Posts by LucreLout

Re: Naomi Klein

I think you'll find that unlike the terrorist bogeymen, this virus is 100% real

I can assure you the terrorists are 100% real. So can millions of other ordinary people quietly going about their business on 9/11.

I find it quite amazing how many of the people who think this virus is some kind of hoax, or no big deal

Indeed. The number of people congregating in my local park at the weekend was unexpected. I mean, yes my family was there too, but unlike many others we were distancing ourselves from everyone else. My local park ain't like the ones on telly in London, there was plenty of space, just plenty of groups ignoring the whole keep your distance message.

Re: But I don't have a so-called "smart" phone.

The problem is, it assumes that you have a phone or you have it with you, when you leave the house.

I suspect its to reduce the groups of teenagers / millennial's congregating in public spaces. Its not like they're leaving home without their phone.

Its a trivial way to make life more difficult for those choosing to put everyone else at risk because they absolutely must not have any restrictions on their own pathetic little lives.

There's no silver bullet solution, even putting the army on the street will see some violating isolation / curfew. The idea is to limit those brainouts and to be identify and appropriately punish them such that they become an example to other hard of learning people.

Re: And how..

And how..

...do they work who is important?

Like they said in the article - healthcare, supply chain etc. I'm afraid if your "business model" is hawking "ok boomer" t-shirts to moaning millennial's, then outrageously you may find your business isn't viewed as important just now.

I have a sideline that uses compute to throw off a little extra walking around money, which I've suspended for the duration in order that the compute, the bandwidth, and the power can be put to more important uses. (The compute:profit ratio is heavily on the compute side).

Re: Not all telework is valuable

User 1: some marketing lowlife or organisation (wo)man videoconferencing.

User 2: a child, who cannot see their friends because school is closed, cannot see their nan because old age homes are closed to visitors, and is possibly terrified based on the adults around them, whose mind could be taken off things by some streamed video.

The problem is that User 3 Is more legitimate than either of those by a very long way - the person working for a legitimate private sector company trying their best to keep people employed to pay taxes to fund the rightly high level of government financing required during the pandemic.

I've spent a lot of effort answering my children's questions about the pandemic and trying to make sure they're not "terrified". It's usually known as "parenting". Their mind is equally easy to take off events with broadcast media rather than streaming, or school work, or books, or any number of none bandwidth sapping activities. It's rather harder to work from home over the telly (unless you work in broadcasting of course).

Re: Overselling?

Perhaps Netflix have sold too many accounts for their own server capacity?

Netflix runs on AWS, so in practicality there's very little upper limit to their "server capacity".

Re: Bandwidth like Bank Reserves?

sure, but also an HD stream is not maxing out a 150Mbit connection

That'd be ok on family movie night, but two teenagers watching diferent things in different rooms while mam & dad try to work from home for two different companies is using rather more data.

Frankly, who really cares if pewdieponce goes low res for a bit? Really?

Re: Why

10 years of wasted investment by UK government in non FTTP solutions paying off right now. Yeah well done idiots.

Only 10, are you sure? Sounds more like playing politics to me.

Re: Why

So what about the customers that are paying more than £2 a month for a decent internet provider, why should we have to endure lower quality video because of the cheap end of the ISP market ?

Well, I'm sure you've noticed this extremely dangerous virus that is killing folk and overwhelming the NHS. Well, here's the thing, in order to have money for the government to give folk and to pay the NHS, they have to have people working to tax. That, in a nutshell, is why your Netflix isn't remotely important right now you utter fucking assclown.

IF, and personally I see it as a big if, but if the country has insufficient broadband capacity for people to work from home, and for you to kill time watching tv/movies/porn/other-assclowns-on-youtube, then the latter is toast.

FFS. And they let these people vote?!

Re: Look at the super markets.

Personally, I think some people are spending way, wayyyy to much time playing disaster/ survival games and want their little virtual world to become a reality because they are level whatever in it, and a big player in that virtual world. Then IRL they aren't a big shaker and mover, and are basically fantasizing about the real world becoming their game where they will be huge.

ROFL. Yeah, the problem with that is that I'm a much bigger "shaker and mover" in the real world than I ever was in any virtual one. I'm doing well financially (very well 4 weeks ago), my career has taken me further than I ever dreamed it would (and I still have 20 years to work), I have a happy home life, and despite the fact that I'm more capable in a fight than many, I'm no where near good enough to survive a post-apocalyptic world; I'd be the guy that gets killed in the opening credits.

None of that, however, makes what is happening out there any less real. People are literally fighting over toilet paper when there's plenty of viable alternatives and near infinite stock of it anyway. That's before they get hungry. Before they lose their parents to the virus. Before they lose their job to the recession. Before they're locked up in their homes all summer, watching other parts of the world moving on without them.

As much as I'd love the world to be a peaceful, rational place, it isn't. It never was.

Except of course, they won't be because clicking buttons on a screen doesn't actually give you any useful skills.

And yet we're in a world where e-sports is the only sports, and where the players earn millions. Whodathunkit?

Food chains are perfectly secure

Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but you're confusing what is with what is perceived to be. The latter is what starts riots, not the former. The fact is that no armed policeman wants to shoot anyone, even a drug dealing scrote. The perception that this was not true is what triggered the rioting, which then became self sustaining. Facts, and perception.

If they end up either limiting the amounts that people can buy, or telling people that if they self isolate the government will deliver food packages then the food problem ends overnight.

That trigger gets abated every time the food arrives, sure, but it only needs one missed delivery.... There's going to be other triggers too. A lot of other triggers. People don't like being locked up in their homes, especially the young. People won't like not earning any money and having to claim welfare. People who have always worked will want an opportunity to do so. They won't get those things until the restrictions end, and will start to push back on them - that is the reason why we didn't lock everything down weeks ago.

If people are self isolating at home and avoiding any contact with people who might be infected, they aren't going to be inclined to participate in mass riots since by definition that requires people to group together with people who may be infected.

Which is fine as long as there isn't a group prone to rash decisions who feel like they have effective immunity to the virus and will most resent the lock down. Oh, wait..... there is. They're called "millennial's".

Even a cursory look at St Patricks day up and down the land would reveal that they're not doing the lock down voluntarily. They'll probably not do it by diktat either. The pressure builds, a trigger gets pulled (real or metaphorical) and the whole thing explodes.

Alternately:

Carry On

Always a good idea, but then so are safe sex and seat belts..... Not always what people do though, is it?

You're in for a very rude awakening this summer because you haven't got a clue. When reality comes and bites you on the arse, it'll be no good having a moan on the groan, and braying on about the unfairness of it all.

Keeping calm doesn't mean don't prepare. Carrying on doesn't involve sticking your head up your ass in the absence of enough sand to put it in.

25% of the countries in the world had civil unrest last year. This years pre-virus prediction was for 40% to have unrest. Surely the bubble you seem to live in isn't so opaque that you can't see the odds have risen a tad lately?

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/16/40percent-of-countries-will-witness-civil-unrest-in-2020-report-claims.html

You're confusing what people want and what reality is. We want the same clam and carry on life that we had last year - I want it and you want it. The only difference is that I can see we ain't gonna get it.

Re: Look at the super markets.

People having weeks worth of food at home and starving are inherently incompatible.

Only if the food is evenly distributed. It isn't.

you'll quickly realise that some peoples fantasies of civilisation collapsing and roving bands of idiots raiding houses for their stocks of food are pretty much zero

Spoken like a man who's never lived in an estate where rioting and looting are happening. I've lived on 2 during riots (20ish years apart - Meadow Well & Croydon) and its absolutely no fun at all. Sometimes you can even see the police from your window, its just that they can't reach you to help you.

The thing with rioting is that once it starts, it spreads. It spreads quickly and it gets hard to contain. More people join in each day either for fun or because they want to air their grievances too. The level of violence escalates at an exponential level until quite sickening levels of violence become almost casual.

It's difficult to self isolate if your house is on fire or if your food got stolen.

...the British army is smaller than the London police force and wouldn't have the manpower.

It takes a lot fewer soldiers to prevent disorder than it does police. Put another way, after 9/11 it wasn't New York's Finest that were deployed at intersections in Manhattan, it was visibly heavily armed troops.

I'm not trying to spread panic to use your words, but to plan to simply rely on the kindness of others over the next few weeks is insane. Totally insane.

We're helping as many people as we can find the things they need locally, but in all honesty my ability to bring food and bog roll for neighbors is disappearing fast as I simply can't find any either for now. I have idea what their plan b is, but I've probably got enough stuff in our normally fairly full cupboards to feed my kids for a couple of weeks, and once supplies run out in the wholesalers/supermarkets, I'm prioritizing feeding my kids.

There's a massive underclass in society that can't control their base impulses, which is why something like 1/3rd of men have a criminal conviction. 1 in 3. And that's before they got hungry, before they got scared. It isn't "if", it's "when".

We had riots in 2011 because a drug dealing gangster got shot. He'd never even been to half the cities that started rioting; nobody there knew him. And you think this time it's going to be different? I'd love you to be right, I really would. You're not, and I think deep down you know it too.

Re: Look at the super markets.

Just follow them back to their car and key it.

There is never any need for this; it is always the hallmark of a c*nt.

Even if you "feel" justified in doing it, you don't know that they've not borrowed someones car.

Re: Look at the super markets.

If this does go on, ration books might actually be required just to prevent people from over ordering.

Price escalation works far better. 1 x unit price for the first unit, 100 x unit price for the second unit and just keep doubling down from there.

Re: Look at the super markets.

Yes, the next time I see some selfish arse filling their trolley to the brim with toilet paper, I'm going to be extremely tempted to give them a hand getting a few more rolls out of the store - by shoving a 4 pack right up their feckin' jacksie...

Yeah, my mrs just returned with a wholesale pack of bog roll (5x9 rolls - you literally can't buy individual 9 packs). Thing is, it ain't for us - one pack of 9 for each neighbour and the other 2 for colleagues at work who have ran out (she's a "ley worker" in this brave new world). We have one pack.

Most that are stockpiling are panic buying hoarders, but just remember it isn't everyone you see.

Re: Look at the super markets.

It's not just the supermarkets.

The internet has mostly sold out of MRE rations, and in all my years of life, I've NEVER seen a squaddie eating those once they've demobbed.

People are planning ahead - try buying a baseball bat online, or a hunting knife. Things you might use to defend your home are selling out quickly alongside the sanitiser, bog roll, and food.

Once the food runs out, anarchy follows by night time, so having a TP fort and enough rice to feed China is only going to make households a target. Peckham will be coming to Hampstead to eat.

The virus death toll is about to soar, I think we all know that, and I think we all wish it weren't so. That said, the fear will spike when people begin dropping like flies, especially when they start to get hungry. Rationale will go straight out of the window, which is why the military are being prepared.

There's nothing in-between bobbies with sticks and soldiers with live rounds, because once again the left did not learn anything from the last spell of social disorder - we have no water cannon, no baton rounds, no tear gas, and so we will have to progress quickly to live rounds. It's going to suck.

"Society" is a very thin vaneer on an awful lot of bullshit, and that vaneer is cracking by the day.

Re: Where is it coming from?

We are looking at potentially a lost year in our tourism business. If we can delay paying tax, laying staff off etc we should make it, not everybody is that well financed.

Tourism will boom next summer subject to everyone being vaccinated. The problems come in how to get from here to there without killing the industry and as few people as possible. Same for pubs, clubs, hotels, festivals, gigs, galleries, theaters, cinemas etc. People will go out and go nuts once this passes.

As I see it the problem is that we're going to hit a phase of massed redundancies, almost no matter what the state does. All countries will get hit with it despite taking different action. Of course there's also the fact that people are only ever 3 meals from rioting thing, and with the shop shelves emptying, it may be worth remembering that they aren't preparing to deploy the military for shits & giggles.

Things will get worse before they get better, a lot worse. Bankruptcies may not be our most pressing problem 6 weeks from now.

Re: And for what it's worth these days..

Remember you can find a new job, money isn't the be all and end all, I know its going to be hard . But you can't find a new parent, relative, partner, lover or friend.

This is completely right and true. I couldn't agree more.

And I think we are going to have to have a good long think about money and egotesticle after this. Money is ALWAYS the driver of **** ups in this situation and I think it needs to go. Its a constant pain in the ass at the best of times - now it's entirely capable of killing people.

Unfortunately you ruined your argument with this utter cretinous nonsense.

This isn't the fall of capitalism, and God help us if it is, because there are no other workable systems in place anywhere in the world or at any time in history. Socialism & communism etc have failed at every time and in every place. The only half option out there is dictatorship, which is nice for the dictator, but no so much everyone else.

Re: More ventilators can be made very quickly

During the 1950 polio epidemics, when hundreds of patients with paralysed chests needed assisted ventilation, medical students hand-ventilated patients in hospital corridors rather than let them just die.

I do wonder how many hand ventilators we have available. Obviously these could be made much more quickly than the automated type.

30 seconds with a nurse yelling "Squeeze this like so and then let go, and repeat every x seconds or your relative dies" would give most a better opportunity than simply being abandoned.

That said, when they start prioritizing patients and deciding to let the older sicker patients die to focus resources on the younger healthier ones, which will happen, the entire edifice of "universal healthcare free at the point of use" ends, and it ends forever. Thereafter healthcare reform will be top of everyone's agenda and the NHS will have no place to hide.

Obviously if they did attempt to "BRING YOU BACK BY FORCE" (sic), then they could also be charged with GBH, assault etc.

Actually they'd be charged by the NHS first for the medical treatment they'd need, then that stuff you said.

Dog the Bounty Hunter may be a big deal in America, but frankly I don't fancy his chances against the boys down the Duck & Parrot given he'll be operating without a firearm.

Re: Pitch forks unnecessary, Karma is good enough

People need to be cured and the spread of the virus needs to be stopped, now.

The former is impossible as yet and the latter would require a coordinated global shutdown of every household everywhere to achieve or the virus pops up again in a giant game of whack-a-mole. I mean, theoretically that is possible, but theoretically the next knock on my door could be Nicole Kidman begging for sex.

Re: The number of p155 takers ruining it for genuine contractors

Is it fair if two people who work together with the same income

Fair is a meaningless word, but in any case my contractors took home between 2 and 3 times as much as my typical FTEs.

I'm sad that contracting as it has been is ending, because I wanted to do it next, but lets be honest, for most in London its been a great tax avoidance wheeze while it lasted, with little genuine downside. I realize many contractors don't work in London, however the ones that do are the ones the government notices.

Any staff carpark below exec level makes it transparent - the good cars almost always belong to a contractor.

Genuine best wishes to you all out there. I've done the level best I can by my contractors, and my FTEs, but preparing for the bad times is part of the day rate during the good times - many people will be losing their jobs who never had that chance.

Re: One-nation Barmy

In times of Coronavirus and the uncertainty of work, contractors are in a far more perilous position than employees as contractors have no legal protections for the work they do and can be easily let go at a moments notice

Not really, no. That's not to crap on the Ronin, only to point out that unless you are willing to go to court to enforce your rights, they don't really exist. And if you do go to court to enforce your rights, you'll never pass a background check again - everywhere in finance has a tick box for "Have you ever sued your employer?" and do a thorough background check on FTEs.

You might, might, get away with it if your name is John Smith and you live in a large city, but if your name is Englebert Presley-Jones III and you live in littleshire, then you're pretty much screwed.

If employment rights are to mean anything, then people need to be able to file claims without their identity ever being made public.

Re: Better than nothing

So as far as I can see, I’m still in the same boat, along with many colleagues who have already left, some of whom have started the process of shutting down their limited companies (for a fee, of course).

Hopefully there will be more new outside IR35 contracts available, but then we’ll have this sh*tshow again next year. If companies haven’t sorted it out with 2-3 weeks to go to April 6th, what are the chances after a 12-month global pandemic? Slim to none I reckon.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news in these times of woe, but you've nailed it.

My company (big bank you have heard of) isn't changing our stance- we simply don't have budget for the few remaining contractors we didn't make FTE or who didn't already leave when we insisted on converting them.

There's no way we're looking at the budget process again this close to financial year end, and most certainly not with the current pandemic.

Re: Just wait 2 weeks

Stock Markets brokers will make a killing without publishing a single word about how they make money from other peoples losses.

Nonsense like this makes it hard to place much value on the rest of your post. Brokers make a fee when you transact, whether you buy or sell. Market markers make the spread (difference between bid & offer price). Short sellers, however, are the ones that make money when you (long buyers) lose it.

Normal people will have just gone about their lives as though nothing had happened.

Normal people are terrified of killing their elderly relatives just by visiting them.

Business As Usual..

No, no it really isn't.

Anyone, anyone with a cold or flu like symptoms NEEDS to stay home and isolate for at least 7 - 14 days. You can't just push through it as what you're doing is pushing pensioners and transplant/cancer/other immuno-compromised patients off their perch.

Your stupidity may well have lethal consequences.

Re: legal basis

I don't know about Swedish law, but under UK law you definitely would be hauled before the beak for failing to abide by the spirit of the law. Which is a thing.

No it isn't. Which is exactly the conversation my business unit has been having with ever business secretary and every chancellor since Tony Blair and Gordon Clown used to be in charge.

The law is a series of words written, hopefully with appropriate due diligence, by hopefully competent people. It has no spirit other than the intent expressed by the words as written. Court orders on the other hand you probably want to do what you thought the judge wanted you to do when he drafted it.

Re: I'm just waiting...

There's only so much the sheeple can stockpile, when every available space is full in their homes the shops will be emptier for the rest of us!

Normally, yes, but with stuff where the whole world is going crazy (sanitizer gels for instance) then it may be months before there's any on the shelves long enough for normal folk to pick any up with the weekly shop.

Society really isn't what the left tell us it is. Evidence for that abounds and in all honesty, has passed the point where the pretense is sustainable. It's time for a better vision, with a lot less state dependence and a lot more individual responsibility.

Re: We got in there early

The wife is in her 80's with COPD (serious lung problems) and my health isn't brilliant

Yup - my folks are in the same boat. And can I get hand sanitizer for them? Can I fuck. I can't even get antibacterial hand soap delivered to them (keeps being substituted). So, yeah, my deepest thanks go out to all the socially irresponsible panic buyers out there.

Society? My arse.

Honestly, peoples behavior and the risks its inflating for my family are causing me to seriously reassess how much money I'm prepared to pay for this "society" or "community" people bang on about, once the virus clears through.

Re: HMRC : Singlehanded incompetent.

Show me one single shred of evidence that Contractors in general haven't paid every penny they owe

They probably will have, its just that the Government have changed the rules so now contractors will owe more.

When the 3rd longest served member of IT at my last bank is an IT contractor, you can sort of see why they have a point. 20+ years in the same gig for the same client and they claimed to not be a permanent member of staff - its amusing, but it's not credible.

That higher public spending everyone keeps voting and lobbying for has to come from somewhere, and it can't come from PAYE as that is already beyond disincentive levels of tax. So what's left? You can't arbitrarily tax a multinational - international trade and finance works on a global scale not a national one. Something or someone you can tax has to pay, and in this case contractors earn a great deal more than most and pay a great deal less tax, and so the government wants to level that up.

Despite being a permie, I'm a little sad about that as I've always wanted to go contracting and kept getting suckered into some "career" thing or other. I do hope the changes don't kill the industry, but I am afraid they might.

Re: HMRC : Singlehanded incompetent.

Here are some readily googleable examples of what you can get away with if you're rich enough to game the system and not want to pay tax

No list could possibly complete without the Guardian being given a mention - they are without any shred of doubt in my mind the biggest hypocrites when it comes to matters of taxation. How much did they pay in their Autotrader gains? Why was the Scott trust offshore? The list of aggressive avoidance measures is extensive and yet they rail against anyone not simply handing HMRC their entire paycheck.

Re: Tesla never said it's driverless

Either the Renault Megane has a poorly designed ABS system

Possibly, I'm not an engineer.

your particular car has a defect

It was a rental, but no I checked the brake system myself afterwards to ensure it was functioning as "expected".

(more likely) you're backing off on the brake pedal when the ABS is engaged

No, sorry I've been an advanced driver for 10+ years, an amateur racer for 15 years, a driver for 30 years, and an amateur mechanic for 20 years. I know how to drive and functionally what each part of the car is doing for a given input.

The software simply wasn't up to scratch in terms of correctly controlling the car in conditions that seem to have escaped the designers notice. Cadence braking, once learned and properly applied, is trivially easy to do, and braking improved markedly once I pulled the correct fuse.

Re: Tesla never said it's driverless

I don't know how thick you have to be to assume to understand the functionality of something by its marketing handle, but it's way down there with the plant species.

Its akin to people complaining they got burned when they started the fire with SAFETY matches.

It takes a special kind of ignorance to think that a car with a steering wheel and other assorted driver controls can drive itself - if it could you'd not be fitting any of that space stealing stuff.

Re: Tesla never said it's driverless

I thought that most people who disengage traction control do it for macho reasons.

Not always. Try stopping a 10 year old Renault Megane in the snow and report back. The ABS/ESP et al are truly woeful in adverse weather and routinely took 3 times longer to stop the car than disabling them and using cadence braking.

I'll freely allow many people disable them because of the Dunning Kruger effect. Most drivers think they're above average, yet haven't taken a test since their L test, often many moons ago, so there's no logical reason to believe they would be above rather than below average, when the latter is statistically more likely.