UKC

Lockdown 3 seems to be very different in traffic volume to lockdown 1. I have just driven from Leeds to Wakefield and then on to Pontefract and and the roads only seem slightly quieter than they were before Christmas. 

How are things looking in other parts of the country? 

In reply to Dax H:

I live on a main road and rush hour sounded like standard rush hour. Markedly different to in April when the roads were dead 24/7. 

In reply to Dax H:

too early to say; in March, our fuel volumes fell 60% overnight (then recovered at the rate of 10% per month (ish). The november "lockdown" had very little effect on movement - we were about 7% down on October, and when lifted at the beginning of december we sold more than we normally do for the first couple of weeks. 

January is always odd. Everybody is normally at work, so travelling, but nobody has any money after Xmas so not spending as much. We wont really know until the end of the week what is happening. but we are "forecasting" (well, guessing really, it is a finger in the air job) that volumes will be down about 25% this month overall.

note however, the lockdown doesnt happen until tomorrow morning........

In reply to Dax H:

Busiest morning commute since pre-Covid days (5-6am, Midlands).

In reply to Dax H:

Went for my allowed cycle ride exercise. Roads were pretty busy certainly nothing like the first lockdown. Not helped by the garden centres being open.

In reply to Dax H:

Just the opposite for me.

Drove up the M20 from Dover and the road was very quiet. Normally its very crowded with foreign plated vehicles, but I counted just 3. I suspect more to do with B****t than the lockdown but I've never seen it so quiet.

Similar story on the M25 A12/14 travelling up to Suffolk.

(Travelling due to working on essential infrastructure, before anyone asks) 

In reply to Dax H:

Dunno. I did as I was asked and stayed at home.

In reply to mondite:

sorry, garden centres open..? WTLF?

In reply to Dax H:

a lot of noise from the A66, M6 at the moment, can be heard from miles away

In reply to minimike:

Yeah they are essential because, ermmm, errr you know.

I did deliberately chose a route to have a look at them and see how depressed I should be.

In reply to minimike:

This lockdown is a f*cking joke, and has precisely zero chance of working. My sector has decided to carry on without giving a flying f*ck, my company is even keeping the offices open for those who "can't possibly work from home".

It's absolutely 100% f*cked. 

Sorry NHS workers, your lives are going to be hell. Apparently, there's nothing we can do about it, so just suck it up, and don't moan.

In reply to Dax H:

North(ish) Leicestershire, 15 mile commute, traffic seemed "normal, maybe a bit quiet". Absolutely nothing like the nearly empty roads of May and early June. 

Jon, just as an FYI rather than me feeling I have to justify anything to you, I drove to my empty building in order to fettle an expensive machine which if left stagnant, will soon need multiple engineer attention. I am trying to minimise spread, by coming in today. I'll be working from home as much as possible from tomorrow. I haven't been within ten metres of anyone apart from other drivers. 

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Interestingly, that's pretty much entirely because of the actions of companies and individuals.  Legally, it's almost identical to March.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

They haven't stopped communal praying in churches or even football matches.

Every week there'll be circa 22 families joined, multiplied by how many football matches there are per week.

Let's hope the praying in churches works cos we're doomed otherwise

In reply to WaterMonkey:

They are closed in most of Scotland. I did like the catholic bishops complaining about lack of scientific evidence for closing them.

In reply to Dax H:

I'm lucky enough to be able to work from home apart from 1 day a month when I have to drive about 12 miles to an empty and well sanitised modern office.  The first drive in during the original lockdown was like something from 28 days later...the typical gridlock on the M60 was gone.

Be interesting to see what it's like this time when I go in at the end of the month

In reply to WaterMonkey:

To be fair to Pro Football the players are tested twice weekly and monitored for symptoms etc. and by and large it does seem to have worked. The instances that have occurred of Covid in footballers seems to be because they broke the very specific rules set out for them. Mainly because some of them are a bit young and dumb. 

I've got no defence for the god botherers. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Well you'll be doing your bit rather better than me then. Because I'm going to go into work and see 15 or so people every day who've travelled in to town despite having absolutely nothing wrong with them under the guise of a "medical appointment", sit in a small unventilated room with with them for about half an hour, and send them on their way while someone in an office hopes they spend some money on their way out.

There was clear guidance from the professional body that I'd only be seeing people who had a problem with their eyesight in the event of a lockdown, but somehow (we all know how), that guidance got chucked in the bin and we're carrying on as normal. 

It's going to be hard to bite my tongue and refrain from starting my history taking with the open question, "so, what the f*ck are you doing in my office?".

The irony here is that by writing this stuff, I could theoretically get in trouble for "bringing the profession into disrepute" or something...which is exactly what the heads of the profession have just done! I'm f*cking livid about it, and so are roughly 85% of the profession at the last count (poll last night). The response to the announcement on Twitter...well let's just say "it didn't go down well with clinicians".

In reply to Dax H:

Seems a bit quieter with the schools shut but this time around everyone has figured out the 'loop holes' so they can carry on with whatever it was they were doing before hand. Also the first time many businesses shut voluntarily while they 'covid proofed' their business premises but they shouldn't need to this time.  

I agree with Jon Stewart though, winter's going to be hell for some people and we're pretty screwed as it's all to late now. New variant or not, anyone could see this was coming long before Christmas.  

In reply to Dax H:

Busy here too in Lancaster, no noticeable difference from before Christmas and markedly busier than lockdown 1.0. 

In reply to Neil Williams:

Yes, seems that way. It looks like we've collectively decided that we can't be arsed, it's someone else's problem. And for most of us, other than the inconvenience of restrictions to what we can do in our leisure time, it will be someone else's problem, so that's alright. F*ck everyone, I'm alright Jack. Welcome to the UK.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

I empathise with your frustration. To be honest, I was surprised to have been classed as a key worker last April. My company and my industry as a whole is classed as "essential to transport and infrastructure" and whilst it's nice to feel "necessary" (and be kept on full pay even during quiet times), I have to admit that a lot of what I personally do, is "ivory tower stuff" (basically hi-res x-ray CT inspection of fancy new gizmos to check that they are intact or the production matches the design, and it's all industrial stuff and therefore ALONG THE LINE perhaps "essential" unless you take a broader view, and a hippy view, and say that perhaps the car manufacturer doesn't REALLY need to shave a few grams off the weight of a seatbelt mount, and the electronics company doesn't REALLY need to make a cheaper battery for the missile guidance circuitboard....). i.e. I am not exactly going round patching up oil pipelines and fixing power transmission lines...

In reply to Jon Stewart:

You know when that changed?

To the day, it changed when the hypocrite Cummings went to Barnard Castle.  Compliance basically ended the second that hit the news.

He has many thousands of deaths worth of blood on his hands, as does Johnson for not marching him out in disgrace the same day.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Cheers. I lost it last night when the announcement came out; and I just received the expected unctuous email from the MD before posting on here just now (I had calmed down and told myself "probably best not to bitch in public" but after reading the email failed to contain my anger). 

If I was doing something that I felt had no material risk, I'd be fine with it. But what I'm doing is just about the highest risk thing you could possibly do short of prostitution, and I don't want to do it because I think it's the wrong thing to do, and I don't respect the motivation for me being employed to do it.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Yes, I have the luxury of being able to feel that what I do is hardly essential to keeping the world spinning, whilst not having to face "general public" who from what you are saying, sometimes just fancy a day out and some contact :-o 

In reply to Dax H:The A1 around Gateshead was quieter yesterday than today. I’m a delivery driver and haven’t noticed anything like the drop in traffic we had at the time of the March lockdown. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Yep. I'll have diabetic 85 year olds with COPD wandering in, I guarantee it. On the one hand, it's their funeral not mine, but my concern is that that's still a hospital bed that needn't have been taken up. They're still going to ring 999 when they realise they're about to croak it.

In reply to Neil Williams:

Cummings was totally wrong in his actions as was Johnson for failing to sack him.

However, to blame people’s non compliance on the actions of one man is non sensical. Especially when many of the population couldn’t stand Cummings in the first place.

No matter what Cummings did or how confusing the government’s messaging might be, we should all, by now, be well aware of what we as individuals need to do to help stop the virus spreading.

You only need to read some of the threads on UKC to see how some apparently well informed people are looking to exploit loopholes in the new lockdown guidance in pursuit of their own pleasure.

Ignoring guidelines is excusable in some circumstances but not when it puts other people’s health and lives at risk.

In reply to baron:

You don't have to like him to come up with the argument "if they can get away with it, so can I".

It's not morally right, but it's how people work.

In reply to baron:

We'll never know what the magnitude of the "Cummings effect" was. But I think it's pretty obvious that the shitshow was a downward rather than upward pressure on compliance, and my guess is that the effect was non-trivial.

In reply to Neil Williams:

It is how some people work but certainly not most. I haven’t used Cummings’ appalling behaviour as an excuse, have you?

The people to blame for spreading the virus are the many who can follow the guidelines but choose not to, for which there is no excuse when people’s lives are at stake.

In reply to baron:

No, but it's how enough people behave to be a problem.  Governments are meant to deal with that.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

I’m certainly not suggesting that Cummings’ behaviour was anything but a negative factor in the war on Covid. Given the death total since his trip I would have thought that most people would have realised that breaking the guidelines in any way was totally unacceptable. Whether or not one gets away with it shouldn’t come into it.

In reply to Neil Williams:

Have you read the ‘Climbing, time to stop?’ thread?
There are people there who are finding any excuse to stretch the guidelines. They’d be doing so no matter what the government decides or proclaims.

I have sympathy if people are breaking guidelines in order to earn a living but not in some leisure pursuit.

In reply to Dax H:

Morning 'walk commute', looking at the M56 from the hill. Seemed pretty busy. Given the late news, I'm guessing lots of people going into work just in case or their boss hasn't told them to WFH yet. Widespread use of the 'confusing messages/common sense' defence ahead.

In reply to artif:

I work in Dover a fair bit and was a bit worried about the mayhem I would face from Jan onwards when driving down, sounds like I probably don't need to worry!

In reply to minimike:

Yep....garden centres/homebase etc. all essential retail for those in high risk categories judging by the people I see heading in and out of our local one 

In reply to Phil79:

A few words of caution.

Operation Brock is in full effect (apart from the unfinished bits), several miles of the M20 eastbound carriageway is dedicated to the traffic going across the Channel. The west bound side is a 2 lane, each side, contraflow. 

In reply to Ian W:

I forgot you run garages, ideally placed to comment on traffic volume, unfortunately also ideally placed to take a right kicking in the profit department. 

In reply to Graeme G:

I wish, it would be great to spend a bit more time at home, unfortunately there are a lot of people who have to go out to work to keep the country running and a lot of people whose employers think they are essential and must stay open. 

In reply to Dax H:

I know. And I’m thankful for them. I was just having a little tongue in cheek fun.

In reply to artif:

Thanks, not due down there for a while and working in the Port, but I'll keep an eye on things.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Like my wife's situation but she works in therapy for the... Clients booked in face to face by admin, given the choice of either over the phone / video or F2F. Contrary to guidelines. The clients have had no medical or other acceptable reason for accepting F2F other than a general preference. One hr sessions in a room...nuts

In reply to artif:

Calm before the storm by all accounts - freight volumes are only 20% of normal whilst the hauliers get their acts together or are waiting to avoid any initial problems. The problem is, because they're all doing it they're just moving the initial problems back!

In reply to Dax H:

Not much profit in fuel, mate! It's all footfall to sell stuff from the shop.......

Our issue is working capital, with nearly half a million quid in tanks that has to be paid for and an "imbalance" in short term cash. We've planned for this one, but it was iffy in March / april.........

In reply to Dax H:

It was 2.5 hours from the north of the Cotswolds to Sheffield today, and about the same back again apparently, on free flowing roads slightly quieter than usual.

In reply to Ian W:

feel for you, hope everything works out okay

In reply to jonfun21:

We're ok - there are a lot worse off than us. We have gained a lot in shop sales as people really don't like the supermarket free for all, especially in our village sites.

In reply to Flinticus:

Sounds crazy. The thing that got my goat was that we had decent guidelines in place, but the professional body decided at 11.30 last night to piss all over it and allow the profiteers to put their interests above those of the public and NHS. Especially since we work collaboratively with the NHS, it's not a good look.

In reply to Dax H:

M6 from north and M65 to Blackburn was normal levels today, nuts.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Ha ha, our lot put out a similar statement on Monday morning due to Tier 4, we are too busy to work from home apparently, they then retracted it after 2 hours when it became apparent lockdown was imminent.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

I work for a major brewery and not only are we still up and running the outlook is to cash in on people being at home and drinking there sorrows away.

Which I find morally quite difficult after working in the prison service and seeing how it can affect people. 

But hey lucky to have a job I guess 

In reply to Meddins:

You won’t be the only ones cashing in, due to several reasons my particular industry is through the roof, we are turning orders away.

I have some colleagues staying in a hotel at the moment, a takeaway breakfast of sausage bun, orange juice, yoghurt and a pastry for £18, in the evening a £4 delivery charge for room service and a 12% service charge added.

In reply to Graeme G:

Ditto, it's a bit strange everyone saying "no it was really busy" ha ha ha

In reply to Cobra_Head:

Unfortunately some of us haven’t got a choice but to get out there !

In reply to Ian W:

I know you make diddly bugger all on the fuel, it's the oil company and the tax man who benefit there. 

I'm finding I buy more from the station shop at the moment. I take the view that I have to go in to fill my van twice a week so I might as well get the bread and milk and whatnot at the same time. 

Out of interest how does the pricing work, using totally made up numbers let's say you paid 1.40p a ltr for your 500k worth in the tanks and the pump price is £1.45 a ltr but no one is buying and as happened in March / April the price fell through the floor when it hit £1.10 a ltr round here. Do you just have to suck it up and hope for the best? 

In reply to Dax H:

Happily there are a lot of people around doing the same; one local (to the site where our HQ is) said that he knows we are a bit more expensive on each item, but he finds himself spending £20 on stuff he had no idea he needed every time he goes into Sainsburys........at our place he buys what he genuinely does need in a couple of mins.

Thats how it works. Much upsucking! Now for us, £500k is less than a fortnight - each site does between 150k and 400k litres per month, total just over 20m litres pa - so we were able to track the movements in oil price more closely with our sales. What actually happened in march is that everyone tried to cling on to their margins; it wasnt a good time and so pretty well everyone - supermarkets included - increased their margins. Some more rural / small independent filling stations even closed for a while when traffic volumes halved, and they couldnt afford to drop their prices and sell for something like 12p / litre less than they paid. They couldnt just buy a cheaper tanker to blend the price as a tanker full still cost £35k a time in april. Its got a lot easier in the last 18 months or so as the oil price has been mega stable compared to previously, so we can all be more competitive, as we can predict margin more safely. When it fluctuates more wildly, we are all looking over our shoulder, and the uncertainty translates into higher margin and hence pump price.

Its all great fun!

In reply to Dark-Cloud:

Deliveroo yourself a Maccy's...

In reply to Dark-Cloud:

I realise that, it doesn't stop it being weird though.

In reply to baron:

Name the people on that thread who are finding "any excuse to stretch the guidelines". I don''t count many. Lots of people are angry and lashing out because this is a really shitty time and a combination of poor government action and poor compliance is getting tiresome. However most UKC climbers seem well behaved and I'm proud of how this site has fought hard against lockdown deniers and supporters of 'let it rip'. Someone started a thread implying the place has become less friendly, as if the last few years of mega arguments didn't happen. UKC feels more of a community to me than it has done for years.

In reply to Offwidth:

I quickly counted half a dozen different posters, without trawling through all of the 200+ posts, who were fairly vociferous in their intention to continue climbing outdoors even if it broke government guidelines. I’m not naming them because it’s not my place to do so nor am I reading every post in order to obtain an exact number. You’ve contributed plenty to that thread so you know who they are. Then count all the posters on the other threads which contain some element of either adhering to or breaking government guidelines.

My post wasn’t about UKC as a community or how the forum has addressed lockdown deniers but how some people are looking for any excuse to break government guidelines. 

In reply to Ian W:

Interesting thank you. Particularly the comment about the cheaper tank to blend. 

I always try where possible to stick with one chain and 99% of the time 1 garage from that chain assuming that I was getting the same quality of fuel every time. 

In reply to baron:

On a theme of this thread I suggest you might need to get your eyes tested. Complaing about climbers on UKC in the face of what some on this thread reveled seems like tunnel vision.

In reply to Offwidth:

I think it probably feels like a community if you share the views of the majority of the prolific posters.

Sadly I suspect that it lacks real balance as the unfriendly attitude of some of those regulars has forced those who don't share that consensus view to leave unless they are pretty thick skinned.

In reply to Dax H:

You are. When i said about blending a cheaper tank, I was meaning buying one at the lower price, and maintaining a selling price a bit higher to mitigate against the losses when the fuel price falls, rather than buy a tanker of supermarket style basic stuff and add it to the good stuff....). If you stick to the same brand in the same area, you are definitely getting the same fuel every time. And there are some differences in the additives each brand uses, but not really much until you get to the superunleaded pump, where there are some significant differences. What difference that makes to your vehicle seems to me to be entirely random.......my big flash merc (CLS350) advises in the handbook that it is not necessary at all to use super diesel. My old VFR750 immediately got 10% more mpg on the same commute as soon as i started using it; it makes no difference whatever to the blackbird that replaced it. It made my sons first bike (14 year old cg125) run like a dream rather than the bag of hammers it had been. Take your pick, its just not predictable at all and appears very vehicle specific. But I tend to put in super every 3 or 4 tanks anyway. The additives do make a difference to engine life, and will probably make more difference as we move to fuel with higher bio content. 

right , thats enough fuel geekery for now - back to work.

In reply to Dax H:

Quiet ish round here, mostly because there was no school run (not that several mothers and kids had been told). There was a very dead week in March then progressive pick-up.

Obviously we've all been through that in March, the progressive pick-up to a minimum in-office/workshop regime has happened once, we know what to do again to WFH as much as we can, and what needs doing to keep things ticking over in the shop.

Quite notable were dozens of out of service busses running empty, presumably stranded out of position by the lockdown or nobody had got round to changing plans for the drivers.

Also there is a bit more work still allowed, lots of trades out and about. That stopped for a while in March while everyone took stock (then ran out of stock!).

jk

In reply to timjones:

I wholly agree, the diversity of points of view has definitely reduced.

In reply to Dax H:

I've just been out to deliver plastic to a recycling site and I would say that it is not as quiet as during the first lockdown but one hell of a lot quieter than a normal weekday morning. Pretty much what I would expect given that many will have worked out how to make their businesses function safely this time around.

In reply to timjones:

There will always be a bit of that. However my concerns were less about old school political difference but too little emphasis on our common ground as fellow climbers and hillwalkers and a very 'unbritish' trait that grew here of absolutism ( that fortunately seems to be reversing). On brexit and religion, as a non religious remainer I ended up defending both sides at times (in particular the dehumanisation involved in mass labelling of brexit voters as idiots and racists or all the religious as deluded fools, or all muslims as medievalist).

In reply to Timmd:

With respect to Covid, this was always going to happen once the numbers started turning into names..

In reply to WaterMonkey:  I guess it was, the 'philosophical hippy types' don't seem to frequent the forums now though.

In reply to WaterMonkey:

I'm not sure that is the case.

If you have taken the time to analyse the information that is available before deciding your position on something it is unlikely to change when "numbers start turning into names". 

In spite of all the "you'll understand wwhen it is your gran" rhetoric from those seek to bully others ito thinking their way most people are smart enough to realise that their own friends and relatives can get infected and to factor this into their thought processes.

In reply to Dax H:

My rush hour  commute through Liverpool was 25% faster today compared to in the summer between lockdowns.

In reply to Red Rover:

Yes, just come past the Pier Head.

Even with lanes closed for roadworks traffic was moving much quicker than normal.

In reply to Dax H:

Yesterday, fuel volumes from our sites were down 27% on the same day last year, and 19% down on 7 days ago. Today is pretty much the same. For perspective, the last week of march 2020 was 61% down on the last week of march 2019.

This new national lockdown is being largely ignored.

In reply to Ian W:

Is it being ignored or are more people just key workers? I have to go to my lab 1 or 2 days per week for example.

In reply to Red Rover:

They've not said key workers this time, just if you can't work from home.  Building sites, for example, remain open.

It's just tier 4 + schools + a few very minor tweaks, not a proper lockdown.  Even March wasn't that proper a lockdown, but this definitely isn't.

In reply to Dax H:

My manager drove into London this morning. He said the M25 was almost as busy as usual, plus he saw four accidents due to a dusting of snow. I despair sometimes. If someone really has to go into work, is it too much to ask that they drive a bit more carefully?

In reply to Red Rover:

Actually I suspect a bit of both; as another has said, this isnt a lockdown, its just tier 4+. Which given the stats for the last couple of days is pathetic. And there are many many more "key workers" this time round. At least 2 high street chains have managed to reclassify themselves as essential by starting to stock a few food items (tins of beans etc), which is a move that i entirely understand as whilst they were previously colsed, the supermarkets were stomping all over them.

In reply to Dax H:

Quite a bit quieter tonight than before Christmas. 

In reply to Ian W:

So only an 8% difference. I say only, 8% is a big deal when selling something but it's nothing like the 61% from the first lockdown. 

I wonder how this new lockdown lite will compare in transmission numbers to the original lockdown lite but not as lite as this one. 

In reply to Dax H:

Ah, not an 8% difference - we would expect daily sales to be broadly what they were last year - its a 27% drop on what we would have expected with no pandemic, against a 61% fall in march 2020. The 19% down on last week is comparing volumes to a holiday week, where volumes are expected to be significantly down (actually vols were up on expectations throughout december. There appeared to be almost no attempt to curb activity, despite the supposed tier3 / 4 restrictions.

Volumes yesterday were only 4% lower than tuesday, which is within the bounds of what we would expect from the effects of the weather alone; it is bloody freezing up here, and it snowed / sleeted on and off all day. Its not looking good lockdown wise when the first line of the "new" rules / laws / guidelines is "stay at home".