UKC

What a great announcement. Go back to work tomorrow announced on a Sunday night. 

I wonder how many people will turn up to work in the morning to companies that are not ready for them back yet. 

The statement should have been speak to your employer about going back to work. 

They didn't say that. They said you can go back if you can't work from home and that they were releasing guidance to employers. Most companies have spent the last few weeks working out how to operate manufacturing with separation.

None, because generally people aren’t stupid enough to turn up without having heard from their employer first.

No, Boris said if you can't work from home you should go back to work from tomorrow. 

At no point did he say check with your employer first. 

You have a great deal more faith in people than I do. 

I think he said his new (or not) rules start on Wednesday. Already had an email from my employer saying continue home working. 

They have, me included but its hard to plan without knowing what the government will allow. Its all a bit academic for us anyway, until the 90% of our customers either come back to work or unlock their gates to service engineers again we don't have the work to bring people back. 

Not sure where I got tomorrow from. Must have miss heard whilst I was swearing at the TV. Just checked the transcript. 

"And the first step is a change of emphasis that we hope that people will act on this week.

We said that you should work from home if you can, and only go to work if you must.

We now need to stress that anyone who can’t work from home, for instance those in construction or manufacturing, should be actively encouraged to go to work.

And we want it to be safe for you to get to work. So you should avoid public transport if at all possible – because we must and will maintain social distancing, and capacity will therefore be limited.

So work from home if you can, but you should go to work if you can’t work from home."

So a clusterf*ck. Surprise. (It's Wednesday for something) 

It's fascinating how Wednesday has been chosen, as if there's something magic about that day. I suspect Boris consulted some soothsayer for advice on this, and that it's based on some jolly sound piece of time-honoured folklore.

I suspect it's a case of not giving too much advance notice and risking people interpreting the rules in a way the government doesn't want them to, whilst allowing businesses to restart as soon as possible.

Announce it as a general aim on Sunday, clarify it on Monday and Tuesday.

You forgot to mention your suppliers.

With the company I work for (at least I hope I still do ), we also need our suppliers to send us some stuff so that we can get back into manufacture in the first place.

As for how our Service Engineers are supposed to go to our European customers to install equipment or fit replacements/upgrades ???

In my understanding from a friend in PHE it's to give them chance to pass the modified regulations etc.