As Kawczynski is 6'8", most people would be dwarfed by him.
This is going to be unpopular, but all the snide comments and jokes about Sunak's height are a bit immature and wearying. He cannot help his height, and there seem to be much stronger negatives to attack him on. (For the record, I'm fairly tall).
As an example: to me, Starmer appears utterly gormless in many photos, as if he's just been surprised by the sun rising in the morning. But he can't really help it.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
Although it's not a guarantee of quality. Why, some people with excellent a-levels and a Russell Group degree can't even spell 'hire.'
What puzzles me is how it is that some people with good degrees from fine universities can turn out to be utterly stupid.
My own view: we are all utterly stupid *in some things*. The key thing is for us to realise this, and not to expose that stupidity to everyone else. A task I frequently fail to achieve...
Yes, that makes sense. I'm confident I know what I'm talking about, when it comes to law or military history.
But, I'd be a fool to advise someone how to install a boiler, or rewire an office.
Some people think skills are transferable.
Take Jonathan Sumption.
Excellent jurist but terrible on epidemiology.
Everything he said about the pandemic was 100% right. Lockdowns were a mistake, apart from the first one.
The ghosts of all those people who died as a result of Johnson's late lockdowns in September and December 2020 say hello.
There should never have been a lockdown, let alone it being late.
With 20/20 hindsight you may have an alternative, but unless you were of the opinion "let it rip", at the time I can't see many other options were on the table.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
Although it's not a guarantee of quality. Why, some people with excellent a-levels and a Russell Group degree can't even spell 'hire.'
What puzzles me is how it is that some people with good degrees from fine universities can turn out to be utterly stupid.
My own view: we are all utterly stupid *in some things*. The key thing is for us to realise this, and not to expose that stupidity to everyone else. A task I frequently fail to achieve...
Yes, that makes sense. I'm confident I know what I'm talking about, when it comes to law or military history.
But, I'd be a fool to advise someone how to install a boiler, or rewire an office.
And I fear that politicians are often asked questions that they could not really be expected to know answers to, and then get accused of dissembling when they say they don't know, or stumble out a non-answer. If a question is designed to be a trap, the answer should be ignored.
Questions like "what is your favourite biscuit?", "which football team do you support?" and "how much is a loaf of bread?"
I would get crucified if I truthfully answered: "which football team do you support?" My answer would be "None. I think football is a corrupt sport from top to bottom."
And my answer to "how much is a loaf of bread?" would be: I'm lucky enough not to need to care much.
I wouldn't make a good politician...
IIRC David Cameron, as LotO and PM, got a weekly briefing from Andy Coulson that contained, among other things, a list of prices for everyday items journalists ask of politicians - bread, milk, petrol etc. also anything that was attracting tabloid coverage that the broadsheets didn’t cover.
I wouldn't have a clue on any of those by several 100 percent. I would be crucified. One of many reasons I have never gone into frontline politics.
Or frontline supermarkets.
Guilty as charged. Ditto with petrol stations (my wife fills up when she does the supermarket shop).
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
Although it's not a guarantee of quality. Why, some people with excellent a-levels and a Russell Group degree can't even spell 'hire.'
What puzzles me is how it is that some people with good degrees from fine universities can turn out to be utterly stupid.
My own view: we are all utterly stupid *in some things*. The key thing is for us to realise this, and not to expose that stupidity to everyone else. A task I frequently fail to achieve...
Yes, that makes sense. I'm confident I know what I'm talking about, when it comes to law or military history.
But, I'd be a fool to advise someone how to install a boiler, or rewire an office.
Some people think skills are transferable.
Take Jonathan Sumption.
Excellent jurist but terrible on epidemiology.
Everything he said about the pandemic was 100% right. Lockdowns were a mistake, apart from the first one.
The ghosts of all those people who died as a result of Johnson's late lockdowns in September and December 2020 say hello.
I am deeply sad for those who died and those who lost friends and family. But the cause of death was covid, not Johnson. Decisions were taken with the knowledge at the time. With hindsight it is clear that we should have locked down in the autumn of 2020 with the certain knowledge of the vaccines coming in jan 2021. We did not have that knowledge.
On this forum we have some who claim we shouldn't have locked down at all, and some at the time who called for lockdown incessantly. It was always a judgement call, balancing the economy against health.
I don't believe we did that differently to other compariter nations, especially after the poor state of the NHS going into the pandemic is taken account of. That can be firmly laid at the door of the Tories.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
True. But in the exception to the rule, I worked with a professor (an oxbridge graduate) whose experiences of students at her alma mater/the college itself were such that she took a pretty dim view of anyone who had gone there. Still very willing to interview if good on paper, but she assumed they'd be tossers. On the interviews I was involved with, she was right.
I academia, I've seen a clear bias towards applicants who have worked with the 'right people' - e.g. "X did PhD/pot-doc under Y, must be pretty good" - but not biased towards institutions as a whole.
In postgraduate medical training we don't look at or score where they trained, so Lincoln medical school counts the same as Oxford or Imperial. In our national appointments process we are rarely appointing for our own region.
At Consultant level we are much more interested in their postgraduate experience and aptitude, so once again doesn't matter.
The national appointments system has its flaws, but the process is pretty effective at snuffing out prejudice, snobbery and patronage. Quite different to my day 3 decades ago when these were key to medical careers.
Was there not a study from around that time showing the posher the school, the higher up the body a consultant specialised?
As Kawczynski is 6'8", most people would be dwarfed by him.
This is going to be unpopular, but all the snide comments and jokes about Sunak's height are a bit immature and wearying. He cannot help his height, and there seem to be much stronger negatives to attack him on. (For the record, I'm fairly tall).
As an example: to me, Starmer appears utterly gormless in many photos, as if he's just been surprised by the sun rising in the morning. But he can't really help it.
I tend to agree. Similarly, Spaffer is an amoral scumbag but his physical size is neither here nor there.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
But also research funding only provides about 75% of the cost of doing research. The standard government funding pays 80% of the full economic cost, and charity funding pays less. So research-intensive universities need teaching to subsidise the research they do.
You're a scientist, I think?
In the fields I was working in it (notably cultural history) tended to be the other way around. A research grant normally covered about twice the cost of the research project, and it was accepted that was one way of keeping unis afloat.
This was one reason why a lot of senior professors never did any teaching. They were getting the money in to subsidise their colleagues.
But in any case, my answer would be that if teaching is needed to subsidise research, the Russell Group needs to take it a lot more seriously.
Yes, am in science, which of course is where most of the research money is. (Personally, I’d like to see more spent on things like cultural history.) It’s interesting what you say about the grant funding in your context.
And, yes, the Russell Group needs to take teaching more seriously, and I think they are (if perhaps still not enough). But, more generally, as happens often, a system has evolved over time with odd incentives, but no-one wants to address that because it’s difficult and expensive.
Our university finance chiefs claim that we lose money, on average, on home students. The clear conclusion is that we must make teaching as bad as possible to reduce intakes
More seriously, it was an interesting analysis. Only looked at teaching costs versus fees, of course, neglecting income from students being at the university - accommodation, food, entertainment etc.
When I joined Bath in 2005 our course had around 20% overseas students, at a time when the differential was much greater in how much they brought in. We were, at the time, the golden department.
Later government changed the rules for overseas pharmacists working (effectively they were priced out of doing the essential pre-registration year as they were not paid enough) and our overseas numbers crashed.
Did the centre recall the golden days? We were insulated from the wrath of the VC as the department income plummeted? No - we were not. Despite many years of surplus, as soon as things turned south we came under existential threat (closure).
Uni's can be utterly ruthless.
I recently needed to speak to someone at a university so called and pressed the relevant buttons on the automated system to speak to whom I needed to talk to - and the number then just rang and rang without answer.
After a few days of this I tried a different tack. Tried again, pressed the button to speak to admissions, pressed the button to speak to international admissions and lo and behold the phone was answered immediately.
Unsurprisingly they were unable to help with my query, but were able to get the person I needed to talk to on the line immediately.
Like many other industries the pandemic induced WFH culture has infested Uni's. Its probably mostly a good thing, but I'd argue too often support staff are WFH, and hard to reach. The ability to put the washing out while still at work is great, but not so good when Mr Roberts is calling with an admissions query.
Last week I had to visit our placements team with a query. An office with 5 desks was occupied by just one member of staff, and the one I needed was WFH and not replying to my emails (which were urgent).
That said, email to such services usually generates a better response as it starts a 'ticket' - an audited trail.
WFH needs the right culture, team structure and equipment to work.
Sending people home with a laptop and telling them to do the same job there, nearly never works.
The closest thing to an exception is software development, where agile is being used. Agile was carefully designed to be functional for geographically distributed teams.
As Kawczynski is 6'8", most people would be dwarfed by him.
This is going to be unpopular, but all the snide comments and jokes about Sunak's height are a bit immature and wearying. He cannot help his height, and there seem to be much stronger negatives to attack him on. (For the record, I'm fairly tall).
As an example: to me, Starmer appears utterly gormless in many photos, as if he's just been surprised by the sun rising in the morning. But he can't really help it.
Totally agree. If its wrong to mock skin colour, hair colour etc, then mocking height is wrong too.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
Although it's not a guarantee of quality. Why, some people with excellent a-levels and a Russell Group degree can't even spell 'hire.'
What puzzles me is how it is that some people with good degrees from fine universities can turn out to be utterly stupid.
My own view: we are all utterly stupid *in some things*. The key thing is for us to realise this, and not to expose that stupidity to everyone else. A task I frequently fail to achieve...
Yes, that makes sense. I'm confident I know what I'm talking about, when it comes to law or military history.
But, I'd be a fool to advise someone how to install a boiler, or rewire an office.
And I fear that politicians are often asked questions that they could not really be expected to know answers to, and then get accused of dissembling when they say they don't know, or stumble out a non-answer. If a question is designed to be a trap, the answer should be ignored.
Questions like "what is your favourite biscuit?", "which football team do you support?" and "how much is a loaf of bread?"
I would get crucified if I truthfully answered: "which football team do you support?" My answer would be "None. I think football is a corrupt sport from top to bottom."
And my answer to "how much is a loaf of bread?" would be: I'm lucky enough not to need to care much.
I wouldn't make a good politician...
IIRC David Cameron, as LotO and PM, got a weekly briefing from Andy Coulson that contained, among other things, a list of prices for everyday items journalists ask of politicians - bread, milk, petrol etc. also anything that was attracting tabloid coverage that the broadsheets didn’t cover.
I wouldn't have a clue on any of those by several 100 percent. I would be crucified. One of many reasons I have never gone into frontline politics.
Or frontline supermarkets.
Guilty as charged. Ditto with petrol stations (my wife fills up when she does the supermarket shop).
I can feel flack coming my way.
You are lucky that our Prime Minister found time to make an instructional video on how to fill up a car with petrol and pay for stuff in a shop.
This is the problem with "fact checking" websites, is that some of the "facts" are very much disputable.
On claim one, the "underlying cause" from death certificates was for a long time significantly higher than the excess deaths. Not sure if that's still the case or not, but its certainly debatable if someone on death's door in a care home for instance who gets covid and dies died from covid, with covid or would have died either way.
On claim two the argument for the decade is based upon an analysis based on age and sex of those who died, but that is simplistic. We know for instance that a very significant proportion of deaths occurred for instance from care homes. A random 80 year old male might have a life expectancy of another decade, but an 80 year old male in a care home does not. By its very nature, care homes get the sickest and least able to survive of the population and mean life expectancy upon entering a care home is on average less than 12 months.
Neither of your disputations hold up. I think the fact-checker has checked their facts better than you!
That underlying cause deaths is higher than excess deaths — and I question for how long that was the case — doesn’t prove the underlying cause death count is wrong. Excess deaths are difficult to calculate and affected by multiple factors (e.g., flu-related deaths were greatly reduced by increased hand washing and social distancing). If someone on death’s door dies from COVID, the underlying cause will be given as whatever left them on death’s door. That’s the point of putting an underlying cause.
On argument two, several studies have looked at this. It is difficult to take into account all the relevant factors, but it’s clear Sumption’s claim was nonsense.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
Although it's not a guarantee of quality. Why, some people with excellent a-levels and a Russell Group degree can't even spell 'hire.'
What puzzles me is how it is that some people with good degrees from fine universities can turn out to be utterly stupid.
My own view: we are all utterly stupid *in some things*. The key thing is for us to realise this, and not to expose that stupidity to everyone else. A task I frequently fail to achieve...
Yes, that makes sense. I'm confident I know what I'm talking about, when it comes to law or military history.
But, I'd be a fool to advise someone how to install a boiler, or rewire an office.
And I fear that politicians are often asked questions that they could not really be expected to know answers to, and then get accused of dissembling when they say they don't know, or stumble out a non-answer. If a question is designed to be a trap, the answer should be ignored.
Questions like "what is your favourite biscuit?", "which football team do you support?" and "how much is a loaf of bread?"
I would get crucified if I truthfully answered: "which football team do you support?" My answer would be "None. I think football is a corrupt sport from top to bottom."
And my answer to "how much is a loaf of bread?" would be: I'm lucky enough not to need to care much.
I wouldn't make a good politician...
IIRC David Cameron, as LotO and PM, got a weekly briefing from Andy Coulson that contained, among other things, a list of prices for everyday items journalists ask of politicians - bread, milk, petrol etc. also anything that was attracting tabloid coverage that the broadsheets didn’t cover.
There was, early on in Cameron's time as opposition leader, a comic moment when a journalist tried the price of bread thing. Cameron reeled off a bunch of prices for various levels of supermarket bread.
IIRC there was an attempt to spin this against Cameron as "over prepared" and "fake".
There was good reason he hired Coulson, and stood by him for longer than he probably should have.
Sunak badly needs a Coulson right now, someone who really understands average people. The difference is that Cameron was much more self-aware of his privilege.
Reminds me of the 'zeitgeist tape' episode of The Thick Of It (back on iPlayer, by the way).
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
Although it's not a guarantee of quality. Why, some people with excellent a-levels and a Russell Group degree can't even spell 'hire.'
What puzzles me is how it is that some people with good degrees from fine universities can turn out to be utterly stupid.
My own view: we are all utterly stupid *in some things*. The key thing is for us to realise this, and not to expose that stupidity to everyone else. A task I frequently fail to achieve...
Yes, that makes sense. I'm confident I know what I'm talking about, when it comes to law or military history.
But, I'd be a fool to advise someone how to install a boiler, or rewire an office.
Some people think skills are transferable.
Take Jonathan Sumption.
Excellent jurist but terrible on epidemiology.
Everything he said about the pandemic was 100% right. Lockdowns were a mistake, apart from the first one.
The ghosts of all those people who died as a result of Johnson's late lockdowns in September and December 2020 say hello.
I am deeply sad for those who died and those who lost friends and family. But the cause of death was covid, not Johnson. Decisions were taken with the knowledge at the time. With hindsight it is clear that we should have locked down in the autumn of 2020 with the certain knowledge of the vaccines coming in jan 2021. We did not have that knowledge.
On this forum we have some who claim we shouldn't have locked down at all, and some at the time who called for lockdown incessantly. It was always a judgement call, balancing the economy against health.
I don't believe we did that differently to other compariter nations, especially after the poor state of the NHS going into the pandemic is taken account of. That can be firmly laid at the door of the Tories.
Johnson fluffed the timing of the lockdowns. That was his decision.
Anyone who three years after the event, claim lockdowns were an error, are either heartless or foolish.
I fully understand there was collateral damage from lockdowns, but at the time that could not have been understood on the knowledge available at the time.
As Kawczynski is 6'8", most people would be dwarfed by him.
This is going to be unpopular, but all the snide comments and jokes about Sunak's height are a bit immature and wearying. He cannot help his height, and there seem to be much stronger negatives to attack him on. (For the record, I'm fairly tall).
As an example: to me, Starmer appears utterly gormless in many photos, as if he's just been surprised by the sun rising in the morning. But he can't really help it.
Totally agree. If its wrong to mock skin colour, hair colour etc, then mocking height is wrong too.
It says more about the mockers tbh.
Is it just me, or does anyone else on hearing someone banging on about someone else being bald, start looking at the complainers own hairline?
"Pumping water out of the ground for drinking and farming redistributed such a large mass that the Earth’s tilt moved by 31.5 inches to the east, toward Iceland, between 1993 and 2010."
'toward Iceland'? What the hell does that mean - is Iceland defined as the East Pole or something? I haven't looked up the paper (which sounds interesting) but I suspect this must be Telegraphese! I mean, there's the whole issue with 'tilting to the East' where east and west are only defined on the rotating body and depend even there on point of reference, but the Iceland thing is something else. Surely 'the axis has moved away from the poles' (while itselft also problematic as that only refers to where the axis crosses the surface) would be simple enough and better?
I'd question this somewhat - how on earth can such a degree of accuracy be determined? Thats less than a yard.
Physics, dear boy. Anyway, might not have been 'on earth', could have used space based measurements
Given it's in the Telegraph, I assume its somehow related to gender identity.
"Pumping water out of the ground for drinking and farming redistributed such a large mass that the Earth’s tilt moved by 31.5 inches to the east, toward Iceland, between 1993 and 2010."
'toward Iceland'? What the hell does that mean - is Iceland defined as the East Pole or something? I haven't looked up the paper (which sounds interesting) but I suspect this must be Telegraphese! I mean, there's the whole issue with 'tilting to the East' where east and west are only defined on the rotating body and depend even there on point of reference, but the Iceland thing is something else. Surely 'the axis has moved away from the poles' (while itselft also problematic as that only refers to where the axis crosses the surface) would be simple enough and better?
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
Although it's not a guarantee of quality. Why, some people with excellent a-levels and a Russell Group degree can't even spell 'hire.'
What puzzles me is how it is that some people with good degrees from fine universities can turn out to be utterly stupid.
My own view: we are all utterly stupid *in some things*. The key thing is for us to realise this, and not to expose that stupidity to everyone else. A task I frequently fail to achieve...
Yes, that makes sense. I'm confident I know what I'm talking about, when it comes to law or military history.
But, I'd be a fool to advise someone how to install a boiler, or rewire an office.
Some people think skills are transferable.
Take Jonathan Sumption.
Excellent jurist but terrible on epidemiology.
Everything he said about the pandemic was 100% right. Lockdowns were a mistake, apart from the first one.
The ghosts of all those people who died as a result of Johnson's late lockdowns in September and December 2020 say hello.
I am deeply sad for those who died and those who lost friends and family. But the cause of death was covid, not Johnson. Decisions were taken with the knowledge at the time. With hindsight it is clear that we should have locked down in the autumn of 2020 with the certain knowledge of the vaccines coming in jan 2021. We did not have that knowledge.
On this forum we have some who claim we shouldn't have locked down at all, and some at the time who called for lockdown incessantly. It was always a judgement call, balancing the economy against health.
I don't believe we did that differently to other compariter nations, especially after the poor state of the NHS going into the pandemic is taken account of. That can be firmly laid at the door of the Tories.
Johnson fluffed the timing of the lockdowns. That was his decision.
Anyone who three years after the event, claim lockdowns were an error, are either heartless or foolish.
I await the inquiry for a fuller investigation of this, but I stick to my point about judging by what was known at the time. Without vaccines what was the future? At some point people would end up exposed. The herd immunity plan was based on a slow progression through the population that didn't overwhelm the NHS. The data coming in said that wasn't going to prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths, so lockdowns were implimented. How do you emerge from lockdown if the virus still exists and is capable of exponential growth?
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
Although it's not a guarantee of quality. Why, some people with excellent a-levels and a Russell Group degree can't even spell 'hire.'
What puzzles me is how it is that some people with good degrees from fine universities can turn out to be utterly stupid.
My own view: we are all utterly stupid *in some things*. The key thing is for us to realise this, and not to expose that stupidity to everyone else. A task I frequently fail to achieve...
Yes, that makes sense. I'm confident I know what I'm talking about, when it comes to law or military history.
But, I'd be a fool to advise someone how to install a boiler, or rewire an office.
And I fear that politicians are often asked questions that they could not really be expected to know answers to, and then get accused of dissembling when they say they don't know, or stumble out a non-answer. If a question is designed to be a trap, the answer should be ignored.
Questions like "what is your favourite biscuit?", "which football team do you support?" and "how much is a loaf of bread?"
I would get crucified if I truthfully answered: "which football team do you support?" My answer would be "None. I think football is a corrupt sport from top to bottom."
And my answer to "how much is a loaf of bread?" would be: I'm lucky enough not to need to care much.
I wouldn't make a good politician...
IIRC David Cameron, as LotO and PM, got a weekly briefing from Andy Coulson that contained, among other things, a list of prices for everyday items journalists ask of politicians - bread, milk, petrol etc. also anything that was attracting tabloid coverage that the broadsheets didn’t cover.
I wouldn't have a clue on any of those by several 100 percent. I would be crucified. One of many reasons I have never gone into frontline politics.
Or frontline supermarkets.
Guilty as charged. Ditto with petrol stations (my wife fills up when she does the supermarket shop).
I can feel flack coming my way.
You are lucky that our Prime Minister found time to make an instructional video on how to fill up a car with petrol and pay for stuff in a shop.
Very good.
Just to make clear I am not some sort of chauvinist. She actually enjoys doing it so I am not going to argue. When I was running my business from home and she was out working the roles were very much reversed and I was more of a house husband.
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
I don't know much about NI, but the issue about nationalisation of utilities is that if voters think they are badly run (overpricing, sewage, power cuts, whatever) and attach great importance to it, they can vote out the Government responsible. Nationalisation is by no means a guarantee of good service, but you know whom to blame for poor service and can influence choices of priority by the usual means (writing to MPs etc.). If I want to influence how Thames Water is run, I wouldn't know where to start.
The counter-argument that competition works wonders is clearly true for something like breakfast cereals where competition provides real choice (who needs an official British Rice Krispies?) but nearly always false for natural monopolies (utilities, trains).
TBF to the Republic, it isn't so long since water was free iirc.
That's correct.
My water in Ireland is still free. I have a 30ft well and my own sewage and wood supply. If I had solar panels/wind turbine/battery and a potato patch and some chickens I would be totally independent. It's doable.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
Although it's not a guarantee of quality. Why, some people with excellent a-levels and a Russell Group degree can't even spell 'hire.'
What puzzles me is how it is that some people with good degrees from fine universities can turn out to be utterly stupid.
My own view: we are all utterly stupid *in some things*. The key thing is for us to realise this, and not to expose that stupidity to everyone else. A task I frequently fail to achieve...
Yes, that makes sense. I'm confident I know what I'm talking about, when it comes to law or military history.
But, I'd be a fool to advise someone how to install a boiler, or rewire an office.
Some people think skills are transferable.
Take Jonathan Sumption.
Excellent jurist but terrible on epidemiology.
Everything he said about the pandemic was 100% right. Lockdowns were a mistake, apart from the first one.
The ghosts of all those people who died as a result of Johnson's late lockdowns in September and December 2020 say hello.
There should never have been a lockdown, let alone it being late.
With 20/20 hindsight you may have an alternative, but unless you were of the opinion "let it rip", at the time I can't see many other options were on the table.
No, at the time I mistakenly supported lockdown.
I was wrong to do so.
I'm willing to admit my mistakes, when I make them. That was an egregious one.
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
I don't know much about NI, but the issue about nationalisation of utilities is that if voters think they are badly run (overpricing, sewage, power cuts, whatever) and attach great importance to it, they can vote out the Government responsible. Nationalisation is by no means a guarantee of good service, but you know whom to blame for poor service and can influence choices of priority by the usual means (writing to MPs etc.). If I want to influence how Thames Water is run, I wouldn't know where to start.
The counter-argument that competition works wonders is clearly true for something like breakfast cereals where competition provides real choice (who needs an official British Rice Krispies?) but nearly always false for natural monopolies (utilities, trains).
TBF to the Republic, it isn't so long since water was free iirc.
That's correct.
My water in Ireland is still free. I have a 30ft well and my own sewage and wood supply. If I had solar panels/wind turbine/battery and a potato patch and some chickens I would be totally independent. It's doable.
A relative had 'free' water like that, from a borehole. Then a dual carriageway was built near her property, and the borehole dried up. Besides, AIUI here in England it's becoming increasingly hard to be off-the-grid wrt water, as they do checks for water quality.
For those seeking a change from cricket, and to be fair, this is not likely to be the change most are seeking, the Tour de France route this year looks tailored for high drama throughout.
Anyway the interesting story this morning is Farage’s bank accounts being closed down…although much mystery surrounds his claims.
He's clearly failing his Bank's KYC tests... Which is hardly surprising as I think he triggers about 3 different red flags (political profile, money from no obvious source, previous Russian connections)
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
Although it's not a guarantee of quality. Why, some people with excellent a-levels and a Russell Group degree can't even spell 'hire.'
What puzzles me is how it is that some people with good degrees from fine universities can turn out to be utterly stupid.
My own view: we are all utterly stupid *in some things*. The key thing is for us to realise this, and not to expose that stupidity to everyone else. A task I frequently fail to achieve...
Yes, that makes sense. I'm confident I know what I'm talking about, when it comes to law or military history.
But, I'd be a fool to advise someone how to install a boiler, or rewire an office.
Some people think skills are transferable.
Take Jonathan Sumption.
Excellent jurist but terrible on epidemiology.
Everything he said about the pandemic was 100% right. Lockdowns were a mistake, apart from the first one.
The ghosts of all those people who died as a result of Johnson's late lockdowns in September and December 2020 say hello.
There should never have been a lockdown, let alone it being late.
With 20/20 hindsight you may have an alternative, but unless you were of the opinion "let it rip", at the time I can't see many other options were on the table.
No, at the time I mistakenly supported lockdown.
I was wrong to do so.
I'm willing to admit my mistakes, when I make them. That was an egregious one.
With the knowledge you had available at the time, you were correct.
Anyway the interesting story this morning is Farage’s bank accounts being closed down…although much mystery surrounds his claims.
He's clearly failing his Bank's KYC tests... Which is hardly surprising as I think he triggers about 3 different red flags (political profile, money from no obvious source, previous Russian connections)
Based on what he’s saying could be a CIFAS marker or two.
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
I don't know much about NI, but the issue about nationalisation of utilities is that if voters think they are badly run (overpricing, sewage, power cuts, whatever) and attach great importance to it, they can vote out the Government responsible. Nationalisation is by no means a guarantee of good service, but you know whom to blame for poor service and can influence choices of priority by the usual means (writing to MPs etc.). If I want to influence how Thames Water is run, I wouldn't know where to start.
The counter-argument that competition works wonders is clearly true for something like breakfast cereals where competition provides real choice (who needs an official British Rice Krispies?) but nearly always false for natural monopolies (utilities, trains).
TBF to the Republic, it isn't so long since water was free iirc.
That's correct.
My water in Ireland is still free. I have a 30ft well and my own sewage and wood supply. If I had solar panels/wind turbine/battery and a potato patch and some chickens I would be totally independent. It's doable.
A relative had 'free' water like that, from a borehole. Then a dual carriageway was built near her property, and the borehole dried up. Besides, AIUI here in England it's becoming increasingly hard to be off-the-grid wrt water, as they do checks for water quality.
I filter the water and zap it with an ultraviolet light and soften it with a salt exchange. I have a certificate of purity. It is a delight to drink.
I should bottle it and bring cases back to Barnes in competition with Thames Water.
"Pumping water out of the ground for drinking and farming redistributed such a large mass that the Earth’s tilt moved by 31.5 inches to the east, toward Iceland, between 1993 and 2010."
'toward Iceland'? What the hell does that mean - is Iceland defined as the East Pole or something? I haven't looked up the paper (which sounds interesting) but I suspect this must be Telegraphese! I mean, there's the whole issue with 'tilting to the East' where east and west are only defined on the rotating body and depend even there on point of reference, but the Iceland thing is something else. Surely 'the axis has moved away from the poles' (while itselft also problematic as that only refers to where the axis crosses the surface) would be simple enough and better?
We have lines of longitude, do we not?
Tipping towards Iceland suggests to me that it’s an American or Canadian paper.
Farage - though an obviously controversial character hasn't iirc been charged or convicted with/of anything. Perhaps he'll have to go all the way to the ECHR.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
Although it's not a guarantee of quality. Why, some people with excellent a-levels and a Russell Group degree can't even spell 'hire.'
What puzzles me is how it is that some people with good degrees from fine universities can turn out to be utterly stupid.
My own view: we are all utterly stupid *in some things*. The key thing is for us to realise this, and not to expose that stupidity to everyone else. A task I frequently fail to achieve...
Yes, that makes sense. I'm confident I know what I'm talking about, when it comes to law or military history.
But, I'd be a fool to advise someone how to install a boiler, or rewire an office.
Some people think skills are transferable.
Take Jonathan Sumption.
Excellent jurist but terrible on epidemiology.
Everything he said about the pandemic was 100% right. Lockdowns were a mistake, apart from the first one.
The ghosts of all those people who died as a result of Johnson's late lockdowns in September and December 2020 say hello.
I am deeply sad for those who died and those who lost friends and family. But the cause of death was covid, not Johnson. Decisions were taken with the knowledge at the time. With hindsight it is clear that we should have locked down in the autumn of 2020 with the certain knowledge of the vaccines coming in jan 2021. We did not have that knowledge.
On this forum we have some who claim we shouldn't have locked down at all, and some at the time who called for lockdown incessantly. It was always a judgement call, balancing the economy against health.
I don't believe we did that differently to other compariter nations, especially after the poor state of the NHS going into the pandemic is taken account of. That can be firmly laid at the door of the Tories.
Johnson fluffed the timing of the lockdowns. That was his decision.
Anyone who three years after the event, claim lockdowns were an error, are either heartless or foolish.
I await the inquiry for a fuller investigation of this, but I stick to my point about judging by what was known at the time. Without vaccines what was the future? At some point people would end up exposed. The herd immunity plan was based on a slow progression through the population that didn't overwhelm the NHS. The data coming in said that wasn't going to prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths, so lockdowns were implimented. How do you emerge from lockdown if the virus still exists and is capable of exponential growth?
Though by the autumn of 2020 the vaccine data was looking very promising, just a matter of production and logistics, so there was a way out.
The vaccine phase 1 and 2 studies were out by August 2020 showing promise, and the phase 3 studies on Pfizer and Moderna in Nov 2020 showing definite effectiveness.
How many people being involuntarily ‘de-banked’, is an acceptable number to deal with the perceived problem?
Surely the focus should be on problematic transactions, rather than problematic people? With obvious exceptions, such as foreign nationals subject to sanctions.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
I work at a top 100 law firm with a 2.2 and no A* grades at A-Level.
"Pumping water out of the ground for drinking and farming redistributed such a large mass that the Earth’s tilt moved by 31.5 inches to the east, toward Iceland, between 1993 and 2010."
'toward Iceland'? What the hell does that mean - is Iceland defined as the East Pole or something? I haven't looked up the paper (which sounds interesting) but I suspect this must be Telegraphese! I mean, there's the whole issue with 'tilting to the East' where east and west are only defined on the rotating body and depend even there on point of reference, but the Iceland thing is something else. Surely 'the axis has moved away from the poles' (while itselft also problematic as that only refers to where the axis crosses the surface) would be simple enough and better?
We have lines of longitude, do we not?
Tipping towards Iceland suggests to me that it’s an American or Canadian paper.
Russia has detained Wagner’s best friend in the armed forces, Sergei Surkovikin, as Putin looks for scapegoats in the security forces after the failed coup.
yeah I don't think it's funny. Asian bloke, short Asian bloke. Yes hugely privileged, wykehamist, etc. But a misstep for PB to keep thinking it's funny.
Though as fees have been frozen for some years and inflation has had its effect, the real value of student fees is 70% of what it was in those years. Domestic undergraduates are now a financial liability.
Increasingly our universities are financed by extras of "student experience" , "Starbucks University" as an academic friend of at a Russell Group puts it. That and Chinese students on business courses paid for by rich 241 families.
I think you can make (endless) fun of something that someone can change (such as their gender - kidding. No I'm not) but not something that cannot. Why should people laugh along with the "in crowd" because that is the very definition of bullying.
For those seeking a change from cricket, and to be fair, this is not likely to be the change most are seeking, the Tour de France route this year looks tailored for high drama throughout.
yeah I don't think it's funny. Asian bloke, short Asian bloke. Yes hugely privileged, wykehamist, etc. But a misstep for PB to keep thinking it's funny.
Technically, 5ft6 is not short. I think it starts around Al Pacino at 5ft4. Yes, he is that short
yeah I don't think it's funny. Asian bloke, short Asian bloke. Yes hugely privileged, wykehamist, etc. But a misstep for PB to keep thinking it's funny.
yeah I don't think it's funny. Asian bloke, short Asian bloke. Yes hugely privileged, wykehamist, etc. But a misstep for PB to keep thinking it's funny.
Technically, 5ft6 is not short. I think it starts around Al Pacino at 5ft4. Yes, he is that short
Sunak is not just small in height, but in perfect proportion, and usually well dressed. I wouldn't mock him for that.
It's his puppy dog enthusiasm and patronising manner that makes me think of him as head boy rather than his size.
How many people being involuntarily ‘de-banked’, is an acceptable number to deal with the perceived problem?
Surely the focus should be on problematic transactions, rather than problematic people? With obvious exceptions, such as foreign nationals subject to sanctions.
For those seeking a change from cricket, and to be fair, this is not likely to be the change most are seeking, the Tour de France route this year looks tailored for high drama throughout.
Kind of fed up with final-weekend ITTs in the grand tours, to be honest. You can have days of exciting racing in the mountains, riders striving for every second in moments of high drama (or, alternatively, Primoz Roglic attacking 200m from the finish, take your pick), and then it all counts for nothing because there's a Saturday time trial in which the usual suspects win.
Planche des Belle Filles was epic, though.
I quite like ITTs (or TTTs) in the first week to randomise the GC a bit.
Anyway the interesting story this morning is Farage’s bank accounts being closed down…although much mystery surrounds his claims.
He's clearly failing his Bank's KYC tests... Which is hardly surprising as I think he triggers about 3 different red flags (political profile, money from no obvious source, previous Russian connections)
Based on what he’s saying could be a CIFAS marker or two.
Yep - FWIW my last week has been spent in conversations that go - we want a fraud marker here - um, you are aware this is potentially a customer facing screen - are you really sure?
Russia has detained Wagner’s best friend in the armed forces, Sergei Surkovikin, as Putin looks for scapegoats in the security forces after the failed coup.
Allegedly he was 'persuaded' to make the statement urging Prigozhin not to carry on. Fair tough nut, so one can imagine the persuasion.
Surkovikin has an interesting history. He was involved in the 1991 coup against Yeltsin, and his unit killed several protestors. His reward was a promotion.
What are we doing here? Laughing at how short Rishi is?
It's never not funny.
You do have more than a little of the schoolground bully about you.
However, it is funny. Unfortunately
He looks like a politician who has been brilliantly miniaturised by Japanese consumer technology
We are into tucks-his-shirt-into-his-underpants country, sadly. That photo puts me in mind of the Andrew/Giuffre one: how in the name of God could he be stupid enough to let it be taken? He is spending a fortune on voice-proletarianising lessons, and then he stands next to someone 6'9". And why don't his clothes fit? His coat is too small all round (and not because he has got fatter, it never did).
The thing about dealing with heightism, is that as I've mentioned many times in the past, too many people have an interest in it.
Both taller and average height men tend to enjoy making fun of smaller men just for their height, as it boosts their own ego, in turn, and many but not all women tend to find taller men more attractive. Hence the prejudice continues, as one of the last acceptable, and rarely challenged ones. HIGNIFY had a picture of him wearing giant shoes, on their last episode, for ionstance.
How many people being involuntarily ‘de-banked’, is an acceptable number to deal with the perceived problem?
Surely the focus should be on problematic transactions, rather than problematic people? With obvious exceptions, such as foreign nationals subject to sanctions.
PEPs and sanctions are a category of risk that precedes risky transactions. In some cases it's internal risk appetite of the bank, in other cases it's regulatory. There are other risk factors that banks will look at, like shared addresses, known familial, business, and personal relationships between other high-risk entities.
I have no knowledge of the specifics of this case, these are only general statements.
Except a CIFAS marker isn’t always triggered by a bank.
It can be as innocent as applying for a mobile phone contract and the network slapping on a marker because they incorrectly suspect fraud.
For those seeking a change from cricket, and to be fair, this is not likely to be the change most are seeking, the Tour de France route this year looks tailored for high drama throughout.
Kind of fed up with final-weekend ITTs in the grand tours, to be honest. You can have days of exciting racing in the mountains, riders striving for every second in moments of high drama (or, alternatively, Primoz Roglic attacking 200m from the finish, take your pick), and then it all counts for nothing because there's a Saturday time trial in which the usual suspects win.
Planche des Belle Filles was epic, though.
I quite like ITTs (or TTTs) in the first week to randomise the GC a bit.
Can't say Roglic didn't deserve his Giro win with his mechanical issue on the TT though.
Russia has detained Wagner’s best friend in the armed forces, Sergei Surkovikin, as Putin looks for scapegoats in the security forces after the failed coup.
Allegedly he was 'persuaded' to make the statement urging Prigozhin not to carry on. Fair tough nut, so one can imagine the persuasion.
Surkovikin has an interesting history. He was involved in the 1991 coup against Yeltsin, and his unit killed several protestors. His reward was a promotion.
The thing about dealing with heightism, is that as I've mentioned many times in the past, too many people have an interest in it.
Both taller and average height men tend to enjoy making fun of smaller men just for their height, as it boosts their own ego in turn, and many - but not all - women tend to find taller men more attractive. Hence the prejudice continues, as one of the last acceptable, and rarely challenged ones. HIGNIFY had a picture of him wearing giant shoes, on their last episode, for ionstance.
It's only a couple of 100k to have your legs broken and a 4" extension patched in. Very popular apparently.
Russia has detained Wagner’s best friend in the armed forces, Sergei Surkovikin, as Putin looks for scapegoats in the security forces after the failed coup.
Allegedly he was 'persuaded' to make the statement urging Prigozhin not to carry on. Fair tough nut, so one can imagine the persuasion.
Surkovikin has an interesting history. He was involved in the 1991 coup against Yeltsin, and his unit killed several protestors. His reward was a promotion.
Anyway the interesting story this morning is Farage’s bank accounts being closed down…although much mystery surrounds his claims.
He's clearly failing his Bank's KYC tests... Which is hardly surprising as I think he triggers about 3 different red flags (political profile, money from no obvious source, previous Russian connections)
Based on what he’s saying could be a CIFAS marker or two.
Yep - FWIW my last week has been spent in conversations that go - we want a fraud marker here - um, you are aware this is potentially a customer facing screen - are you really sure?
"Pumping water out of the ground for drinking and farming redistributed such a large mass that the Earth’s tilt moved by 31.5 inches to the east, toward Iceland, between 1993 and 2010."
'toward Iceland'? What the hell does that mean - is Iceland defined as the East Pole or something? I haven't looked up the paper (which sounds interesting) but I suspect this must be Telegraphese! I mean, there's the whole issue with 'tilting to the East' where east and west are only defined on the rotating body and depend even there on point of reference, but the Iceland thing is something else. Surely 'the axis has moved away from the poles' (while itselft also problematic as that only refers to where the axis crosses the surface) would be simple enough and better?
We have lines of longitude, do we not?
We do, but these are not defined at the true poles, which are where the axis of rotation meets the surface (which, of course, also means my suggested alternative wording is flawed, but still better understood, I think). You can't go East from the (true) pole (or West, or North) only South.
Presumably it works if you take a reference 'pole', from which the axis of rotation is already removed and then note that the axis of rotation then increases longitude. Iceland is still a really weird reference, given how far south it is - the line towards Iceland is going to be much more South than East or West.
Good. Members of the House should be treated in the same way as Officers of the Court. If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" because I didn't like how it had treated one of my clients I could expect to be suspended from practice, at least.
If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" that would be free speech.
Whether you like what someone has to say or not, people should have a right to say it, that especially entails to MPs.
You can't bring the body that you work in into disrepute.
You are not an Officer of the Court so you can describe the KBD as you wish, unlike me, who would be up before the SRA or the SDT faster than you could blink if I did so on, say, GB News.
Neither are you a Member of Parliament, so you can describe any of its committees as you wish, in the Mail or anywhere else.
I'm sure, however, if you publicly described an internal disciplinary tribunal at your workplace (unless you own and run it) as being a Kangaroo Court you would face severe consequences.
MPs do not work for Parliament, they work for their constituents. It is up to their constituents to decide if they're doing a good job or not.
A majority of MPs vetting and kicking out a minority of MPs who criticise them is not the hallmark of a democracy, it is what happens in countries like Russia, Iran or Chinese Hong Kong.
I deliberately said work "in". I don't work for the courts either. Neither do Premier League managers work for the Premier League or, specifically, their referees.
As a member of a body you have to abide by its rules. If an MP insists on, for example, standing up in the chamber and repeatedly calling the Speaker a wanker Parliament should not have to wait up to five years to kick him out. This behaviour was not much short of that.
The thing about dealing with heightism, is that as I've mentioned many times in the past, too many people have an interest in it.
Both taller and average height men tend to enjoy making fun of smaller men just for their height, as it boosts their own ego, in turn, and many but not all women tend to find taller men more attractive. Hence the prejudice continues, as one of the last acceptable, and rarely challenged ones. HIGNIFY had a picture of him wearing giant shoes, on their last episode, for ionstance.
yeah I don't think it's funny. Asian bloke, short Asian bloke. Yes hugely privileged, wykehamist, etc. But a misstep for PB to keep thinking it's funny.
Technically, 5ft6 is not short. I think it starts around Al Pacino at 5ft4. Yes, he is that short
Sunak is...usually well dressed...
Expensive suits, but I'm not sure they're well tailored: should the jacket crease like that when buttoned? Plus he's thin with not a lot of chest muscle, which is exacerbated by his habit of tucking his shirt in with a noticeable belt. However he doesn't have a gut, which helps in terms of fitness and suit wearing.
The overall problem is that he has a long, thin man's face but a boy's body. There's nothing he can realistically do about this except weight-lift. Bob Hoskins (5ft 4 and a bit) could get away with it because he had a gorilla build, but Sunak is cursed.
For those seeking a change from cricket, and to be fair, this is not likely to be the change most are seeking, the Tour de France route this year looks tailored for high drama throughout.
Kind of fed up with final-weekend ITTs in the grand tours, to be honest. You can have days of exciting racing in the mountains, riders striving for every second in moments of high drama (or, alternatively, Primoz Roglic attacking 200m from the finish, take your pick), and then it all counts for nothing because there's a Saturday time trial in which the usual suspects win.
Planche des Belle Filles was epic, though.
I quite like ITTs (or TTTs) in the first week to randomise the GC a bit.
I suppose you can see it as a spoiler but.... it seems like the smaller guys have much more of an advantage in the recent grand tours. Got to give the rouleurs a chance too!
Sure they'd still be won buy the usual suspects yet it would make them think about their conditioning if a 100km flat ITT was on the horizon.
The thing about dealing with heightism, is that as I've mentioned many times in the past, too many people have an interest in it.
Both taller and average height men tend to enjoy making fun of smaller men just for their height, as it boosts their own ego in turn, and many - but not all - women tend to find taller men more attractive. Hence the prejudice continues, as one of the last acceptable, and rarely challenged ones. HIGNIFY had a picture of him wearing giant shoes, on their last episode, for ionstance.
It's only a couple of 100k to have your legs broken and a 4" extension patched in. Very popular apparently.
It's not unusual for short rich children to be put on growth hormone before puberty, so that they can gain a few extra inches. It is quite expensive but in view of heightism in society possibly a good investment.
yeah I don't think it's funny. Asian bloke, short Asian bloke. Yes hugely privileged, wykehamist, etc. But a misstep for PB to keep thinking it's funny.
This tall Asian bloke thinks it is funny.
You are irrevocably blinded and in a rage of hatred because he is an Oxford PPE PM short. Amiright?
Russia has detained Wagner’s best friend in the armed forces, Sergei Surkovikin, as Putin looks for scapegoats in the security forces after the failed coup.
Allegedly he was 'persuaded' to make the statement urging Prigozhin not to carry on. Fair tough nut, so one can imagine the persuasion.
Surkovikin has an interesting history. He was involved in the 1991 coup against Yeltsin, and his unit killed several protestors. His reward was a promotion.
The thing about dealing with heightism, is that as I've mentioned many times in the past, too many people have an interest in it.
Both taller and average height men tend to enjoy making fun of smaller men just for their height, as it boosts their own ego, in turn, and many but not all women tend to find taller men more attractive. Hence the prejudice continues, as one of the last acceptable, and rarely challenged ones. HIGNIFY had a picture of him wearing giant shoes, on their last episode, for ionstance.
Truly tall men have no need to be heightist
The obsession is a bit odd, in my view. I'm just over 6 foot, which feels to me average or a bit above, but I've no interest in Sunak's height. The pic is striking - I thought at first Sunak had been photoshopped in at reduced size - but who cares? I'd choose Sunak over Kawczynski as my PM.
The thing about dealing with heightism, is that as I've mentioned many times in the past, too many people have an interest in it.
Both taller and average height men tend to enjoy making fun of smaller men just for their height, as it boosts their own ego, in turn, and many but not all women tend to find taller men more attractive. Hence the prejudice continues, as one of the last acceptable, and rarely challenged ones. HIGNIFY had a picture of him wearing giant shoes, on their last episode, for ionstance.
I don't like it, and I'm 6ft3
I'm also not too keen on it, and I'm just under 5ft 10.
It does make a lot of people feel better about themselves, though.
"Pumping water out of the ground for drinking and farming redistributed such a large mass that the Earth’s tilt moved by 31.5 inches to the east, toward Iceland, between 1993 and 2010."
'toward Iceland'? What the hell does that mean - is Iceland defined as the East Pole or something? I haven't looked up the paper (which sounds interesting) but I suspect this must be Telegraphese! I mean, there's the whole issue with 'tilting to the East' where east and west are only defined on the rotating body and depend even there on point of reference, but the Iceland thing is something else. Surely 'the axis has moved away from the poles' (while itselft also problematic as that only refers to where the axis crosses the surface) would be simple enough and better?
I'd question this somewhat - how on earth can such a degree of accuracy be determined? Thats less than a yard.
I haven't read any of the papers, but GPS is more accurate than that and the tilt of the satellite orbits won't be affected (to a first order approximation, anyway). The position of the stars and sun relative to the earth are also very accurately known.
Remember that the geographic coordinate systems we use are referenced to individual continental plates, so there is clearly enough accuracy to see the US drifting relative to European coordinates in fairly short timescales.
The weird "moved east" is I think a reference to the fact that the Earth's rotational pole moves all the time and its movement is modelled and predicted. The pole moved towards Iceland but ended up a bit east of what was expected. The discrepancy was 31.5 inches (rather than the entire change) , so the text is a bit misleading. This idea of water movement causing a tilt has been proposed as the cause of the discrepancy.
yeah I don't think it's funny. Asian bloke, short Asian bloke. Yes hugely privileged, wykehamist, etc. But a misstep for PB to keep thinking it's funny.
This tall Asian bloke thinks it is funny.
You are irrevocably blinded and in a rage of hatred because he is an Oxford PPE PM short. Amiright?
My love of David Cameron shows being Oxford PPE is no bar to my affections.
The thing about dealing with heightism, is that as I've mentioned many times in the past, too many people have an interest in it.
Both taller and average height men tend to enjoy making fun of smaller men just for their height, as it boosts their own ego, in turn, and many but not all women tend to find taller men more attractive. Hence the prejudice continues, as one of the last acceptable, and rarely challenged ones. HIGNIFY had a picture of him wearing giant shoes, on their last episode, for ionstance.
Truly tall men have no need to be heightist
The obsession is a bit odd, in my view. I'm just over 6 foot, which feels to me average or a bit above, but I've no interest in Sunak's height. The pic is striking - I thought at first Sunak had been photoshopped in at reduced size - but who cares? I'd choose Sunak over Kawczynski as my PM.
I honestly, honestly thought it was a cutout before I realised
yeah I don't think it's funny. Asian bloke, short Asian bloke. Yes hugely privileged, wykehamist, etc. But a misstep for PB to keep thinking it's funny.
Why do you mention privilege? Are you implying that this is "punching up". Because it's really not.
There will be people who say "yes but...." about it all. I don't agree obvs, and I thought I would get such objections out of the way.
yeah I don't think it's funny. Asian bloke, short Asian bloke. Yes hugely privileged, wykehamist, etc. But a misstep for PB to keep thinking it's funny.
This tall Asian bloke thinks it is funny.
You are irrevocably blinded and in a rage of hatred because he is an Oxford PPE PM short. Amiright?
My love of David Cameron shows being Oxford PPE is no bar to my affections.
Weren't we talking about exceptions and rules the other day?
The thing about dealing with heightism, is that as I've mentioned many times in the past, too many people have an interest in it.
Both taller and average height men tend to enjoy making fun of smaller men just for their height, as it boosts their own ego, in turn, and many but not all women tend to find taller men more attractive. Hence the prejudice continues, as one of the last acceptable, and rarely challenged ones. HIGNIFY had a picture of him wearing giant shoes, on their last episode, for ionstance.
Truly tall men have no need to be heightist
The obsession is a bit odd, in my view. I'm just over 6 foot, which feels to me average or a bit above, but I've no interest in Sunak's height. The pic is striking - I thought at first Sunak had been photoshopped in at reduced size - but who cares? I'd choose Sunak over Kawczynski as my PM.
I honestly, honestly thought it was a cutout before I realised
Yep. I hadn't realised Kawczynski was so tall (didn't care and still don't).
yeah I don't think it's funny. Asian bloke, short Asian bloke. Yes hugely privileged, wykehamist, etc. But a misstep for PB to keep thinking it's funny.
If anyone thinks people find that funny because of _race_, then that says something about the person who thinks that.
"Pumping water out of the ground for drinking and farming redistributed such a large mass that the Earth’s tilt moved by 31.5 inches to the east, toward Iceland, between 1993 and 2010."
'toward Iceland'? What the hell does that mean - is Iceland defined as the East Pole or something? I haven't looked up the paper (which sounds interesting) but I suspect this must be Telegraphese! I mean, there's the whole issue with 'tilting to the East' where east and west are only defined on the rotating body and depend even there on point of reference, but the Iceland thing is something else. Surely 'the axis has moved away from the poles' (while itselft also problematic as that only refers to where the axis crosses the surface) would be simple enough and better?
I'd question this somewhat - how on earth can such a degree of accuracy be determined? Thats less than a yard.
I haven't read any of the papers, but GPS is more accurate than that and the tilt of the satellite orbits won't be affected (to a first order approximation, anyway). The position of the stars and sun relative to the earth are also very accurately known.
Remember that the geographic coordinate systems we use are referenced to individual continental plates, so there is clearly enough accuracy to see the US drifting relative to European coordinates in fairly short timescales.
The weird "moved east" is I think a reference to the fact that the Earth's rotational pole moves all the time and its movement is modelled and predicted. The pole moved towards Iceland but ended up a bit east of what was expected. The discrepancy was 31.5 inches (rather than the entire change) , so the text is a bit misleading. This idea of water movement causing a tilt has been proposed as the cause of the discrepancy.
There is of course no east at the North Pole.
Your name (while of course of different origin entirely) reminded me that this is all academic anyway. The Earth, as all fools know, is flat, with turtles all the way down. All this shifting of the pole means is that the choreography of the elephants is slightly out.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
True. But in the exception to the rule, I worked with a professor (an oxbridge graduate) whose experiences of students at her alma mater/the college itself were such that she took a pretty dim view of anyone who had gone there. Still very willing to interview if good on paper, but she assumed they'd be tossers. On the interviews I was involved with, she was right.
I academia, I've seen a clear bias towards applicants who have worked with the 'right people' - e.g. "X did PhD/pot-doc under Y, must be pretty good" - but not biased towards institutions as a whole.
In postgraduate medical training we don't look at or score where they trained, so Lincoln medical school counts the same as Oxford or Imperial. In our national appointments process we are rarely appointing for our own region.
At Consultant level we are much more interested in their postgraduate experience and aptitude, so once again doesn't matter.
The national appointments system has its flaws, but the process is pretty effective at snuffing out prejudice, snobbery and patronage. Quite different to my day 3 decades ago when these were key to medical careers.
Yep. For most of our hiring it's post-PhD experience, except for the most junior roles where we care about PhD (topic/publications more than where) and, possibly, Masters. I doubt I've remembered, by interview, where anyone did their undergrad. Certainly doesn't come in to shortlisting - we normally work off a spreadsheet with the essential and desirable criteria, plus notes - there's nowhere to record undergrad degree location (or, indeed, postgrad degree location).
The thing about dealing with heightism, is that as I've mentioned many times in the past, too many people have an interest in it.
Both taller and average height men tend to enjoy making fun of smaller men just for their height, as it boosts their own ego in turn, and many - but not all - women tend to find taller men more attractive. Hence the prejudice continues, as one of the last acceptable, and rarely challenged ones. HIGNIFY had a picture of him wearing giant shoes, on their last episode, for ionstance.
It's only a couple of 100k to have your legs broken and a 4" extension patched in. Very popular apparently.
It's not unusual for short rich children to be put on growth hormone before puberty, so that they can gain a few extra inches. It is quite expensive but in view of heightism in society possibly a good investment.
See one Lionel Messi. (Well, not rich from his family but via River Plate and then Barcelona).
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
True. But in the exception to the rule, I worked with a professor (an oxbridge graduate) whose experiences of students at her alma mater/the college itself were such that she took a pretty dim view of anyone who had gone there. Still very willing to interview if good on paper, but she assumed they'd be tossers. On the interviews I was involved with, she was right.
I academia, I've seen a clear bias towards applicants who have worked with the 'right people' - e.g. "X did PhD/pot-doc under Y, must be pretty good" - but not biased towards institutions as a whole.
In postgraduate medical training we don't look at or score where they trained, so Lincoln medical school counts the same as Oxford or Imperial. In our national appointments process we are rarely appointing for our own region.
At Consultant level we are much more interested in their postgraduate experience and aptitude, so once again doesn't matter.
The national appointments system has its flaws, but the process is pretty effective at snuffing out prejudice, snobbery and patronage. Quite different to my day 3 decades ago when these were key to medical careers.
Yep. For most of our hiring it's post-PhD experience, except for the most junior roles where we care about PhD (topic/publications more than where) and, possibly, Masters. I doubt I've remembered, by interview, where anyone did their undergrad. Certainly doesn't come in to shortlisting - we normally work off a spreadsheet with the essential and desirable criteria, plus notes - there's nowhere to record undergrad degree location (or, indeed, postgrad degree location).
The logic goes GCSEs matter until you have A levels A levels matter until you've got a degree Your degree and where you did it matters up to the point that you have x years experience / a PhD After that just the PhD or experience matters and if the degree still matters then the job is probably 1 to avoid...
yeah I don't think it's funny. Asian bloke, short Asian bloke. Yes hugely privileged, wykehamist, etc. But a misstep for PB to keep thinking it's funny.
"Pumping water out of the ground for drinking and farming redistributed such a large mass that the Earth’s tilt moved by 31.5 inches to the east, toward Iceland, between 1993 and 2010."
'toward Iceland'? What the hell does that mean - is Iceland defined as the East Pole or something? I haven't looked up the paper (which sounds interesting) but I suspect this must be Telegraphese! I mean, there's the whole issue with 'tilting to the East' where east and west are only defined on the rotating body and depend even there on point of reference, but the Iceland thing is something else. Surely 'the axis has moved away from the poles' (while itselft also problematic as that only refers to where the axis crosses the surface) would be simple enough and better?
I'd question this somewhat - how on earth can such a degree of accuracy be determined? Thats less than a yard.
I haven't read any of the papers, but GPS is more accurate than that and the tilt of the satellite orbits won't be affected (to a first order approximation, anyway). The position of the stars and sun relative to the earth are also very accurately known.
Remember that the geographic coordinate systems we use are referenced to individual continental plates, so there is clearly enough accuracy to see the US drifting relative to European coordinates in fairly short timescales.
The weird "moved east" is I think a reference to the fact that the Earth's rotational pole moves all the time and its movement is modelled and predicted. The pole moved towards Iceland but ended up a bit east of what was expected. The discrepancy was 31.5 inches (rather than the entire change) , so the text is a bit misleading. This idea of water movement causing a tilt has been proposed as the cause of the discrepancy.
There is of course no east at the North Pole.
One thing that amazes me is that even the USA cannot survey itself properly. Until recently they used the 'Survey foot', which is different from the 'international foot'. The difference is only 1/100 of a foot per mile, but that can make a massive difference over a vast difference. Such as a continental country.
Incidentally, I only just discovered why the Nautical Mile is a massively brilliant thing, and far better than the standard 'mile' or the mamby-pamby metric system.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
True. But in the exception to the rule, I worked with a professor (an oxbridge graduate) whose experiences of students at her alma mater/the college itself were such that she took a pretty dim view of anyone who had gone there. Still very willing to interview if good on paper, but she assumed they'd be tossers. On the interviews I was involved with, she was right.
I academia, I've seen a clear bias towards applicants who have worked with the 'right people' - e.g. "X did PhD/pot-doc under Y, must be pretty good" - but not biased towards institutions as a whole.
In postgraduate medical training we don't look at or score where they trained, so Lincoln medical school counts the same as Oxford or Imperial. In our national appointments process we are rarely appointing for our own region.
At Consultant level we are much more interested in their postgraduate experience and aptitude, so once again doesn't matter.
The national appointments system has its flaws, but the process is pretty effective at snuffing out prejudice, snobbery and patronage. Quite different to my day 3 decades ago when these were key to medical careers.
Yep. For most of our hiring it's post-PhD experience, except for the most junior roles where we care about PhD (topic/publications more than where) and, possibly, Masters. I doubt I've remembered, by interview, where anyone did their undergrad. Certainly doesn't come in to shortlisting - we normally work off a spreadsheet with the essential and desirable criteria, plus notes - there's nowhere to record undergrad degree location (or, indeed, postgrad degree location).
Presumably there is room in the notes for the "Attended Balliol and was Pres of the Union" bit? If not, then the sky will fall in.
Comments
As an example: to me, Starmer appears utterly gormless in many photos, as if he's just been surprised by the sun rising in the morning. But he can't really help it.
I can feel flack coming my way.
On this forum we have some who claim we shouldn't have locked down at all, and some at the time who called for lockdown incessantly. It was always a judgement call, balancing the economy against health.
I don't believe we did that differently to other compariter nations, especially after the poor state of the NHS going into the pandemic is taken account of. That can be firmly laid at the door of the Tories.
Sending people home with a laptop and telling them to do the same job there, nearly never works.
The closest thing to an exception is software development, where agile is being used. Agile was carefully designed to be functional for geographically distributed teams.
It says more about the mockers tbh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDIHrX-Jp2E
That underlying cause deaths is higher than excess deaths — and I question for how long that was the case — doesn’t prove the underlying cause death count is wrong. Excess deaths are difficult to calculate and affected by multiple factors (e.g., flu-related deaths were greatly reduced by increased hand washing and social distancing). If someone on death’s door dies from COVID, the underlying cause will be given as whatever left them on death’s door. That’s the point of putting an underlying cause.
On argument two, several studies have looked at this. It is difficult to take into account all the relevant factors, but it’s clear Sumption’s claim was nonsense.
Con 11041 (41.9%) (15 wards)
Lab 8415 (31.9%) (13 wards)
Grn 3391 (12.9%) (8 wards) (Inc 1958 votes, 7.4% where Lab didn't stand)
Ind/Oth: 3529 (13.4%) (4 wards Inc 1 YP candidate)
With the 22 -> 23 swing and Labour not contesting a couple of wards, this looks game on to me.
Anyone who three years after the event, claim lockdowns were an error, are either heartless or foolish.
I fully understand there was collateral damage from lockdowns, but at the time that could not have been understood on the knowledge available at the time.
Just to make clear I am not some sort of chauvinist. She actually enjoys doing it so I am not going to argue. When I was running my business from home and she was out working the roles were very much reversed and I was more of a house husband.
My water in Ireland is still free. I have a 30ft well and my own sewage and wood supply. If I had solar panels/wind turbine/battery and a potato patch and some chickens I would be totally independent. It's doable.
I was wrong to do so.
I'm willing to admit my mistakes, when I make them. That was an egregious one.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/65843147
I should bottle it and bring cases back to Barnes in competition with Thames Water.
https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/health/2023/06/29/mp-raises-urgency-over-hospital-reorganisation-plans-with-pm-to-avoid-opponents-trashing-it/
I'm worried that he hasn't.
Perhaps he'll have to go all the way to the ECHR.
The vaccine phase 1 and 2 studies were out by August 2020 showing promise, and the phase 3 studies on Pfizer and Moderna in Nov 2020 showing definite effectiveness.
Surely the focus should be on problematic transactions, rather than problematic people? With obvious exceptions, such as foreign nationals subject to sanctions.
(Slide: author's own work)
He looks like a politician who has been brilliantly miniaturised by Japanese consumer technology
Russia has detained Wagner’s best friend in the armed forces, Sergei Surkovikin, as Putin looks for scapegoats in the security forces after the failed coup.
“We understand that there will be more people who will follow”.
https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1674378517591490562
Allegedly he was 'persuaded' to make the statement urging Prigozhin not to carry on. Fair tough nut, so one can imagine the persuasion.
C'est molto interessant, ich glaublich.
Increasingly our universities are financed by extras of "student experience" , "Starbucks University" as an academic friend of at a Russell Group puts it. That and Chinese students on business courses paid for by rich 241 families.
It's his puppy dog enthusiasm and patronising manner that makes me think of him as head boy rather than his size.
Planche des Belle Filles was epic, though.
I quite like ITTs (or TTTs) in the first week to randomise the GC a bit.
I doubt he'll get the same treatment this time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Surovikin
Doomed.
Both taller and average height men tend to enjoy making fun of smaller men just for their height, as it boosts their own ego, in turn, and many but not all women tend to find taller men more attractive. Hence the prejudice continues, as one of the last acceptable, and rarely challenged ones. HIGNIFY had a picture of him wearing giant shoes, on their last episode, for ionstance.
It can be as innocent as applying for a mobile phone contract and the network slapping on a marker because they incorrectly suspect fraud.
But he's also one of their few apparently competent generals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Surovikin#Syrian_civil_war
His deputy is also reported to have been arrested.
Hey Ho.
Presumably it works if you take a reference 'pole', from which the axis of rotation is already removed and then note that the axis of rotation then increases longitude. Iceland is still a really weird reference, given how far south it is - the line towards Iceland is going to be much more South than East or West.
As a member of a body you have to abide by its rules. If an MP insists on, for example, standing up in the chamber and repeatedly calling the Speaker a wanker Parliament should not have to wait up to five years to kick him out. This behaviour was not much short of that.
The overall problem is that he has a long, thin man's face but a boy's body. There's nothing he can realistically do about this except weight-lift. Bob Hoskins (5ft 4 and a bit) could get away with it because he had a gorilla build, but Sunak is cursed.
Sure they'd still be won buy the usual suspects yet it would make them think about their conditioning if a 100km flat ITT was on the horizon.
an Oxford PPE PMshort. Amiright?Let the orcs continue to argue with each other, and lock up those who actually know how to fight a war.
Meanwhile, a few more towns and villlages in the Donbass now have blue and yellow flags flying over them. 🇺🇦
The obsession is a bit odd, in my view. I'm just over 6 foot, which feels to me average or a bit above, but I've no interest in Sunak's height. The pic is striking - I thought at first Sunak had been photoshopped in at reduced size - but who cares? I'd choose Sunak over Kawczynski as my PM.
It does make a lot of people feel better about themselves, though.
Remember that the geographic coordinate systems we use are referenced to individual continental plates, so there is clearly enough accuracy to see the US drifting relative to European coordinates in fairly short timescales.
The weird "moved east" is I think a reference to the fact that the Earth's rotational pole moves all the time and its movement is modelled and predicted. The pole moved towards Iceland but ended up a bit east of what was expected. The discrepancy was 31.5 inches (rather than the entire change) , so the text is a bit misleading. This idea of water movement causing a tilt has been proposed as the cause of the discrepancy.
There is of course no east at the North Pole.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CuEZvKAgoLx/
GCSEs matter until you have A levels
A levels matter until you've got a degree
Your degree and where you did it matters up to the point that you have x years experience / a PhD
After that just the PhD or experience matters and if the degree still matters then the job is probably 1 to avoid...
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/geodesy/international-foot.html
Incidentally, I only just discovered why the Nautical Mile is a massively brilliant thing, and far better than the standard 'mile' or the mamby-pamby metric system.