"Universities must ditch online lectures when all remaining Covid restrictions are lifted, minister says
MP Michelle Donelan said there is 'no excuse' for keeping lectures online when all legal restrictions to curb coronavirus are lifted in England on Thursday It comes as several universities admitted they plan to continue remote learning "
We did online lectures before COVID; we will do so in the future too. It’s an efficient way to deliver teaching to NHS staff who take our educational courses. But I suspect such subtlety and an understanding of how we can use a range of educational technologies to best suit different student groups is lost on the Daily Mail or Conservative MPs…
I have been thinking of doing an on-line MA, which was on-line pre-Covid. An on-line course would be more convenient for me.
Really? Javid thinks that is a priority for money when waiting lists are off the charts?
I don’t know how expensive either the ONS or REACT studies are, but one of the areas the UK has been genuinely “world beating” has been in surveillance - it would be a pity to drop it entirely - possibly scale it back - but stopping it would be a mistake.
Wouldn't the ONS report be funded via the treasury? I doubt that it's particularly expensive to run. What the government wants to do is shut down all of the very expensive testing infrastructure, I expect PCR tests will be only be available by post rather than the current walk in and drive through centres dotted around the country those cost real money to maintain.
With low levels of COVID I don’t see the harm in switching PCR testing to “by post” only - and start charging/do by prescription. But with the end of legal restrictions not sure what purpose it still serves beyond a diagnostic one.
What I do think would be a pity would be ending the surveillance which as others have pointed out is not costing “billions per month”.
4. Its absolutely the case that the driver for the rapid dropping of restrictions is to throw red meat at the feral backbenchers and save Big Dog.
I expect thats what informed the decisions in Norway, Denmark, Guernsey......too.
Several of you need to wipe that bit of foam from the side of your mouth.
Amazingly enough each country who have had in some cases completely different experiences of Covid in terms of deaths and restrictions make their own decisions for their own specific reasons. What we do has nothing to do with what they do and vice versa.
Again, its right to be winding down Covid operations (even if the end to testing is a self-fulfilling prophesy resulting in cases falling) as we're well over Omicron. Personally I hope thats the last we ever hear of Covid.
But lets not pretend that the rapid shift from the science to the politics isn't being done as the latest desperate play in Operation Save Big Dog. They're not even pretending - no Whitty / Vallance "good news everyone" presser with slides showing the exponential drop off to justify this.
Who cares? Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons - after the two years we've just had - is still doing the right thing.
If we've seen the last of Covid I will be ecstatic. Whilst I have taken full advantage of the opportunities it has presented it has been a hateful heinous experience.
What we need to do is not assume that the rapid release from Omicron's clutches doesn't mean there won't be a nastier variant to follow. Pull the plugs out of as much of the pandemic systems as we can, but don't just throw them in the big - we may need them again.
Last of Covid?
What part of we're going to live with Covid are you struggling to wrap your head around?
We've seen the last of Covid in the same way as we've seen the last of the Common Cold.
You keep repeating this 'Common Cold' mantra. As it happens, three members of my extended family, all triple-jabbed, currently have Covid - cases where I live are still high. They do not have a common cold. Two of them are really quite unwell, and one has been so for 10 days. High temperature, and incapacitated. Even if they hadn't chosen to isolate, they're not well enough to leave home. Yes, they're not going to die, but it's ludicrous to compare their illness with a common cold.
A good friend of mine is really struggling to recover from her bout of "common cold". Long-Covid is not something to just dismiss.
I was a 'long Covid' sceptic, until I got Covid. I've been exhausted for the last 3 weeks, lying on the sofa all day. Every so often I will have an active day going out etc, but then I will need a day to recover afterwards. I am open to the possibility that there is a psychological element to this, but it definetly feels pretty real . @DavidL warned about a statistically significant amount of people having heart attacks whilst recovering from Covid, it does feel like the more you push yourself the worse the fatigue gets. Just my experience, and I am in favour of removing the restrictions, but it has been quite an alarming set of events.
I hope you recover quickly. Any idea what made you sceptical of the long Covid in the first place?
I also hope @darkage recovers fully. As I'm reasonably fit and healthy I didn't so much fear Covid as I did Long Covid. OK so it could have killed me but such is life. But having an open-ended debilitating condition?That was the fear. My mum has it (OK she's 74 but it has *floored* her) and I have a couple of early 30s friends with it and it sounds bloody horrible.
Which is why Covid is not and never has been the common cold.
How long is long? I haven't come across anyone who has had long covid, though I have heard of such cases at one remove. The longest covid I have come across was a colleague at work who was one of the first 100-odd or so confirmed cases in the UK - so obviously pre-vaccine or other acquired immunity. He was pretty ill with it at the time, and there were suggestions that it had done permanent damage to his lungs. He struggled with any sort of physical exertion for a good three months or so. But he is fine now. So I don't think that is long enough to be long covid.
I am about a month in and it is getting better so not at the point where I would regard it as a long term health condition. But it is noticeably worse than a winter cold or flu. One thing that has been troubling me is that, until I got Covid, I hadn't been sick at all for 2 years. So it may be that my immune system was weakened as it hadn't been exposed to seasonal bugs due to the consequences of Covid suppression measures. I don't really know, so a lot of this is just speculation. But the point definetly holds that, on reflection, it felt more severe than a typical winter flu episode and that is because of the ongoing fatigue.
A lack of exposure to seasonal bugs like flu will have had no impact on your response to COVID-19. That’s not how the immune system works. AIUI, there may be some slight cross-protection from exposure to other coronaviruses: so some colds might leave you with a bit of protection against COVID, and vice versa. But it’s not much of an effect.
The reason you’ve been hit hard by COVID is because it’s a nasty bug. There is a lot of interpersonal variation, so you’ve also been unlucky.
"Universities must ditch online lectures when all remaining Covid restrictions are lifted, minister says
MP Michelle Donelan said there is 'no excuse' for keeping lectures online when all legal restrictions to curb coronavirus are lifted in England on Thursday It comes as several universities admitted they plan to continue remote learning "
We did online lectures before COVID; we will do so in the future too. It’s an efficient way to deliver teaching to NHS staff who take our educational courses. But I suspect such subtlety and an understanding of how we can use a range of educational technologies to best suit different student groups is lost on the Daily Mail or Conservative MPs…
Quite a lot of students really like online lectures. If the lecture is well done, and the students can watch when they want, and pause etc it can work well. Last thursday I gave three 1 hour (well 50 minutes - there is a 10 min change-over gap) to the same cohort. The last lecture was their seventh hour of the day. I think many would have rather had the option to watch when ready.
However some stuff for me doesn't work online - tutorials and workshops work best wandering round the room and interacting with the students.
And clearly practical classes have to be in person.
So really the best thing is probably a mix or a blend.
And lastly - in previous times last Friday would have been a write-off for my Uni - red warning so closed campus, but most teaching was able to switch to online.
"Universities must ditch online lectures when all remaining Covid restrictions are lifted, minister says
MP Michelle Donelan said there is 'no excuse' for keeping lectures online when all legal restrictions to curb coronavirus are lifted in England on Thursday It comes as several universities admitted they plan to continue remote learning "
We did online lectures before COVID; we will do so in the future too. It’s an efficient way to deliver teaching to NHS staff who take our educational courses. But I suspect such subtlety and an understanding of how we can use a range of educational technologies to best suit different student groups is lost on the Daily Mail or Conservative MPs…
I was recording and podcasting lectures at Aberystwyth as long ago as 2011.
True but I doubt that £9000 per year students were being compelled to listen to podcasts instead of attending in-person lecture or tutorials.
Having some element of online, for cheaper courses, is entirely reasonable. Refusing to teach in person people who are paying £9000 for the privilege of it is not.
They were recordings of the actual lectures. Including the moment where a young man was speaking to his girlfriend and therefore the lecture went, 'and Tom Paine said perhaps the gentleman in the bobble hat could pay attention.'
Oddly, we had endless complaints one time I forgot to turn the recording system on, as people had taken to having a nice lie-in instead and listen to the lecture at their convenience.
"Universities must ditch online lectures when all remaining Covid restrictions are lifted, minister says
MP Michelle Donelan said there is 'no excuse' for keeping lectures online when all legal restrictions to curb coronavirus are lifted in England on Thursday It comes as several universities admitted they plan to continue remote learning "
We did online lectures before COVID; we will do so in the future too. It’s an efficient way to deliver teaching to NHS staff who take our educational courses. But I suspect such subtlety and an understanding of how we can use a range of educational technologies to best suit different student groups is lost on the Daily Mail or Conservative MPs…
There’s a difference between planned online courses, and full-time in-person courses that have been shifted (involuntarily, as far as the student is concerned) online due to the pandemic.
Really? Javid thinks that is a priority for money when waiting lists are off the charts?
I don’t know how expensive either the ONS or REACT studies are, but one of the areas the UK has been genuinely “world beating” has been in surveillance - it would be a pity to drop it entirely - possibly scale it back - but stopping it would be a mistake.
The surveys are relatively cheap - a few 100K tests, some fairly standard data science.
What is actually costing £2bn / month? Could, say, £20 million a month secure proper health surveillance? £200m?
Having all of the testing centre infrastructure. Those people have to be paid and could be doing something a lot more useful within the NHS rather than endless swabbing of the worried well.
That, though, has been true throughout the pandemic. Just retaining the ONS survey, and using LFTs for everything else (and dispensing with the almost useless track & trace) would have saved most of what was spent while retaining 90% of the benefit.
I very much sympathise with those who have "Long Covid" and wish them all a speedy return to full fitness.
But it is a measure of how we have skewed (how the government has skewed) our perception of illnesses that we are thinking of continued moderated laws on account of what is undoubtedly a nasty illness. But only an illness and an illness that our health service can cope with which was the reason that all those restrictions were imposed in the first place.
It's awful having all kinds of illnesses but if our health service can cope then we must just get on with it and seek appropriate treatment and attention.
We have laws in place concerning all of these diseases:
I'm told.. -Dept of Health asked No 11 for more than 5bn extra last week to maintain more free testing, eg testing of NHS staff even if they didn't have symptoms -By Sat, DH demand down to 3bn but warned of cuts elsewhere if no more £££ -By Sunday, DH demand down to 1.8bn...
But seems talks btw DH and Treasury now settled with no extra cash, plan seems instead to move money around within exsiting Dept of Health budget - no new time agreed yet for Cabinet tho
"Universities must ditch online lectures when all remaining Covid restrictions are lifted, minister says
MP Michelle Donelan said there is 'no excuse' for keeping lectures online when all legal restrictions to curb coronavirus are lifted in England on Thursday It comes as several universities admitted they plan to continue remote learning "
We did online lectures before COVID; we will do so in the future too. It’s an efficient way to deliver teaching to NHS staff who take our educational courses. But I suspect such subtlety and an understanding of how we can use a range of educational technologies to best suit different student groups is lost on the Daily Mail or Conservative MPs…
I was recording and podcasting lectures at Aberystwyth as long ago as 2011.
True but I doubt that £9000 per year students were being compelled to listen to podcasts instead of attending in-person lecture or tutorials.
Having some element of online, for cheaper courses, is entirely reasonable. Refusing to teach in person people who are paying £9000 for the privilege of it is not.
They were recordings of the actual lectures. Including the moment where a young man was speaking to his girlfriend and therefore the lecture went, 'and Tom Paine said perhaps the gentleman in the bobble hat could pay attention.'
Oddly, we had endless complaints one time I forgot to turn the recording system on, as people had taken to having a nice lie-in instead and listen to the lecture at their convenience.
That strikes me as ironic now...
Lots of staff don't particularly like recording their lectures (we now do it for ALL lectures). It does lead to lower attendance, and I suspect for some the recording is a poor substitute (easy to think you are watching it, but not actually pay attention). One colleague seems to think the uni will take his recorded lectures and the sack him, and just play the recordings each year... He's generally on the paranoid scale!
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia will hold an unscheduled meeting of his Security Council on Monday, the Kremlin said, declaring that “tensions are rising” as the warnings from the United States that his nation stands poised to attack Ukraine, swiftly and without provocation, grow more dire by the day.
Is the No.10 comms department still that shambolic that it leaks a decision to end Covid restrictions without having worked out the finer details?
Evidently yes
Big Dog barking too soon?
A couple of times, COVID announcements were delayed, because the devolved governments wanted things changed/added late in the process.
Have you got examples of that? I must say extensive consultation, compromise and agreement between HMG and the devolved governments has not been my abiding memory of the last 2 years.
PMSL at that one, as if they have ever given a hoot for the devolved governments and even worse pretending that they would even contemplate changing anything that they suggested.
"Universities must ditch online lectures when all remaining Covid restrictions are lifted, minister says
MP Michelle Donelan said there is 'no excuse' for keeping lectures online when all legal restrictions to curb coronavirus are lifted in England on Thursday It comes as several universities admitted they plan to continue remote learning "
Really? Javid thinks that is a priority for money when waiting lists are off the charts?
I don’t know how expensive either the ONS or REACT studies are, but one of the areas the UK has been genuinely “world beating” has been in surveillance - it would be a pity to drop it entirely - possibly scale it back - but stopping it would be a mistake.
Wouldn't the ONS report be funded via the treasury? I doubt that it's particularly expensive to run. What the government wants to do is shut down all of the very expensive testing infrastructure, I expect PCR tests will be only be available by post rather than the current walk in and drive through centres dotted around the country those cost real money to maintain.
With low levels of COVID I don’t see the harm in switching PCR testing to “by post” only - and start charging/do by prescription. But with the end of legal restrictions not sure what purpose it still serves beyond a diagnostic one.
What I do think would be a pity would be ending the surveillance which as others have pointed out is not costing “billions per month”.
PCR will probably move to access via the GP. LFT maybe the same - box of x via the GP, for y reasons ?
"Universities must ditch online lectures when all remaining Covid restrictions are lifted, minister says
MP Michelle Donelan said there is 'no excuse' for keeping lectures online when all legal restrictions to curb coronavirus are lifted in England on Thursday It comes as several universities admitted they plan to continue remote learning "
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia will hold an unscheduled meeting of his Security Council on Monday, the Kremlin said, declaring that “tensions are rising” as the warnings from the United States that his nation stands poised to attack Ukraine, swiftly and without provocation, grow more dire by the day.
NY Times blog
Is that tensions rising within his Security Council as to why they haven't invaded yet, I wonder.....
Since 2017, the Good Law Project has become a vital means through which lawyers can influence public life. The organisation, led by tax lawyer and legend Jolyon Maugham, has consistently intervened to keep our elected government in check. As Maugham himself has noted, there may be ‘no silver bullet’ to get rid of a government you don’t like, but the Good Law Project comes pretty close.
They say that politics is acting for ugly people. Well, the work of the Good Law Project is politics for important people.
…..The Good Law Project is our best hope for influencing public life without having to engage with the public.
Brilliant - No 10 announces the results of today's Cabinet Meeting over the weekend. Not surprisingly some of the ministers thought they should have been consulted first! Not only the Speaker getting fed up with premature announcements.
Is there any photographic evidence of Downing Street volunteers bravely trialling this new living-with-covid regime to ensure it was safe for the rest of us?
If anyone fancies a bargain holiday I just found this amazing deal on Opodo
Shades of that guy who went to Afghanistan two days before the Taliban took over the country.
For whatever reason YouTube a couple of weeks ago decided to start recommending a particular sub-genre travel videos. It seems like there are a whole of load of YouTube tw#ts, who specialise in going to the worst areas / most dangerous countries for the clicks. Somalia, check, what still not dangerous enough, lets go to Somaliland and try to see about the Puntland–Somaliland.
They are probably all booking their flights to Ukraine as we speak.
Ben Wallace taking defence questions for an hour at 2.30pm will then give a “Ukraine update” at 3.30pm, pushing the PM’s covid statement later to around 4.30pm, meaning there won’t be a press conference at 5pm as usual.
Since 2017, the Good Law Project has become a vital means through which lawyers can influence public life. The organisation, led by tax lawyer and legend Jolyon Maugham, has consistently intervened to keep our elected government in check. As Maugham himself has noted, there may be ‘no silver bullet’ to get rid of a government you don’t like, but the Good Law Project comes pretty close.
They say that politics is acting for ugly people. Well, the work of the Good Law Project is politics for important people.
…..The Good Law Project is our best hope for influencing public life without having to engage with the public.
Since 2017, the Good Law Project has become a vital means through which lawyers can influence public life. The organisation, led by tax lawyer and legend Jolyon Maugham, has consistently intervened to keep our elected government in check. As Maugham himself has noted, there may be ‘no silver bullet’ to get rid of a government you don’t like, but the Good Law Project comes pretty close.
They say that politics is acting for ugly people. Well, the work of the Good Law Project is politics for important people.
…..The Good Law Project is our best hope for influencing public life without having to engage with the public.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia will hold an unscheduled meeting of his Security Council on Monday, the Kremlin said, declaring that “tensions are rising” as the warnings from the United States that his nation stands poised to attack Ukraine, swiftly and without provocation, grow more dire by the day.
NY Times blog
Is that tensions rising within his Security Council as to why they haven't invaded yet, I wonder.....
Last December, Vladimir Zhirinovsky said that if Ukraine didn't comply with Russia's interpretation of the Minsk agreement, they'd find out its new policy at 4am on 22nd February...
I very much sympathise with those who have "Long Covid" and wish them all a speedy return to full fitness.
But it is a measure of how we have skewed (how the government has skewed) our perception of illnesses that we are thinking of continued moderated laws on account of what is undoubtedly a nasty illness. But only an illness and an illness that our health service can cope with which was the reason that all those restrictions were imposed in the first place.
It's awful having all kinds of illnesses but if our health service can cope then we must just get on with it and seek appropriate treatment and attention.
We have laws in place concerning all of these diseases:
… and did so long before COVID-19. What is skewed is some people’s understanding of how long public health legislation has existed in this country.
Fantastic good to know that the government is looking after us. I can't recall however when the government told me how many people I could have in my home on account of Measles.
Is there any photographic evidence of Downing Street volunteers bravely trialling this new living-with-covid regime to ensure it was safe for the rest of us?
I understand it was so frightening many of the volunteers had to drink copious amounts of vodka to steady their nerves. Purely for essential work purposes of course.
"Universities must ditch online lectures when all remaining Covid restrictions are lifted, minister says
MP Michelle Donelan said there is 'no excuse' for keeping lectures online when all legal restrictions to curb coronavirus are lifted in England on Thursday It comes as several universities admitted they plan to continue remote learning "
We did online lectures before COVID; we will do so in the future too. It’s an efficient way to deliver teaching to NHS staff who take our educational courses. But I suspect such subtlety and an understanding of how we can use a range of educational technologies to best suit different student groups is lost on the Daily Mail or Conservative MPs…
I've been to a few on line lectures operated by such people as WEA and u3acommunities.
They are OK if the lecturer knows what they are doing with the kit and there are either not too many people present; one chap I know reckons one screenful on Zoom is enough; other think they can operate with 100, but unless there's no opportunities for questions, they can't! I've been to some where the lecturer would have been crap in a one-to-one, but twas ever thus!
Since 2017, the Good Law Project has become a vital means through which lawyers can influence public life. The organisation, led by tax lawyer and legend Jolyon Maugham, has consistently intervened to keep our elected government in check. As Maugham himself has noted, there may be ‘no silver bullet’ to get rid of a government you don’t like, but the Good Law Project comes pretty close.
They say that politics is acting for ugly people. Well, the work of the Good Law Project is politics for important people.
…..The Good Law Project is our best hope for influencing public life without having to engage with the public.
Andrew Roth @Andrew__Roth · 11m Russia can act at any moment but worth noting that DNR ‘request’ for financial and military aid was an answer by a spokesman in an interview where he was asked “What help do you need from Russia?” Not quite a formal appeal.
Three job vacancies have been put up on the civil servants’ portal, all for the Downing Street data unit – a £60,000 “Data Scientist”, a £60,000 “Data Architect/Engineer” and a £60,000 “Front End Developer”.
Since 2017, the Good Law Project has become a vital means through which lawyers can influence public life. The organisation, led by tax lawyer and legend Jolyon Maugham, has consistently intervened to keep our elected government in check. As Maugham himself has noted, there may be ‘no silver bullet’ to get rid of a government you don’t like, but the Good Law Project comes pretty close.
They say that politics is acting for ugly people. Well, the work of the Good Law Project is politics for important people.
…..The Good Law Project is our best hope for influencing public life without having to engage with the public.
My personal stance starts with: what would we do if we started from here?
Omicron for the vaccinated seems to be between a common cold and earlier covid. Which is a wide range, of course. My impression is that Omicron for the vaccinated can present all across the spectrum of previous outcomes but is heavily skewed towards the milder presentations. Very roughly, something like this:
Long covid is also certainly a concern, but is considerably less of an issue in the vaccinated. And yes, cardiovascular issues are significantly more common in the recovered-from-covid, but this seems to be heavily related to how severe it was.
With all that, I would suggest that the need for strong restrictions is currently in the past. Surveillance should continue (in the form of the ONS survey, with sequencing of a proportion of the results from that) in order to act as an early warning for potential future variants, which may well not skew as often mild as Omicron, and for waning immunity.
Provision of FFP3 masks could be subsidised for the clinically vulnerable for them to decide to use in busy indoor spaces. LFTs subsidised for the clinically vulnerable and those caring for vulnerable people, but not any longer for the wider population. The daily test figures should also now be unnecessary.
Having plans in hand for levels of restrictions and test resumption that could be rolled out if and when a worse variant does appear would be wise, but we can hope that no such variant does present. Increasing stocks of antivirals such as paxlovid and having the ability to ramp up vaccinations if necessary following waning immunity would also be wise. As would taking whatever steps are possible to help the NHS recover from two years of extreme overload.
But the daily restrictions we've seen to date? I don't see the current need for them. We wouldn't be going to them if we hadn't been through covid already.
One important thing we need to do is get vaccinating the areas of the world that are less vaccinated (eg Africa). The more we can reduce the prevalence of covid worldwide, the fewer parallel processors the virus (effectively) has to work on variants. Each replication is an opportunity for mutation which is an opportunity for an "improved" variant on transmissibility, severity, and immune evasion.
Each individual replication has only a tiny chance of getting a useable variant out of it, but with enough millions of people infected, the chance grows. The fewer people have it, the fewer replications there are, and the longer it would take to get any future variants of concern.
As well as supply, we have to work on demand - doing something about people who are deliberately spreading antivaxxer misinformation.
Three job vacancies have been put up on the civil servants’ portal, all for the Downing Street data unit – a £60,000 “Data Scientist”, a £60,000 “Data Architect/Engineer” and a £60,000 “Front End Developer”.
"Universities must ditch online lectures when all remaining Covid restrictions are lifted, minister says
MP Michelle Donelan said there is 'no excuse' for keeping lectures online when all legal restrictions to curb coronavirus are lifted in England on Thursday It comes as several universities admitted they plan to continue remote learning "
We did online lectures before COVID; we will do so in the future too. It’s an efficient way to deliver teaching to NHS staff who take our educational courses. But I suspect such subtlety and an understanding of how we can use a range of educational technologies to best suit different student groups is lost on the Daily Mail or Conservative MPs…
I was recording and podcasting lectures at Aberystwyth as long ago as 2011.
True but I doubt that £9000 per year students were being compelled to listen to podcasts instead of attending in-person lecture or tutorials.
Having some element of online, for cheaper courses, is entirely reasonable. Refusing to teach in person people who are paying £9000 for the privilege of it is not.
They were recordings of the actual lectures. Including the moment where a young man was speaking to his girlfriend and therefore the lecture went, 'and Tom Paine said perhaps the gentleman in the bobble hat could pay attention.'
Oddly, we had endless complaints one time I forgot to turn the recording system on, as people had taken to having a nice lie-in instead and listen to the lecture at their convenience.
That strikes me as ironic now...
Lots of staff don't particularly like recording their lectures (we now do it for ALL lectures). It does lead to lower attendance, and I suspect for some the recording is a poor substitute (easy to think you are watching it, but not actually pay attention). One colleague seems to think the uni will take his recorded lectures and the sack him, and just play the recordings each year... He's generally on the paranoid scale!
In the long run he is surely right, the direction of travel is clearly less face to face lecture time to big groups of students. Teaching smaller groups/individuals will be the skills widely in demand. Although the very best lecturers may think it time to start owning their online content and then sell it to the highest bidding universities and online learning sites.
Three job vacancies have been put up on the civil servants’ portal, all for the Downing Street data unit – a £60,000 “Data Scientist”, a £60,000 “Data Architect/Engineer” and a £60,000 “Front End Developer”.
Three job vacancies have been put up on the civil servants’ portal, all for the Downing Street data unit – a £60,000 “Data Scientist”, a £60,000 “Data Architect/Engineer” and a £60,000 “Front End Developer”.
(FPT) Private prosecutions are increasingly common, thanks to constraints on CPS funding. The Post Office is far from the only organisation bringing private prosecutions (see eg local authorities, or the RSPCA…).
The courts are effectively the regulators of private prosecutions, but for obvious reasons that regulation is not systematic. The CPS has powers to intervene in private prosecutions in particular circumstances, but has no overall regulatory role at all….
There are good arguments in favour of having a system of private prosecutions, but it does seem extraordinary that we recognised as far back as the mid 80s that there were dangerous conflicts of interest in having those who investigated a crime also bring prosecutions. As a result the CPS was set up to take over that role from the police.
And yet in the intervening three and a half decades we’ve never done anything about setting up a system to regulate decisions to prosecute still taken by those who do the investigation - ie for pretty well all private prosecutions.
There have been concerns about RSPCA prosecutions for some time now. I believe they now no longer want to do them. I encountered them at the start of my career and was not impressed.
From a few threads back -
"My very first job was as a government lawyer. I was responsible for advising the team which deal with offences under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, specifically in relation to the then very widespread and profitable trade in stealing the eggs of birds of prey. The unit was in Bristol and worked closely with the RSPCA who, in a small way, were quite as bad as the Post Office in the way they abused their powers .
I pointed this out - that neither the people in the unit nor the RSPCA could do what they were doing, that if any of the people arrested brought a challenge the department would lose etc, and the relevant Minister would be mightily pissed off to find that not only were civil servants breaking the law but doing so even after they had been advised otherwise. (Those were the days, eh!)
The fury this engendered among the older male career civil servants in the unit was quite something to behold. My crimes involved being "a girl" (adorned by a number of crude epithets), young, a lawyer, not understanding how things were done around here etc etc. The RSPCA was especially outraged because they were on the side of the poor birds so how dare anyone challenge them.
Anyway I didn't give a toss, escalated and eventually got some changes. After a couple of years I left. It made me realise the importance of challenge, the value of and power you can have as a lawyer, and made me very sceptical indeed of charities and others which claim the moral high ground and use it as a reason to fob off scrutiny. See other charities, the police, the NHS, churches etc.
"The louder he spoke of his honour, the faster we counted the spoons."
It's a good maxim to bear in mind. Asking why and challenging and scrutinising what you are told is an essential life skill. When things go wrong, you will invariably find that at the heart and start of it, it is because this does not happen or people don't listen when it does."
" The unit was in Bristol and worked closely with the RSPCA who, in a small way, were quite as bad as the Post Office in the way they abused their powers .
I pointed this out - that neither the people in the unit nor the RSPCA could do what they were doing, that if any of the people arrested brought a challenge the department would lose"
What were they doing that they couldn't ?
Entering people's homes and seizing evidence without the lawful authority to do so.
Even if you take all the current Russian claims at face value, they're pretty small beer. You could justify some airstrikes on Ukrainian army positions in the Donbas, maybe a peacekeeping buffer zone between the two sides, but nothing that would make taking Kyiv, or the Black Sea coast, as anything other than wildly disproportionate.
So it would seem likely that we'd have quite a bit more in the way of pretexts and provocations being ramped up over several days or longer to justify a full invasion.
Kyiv is portrayed as claiming borscht is exclusively the Ukraine national dish (which I believe it is anyway). If hummus is anything to go by that could really kick things off.
"Universities must ditch online lectures when all remaining Covid restrictions are lifted, minister says
MP Michelle Donelan said there is 'no excuse' for keeping lectures online when all legal restrictions to curb coronavirus are lifted in England on Thursday It comes as several universities admitted they plan to continue remote learning "
We did online lectures before COVID; we will do so in the future too. It’s an efficient way to deliver teaching to NHS staff who take our educational courses. But I suspect such subtlety and an understanding of how we can use a range of educational technologies to best suit different student groups is lost on the Daily Mail or Conservative MPs…
I was recording and podcasting lectures at Aberystwyth as long ago as 2011.
True but I doubt that £9000 per year students were being compelled to listen to podcasts instead of attending in-person lecture or tutorials.
Having some element of online, for cheaper courses, is entirely reasonable. Refusing to teach in person people who are paying £9000 for the privilege of it is not.
They were recordings of the actual lectures. Including the moment where a young man was speaking to his girlfriend and therefore the lecture went, 'and Tom Paine said perhaps the gentleman in the bobble hat could pay attention.'
Oddly, we had endless complaints one time I forgot to turn the recording system on, as people had taken to having a nice lie-in instead and listen to the lecture at their convenience.
That strikes me as ironic now...
Lots of staff don't particularly like recording their lectures (we now do it for ALL lectures). It does lead to lower attendance, and I suspect for some the recording is a poor substitute (easy to think you are watching it, but not actually pay attention). One colleague seems to think the uni will take his recorded lectures and the sack him, and just play the recordings each year... He's generally on the paranoid scale!
In the long run he is surely right, the direction of travel is clearly less face to face lecture time to big groups of students. Teaching smaller groups/individuals will be the skills widely in demand. Although the very best lecturers may think it time to start owning their online content and then sell it to the highest bidding universities and online learning sites.
One terrifying idea is that lecturers could end up doing lots of 1-to-1 tuition with the students who have watched their online lecture series....
Ben Wallace to address Parliament at 3.30pm The Defence Secretary will address the House of Commons on the Ukraine crisis at 3.30 this afternoon, giving a prepared statement.
"Universities must ditch online lectures when all remaining Covid restrictions are lifted, minister says
MP Michelle Donelan said there is 'no excuse' for keeping lectures online when all legal restrictions to curb coronavirus are lifted in England on Thursday It comes as several universities admitted they plan to continue remote learning "
If universities dared to think a little outside the box, they’d notice that they could sell additional online-only undergrad courses in many disciplines for half the regular tuition fees, not bound by physical space, only by finding enough doc students to do the marking and grading.
You are expecting university managers to show imagination and intelligence?
I know, wishful thinking!
To be fair, some British (and American) universities already offer online courses, and that is betting without the Open University.
Even if you take all the current Russian claims at face value, they're pretty small beer. You could justify some airstrikes on Ukrainian army positions in the Donbas, maybe a peacekeeping buffer zone between the two sides, but nothing that would make taking Kyiv, or the Black Sea coast, as anything other than wildly disproportionate.
So it would seem likely that we'd have quite a bit more in the way of pretexts and provocations being ramped up over several days or longer to justify a full invasion.
Kyiv is portrayed as claiming borscht is exclusively the Ukraine national dish (which I believe it is anyway). If hummus is anything to go by that could really kick things off.
Claiming to be the originator of Hummus will kick off a fight in a large chunk of the world....
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h It's also good to see the recent changes in No.10 are delivering the stability and professionalism we were all promised.
(FPT) Private prosecutions are increasingly common, thanks to constraints on CPS funding. The Post Office is far from the only organisation bringing private prosecutions (see eg local authorities, or the RSPCA…).
The courts are effectively the regulators of private prosecutions, but for obvious reasons that regulation is not systematic. The CPS has powers to intervene in private prosecutions in particular circumstances, but has no overall regulatory role at all….
There are good arguments in favour of having a system of private prosecutions, but it does seem extraordinary that we recognised as far back as the mid 80s that there were dangerous conflicts of interest in having those who investigated a crime also bring prosecutions. As a result the CPS was set up to take over that role from the police.
And yet in the intervening three and a half decades we’ve never done anything about setting up a system to regulate decisions to prosecute still taken by those who do the investigation - ie for pretty well all private prosecutions.
There have been concerns about RSPCA prosecutions for some time now. I believe they now no longer want to do them. I encountered them at the start of my career and was not impressed.
From a few threads back -
"My very first job was as a government lawyer. I was responsible for advising the team which deal with offences under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, specifically in relation to the then very widespread and profitable trade in stealing the eggs of birds of prey. The unit was in Bristol and worked closely with the RSPCA who, in a small way, were quite as bad as the Post Office in the way they abused their powers .
I pointed this out - that neither the people in the unit nor the RSPCA could do what they were doing, that if any of the people arrested brought a challenge the department would lose etc, and the relevant Minister would be mightily pissed off to find that not only were civil servants breaking the law but doing so even after they had been advised otherwise. (Those were the days, eh!)
The fury this engendered among the older male career civil servants in the unit was quite something to behold. My crimes involved being "a girl" (adorned by a number of crude epithets), young, a lawyer, not understanding how things were done around here etc etc. The RSPCA was especially outraged because they were on the side of the poor birds so how dare anyone challenge them.
Anyway I didn't give a toss, escalated and eventually got some changes. After a couple of years I left. It made me realise the importance of challenge, the value of and power you can have as a lawyer, and made me very sceptical indeed of charities and others which claim the moral high ground and use it as a reason to fob off scrutiny. See other charities, the police, the NHS, churches etc.
"The louder he spoke of his honour, the faster we counted the spoons."
It's a good maxim to bear in mind. Asking why and challenging and scrutinising what you are told is an essential life skill. When things go wrong, you will invariably find that at the heart and start of it, it is because this does not happen or people don't listen when it does."
" The unit was in Bristol and worked closely with the RSPCA who, in a small way, were quite as bad as the Post Office in the way they abused their powers .
I pointed this out - that neither the people in the unit nor the RSPCA could do what they were doing, that if any of the people arrested brought a challenge the department would lose"
What were they doing that they couldn't ?
Entering people's homes and seizing evidence without the lawful authority to do so.
Interesting.
In the US, a legal relative dealt with some of the comedies of the fallout of the Title 9 stuff.
This included instance where university campus security guards "raided" an off campus student's accommodation and seized property. Completely illegal. Breaking and entering - complete with firearms!
I’d have a slightly different take from Mr Green - in a sense this was Cabinet -working because two ministers fought out their case and came to agreement and didn’t have an imperial PM impose a solution.
Yes, it should have been sorted before the meeting had to be put back - so the PM’s office clearly not on top of its brief, but perhaps the obituaries for Cabinet government were premature?
Three job vacancies have been put up on the civil servants’ portal, all for the Downing Street data unit – a £60,000 “Data Scientist”, a £60,000 “Data Architect/Engineer” and a £60,000 “Front End Developer”.
They are probably looking for an HYUFD style analyst who can find and publicise numbers that fit the politics rather than someone to do anything complex.
Three job vacancies have been put up on the civil servants’ portal, all for the Downing Street data unit – a £60,000 “Data Scientist”, a £60,000 “Data Architect/Engineer” and a £60,000 “Front End Developer”.
Good response I suggest. Kills the story, even if "have been assured by my lovely wife that it is part and parcel of a drag show!”" is a bit unsubtle...
Surprise that their nativist, heritage obsessed government isn’t promoting the lance as an appropriate answer to enemy armour.
You are aware that the "Polish cavalry charging at German tanks with lances" thing was nearly entirely Nazi propaganda?
The Polish government at the time, which was fairly poor, was trying to mechanise as fast as it could. Being caught without enough tanks is a long remembered thing there....
Polish cavalry fought as mounted infantry. One one occasion, at least, they gave a German Panzer unit a nasty surprise, while they were stopped to refuel and re-arm.
Three job vacancies have been put up on the civil servants’ portal, all for the Downing Street data unit – a £60,000 “Data Scientist”, a £60,000 “Data Architect/Engineer” and a £60,000 “Front End Developer”.
On the cabinet wranglings re testing, my understanding is that Treasury said no more testing money, had to be found from existing budgets, DHSC proposed moving money away from the elective surgery budget to cover testing gap but PM pushed back on this, hence stalemate. https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1495743570652839939
On the cabinet wranglings re testing, my understanding is that Treasury said no more testing money, had to be found from existing budgets, DHSC proposed moving money away from the elective surgery budget to cover testing gap but PM pushed back on this, hence stalemate. https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1495743570652839939
Good, quite right too.
The testing needs to stop, not kill the NHS to save testing. What a farcical idea.
Three job vacancies have been put up on the civil servants’ portal, all for the Downing Street data unit – a £60,000 “Data Scientist”, a £60,000 “Data Architect/Engineer” and a £60,000 “Front End Developer”.
One thing to consider, the person taking the job on likely will be in for a max of just under or over 2 years. Not much job security there.
Also who is paying for the roles, the Conservatives or the state ?
If it's the state then I think the roles should be fulfilled more broadly under the civil service so there's more continuity and people aren't being chopped and changed every change of Gov't. It's the American way to basically politicise your entire civil service, and not something I think we want here.
Mr. Divvie, lots of places persist with outdated military tech, due to a blindspot or failure to appreciate the new stuff.
Both the Poles and Russians had surprisingly large cavalry forces in WWII, and the French famously persisted in charging on horseback towards Englishmen with longbows, which was not necessarily to their advantage.
Three job vacancies have been put up on the civil servants’ portal, all for the Downing Street data unit – a £60,000 “Data Scientist”, a £60,000 “Data Architect/Engineer” and a £60,000 “Front End Developer”.
One thing to consider, the person taking the job on likely will be in for a max of just under or over 2 years. Not much job security there.
Also who is paying for the roles, the Conservatives or the state ?
If it's the state then I think the roles should be fulfilled more broadly under the civil service so there's more continuity and people aren't being chopped and changed every change of Gov't. It's the American way to basically politicise your entire civil service, and not something I think we want here.
They're civil service jobs, so no worries about job (rather than role) security.
Customer service done right: Customer not in when DHL try to deliver. Customer has a pre-existing issue with her local DHL reps and arranges to collect from the depot rather than try for another delivery. That takes too long and the products are defrosted. Cue complaint about us using DHL.
Not our fault, not DHL's fault. But she still gets an apology, a full refund and a voucher off a replacement order. Because its better to lose a bit of money making up for a poor experience than lose their business entirely plus anyone else they speak to about how badly we treated them plus their friends who pass o the story etc etc.
So how do bigger companies not get this? A computer says no approach where you are in the wrong even when its clearly the other way round and a grudging "gesture of goodwill" if you're lucky? Those three words do trigger me I confess, especially (as I once had) the company was legally in the shit and I was threatening to take them to court.
Apologise. Refund. Make right. Next customer please. It's not difficult.
Yodel 'lost' a box of wine that I'd ordered from Majestic. Driver said he'd left it, we were in all the time, no-one knocked etc. Clearly addressed to me, neighbours know me etc. Have to check with driver; no, nothing to add. No photo. Sorry, end of. Contacted Majestic; Oh dear, send us the answer from Yodel. Did, and was told to go to local Majestic branch who sorted out a replacement, in fact to higher value. Majestic 10 Yodel nil. IMHO
The supplier (Majestic in this case) will be very happy to have received the feedback on their courier. One can imagine how much ‘shrinkage’ they must suffer on deliveries of things like wine.
I had a case of wine go missing before Christmas, which they claimed to have delivered; it took me over a week to get a copy of the delivery photograph sent to me, of the box sitting in someone else's doorway.
I cancelled my Amazon Prime because they kept leaving parcels on other people's doorsteps. Several items went missing and then the final straw was something turning up on my doorstep two days later with all of the contents carefully removed.
DPD are in my experience the best delivery firm. They do what you ask, have a brilliant real time tracking system and are super efficient.
Through the pandemic Hermes have been terrible, closely followed by Royal Mail and Amazon.
I found DPD crap, 3 times tehy failed to pick up a parcel and evrey time it was signed off as customer refused. When they finally sent someone he said he knew who the lazy barsteward was who could not be bothered going so far to pick it up.
I agree with our Malcolm about the uselessness of DPD. I recently sent a small package to the HQ of an international bank. The building was one of the largest in the city. The message came back that they could not find the building, and so it had to be returned to me.
A couple of weeks ago we discussed the regional GDP figures, which were hopelessly out of date. The slightly less out of date (end of June 2021) figures have been published.
Previously noticable was the lack of GDP grwoth in the West Midlands, which suggested a future Red Wall problem for the Conservatives. There is an interesting update. WM stays far behind, but it would be difficult to see a trend anywhere else. WM up 5.1%, similar to other regions - so no change in the gap.
Compared to Q4 2019:
North East 99% North West 98% Yorkshire and The Humber 99% East Midlands 97% West Midlands 92% East of England 97% London 99% South East 96% South West 99% England 97% Wales 101%
Everywhere else pretty consistent - these figures always carry a pinch of salt because of the way that the ONS has to determine where GDP is generated.
Surprise that their nativist, heritage obsessed government isn’t promoting the lance as an appropriate answer to enemy armour.
You are aware that the "Polish cavalry charging at German tanks with lances" thing was nearly entirely Nazi propaganda?
The Polish government at the time, which was fairly poor, was trying to mechanise as fast as it could. Being caught without enough tanks is a long remembered thing there....
Polish cavalry fought as mounted infantry. One one occasion, at least, they gave a German Panzer unit a nasty surprise, while they were stopped to refuel and re-arm.
I am aware of it but I also think the myth appeals to a certain Polish sense of doomed heroism. I think the incident that you're referring to was in fact a Wehrmacht infantry unit the Poles caught by surprise and charged successfully, but were then themselves caught by armoured cars losing about a third of their number.
Surprise that their nativist, heritage obsessed government isn’t promoting the lance as an appropriate answer to enemy armour.
You are aware that the "Polish cavalry charging at German tanks with lances" thing was nearly entirely Nazi propaganda?
The Polish government at the time, which was fairly poor, was trying to mechanise as fast as it could. Being caught without enough tanks is a long remembered thing there....
Polish cavalry fought as mounted infantry. One one occasion, at least, they gave a German Panzer unit a nasty surprise, while they were stopped to refuel and re-arm.
I think the incident that you're referring to was in fact a Wehrmacht infantry unit the Poles caught by surprise and charged successfully, but were then themselves caught by armoured cars losing about a third of their number.
The Government decision to move from free to paid for Covid testing is illogical. Either it's worth doing, in which case they pay for it as they do for any other diagnostic testing on the NHS, or we no longer need to know who has Covid, in which case government advises against the test.
It raises the suspicion that the real reason for making testing more costly/difficult is stop incidents being reported. so it can be covered up.
Surprise that their nativist, heritage obsessed government isn’t promoting the lance as an appropriate answer to enemy armour.
You are aware that the "Polish cavalry charging at German tanks with lances" thing was nearly entirely Nazi propaganda?
The Polish government at the time, which was fairly poor, was trying to mechanise as fast as it could. Being caught without enough tanks is a long remembered thing there....
Polish cavalry fought as mounted infantry. One one occasion, at least, they gave a German Panzer unit a nasty surprise, while they were stopped to refuel and re-arm.
I think the incident that you're referring to was in fact a Wehrmacht infantry unit the Poles caught by surprise and charged successfully, but were then themselves caught by armoured cars losing about a third of their number.
I’d have a slightly different take from Mr Green - in a sense this was Cabinet -working because two ministers fought out their case and came to agreement and didn’t have an imperial PM impose a solution.
Yes, it should have been sorted before the meeting had to be put back - so the PM’s office clearly not on top of its brief, but perhaps the obituaries for Cabinet government were premature?
The Government decision to move from free to paid for Covid testing is illogical. Either it's worth doing, in which case they pay for it as they do for any other diagnostic testing on the NHS, or we no longer need to know who has Covid, in which case government advises against the test.
It raises the suspicion that the real reason for making testing more costly/difficult is stop incidents being reported. so it can be covered up.
I assume the cost will still be subsidised. So it's a subsidised facility for people to find out if they are positive and act accordingly. Seems sensible even if the majority of seroprevalence data will come from other sources.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia will hold an unscheduled meeting of his Security Council on Monday, the Kremlin said, declaring that “tensions are rising” as the warnings from the United States that his nation stands poised to attack Ukraine, swiftly and without provocation, grow more dire by the day.
NY Times blog
Tensions are rising? You know, I think the Kremlin has it right about that.
Sir John Bell - Regis Professor of Medicine, Oxford on R4 - disease is now relatively mild (among the vaccinated) and is a serious illness very largely only among the un-vaccinated. Also can rely on public to be sensible. Doesn’t see much point of continuing with legal restrictions. Testing cannot rely on commercial only testing - need to scale back to where testing is required and ONS surveillance needs to continue. Masks reduce transmission a bit, but don’t stop it - mandating it not necessary, rely on individual choice.
From another Whitehall Source “The question is how much risk we are willing to take on board as we learn to live with Covid. To avoid future restrictions there is a minimum needed to ensure we are ready to ramp up and successfully respond to future waves as we did with Omicron.” https://twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/1495748943292022795
Sir John Bell warns that "sliding back into a purely commercial model of testing" for Covid would be "unhelpful" as PM ends current rules & calls for ONS survey to be extended #BBCWATO https://twitter.com/RebeccaKeating/status/1495749313544261640
BoZo is apparently willing to overrule the Saj about how his budget is spent, but not overrule Rishi about the size of that budget.
The Government decision to move from free to paid for Covid testing is illogical. Either it's worth doing, in which case they pay for it as they do for any other diagnostic testing on the NHS, or we no longer need to know who has Covid, in which case government advises against the test.
It raises the suspicion that the real reason for making testing more costly/difficult is stop incidents being reported. so it can be covered up.
I assume the cost will still be subsidised. So it's a subsidised facility for people to find out if they are positive and act accordingly. Seems sensible even if the majority of seroprevalence data will come from other sources.
Why isn't it free in that case, as with all other diagnostic tests on the NHS? It is either useful or it isn't.
Surprise that their nativist, heritage obsessed government isn’t promoting the lance as an appropriate answer to enemy armour.
You are aware that the "Polish cavalry charging at German tanks with lances" thing was nearly entirely Nazi propaganda?
The Polish government at the time, which was fairly poor, was trying to mechanise as fast as it could. Being caught without enough tanks is a long remembered thing there....
Polish cavalry fought as mounted infantry. One one occasion, at least, they gave a German Panzer unit a nasty surprise, while they were stopped to refuel and re-arm.
I think the incident that you're referring to was in fact a Wehrmacht infantry unit the Poles caught by surprise and charged successfully, but were then themselves caught by armoured cars losing about a third of their number.
Cracking incidental knowledge. Even for PB.
If knowledge were power, this place would run the country...
Sir John Bell - Regis Professor of Medicine, Oxford on R4 - disease is now relatively mild (among the vaccinated) and is a serious illness very largely only among the un-vaccinated. Also can rely on public to be sensible. Doesn’t see much point of continuing with legal restrictions. Testing cannot rely on commercial only testing - need to scale back to where testing is required and ONS surveillance needs to continue. Masks reduce transmission a bit, but don’t stop it - mandating it not necessary, rely on individual choice.
Customer service done right: Customer not in when DHL try to deliver. Customer has a pre-existing issue with her local DHL reps and arranges to collect from the depot rather than try for another delivery. That takes too long and the products are defrosted. Cue complaint about us using DHL.
Not our fault, not DHL's fault. But she still gets an apology, a full refund and a voucher off a replacement order. Because its better to lose a bit of money making up for a poor experience than lose their business entirely plus anyone else they speak to about how badly we treated them plus their friends who pass o the story etc etc.
So how do bigger companies not get this? A computer says no approach where you are in the wrong even when its clearly the other way round and a grudging "gesture of goodwill" if you're lucky? Those three words do trigger me I confess, especially (as I once had) the company was legally in the shit and I was threatening to take them to court.
Apologise. Refund. Make right. Next customer please. It's not difficult.
Yodel 'lost' a box of wine that I'd ordered from Majestic. Driver said he'd left it, we were in all the time, no-one knocked etc. Clearly addressed to me, neighbours know me etc. Have to check with driver; no, nothing to add. No photo. Sorry, end of. Contacted Majestic; Oh dear, send us the answer from Yodel. Did, and was told to go to local Majestic branch who sorted out a replacement, in fact to higher value. Majestic 10 Yodel nil. IMHO
The supplier (Majestic in this case) will be very happy to have received the feedback on their courier. One can imagine how much ‘shrinkage’ they must suffer on deliveries of things like wine.
I had a case of wine go missing before Christmas, which they claimed to have delivered; it took me over a week to get a copy of the delivery photograph sent to me, of the box sitting in someone else's doorway.
I cancelled my Amazon Prime because they kept leaving parcels on other people's doorsteps. Several items went missing and then the final straw was something turning up on my doorstep two days later with all of the contents carefully removed.
DPD are in my experience the best delivery firm. They do what you ask, have a brilliant real time tracking system and are super efficient.
Through the pandemic Hermes have been terrible, closely followed by Royal Mail and Amazon.
I found DPD crap, 3 times tehy failed to pick up a parcel and evrey time it was signed off as customer refused. When they finally sent someone he said he knew who the lazy barsteward was who could not be bothered going so far to pick it up.
I agree with our Malcolm about the uselessness of DPD. I recently sent a small package to the HQ of an international bank. The building was one of the largest in the city. The message came back that they could not find the building, and so it had to be returned to me.
On the other hand, I had quite a lot of beer delivered by DPD during lockdown, they seemed to have cornered the market in small breweries. It was a great service and I soon got the know my local delivery driver.
The Government decision to move from free to paid for Covid testing is illogical. Either it's worth doing, in which case they pay for it as they do for any other diagnostic testing on the NHS, or we no longer need to know who has Covid, in which case government advises against the test.
It raises the suspicion that the real reason for making testing more costly/difficult is stop incidents being reported. so it can be covered up.
I assume the cost will still be subsidised. So it's a subsidised facility for people to find out if they are positive and act accordingly. Seems sensible even if the majority of seroprevalence data will come from other sources.
Why isn't it free in that case, as with all other diagnostic tests on the NHS? It is either useful or it isn't.
Well, at the moment, 99% of tests are negative. Which isn't very helpful, and suggests a lot of tests are done by people, with few symptoms, who do not need them. They can't be blamed for making use of them, because they are there.
The Government decision to move from free to paid for Covid testing is illogical. Either it's worth doing, in which case they pay for it as they do for any other diagnostic testing on the NHS, or we no longer need to know who has Covid, in which case government advises against the test.
It raises the suspicion that the real reason for making testing more costly/difficult is stop incidents being reported. so it can be covered up.
I assume the cost will still be subsidised. So it's a subsidised facility for people to find out if they are positive and act accordingly. Seems sensible even if the majority of seroprevalence data will come from other sources.
Why isn't it free in that case, as with all other diagnostic tests on the NHS? It is either useful or it isn't.
Well, at the moment, 99% of tests are negative. Which isn't very helpful, and suggests a lot of tests are done by people, with few symptoms, who do not need them. They can't be blamed for making use of them, because they are there.
The idea of asymptomatic testing was always to try to reduce the spread. Now that the consensus is that generally we don't need to stop, and importantly cannot stop transmission, then asymptomatic testing should be stopped. Use testing for the ONS to track the general situation and use it for diagnosis on hospital admission to help with securing the best treatment strategy.
The Government decision to move from free to paid for Covid testing is illogical. Either it's worth doing, in which case they pay for it as they do for any other diagnostic testing on the NHS, or we no longer need to know who has Covid, in which case government advises against the test.
It raises the suspicion that the real reason for making testing more costly/difficult is stop incidents being reported. so it can be covered up.
I don't know what others experience is but I am currently contracting at a Council and they are still very cautious about Covid - not many people in the office and most WFH. They've already said that they will keep the situation for the foreseeable future as it is for health and safety reasons. 2 years of this, so many false starts etc and there just seems to have been a culture shift to home working. Maybe forcing them to pay up big time for endless covid tests will enact a shift in perspective.
From another Whitehall Source “The question is how much risk we are willing to take on board as we learn to live with Covid. To avoid future restrictions there is a minimum needed to ensure we are ready to ramp up and successfully respond to future waves as we did with Omicron.” https://twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/1495748943292022795
Sir John Bell warns that "sliding back into a purely commercial model of testing" for Covid would be "unhelpful" as PM ends current rules & calls for ONS survey to be extended #BBCWATO https://twitter.com/RebeccaKeating/status/1495749313544261640
BoZo is apparently willing to overrule the Saj about how his budget is spent, but not overrule Rishi about the size of that budget.
I think the basic dispute is really that Javid wants more extensive testing, and Sunak less.
So Javid says, if you're not going to give the money to me, I will take it from elsewhere.
But really he doesn't want to do that, he was the Treasury to pay.
It does sound like the majority of the plan is agreed though and we are probably talking about the difference between a 75% and 90% reduction.
The Government decision to move from free to paid for Covid testing is illogical. Either it's worth doing, in which case they pay for it as they do for any other diagnostic testing on the NHS, or we no longer need to know who has Covid, in which case government advises against the test.
It raises the suspicion that the real reason for making testing more costly/difficult is stop incidents being reported. so it can be covered up.
I assume the cost will still be subsidised. So it's a subsidised facility for people to find out if they are positive and act accordingly. Seems sensible even if the majority of seroprevalence data will come from other sources.
Why isn't it free in that case, as with all other diagnostic tests on the NHS? It is either useful or it isn't.
Well, at the moment, 99% of tests are negative. Which isn't very helpful, and suggests a lot of tests are done by people, with few symptoms, who do not need them. They can't be blamed for making use of them, because they are there.
The idea of asymptomatic testing was always to try to reduce the spread. Now that the consensus is that generally we don't need to stop, and importantly cannot stop transmission, then asymptomatic testing should be stopped. Use testing for the ONS to track the general situation and use it for diagnosis on hospital admission to help with securing the best treatment strategy.
That's right, but the second part is having that future capacity ready for any further waves (of symptomatic patients). Therefore the marginal cost of some testing is limited, because we'd still be paying the cost of the capacity, used or not.
The Government decision to move from free to paid for Covid testing is illogical. Either it's worth doing, in which case they pay for it as they do for any other diagnostic testing on the NHS, or we no longer need to know who has Covid, in which case government advises against the test.
It raises the suspicion that the real reason for making testing more costly/difficult is stop incidents being reported. so it can be covered up.
I don't know what others experience is but I am currently contracting at a Council and they are still very cautious about Covid - not many people in the office and most WFH. They've already said that they will keep the situation for the foreseeable future as it is for health and safety reasons. 2 years of this, so many false starts etc and there just seems to have been a culture shift to home working. Maybe forcing them to pay up big time for endless covid tests will enact a shift in perspective.
I've described previously the over-cautious approach of my Uni. You can go to pubs and night-clubs, have 80,000 at Twickenham, as many folk in your house as you want, but my uni thinks its important to put a mask on to go out into the corridor... Previously we were trying to avoid staff and students having to isolate. Now - I'm not sure what we are achieving.
A couple of weeks ago we discussed the regional GDP figures, which were hopelessly out of date. The slightly less out of date (end of June 2021) figures have been published.
Previously noticable was the lack of GDP grwoth in the West Midlands, which suggested a future Red Wall problem for the Conservatives. There is an interesting update. WM stays far behind, but it would be difficult to see a trend anywhere else. WM up 5.1%, similar to other regions - so no change in the gap.
Compared to Q4 2019:
North East 99% North West 98% Yorkshire and The Humber 99% East Midlands 97% West Midlands 92% East of England 97% London 99% South East 96% South West 99% England 97% Wales 101%
Everywhere else pretty consistent - these figures always carry a pinch of salt because of the way that the ONS has to determine where GDP is generated.
Noticeable that the North's GDP figures are all better than the English average, as are the Welsh figures. Plenty of redwall seats there, so some good news for the Tories. London also better than the English average which might help reduce Tory losses in the capital. The East Midlands and East of England figures are spot on the English average.
However the South East figures are poor, almost as bad as the West Midlands, which suggests the LDs could benefit in the Home Counties as much as Labour in the West Midlands
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What I do think would be a pity would be ending the surveillance which as others have pointed out is not costing “billions per month”.
The reason you’ve been hit hard by COVID is because it’s a nasty bug. There is a lot of interpersonal variation, so you’ve also been unlucky.
I hope you feel better soon! Being ill sucks.
Oh, and KBP airport is east of the city, Russian side of the river.
IEV airport (the older, smaller one) is west of the city.
However some stuff for me doesn't work online - tutorials and workshops work best wandering round the room and interacting with the students.
And clearly practical classes have to be in person.
So really the best thing is probably a mix or a blend.
And lastly - in previous times last Friday would have been a write-off for my Uni - red warning so closed campus, but most teaching was able to switch to online.
Oddly, we had endless complaints one time I forgot to turn the recording system on, as people had taken to having a nice lie-in instead and listen to the lecture at their convenience.
That strikes me as ironic now...
Just retaining the ONS survey, and using LFTs for everything else (and dispensing with the almost useless track & trace) would have saved most of what was spent while retaining 90% of the benefit.
Acute encephalitis
Acute infectious hepatitis
Acute meningitis
Acute poliomyelitis
Anthrax
Botulism
Brucellosis
Cholera
Diphtheria
Enteric fever (typhoid or paratyphoid fever)
Food poisoning
Haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS)
Infectious bloody diarrhoea
Invasive group A streptococcal disease
Legionnaires’ disease
Leprosy
Malaria
Measles
Meningococcal septicaemia
Mumps
Plague
Rabies
Rubella
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)
Scarlet fever
Smallpox
Tetanus
Tuberculosis
Typhus
Viral haemorrhagic fever (VHF)
Whooping cough
Yellow fever
… and did so long before COVID-19. What is skewed is some people’s understanding of how long public health legislation has existed in this country.
God help us if Russia invades Ukraine and Johnson is still running our response.
-Dept of Health asked No 11 for more than 5bn extra last week to maintain more free testing, eg testing of NHS staff even if they didn't have symptoms
-By Sat, DH demand down to 3bn but warned of cuts elsewhere if no more £££
-By Sunday, DH demand down to 1.8bn...
But seems talks btw DH and Treasury now settled with no extra cash, plan seems instead to move money around within exsiting Dept of Health budget - no new time agreed yet for Cabinet tho
https://twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/1495733794875355144?s=20&t=BxAxvrdf-9eoVZgeIbQN7A
NY Times blog
LFT maybe the same - box of x via the GP, for y reasons ?
Since government pays for most of education, they get most of the say.....
They say that politics is acting for ugly people. Well, the work of the Good Law Project is politics for important people.
…..The Good Law Project is our best hope for influencing public life without having to engage with the public.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/02/18/we-cant-leave-democracy-to-the-electorate/
They are probably all booking their flights to Ukraine as we speak.
#learntolivewithcovid
#learntolivewithrishi
https://twitter.com/MattChorley/status/1495736546586202115
"But I know that Maugham will never be outfoxed by his critics"
The bad law project, bordering on the vexatious law project.
https://twitter.com/qwest__/status/1495420421142941696
BREAKING — Self-proclaimed Donbas Republic asks military and financial assistance from Russia against the “Ukranian attacks” — RT
https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1495724367665405953?
They are OK if the lecturer knows what they are doing with the kit and there are either not too many people present; one chap I know reckons one screenful on Zoom is enough; other think they can operate with 100, but unless there's no opportunities for questions, they can't!
I've been to some where the lecturer would have been crap in a one-to-one, but twas ever thus!
TORY MP RECEIVES LAP DANCE AND ON STAGE ‘BLOW JOB’ FROM DILDO-WIELDING DRAG QUEEN
https://order-order.com/2022/02/21/exclusive-tory-mp-receives-lap-dance-and-on-stage-blow-job-from-dildo-wielding-drag-queen/
“The intelligence we are seeing suggests Russia intends to launch an invasion, and President Putin’s plan has in effect already begun.”
“We stand ready to act as needed”
https://twitter.com/tomhfh/status/1495738466407231492
@Andrew__Roth
·
11m
Russia can act at any moment but worth noting that DNR ‘request’ for financial and military aid was an answer by a spokesman in an interview where he was asked “What help do you need from Russia?” Not quite a formal appeal.
https://twitter.com/Andrew__Roth
https://order-order.com/2022/02/21/barclay-makes-start-on-data-drive/
£60k for a really good data scientist. Dream on.
Surely you kimono that?
Each individual replication has only a tiny chance of getting a useable variant out of it, but with enough millions of people infected, the chance grows. The fewer people have it, the fewer replications there are, and the longer it would take to get any future variants of concern.
As well as supply, we have to work on demand - doing something about people who are deliberately spreading antivaxxer misinformation.
Terrifying for whom is left to the reader.
Ben Wallace to address Parliament at 3.30pm
The Defence Secretary will address the House of Commons on the Ukraine crisis at 3.30 this afternoon, giving a prepared statement.
(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
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1h
It's also good to see the recent changes in No.10 are delivering the stability and professionalism we were all promised.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author
In the US, a legal relative dealt with some of the comedies of the fallout of the Title 9 stuff.
This included instance where university campus security guards "raided" an off campus student's accommodation and seized property. Completely illegal. Breaking and entering - complete with firearms!
Yes, it should have been sorted before the meeting had to be put back - so the PM’s office clearly not on top of its brief, but perhaps the obituaries for Cabinet government were premature?
My glass is half full, Mr Green’s half empty:
https://davidallengreen.com/2022/02/the-constitutional-significance-of-todays-disunited-cabinet/
So far I've not seen any reports that what the Macaroon was trying to lob across that big table was anything like a sell out of Ukraine.
https://www.defensenews.com/land/2022/02/18/state-department-clears-6-billion-sale-of-tanks-to-poland/
The Polish government at the time, which was fairly poor, was trying to mechanise as fast as it could. Being caught without enough tanks is a long remembered thing there....
Polish cavalry fought as mounted infantry. One one occasion, at least, they gave a German Panzer unit a nasty surprise, while they were stopped to refuel and re-arm.
Those first two are £120k jobs all day long, if you want someone who can both work independently and sit in meetings with the idiots.
https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2022/02/21/how-different-countries-have-measured-the-output-of-public-services-during-the-pandemic/
And how measurement of Public Service productivity “fall” - not seen in some other countries with different measurements makes comparison difficult.
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1495743570652839939
The testing needs to stop, not kill the NHS to save testing. What a farcical idea.
If it's the state then I think the roles should be fulfilled more broadly under the civil service so there's more continuity and people aren't being chopped and changed every change of Gov't. It's the American way to basically politicise your entire civil service, and not something I think we want here.
Both the Poles and Russians had surprisingly large cavalry forces in WWII, and the French famously persisted in charging on horseback towards Englishmen with longbows, which was not necessarily to their advantage.
Previously noticable was the lack of GDP grwoth in the West Midlands, which suggested a future Red Wall problem for the Conservatives. There is an interesting update. WM stays far behind, but it would be difficult to see a trend anywhere else. WM up 5.1%, similar to other regions - so no change in the gap.
Compared to Q4 2019:
North East 99%
North West 98%
Yorkshire and The Humber 99%
East Midlands 97%
West Midlands 92%
East of England 97%
London 99%
South East 96%
South West 99%
England 97%
Wales 101%
Everywhere else pretty consistent - these figures always carry a pinch of salt because of the way that the ONS has to determine where GDP is generated.
I think the incident that you're referring to was in fact a Wehrmacht infantry unit the Poles caught by surprise and charged successfully, but were then themselves caught by armoured cars losing about a third of their number.
It raises the suspicion that the real reason for making testing more costly/difficult is stop incidents being reported. so it can be covered up.
The Big Dog announcing policy on a "what best serves my very narrow interests" basis without agreement in cabinet? Not how government should work.
Best to copy Blair and the coalition and just scrap cabinet government altogether Boris...
“The question is how much risk we are willing to take on board as we learn to live with Covid. To avoid future restrictions there is a minimum needed to ensure we are ready to ramp up and successfully respond to future waves as we did with Omicron.”
https://twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/1495748943292022795
Sir John Bell warns that "sliding back into a purely commercial model of testing" for Covid would be "unhelpful" as PM ends current rules & calls for ONS survey to be extended #BBCWATO
https://twitter.com/RebeccaKeating/status/1495749313544261640
BoZo is apparently willing to overrule the Saj about how his budget is spent, but not overrule Rishi about the size of that budget.
So Javid says, if you're not going to give the money to me, I will take it from elsewhere.
But really he doesn't want to do that, he was the Treasury to pay.
It does sound like the majority of the plan is agreed though and we are probably talking about the difference between a 75% and 90% reduction.
However the South East figures are poor, almost as bad as the West Midlands, which suggests the LDs could benefit in the Home Counties as much as Labour in the West Midlands