Strike a light

Not quite the lowest postings in 2022, but will try to find something each week as we move into the New Year. It has not started too well with SWMBO struggling to shake off her third bout of Covid which looks like it could be a long Covid type of hang-over. We shall see how she develops over the next few weeks.

The year end has been dominated by strikes and the national nurses, railworkers and border force strikes have been augmented in Wirral by a bin strike.

Now this is an interesting case study. Firstly the whole of the Wirral population is affected, unlike the National strikes which affect smaller percentages of the population. The bin men are employed by BIFFA and the waste disposal sites ( the tips) are run by VEOLA. They are both subcontractors of Wirral Council.

As mentioned in an earlier post Wirral Council are £46m in debt so they are unlikely to let their sub-contractors off the hook regarding their financial deals. That said, they did call all parties into a Zoom call on Christmas Day, and the press are indicating that the bin men accepted a 10% pay rise and went back to work.

Deep joy for the residents and probably a bit of double time for the refuse collection operatives, to give them their correct title. Think, however, of the good will they have lost. They were not working the week before Christmas so must have lost out hugely on the traditional Christmas box which I and other residents surely still give them. £100 a street must be worth several thousand pound per lorry. Losses they will never recoup. The postal workers were in the same boat. So they have bowed to their Union wishes without  thinking it through.

Let's look at the RMT, and their dinosaur of a leader, Mick Lynch. Liverpool is one of the last bastions of the Union movement. Unite and Unison are investing heavily in student accommodation in an effort to brain washing their residents into the benfits of joining a trade union. 

All the RMT union seem to be doing however is alienating their very customer base and they could see many being permanently driven down other transportation routes, particularly as working from home seems to be becoming a more accepted work pattern.

Any why are they striking? Clearly they want more money, don't we all, but working practises play a part as well. They are opposed to the closure of ticket offices, but very few people buy tickets at the station these days. what the train operators are saying is get off you backside and help out of the station concourse. Technology has been forcing people to retrain for decades now, the RMT really do need to remove their blinker's and embrace the closure of ticket offices and the introduction of driverless train. The DLR in London and the Metro in Paris do not have any more accidents than Metrolink or the London Underground. There needs to be a bit of give and take to allow the Country continue to operate without the Unions trying to hold us all to ransom.

Finally to the nurses. Yes they need a payrise, but not the 23% being bandied around. Undoubtedly the independent pay board will allocate a double figure rise for them in the 2023 assessment, and hoepfully the Government will accept and implement it. There are two areas, however, which I am struggling to understand.

The first is bedblocking. What has happened to the Nightingale hospitals developed very quickly for COVID patients, but rarely needed. why can't these facilities be used for people with either little or nothing wrong with them, who are waiting for aftercare, or for the new wave of flu and COVID patients, making them almost isolation hospitals?

Second is the cost of accommodation. In the day, every hospital had nurses home to allow the staff  subsidised living facilities. Maybe the Unite and unison investment in property could be better used to reintroduce these facilities and help their members in a more practical way.

Time will tell. 

Gotcha

Damn and blast. I have just tested positive for Covid. I thought it was a bit of left over jet lag but it seemed too debilitating for  that and as we had a group outing tonight I thought it best to check.

So either got it in Fenway Park, on the BA flight to Heathrow or on the shuttle to Manchester which was populated by a large number of potential unvaccinated people.

Our first Liverpool golf Salver day went off well on Monday so hopefully I have been careful regarding cross infection. I have cancelled other commitments until next week.

Maybe this will dose me up with anti-bodies ready for the Winter

Subliminal shutdown

Once more we are faced with a COVID dilemma as a new strain first noticed in South Africa, sweeps across the world. The new virus spreads very quickly but according to the Saffers it has mild symptoms and few people are dying from it. Yes South Africa has a younger population but they are less efficient with their vaccines than we are, so what are we and the Government to  make of it?

Generally I do not think the British people have gone one step beyond to have two vaccines and a booster just to sit at home starring at the wall. The booster programme in particular was designed to allow a normal lifestyle to be embraced. If you feel poorly, then stay at home you might have COVID, you might have the flu or you might just have a cold. If you feel well then get on with things. Even if you are asymptomatic you are not going to influence the speed at which  this thing is already spreading and as long as deaths and hospitalisations are maintaining a flat rate , or even slowly increasing, then the speed of the booster programme should come to our aid.

There will be people who see the opportunity to call in sick over the festive period as a bonus, almost an extra few days on the national holiday,and businesses or public services will have to close as a result.There  will be health workers hugely frustrated that the majority of people in hospital are not fully inoculated but a virus has a life too. It does not plan to wipe out every host it infects. That would be destroying the very environment it need to breed, multiply and eventually mutate. This Omicron variant sounds a lot like a cryptocurrency and COVID seems to be behaving much like one too. Huge peeks of infection followed by  big falls. 

It is good to see the Government calling it's bluff at the moment even if the scientists and health professionals say we are about to be hit by another tidal wave of infection. The vast majority who make it to our TV screens seem to be from the Dad's Army school of doomery, each one grasping for that key nugget that they can use in a 'told you so' moment in the future.

Let's  enjoy the festive break and everything that goes with it and tackle any new challenges which 2022 may hold for us, full on.......or should that be mask on!!!

Merry Christmas and happy New Year to all of you. 

 

St Andrew @ Wallasey

 Last night Wallasey hosted the annual St Andrews dinner, the third I have attended, with still two to go. I had a lead role in this one as I had to make my last major speech of my Captaincy . There were about 100 people in attendance and the in-house catering team did us proud with traditional Scottish fayre including the haggis which I got the opportunity to stab to death. The address was conducted by Tom Blackstock in his usual exuberant style with bagpipes accompaniment.

Then it was up to me to summarise my 18 months in office and I threw a few stories in to add to the entertainment. I was fortunate to recieve a standing ovation at the end of it which was a great surprise and very much appreciated.

We then adjourned to the bar to exchange stories and experiences with the ex-Captains and my personal guests, Jim Mitchell and Paul Spivey. Jim very kindly led the evening with the Selkirk grace  to maintain the Scottish theme 

Golf is now starting to return to normal with no formal events to attend so I can return to playing at the Club when I want to. That said, the weather has been awful with high winds and rain. We lost eight fence panels at home and I have obtained enough wood to replace them, so that will take me a few days. The price of wood was extraordinary and has increased three fold since I last needed to buy some. So at least I now have enough to see us through the next few years as most of the panels which came down were over 20 years old. The ones which remained and survived I had already replaced at some previous time.

The golf club lost the three elegant pine trees by the clubhouse but not any of the scrubby sycamore around which they were circled. So that will be a maintenance job for the greens staff that they were not expecting!

So two St Andrews dinners this week then we are into December and the festive dinner season. Lets hope the latest COVID mutation is kept at bay long enough for everybody to enjoy it. Ho ho ho!

Rainbow support for NHS

Well, the Captains get together at Wallasey went really rather well. The first part of the day saw the final of the individual knock-out trophy which was won in a tight match by Ian Glover from Ashton-in-Makerfield with Ben Johnson from Gathurst being runner-up. at least I can say I was beaten by the winner!!

The rest of the day was formed of a Stableford competition at the home of Stableford, and one group ran away with the prizes for that. All of pour concerns were centred on the weather, but in true Wirral tradition, the worst of it circumnavigated the course to allow almost every member to finish the round as dry as they started. You would not guess from this photo though!

The Covid restrictions were very well observed, and policed by the staff, so it was a fitting penultimate event in a  funny old season .

The week went a bit down hill for me though as I lost two match play competitions on Thursday and Friday, the Friday event being in the preliminary round of the Senior Winter Knock-out, an event I have still to win.

The 2020 Captains will now move on to Childwall for another group event, and I am looking to play at West Lancs and Hillside before hosting the three or four people who could not make the initial date  back at Wallasey in November. whether the clubhouse will be open will all be down to Boris and his plans for lockdown here in the North West.

In an interesting aside to the President of the United States (PORTUS) contracting the disease, we were amused that the First Lady also has an accrynm, FLOTUS, almost like flotsum. With that at the back of my mind I am now considering whether SWMBO should be renamed as FLOW, First Lady of Wallasey Golf Club. The only problem is that they might start calling me Andy Capp!!