Plague!

Discussion in 'Off Topic International' started by -frog-, Mar 13, 2020.

  1. -frog-

    -frog- Well-Known Member

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    Dunno what the govt is doing here for the employed, cause I'm self-employed.
    And they don't do shit for us here.
    There is a plan to support us to pay social insurance contributions (base rate is some 350 Euros a month), yet they adopted a principle, that your revenue for the month preceding the outbreak must be below 3 average salaries (PLN 15.6k or Euro 3.3k). Great for those, who are "self-employed" to circumnavigate higher social insurance contributions (so actually the bastards who are actually in employment, but chose to trick the system), and real "lone wolfs". But I have subcontractors, so I'm fucked. Although I earn significantly less than PLN 15k my revenue for February exceeds that figure. So no help for me... although I get 1/4, maybe 1/3 of the previous number of orders.
    Anyone trading, or using sub-contractors is fucked this way.
    And they do that on purpose.
    To "show off" that they're helping... while helping only those, who actually misuse the system, and not those who are actually at loss.

    Other thing - there's maternity leave for those in self-employment, paid at 2/3 of the average salary (some 700 Euros - not much, but it would do).
    Well - in order to qualify you have to have a preschooler or a primary school pupil, who is under 8 at home.
    My daughter is 8 and a half.
    My son is 1 year and 4 months old... I can go and fuck myself, I won't get a penny.

    They printed PLN 20 billion las week.
    They're offering social insurance contribution relief for farmers and priests (both pay PLN 400 per quarter, and not PLN 1400 a month, like I do - so sick is that system).
    Farmers can still grow their crops.
    I can't reach and meet my customers...
     
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  2. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    Thanks Biles, I wish the same to you all! Be safe!
     
  3. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    It's the same here. There are profiteers and all. It's horrible and the hatred has surfaced right from the start. I'll write more about it a bit later.

    On the other hand, there's also care and compassion, where we weren't expecting. As it happened to yourself, there are self employed here that don't benefit from new laws. So some state institutions announced they will no longer apply for govt grants for cultural projects, so the smaller organisations could benefit from it all.
    Later, the govt has announced the benefit scheme will be extended to include the freelancers, but we don't know yet the conditions.

    They'll print money here too, the inflation will rise, the food prices are already a bit higher. The health system is a mess, it always was, they didn't care about it. They're doing the simplest of things, printing money, and that's all.
     
  4. -frog-

    -frog- Well-Known Member

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    Nope, you've got a reasonable government there.
    We've got the sick old KaczyƄski and his fascist-populist party in charge.

    They spent all the reserves to bribe their uneducated electorate with various benefits.
    They even used the Material Reserve Agency's money to buy coal (for the equivalent if it's 5-year budget) so that the coal miner's 14th salaries were not threatened (yes, you read correctly - coal miners get 14 monthly salaries every year here). The Agency was established to buy reserves of food, materials used during floods (sand and bags, pumps, boats and rafts) and yes... medical supplies, such as masks, coveralls, googles, hand sanitizer. Guess what they're short of now? Yes, medical supplies, food, transport means... but they have millions of tons of coal and coal dust on stock, enough to keep the crematories running for months - they're (I'm quoting our PM, who's a pathological liar, and was even sentenced by court for lying in public, here) "well prepared".
    Now they're pressing for presidential elections to be held on May 10th... cause they know they won't win under normal conditions.
    The mayor of my city replied today, that he's a bit short with preparations for elections.
    He needs 1800 people to sit in the various electoral bodies in the city alone.
    There were 8 insane enough to report for these duties... we're just 1792 short :D
     
  5. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    This plague doesn't kill everyone who catches the bug.
    Not this time....
    My mum told us kids about something happening to humanity, she was a girl at that time, but that evil had been around, was recurring, and nobody and any idea what it was, what cause it I mean.
    She told me about doors being kicked in by the police and hangings. My Granddad told me about the hangings, sorry.
     
  6. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    Many Romanians work in Spain and Italy and many of those have returned since the outbreaks. They are automatically placed into quarantine for 14 days.
    Quarantine centres have been organised in hotels, here. Next to my city there's a summer resort, so there are many hotels and their owners are happy to host them, because the govt is paying.
    But this has outraged many of the residents, who are demanding the moving of the quarantined persons to other places, with the most ridiculous of motives. Some are even saying that the quarantined don't deserve the conditions in the hotels and they should be sent to some sort of camps, almost like a punishment. And the tone of the whole thing is a fascist one, blaming the returned migrants for being sick, for being immigrants, for "abandoning the fatherland to go to work for foreigners". But the most curious thing is that this new attitude towards Romanian migrants (I've become aware of it last year) has been induced and used not by some extremist right wing party, but by the major left wing party here (now in opposition). The thing is this mostly low education diaspora has turned out to be decisive during the last elections, voting against the corrupt left wing government of the last years. The left wing has lost the last two presidential elections and the last European elections so they are doing their best to discredit the diaspora. So there we have an opposition left wing party with a fascist message that's being used during an emergency state.
     
  7. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    Oh, man!

    I've read stories about the plagues in the 19th century here. The undertakers going from house to house to collect both the dead and the sick. Leaving some of the sick to die on the fields instead of taking them to the quarantine places.
     
  8. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    At the beginning of the epidemy here, the government had to be voted in by the parliament. We have a left wing (PSD) parliament majority but the government is right wing (PNL). PSD didn't want to form a government (nobody wanted them, they have been kicked out last year). But the PNL MP's were into quarantine, because one of their members infected many others when he attended to large meetings while having "flu symptoms"! So the PSD had to vote for the PNL government! They argued that they were doing it in the national interest, in fact they're waiting for the others to mess up this coronavirus situation. Politics is so funny.
     
  9. -frog-

    -frog- Well-Known Member

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    We've got a state of emergency, without anyone declaring a state of emergency.
    The govt is playing dumb and breaking constitutional freedoms... and no one seems to give shit.

    Went to change the wheels today (got two sets of rims and tires to make the winter-summer changeover painless).
    Called the garage yesterday and they asked me if I was not afraid of the possible sanctions.
    What sanctions? One of their customers got a ticket for PLN 500 (Roughly 110-120 Euros) for changing tires.
    "I'd go to the court instead" I replied.
    Changed the tires today, they were happy with my custom, cause they've lost some 60-70% of customers, and their bills won't pay for themselves. "It's just that I am a regular, that they asked about those fines."
    There was a cyclist in Cracow fined 12 thousand PLN (yes, that's over 2500 Euros) for cycling on a closed cycling path (not a soul near him).
     
  10. mcgru-

    mcgru- Well-Known Member

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  11. Uncles

    Uncles Well-Known Member

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    You refer of course to the novel Breakfast of Champions, in which Vonnegut wrote about how yeast will reproduce in its environment until it consumes and excretes its own resources until exhaustion and death? Read that novel in high school -- at the minimum wage burger joint where I was working, a more intelligent, older guy already at university shop loaned it to me. Connections and happenstance. Thanks for mentioning that, gotta re-read it!
     
  12. Uncles

    Uncles Well-Known Member

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    Nu, xde ona zhivet!
     
  13. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    In my land, the Provence, there was a law against wearing of disguises [masks, brimmed hats, bandannas] - it is obviously not enforced, but It is a law and can be enforced. If The King Wanted that. I think that law was a reaction to some school-learning the King Of Here had read. In Italy, a long time ago, there was a problem on the streets, Masks were a fashion. And that fashion led to some great and terrible violence in, oh, it was Venice.
    I agree that masks are okay. I wear one when I remember too, before I go out to to my errands.
    I am sure, I would bet money, that there are thugs about, prowling about, using masks and hiding behind corners and stuff.
    The Rich in Venice used masks to disguise themselves, so they could hide from desperadoes. BUT the masks became a fashion, so that anyone could wear them. So their king or whatever, said NO MORE MASKS.
    The Law Is An Ass.
    Yup.
    I do not know what to do. I wear a mask, sometimes. It is so I can blend in. That is the same reasoning that gangsters had when they adopted the fashion of masks in Venice.
    In my land, it was brimmed hats, and bandannas and cloaks [with hoods......], and padded shoes the gangsters used.
    The Law Is A Ass.
    I had to shave-off my magnificent beard, so the mask would fit easier over my chin.
    A Medical mask needs to be replaced and sometimes ten times a day.....
    I have to buy them for 6 bucks, Canadian, EACH.
    I am not contagious, I am told. BUT that does not ease the minds of anyone I walk by.
    YUP, the whole world is gonna make some really weird changes.
    The Coffee shop near here has a big sign up that says OPEN 24/7. They are lying cocksuckers, the DRIVE-THROUGH is open 24/7. And it is illegal to walk along the pathway to the little window where a burger or a coffee is sold. The place is closed at 9PM. BUT the sign, that can be seen for ten km claims OPEN 24/7!!!!
    I think that in the next few months, Drive-Though service will allow pedestrians.... And service places, like cafes and hot-dog-stands will grow to everywhere. in the world.
    I do not know what is gonna happen to the huge Big Box Stores. Perhaps the Mom and Dad shops will become common again?
    I sometimes want a burger or a cup of coffee and the cafes and restaurants have been playing their game against pedestrians, for decades now.
    I not sure we will ever see the day that birth control is mandatory.
    As of now, if someone offers his hand, shake the hand, I don't even have to explain why I won't touch ass-wiping nose-picking hands and fingers, I also do not wander around kissing people. BUT nobody ever demanded I explain that.
    Ya cannot wear sunglasses in my town, it is illegal.
    The Law Is A Ass

    For now, i am just gonna do what I am told. I am too fat to fly.
    I fear a economic depression. I fear becoming desperate and not being fit enough to struggle.
    IF humanity stays on it's path we are doomed. That has been common knowledge for decades among the common people. Shit or get of the pot!!!!
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2020
  14. -frog-

    -frog- Well-Known Member

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    We all fear economic depression Biles.

    As far face masks are considered - they are mandatory in public places here (since last Thursday).
    They sell somewhere between PLN 2.50 and PLN 7.00 (depending on where you get them - one Canuck dollar is now valued at 3 PLN). 3 months ago you could buy a box of 20 for PLN 10.00 (that's what I bought to work on the fence paint in the garden, once the DIY shop ran out of dust masks - was a valuable discovery after 2 or 3 years). The average salary, though, is just over PLN 4k here (or 1350 Canuck dollars, if you prefer this currency)... use 5 masks a day @PLN 5 a piece for 20 working days... you're short of 1/8 of your salary.
    Restaurants are doomed here.
    Even McDonald's filed huge redundancy plans with the JobCentre here - everything is going to fuck itself, except for the government, they've just passed a huge (40%) rise for themselves.

    People are not allowed into parks or forests (this ban will be lifted on Monday), yet the ruling party organized their gruesome "April 10th" ceremonies, without any distancing, without masks... with all the official protocol.

    I lost half of my revenue, but I'm rather a fat cat among the "little ones", so I can cope with that for some time.
    The worst part is being locked down with your family all that time.
    I love my wife and children... but not when I have to stay with them 23.5 hours a day (save for doggy walks).
    The younger (1.5 years) now developed sleep disorders, waking up in the middle of the night, and crying for us to get him to the playground or to the in-laws place.
    The older (8.5 years) has remote school meetings (using MS Office Teams) but completely refuses to participate in any of the house choires.
    Her room looks like a den of a wild animal (she now transferred to the sofa bed in our bedroom, cause her own bed is covered with all the stuff she puts up on it for the robotic vacuum cleaner to pass).
    My wife went into a stupor, and she now watches 3 to 5 episodes of FOX-screened dramas every day... I already fear for her sanity after this madness comes to an end.
     
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  15. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    I reduced my wants to a bare minumum. I want a pint of beer once a week. I want smokes in a little box, not the kind I have to make with bark and wood chips. I need to pay for lodgings and I need food. I need clothes.
    Simple needs and wants.
    I did all that buy accident, I had two heart attacks twelve years ago and I had to clean up my affairs, I had to simplify as much of my activities, my needs and my wants, as much as I knew how to.
    My needs and wants have been, for a long time, now, very simple things, and simple does not mean easy!
    Your writing in your little article above is descriptive of what a Common Man must endure, day-to-day. A endurance.....
    IF I had to be around a wife and maintain a home, and live near my children, and her..... I do not know what I could do and am so thankful that I was forced to simplify everything around me.
    I simplified my money affairs. I simplified my dietary needs. I simplified my fashion choices. I don't have a wife [anymore], she is gone, and so is the huge male human that popped out of her [he is said to be my son ;)]. He is gone, was a grown man when I last fell down, he is out of my hair, away from me. He hates me. That is fine, he is a man and I did not want him to worship me, or even like me. He is a far better man that I was at his age, and I hope he is a champion some day. He seems to be doing really well, but I was a lying thieving bumming-around fucker at his age, maybe he is too???
    Still, my life, my affairs are simple and I am so glad that happened and I did not do it on purpose, I didn't have a plan, I didn't know what I was doing, where I was headed.
    I do now, I am headed down. I am not long to live and I don't care, I don't worry, I am so glad that I do not have to drag around a ball and chain attached to my ankle.
    You have a lot of complicated and difficult stuff to manage. Please do not lose your mind!!
    If you live through this and society doesn't go POOF, would you consider simplify things? i do not know how old you are. I think there comes a time when a man loses some or much of his strength.... BE STRONG!!!!!!
    Best wishes!!!!!!!!!
    Simplify all things. I think that is a good idea, it took me a couple heart attacks that forced me to simplify things. Don't have one of those [heart attacks], man!!!! Best wishes!
    On Wednesday, I am gonna have my pint. I won't be able to enjoy it in a saloon, in a frosty glass. In my land you cannot go inside a saloon, a pub, a beer-house and have a beer, is all quarantined, so the saloon is closed., and it is illegal to drink a beer out doors. ....
    SO, I have to sit on my balcony on Wednesday and pretend to like the crazy people near me, sitting on their balconies, with the beer that we are not allowed to enjoy at the pub, or outdoors..
    I know, in another life I could be eating worms. I know things could be a lot worse.
    AGAIN. BEST WISHES AND PEACE!!!!!!!
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2020
  16. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    I keep in touch with my former high school gang, after so many years. Not so much with the university one. We write every day and talk over the phone frequently. We have various jobs and some are all over Europe. We check on each other more now. How are they, their kids, how are their parents. For me, this helps.
     
  17. Uncles

    Uncles Well-Known Member

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    When this dread virus has run its natural course, we can all laugh about it (one hopes). Did you really shave your beard? This is something that we've all got to see!
     
  18. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    When I cut it off I found a nest of baby squirrels.....
     
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  19. -frog-

    -frog- Well-Known Member

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    Were they any good? (I mean the organoleptic properties) ;)
     
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  20. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    I am in the middle of Installing MSWindows10 on a VM right now and I am as confused as fuck. And now I am supposed to do what?
    Where the fuck was I?
    Who did that?!
    Oh, wait, I w