I'm sure that you've seen the VT of kids having to huddle around mobile phones to have any internet access.
You are falling into the trap of believing everyone is as privileged as you and no, not everyone spends their income on fag, booze and loose women either - thought I'd get that one in before you replied.

People have to live their lives as they feel fit - personally my kids where the most important element and they got first dibs on the money - the fact others choose to do differently is their choice - as the saying goes "walk a mile in someone else's shoes". You can get the internet for £15/month? if your child's education would benefit from that spend is that too expensive for 99% of most households?

I can't tell if you're being serious or just on a wind-up. I honestly can't.

£15 a month for internet sounds great, but you also need a phone line and a device to access the internet. And considering £15 in some households will be more than the weekly food budget...!

Maybe it's you who needs to walk a mile in someone else's shoes. In fact, I'd suggest a lot more than a mile.

Bloody well said KSC









They could always try to use the food bank twice a week and lets not forget that during this time 1000's of people that were laid off had no money coming in whatsoever, apart from maybe child benefit.
Sal doesn't know or want to know about those less well off than him, mind you he probably thinks it's "their" own fault



Maybe Corbyn's plan for free internet for everyone wasn't such a bad idea after all ?
Do you think that he knew something

Interesting - I seldom see any kid who doesn't have a mobile phone so your £15/month for food is b0ll0cks. So I suggest there are very few people if they really wanted to couldn't afford both a computer or a broadband connection - they will definitely be some but they are a very small minority. It is possible to have broadband without a land line also.

Someone mentioned so many people losing jobs is the suggestion that these people simply cancelled their broadband - something that would be vital in locating work - really?

Don't forget all those widescreen TVs, Nike trainers, and cigs.

You're right, you can have broadband without a phone line, but there isn't much of a cost saving.

Sounds like Sal has never lived anywhere other than in the comfortable middle classes. As the baseball saying goes, born on third base and thought he hit a triple.

He reminds me of Alan Partridge, notably the scene about the Irish potato famine...

[i"I mean, if it was just the potatoes that were affected, at the end of the day, you will pay the price if you're a fussy eater. If they could afford to emigrate then they could afford to eat in a modest restaurant."[/i

Surprised you brought that up - kids have got have something on their feet and some branded trainers are pretty cheap - seems like a sensible option

I came from a house with an outside toilet in Listerhills in Bradford - both my parents were nurses in the 60s they weren't earning much - I was very lucky to get a scholarship to Bradford Grammer School parental encouragement helped - the rest as they say is down to myself, hardwork and a great deal of luck.

Unlike Ghost who did grow up middle class suburbia - went to uni, has a nice cushy job in the public sector never taken a risk or employed anybody using his own money - I know what its like for many people to rely on the decisions I make for the money to feed their family. Unlike you who simply talks the talk and has never walked the walk - complete empty jacket

LOL, poor Sal.



I've never worked in the public sector, the remuneration tends not to be as good as private.
But unlike you I am not a crazed ideologue who can't empathise with people who have different experiences to me, I don't presume that people with different jobs to me are inferior, I don't assume everyone else is lazy and I don't look at my own life and fail to recognise that fortune and circumstance has helped me along the way.

How compelling do y’all find these data? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5793824/

How compelling do y’all find these data? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5793824/

Local test and trace teams reaching 97.7% of contacts in England
the data shows local health protection teams are reaching far more close contacts of people who tested positive for coronavirus than those handled online or by call centres.
For cases handled by local health protection teams, 97.7% of contacts were reached and asked to self-isolate. For cases handled either online or by call centres, 57.6% of close contacts were reached.
Overall in the week ending October 7, a total of 216,627 people were identified as having come into contact with someone who tested positive and some 62.6% of contacts were reached.
This is the lowest weekly percentage since test and trace began, and is down from 69.5% in the previous week.

Just imagine how much local track and trace could have achieved given half of the money SERCO were given. Just imagine how much better the rate of Covid with and the economy might have been if we had used the last 6 months to develop a system to prevent the spread of Covid.

Manchester have asked for £20 million pounds for them to set up a local track and trace system.

Where will that sort of money come from ?


Maybe from the 1000 advisors being paid by SERCO £1950 per day . In 10,days with that money they could fund Manchester’s track and trace.

So are we saying 200k people a week need to self isolate for 14 days - so approx 400k at any one time?

It's more than likely double that figure.

Bearing in mind that until/unless a vaccine is found, all of us are going to be infected at one time or another.

And everyone wonders why track and trace wont work - 200k a week - say it takes 30 minutes a call that's 100k hours of calls a week if you can contact each person quickly. That's a big number

True. You can add to that the fact that the three main sites, Collindale, Manchester and Porton Down don't really get on with each other or coordinate particularly well.

It won't work now, but four months ago it would have, and we probably wouldn't now be looking at this dreadful scale of infection rise. It's a 35 million pound clusterf***. Not only did they set it up on an Excel spreadsheet (totally unbelievable) but they used the spreadsheet the wrong way around.

If you want to believe everything you read, that is. But what would The Sin bin without all the left wing bias.

Multiple threads, all about how useless the government are, not a single mention of the Labour 'plan' or Crignebins brother evoking hate and anti establishment gatherings....

I'd completely missed the bit where Labour won the election and we had their record in power to judge them by.
Distraction and whataboutery - this is all the hard right have left to cling to.

I think IR80 has a new username, folks.

Well there’s probably a good reason why we we can’t judge Labours record in power - and in all honesty with the current balls up of Covid & Brexit you’d still hardly know they exist

I would suggest you watch the many PMQ’s between Johnson and Starmer or the debate between Johnson and Miliband this year and you may realise that they do exist and find it rather easy to make the PM look clueless and irrelevant. The polls also show more people support Labour than the Cons and that Starmer is a better leader.
I wonder how many of the new red wall Conservatives will be voted back in next time, judging by how twitchy they have become they are already beginning to wonder if Johnson is the right man
How many of those impacted by Covid wished that Labour was in power. The private companies making millions won’t of course because they can just carry on milking the tax payer for as much as possible with the full backing of the Cons especially one minister.