Sounds worrying, because he doesn't say "part of Ukraine".
A fairly standard part of Greater X Nationalism, is that countries that contain bits that you want to be part of greater X are not real countries.
It has been a common trope of Greater Russian Nationalism for many many years that Ukraine doesn't have a culture of it's own, it's language is just a dialect of Russian etc etc.
In fact the "Ukrainian isn't a language" thing, is a fairly good indicator of the position of any Russian you meet......
"Scots isn't a language"
Just throwing out some ill considered thoughts, and I can't really speak for Ukrainian Vs Russian but I do think that Scots isn't really a language. By and large, a person speaking Scots can be understood by a person who only speaks English (and vice versa), which makes it to my mind a dialect.
However, I wonder if the problem is with the words we use. English and Gaelic are two very distinctly different languages. Spanish and Italian are much more closely related but are still two different languages. Bavarian Dialect and Plattdeutsch are very different from each other. English and Scots don't seem that different from each other to me, but it's a very sliding scale and there doesn't seem to be a hard line when a dialect becomes a language. Perhaps more helpful is the concept of a linguistic identity (I'm sure the field of linguistics has a concept like this already)? This sidesteps the thorny issue of language Vs dialect and acknowledges that, even if linguistic differences might not amount to a full-blown language, those differences can inform and be informed by Identity.
Therefore it doesn't mean shit if Ukrainian is a dialect of Russian because there is a cultural identity based around it.
Personally:
He is the best kent o the mony makars that haes wrocht in the Scots leid, tho he screived mony poems in Inglis forby, an in a kin o licht Scots that can be easy read by fowk nae sae acquent wi Scots, within an furth o Scotland.
I can understand less of that than:
Il est le plus connu des poètes qui ont écrit en scots, bien que la plus grande partie de son œuvre soit en anglais et en light scots (écossais allégé), un dialecte plus accessible à un public non écossais.
On Scottish language and culture, on which I know relatively little, I found this radio series very interesting.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
The problem is that the current sick pay provision, from an employers perspective, can be far too costly and generous to those who fake sickness (which is easily done). Especially for small businesses where labour is a very serious cost.
A lot easier to fix if you aren't worried about your costs as much.
'Three days unpaid' is hardly 'costly.' Not compared to somebody coming in and making everyone else ill, lowering productivity for possibly weeks.
First three days being unpaid is the best part of SSP from my perspective. It means that those who throw a sickie as they can't be bothered to come into work, aren't paid for it.
Tell people who are hungover they can call in "sick" and get paid, and absence rates will go up, especially on Mondays.
Is Sunday a big drinking night round your way?
It can be yes, especially if people feel they can call in sick on the Monday so they're free to drink heavily. That's why Sunday has a lot of big football fixtures in the pub. People aren't going there to drink shandies.
I once had a performance review with an employee who'd been with us nearly six months. He'd called in "sick" 10 times in that six month period - twice on a Friday, eight times on a Monday, never on a Tuesday to Thursday.
Should people companies be compelled by law to pay people who are throwing sickies?
If you prove someone is claiming to be unwell when not, sack them.
Not easily done.
In the real world, people throwing sickies is a very real problem already, and with more generous SSP would be an even bigger problem.
Its easy to dismiss it if its not costing you money, or you're wishing that people aren't like that, but many are.
In your case the guy has been with you around 6 months. You can easily manage out the business.
In that case, without going into more details that is exactly what was done, but it was just an example.
People are in denial if they don't think sickies are a very real problem in the real world. Utter denial.
Angst about removal of self-isolation rules if you test +ve for covid shows yet again a misunderstanding of regulations (law) and guidance (advice). The requirement to self-isolate has NEVER been a legal requirement in Scotland (though it has been till now in England). /1of2
The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation) (England) Regulations 2020 apply, as name suggests, in England only. No analogue in Scotland, where self-isolation “rules” have only ever been guidance.
Sounds worrying, because he doesn't say "part of Ukraine".
A fairly standard part of Greater X Nationalism, is that countries that contain bits that you want to be part of greater X are not real countries.
It has been a common trope of Greater Russian Nationalism for many many years that Ukraine doesn't have a culture of it's own, it's language is just a dialect of Russian etc etc.
In fact the "Ukrainian isn't a language" thing, is a fairly good indicator of the position of any Russian you meet......
"Scots isn't a language"
Just throwing out some ill considered thoughts, and I can't really speak for Ukrainian Vs Russian but I do think that Scots isn't really a language. By and large, a person speaking Scots can be understood by a person who only speaks English (and vice versa), which makes it to my mind a dialect.
However, I wonder if the problem is with the words we use. English and Gaelic are two very distinctly different languages. Spanish and Italian are much more closely related but are still two different languages. Bavarian Dialect and Plattdeutsch are very different from each other. English and Scots don't seem that different from each other to me, but it's a very sliding scale and there doesn't seem to be a hard line when a dialect becomes a language. Perhaps more helpful is the concept of a linguistic identity (I'm sure the field of linguistics has a concept like this already)? This sidesteps the thorny issue of language Vs dialect and acknowledges that, even if linguistic differences might not amount to a full-blown language, those differences can inform and be informed by Identity.
Therefore it doesn't mean shit if Ukrainian is a dialect of Russian because there is a cultural identity based around it.
Personally:
He is the best kent o the mony makars that haes wrocht in the Scots leid, tho he screived mony poems in Inglis forby, an in a kin o licht Scots that can be easy read by fowk nae sae acquent wi Scots, within an furth o Scotland.
I can understand less of that than:
Il est le plus connu des poètes qui ont écrit en scots, bien que la plus grande partie de son œuvre soit en anglais et en light scots (écossais allégé), un dialecte plus accessible à un public non écossais.
On Scottish language and culture, on which I know relatively little, I found this radio series very interesting.
UK borrowed £5.4bn less than last year and - more importantly - there were revisions down of £5.4bn in the year to date.
This means that more than half the damage to the public finances - in deficit terms - will have been undone this year.
Given nominal GDP growth, the UK's borrowings as a % of GDP have fallen even further and debt looks basically static. Indeed it is not outside possibility that debt will fall as a % of GDP this year.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
Doubt you will vote for him though. You'll find something to dislike.
I hadn't actually seen that announcement, which doesn't say much for his comms department or for how closely I've been following things.
And what in my posting history makes you think I would 'find something to dislike?'
Unfortunately, he linked it to banning employers employing employees on terms that both parties are happy with,
For the majority of people the idea that, as employees and employers, they are negotiating on equal terms when it comes to the terms of their employment contracts is ludicrous.
Indeed. The employee can choose to go to any employer they want, they employer unless they're headhunting is generally restricted to those employees who've chosen to approach them rather than the other way around.
If you're not happy with your employer, you can always look for another.
Or Employees who recruitment "consultants" have chosen to put forward to them.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
The problem is that the current sick pay provision, from an employers perspective, can be far too costly and generous to those who fake sickness (which is easily done). Especially for small businesses where labour is a very serious cost.
A lot easier to fix if you aren't worried about your costs as much.
'Three days unpaid' is hardly 'costly.' Not compared to somebody coming in and making everyone else ill, lowering productivity for possibly weeks.
First three days being unpaid is the best part of SSP from my perspective. It means that those who throw a sickie as they can't be bothered to come into work, aren't paid for it.
Tell people who are hungover they can call in "sick" and get paid, and absence rates will go up, especially on Mondays.
Is Sunday a big drinking night round your way?
It can be yes, especially if people feel they can call in sick on the Monday so they're free to drink heavily. That's why Sunday has a lot of big football fixtures in the pub. People aren't going there to drink shandies.
I once had a performance review with an employee who'd been with us nearly six months. He'd called in "sick" 10 times in that six month period - twice on a Friday, eight times on a Monday, never on a Tuesday to Thursday.
Should people companies be compelled by law to pay people who are throwing sickies?
Why should the majority be punished for the actions of a minority. We should have decent sick pay in this country not a pittance. If he/she/they were throwing sickies you could manage them out of the business especially if they have only been there a few months.
Here's the thing. A good employer has policies. Including sickness. Which would prompt an HR review as soon as a pattern of "sickness" presented itself. This does two things - weeds out the fakers, and provides support for the genuinely afflicted.
Companies should be compelled by law to pay proper fit for purpose sick pay (not the SSP crap we have now). And be free to dismiss the fakers.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
What are you talking about? Any specific examples?
I think in the real world that people throwing sickies is a bigger problem than people being forced in when they're genuinely sick.
"Poor health in the workforce is costly to employers and the economy. This is partly due to health problems causing people to spend less time at work, for example via unemployment, worklessness, reduced hours and absenteeism, but is also due to people being less productive while at work. Research suggests that reduced productivity at work due to ill-health (often referred to as "presenteeism") is a widespread phenomenon in the UK. Recent estimates suggest that 1.5 days of work time are lost due to presenteeism for every one day lost due to absenteeism, and the cost of presenteeism to business is double that of absenteeism, amounting to about £21.2 billion per year (Parsonage and Saini 2017). Another survey estimates that the equivalent of 35 days per person per year are lost to presenteeism in the UK (Vitality Health / Rand Europe 2019)."
"Presenteeism has been defined in several ways, but it most commonly refers to situations where people continue to work while unwell and not functioning to their full capacity1. Evidence is growing that the incidence and costs of presenteeism are higher than absenteeism2,3, but investigating it is considerably more challenging."
From a cold, geopolitical point of view, there is a reason of sorts for Putin's actions. This is not an attempt to justify Putin's actions but to understand them.
First of all, throughout Russian history they've been invaded many times. Swedes, Lithuanians, Poles, Germans, French, Turks, Tartars, Mongols - the list goes on. Some of the invasions, most notably Napoleon's and Hitler's, were from former allies - so, to a neurotic Russian leader, even treaties are not a guarantee of no invasion.
Russia is an enormous country, and much of its border is on flat land, easy to invade across. So the Russian strategy is to push out as far as possible - so that if anyone invades, they'll get exhausted before reaching the heart of the country. The idea seems to be to expand out to certain physical barriers - such as the Carpathian Mountains, the Caspian Sea and so on - so that Russia can control choke points in the event of any invasion. To that end Putin would need a puppet, or friendly, goverment - as he has in Belarus - in Ukraine and the three Baltic states, as well as parts of Poland. This also explains Russia's presence in Georgia and heavy involvement in the formerly Soviet 'stans.
Russia's demography seems to be in terminal decline, with a very low birthrate and poor health (that's not even taking into account Covid, since the numbers there are opaque), so Putin appears to be acting now - in 10 or even 5 years he may not have the armed forces at his disposal to do anything he wants.
Of course, Putin's repeated interventions in Ukraine over the past decade have provoked something he insists doesn't exist: Ukrainian national identity. Even Russian-speaking Ukrainians are unlikely to feel as friendly to him as they once did. He may even have provoked Ukraine into genuinely anting Nato membership - and Finland and Sweden will end up acting, in practice if not in treaty, as Nato countries.
So, in my view, not barmy - just neurotic, and a subscriber to the 'maps are destiny' worldview. But in attempting to act in what he bizarrely sees as a rational defensive way, he's probably guaranteeing his country to a new Time of Troubles sooner or later.
Sounds worrying, because he doesn't say "part of Ukraine".
A fairly standard part of Greater X Nationalism, is that countries that contain bits that you want to be part of greater X are not real countries.
It has been a common trope of Greater Russian Nationalism for many many years that Ukraine doesn't have a culture of it's own, it's language is just a dialect of Russian etc etc.
In fact the "Ukrainian isn't a language" thing, is a fairly good indicator of the position of any Russian you meet......
"Scots isn't a language"
Just throwing out some ill considered thoughts, and I can't really speak for Ukrainian Vs Russian but I do think that Scots isn't really a language. By and large, a person speaking Scots can be understood by a person who only speaks English (and vice versa), which makes it to my mind a dialect.
However, I wonder if the problem is with the words we use. English and Gaelic are two very distinctly different languages. Spanish and Italian are much more closely related but are still two different languages. Bavarian Dialect and Plattdeutsch are very different from each other. English and Scots don't seem that different from each other to me, but it's a very sliding scale and there doesn't seem to be a hard line when a dialect becomes a language. Perhaps more helpful is the concept of a linguistic identity (I'm sure the field of linguistics has a concept like this already)? This sidesteps the thorny issue of language Vs dialect and acknowledges that, even if linguistic differences might not amount to a full-blown language, those differences can inform and be informed by Identity.
Therefore it doesn't mean shit if Ukrainian is a dialect of Russian because there is a cultural identity based around it.
Personally:
He is the best kent o the mony makars that haes wrocht in the Scots leid, tho he screived mony poems in Inglis forby, an in a kin o licht Scots that can be easy read by fowk nae sae acquent wi Scots, within an furth o Scotland.
I can understand less of that than:
Il est le plus connu des poètes qui ont écrit en scots, bien que la plus grande partie de son œuvre soit en anglais et en light scots (écossais allégé), un dialecte plus accessible à un public non écossais.
I think
"a shprakh iz a dyalekt mit an armey un flot"
applies
Magyar speakers might disagree about the "navy" part!
Edit: damn it, they have a navy
1. Hungary is well blessed with water on which ships can sail (the Danube, Lake Balaton); 2. Hungary has a river flotilla regiment, Honved. 3. The country was ruled by a dictator, Admiral Miklós Horthy, for more than two decades up to 1944.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
Totally. I benefit hugely from this. Three and half months off with cancer - full pay from the Uni. Excellent.
To me the real issue with SSP is this: people who are serious ill for months, what do you do about them? Someone who is off for months missing out on most of their pay for months is far more of a problem than those who are throwing sickies (or less frequently those who happen to be sick) missing out on a single days pay.
OTOH though if someone throws a sicky for months, easily done with things like "stress"*, then should an employer be forced to pay their wages when they're not working?
* I am not saying stress isn't a serious problem for those who have it, it is deadly serious, but its easily faked too which is a serious problem.
"Stress" he mocks. If you are off for months you have been signed off with stress, not because you are faking it. Its a bit sad that mental health is something that is still mocked in 2022.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
The problem is that the current sick pay provision, from an employers perspective, can be far too costly and generous to those who fake sickness (which is easily done). Especially for small businesses where labour is a very serious cost.
A lot easier to fix if you aren't worried about your costs as much.
'Three days unpaid' is hardly 'costly.' Not compared to somebody coming in and making everyone else ill, lowering productivity for possibly weeks.
First three days being unpaid is the best part of SSP from my perspective. It means that those who throw a sickie as they can't be bothered to come into work, aren't paid for it.
Tell people who are hungover they can call in "sick" and get paid, and absence rates will go up, especially on Mondays.
Is Sunday a big drinking night round your way?
It can be yes, especially if people feel they can call in sick on the Monday so they're free to drink heavily. That's why Sunday has a lot of big football fixtures in the pub. People aren't going there to drink shandies.
I once had a performance review with an employee who'd been with us nearly six months. He'd called in "sick" 10 times in that six month period - twice on a Friday, eight times on a Monday, never on a Tuesday to Thursday.
Should people companies be compelled by law to pay people who are throwing sickies?
Why should the majority be punished for the actions of a minority. We should have decent sick pay in this country not a pittance. If he/she/they were throwing sickies you could manage them out of the business especially if they have only been there a few months.
Here's the thing. A good employer has policies. Including sickness. Which would prompt an HR review as soon as a pattern of "sickness" presented itself. This does two things - weeds out the fakers, and provides support for the genuinely afflicted.
Companies should be compelled by law to pay proper fit for purpose sick pay (not the SSP crap we have now). And be free to dismiss the fakers.
Absolutely right. The whole notion that we shouldn't pay decent sick pay to people as some people will just take the piss is nonsense and stigmatises the majority who never would.
How does one get it after two? Luck? Or am I too conservative? I normally start with 2 words with different reasonably common letters. Adieu followed by summat like storm or frost.
Yesterday, my wife's first word got the T in second place, and she knew there was an O and no S. The only word she could think of that was something-T but not S-T, and with an O in it, was OTHER. So she got it in 2.
Sounds worrying, because he doesn't say "part of Ukraine".
A fairly standard part of Greater X Nationalism, is that countries that contain bits that you want to be part of greater X are not real countries.
It has been a common trope of Greater Russian Nationalism for many many years that Ukraine doesn't have a culture of it's own, it's language is just a dialect of Russian etc etc.
In fact the "Ukrainian isn't a language" thing, is a fairly good indicator of the position of any Russian you meet......
"Scots isn't a language"
Just throwing out some ill considered thoughts, and I can't really speak for Ukrainian Vs Russian but I do think that Scots isn't really a language. By and large, a person speaking Scots can be understood by a person who only speaks English (and vice versa), which makes it to my mind a dialect.
However, I wonder if the problem is with the words we use. English and Gaelic are two very distinctly different languages. Spanish and Italian are much more closely related but are still two different languages. Bavarian Dialect and Plattdeutsch are very different from each other. English and Scots don't seem that different from each other to me, but it's a very sliding scale and there doesn't seem to be a hard line when a dialect becomes a language. Perhaps more helpful is the concept of a linguistic identity (I'm sure the field of linguistics has a concept like this already)? This sidesteps the thorny issue of language Vs dialect and acknowledges that, even if linguistic differences might not amount to a full-blown language, those differences can inform and be informed by Identity.
Therefore it doesn't mean shit if Ukrainian is a dialect of Russian because there is a cultural identity based around it.
Personally:
He is the best kent o the mony makars that haes wrocht in the Scots leid, tho he screived mony poems in Inglis forby, an in a kin o licht Scots that can be easy read by fowk nae sae acquent wi Scots, within an furth o Scotland.
I can understand less of that than:
Il est le plus connu des poètes qui ont écrit en scots, bien que la plus grande partie de son œuvre soit en anglais et en light scots (écossais allégé), un dialecte plus accessible à un public non écossais.
Haha, in the interests of backing up my own words... He is the best known of the money makers that has written in the Scots leid (not sure, maybe tongue?), though he scribed many poems in English forby, and in a kin of light Scots that can be easily read by folk not acquainted with Scots, within a firth of Scotland. So, I'm guessing not a perfect translation, but the general gist is there. I wouldn't know where to start with the French, though having learned some German perhaps I would have done better with that?
Still, I think the point of a sliding scale between language and dialect, particularly in edge cases, holds up and if cultural identity is based around linguistic differences it doesn't really matter what we call them.
Angst about removal of self-isolation rules if you test +ve for covid shows yet again a misunderstanding of regulations (law) and guidance (advice). The requirement to self-isolate has NEVER been a legal requirement in Scotland (though it has been till now in England). /1of2
The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation) (England) Regulations 2020 apply, as name suggests, in England only. No analogue in Scotland, where self-isolation “rules” have only ever been guidance.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
The problem is that the current sick pay provision, from an employers perspective, can be far too costly and generous to those who fake sickness (which is easily done). Especially for small businesses where labour is a very serious cost.
A lot easier to fix if you aren't worried about your costs as much.
'Three days unpaid' is hardly 'costly.' Not compared to somebody coming in and making everyone else ill, lowering productivity for possibly weeks.
First three days being unpaid is the best part of SSP from my perspective. It means that those who throw a sickie as they can't be bothered to come into work, aren't paid for it.
Tell people who are hungover they can call in "sick" and get paid, and absence rates will go up, especially on Mondays.
Is Sunday a big drinking night round your way?
It can be yes, especially if people feel they can call in sick on the Monday so they're free to drink heavily. That's why Sunday has a lot of big football fixtures in the pub. People aren't going there to drink shandies.
I once had a performance review with an employee who'd been with us nearly six months. He'd called in "sick" 10 times in that six month period - twice on a Friday, eight times on a Monday, never on a Tuesday to Thursday.
Should people companies be compelled by law to pay people who are throwing sickies?
Why should the majority be punished for the actions of a minority. We should have decent sick pay in this country not a pittance. If he/she/they were throwing sickies you could manage them out of the business especially if they have only been there a few months.
Here's the thing. A good employer has policies. Including sickness. Which would prompt an HR review as soon as a pattern of "sickness" presented itself. This does two things - weeds out the fakers, and provides support for the genuinely afflicted.
Companies should be compelled by law to pay proper fit for purpose sick pay (not the SSP crap we have now). And be free to dismiss the fakers.
When I was in business I always ensured our staff were paid as normal if they were off through sickness
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
The problem is that the current sick pay provision, from an employers perspective, can be far too costly and generous to those who fake sickness (which is easily done). Especially for small businesses where labour is a very serious cost.
A lot easier to fix if you aren't worried about your costs as much.
'Three days unpaid' is hardly 'costly.' Not compared to somebody coming in and making everyone else ill, lowering productivity for possibly weeks.
First three days being unpaid is the best part of SSP from my perspective. It means that those who throw a sickie as they can't be bothered to come into work, aren't paid for it.
Tell people who are hungover they can call in "sick" and get paid, and absence rates will go up, especially on Mondays.
Is Sunday a big drinking night round your way?
It can be yes, especially if people feel they can call in sick on the Monday so they're free to drink heavily. That's why Sunday has a lot of big football fixtures in the pub. People aren't going there to drink shandies.
I once had a performance review with an employee who'd been with us nearly six months. He'd called in "sick" 10 times in that six month period - twice on a Friday, eight times on a Monday, never on a Tuesday to Thursday.
Should people companies be compelled by law to pay people who are throwing sickies?
Why should the majority be punished for the actions of a minority. We should have decent sick pay in this country not a pittance. If he/she/they were throwing sickies you could manage them out of the business especially if they have only been there a few months.
Here's the thing. A good employer has policies. Including sickness. Which would prompt an HR review as soon as a pattern of "sickness" presented itself. This does two things - weeds out the fakers, and provides support for the genuinely afflicted.
Companies should be compelled by law to pay proper fit for purpose sick pay (not the SSP crap we have now). And be free to dismiss the fakers.
We have had a chap off for 8 months for depression and knee pain.
There is nothing wrong with him but he manages to get Doctors certificates
We have ended up employing a Private Investigator to follow him. He spends his time playing golf and getting cash in hand work fitting blinds.
Despite this beacuse of the Doctors certificates its very hard for us to take any action against him.
I enjoyed it but I think it has been a bit over-hyped. It is clearly heart-felt but perhaps that is part of the problem. The young boy is beautifully played. As is Pop, the grand-father by Ciaran Hinds. He certainly deserves his Oscar nomination. Judi Dench, I'm afraid, does not.
Catriona Balfe was very good as the mother and probably deserved an Oscar nomination more than Judi. But there were some odd unexplained gaps in the relationship between the parents and the young Protestant boy being at school with a Catholic girl in 1969 did not make sense. It felt like a cinematic version of a novella rather than a novel or fully fledged film, if that makes sense.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
The problem is that the current sick pay provision, from an employers perspective, can be far too costly and generous to those who fake sickness (which is easily done). Especially for small businesses where labour is a very serious cost.
A lot easier to fix if you aren't worried about your costs as much.
'Three days unpaid' is hardly 'costly.' Not compared to somebody coming in and making everyone else ill, lowering productivity for possibly weeks.
First three days being unpaid is the best part of SSP from my perspective. It means that those who throw a sickie as they can't be bothered to come into work, aren't paid for it.
Tell people who are hungover they can call in "sick" and get paid, and absence rates will go up, especially on Mondays.
Is Sunday a big drinking night round your way?
It can be yes, especially if people feel they can call in sick on the Monday so they're free to drink heavily. That's why Sunday has a lot of big football fixtures in the pub. People aren't going there to drink shandies.
I once had a performance review with an employee who'd been with us nearly six months. He'd called in "sick" 10 times in that six month period - twice on a Friday, eight times on a Monday, never on a Tuesday to Thursday.
Should people companies be compelled by law to pay people who are throwing sickies?
Why should the majority be punished for the actions of a minority. We should have decent sick pay in this country not a pittance. If he/she/they were throwing sickies you could manage them out of the business especially if they have only been there a few months.
Here's the thing. A good employer has policies. Including sickness. Which would prompt an HR review as soon as a pattern of "sickness" presented itself. This does two things - weeds out the fakers, and provides support for the genuinely afflicted.
Companies should be compelled by law to pay proper fit for purpose sick pay (not the SSP crap we have now). And be free to dismiss the fakers.
When I was in business I always ensured our staff were paid as normal if they were off through sickness
I don't think there is a white collar firm in the country that doesn't offer at least 6 weeks' pay at 70% or more.
According to a survey 76% of employees working in retail admitted to lying about being sick in order to take a day off, with a third admitting to doing so repeatedly. The true figure of course could be even higher.
Is there any wonder that sector is most likely to have SSP as the standard?
When the majority of your staff are prepared to lie about being sick, then having sick policies set accordingly is entirely logical and reasonable.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
Totally. I benefit hugely from this. Three and half months off with cancer - full pay from the Uni. Excellent.
To me the real issue with SSP is this: people who are serious ill for months, what do you do about them? Someone who is off for months missing out on most of their pay for months is far more of a problem than those who are throwing sickies (or less frequently those who happen to be sick) missing out on a single days pay.
OTOH though if someone throws a sicky for months, easily done with things like "stress"*, then should an employer be forced to pay their wages when they're not working?
* I am not saying stress isn't a serious problem for those who have it, it is deadly serious, but its easily faked too which is a serious problem.
"Stress" he mocks. If you are off for months you have been signed off with stress, not because you are faking it. Its a bit sad that mental health is something that is still mocked in 2022.
I didn't mock mental health. I said its deadly serious problem for those who have it.
But it is also exceedingly easy to be signed off for "stress" while faking it. Just because you are signed off doesn't mean you aren't faking it - that's not to say all are faking it, its very serious for those who have it, but those who are faking it are also real too.
Sounds worrying, because he doesn't say "part of Ukraine".
A fairly standard part of Greater X Nationalism, is that countries that contain bits that you want to be part of greater X are not real countries.
It has been a common trope of Greater Russian Nationalism for many many years that Ukraine doesn't have a culture of it's own, it's language is just a dialect of Russian etc etc.
In fact the "Ukrainian isn't a language" thing, is a fairly good indicator of the position of any Russian you meet......
"Scots isn't a language"
Just throwing out some ill considered thoughts, and I can't really speak for Ukrainian Vs Russian but I do think that Scots isn't really a language. By and large, a person speaking Scots can be understood by a person who only speaks English (and vice versa), which makes it to my mind a dialect.
However, I wonder if the problem is with the words we use. English and Gaelic are two very distinctly different languages. Spanish and Italian are much more closely related but are still two different languages. Bavarian Dialect and Plattdeutsch are very different from each other. English and Scots don't seem that different from each other to me, but it's a very sliding scale and there doesn't seem to be a hard line when a dialect becomes a language. Perhaps more helpful is the concept of a linguistic identity (I'm sure the field of linguistics has a concept like this already)? This sidesteps the thorny issue of language Vs dialect and acknowledges that, even if linguistic differences might not amount to a full-blown language, those differences can inform and be informed by Identity.
Therefore it doesn't mean shit if Ukrainian is a dialect of Russian because there is a cultural identity based around it.
Personally:
He is the best kent o the mony makars that haes wrocht in the Scots leid, tho he screived mony poems in Inglis forby, an in a kin o licht Scots that can be easy read by fowk nae sae acquent wi Scots, within an furth o Scotland.
I can understand less of that than:
Il est le plus connu des poètes qui ont écrit en scots, bien que la plus grande partie de son œuvre soit en anglais et en light scots (écossais allégé), un dialecte plus accessible à un public non écossais.
1) How many years of French lessons did it take you to develop that level of understanding, and what formal Scots instruction have you received to set against it? Conversely, which one would the average English speaker with no knowledge of French find easier to understand?
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
Doubt you will vote for him though. You'll find something to dislike.
I hadn't actually seen that announcement, which doesn't say much for his comms department or for how closely I've been following things.
And what in my posting history makes you think I would 'find something to dislike?'
Unfortunately, he linked it to banning employers employing employees on terms that both parties are happy with,
For the majority of people the idea that, as employees and employers, they are negotiating on equal terms when it comes to the terms of their employment contracts is ludicrous.
Indeed. The employee can choose to go to any employer they want, they employer unless they're headhunting is generally restricted to those employees who've chosen to approach them rather than the other way around.
If you're not happy with your employer, you can always look for another.
One of these parties has the resources to employ employment lawyers on permanent retainer, the other usually doesn’t - the vast majority of people in this country live paycheck to paycheck.
Yes, a minority of intelligent, well paid & in demand professionals are in a privileged position & can be choosy about their employers. I suggest to you that your own work as an IT professional has given you a very skewed idea of what the working relationship is like for the majority of people in this country.
You might argue that “the weak suffer what they must” but governments are there to act in the interests of all, not just employers & it’s notable how much UK employment law is there to outlaw ways in which employers used to take advantage of their employees in the past.
According to a survey 76% of employees working in retail admitted to lying about being sick in order to take a day off, with a third admitting to doing so repeatedly. The true figure of course could be even higher.
Is there any wonder that sector is most likely to have SSP as the standard?
When the majority of your staff are prepared to lie about being sick, then having sick policies set accordingly is entirely logical and reasonable.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
Totally. I benefit hugely from this. Three and half months off with cancer - full pay from the Uni. Excellent.
To me the real issue with SSP is this: people who are serious ill for months, what do you do about them? Someone who is off for months missing out on most of their pay for months is far more of a problem than those who are throwing sickies (or less frequently those who happen to be sick) missing out on a single days pay.
OTOH though if someone throws a sicky for months, easily done with things like "stress"*, then should an employer be forced to pay their wages when they're not working?
* I am not saying stress isn't a serious problem for those who have it, it is deadly serious, but its easily faked too which is a serious problem.
"Stress" he mocks. If you are off for months you have been signed off with stress, not because you are faking it. Its a bit sad that mental health is something that is still mocked in 2022.
I didn't mock mental health. I said its deadly serious problem for those who have it.
But it is also exceedingly easy to be signed off for "stress" while faking it. Just because you are signed off doesn't mean you aren't faking it - that's not to say all are faking it, its very serious for those who have it, but those who are faking it are also real too.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
Trouble is, for diseases where infected people are spreading the virus before symptoms appear, this is unhelpful.
No its not.
Viruses spread. You need to live with that, unless you've got some delusional idea that you can prevent viruses from spreading.
So, Bartholomew, I presume you don't bother washing your hands after going to the toilet? And you've never used a condom with a new sexual partner?
Of course we can prevent viruses from spreading and we seek to do that all the time. Are you completely bonkers?
So now that Russia are the official baddies can we now have publication of the report into their meddling in our affairs? Surely we can all then collectively boo Putin and put right the damage he has done...
No, that is the limited ISC one that urged Downing Street to order a full enquiry and implement a framework to protect us from future attacks. Big Dog refused. We need the proper report that the ISC says we need to investigate Russian meddling in elections and referendums which Downing Street refuses to look at.
Why is Big Dog afraid of investigating Russia? Aren't they now the big bad who need to be Stopped? How can we stop them if he won't even look at it? Especially when the limited report showed meddling in the Scottish Independence vote - its totally logical to assume further meddling in the Brexit vote and both of the rerun elections of 2017 and 2019.
Here is the reality. The Tories take a lot of money from Russians. The Tories benefited from Russian state meddling in our democratic processes. The Tories say Russia is bad but are happy to take their money and their assistance because the Tories are brazenly corrupt.
So take everything the Big Dog says about Russia with a pinch of salt. They are his mates.
According to a survey 76% of employees working in retail admitted to lying about being sick in order to take a day off, with a third admitting to doing so repeatedly. The true figure of course could be even higher.
Is there any wonder that sector is most likely to have SSP as the standard?
When the majority of your staff are prepared to lie about being sick, then having sick policies set accordingly is entirely logical and reasonable.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
Totally. I benefit hugely from this. Three and half months off with cancer - full pay from the Uni. Excellent.
To me the real issue with SSP is this: people who are serious ill for months, what do you do about them? Someone who is off for months missing out on most of their pay for months is far more of a problem than those who are throwing sickies (or less frequently those who happen to be sick) missing out on a single days pay.
OTOH though if someone throws a sicky for months, easily done with things like "stress"*, then should an employer be forced to pay their wages when they're not working?
* I am not saying stress isn't a serious problem for those who have it, it is deadly serious, but its easily faked too which is a serious problem.
"Stress" he mocks. If you are off for months you have been signed off with stress, not because you are faking it. Its a bit sad that mental health is something that is still mocked in 2022.
I didn't mock mental health. I said its deadly serious problem for those who have it.
But it is also exceedingly easy to be signed off for "stress" while faking it. Just because you are signed off doesn't mean you aren't faking it - that's not to say all are faking it, its very serious for those who have it, but those who are faking it are also real too.
Are you in retail then ? Hence your view on SSP ?
Not any more, but I was many years ago. The difference between that and white collar is staggering in the real world.
As I said, for white collar firms hiring professionals you are wise to pay your staff full or near full pay.
But if you're not ... the situation is very, very different.
A fairly standard part of Greater X Nationalism, is that countries that contain bits that you want to be part of greater X are not real countries.
It has been a common trope of Greater Russian Nationalism for many many years that Ukraine doesn't have a culture of it's own, it's language is just a dialect of Russian etc etc.
In fact the "Ukrainian isn't a language" thing, is a fairly good indicator of the position of any Russian you meet......
Isn't that more or less the same approach taken in China?
Which is run by Greater Han* Chinese Nationalists
*A sort of plastic, made up version of Han culture and history. Imagine the British and the British Empire as described by G. A. Henty....
Uefa is ready to drop St Petersburg as the venue for this year’s Champions League final as the military crisis in Ukraine deepens.
Gazprom, the Russian gas company, is at the heart of European football and has longstanding commercial arrangements with Uefa. Last summer it announced an expansion of its sponsorship arrangement with Uefa to include the European Championship as well as the Champions and Europa Leagues. It also holds the naming rights for the stadium at which the final is due to be played, the Gazprom Arena.
I enjoyed it but I think it has been a bit over-hyped. It is clearly heart-felt but perhaps that is part of the problem. The young boy is beautifully played. As is Pop, the grand-father by Ciaran Hinds. He certainly deserves his Oscar nomination. Judi Dench, I'm afraid, does not.
Catriona Balfe was very good as the mother and probably deserved an Oscar nomination more than Judi. But there were some odd unexplained gaps in the relationship between the parents and the young Protestant boy being at school with a Catholic girl in 1969 did not make sense. It felt like a cinematic version of a novella rather than a novel or fully fledged film, if that makes sense.
Still worth a viewing.
Some feel it doesn't safely negotiate the border with schmaltz. I thought that was unfair. It is a good study in the issues of whether to move away from all you have ever known because of conflict. I'm sure there are plenty in Ukraine struggling with similar issues today (and bringing it back on topic!).
But I fell deeply in love with Catriona Balfe. Superb performance.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
Trouble is, for diseases where infected people are spreading the virus before symptoms appear, this is unhelpful.
No its not.
Viruses spread. You need to live with that, unless you've got some delusional idea that you can prevent viruses from spreading.
So, Bartholomew, I presume you don't bother washing your hands after going to the toilet? And you've never used a condom with a new sexual partner?
Of course we can prevent viruses from spreading and we seek to do that all the time. Are you completely bonkers?
Don't be ridiculous, of course I wash my hands and before I was married I took all appropriate protections.
But we can't prevent viruses from spreading, viruses still spread despite those steps. We can take reasonable steps to reduce the risk of them spreading, but we can't [and shouldn't] stop them entirely. Taking unreasonable steps to try and go OTT to prevent spread is not reasonable or rational.
And now I've wasted far too much time on this site today, I have to go.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
The problem is that the current sick pay provision, from an employers perspective, can be far too costly and generous to those who fake sickness (which is easily done). Especially for small businesses where labour is a very serious cost.
A lot easier to fix if you aren't worried about your costs as much.
'Three days unpaid' is hardly 'costly.' Not compared to somebody coming in and making everyone else ill, lowering productivity for possibly weeks.
First three days being unpaid is the best part of SSP from my perspective. It means that those who throw a sickie as they can't be bothered to come into work, aren't paid for it.
Tell people who are hungover they can call in "sick" and get paid, and absence rates will go up, especially on Mondays.
Is Sunday a big drinking night round your way?
It can be yes, especially if people feel they can call in sick on the Monday so they're free to drink heavily. That's why Sunday has a lot of big football fixtures in the pub. People aren't going there to drink shandies.
I once had a performance review with an employee who'd been with us nearly six months. He'd called in "sick" 10 times in that six month period - twice on a Friday, eight times on a Monday, never on a Tuesday to Thursday.
Should people companies be compelled by law to pay people who are throwing sickies?
Why should the majority be punished for the actions of a minority. We should have decent sick pay in this country not a pittance. If he/she/they were throwing sickies you could manage them out of the business especially if they have only been there a few months.
Here's the thing. A good employer has policies. Including sickness. Which would prompt an HR review as soon as a pattern of "sickness" presented itself. This does two things - weeds out the fakers, and provides support for the genuinely afflicted.
Companies should be compelled by law to pay proper fit for purpose sick pay (not the SSP crap we have now). And be free to dismiss the fakers.
We have had a chap off for 8 months for depression and knee pain.
There is nothing wrong with him but he manages to get Doctors certificates
We have ended up employing a Private Investigator to follow him. He spends his time playing golf and getting cash in hand work fitting blinds.
Despite this beacuse of the Doctors certificates its very hard for us to take any action against him.
Isn’t that over the limits for sick pay / medical leave of any kind? IIRC the requirement for an employer to pay sick pay expires after 7 months. Time to pull the plug if you genuinely believe him to be swinging the lead?
I didn't mock mental health. I said its deadly serious problem for those who have it.
But it is also exceedingly easy to be signed off for "stress" while faking it. Just because you are signed off doesn't mean you aren't faking it - that's not to say all are faking it, its very serious for those who have it, but those who are faking it are also real too.
You are *still* mocking mental health as something easy to fake therefore something that must be suspect. Mental health crises are not something anyone with decency puts in "quotes".
Whats more as anyone who has suffered will tell you, the source can be specific and it can be acute. If you haven't suffered heart palpitations caused by having to go into work, or even *thinking* about doing so then you're not really in a place to say "stress".
Sounds worrying, because he doesn't say "part of Ukraine".
A fairly standard part of Greater X Nationalism, is that countries that contain bits that you want to be part of greater X are not real countries.
It has been a common trope of Greater Russian Nationalism for many many years that Ukraine doesn't have a culture of it's own, it's language is just a dialect of Russian etc etc.
In fact the "Ukrainian isn't a language" thing, is a fairly good indicator of the position of any Russian you meet......
"Scots isn't a language"
Just throwing out some ill considered thoughts, and I can't really speak for Ukrainian Vs Russian but I do think that Scots isn't really a language. By and large, a person speaking Scots can be understood by a person who only speaks English (and vice versa), which makes it to my mind a dialect.
However, I wonder if the problem is with the words we use. English and Gaelic are two very distinctly different languages. Spanish and Italian are much more closely related but are still two different languages. Bavarian Dialect and Plattdeutsch are very different from each other. English and Scots don't seem that different from each other to me, but it's a very sliding scale and there doesn't seem to be a hard line when a dialect becomes a language. Perhaps more helpful is the concept of a linguistic identity (I'm sure the field of linguistics has a concept like this already)? This sidesteps the thorny issue of language Vs dialect and acknowledges that, even if linguistic differences might not amount to a full-blown language, those differences can inform and be informed by Identity.
Therefore it doesn't mean shit if Ukrainian is a dialect of Russian because there is a cultural identity based around it.
Personally:
He is the best kent o the mony makars that haes wrocht in the Scots leid, tho he screived mony poems in Inglis forby, an in a kin o licht Scots that can be easy read by fowk nae sae acquent wi Scots, within an furth o Scotland.
I can understand less of that than:
Il est le plus connu des poètes qui ont écrit en scots, bien que la plus grande partie de son œuvre soit en anglais et en light scots (écossais allégé), un dialecte plus accessible à un public non écossais.
Haha, in the interests of backing up my own words... He is the best known of the money makers that has written in the Scots leid (not sure, maybe tongue?), though he scribed many poems in English forby, and in a kin of light Scots that can be easily read by folk not acquainted with Scots, within a firth of Scotland. So, I'm guessing not a perfect translation, but the general gist is there. I wouldn't know where to start with the French, though having learned some German perhaps I would have done better with that?
Still, I think the point of a sliding scale between language and dialect, particularly in edge cases, holds up and if cultural identity is based around linguistic differences it doesn't really matter what we call them.
Yes, the gist is good. I find myself able to get the gist in languages I certainly cannot speak: Oekraïne (Oekraïens: Україна) is een land in Oost-Europa dat in het noordoosten en oosten aan Rusland, in het noordwesten aan Wit-Rusland, in het westen aan Polen, Slowakije en Hongarije en in het zuidwesten aan Roemenië en Moldavië grenst.
But for that, and for Scots, much concentration is needed on my part. I can wrangle the meaning out of some words but not others (forby? furth?) and I wouldn't know what words to choose if I was writing or speaking (wrocht verus screived?). So I would never say I can speak Scots. And as a native English speaker, that seems to give me a strong indication that it's a separate language. Partial intelligibility for the naive reader is the lower bar to clear. The ability to write it is a higher one.
EDIT: the glaring problem with your translation was "mony makars". You totally missed on that bit!
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
Trouble is, for diseases where infected people are spreading the virus before symptoms appear, this is unhelpful.
No its not.
Viruses spread. You need to live with that, unless you've got some delusional idea that you can prevent viruses from spreading.
So, Bartholomew, I presume you don't bother washing your hands after going to the toilet? And you've never used a condom with a new sexual partner?
Of course we can prevent viruses from spreading and we seek to do that all the time. Are you completely bonkers?
Don't be ridiculous, of course I wash my hands and before I was married I took all appropriate protections.
But we can't prevent viruses from spreading, viruses still spread despite those steps. We can take reasonable steps to reduce the risk of them spreading, but we can't [and shouldn't] stop them entirely. Taking unreasonable steps to try and go OTT to prevent spread is not reasonable or rational.
And now I've wasted far too much time on this site today, I have to go.
So, we *can* prevent viruses from spreading (some of the time, in some situations) and should. Great.
(I note, in a small number of cases, we have been able to stop viruses spreading entirely. We eliminated smallpox. We stopped MERS.)
According to a survey 76% of employees working in retail admitted to lying about being sick in order to take a day off, with a third admitting to doing so repeatedly. The true figure of course could be even higher.
Is there any wonder that sector is most likely to have SSP as the standard?
When the majority of your staff are prepared to lie about being sick, then having sick policies set accordingly is entirely logical and reasonable.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
Totally. I benefit hugely from this. Three and half months off with cancer - full pay from the Uni. Excellent.
To me the real issue with SSP is this: people who are serious ill for months, what do you do about them? Someone who is off for months missing out on most of their pay for months is far more of a problem than those who are throwing sickies (or less frequently those who happen to be sick) missing out on a single days pay.
OTOH though if someone throws a sicky for months, easily done with things like "stress"*, then should an employer be forced to pay their wages when they're not working?
* I am not saying stress isn't a serious problem for those who have it, it is deadly serious, but its easily faked too which is a serious problem.
"Stress" he mocks. If you are off for months you have been signed off with stress, not because you are faking it. Its a bit sad that mental health is something that is still mocked in 2022.
I didn't mock mental health. I said its deadly serious problem for those who have it.
But it is also exceedingly easy to be signed off for "stress" while faking it. Just because you are signed off doesn't mean you aren't faking it - that's not to say all are faking it, its very serious for those who have it, but those who are faking it are also real too.
Are you in retail then ? Hence your view on SSP ?
Not any more, but I was many years ago. The difference between that and white collar is staggering in the real world.
As I said, for white collar firms hiring professionals you are wise to pay your staff full or near full pay.
But if you're not ... the situation is very, very different.
It would also be interesting to compare different retail sectors/employers - i.e. if employer gives a damn about your employees, do they take fewer sick days? John Lewis versus $randomhighstreettatstore for example.
I know there's a chicken and egg aspect to this, but interesting that you report such high rates of sick leave fraus in a sector that generally does only offer SSP.
I didn't mock mental health. I said its deadly serious problem for those who have it.
But it is also exceedingly easy to be signed off for "stress" while faking it. Just because you are signed off doesn't mean you aren't faking it - that's not to say all are faking it, its very serious for those who have it, but those who are faking it are also real too.
You are *still* mocking mental health as something easy to fake therefore something that must be suspect. Mental health crises are not something anyone with decency puts in "quotes".
Whats more as anyone who has suffered will tell you, the source can be specific and it can be acute. If you haven't suffered heart palpitations caused by having to go into work, or even *thinking* about doing so then you're not really in a place to say "stress".
The people who really have stress have stress.
The people who are faking it have "stress".
I'm not mocking it as something that is easy to fake. It simply is easy to fake, that is a matter of fact, that we need to be able to deal with.
Its not just mental health that is fakeable of course, its just one of the easiest things to fake, along with "back pain". I once knew a troubled individual who faked that she had "cancer".
Uefa is ready to drop St Petersburg as the venue for this year’s Champions League final as the military crisis in Ukraine deepens.
Gazprom, the Russian gas company, is at the heart of European football and has longstanding commercial arrangements with Uefa. Last summer it announced an expansion of its sponsorship arrangement with Uefa to include the European Championship as well as the Champions and Europa Leagues. It also holds the naming rights for the stadium at which the final is due to be played, the Gazprom Arena.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
Totally. I benefit hugely from this. Three and half months off with cancer - full pay from the Uni. Excellent.
To me the real issue with SSP is this: people who are serious ill for months, what do you do about them? Someone who is off for months missing out on most of their pay for months is far more of a problem than those who are throwing sickies (or less frequently those who happen to be sick) missing out on a single days pay.
OTOH though if someone throws a sicky for months, easily done with things like "stress"*, then should an employer be forced to pay their wages when they're not working?
* I am not saying stress isn't a serious problem for those who have it, it is deadly serious, but its easily faked too which is a serious problem.
"Stress" he mocks. If you are off for months you have been signed off with stress, not because you are faking it. Its a bit sad that mental health is something that is still mocked in 2022.
Stress can be immensely debilitating. My wife was bullied out of a job she liked by a spite cow (ultimately got removed, but too late for around 15 people who she had forced out). It manifested as huge allergic reactions to perfume, but was ultimately stress. I think it took at least a year to get over it, and required three job changes. When initially signed off (on full pay) she was able to do very little as she was so depressed, The one thing that worked was walking and playing pokemon go. It was a grim time.
In any workplace of a certain size there will be people who swing the lead. Generally they get found out, and its not right the bulk of the workforce suffer because of it.
Sounds worrying, because he doesn't say "part of Ukraine".
A fairly standard part of Greater X Nationalism, is that countries that contain bits that you want to be part of greater X are not real countries.
It has been a common trope of Greater Russian Nationalism for many many years that Ukraine doesn't have a culture of it's own, it's language is just a dialect of Russian etc etc.
In fact the "Ukrainian isn't a language" thing, is a fairly good indicator of the position of any Russian you meet......
"Scots isn't a language"
Just throwing out some ill considered thoughts, and I can't really speak for Ukrainian Vs Russian but I do think that Scots isn't really a language. By and large, a person speaking Scots can be understood by a person who only speaks English (and vice versa), which makes it to my mind a dialect.
However, I wonder if the problem is with the words we use. English and Gaelic are two very distinctly different languages. Spanish and Italian are much more closely related but are still two different languages. Bavarian Dialect and Plattdeutsch are very different from each other. English and Scots don't seem that different from each other to me, but it's a very sliding scale and there doesn't seem to be a hard line when a dialect becomes a language. Perhaps more helpful is the concept of a linguistic identity (I'm sure the field of linguistics has a concept like this already)? This sidesteps the thorny issue of language Vs dialect and acknowledges that, even if linguistic differences might not amount to a full-blown language, those differences can inform and be informed by Identity.
Therefore it doesn't mean shit if Ukrainian is a dialect of Russian because there is a cultural identity based around it.
Personally:
He is the best kent o the mony makars that haes wrocht in the Scots leid, tho he screived mony poems in Inglis forby, an in a kin o licht Scots that can be easy read by fowk nae sae acquent wi Scots, within an furth o Scotland.
I can understand less of that than:
Il est le plus connu des poètes qui ont écrit en scots, bien que la plus grande partie de son œuvre soit en anglais et en light scots (écossais allégé), un dialecte plus accessible à un public non écossais.
Haha, in the interests of backing up my own words... He is the best known of the money makers that has written in the Scots leid (not sure, maybe tongue?), though he scribed many poems in English forby, and in a kin of light Scots that can be easily read by folk not acquainted with Scots, within a firth of Scotland. So, I'm guessing not a perfect translation, but the general gist is there. I wouldn't know where to start with the French, though having learned some German perhaps I would have done better with that?
Still, I think the point of a sliding scale between language and dialect, particularly in edge cases, holds up and if cultural identity is based around linguistic differences it doesn't really matter what we call them.
Yes, the gist is good. I find myself able to get the gist in languages I certainly cannot speak: Oekraïne (Oekraïens: Україна) is een land in Oost-Europa dat in het noordoosten en oosten aan Rusland, in het noordwesten aan Wit-Rusland, in het westen aan Polen, Slowakije en Hongarije en in het zuidwesten aan Roemenië en Moldavië grenst.
I think I could 100% translate that, but mostly because of my knowledge of geography and the context of the sentence. I had to think about Wit-Rusland for a while, but then I remembered what the Bela in Belarus means in Russian.
The far right uniting with the far left it seems behind Putin
Authoritirians holding hands across the aisle. There was always a fascist element to the Brixiteer true believers, even if it wasn’t a dominant one.
Been watching a few of the left spaces go full tankie. You know it’s coming, but seeing the authoritarian bootlickers reveal themselves for who they really are is still depressing.
I didn't mock mental health. I said its deadly serious problem for those who have it.
But it is also exceedingly easy to be signed off for "stress" while faking it. Just because you are signed off doesn't mean you aren't faking it - that's not to say all are faking it, its very serious for those who have it, but those who are faking it are also real too.
You are *still* mocking mental health as something easy to fake therefore something that must be suspect. Mental health crises are not something anyone with decency puts in "quotes".
Whats more as anyone who has suffered will tell you, the source can be specific and it can be acute. If you haven't suffered heart palpitations caused by having to go into work, or even *thinking* about doing so then you're not really in a place to say "stress".
The people who really have stress have stress.
The people who are faking it have "stress".
I'm not mocking it as something that is easy to fake. It simply is easy to fake, that is a matter of fact, that we need to be able to deal with.
Its not just mental health that is fakeable of course, its just one of the easiest things to fake, along with "back pain". I once knew a troubled individual who faked that she had cancer.
So your response to someone with Cancer would also be to say "easily done with things like "cancer" "? Any other diseases worth you putting in quote marks? "Covid"? "AIDS"?
Uefa is ready to drop St Petersburg as the venue for this year’s Champions League final as the military crisis in Ukraine deepens.
Gazprom, the Russian gas company, is at the heart of European football and has longstanding commercial arrangements with Uefa. Last summer it announced an expansion of its sponsorship arrangement with Uefa to include the European Championship as well as the Champions and Europa Leagues. It also holds the naming rights for the stadium at which the final is due to be played, the Gazprom Arena.
No chance. Drop them.
They should be banned from UEFA and FIFA this morning. But they won't be.
Unless UEFA think it's unsafe to go, then Russia will keep the final.
See also the disgraceful decision not to strip Azerbaijan of the Europa League Final when they wouldn't guarantee the safety of Henrikh Mkhitaryan should he travel to the final.
The far right uniting with the far left it seems behind Putin
Brexit Party far right. The right wing of the Tory Party has alot in common with them.
Oh, and yes, he is clearly wrong. I am not instinctively of the view the West is all good and Russia/China all bad but in this case Putin is totally in the wrong and it is hard to see a reasonable justification for his actions.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
The problem is that the current sick pay provision, from an employers perspective, can be far too costly and generous to those who fake sickness (which is easily done). Especially for small businesses where labour is a very serious cost.
A lot easier to fix if you aren't worried about your costs as much.
'Three days unpaid' is hardly 'costly.' Not compared to somebody coming in and making everyone else ill, lowering productivity for possibly weeks.
First three days being unpaid is the best part of SSP from my perspective. It means that those who throw a sickie as they can't be bothered to come into work, aren't paid for it.
Tell people who are hungover they can call in "sick" and get paid, and absence rates will go up, especially on Mondays.
Is Sunday a big drinking night round your way?
It can be yes, especially if people feel they can call in sick on the Monday so they're free to drink heavily. That's why Sunday has a lot of big football fixtures in the pub. People aren't going there to drink shandies.
I once had a performance review with an employee who'd been with us nearly six months. He'd called in "sick" 10 times in that six month period - twice on a Friday, eight times on a Monday, never on a Tuesday to Thursday.
Should people companies be compelled by law to pay people who are throwing sickies?
Why should the majority be punished for the actions of a minority. We should have decent sick pay in this country not a pittance. If he/she/they were throwing sickies you could manage them out of the business especially if they have only been there a few months.
Here's the thing. A good employer has policies. Including sickness. Which would prompt an HR review as soon as a pattern of "sickness" presented itself. This does two things - weeds out the fakers, and provides support for the genuinely afflicted.
Companies should be compelled by law to pay proper fit for purpose sick pay (not the SSP crap we have now). And be free to dismiss the fakers.
We have had a chap off for 8 months for depression and knee pain.
There is nothing wrong with him but he manages to get Doctors certificates
We have ended up employing a Private Investigator to follow him. He spends his time playing golf and getting cash in hand work fitting blinds.
Despite this beacuse of the Doctors certificates its very hard for us to take any action against him.
Sack him and use the evidence you have gathered. At the very least bring him in and discuss your evidence.
I didn't mock mental health. I said its deadly serious problem for those who have it.
But it is also exceedingly easy to be signed off for "stress" while faking it. Just because you are signed off doesn't mean you aren't faking it - that's not to say all are faking it, its very serious for those who have it, but those who are faking it are also real too.
You are *still* mocking mental health as something easy to fake therefore something that must be suspect. Mental health crises are not something anyone with decency puts in "quotes".
Whats more as anyone who has suffered will tell you, the source can be specific and it can be acute. If you haven't suffered heart palpitations caused by having to go into work, or even *thinking* about doing so then you're not really in a place to say "stress".
The people who really have stress have stress.
The people who are faking it have "stress".
I'm not mocking it as something that is easy to fake. It simply is easy to fake, that is a matter of fact, that we need to be able to deal with.
Its not just mental health that is fakeable of course, its just one of the easiest things to fake, along with "back pain". I once knew a troubled individual who faked that she had cancer.
So your response to someone with Cancer would also be to say "easily done with things like "cancer" "? Any other diseases worth you putting in quote marks? "Covid"? "AIDS"?
I've already editted in the quote marks for cancer on that post before you replied coincidentally, I missed them originally.
Yes, literally everything that is faked I would put quote marks on. Many people faked they had "Covid" in order to get time off during this pandemic. If someone faked they had AIDS then they would have faked "AIDS".
Literally anything that is faked is "[whatever they're faking]". Anyone that is legit, no quotes necessary, but anyone who's faking it then yes quote what they're faking.
Uefa is ready to drop St Petersburg as the venue for this year’s Champions League final as the military crisis in Ukraine deepens.
Gazprom, the Russian gas company, is at the heart of European football and has longstanding commercial arrangements with Uefa. Last summer it announced an expansion of its sponsorship arrangement with Uefa to include the European Championship as well as the Champions and Europa Leagues. It also holds the naming rights for the stadium at which the final is due to be played, the Gazprom Arena.
No chance. Drop them.
Here is the Russian problem; We don't like Putin. But we do like money and gas. Unless F1 ban Haas running cars bedecked in Russian flags with Russian oligarch names, UEFA move the final and drop Gazprom, and the Tories give back their millions then its all just hot air isn't it?
We either boycott and sanction or we don't. There can't be half measures even if that costs Haas / UEFA / the Tories.
Sounds worrying, because he doesn't say "part of Ukraine".
A fairly standard part of Greater X Nationalism, is that countries that contain bits that you want to be part of greater X are not real countries.
It has been a common trope of Greater Russian Nationalism for many many years that Ukraine doesn't have a culture of it's own, it's language is just a dialect of Russian etc etc.
In fact the "Ukrainian isn't a language" thing, is a fairly good indicator of the position of any Russian you meet......
Those supporting the Russian position, would you please go and tell Sturgeon, Salmond and Blackford that they're all English because that's the language they use?
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
The problem is that the current sick pay provision, from an employers perspective, can be far too costly and generous to those who fake sickness (which is easily done). Especially for small businesses where labour is a very serious cost.
A lot easier to fix if you aren't worried about your costs as much.
'Three days unpaid' is hardly 'costly.' Not compared to somebody coming in and making everyone else ill, lowering productivity for possibly weeks.
First three days being unpaid is the best part of SSP from my perspective. It means that those who throw a sickie as they can't be bothered to come into work, aren't paid for it.
Tell people who are hungover they can call in "sick" and get paid, and absence rates will go up, especially on Mondays.
Is Sunday a big drinking night round your way?
It can be yes, especially if people feel they can call in sick on the Monday so they're free to drink heavily. That's why Sunday has a lot of big football fixtures in the pub. People aren't going there to drink shandies.
I once had a performance review with an employee who'd been with us nearly six months. He'd called in "sick" 10 times in that six month period - twice on a Friday, eight times on a Monday, never on a Tuesday to Thursday.
Should people companies be compelled by law to pay people who are throwing sickies?
Why should the majority be punished for the actions of a minority. We should have decent sick pay in this country not a pittance. If he/she/they were throwing sickies you could manage them out of the business especially if they have only been there a few months.
Here's the thing. A good employer has policies. Including sickness. Which would prompt an HR review as soon as a pattern of "sickness" presented itself. This does two things - weeds out the fakers, and provides support for the genuinely afflicted.
Companies should be compelled by law to pay proper fit for purpose sick pay (not the SSP crap we have now). And be free to dismiss the fakers.
We have had a chap off for 8 months for depression and knee pain.
There is nothing wrong with him but he manages to get Doctors certificates
We have ended up employing a Private Investigator to follow him. He spends his time playing golf and getting cash in hand work fitting blinds.
Despite this beacuse of the Doctors certificates its very hard for us to take any action against him.
Isn’t that over the limits for sick pay / medical leave of any kind? IIRC the requirement for an employer to pay sick pay expires after 7 months. Time to pull the plug if you genuinely believe him to be swinging the lead?
In white collar I once had to deal with the following. A consultant who
- On client site, refused to do tasks when asked by the team lead, because "he didn't like them" - Discovered to be writing code for his uncles IT company on the client site, on the client computers. - When called in for a third review of his performance, demanded full time WFT, a company provided treadmill desk....
I was peripherally involved. I advised the friend who was dealing with it to be very very careful, since it was an obvious setup for a prank TV show. It wasn't. This... life form... was for real.
The punchline came later. A recruiter for a certain recruitment firm that has a reputation lower than Foxtons has for housing, was astonished that the person in question had been hired. "I didn't put him forward to you guys, since it would have damaged my reputation" were his words....
So now that Russia are the official baddies can we now have publication of the report into their meddling in our affairs? Surely we can all then collectively boo Putin and put right the damage he has done...
No, that is the limited ISC one that urged Downing Street to order a full enquiry and implement a framework to protect us from future attacks. Big Dog refused. We need the proper report that the ISC says we need to investigate Russian meddling in elections and referendums which Downing Street refuses to look at.
Why is Big Dog afraid of investigating Russia? Aren't they now the big bad who need to be Stopped? How can we stop them if he won't even look at it? Especially when the limited report showed meddling in the Scottish Independence vote - its totally logical to assume further meddling in the Brexit vote and both of the rerun elections of 2017 and 2019.
Here is the reality. The Tories take a lot of money from Russians. The Tories benefited from Russian state meddling in our democratic processes. The Tories say Russia is bad but are happy to take their money and their assistance because the Tories are brazenly corrupt.
So take everything the Big Dog says about Russia with a pinch of salt. They are his mates.
So it's an investigation which ought to be done? And the report published? Yes? I agree with you. The way Russian money has seeped into politics and finance here is a very bad thing. I have encountered - professionally - some hair-raising examples.
But that, to be pedantic, is slightly different from saying that there is a report which has been written but is being kept under wraps.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
The problem is that the current sick pay provision, from an employers perspective, can be far too costly and generous to those who fake sickness (which is easily done). Especially for small businesses where labour is a very serious cost.
A lot easier to fix if you aren't worried about your costs as much.
'Three days unpaid' is hardly 'costly.' Not compared to somebody coming in and making everyone else ill, lowering productivity for possibly weeks.
First three days being unpaid is the best part of SSP from my perspective. It means that those who throw a sickie as they can't be bothered to come into work, aren't paid for it.
Tell people who are hungover they can call in "sick" and get paid, and absence rates will go up, especially on Mondays.
Is Sunday a big drinking night round your way?
It can be yes, especially if people feel they can call in sick on the Monday so they're free to drink heavily. That's why Sunday has a lot of big football fixtures in the pub. People aren't going there to drink shandies.
I once had a performance review with an employee who'd been with us nearly six months. He'd called in "sick" 10 times in that six month period - twice on a Friday, eight times on a Monday, never on a Tuesday to Thursday.
Should people companies be compelled by law to pay people who are throwing sickies?
Why should the majority be punished for the actions of a minority. We should have decent sick pay in this country not a pittance. If he/she/they were throwing sickies you could manage them out of the business especially if they have only been there a few months.
Here's the thing. A good employer has policies. Including sickness. Which would prompt an HR review as soon as a pattern of "sickness" presented itself. This does two things - weeds out the fakers, and provides support for the genuinely afflicted.
Companies should be compelled by law to pay proper fit for purpose sick pay (not the SSP crap we have now). And be free to dismiss the fakers.
We have had a chap off for 8 months for depression and knee pain.
There is nothing wrong with him but he manages to get Doctors certificates
We have ended up employing a Private Investigator to follow him. He spends his time playing golf and getting cash in hand work fitting blinds.
Despite this beacuse of the Doctors certificates its very hard for us to take any action against him.
Sack him and use the evidence you have gathered. At the very least bring him in and discuss your evidence.
But then it gets complicated - Golf? well, people with depression are advised, medically, to get out of the house and do things. People with a knee injury will be advised to take limited exercise to keep moving.
The cash in hand work is more of a problem - is he full time on the pay roll still and does his contract have the stuff about not doing work for others?
I didn't mock mental health. I said its deadly serious problem for those who have it.
But it is also exceedingly easy to be signed off for "stress" while faking it. Just because you are signed off doesn't mean you aren't faking it - that's not to say all are faking it, its very serious for those who have it, but those who are faking it are also real too.
You are *still* mocking mental health as something easy to fake therefore something that must be suspect. Mental health crises are not something anyone with decency puts in "quotes".
Whats more as anyone who has suffered will tell you, the source can be specific and it can be acute. If you haven't suffered heart palpitations caused by having to go into work, or even *thinking* about doing so then you're not really in a place to say "stress".
The people who really have stress have stress.
The people who are faking it have "stress".
I'm not mocking it as something that is easy to fake. It simply is easy to fake, that is a matter of fact, that we need to be able to deal with.
Its not just mental health that is fakeable of course, its just one of the easiest things to fake, along with "back pain". I once knew a troubled individual who faked that she had cancer.
We once had a young lad who faked that his mum had died.
He went through the whole story of the time that she was admitted to hospital, a period that she got better and a period when she was ill again, eventually dying. We sent a card and flowers to his house.
We were very surprised when she came to our office three weeks after her death.
The far right uniting with the far left it seems behind Putin
Wasn't he the editor of Loaded magazine or Nuts or one of the other lads mags before it folded?
Heck of a career move...
The most shocking part of his CV is the first stop...
His first job in journalism was as a researcher for the women's magazine Bella in 1995.[4][5] Two years later, he was promoted to commissioning editor. Daubney then became the features editor for the men's lifestyle magazine, FHM in the late 1990s. After this, he was the editor of page3.com for the tabloid newspaper The Sun. He then wrote articles for the sports section of the tabloid newspaper News of the World before becoming the deputy editor of the men's lifestyle magazine Loaded in February 2003. In September of that year, he was promoted to editor of the magazine.[6][7][8]
Sounds worrying, because he doesn't say "part of Ukraine".
A fairly standard part of Greater X Nationalism, is that countries that contain bits that you want to be part of greater X are not real countries.
It has been a common trope of Greater Russian Nationalism for many many years that Ukraine doesn't have a culture of it's own, it's language is just a dialect of Russian etc etc.
In fact the "Ukrainian isn't a language" thing, is a fairly good indicator of the position of any Russian you meet......
"Scots isn't a language"
Just throwing out some ill considered thoughts, and I can't really speak for Ukrainian Vs Russian but I do think that Scots isn't really a language. By and large, a person speaking Scots can be understood by a person who only speaks English (and vice versa), which makes it to my mind a dialect.
However, I wonder if the problem is with the words we use. English and Gaelic are two very distinctly different languages. Spanish and Italian are much more closely related but are still two different languages. Bavarian Dialect and Plattdeutsch are very different from each other. English and Scots don't seem that different from each other to me, but it's a very sliding scale and there doesn't seem to be a hard line when a dialect becomes a language. Perhaps more helpful is the concept of a linguistic identity (I'm sure the field of linguistics has a concept like this already)? This sidesteps the thorny issue of language Vs dialect and acknowledges that, even if linguistic differences might not amount to a full-blown language, those differences can inform and be informed by Identity.
Therefore it doesn't mean shit if Ukrainian is a dialect of Russian because there is a cultural identity based around it.
Personally:
He is the best kent o the mony makars that haes wrocht in the Scots leid, tho he screived mony poems in Inglis forby, an in a kin o licht Scots that can be easy read by fowk nae sae acquent wi Scots, within an furth o Scotland.
I can understand less of that than:
Il est le plus connu des poètes qui ont écrit en scots, bien que la plus grande partie de son œuvre soit en anglais et en light scots (écossais allégé), un dialecte plus accessible à un public non écossais.
Haha, in the interests of backing up my own words... He is the best known of the money makers that has written in the Scots leid (not sure, maybe tongue?), though he scribed many poems in English forby, and in a kin of light Scots that can be easily read by folk not acquainted with Scots, within a firth of Scotland. So, I'm guessing not a perfect translation, but the general gist is there. I wouldn't know where to start with the French, though having learned some German perhaps I would have done better with that?
Still, I think the point of a sliding scale between language and dialect, particularly in edge cases, holds up and if cultural identity is based around linguistic differences it doesn't really matter what we call them.
Yes, the gist is good. I find myself able to get the gist in languages I certainly cannot speak: Oekraïne (Oekraïens: Україна) is een land in Oost-Europa dat in het noordoosten en oosten aan Rusland, in het noordwesten aan Wit-Rusland, in het westen aan Polen, Slowakije en Hongarije en in het zuidwesten aan Roemenië en Moldavië grenst.
I think I could 100% translate that, but mostly because of my knowledge of geography and the context of the sentence. I had to think about Wit-Rusland for a while, but then I remembered what the Bela in Belarus means in Russian.
I'm fairly sure I have an old atlas somewhere in which Belarus is labelled as 'White Russia'. I still regard calling it Belarus (or the Bylerussian SSR) as fairly newfangled.
Uefa is ready to drop St Petersburg as the venue for this year’s Champions League final as the military crisis in Ukraine deepens.
Gazprom, the Russian gas company, is at the heart of European football and has longstanding commercial arrangements with Uefa. Last summer it announced an expansion of its sponsorship arrangement with Uefa to include the European Championship as well as the Champions and Europa Leagues. It also holds the naming rights for the stadium at which the final is due to be played, the Gazprom Arena.
No chance. Drop them.
They should be banned from UEFA and FIFA this morning. But they won't be.
Unless UEFA think it's unsafe to go, then Russia will keep the final.
See also the disgraceful decision not to strip Azerbaijan of the Europa League Final when they wouldn't guarantee the safety of Henrikh Mkhitaryan should he travel to the final.
Azerbaijan is still attacking Armenia. The west still stands idly by while the Azeri's prosecute an aggressive campaign against the Armenians.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
The problem is that the current sick pay provision, from an employers perspective, can be far too costly and generous to those who fake sickness (which is easily done). Especially for small businesses where labour is a very serious cost.
A lot easier to fix if you aren't worried about your costs as much.
'Three days unpaid' is hardly 'costly.' Not compared to somebody coming in and making everyone else ill, lowering productivity for possibly weeks.
First three days being unpaid is the best part of SSP from my perspective. It means that those who throw a sickie as they can't be bothered to come into work, aren't paid for it.
Tell people who are hungover they can call in "sick" and get paid, and absence rates will go up, especially on Mondays.
Is Sunday a big drinking night round your way?
It can be yes, especially if people feel they can call in sick on the Monday so they're free to drink heavily. That's why Sunday has a lot of big football fixtures in the pub. People aren't going there to drink shandies.
I once had a performance review with an employee who'd been with us nearly six months. He'd called in "sick" 10 times in that six month period - twice on a Friday, eight times on a Monday, never on a Tuesday to Thursday.
Should people companies be compelled by law to pay people who are throwing sickies?
Why should the majority be punished for the actions of a minority. We should have decent sick pay in this country not a pittance. If he/she/they were throwing sickies you could manage them out of the business especially if they have only been there a few months.
Here's the thing. A good employer has policies. Including sickness. Which would prompt an HR review as soon as a pattern of "sickness" presented itself. This does two things - weeds out the fakers, and provides support for the genuinely afflicted.
Companies should be compelled by law to pay proper fit for purpose sick pay (not the SSP crap we have now). And be free to dismiss the fakers.
We have had a chap off for 8 months for depression and knee pain.
There is nothing wrong with him but he manages to get Doctors certificates
We have ended up employing a Private Investigator to follow him. He spends his time playing golf and getting cash in hand work fitting blinds.
Despite this beacuse of the Doctors certificates its very hard for us to take any action against him.
Sack him and use the evidence you have gathered. At the very least bring him in and discuss your evidence.
But then it gets complicated - Golf? well, people with depression are advised, medically, to get out of the house and do things. People with a knee injury will be advised to take limited exercise to keep moving.
The cash in hand work is more of a problem - is he full time on the pay roll still and does his contract have the stuff about not doing work for others?
Thats what we are working on, we need evidence that he is actually getting money as he could say that he is fitting the blinds as it improves his mental health.
Thank you @MikeSmithson for promoting @Cicero ‘s important comment to a thread header. However, it’s typical of PB that the discussion on his comment stops as soon as it becomes relevant to the thread header!
He was sold by Oxford, against his wishes, to West Ham in order to clear some of the debts run up by Robert Maxwell, but never thrived away from Oxford and to his relief eventually returned.
I always find something heroic about footballers who want to play for the club they support - Matt le Tissier, Steve Bull, and so on. I understand moving for the money, but I find the concept of moving to a big club 'to win things' fairly distasteful.
Uefa is ready to drop St Petersburg as the venue for this year’s Champions League final as the military crisis in Ukraine deepens.
Gazprom, the Russian gas company, is at the heart of European football and has longstanding commercial arrangements with Uefa. Last summer it announced an expansion of its sponsorship arrangement with Uefa to include the European Championship as well as the Champions and Europa Leagues. It also holds the naming rights for the stadium at which the final is due to be played, the Gazprom Arena.
No chance. Drop them.
Here is the Russian problem; We don't like Putin. But we do like money and gas. Unless F1 ban Haas running cars bedecked in Russian flags with Russian oligarch names, UEFA move the final and drop Gazprom, and the Tories give back their millions then its all just hot air isn't it?
We either boycott and sanction or we don't. There can't be half measures even if that costs Haas / UEFA / the Tories.
Sanctions are low-level warfare in much the same way as street harassment lies at the bottom of a scale leading on to assault and murder. Just because there are no bodies to count should not detract from the fact that they are regarded as confrontational by the recipient and not necessarily accepted with equanimity.
It has often been said that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ('a day that shall live in infamy') came 'out of the blue', but it was, in fact, preceded by many years of sanctions by the US against Japan to deter their expansionism around the Pacific. Obviously sanctions are better than 'war war' but they are not necessarily a cost-free way of avoiding it.
Germany refusing to certify Nordstream 2. Think this is a spectacular overplaying of Putin's hand here. Out of weakness not strength. Has the military strength, of course, to do what he likes. Not sure he has political or economic at all. The West has been surprisingly United and firm.
Uefa is ready to drop St Petersburg as the venue for this year’s Champions League final as the military crisis in Ukraine deepens.
Gazprom, the Russian gas company, is at the heart of European football and has longstanding commercial arrangements with Uefa. Last summer it announced an expansion of its sponsorship arrangement with Uefa to include the European Championship as well as the Champions and Europa Leagues. It also holds the naming rights for the stadium at which the final is due to be played, the Gazprom Arena.
Governments are about to take such decisions out of the hands of sporting organisations such as UEFA and Formula 1.
If they cant receive the sanction fee from a Russian bank account, then they won’t be going there.
I enjoyed it but I think it has been a bit over-hyped. It is clearly heart-felt but perhaps that is part of the problem. The young boy is beautifully played. As is Pop, the grand-father by Ciaran Hinds. He certainly deserves his Oscar nomination. Judi Dench, I'm afraid, does not.
Catriona Balfe was very good as the mother and probably deserved an Oscar nomination more than Judi. But there were some odd unexplained gaps in the relationship between the parents and the young Protestant boy being at school with a Catholic girl in 1969 did not make sense. It felt like a cinematic version of a novella rather than a novel or fully fledged film, if that makes sense.
Still worth a viewing.
Some feel it doesn't safely negotiate the border with schmaltz. I thought that was unfair. It is a good study in the issues of whether to move away from all you have ever known because of conflict. I'm sure there are plenty in Ukraine struggling with similar issues today (and bringing it back on topic!).
But I fell deeply in love with Catriona Balfe. Superb performance.
Yes - she is very good indeed. Her speech when she talks about the ties which bind her to her home is superb. Moving away from your home is always a wrench, even when voluntary. Being forced to do so must be so hard.
A film well worth watching in many ways. It just felt less than the sum of its parts. I think perhaps it needed another writer's input or maybe another director.
Germany refusing to certify Nordstream 2. Think this is a spectacular overplaying of Putin's hand here. Out of weakness not strength. Has the military strength, of course, to do what he likes. Not sure he has political or economic at all. The West has been surprisingly United and firm.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
The problem is that the current sick pay provision, from an employers perspective, can be far too costly and generous to those who fake sickness (which is easily done). Especially for small businesses where labour is a very serious cost.
A lot easier to fix if you aren't worried about your costs as much.
'Three days unpaid' is hardly 'costly.' Not compared to somebody coming in and making everyone else ill, lowering productivity for possibly weeks.
First three days being unpaid is the best part of SSP from my perspective. It means that those who throw a sickie as they can't be bothered to come into work, aren't paid for it.
Tell people who are hungover they can call in "sick" and get paid, and absence rates will go up, especially on Mondays.
Is Sunday a big drinking night round your way?
It can be yes, especially if people feel they can call in sick on the Monday so they're free to drink heavily. That's why Sunday has a lot of big football fixtures in the pub. People aren't going there to drink shandies.
I once had a performance review with an employee who'd been with us nearly six months. He'd called in "sick" 10 times in that six month period - twice on a Friday, eight times on a Monday, never on a Tuesday to Thursday.
Should people companies be compelled by law to pay people who are throwing sickies?
Why should the majority be punished for the actions of a minority. We should have decent sick pay in this country not a pittance. If he/she/they were throwing sickies you could manage them out of the business especially if they have only been there a few months.
Here's the thing. A good employer has policies. Including sickness. Which would prompt an HR review as soon as a pattern of "sickness" presented itself. This does two things - weeds out the fakers, and provides support for the genuinely afflicted.
Companies should be compelled by law to pay proper fit for purpose sick pay (not the SSP crap we have now). And be free to dismiss the fakers.
We have had a chap off for 8 months for depression and knee pain.
There is nothing wrong with him but he manages to get Doctors certificates
We have ended up employing a Private Investigator to follow him. He spends his time playing golf and getting cash in hand work fitting blinds.
Despite this beacuse of the Doctors certificates its very hard for us to take any action against him.
Sack him and use the evidence you have gathered. At the very least bring him in and discuss your evidence.
But then it gets complicated - Golf? well, people with depression are advised, medically, to get out of the house and do things. People with a knee injury will be advised to take limited exercise to keep moving.
The cash in hand work is more of a problem - is he full time on the pay roll still and does his contract have the stuff about not doing work for others?
I think it depends on what his job is and why he is being signed off. If his work is hindered by a knee injury and he his playing golf then something doesn't ring true.
It can be complex. In an unrelated issue my wife was rear-ended a few years ago and suffered a back injury. The insurance claim was extremely protracted, partly because the issue of fake whiplash claims was prominent. My wife, who runs marathons, was extremely fit at the time, and this masked the pain for a few days, at which point it became severe. She is still not right after nearly a decade. She is able to run marathons, although not on the road, only off-road. I was paranoid at the time of the claim that if we went to court, the insurance company would drag up pictures of her running marathons to say that she was fine. She wasn't, but she has a very high pain threshold. In the end we settled for 15,000. It might sound a lot, but she suffered life affecting injuries that have prevented her from running road marathons ever since, and required medical intervention (spinal injections).
The point is - I get the point about taking exercise to help depression. And we have one side of the story presented here. But it does sound egregious.
I didn't mock mental health. I said its deadly serious problem for those who have it.
But it is also exceedingly easy to be signed off for "stress" while faking it. Just because you are signed off doesn't mean you aren't faking it - that's not to say all are faking it, its very serious for those who have it, but those who are faking it are also real too.
You are *still* mocking mental health as something easy to fake therefore something that must be suspect. Mental health crises are not something anyone with decency puts in "quotes".
Whats more as anyone who has suffered will tell you, the source can be specific and it can be acute. If you haven't suffered heart palpitations caused by having to go into work, or even *thinking* about doing so then you're not really in a place to say "stress".
The people who really have stress have stress.
The people who are faking it have "stress".
I'm not mocking it as something that is easy to fake. It simply is easy to fake, that is a matter of fact, that we need to be able to deal with.
Its not just mental health that is fakeable of course, its just one of the easiest things to fake, along with "back pain". I once knew a troubled individual who faked that she had cancer.
We once had a young lad who faked that his mum had died.
He went through the whole story of the time that she was admitted to hospital, a period that she got better and a period when she was ill again, eventually dying. We sent a card and flowers to his house.
We were very surprised when she came to our office three weeks after her death.
He made the whole story up just to get days off.
For Terry Pratchett fans - the agreed number of Grandmother's funerals a year...
So now that Russia are the official baddies can we now have publication of the report into their meddling in our affairs? Surely we can all then collectively boo Putin and put right the damage he has done...
No, that is the limited ISC one that urged Downing Street to order a full enquiry and implement a framework to protect us from future attacks. Big Dog refused. We need the proper report that the ISC says we need to investigate Russian meddling in elections and referendums which Downing Street refuses to look at.
Why is Big Dog afraid of investigating Russia? Aren't they now the big bad who need to be Stopped? How can we stop them if he won't even look at it? Especially when the limited report showed meddling in the Scottish Independence vote - its totally logical to assume further meddling in the Brexit vote and both of the rerun elections of 2017 and 2019.
Here is the reality. The Tories take a lot of money from Russians. The Tories benefited from Russian state meddling in our democratic processes. The Tories say Russia is bad but are happy to take their money and their assistance because the Tories are brazenly corrupt.
So take everything the Big Dog says about Russia with a pinch of salt. They are his mates.
So it's an investigation which ought to be done? And the report published? Yes? I agree with you. The way Russian money has seeped into politics and finance here is a very bad thing. I have encountered - professionally - some hair-raising examples.
But that, to be pedantic, is slightly different from saying that there is a report which has been written but is being kept under wraps.
TBH I was under the impression they had only released part of it - was a whole back. That they completely refused to authorise an investigation despite the ISC stating there was clear grounds and need to do so is even worse than I thought it was.
Tories covering up for Russia. Taking money from Russia. But supposedly are to get credit for opposing Putin.
Thank you @MikeSmithson for promoting @Cicero ‘s important comment to a thread header. However, it’s typical of PB that the discussion on his comment stops as soon as it becomes relevant to the thread header!
The trouble is, Fairlie, that few of us are as well informed on these matters as Cicero.
He has posted here for many years and is known as a fair-minded and independent commentator. We are lucky to have his insights freely available.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
No, not a legal mandate. But some on here (BR in particular) keep insisting Covid is the common cold and we should all just keep going to work if we have it.
My point is that as Covid becomes just another virus we need to treat it the same - if you are ill you stay off work. I keep reading "there is no reason for disruption in schools" yet I know some schools who have got staff problems as Covid tears through them. It isn't the common cold. And just like if you get a Norovirus outbreak it can hit somewhere like a school hard.
The point is, there's a difference between "having it (the virus)" and "being ill".
Of course! People who are sick should not be in work. Yet it has been claimed that people who have it should be going about their normal business because we all need to live with it.
Lifting mandatory quarantine is an obvious step. But lets not kneejerk all the way to "its just the common cold, you need to be in work even if you're ill"
The common cold can lead to very serious sickness (and even death) and if someone is sick with the common cold they should be staying home.
Who has said those who are seriously ill with the common cold should be going into work? Not me, not any 'other feller' connected to me either. I've never said that.
I've said people should be staying at home if they're ill, but having the virus does not mean you are ill. Being ill means you're ill. Treat the illness, not the virus, and you don't need testing to know your symptoms.
To move this on, you would support slapping down shyster employers who exploit our crap sick pay regime by forcing people who are sick (with Covid or anything else) from coming in?
If Keir Starmer made sorting out statutory sick pay a central plank of his next election I'd vote for him without a second thought. The current system is an utter disgrace and should have been junked years ago.
And I say that as somebody who has a very generous sick pay provision in his current post.
The problem is that the current sick pay provision, from an employers perspective, can be far too costly and generous to those who fake sickness (which is easily done). Especially for small businesses where labour is a very serious cost.
A lot easier to fix if you aren't worried about your costs as much.
'Three days unpaid' is hardly 'costly.' Not compared to somebody coming in and making everyone else ill, lowering productivity for possibly weeks.
First three days being unpaid is the best part of SSP from my perspective. It means that those who throw a sickie as they can't be bothered to come into work, aren't paid for it.
Tell people who are hungover they can call in "sick" and get paid, and absence rates will go up, especially on Mondays.
Is Sunday a big drinking night round your way?
It can be yes, especially if people feel they can call in sick on the Monday so they're free to drink heavily. That's why Sunday has a lot of big football fixtures in the pub. People aren't going there to drink shandies.
I once had a performance review with an employee who'd been with us nearly six months. He'd called in "sick" 10 times in that six month period - twice on a Friday, eight times on a Monday, never on a Tuesday to Thursday.
Should people companies be compelled by law to pay people who are throwing sickies?
Why should the majority be punished for the actions of a minority. We should have decent sick pay in this country not a pittance. If he/she/they were throwing sickies you could manage them out of the business especially if they have only been there a few months.
Here's the thing. A good employer has policies. Including sickness. Which would prompt an HR review as soon as a pattern of "sickness" presented itself. This does two things - weeds out the fakers, and provides support for the genuinely afflicted.
Companies should be compelled by law to pay proper fit for purpose sick pay (not the SSP crap we have now). And be free to dismiss the fakers.
We have had a chap off for 8 months for depression and knee pain.
There is nothing wrong with him but he manages to get Doctors certificates
We have ended up employing a Private Investigator to follow him. He spends his time playing golf and getting cash in hand work fitting blinds.
Despite this beacuse of the Doctors certificates its very hard for us to take any action against him.
Sack him and use the evidence you have gathered. At the very least bring him in and discuss your evidence.
But then it gets complicated - Golf? well, people with depression are advised, medically, to get out of the house and do things. People with a knee injury will be advised to take limited exercise to keep moving.
The cash in hand work is more of a problem - is he full time on the pay roll still and does his contract have the stuff about not doing work for others?
I think it depends on what his job is and why he is being signed off. If his work is hindered by a knee injury and he his playing golf then something doesn't ring true.
It can be complex. In an unrelated issue my wife was rear-ended a few years ago and suffered a back injury. The insurance claim was extremely protracted, partly because the issue of fake whiplash claims was prominent. My wife, who runs marathons, was extremely fit at the time, and this masked the pain for a few days, at which point it became severe. She is still not right after nearly a decade. She is able to run marathons, although not on the road, only off-road. I was paranoid at the time of the claim that if we went to court, the insurance company would drag up pictures of her running marathons to say that she was fine. She wasn't, but she has a very high pain threshold. In the end we settled for 15,000. It might sound a lot, but she suffered life affecting injuries that have prevented her from running road marathons ever since, and required medical intervention (spinal injections).
The point is - I get the point about taking exercise to help depression. And we have one side of the story presented here. But it does sound egregious.
Yes. Just yes....
Humans are complex entities and judging their actions requires discretion, intelligence and humanity.
Fortunately, the people running the benefits systems in this country are legendary for all three of those qualities.....
He was sold by Oxford, against his wishes, to West Ham in order to clear some of the debts run up by Robert Maxwell, but never thrived away from Oxford and to his relief eventually returned.
I always find something heroic about footballers who want to play for the club they support - Matt le Tissier, Steve Bull, and so on. I understand moving for the money, but I find the concept of moving to a big club 'to win things' fairly distasteful.
He came to Swindon after his West Ham experience, lasted a season before going home. His joy at scoring against Swindon ever after was something to behold. Sad loss, and maybe in today's better mental health climate he might have had a better career?
I didn't mock mental health. I said its deadly serious problem for those who have it.
But it is also exceedingly easy to be signed off for "stress" while faking it. Just because you are signed off doesn't mean you aren't faking it - that's not to say all are faking it, its very serious for those who have it, but those who are faking it are also real too.
You are *still* mocking mental health as something easy to fake therefore something that must be suspect. Mental health crises are not something anyone with decency puts in "quotes".
Whats more as anyone who has suffered will tell you, the source can be specific and it can be acute. If you haven't suffered heart palpitations caused by having to go into work, or even *thinking* about doing so then you're not really in a place to say "stress".
The people who really have stress have stress.
The people who are faking it have "stress".
I'm not mocking it as something that is easy to fake. It simply is easy to fake, that is a matter of fact, that we need to be able to deal with.
Its not just mental health that is fakeable of course, its just one of the easiest things to fake, along with "back pain". I once knew a troubled individual who faked that she had "cancer".
Wouldn't pretending to have a mental health condition be, in itself, a sign of not the best mental health? I mean. It's not something someone happy would consider.
So now that Russia are the official baddies can we now have publication of the report into their meddling in our affairs? Surely we can all then collectively boo Putin and put right the damage he has done...
No, that is the limited ISC one that urged Downing Street to order a full enquiry and implement a framework to protect us from future attacks. Big Dog refused. We need the proper report that the ISC says we need to investigate Russian meddling in elections and referendums which Downing Street refuses to look at.
Why is Big Dog afraid of investigating Russia? Aren't they now the big bad who need to be Stopped? How can we stop them if he won't even look at it? Especially when the limited report showed meddling in the Scottish Independence vote - its totally logical to assume further meddling in the Brexit vote and both of the rerun elections of 2017 and 2019.
Here is the reality. The Tories take a lot of money from Russians. The Tories benefited from Russian state meddling in our democratic processes. The Tories say Russia is bad but are happy to take their money and their assistance because the Tories are brazenly corrupt.
So take everything the Big Dog says about Russia with a pinch of salt. They are his mates.
Do the Tories take Russian money though? I keep hearing this trotted out - is there any evidence of it? I'm tempted to treat this with a pinch of salt, like the Russia-interfered-in-the-2016-US-election meme. It seems on the face if it unlikely. And if so, money from which Russians? Money from the Russian state, or from their fugitives? I concede that it also seemed unlikely that Barry Gardiner was taking money from China, or that apparently everyone is taking money from Qatar.
Uefa is ready to drop St Petersburg as the venue for this year’s Champions League final as the military crisis in Ukraine deepens.
Gazprom, the Russian gas company, is at the heart of European football and has longstanding commercial arrangements with Uefa. Last summer it announced an expansion of its sponsorship arrangement with Uefa to include the European Championship as well as the Champions and Europa Leagues. It also holds the naming rights for the stadium at which the final is due to be played, the Gazprom Arena.
Governments are about to take such decisions out of the hands of sporting organisations such as UEFA and Formula 1.
If they cant receive the sanction fee from a Russian bank account, then they won’t be going there.
Our government is quite happy taking millions from Russian bank accounts. Why would they ban UEFA et al from doing the same?
The liberal west is either going to stand up to Putin, or it is just going to collapse, as Russian claims on Europe extend effectively all the way to the English Channel. We keep hearing that Britain is irredemably evil due to slavery and colonialism, yet based on what we are hearing from Putin it is threatened by a project of territorial expansion that is actually worse than colonialism, in that it seeks to subjugate people and deny them their own identity. It is grim, but the reality is that we will probably eventually need to actually fight Russia.
Johnson talks of "a barrage of sanctions". I'm glad to see UK sanctions against Russia; I'm not convinced that Johnson's wordplay is helpful.
I was talking to a terrorism analyst friend. Sunday, she was all "Putin is a clever guy, he knows what he is doing, he runs rings around the West." Today, she's "OMG, did you hear the speech? Putin has gone mad."
Germany refusing to certify Nordstream 2. Think this is a spectacular overplaying of Putin's hand here. Out of weakness not strength. Has the military strength, of course, to do what he likes. Not sure he has political or economic at all. The West has been surprisingly United and firm.
So now that Russia are the official baddies can we now have publication of the report into their meddling in our affairs? Surely we can all then collectively boo Putin and put right the damage he has done...
No, that is the limited ISC one that urged Downing Street to order a full enquiry and implement a framework to protect us from future attacks. Big Dog refused. We need the proper report that the ISC says we need to investigate Russian meddling in elections and referendums which Downing Street refuses to look at.
Why is Big Dog afraid of investigating Russia? Aren't they now the big bad who need to be Stopped? How can we stop them if he won't even look at it? Especially when the limited report showed meddling in the Scottish Independence vote - its totally logical to assume further meddling in the Brexit vote and both of the rerun elections of 2017 and 2019.
Here is the reality. The Tories take a lot of money from Russians. The Tories benefited from Russian state meddling in our democratic processes. The Tories say Russia is bad but are happy to take their money and their assistance because the Tories are brazenly corrupt.
So take everything the Big Dog says about Russia with a pinch of salt. They are his mates.
Do the Tories take Russian money though? I keep hearing this trotted out - is there any evidence of it? I'm tempted to treat this with a pinch of salt, like the Russia-interfered-in-the-2016-US-election meme. It seems on the face if it unlikely. And if so, money from which Russians? Money from the Russian state, or from their fugitives? I concede that it also seemed unlikely that Barry Gardiner was taking money from China, or that apparently everyone is taking money from Qatar.
The liberal west is either going to stand up to Putin, or it is just going to collapse, as Russian claims on Europe extend effectively all the way to the English Channel. We keep hearing that Britain is irredemably evil due to slavery and colonialism, yet based on what we are hearing from Putin it is threatened by a project of territorial expansion that is actually worse than colonialism, in that it seeks to subjugate people and deny them their own identity. It is grim, but the reality is that we will probably eventually need to actually fight Russia.
It is straight up Imperialism - conquering countries to add them to your own. It is a direct line from the Russian *Empire* to what Putin is doing now.
As chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Russia I am writing to the Russian ambassador to invite him to meet with us. Last time we met he guaranteed that Russia would not invade Ukraine including the areas of Donetsk and Luhansk. He said the very idea was preposterous. https://twitter.com/RhonddaBryant/status/1496060751638892544
Germany refusing to certify Nordstream 2. Think this is a spectacular overplaying of Putin's hand here. Out of weakness not strength. Has the military strength, of course, to do what he likes. Not sure he has political or economic at all. The West has been surprisingly United and firm.
The liberal west is either going to stand up to Putin, or it is just going to collapse, as Russian claims on Europe extend effectively all the way to the English Channel. We keep hearing that Britain is irredemably evil due to slavery and colonialism, yet based on what we are hearing from Putin it is threatened by a project of territorial expansion that is actually worse than colonialism, in that it seeks to subjugate people and deny them their own identity. It is grim, but the reality is that we will probably eventually need to actually fight Russia.
It is straight up Imperialism - conquering countries to add them to your own. It is a direct line from the Russian *Empire* to what Putin is doing now.
Important to remember Russia itself is still an Empire. Chechnya is only the most newsworthy amongst a significant number of areas whose people wouldn't choose to be Russian if anyone ever bothered to ask.
So now that Russia are the official baddies can we now have publication of the report into their meddling in our affairs? Surely we can all then collectively boo Putin and put right the damage he has done...
No, that is the limited ISC one that urged Downing Street to order a full enquiry and implement a framework to protect us from future attacks. Big Dog refused. We need the proper report that the ISC says we need to investigate Russian meddling in elections and referendums which Downing Street refuses to look at.
Why is Big Dog afraid of investigating Russia? Aren't they now the big bad who need to be Stopped? How can we stop them if he won't even look at it? Especially when the limited report showed meddling in the Scottish Independence vote - its totally logical to assume further meddling in the Brexit vote and both of the rerun elections of 2017 and 2019.
Here is the reality. The Tories take a lot of money from Russians. The Tories benefited from Russian state meddling in our democratic processes. The Tories say Russia is bad but are happy to take their money and their assistance because the Tories are brazenly corrupt.
So take everything the Big Dog says about Russia with a pinch of salt. They are his mates.
Do the Tories take Russian money though? I keep hearing this trotted out - is there any evidence of it? I'm tempted to treat this with a pinch of salt, like the Russia-interfered-in-the-2016-US-election meme. It seems on the face if it unlikely. And if so, money from which Russians? Money from the Russian state, or from their fugitives? I concede that it also seemed unlikely that Barry Gardiner was taking money from China, or that apparently everyone is taking money from Qatar.
That's one report. There are others. Temerko himself came to a hustings in Stockton South in 2015 to see what his money was being spent on.
If the government are serious about going after Russian money and influence to deter Putin, it would be a good start to stop taking Russian money and influence themselves.
The far right uniting with the far left it seems behind Putin
Putin has cultivated the far right for a number of years, backing AfD, Front National, and even the Nick Griffin. The far left are just thick.
And for the avoidance of doubt, those two stopped clocks may be right twice a day, but on this issue they're dead wrong.
You have missed off his cultivation of Brexit and Scottish Nationalism. Anyone who believes he hasn't is naive in the extreme. Whether it was enough to turn the dial by 2% is anyone's guess.
I didn't mock mental health. I said its deadly serious problem for those who have it.
But it is also exceedingly easy to be signed off for "stress" while faking it. Just because you are signed off doesn't mean you aren't faking it - that's not to say all are faking it, its very serious for those who have it, but those who are faking it are also real too.
You are *still* mocking mental health as something easy to fake therefore something that must be suspect. Mental health crises are not something anyone with decency puts in "quotes".
Whats more as anyone who has suffered will tell you, the source can be specific and it can be acute. If you haven't suffered heart palpitations caused by having to go into work, or even *thinking* about doing so then you're not really in a place to say "stress".
The people who really have stress have stress.
The people who are faking it have "stress".
I'm not mocking it as something that is easy to fake. It simply is easy to fake, that is a matter of fact, that we need to be able to deal with.
Its not just mental health that is fakeable of course, its just one of the easiest things to fake, along with "back pain". I once knew a troubled individual who faked that she had "cancer".
Wouldn't pretending to have a mental health condition be, in itself, a sign of not the best mental health? I mean. It's not something someone happy would consider.
Being unhappy isn't a mental health crisis. It depends upon the circumstances of course, but it varies from case to case. If someone thinks they can get paid in one job, then work cash in hand in another (or enjoy time off) then some people regrettably will fake it.
Incidentally one thing I just thought of and came back online to add is that unfortunately the poor provision of mental health treatment in this country for those with serious issues feeds into why its so easy to fake for those pretending to have them.
In order to get (and keep) a sick note for stress or depression or others they're often not doing so after repeated hours-long therapy sessions to treat them. They're frequently doing so after a less than ten minute conversation with a GP. Many with serious mental health crises will say how long it takes, and how difficult it is, to get serious help.
In a less than 10 minute conversation with a GP, those with serious mental health crises aren't getting the treatment they need. In a less than 10 minute conversation with a GP, those who are faking it can easily say what they need to in order to get signed off.
Its the worst of both worlds. Poor treatment for the unfortunate people who need more help, while easily facilitating those who are faking it. Nobody wins from this (except as often in life, the fraudsters).
Germany refusing to certify Nordstream 2. Think this is a spectacular overplaying of Putin's hand here. Out of weakness not strength. Has the military strength, of course, to do what he likes. Not sure he has political or economic at all. The West has been surprisingly United and firm.
I wasn't questioning the report, just pointing out that it will require follow through. The statement is certainly strong (and if followed up, is a very big deal indeed).
Now that the Germans have acted, perhaps our PM would like to take another look at the Russian money in London, and what action might be appropriate there.
So now that Russia are the official baddies can we now have publication of the report into their meddling in our affairs? Surely we can all then collectively boo Putin and put right the damage he has done...
No, that is the limited ISC one that urged Downing Street to order a full enquiry and implement a framework to protect us from future attacks. Big Dog refused. We need the proper report that the ISC says we need to investigate Russian meddling in elections and referendums which Downing Street refuses to look at.
Why is Big Dog afraid of investigating Russia? Aren't they now the big bad who need to be Stopped? How can we stop them if he won't even look at it? Especially when the limited report showed meddling in the Scottish Independence vote - its totally logical to assume further meddling in the Brexit vote and both of the rerun elections of 2017 and 2019.
Here is the reality. The Tories take a lot of money from Russians. The Tories benefited from Russian state meddling in our democratic processes. The Tories say Russia is bad but are happy to take their money and their assistance because the Tories are brazenly corrupt.
So take everything the Big Dog says about Russia with a pinch of salt. They are his mates.
Do the Tories take Russian money though? I keep hearing this trotted out - is there any evidence of it? I'm tempted to treat this with a pinch of salt, like the Russia-interfered-in-the-2016-US-election meme. It seems on the face if it unlikely. And if so, money from which Russians? Money from the Russian state, or from their fugitives? I concede that it also seemed unlikely that Barry Gardiner was taking money from China, or that apparently everyone is taking money from Qatar.
That's one report. There are others. Temerko himself came to a hustings in Stockton South in 2015 to see what his money was being spent on.
If the government are serious about going after Russian money and influence to deter Putin, it would be a good start to stop taking Russian money and influence themselves.
I didn't mock mental health. I said its deadly serious problem for those who have it.
But it is also exceedingly easy to be signed off for "stress" while faking it. Just because you are signed off doesn't mean you aren't faking it - that's not to say all are faking it, its very serious for those who have it, but those who are faking it are also real too.
You are *still* mocking mental health as something easy to fake therefore something that must be suspect. Mental health crises are not something anyone with decency puts in "quotes".
Whats more as anyone who has suffered will tell you, the source can be specific and it can be acute. If you haven't suffered heart palpitations caused by having to go into work, or even *thinking* about doing so then you're not really in a place to say "stress".
The people who really have stress have stress.
The people who are faking it have "stress".
I'm not mocking it as something that is easy to fake. It simply is easy to fake, that is a matter of fact, that we need to be able to deal with.
Its not just mental health that is fakeable of course, its just one of the easiest things to fake, along with "back pain". I once knew a troubled individual who faked that she had "cancer".
Wouldn't pretending to have a mental health condition be, in itself, a sign of not the best mental health? I mean. It's not something someone happy would consider.
Being unhappy isn't a mental health crisis. It depends upon the circumstances of course, but it varies from case to case. If someone thinks they can get paid in one job, then work cash in hand in another (or enjoy time off) then some people regrettably will fake it.
Incidentally one thing I just thought of and came back online to add is that unfortunately the poor provision of mental health treatment in this country for those with serious issues feeds into why its so easy to fake for those pretending to have them.
In order to get (and keep) a sick note for stress or depression or others they're often not doing so after repeated hours-long therapy sessions to treat them. They're frequently doing so after a less than ten minute conversation with a GP. Many with serious mental health crises will say how long it takes, and how difficult it is, to get serious help.
In a less than 10 minute conversation with a GP, those with serious mental health crises aren't getting the treatment they need. In a less than 10 minute conversation with a GP, those who are faking it can easily say what they need to in order to get signed off.
Its the worst of both worlds. Poor treatment for the unfortunate people who need more help, while easily facilitating those who are faking it. Nobody wins from this (except as often in life, the fraudsters).
Mental health provision is a disgrace. Are we about to step up funding to make it fit for purpose? Don't be silly...!
The far right uniting with the far left it seems behind Putin
Whoever has weakened the West to the point it can't respond properly to brutal Russian aggression, it sure isn't Martin Daubney.
The conservatives, by contrast, have been in power in the UK for more than a decade.
The point is Trump and the European far right, Le Pen and Zemmour, Salvini, the AfD, even maybe Farage would not respond to Putin even if he is aggressive as ideologically they like a lot of his nationalist and anti woke agenda.
The Tories and Boris however might not go to war over Ukraine but they would defend Poland and the Baltic states along with Macron and Biden and NATO if Russia went even further, while still imposing sanctions on Putin over Ukraine
I’m actually less pessimistic today than yesterday
There’s a chance Putin will stop here. Annexation of some depressed coal-mining regions of Far East Ukraine. It’s not great for world peace but it’s not Pearl Harbour
I wonder if the fairly stern western response has put him off the full fat, guns-blazing Barbarossa. He reckons he can get away with this, and he probably can. But no more
And he is visibly ageing and weakening. 69. He’s not gonna be there forever
I didn't mock mental health. I said its deadly serious problem for those who have it.
But it is also exceedingly easy to be signed off for "stress" while faking it. Just because you are signed off doesn't mean you aren't faking it - that's not to say all are faking it, its very serious for those who have it, but those who are faking it are also real too.
You are *still* mocking mental health as something easy to fake therefore something that must be suspect. Mental health crises are not something anyone with decency puts in "quotes".
Whats more as anyone who has suffered will tell you, the source can be specific and it can be acute. If you haven't suffered heart palpitations caused by having to go into work, or even *thinking* about doing so then you're not really in a place to say "stress".
The people who really have stress have stress.
The people who are faking it have "stress".
I'm not mocking it as something that is easy to fake. It simply is easy to fake, that is a matter of fact, that we need to be able to deal with.
Its not just mental health that is fakeable of course, its just one of the easiest things to fake, along with "back pain". I once knew a troubled individual who faked that she had "cancer".
Wouldn't pretending to have a mental health condition be, in itself, a sign of not the best mental health? I mean. It's not something someone happy would consider.
Being unhappy isn't a mental health crisis. It depends upon the circumstances of course, but it varies from case to case. If someone thinks they can get paid in one job, then work cash in hand in another (or enjoy time off) then some people regrettably will fake it.
Incidentally one thing I just thought of and came back online to add is that unfortunately the poor provision of mental health treatment in this country for those with serious issues feeds into why its so easy to fake for those pretending to have them.
In order to get (and keep) a sick note for stress or depression or others they're often not doing so after repeated hours-long therapy sessions to treat them. They're frequently doing so after a less than ten minute conversation with a GP. Many with serious mental health crises will say how long it takes, and how difficult it is, to get serious help.
In a less than 10 minute conversation with a GP, those with serious mental health crises aren't getting the treatment they need. In a less than 10 minute conversation with a GP, those who are faking it can easily say what they need to in order to get signed off.
Its the worst of both worlds. Poor treatment for the unfortunate people who need more help, while easily facilitating those who are faking it. Nobody wins from this (except as often in life, the fraudsters).
Mental health provision is a disgrace. Are we about to step up funding to make it fit for purpose? Don't be silly...!
Precisely my point!
But is there any wonder that employers don't want to be liable for the failings of the state?
One way to increase SSP but to keep it 'fairer' would be for the state instead of the employer to pay for the cost of SSP. Have employers able to net off 100% of SSP for those who aren't working from their PAYE P32 report. If that happened then employers would just have the inconvenience of covering the time off, without adding insult to injury by paying people who aren't working - and the state could set SSP at whatever level it deemed appropriate without harming other parties.
However the cost to the taxpayer of that would be extravagant. But that's the cost you're expecting employers to shoulder.
Comments
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000x6v7
I'd be interested to know what our Scottish posters thought of it, if they've heard it.
People are in denial if they don't think sickies are a very real problem in the real world. Utter denial.
UK borrowed £5.4bn less than last year and - more importantly - there were revisions down of £5.4bn in the year to date.
This means that more than half the damage to the public finances - in deficit terms - will have been undone this year.
Given nominal GDP growth, the UK's borrowings as a % of GDP have fallen even further and debt looks basically static. Indeed it is not outside possibility that debt will fall as a % of GDP this year.
Companies should be compelled by law to pay proper fit for purpose sick pay (not the SSP crap we have now). And be free to dismiss the fakers.
"Poor health in the workforce is costly to employers and the economy. This is partly due to health problems
causing people to spend less time at work, for example via unemployment, worklessness, reduced hours
and absenteeism, but is also due to people being less productive while at work. Research suggests that
reduced productivity at work due to ill-health (often referred to as "presenteeism") is a widespread
phenomenon in the UK. Recent estimates suggest that 1.5 days of work time are lost due to presenteeism
for every one day lost due to absenteeism, and the cost of presenteeism to business is double that of
absenteeism, amounting to about £21.2 billion per year (Parsonage and Saini 2017). Another survey
estimates that the equivalent of 35 days per person per year are lost to presenteeism in the UK (Vitality
Health / Rand Europe 2019)."
https://uobrep.openrepository.com/handle/10547/623041
"Presenteeism has been defined in several ways, but it most commonly refers to
situations where people continue to work while unwell and not functioning to their full
capacity1. Evidence is growing that the incidence and costs of presenteeism are higher than
absenteeism2,3, but investigating it is considerably more challenging."
First of all, throughout Russian history they've been invaded many times. Swedes, Lithuanians, Poles, Germans, French, Turks, Tartars, Mongols - the list goes on. Some of the invasions, most notably Napoleon's and Hitler's, were from former allies - so, to a neurotic Russian leader, even treaties are not a guarantee of no invasion.
Russia is an enormous country, and much of its border is on flat land, easy to invade across. So the Russian strategy is to push out as far as possible - so that if anyone invades, they'll get exhausted before reaching the heart of the country. The idea seems to be to expand out to certain physical barriers - such as the Carpathian Mountains, the Caspian Sea and so on - so that Russia can control choke points in the event of any invasion. To that end Putin would need a puppet, or friendly, goverment - as he has in Belarus - in Ukraine and the three Baltic states, as well as parts of Poland. This also explains Russia's presence in Georgia and heavy involvement in the formerly Soviet 'stans.
Russia's demography seems to be in terminal decline, with a very low birthrate and poor health (that's not even taking into account Covid, since the numbers there are opaque), so Putin appears to be acting now - in 10 or even 5 years he may not have the armed forces at his disposal to do anything he wants.
Of course, Putin's repeated interventions in Ukraine over the past decade have provoked something he insists doesn't exist: Ukrainian national identity. Even Russian-speaking Ukrainians are unlikely to feel as friendly to him as they once did. He may even have provoked Ukraine into genuinely anting Nato membership - and Finland and Sweden will end up acting, in practice if not in treaty, as Nato countries.
So, in my view, not barmy - just neurotic, and a subscriber to the 'maps are destiny' worldview. But in attempting to act in what he bizarrely sees as a rational defensive way, he's probably guaranteeing his country to a new Time of Troubles sooner or later.
3. The country was ruled by a dictator, Admiral Miklós Horthy, for more than two decades up to 1944.
He was an admiral in the Austro-Hungarian navy.
He is the best known of the money makers that has written in the Scots leid (not sure, maybe tongue?), though he scribed many poems in English forby, and in a kin of light Scots that can be easily read by folk not acquainted with Scots, within a firth of Scotland.
So, I'm guessing not a perfect translation, but the general gist is there. I wouldn't know where to start with the French, though having learned some German perhaps I would have done better with that?
Still, I think the point of a sliding scale between language and dialect, particularly in edge cases, holds up and if cultural identity is based around linguistic differences it doesn't really matter what we call them.
There is nothing wrong with him but he manages to get Doctors certificates
We have ended up employing a Private Investigator to follow him. He spends his time playing golf and getting cash in hand work fitting blinds.
Despite this beacuse of the Doctors certificates its very hard for us to take any action against him.
I enjoyed it but I think it has been a bit over-hyped. It is clearly heart-felt but perhaps that is part of the problem. The young boy is beautifully played. As is Pop, the grand-father by Ciaran Hinds. He certainly deserves his Oscar nomination. Judi Dench, I'm afraid, does not.
Catriona Balfe was very good as the mother and probably deserved an Oscar nomination more than Judi. But there were some odd unexplained gaps in the relationship between the parents and the young Protestant boy being at school with a Catholic girl in 1969 did not make sense. It felt like a cinematic version of a novella rather than a novel or fully fledged film, if that makes sense.
Still worth a viewing.
Is there any wonder that sector is most likely to have SSP as the standard?
When the majority of your staff are prepared to lie about being sick, then having sick policies set accordingly is entirely logical and reasonable. I didn't mock mental health. I said its deadly serious problem for those who have it.
But it is also exceedingly easy to be signed off for "stress" while faking it. Just because you are signed off doesn't mean you aren't faking it - that's not to say all are faking it, its very serious for those who have it, but those who are faking it are also real too.
2) As your Scots quote is from the Scots wikipedia, is it possible that your difficulty in understanding it stems from it being one of the 23,000 articles written "in exceedingly poor quality Scots by a single prolific contributor without basic knowledge of the language.. apparently using an online English–Scots dictionary to crudely translate parts of English Wikipedia articles"?
Yes, a minority of intelligent, well paid & in demand professionals are in a privileged position & can be choosy about their employers. I suggest to you that your own work as an IT professional has given you a very skewed idea of what the working relationship is like for the majority of people in this country.
You might argue that “the weak suffer what they must” but governments are there to act in the interests of all, not just employers & it’s notable how much UK employment law is there to outlaw ways in which employers used to take advantage of their employees in the past.
Of course we can prevent viruses from spreading and we seek to do that all the time. Are you completely bonkers?
Why is Big Dog afraid of investigating Russia? Aren't they now the big bad who need to be Stopped? How can we stop them if he won't even look at it? Especially when the limited report showed meddling in the Scottish Independence vote - its totally logical to assume further meddling in the Brexit vote and both of the rerun elections of 2017 and 2019.
Here is the reality. The Tories take a lot of money from Russians. The Tories benefited from Russian state meddling in our democratic processes. The Tories say Russia is bad but are happy to take their money and their assistance because the Tories are brazenly corrupt.
So take everything the Big Dog says about Russia with a pinch of salt. They are his mates.
As I said, for white collar firms hiring professionals you are wise to pay your staff full or near full pay.
But if you're not ... the situation is very, very different.
*A sort of plastic, made up version of Han culture and history. Imagine the British and the British Empire as described by G. A. Henty....
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/feb/22/uefa-champions-league-final-st-petersburg-russia-ukraine-crisis
Uefa is ready to drop St Petersburg as the venue for this year’s Champions League final as the military crisis in Ukraine deepens.
Gazprom, the Russian gas company, is at the heart of European football and has longstanding commercial arrangements with Uefa. Last summer it announced an expansion of its sponsorship arrangement with Uefa to include the European Championship as well as the Champions and Europa Leagues. It also holds the naming rights for the stadium at which the final is due to be played, the Gazprom Arena.
But I fell deeply in love with Catriona Balfe. Superb performance.
But we can't prevent viruses from spreading, viruses still spread despite those steps. We can take reasonable steps to reduce the risk of them spreading, but we can't [and shouldn't] stop them entirely. Taking unreasonable steps to try and go OTT to prevent spread is not reasonable or rational.
And now I've wasted far too much time on this site today, I have to go.
Whats more as anyone who has suffered will tell you, the source can be specific and it can be acute. If you haven't suffered heart palpitations caused by having to go into work, or even *thinking* about doing so then you're not really in a place to say "stress".
Oekraïne (Oekraïens: Україна) is een land in Oost-Europa dat in het noordoosten en oosten aan Rusland, in het noordwesten aan Wit-Rusland, in het westen aan Polen, Slowakije en Hongarije en in het zuidwesten aan Roemenië en Moldavië grenst.
But for that, and for Scots, much concentration is needed on my part. I can wrangle the meaning out of some words but not others (forby? furth?) and I wouldn't know what words to choose if I was writing or speaking (wrocht verus screived?). So I would never say I can speak Scots. And as a native English speaker, that seems to give me a strong indication that it's a separate language. Partial intelligibility for the naive reader is the lower bar to clear. The ability to write it is a higher one.
EDIT: the glaring problem with your translation was "mony makars". You totally missed on that bit!
(I note, in a small number of cases, we have been able to stop viruses spreading entirely. We eliminated smallpox. We stopped MERS.)
"If you jab a bear with a stick for long enough, like Putin, he’s going to get angry."
https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1496072271819165697?s=20&t=cgX6uyyOTTSavg2or7wyww
The far right uniting with the far left it seems behind Putin
I know there's a chicken and egg aspect to this, but interesting that you report such high rates of sick leave fraus in a sector that generally does only offer SSP.
The people who are faking it have "stress".
I'm not mocking it as something that is easy to fake. It simply is easy to fake, that is a matter of fact, that we need to be able to deal with.
Its not just mental health that is fakeable of course, its just one of the easiest things to fake, along with "back pain". I once knew a troubled individual who faked that she had "cancer".
And for the avoidance of doubt, those two stopped clocks may be right twice a day, but on this issue they're dead wrong.
In any workplace of a certain size there will be people who swing the lead. Generally they get found out, and its not right the bulk of the workforce suffer because of it.
Been watching a few of the left spaces go full tankie. You know it’s coming, but seeing the authoritarian bootlickers reveal themselves for who they really are is still depressing.
Unless UEFA think it's unsafe to go, then Russia will keep the final.
See also the disgraceful decision not to strip Azerbaijan of the Europa League Final when they wouldn't guarantee the safety of Henrikh Mkhitaryan should he travel to the final.
Oh, and yes, he is clearly wrong. I am not instinctively of the view the West is all good and Russia/China all bad but in this case Putin is totally in the wrong and it is hard to see a reasonable justification for his actions.
Yes, literally everything that is faked I would put quote marks on. Many people faked they had "Covid" in order to get time off during this pandemic. If someone faked they had AIDS then they would have faked "AIDS".
Literally anything that is faked is "[whatever they're faking]". Anyone that is legit, no quotes necessary, but anyone who's faking it then yes quote what they're faking.
We either boycott and sanction or we don't. There can't be half measures even if that costs Haas / UEFA / the Tories.
- On client site, refused to do tasks when asked by the team lead, because "he didn't like them"
- Discovered to be writing code for his uncles IT company on the client site, on the client computers.
- When called in for a third review of his performance, demanded full time WFT, a company provided treadmill desk....
I was peripherally involved. I advised the friend who was dealing with it to be very very careful, since it was an obvious setup for a prank TV show. It wasn't. This... life form... was for real.
The punchline came later. A recruiter for a certain recruitment firm that has a reputation lower than Foxtons has for housing, was astonished that the person in question had been hired. "I didn't put him forward to you guys, since it would have damaged my reputation" were his words....
Heck of a career move...
But that, to be pedantic, is slightly different from saying that there is a report which has been written but is being kept under wraps.
The cash in hand work is more of a problem - is he full time on the pay roll still and does his contract have the stuff about not doing work for others?
https://www.ibtimes.com/airbus-plans-demonstrator-hydrogen-plane-mid-decade-sources-3408732
He went through the whole story of the time that she was admitted to hospital, a period that she got better and a period when she was ill again, eventually dying. We sent a card and flowers to his house.
We were very surprised when she came to our office three weeks after her death.
He made the whole story up just to get days off.
His first job in journalism was as a researcher for the women's magazine Bella in 1995.[4][5] Two years later, he was promoted to commissioning editor. Daubney then became the features editor for the men's lifestyle magazine, FHM in the late 1990s. After this, he was the editor of page3.com for the tabloid newspaper The Sun. He then wrote articles for the sports section of the tabloid newspaper News of the World before becoming the deputy editor of the men's lifestyle magazine Loaded in February 2003. In September of that year, he was promoted to editor of the magazine.[6][7][8]
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2022/02/21/farewell-joey-beauchamp-oxford-uniteds-homespun-hero-blessed/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr
He was sold by Oxford, against his wishes, to West Ham in order to clear some of the debts run up by Robert Maxwell, but never thrived away from Oxford and to his relief eventually returned.
I always find something heroic about footballers who want to play for the club they support - Matt le Tissier, Steve Bull, and so on. I understand moving for the money, but I find the concept of moving to a big club 'to win things' fairly distasteful.
It has often been said that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ('a day that shall live in infamy') came 'out of the blue', but it was, in fact, preceded by many years of sanctions by the US against Japan to deter their expansionism around the Pacific. Obviously sanctions are better than 'war war' but they are not necessarily a cost-free way of avoiding it.
He wasn't even married
Think this is a spectacular overplaying of Putin's hand here.
Out of weakness not strength.
Has the military strength, of course, to do what he likes.
Not sure he has political or economic at all. The West has been surprisingly United and firm.
If they cant receive the sanction fee from a Russian bank account, then they won’t be going there.
A film well worth watching in many ways. It just felt less than the sum of its parts. I think perhaps it needed another writer's input or maybe another director.
Excellent news, if this is followed through.
It can be complex. In an unrelated issue my wife was rear-ended a few years ago and suffered a back injury. The insurance claim was extremely protracted, partly because the issue of fake whiplash claims was prominent. My wife, who runs marathons, was extremely fit at the time, and this masked the pain for a few days, at which point it became severe. She is still not right after nearly a decade. She is able to run marathons, although not on the road, only off-road. I was paranoid at the time of the claim that if we went to court, the insurance company would drag up pictures of her running marathons to say that she was fine. She wasn't, but she has a very high pain threshold. In the end we settled for 15,000. It might sound a lot, but she suffered life affecting injuries that have prevented her from running road marathons ever since, and required medical intervention (spinal injections).
The point is - I get the point about taking exercise to help depression. And we have one side of the story presented here. But it does sound egregious.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/feb/22/remains-of-worlds-largest-jurassic-pterosaur-recovered-in-scotland
Tories covering up for Russia. Taking money from Russia. But supposedly are to get credit for opposing Putin.
Naah.
He has posted here for many years and is known as a fair-minded and independent commentator. We are lucky to have his insights freely available.
Humans are complex entities and judging their actions requires discretion, intelligence and humanity.
Fortunately, the people running the benefits systems in this country are legendary for all three of those qualities.....
I mean. It's not something someone happy would consider.
Actually, is that too much bad taste pun for the site? 😶
I concede that it also seemed unlikely that Barry Gardiner was taking money from China, or that apparently everyone is taking money from Qatar.
The liberal west is either going to stand up to Putin, or it is just going to collapse, as Russian claims on Europe extend effectively all the way to the English Channel. We keep hearing that Britain is irredemably evil due to slavery and colonialism, yet based on what we are hearing from Putin it is threatened by a project of territorial expansion that is actually worse than colonialism, in that it seeks to subjugate people and deny them their own identity. It is grim, but the reality is that we will probably eventually need to actually fight Russia.
I was talking to a terrorism analyst friend. Sunday, she was all "Putin is a clever guy, he knows what he is doing, he runs rings around the West." Today, she's "OMG, did you hear the speech? Putin has gone mad."
'But wonder on Cookie, till truth make all things plain.'
https://twitter.com/RhonddaBryant/status/1496060751638892544
- Radiohead - no
- Pineapple on Pizza - no
- Python - no
No, you're good.
Oligarchs lobby Foreign Office in bid to avoid sanctions
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/02/21/oligarchs-lobby-foreign-office-bid-avoid-sanctions-russia-invades/
The conservatives, by contrast, have been in power in the UK for more than a decade.
That's one report. There are others. Temerko himself came to a hustings in Stockton South in 2015 to see what his money was being spent on.
If the government are serious about going after Russian money and influence to deter Putin, it would be a good start to stop taking Russian money and influence themselves.
Incidentally one thing I just thought of and came back online to add is that unfortunately the poor provision of mental health treatment in this country for those with serious issues feeds into why its so easy to fake for those pretending to have them.
In order to get (and keep) a sick note for stress or depression or others they're often not doing so after repeated hours-long therapy sessions to treat them. They're frequently doing so after a less than ten minute conversation with a GP. Many with serious mental health crises will say how long it takes, and how difficult it is, to get serious help.
In a less than 10 minute conversation with a GP, those with serious mental health crises aren't getting the treatment they need.
In a less than 10 minute conversation with a GP, those who are faking it can easily say what they need to in order to get signed off.
Its the worst of both worlds. Poor treatment for the unfortunate people who need more help, while easily facilitating those who are faking it. Nobody wins from this (except as often in life, the fraudsters).
The statement is certainly strong (and if followed up, is a very big deal indeed).
Now that the Germans have acted, perhaps our PM would like to take another look at the Russian money in London, and what action might be appropriate there.
The Tories and Boris however might not go to war over Ukraine but they would defend Poland and the Baltic states along with Macron and Biden and NATO if Russia went even further, while still imposing sanctions on Putin over Ukraine
There’s a chance Putin will stop here. Annexation of some depressed coal-mining regions of Far East Ukraine. It’s not great for world peace but it’s not Pearl Harbour
I wonder if the fairly stern western response has put him off the full fat, guns-blazing Barbarossa. He reckons he can get away with this, and he probably can. But no more
And he is visibly ageing and weakening. 69. He’s not gonna be there forever
But is there any wonder that employers don't want to be liable for the failings of the state?
One way to increase SSP but to keep it 'fairer' would be for the state instead of the employer to pay for the cost of SSP. Have employers able to net off 100% of SSP for those who aren't working from their PAYE P32 report. If that happened then employers would just have the inconvenience of covering the time off, without adding insult to injury by paying people who aren't working - and the state could set SSP at whatever level it deemed appropriate without harming other parties.
However the cost to the taxpayer of that would be extravagant. But that's the cost you're expecting employers to shoulder.