The bureaucracy is...not great

[andrewducker]

At the moment you basically can't get home deliveries from shops unless you're "vulnerable".

If you phone Sainsbury to register yourself as vulnerable (Jane counts, as she's pregnant) they say to register with Gov.UK.

So I go there, where there's nothing obvious, but some wandering about leads me to this page where you can register. Yay!

Except...only in England. The link for Scotland leads to this page. Which doesn't allow you to register for anything!

The risk for pregnancy isn't actually any higher, but I have friends who are actively immunocompromised, and they're in the same situation of not being able to register.

This is not ok.

Comments

[miss_s_b]

That is not ok at all; at least you managed to get through to Sainers, though. My friend Sarah ahs made over 600 attempts and got nowhere :(

[andrewducker]

To an automated line, in this case. No way to get through to an actual person.

[miss_s_b]

:(

[dewline]

Severely sub-optimal.

[alithea]

That is severely pants!

My advice would be to join a COVID19 mutual aid group for your area and see if someone knows what smaller local shops are doing deliveries - here in Dundee lots of more convenience shop sized shops, grocers and butchers are delivering now and they're less likely to have the backlog of bookings that the big supermarkets do. Also, here at least, many of them are better supplied having not been hit by the panic buyers.

[andrewducker]

Cheers!

Hopefully the government will get their act together soon.

[alithea]

Hopefully so!

[hutchingsmusic]

You should be able to get a home delivery in Edinburgh from charlesstamper.online - fruit, veg, milk, eggs, vegan milk alternatives. Not sure how they are on GF and wheatfree stuff but it'll give you some options.
https://www.morrisons.com/food-boxes/how-it-works might also be useful - again, they can't cater specifically for allergies but there should be more there that Jane can eat. We have some GF and sugar-free things, let us know if there's stuff you're short of and we could put it outside for you to pick up if you can drive/walk over?

[andrewducker]

Cheers, I'll let my friend know!

(But I'm concerned about the people being failed by the system, so hopefully they'll get their act together soon)

[cmcmck]

And then when you get registered (an elderly friend on here in Ely is) the company can't provide three quarters of the things you need due to Joe panic buyer hoovering up the lot.......

[rhythmaning]

My friend that used to work with the Scottish Government emergency planning for back to me, posting a screen capture of an exchange he'd had with the current head of the department.

When I summarised the exchange as

"Would I be right in thinking that it's not sorted out yet, and it is being done separately by each local authority?"

He agreed that that was about right. He's going to let me know if he hears any more. Sorry not be able to help!

I think the Scottish Government needs to get a grip of this.

[andrewducker]

They really do!

Thank you for chasing.