The Lurker

I’m quite pleased about this; unless you’re tackling the Eiger then the gear sold by Regatta or Mountain Warehouse is more than suitable. I was in there nearly every weekend when the kids were little.

Added to which it takes five years to qualify as a doctor and at least another three or four before they're competent to the point that they can practise without close supervision. The NHS model has always relied upon skilled immigrants. Ethical considerations about stealing other countries professionals aside; bringing in foreign trained medics and nurses makes strong economic sense. I don't know exactly how much it costs to train a doctor to registrar level and can;t be arsed to look it up but it will be long thousands. We need the staff now.

Rolling-rotas have their positives and negatives; I’ve done them in the past and liked knowing what I’d be working well in advance but found it quite restrictive in some ways and like you say; the feeling of permanent jet-lag wasn’t fun! At the time I’m referring to we worked to a rota that was planned and ‘published’ a minimum of one month in advance so there was room for negotiation and compromise; if you needed particular days off you’d generally get where possible; I generally worked day shifts for one month then nights for the next, Best thing was when we had kids I negotiated to always have Wednesdays and Thursdays off which took the sting out of childcare costs. It meant working more than my fair share of weekend hours but the enhanced rate was welcome.

Many years ago I worked fourteen hour shifts meaning I only worked ten and a half days a month; the working environment was 24/7/365. It was great and worked well for my employer; it also meant that by canny use of leave and shift pattern manipulation I could structure my leave to take three weeks off with only using about one weeks leave. I can’t remember the exact maths but I recall that in terms of the breaks I was entitled to my employer got about an extra hour and a half or so out of me each month. Saved in travel costs; lots of free time to do what I wanted and worked well once we had kids. It’s a fairly simple proposal and if an employer and employee are both in favour then I see no issue; it won’t suite every job or every role within an organisation but unfortunately we are all in some way trapped by the career choices we made when we were younger.

I think that Newsdesk is clearly in possession of some knowledge of what has actually gone wrong with the identification. If it’s the same as I’ve heard I would suggest that those slamming the organisers and officials wind their collective necks in to avoid an embarrassing climb down when the full facts come out.

If you do not understand the meaning behind the Black Lives Matter movement then you are either thick; deliberately obtuse or racist. Probably a mix of all three. The movement is not stating that black lives matter more than any other lives but that they matter just as much and can the Police please stop killing us? Years ago I would probably have been one of the “all lives matter” wankers; yes; if you’ve stated that you are a wanker! But one of my oldest friends married a woman of colour; the stories he tells me of the prejudice that his wife and children have to deal with every single day is terrifying. I would have scoffed at the concept of white privilege but I now understand that simply walking down the high street of the city I was born in without receiving side ways looks; without people crossing the street and without receiving verbal and physical abuse is a privilege many Black British people never get to enjoy. I know the situation this side of the Atlantic is nothing like as bad as in the US but it is still bad and many people want to show their support for a global movement that came into existence to tackle a global problem. There are only so many times that peaceful protest can be ignored before people will turn to more radical and destructive methods to make their point. I am a middle-aged, heterosexual white man and I support #blacklivesmatter because I understand the fear in which so many of our fellow humans live on a daily basis. Part of the solution or part of the problem; there is no middle ground on this one.

I'm fairly sure parking restrictions are still null and void; double yellows and disabled spaces were always still enforced but unless I've missed a bulletin then there are no longer any time limits on parking.

Firstly; those three articles you linked? Dated 20th, 21st and 13th of March 2020 respectively. the numbers in the US for those dates (again respectively) were: 185,991 cases; 3,809 deaths. 160,686 cases: 2,988 deaths and 2,163 cases, 52 deaths. Today that figure stands at 1,033,913 cases and 54,938 deaths. (I quote US stats as the articles appear to originate from across the Atlantic.) [Stats are taken from Wikipedia because for some reason the John Hopkins site won't work at the moment.) To say those articles haven't aged well would be an understatement; basing your argument on articles written by Opinionists over a month ago highlights its' flaws. I'm interested in your thoughts on why the 'NHS is nothing else more than institutionalized hypocrisy.' I'm guessing that neither you nor a loved one has received life saving treatment. The FMD outbreak in 2001 cannot be compared with Coronavirus because it was a 'known unknown' and there should've been a better and swifter response in place ready to go when the first cases were detected, I'll concede that western governments should have had a better pre-prepared pandemic response to Coronavirus but there was no way of knowing the full nature of what any potential disease would would be. The FMD outbreak in 2001 cannot be compared with Coronavirus because a vaccine was available prior to the breakout although using this renders the recipient animal unfit for the food chain so mass culling would still have been required. The one paper you reference that I could find to read in full seems to have a bit of an axe to grind; 'won't somebody think of the animals?' See my previous post in regard to the comfort offered by a passenger seat on the hindsight bus. FMD was horrific; I was living in rural Yorkshire at the time and vividly recall the devastation in the farming communities and allied businesses. It's a crap disease causing the animals to waste away and rendering them uneconomically viable; if allowed to spread it would have wiped out the UK livestock industry and the social and economic damage would have been far, far worse than it was (are you beginning to see the parallels?) The cull was necessarily tragic to prevent a more widespread outbreak and led to stronger measures to prevent and deal with future outbreaks; evidenced by the reaction to a further breakout in 2007. To be honest; I can't really be arsed writing anymore; especially as I suspect that logic and compassion for fellow humans will never penetrate your tin foil hat; therefore I direct you to the last sentence of my previous post.

I think this probably sums up the problem; the lack of clarity or specificity in the rules and regulations means that those responsible for enforcement are the ones who have to interpret the meaning; I guess that this often happens with new legislation but the far reaching nature of the Covid regulations means we are much more aware of it. At the beginning of lock down I think it was right that a blanket approach was taken; if they'd debated every last nuance of possible activity then we'd still be waiting and numbers would be in the long thousands by now. However; there should've been a dedicated team set in place straight away to interpret the regs to avoid confusion. Taking your points in order: Hadn't heard about fishing being a problem before now but it seems sensible to me that it should be allowed in places where a stationary person fishing can easily be 'socially distanced' by folk passing by and not allowed where it can't. Telling people to exercise at the closest location also seems perfectly reasonable to me; remember that when the regs were first brought in no one had any idea how all this was going to pan out; no one knew how well the general public would react and respect the social distancing rules. What may now seem like a bit of an overreaction in light of how low our numbers have actually been smacks riding the hindsight bus. I'm pretty sure that on the very first day of lock down the Police (having been made aware of someone going for a very long ride) put something out about this being unacceptable. People were told not to travel unless it was absolutely necessary; be it 100 yards or 100 miles they shouldn't be doing it and as you say; they were 'warned' not prosecuted. That seems to me to be a reasonable action. How does making up the rules suit the Police? You (and others) seem to think that the Police are somehow benefiting from or even enjoying this situation and I just don't see that. From the Chief Constables' last appearance at the briefing and from people I know who are Police Officers all this is at best a total ball-ache and at worst is seriously harming their core role. No one is enjoying the current situation, no one likes having restrictions on their lives and certainly no one likes the economic harm this is causing but we all have a choice between knuckling down so that we can relax the restrictions sooner or we can make things worse for everyone including ourselves by breaching the rules. Railing against the restrictions does not make anyone a libertarian warrior; it just makes them a petulant twat.

Can you provide examples of where the Police have made things up as they go along?

https://fullfact.org/ I find this helpful.

Agreed; I was secretly hoping for a bite!

Realistically; if wildlife on Langness was the paramount concern then we'd close the golf course and allow it to naturally re-wild. I suspect the opposition is mostly down to increased traffic through Derbyhaven.

That design would be great on the site of the old swimming pool (wont happen due to the influence of a nearby part-time resident) but losing the charm of the Nosey Crook will be a real loss; all our friends who have visited have remarked on how much they like it. One less place that makes the Island special and one more place that could be anywhere in the British Isles.

Agreed; along with the Hotel School.

Which is the biggest problem Port Erin faces; build 'luxury' apartments many of which are not occupied full time and the remaining population cannot support the village services. If everyone who could afford to buy one of those flats actually lived there and engaged in the village it would be a very different place with thriving good quality hostelries. Absolutely gutted about The Bay closing but it's being getting quieter and quieter over the last ten years.

When? Where's your source?

Boris Johnson and the ERG lunatics it would seem.

That's project fear that is.

Good come back mate; the Oxford Debating Society must really miss your contributions. I try to avoid getting personal on these forums but you really are a dick.

Weak.

Sorry, you'll have to do better than that. Expecting others to to provide the evidence to support your position is a sign of a very weak argument. Prove your point or shut up.

You're going to have to provide a source for that one as I've searched and cannot find any suggestion that Phillip Hammond has said that the Benn Act was drafted by the EU.

David Lock QC is on public record stating that he drafted the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019. He drafted it on his own at his desk in his house in Worcestershire.

You’re half right; I’ve met plenty of remainers who are far from intelligent. They just have to go to greater lengths to prove it