#The service is bad because the workers are being forced to cram 50 hours of work into 38

[honestlyvan]

“We all spend 7 hours a day missing people we’re supposed to make our deliveries to, then leaving shitty invoices with bad handwriting and missing information, but we think we deserve higher wages.” 

is not what is going on. What is going on is most likely route crunch, being given a route that is so long you possibly can’t complete it within the 8 hours you’re given for that day, and if you don’t want to work for literally free, you have to rush it. Higher wages, better compensation for overtime and better working conditions result in better work being done, because most of the problems with service delays are the result of people literally not having the manhours to do them.

And when they’re not, when a problem legitimately is a pipelining one, workers who are better paid and have more reasonable working conditions also have more hours in the day and more will to actually fill out reports and take part in roundtables and develompent calls. If you’ve had to spend twelve hours on a route that is scheduled so that you only get paid for eight of those hours, then of course you’re just not gonna go home instead of going to that fucking meeting with your boss to talk about how to improve throughput.

And the people who are paying for all of this are not incentivised to fix it on their own! The owners are incentivised to provide the minimum service they can get away with and make you pay the maximum they possibly can for it. The best way to make changes is to deny profit on that service, and strikes are one of the best way to do that.

Who wants to help me burn the entire UPS to the fucking ground in a blaze of unrestrained violent glory

[biofunmy]

New York Identifies Hospitals and Nursing Homes With Deadly Fungus

There once was a man named Albert Alexander. He was a policeman — “[American accent] Hey.” — in England. “[British accent] Hello.” One day on patrol, he cut his cheek — “Ouch!” — which led to a terrible infection. See, this was back in 1941, before patients had antibiotics. These were the days when a little scratch could kill you. “Or you got an ear infection and you died. A cat bite and you died. Or you stepped on a stick and you died. All of a sudden, antibiotics come along and bang.” The antibiotic era had begun. Soon a slow and painful death became a seven-day course of antibiotics and a $10 copay. And Albert? Albert was the first patient in the world to receive the antibiotic — penicillin. And it worked. “We just came up with a lifesaving, life-extending drug, one of the greatest developments in human history. Except not.” That’s Matt Richtel, a science reporter for The New York Times. For the past year, Matt’s been talking to health experts to find out if we are reaching the end of the antibiotic era. Modern medicine depends on the antibiotic. “And having used it so much, we’re now putting it at risk. Is our fate sealed?” “First off, I don’t think people respect bacteria enough.” This is Ellen Silbergeld, one of the leading scientists studying antibiotic resistance. “Bacteria rule the world. We are just a platform for bacteria. Within the human body, there are more bacterial cells than there are human cells. So we are, in fact, mostly bacteria.” “Alexander Fleming —” the man who discovered penicillin “— in his Nobel speech said, hang on, be aware. When you start killing this stuff off, it’s going to fight back.” “Did we pay any attention to that? No.” “The C.D.C. got our attention today with a warning about what it calls ‘nightmare bacteria.’” “These are bacteria that are resistant to most, if not all, antibiotics.” When we take antibiotics to kill infections, some bacteria survive. It used to be they’d replicate, and eventually resistance would grow. But now, they’re way more efficient and share drug-resistant genes among themselves. So every time we take an antibiotic, we risk creating stronger, more resistant bacteria. And stronger, more resistant bacteria means less and less effective antibiotics. And this is a problem because we take lots of antibiotics. “Money gets made over the sale of antibiotics.” Big money. Globally, the antibiotics market is valued at $40 billion. And in the U.S., the C.D.C. estimates that about 30 percent of all prescribed antibiotics are not needed at all. That’s 47 million excess prescriptions. And in many places outside of the U.S., you don’t even need a prescription. “You can walk into a pharmacy. A pharmacist will diagnose you and give you antibiotics. I tend to think of it as a story of Darwinian forces multiplied by the pace and scale of global capitalism. In an interconnected world — travel, import, export — we’re moving the bugs with us.” “I can go to a meeting in China or Vietnam or some place —” This is Lance Price, the director of the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center. “I can become colonized by untreatable E. coli. And I might not have any symptoms. But you can get colonized. And you can become this sort of long-term host.” So you could be healthy and still spreading bad bacteria without even knowing it. “Drug-resistant bacteria have never been able to travel the world as fast as they do today.” And that’s just part of the problem. “You should know that about 80 percent of antibiotic production in this country goes into agriculture.” “Why on earth did somebody think putting antibiotics in agriculture was a great idea?” “We’ve said, hey, look, cram these animals together. Don’t worry too much about hygiene or trying to keep them healthy. Just give them antibiotics. And then in a couple weeks, you’re going to have full-grown animals that you can chop up and eat. Right? And you can make money off of that.” “Nobody was making the connection between feeding animals antibiotics and the fact that the food would be carrying drug-resistant bacteria.” So Ellen did a study. She compared different kinds of store-bought chicken. And she found that poultry raised with antibiotics had nine times as much drug-resistant bacteria on it. “Now, let’s talk about the vegetarians. I just want you to understand, you’re not safe. You know all these outbreaks that take place among the lettuce and the things like that. Have you ever wondered how that happened? It’s because animal manure is used in raising crops. Organic agriculture lauds the use of animal manure.” “Unless you’re just a complete, ‘I’m a vegan, and I only hang out with vegans, and I eat sterilized vegetables,’ you know, it’s very likely that you’re picking up the same bacteria.” Resistant bacteria seep into the groundwater, fly off the back of livestock trucks and hitch a ride home on the hands of farm workers, all of which makes trying to pinpoint exactly where resistant bacteria is originating extremely difficult. And even when it seems like there is a clear source, things still aren’t so simple. “No one wants to be seen as a hub of an epidemic.” Say your grandmother makes you a rump roast. And then that rump roast makes you sick. Well, if you live in France, or Ireland, or pretty much anywhere in the E.U., packaged meat has a tracking label. You can figure out exactly what farm that meat came from. But in the U.S., not even the top public health officials can do that. “Most countries have animal ID laws. We don’t.” Pat Basu, former chief veterinarian for the U.S.D.A.’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, basically one of the top veterinarians in the country. “Let me start at the beginning. We got a case where we had resistant bacteria causing illness in people. There were sick people that C.D.C. identified.” “More than 50 people in eight counties have gotten an unusual strain of salmonella linked to pork.” “This is not your grandmother’s pathogen anymore. This is a new bug.” Health officials traced the outbreak back to the slaughterhouse and identified six potential farms where the outbreak could have come from. But then the investigation shut down. “The individual farmers have to agree voluntarily to share the data with these investigators who go out. We couldn’t go any further back. It was a dead end.” 192 people sick, 30 hospitalizations and zero access for health officials to investigate the farms. “The secrecy is maintained because there are big economic forces behind it. Farms are scared of losing their ability to get antibiotics. Hospitals are scared of driving away patients.” “Well, as a physician, I do get very upset. I get very upset, as a patient, that information is being withheld.” This is Kevin Kavanagh, a doctor and a consumer advocate for patients. “Drug-resistant bacteria is a huge problem. If it occurs at a restaurant, if it occurs in a cruise ship, you know about this immediately —” “A salmonella outbreak —” “within days or hours of an outbreak occurring.” “This morning, Chipotle is keeping dozens of its restaurants in the Pacific Northwest closed —” “But yet, in a hospital, it can take you months or even over a year until this data appears on a governmental website or reported by the C.D.C.” In the U.S., hospitals are under no obligation to inform the public when a bacterial outbreak occurs. “Defend and deny. They are very concerned about the short-term economic benefits, rather than looking at long-term problems.” “There’s always this response like, well, but there’s still a drug, right? Like, this isn’t the end.” Remember Albert Alexander? — “Hello. Ouch!” — the first patient to be given penicillin? Well, his story didn’t end there. Five days after he started recovering, the hospital ran out of the new drug, and Mr. Alexander died. Today, we don’t have to worry about antibiotics running out. We have to worry about using them so much that they stop working altogether. “— want to know why a metro health department didn’t shut down a restaurant —” “It’s a very resistant bacteria —” “We really need to change the way we use antibiotics. Because the way we use antibiotics is destroying them.” “It’s putting at risk the entire system of care that we depend on for lengthening our lives and improving the quality of our lives.” The British government commissioned a study which predicted a worst case scenario where more people will die by 2050 of these infections than will die of cancer. “That’s a generation from now.” “It takes 10 years to identify, develop, test and bring to market a new antibiotic. And it takes a billion dollars.” “This is a common issue for humanity.” “Very similar to global warming.” “You can’t control it as a single company. You can’t control this as a single government.” And because the bacteria are now working together so efficiently — “Unless the world acts consistently together, it doesn’t make a difference.”

Sahred From Source link Science

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[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: December 2018

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of December 2018 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

It’s almost impressive that Theresa May not only managed to be the first Prime Minister to lose three votes in a day since 1978, but also be the first person in British history to be running a government that was found in contempt of parliament.  So how could she top that?  By accusing Jeremy Corbyn of calling her a “stupid woman” and playing the misogyny card...even though she reinstated two MPs to the party to support her in the no confidence vote in spite of their currently being under investigation for groping female staffers, sending inappropriate texts to female constituents, and in one case an allegation of rape and, because that wasn’t enough, once again delaying the promised £20m of funding for women’s shelters

So nice of Priti Patel to crawl out of the woodwork to volunteer the suggestion that, if the Republic of Ireland doesn’t agree with the Britait terms given to them, the UK should threaten them with food shortages.  So not only does she demonstrate herself to be a totalitarian sociopath who is willing to have millions starve so she gets what she wants, but she also demonstrated her ignorance of the fact that 37% of the UK’s food imports are from the Republic of Ireland while I’m sure the rest of the EU won’t respond well to one of their members being threatened with the possibility of being starved into submission.

Wanting a piece of the “let’s bully the irish�� pie David Vance took a break from posting Islamophobic bilge to his Gab account by tweeting how, as the Republic of Ireland is “totally dependant” on the UK for its gas supplies, the UK should cut off their supply to force them to give the Leavers the Britait they want - which not only demonstrates what sort of sociopathic morons thought Priti Patel’s threats of food shortages was a good idea, but he failed to spot the graphic he posted to support his putsch clearly showed three gas fields off the coast of Ireland...

You would think nobody would be so brainless as to delay thousands of flights on one of the busiest periods of the year for flight departures, but then those dickheads flying drones over Gatwick decided that was exactly what they wanted to do when they flew a pair of drones over Gatwick airport that grounded flights for 24 hours - which led to Liz Truss stating that the best defence against drone attacks would be those noted ground-dwelling animals that are dogs, while several newspapers (notably the Daily Mail) are currently hoping that Paul Gait and Elaine Kirk don’t take them to the cleaners for splashing their names and faces across their front page claiming they were the ones responsible

With the Tories once again tooting on the immigration dog whistle in order to gain public support for their Britait plans Sajid Javid announced the day before the Home Office was due to release its white paper on immigration that would outline what immigration system the UK would adopt after cutting their nose off to spite their face that, actually, they wouldn’t be releasing them until after the Commons vote, but Commons can go ahead and vote even though yet more information has been withheld

It appears that Jacob Rees-Mogg doesn’t understand how arithmetics work considering his response to losing a vote 63/37 was to give some mealy-mouthed waffle about how the result isn’t genuine, yet he’s spent the past two and a half years stating that winning a vote 52/48 makes the result 100% legally binding, you can't have a second referendum, the people have spoken and if you disagree with the result no matter how many lies were told to get it you are a traitor and have achieved Unperson status

For some reason Kevin Spacey though the best use of the remarkable amount of free time he has on his hands these days was to post a video of him in character as Frank Underwood that came across as him attempting to get his role on House of Cards back (as well as, you know, appearing to be remarkably creepy) - which went so well within hours of the video going up he was charged with sexual assault

It seems that the BBC didn’t learn from the initial attempts to gaslight the public about the Vicargate scandal as they kept on trying to lie their way out of the hole they dug for themselves by stating that “Lynn” wasn’t a paid actress and the only money she received was an unspecified disturbance fee...which not only means that they paid her to appear, but it wasn’t long before several other Newsnight panelists mentioned they had not received a disturbance fee for their appearances

Not only did various Troy MPs such as Dominic Raab, Claire Perry, Ross Thompson, John Lamont, Nigel Evans, Kirstene Hair, Damien Moore, Steve Brine, David Mundell, Steve Double and Luke Graham think it was a good idea to post photos of them all smiles as they visited their local food banks, which mainly served to make them look remarkably similar to the rednecks posing with the endangered species they just gunned down to show what manly men at the height of their manliness they are, the fact that most of these photos were tweeted with the exact same caption (while also plugging Tesco) make it clear that they were posting these on orders from above

Apparently Boris Johnson forgot to declare the £52,000 he was paid by the Daily Telegraph - because that’s such a small amount of money that it obviously wouldn’t occur to him that he might have to declare it...

It seems that Louis CK got a little rusty with his lack of performing due to charges of sexual harassment, which is the only logical reason for his routine saying the Parkland survivors aren’t allowed to demand gun control because they weren’t shot dead.  The amount of logic fails in that sentence is staggering

It didn’t occur to Leave.EU that, if they want to post a video triumphantly declaring that a whole twelve of their members were willing to block Westminster Bridge until they get what Arron Banks and Richard Tice get - the problem is the video they posted showed their rent-a-mob was preventing an ambulance that was on call from crossing Westminster Bridge, which I’m sure the paramedics were really happy about...

Congratulations to Seaborne Freight for the £14m of taxpayer’s money they received after being awarded a contract to run a freight service between Ramsgate and Ostend - in spite of the minor inconvenience that not only does the firm not have a trading history, but they don’t have a single ship - but I’m sure that the fact that Seaborne is run by Mark Bamford whose main claim to fame is being the brother of noted Tory donor Anthony Bamford has nothing to do with it...

Sentient testicle Toby Young used his Spectator column to whine about how this Christmas he hasn’t received a single card nor been invited to any parties, which he says is entirely the fault of the Twitter hate mob for pointing out the blatant racism, homophobia and misogyny in his tweets and columns as well as his free school’s exclusionary policies towards the disabled.  So no, it's definitely not the fault of an obnoxious toad who wrote a book called How to Lose Friends and Alienate People for losing friends and alienating people with his own dickheadishness...

Person who was unaware Britain is an island Dominic Raab thought he was being really clever when he tweeted a graph to claim that British workers’ wages are rising - which only served to demonstrate their wages are lower than they were a decade ago

It’s funny how Ivan Lewis failed to use the words “suspended”, “for”, “sexual” or “misconduct” when announcing his departure from the Labour party - although it’s not funny how Sky News swallowed his version of events hook, line and sinker instead of do some researching, which happens to be what a journalists’ job involves

Glorified gameshow host with one hell of a chip on his tiny, tiny shoulder Alan Sugar responded to people hoping that his promise to leave the country if Jeremy Corbyn became Prime Minister with hope that he was true to his word by tweeting some really bad fridge poetry that culminated with him stating people with less money than him were “losers” who “have not achieved anything in life” - which I’m sure was appreciated by healthcare workers, firemen, teachers, and numerous other people who don’t make as much money as him so are, therefore, worthless

In a bid to remind people what scumbags they are Chelsea fans managed to cram racially abusing Raheem Sterling when they played Manchester City, then a few days later were heard breaking out their usual chants about Auschwitz and gas chambers when playing Hungarian team Vidi

It didn’t occur to Blizzard Entertainment that anyone who played Heroes of the Storm professionally would like to be informed ahead of time that they had cancelled the games’ esports events planned 2019 - although, as there’s talk of Activision cutting back at Blizzard, this may not be on them

Marketing genius Soulja Boy had a great idea: sell one of those emulator consoles that can be bought for around $100 and then jack up the price by 50% because of reasons, and within a few weeks pull them from stores because Nintendo’s lawyers hit him so hard they even got hold of his web domains

Hapless berk Mike Dean once again felt the need to listen to the paranoid gibberish of Arsenal fans claiming he’s a Spurs fan before a North London Derby by proving himself to be impartial...by booking Eric Dier for celebrating a goal yet failing to do anything when the Arsenal bench rushed on the pitch to jostle with him and his Arsenal teammates, nor did he seem to think Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s celebration in front of Spurs fans was a bookable offence

None of which excuses Averof Pantelli for throwing a banana peel on the pitch at Aubameyang, while his excuse of claiming that he isn’t racist because the peel wasn’t his but a kid who dumped it on the floor and, by the way, I’m not racist and anyway Greek Cypriots can’t be racist didn't help his case much

And then Arsenal fans promptly fell off the moral high ground two weeks later when one of their fans threw a bottle at Dele Alli while several of theirs were caught singing anti-semitic songs when Spurs knocked them out of the Carabao Cup in their own backyard

According to Jonathan Agnew no BBC presenter should be allowed to voice any political opinions on their own Twitter, which of course doesn’t look like Agnew saying that because he doesn't agree with Gary Lineker that means Gary Lineker is wrong and should therefore be the subject to droning idiots incorrectly citing the BBC guidelines to him

Good work by Tumblr in deciding that mass-flagging of content was the way forward, which mainly served to piss off the numerous models, photographers and artists - but judging by my follow list did nothing to deter those pages that advertise the various camgirls who are so keen on talking to you that they have a photo of them in no clothing whatsoever to advertise this

And finally, failing to do ten seconds of research when writing a statement upon someone’s death, there’s government shutdown enthusiast and person who thinks that believing in Santa Claus is more credible than acknowledging climate change Donald Trump - but nobody died, right?