1 April 2020 – Day 10
I guess today is the 10th day of Washington State’s “shelter in place” order? I thought it was the 7th day for some reason but when I went to the Department of Health site, they list the 23rd of March as the official start.
I think what happened was that my work stopped letting us come in on that Wednesday so that’s when I started counting my SiP.
Anyway, governor Jay Inslee’s order to shelter in place was issued at exactly the right time and is already having the desired effect: the curve is flattening in Washington State. We had just 1 death in Washington State, from Coronavirus on the 27th. That was 4 days ago. There might be a lag time in reporting but the good news is that the SiP order works.
Now, what we need to see is places like New York, New Orleans, and other places where the virus is flaring up do the same. This is really that simple: the majority of us need to shelter in place, stop flying everywhere, and stop getting into each other’s personal space.
Meanwhile, the essential workers need to be praised. I have long fought back against the claim from the wealthy that they are “hard workers”. Bullshit, the hard workers are the folks restocking our groceries, picking and packing our foods, delivering goods to us, maintaining our power-water-internet, and administering to our illnesses. These folks all need raises and more important than that: every essential worker should be given medicare and paid sick leave. Look, if those folks who restock the shelves get sick, if our nurses and doctors get sick, WE ARE FUCKED.
Look around your home. How long would you last if the grocery stores all shut down? Two weeks? Maybe? Get with the program here people: treat the essential workers like the essential employees that they the fuck are.
Anyway, rant over for the day. Tomorrow, I’ll jump back in time to my 2nd ever Arsenal match. It’s a doozy*!
*More like a SNOOZY!
Good stuff, Tim. Agree 100%.
Football isn’t exactly showing that it understands the right thing to do. It’s time the players recognised that they are payed a king’s ransom to play and when they’re not playing they should simply not take the money! Once again it’s the little people (without whom clubs couldn’t operate) that take the hit.
Hopefully the Arsenal can show an example to this skanky outfit:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2020/04/01/disgrace-premier-league-clubs-abusing-governments-furlough-scheme/
https://www.arsenal.com/news/latest-update-from-club
The club are going to pay the match day casuals on THEIR pay roll for games up to 30 April (the initial closure date) for the games that would have taken place in that period.
This is undoubtedly a good thing.
However I suspect a lot of the catering staff are hired through an agency so probably miss out on this reasonable offer
I’ve seen nothing about the ordinary non playing staff yet so assume the club are paying them as normal. Hopefully we won’t follow the example of the tiny totts down the road.
One egregious aspect of the tinys is that their owner is a tax exile now presuming on the generosity of the UK tax payer – say like those Bahama / Panama flagged cruise liners expecting help in the US
In general I think that the bigger clubs should be able to find the cash for their non playing staff