What? That's the complete opposite of what OP was saying.
You don't need github to be online to work with your code or even your repositories so long as you haven't gone and thrown all your digital eggs in the same basket (i.e. as long as you have other remotes or at least local copies of your repositories).
I don't think so, because it's GitHub that's down and I think kmfrk would have mentioned it if his other service was coincidentally down at the same time. I think what kmfrk meant is that he can't operate without GitHub's issues. It isn't ideal but it's understandable.