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I used to work in a large plc where there were some people who were expected to be in the office and others who had a lot more freedom. What tended to happen was that every Friday you'd get a flurry of emails from the people in the latter group who were "working from home" at 9am, they'd be uncontactable all day and then you'd see another email or two at sort of 4:30 just to bookend the day nicely so that nobody thought they were skiving. Then you'd notice on their facebook they were somehow on a weekend away at 5pm having miraculously travelled six hours in a few short minutes... In hindsight that company had a really shitty culture which was the real problem but that sort of thing really turned me off letting people work from home. It took me a while to come around to letting people work more flexibly where I'm at now, but when it goes hand in hand with a decent culture it really does work. People have coughs and colds they just work from home and I don't lose half the team to man flu over the next week. People need to go to an appointment, want some quiet desk time to do something or want to skive off early on a Friday that's fine, but if we need someone to fix something in the evening that's also fine. It's all co-ordinated in a messenger app, people write stuff down and use teleconf and desktop sharing software if they need to and it seems to work. I actually find myself telling people to work from home fairly often and when we have things like coronavirus and our clients ask what the disaster recovery / business continuity plans are our answer is "we can operate fully remotely on zero notice". Saves a lot of ball ache.

Nice to see 38% of existing methane snorting season ticket holder have stated, on slagchat that they won't be renewing. Admittedly, they've only had 58 votes. Dropping like a stone.

A coronavirus outbreak is going to rip through the place I work. The company I work for has recently implemented a very strict sickness policy based on Bradford Factor scores. Basically if you are off sick just a few times in a year, you get hammered. This has resulted in people being terrified to take any sick time and so the entire office is constantly full of sneezing, coughing and occasionally puking people. They also gave us laptops at the start of the year so that people can work from home if necessary. But they also demand that people pre-book any work from home time and so it has made zero difference to the amount of disease I am surrounded by. Last Thursday night/Friday morning, I had a bout of diarrhoea, I didn’t feel great but figured I was just about well enough to work. We had been told the day before that we could work from home if we wanted because of Greta Thunberg coming to Bristol and so I decided to work from home. I soon received some messages telling me that I either had to take the day as sick, or come into the office. WFH approval was only given for people who drive in and as I walk I was not allowed to do it. I said that I didn’t want to spread the bug I had but still had to make a choice between a sick day or coming into the office. So I went in. Two people were off Monday with stomach upsets, I have no idea if they caught it from me, but it seems likely. So yeah, I’m dead if a deadly disease strikes Bristol, we will all be forced into a confined office to spread it amongst ourselves. None of the above applies to the managers of course, they all work from home whenever they feel like it.

Of course it hasn't. Up until a couple of days ago they seemed to think that ignoring it and hoping it would go away was the way to go.

City Centre Sauna?! (Allegedly!)

Been out tonight to get some food in a supermarket - no tissues, no paracetamol no hand wash - madness

What about the 500,000 people in BS7 the week after?

I always thought the Topaz Massage Parlour on Stapleton Road had a better feel to it. And their birch twigs were certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Quote from: Ads on Today at 02:08:46 PM Jesus, what a bellend that Pompousopolous is. @Mr Popodopolous I presume it's you they are referring to, and confirming what we have all long suspected!

It's still a bit of a learning process for me too! Yes- a last minute fall from grace into the drop zone with VAR would be perfect!

For the avoidance of any doubt, Rovers do not use percentages in their polls. These are, in fact, the actual total number of fans they have (which is an all-time high for them). They are collectively known as Horfield's Hideous Hundred.

Stupid organising to begin with

Sales price £56.7m less NBV of £21.1m gives £35.6m profit. How the proceeds are shown - cash, debtors, loan, is irrelevant to calculating the profit on the sale. Showing the proceeds is a little unusual, is it shown as a long term loan?

Don't think that's true. There are hundreds of cases in Singapore where the temperature is above that year-round. I think it's something we should be trying our best to control. It has the same virulence as the "Spanish Flu" which killed millions of people worldwide in the wake of WWI. It was deadlier than the war that preceded it, in fact.

Is the UEFA rule applicable to the EFL? As you stated previously, £105m has been pumped in by our owners.

It's the hope that kills ya eh Pops? £14m from Hs2 Get in.

That was something Trump said, but opinions seems to be mixed on whether hot weather will slow it down. Even if a hot summer slows it, it may come back for the winter. The 1918 flu died down in the summer months, before returning to kill more people than ever in October.

Seems they didn't reduce the wage bill at all- I assumed it would've been down by £5-10m but even excluding promotion bonuses it stayed flat at best! I also assumed- wrongly possibly- that Amortisation of Player Registrations would've come down- nope it increased! £36.3m profit on Villa Park is curious, given we've been told that it's easily worth what it was sold for... In the cash flow statements, there is/has been the princely sum of £10,000 received on "Proceeds from disposal of tangible fixed assets". In fact, further digging suggests that this is all still due. The rent might be £2.6m per year but it's not explicitly stated as such. Now as I've mentioned before, UEFA have a rule that would negate all of this. Let's assume rent £2.6m per season? UEFA with such transactions take 50 years of rental payment unless the ground has been disposed of truly in a genuinely arms length transaction and put that then subtract the profit for FFP purposes...profit negated at best if they eliminate loss on disposal of fixed assets, and a £90-95m loss at worst if you don't! Seems to be though on early reading, this stadium sale, payable in the form of loans due from NSWE Stadium Limited. ? Seems a bit similar to both Birmingham and Sheffield Wednesday from that respect- though I can't see anything wrong with the price or rent in Birmingham's case. As always, very interested in your thoughts @Davefevs Bit of a rubix cube this...will be interesting to see what everyone thinks. Personally speaking at this time, I'm struggling to fathom how the stadium sale is right. It might be that the price is right- it might be that the Profit is right- but I don't see how both can be right. It just feels out of kilter, one way or another as of now.

Australia prepare for 'inevitable' Olympic games cancellation AFL cancel game in China Premier League clubs cancel pre-season games down-under - Manyoo, Spurs and Arsenal cancel arranged games in Australia. Use of armed forces to quarantine areas 'not ruled out' Massive runs on supermarkets leave shelves empty around the country. And we only have had one death yet. When you have lunatic Christians in Korea hiding it, and stupid Muslims in religious sites licking the same stone one after each other, and the Indonesian President stating 'Allah will stop the virus from entering our country' - you have to wonder if we actually deserve all we get. Religion - killing more people than anything else in the history of mankind........

Eh? AJ Pulev? It's at Spurs as the article states? No way could Top Rank win a purse bid for that- they've just had their fingers burned a bit from Wilder Fury too apparently, around 150k US buys short of break even. I don't think there's anything up with Joshua's confidence mate! And how can he be ducking Fury? Wilder has invoked his contractually mandated rematch, it's sod all to do with AJ. I don't think there's any doubt both Joshua and Tyson would take the fight at 50/50 in a heartbeat. Not aimed at you obviously, but I don't really get these people on social media having to be a fan of one or the other of them to the howling detriment of the other. I like both of them, they're British boxers. It's not a football match ffs.

I believe their accounts are due this month, be interesting to see if this represents a nail in their coffin or not. They must be close to having unsecured money going in to the club, at which point Wally will either have to part with at-risk cash or walk away, either with or without a buyer lined up. Which would either mean new owners paying an absolute fortune for a third-world stadium, or administration. Part of me won't be surprised if their accounts are delayed due to a takeover deal being worked on. But who knows. With attendances falling, renewal of season tickets likely to be down and their star striker not scoring, you wonder how they can trade their way to another season without financial support. For all the grief they gave Higgs, losses were at a far more manageable level, and they actually paid fees for players back then. Still, lovely bloke, nice watch and all that!

That was Watford..?

It is somewhat more dangerous than flu no doubt but the media are something else. They need stories to survive themselves and a worldwide pandemic is high on the list of scary and shock stories for people to read and grip them. If you've watched any of Charlie Brookers old material you'll know fear is one of their greatest tools.

This idea does annoy me bit, we had no hand in it. Cov May have suggested to delay KO as somewhere upwards of 15k were travelling from Bristol, we just got in for kick off havin got the later batch of coaches from the Gate. The Ref would have had to agree anyway, very handy for us, though nothing too untoward apart from actually putting the score up on the score board, which was nice. ?

Sunderland have hated us ever since we rigged the Coventry game to get them relegated. Most exciting football experience I've ever had and one I will never forget. Better even than beating the Manure a couple of years back as it gave us another season in the top flight - Something that those dozy sags can still only dream of.