They are not exact on location, but there is a residence custom built a few years ago that has had problems - cladding, owners in administration, unauthorised dual use as Airbnb rooms - which fits the descriptions.
Penny Mordant wants the young of this country to do national service.
The Tories have given up. Get rid.
Is it a terrible idea to ask young people to do some voluntary work or similar as part of their education and development, for instance? I haven’t interrogated the full proposals but I don’t think she’s talking about press-ganging 16 year olds into the military.
Don't sort out the problems young people are experiencing, force them to work instead. It is an insult.
Why not get the elderly to do it, they get everything else handed to them.
We force them to go to school. What is the difference?
If it’s introduced as part of a way of helping young people develop non-academic skills and helping our young people to be community minded and spirited, I’m all for it. Clearly I don’t have much faith in the current government implementing it properly, but conceptually I see positives.
How does making young people join the army help them develop in any way? It's just an excuse to get away from solving problems.
In an increasingly technical armed forces, semi-trained cannon fodder isn't particularly a productive use of training time.
Conscripts would be a net negative as they can't really contribute much in the short time they are in and take up a lot of NCO time with discipline, training and welfare. Unless we are going to go in for Basij human wave tactics which admittedly is a 2023 tory type thing to do.
Even Mordaunt knows all this. She is just chucking out shit ideas that might appeal to the over 70 C2DEs who now sit at the focal point of all tory policy formulation in anticipation of an inevitably doomed third (or is it fourth?} tilt at the tory leadership.
That's pretty much why they did away with National Service, even for brown jobs, c. 1958. More than half a century ago. Rather like the rum ration in the RN, it's incompatible with lots of high-end kit.
A long but worthwhile read from the brilliant Jennifer Williams in the FT. I went to college in Oldham so know the town well. To read so many problems at a big high school is disheartening.
The Tories have absolutely broken the ability of so many families to get by, and also broken the budgets of the schools who are left to pick up the pieces.
Christ, that is a tough read, it left me in tears. The Tories have utterly broken this country, and unforgivably they have ensured that children, and especially poor children, have borne the brunt of it. I find it hard to control my anger at them sometimes.
Is this really the country we want? The society we believe to be just? I know PB Tories and their fellow travellers excuse almost everything, but is this what we have been reduced to? For what other benefit?
If we remove the (often) justified anger, then there's four simple questions which the politicans of all sides need to ask.
1) What are we currently spending money on? 2) What could we spend more money or or less on to make the changes which people want (and what are those changes)? 3) How can we increase the money to make the gap from 1 to 2?
Anything other than that is really just details.
Given that there appears to be little appetite for tax rises (except for the idea of raising mythical billions from the top 1%), and the books are still a long way from balancing, the conversation really needs to be around the scope of government.
What does government do currently, that it could stop doing without too many adverse effects?
The obvious standout figures are £20bn on ‘Energy Security and Net Zero’, £10bn on “Science, Innovation and Technology”, and nearly £10bn on the Foreign Office. DWP also spends £8.5bn on its own admin, and HMRC £6.5bn, which suggests that reducing complexity in the tax and benefits system could lead to savings there.
In the current culture there is a problem. We are borrowing £100 bn per annum even now. So that needs to be found. But there isn't a single area of interest where there isn't pressure for government to spend more, usually much more. The media, especially the BBC give a perpetual free and unchallenged ride to all and everyone who are calling for higher expenditure on everything under the sun.
To see the size of the £100 bn deficit, if we abolished all state managed expenditure on education entirely, it still would not cover it. So bits of tinkering will make no real difference.
The philosophy that the solution is always cut, cut, cut has gotten us to where we are today.
We pay less in tax than many other developed countries that enjoy higher standards of living than us. Let’s be more like them. Well-funded public services are a worthwhile investment.
It's enlightened self interest. The biggest thing government can do for the economy is foster an educated and healthy population.
A long but worthwhile read from the brilliant Jennifer Williams in the FT. I went to college in Oldham so know the town well. To read so many problems at a big high school is disheartening.
The Tories have absolutely broken the ability of so many families to get by, and also broken the budgets of the schools who are left to pick up the pieces.
Christ, that is a tough read, it left me in tears. The Tories have utterly broken this country, and unforgivably they have ensured that children, and especially poor children, have borne the brunt of it. I find it hard to control my anger at them sometimes.
Is this really the country we want? The society we believe to be just? I know PB Tories and their fellow travellers excuse almost everything, but is this what we have been reduced to? For what other benefit?
If we remove the (often) justified anger, then there's four simple questions which the politicans of all sides need to ask.
1) What are we currently spending money on? 2) What could we spend more money or or less on to make the changes which people want (and what are those changes)? 3) How can we increase the money to make the gap from 1 to 2?
Anything other than that is really just details.
Given that there appears to be little appetite for tax rises (except for the idea of raising mythical billions from the top 1%), and the books are still a long way from balancing, the conversation really needs to be around the scope of government.
What does government do currently, that it could stop doing without too many adverse effects?
The obvious standout figures are £20bn on ‘Energy Security and Net Zero’, £10bn on “Science, Innovation and Technology”, and nearly £10bn on the Foreign Office. DWP also spends £8.5bn on its own admin, and HMRC £6.5bn, which suggests that reducing complexity in the tax and benefits system could lead to savings there.
In the current culture there is a problem. We are borrowing £100 bn per annum even now. So that needs to be found. But there isn't a single area of interest where there isn't pressure for government to spend more, usually much more. The media, especially the BBC give a perpetual free and unchallenged ride to all and everyone who are calling for higher expenditure on everything under the sun.
To see the size of the £100 bn deficit, if we abolished all state managed expenditure on education entirely, it still would not cover it. So bits of tinkering will make no real difference.
The philosophy that the solution is always cut, cut, cut has gotten us to where we are today.
We pay less in tax than many other developed countries that enjoy higher standards of living than us. Let’s be more like them. Well-funded public services are a worthwhile investment.
It's enlightened self interest. The biggest thing government can do for the economy is foster an educated and healthy population.
But to do that would put cut the profits of Big Food. Educated, healthy people don't buy industrially manufactured edible products.
A long but worthwhile read from the brilliant Jennifer Williams in the FT. I went to college in Oldham so know the town well. To read so many problems at a big high school is disheartening.
The Tories have absolutely broken the ability of so many families to get by, and also broken the budgets of the schools who are left to pick up the pieces.
Christ, that is a tough read, it left me in tears. The Tories have utterly broken this country, and unforgivably they have ensured that children, and especially poor children, have borne the brunt of it. I find it hard to control my anger at them sometimes.
Is this really the country we want? The society we believe to be just? I know PB Tories and their fellow travellers excuse almost everything, but is this what we have been reduced to? For what other benefit?
If we remove the (often) justified anger, then there's four simple questions which the politicans of all sides need to ask.
1) What are we currently spending money on? 2) What could we spend more money or or less on to make the changes which people want (and what are those changes)? 3) How can we increase the money to make the gap from 1 to 2?
Anything other than that is really just details.
Given that there appears to be little appetite for tax rises (except for the idea of raising mythical billions from the top 1%), and the books are still a long way from balancing, the conversation really needs to be around the scope of government.
What does government do currently, that it could stop doing without too many adverse effects?
The obvious standout figures are £20bn on ‘Energy Security and Net Zero’, £10bn on “Science, Innovation and Technology”, and nearly £10bn on the Foreign Office. DWP also spends £8.5bn on its own admin, and HMRC £6.5bn, which suggests that reducing complexity in the tax and benefits system could lead to savings there.
In the current culture there is a problem. We are borrowing £100 bn per annum even now. So that needs to be found. But there isn't a single area of interest where there isn't pressure for government to spend more, usually much more. The media, especially the BBC give a perpetual free and unchallenged ride to all and everyone who are calling for higher expenditure on everything under the sun.
To see the size of the £100 bn deficit, if we abolished all state managed expenditure on education entirely, it still would not cover it. So bits of tinkering will make no real difference.
The philosophy that the solution is always cut, cut, cut has gotten us to where we are today.
We pay less in tax than many other developed countries that enjoy higher standards of living than us. Let’s be more like them. Well-funded public services are a worthwhile investment.
It's enlightened self interest. The biggest thing government can do for the economy is foster an educated and healthy population.
But to do that would put cut the profits of Big Food. Educated, healthy people don't buy industrially manufactured edible products.
A long but worthwhile read from the brilliant Jennifer Williams in the FT. I went to college in Oldham so know the town well. To read so many problems at a big high school is disheartening.
The Tories have absolutely broken the ability of so many families to get by, and also broken the budgets of the schools who are left to pick up the pieces.
Christ, that is a tough read, it left me in tears. The Tories have utterly broken this country, and unforgivably they have ensured that children, and especially poor children, have borne the brunt of it. I find it hard to control my anger at them sometimes.
Is this really the country we want? The society we believe to be just? I know PB Tories and their fellow travellers excuse almost everything, but is this what we have been reduced to? For what other benefit?
If we remove the (often) justified anger, then there's four simple questions which the politicans of all sides need to ask.
1) What are we currently spending money on? 2) What could we spend more money or or less on to make the changes which people want (and what are those changes)? 3) How can we increase the money to make the gap from 1 to 2?
Anything other than that is really just details.
Given that there appears to be little appetite for tax rises (except for the idea of raising mythical billions from the top 1%), and the books are still a long way from balancing, the conversation really needs to be around the scope of government.
What does government do currently, that it could stop doing without too many adverse effects?
The obvious standout figures are £20bn on ‘Energy Security and Net Zero’, £10bn on “Science, Innovation and Technology”, and nearly £10bn on the Foreign Office. DWP also spends £8.5bn on its own admin, and HMRC £6.5bn, which suggests that reducing complexity in the tax and benefits system could lead to savings there.
In the current culture there is a problem. We are borrowing £100 bn per annum even now. So that needs to be found. But there isn't a single area of interest where there isn't pressure for government to spend more, usually much more. The media, especially the BBC give a perpetual free and unchallenged ride to all and everyone who are calling for higher expenditure on everything under the sun.
To see the size of the £100 bn deficit, if we abolished all state managed expenditure on education entirely, it still would not cover it. So bits of tinkering will make no real difference.
The philosophy that the solution is always cut, cut, cut has gotten us to where we are today.
We pay less in tax than many other developed countries that enjoy higher standards of living than us. Let’s be more like them. Well-funded public services are a worthwhile investment.
The £100 billion gap (current borrowing) is £3,300 per year from 30 million tax payers. I am totally sympathetic to the tax rise solution but it needs turning into real figures for actual people and I don't have any politically workable suggestions.
Answers on a postcard.
And BTW in overall expenditure there have been no cuts, and never have been.
Every young person will have to do 50 hours' voluntary work by the age of 19 if Labour wins the next election. Gordon Brown said a plan for compulsory community service would be included in Labour's manifesto.
It was a crap idea then, and it's a crap idea now. It's supposed to instill some sort of mythical sense of community (Ms Mordaunt enthusiastically endorsed the blueprint in an article for the Telegraph, saying it would foster the 'goodwill and community spirit, energy and imagination' of teens.) The best thing we could do for our young adults is give them some hope that they can get somewhere to live, get a job and that us oldies won't fuck everything up!
Giving young people opportunities to volunteer is a good thing. My two older children have both done voluntary work under the aegis of the brilliant DofE scheme and they've got a lot out of it as well as giving back to the community. Where I think it falls down is if young people are presented to an ageing electorate as a problem that needs fixing, and if some kind of poorly resourced mandatory scheme crowds out the excellent and worthwhile volunteering opportunities that already exist, while undermining the very concept of volunteering - that it should be voluntary. My view is that everyone of all ages should seek out volunteering opportunities, they can be very rewarding and a great way to connect with people.
Volunteering is great, but the Tory fascination wirh "National Service" has nowt to do with proper volunteering. They want it to bring discipline and a sense of patriotism. That isn't what modern young 'uns need.
I think David Lammy is quite keen on some variant of this idea... to bring a better sense of national unity (teenagers from Buxton meet teenagers from Brixton kinda thing).
Genuinely I can see positives to this if done well. Probably not cheap though.
Penny Mordant wants the young of this country to do national service.
The Tories have given up. Get rid.
Is it a terrible idea to ask young people to do some voluntary work or similar as part of their education and development, for instance? I haven’t interrogated the full proposals but I don’t think she’s talking about press-ganging 16 year olds into the military.
Don't sort out the problems young people are experiencing, force them to work instead. It is an insult.
Why not get the elderly to do it, they get everything else handed to them.
We force them to go to school. What is the difference?
If it’s introduced as part of a way of helping young people develop non-academic skills and helping our young people to be community minded and spirited, I’m all for it. Clearly I don’t have much faith in the current government implementing it properly, but conceptually I see positives.
How does making young people join the army help them develop in any way? It's just an excuse to get away from solving problems.
In an increasingly technical armed forces, semi-trained cannon fodder isn't particularly a productive use of training time.
Conscripts would be a net negative as they can't really contribute much in the short time they are in and take up a lot of NCO time with discipline, training and welfare. Unless we are going to go in for Basij human wave tactics which admittedly is a 2023 tory type thing to do.
Even Mordaunt knows all this. She is just chucking out shit ideas that might appeal to the over 70 C2DEs who now sit at the focal point of all tory policy formulation in anticipation of an inevitably doomed third (or is it fourth?} tilt at the tory leadership.
That's pretty much why they did away with National Service, even for brown jobs, c. 1958. More than half a century ago. Rather like the rum ration in the RN, it's incompatible with lots of high-end kit.
Once the MoD no longer used coal and therefore the need to paint it white, conscription was doomed.
My late uncle loved his naval national service to the point of considering a career in it, and was RNR for the rest of his working life. Mind you he enjoyed his time at Edinburgh Academy so was perhaps a glass half full type of chap.
Every young person will have to do 50 hours' voluntary work by the age of 19 if Labour wins the next election. Gordon Brown said a plan for compulsory community service would be included in Labour's manifesto.
I would challenge the concept of compulsory voluntary work.
Actually to against the reflex people have had of rejecting this automatically, personally I had to do this while I was at school.
Instead of doing A Levels I studied the International Baccalaureate (as I was an ex pat living abroad intending to return to the UK).
To get a Baccalaureate as well as your six A Level equivalent subjects you study you have to do three further compulsory elements. An Extended Essay on any subject you choose, Theory of Knowledge (which is essentially Philosophy) and 150 hours of "CAS".
CAS is not graded unlike the other two elements and is a simple Boolean, if you haven't done it, you can't get your diploma. If you have, you can. It stands for Community, Action, Service. Over the two years of your Baccalaureate you need to do 50 hours of each.
How you choose to spend 50 hours in Action, or how you choose to do 50 hours of Service, or 50 hours for the Community is entirely up to you and entirely voluntary. But you must achieve all 50 in all 3 headings in order to graduate with your Baccalaureate.
A comparable thing many people do in this country is the Duke of Edinburgh award.
I don't think these things are bad ideas. Getting young people exposed to other things and not just pure academic studies is part of a well rounded education. And doing some of it voluntarily, like doing homework at home, helps too.
Almost all of my own CAS was stuff I wanted to do anyway, but structuring it such that my hours were registered and countersigned meant I had to think about it and be organised about it. And it did prompt some extra activities, which is not a bad thing.
I think David Lammy is quite keen on some variant of this idea... to bring a better sense of national unity (teenagers from Buxton meet teenagers from Brixton kinda thing).
Genuinely I can see positives to this if done well. Probably not cheap though.
More by accident than design my Dad from Glasgow ended up in a squad with a bunch of lads from the South East of England.
Every young person will have to do 50 hours' voluntary work by the age of 19 if Labour wins the next election. Gordon Brown said a plan for compulsory community service would be included in Labour's manifesto.
It was a crap idea then, and it's a crap idea now. It's supposed to instill some sort of mythical sense of community (Ms Mordaunt enthusiastically endorsed the blueprint in an article for the Telegraph, saying it would foster the 'goodwill and community spirit, energy and imagination' of teens.) The best thing we could do for our young adults is give them some hope that they can get somewhere to live, get a job and that us oldies won't fuck everything up!
Giving young people opportunities to volunteer is a good thing. My two older children have both done voluntary work under the aegis of the brilliant DofE scheme and they've got a lot out of it as well as giving back to the community. Where I think it falls down is if young people are presented to an ageing electorate as a problem that needs fixing, and if some kind of poorly resourced mandatory scheme crowds out the excellent and worthwhile volunteering opportunities that already exist, while undermining the very concept of volunteering - that it should be voluntary. My view is that everyone of all ages should seek out volunteering opportunities, they can be very rewarding and a great way to connect with people.
Volunteering is great, but the Tory fascination wirh "National Service" has nowt to do with proper volunteering. They want it to bring discipline and a sense of patriotism. That isn't what modern young 'uns need.
I think David Lammy is quite keen on some variant of this idea... to bring a better sense of national unity (teenagers from Buxton meet teenagers from Brixton kinda thing).
Genuinely I can see positives to this if done well. Probably not cheap though.
Indeed. It doesn’t need to be a left v right thing. People bemoan the lack of community in this country. Lack of social cohesion. Limited opportunities for young people to get involved in activities to aid in personal development and make them more invested their local areas.
Clearly politicians often try to fetishise this as a harking back to national service and duty and all the rest of it as a way to appeal to certain demographics. But strip away the branding and I can really get on board with these kinds of initiatives.
I think David Lammy is quite keen on some variant of this idea... to bring a better sense of national unity (teenagers from Buxton meet teenagers from Brixton kinda thing).
Genuinely I can see positives to this if done well. Probably not cheap though.
More by accident than design my Dad from Glasgow ended up in a squad with a bunch of lads from the South East of England.
Lifelong friends...
Better than being sexually harassed by a sergeant and eating pumpkins for the King in Malta, as my FiL did for a year in 1950.
Every young person will have to do 50 hours' voluntary work by the age of 19 if Labour wins the next election. Gordon Brown said a plan for compulsory community service would be included in Labour's manifesto.
It was a crap idea then, and it's a crap idea now. It's supposed to instill some sort of mythical sense of community (Ms Mordaunt enthusiastically endorsed the blueprint in an article for the Telegraph, saying it would foster the 'goodwill and community spirit, energy and imagination' of teens.) The best thing we could do for our young adults is give them some hope that they can get somewhere to live, get a job and that us oldies won't fuck everything up!
Giving young people opportunities to volunteer is a good thing. My two older children have both done voluntary work under the aegis of the brilliant DofE scheme and they've got a lot out of it as well as giving back to the community. Where I think it falls down is if young people are presented to an ageing electorate as a problem that needs fixing, and if some kind of poorly resourced mandatory scheme crowds out the excellent and worthwhile volunteering opportunities that already exist, while undermining the very concept of volunteering - that it should be voluntary. My view is that everyone of all ages should seek out volunteering opportunities, they can be very rewarding and a great way to connect with people.
Volunteering is great, but the Tory fascination wirh "National Service" has nowt to do with proper volunteering. They want it to bring discipline and a sense of patriotism. That isn't what modern young 'uns need.
I think David Lammy is quite keen on some variant of this idea... to bring a better sense of national unity (teenagers from Buxton meet teenagers from Brixton kinda thing).
Genuinely I can see positives to this if done well. Probably not cheap though.
Indeed. The difference between this and National Service of old is that was compelling people to do something. Getting people to choose how and what they do and where need be facilitating it, as happened with my own Community Action Service is not in my view a bad thing.
If it gives young people opportunities and experiences they might not otherwise have, that can be a very good thing.
Anyone offering National Service is an absolute idiot and onto a vote loser. Young people don't want to be patronised any further, build some fucking houses.
Every young person will have to do 50 hours' voluntary work by the age of 19 if Labour wins the next election. Gordon Brown said a plan for compulsory community service would be included in Labour's manifesto.
It was a crap idea then, and it's a crap idea now. It's supposed to instill some sort of mythical sense of community (Ms Mordaunt enthusiastically endorsed the blueprint in an article for the Telegraph, saying it would foster the 'goodwill and community spirit, energy and imagination' of teens.) The best thing we could do for our young adults is give them some hope that they can get somewhere to live, get a job and that us oldies won't fuck everything up!
Giving young people opportunities to volunteer is a good thing. My two older children have both done voluntary work under the aegis of the brilliant DofE scheme and they've got a lot out of it as well as giving back to the community. Where I think it falls down is if young people are presented to an ageing electorate as a problem that needs fixing, and if some kind of poorly resourced mandatory scheme crowds out the excellent and worthwhile volunteering opportunities that already exist, while undermining the very concept of volunteering - that it should be voluntary. My view is that everyone of all ages should seek out volunteering opportunities, they can be very rewarding and a great way to connect with people.
Volunteering is great, but the Tory fascination wirh "National Service" has nowt to do with proper volunteering. They want it to bring discipline and a sense of patriotism. That isn't what modern young 'uns need.
I think David Lammy is quite keen on some variant of this idea... to bring a better sense of national unity (teenagers from Buxton meet teenagers from Brixton kinda thing).
Genuinely I can see positives to this if done well. Probably not cheap though.
Indeed. It doesn’t need to be a left v right thing. People bemoan the lack of community in this country. Lack of social cohesion. Limited opportunities for young people to get involved in activities to aid in personal development and make them more invested their local areas.
Clearly politicians often try to fetishise this as a harking back to national service and duty and all the rest of it as a way to appeal to certain demographics. But strip away the branding and I can really get on board with these kinds of initiatives.
Tory leadership hopefuls should be wary of going near anything that looks like a 'Big Society' re-launch. It was the perceived mawkishness of that idea that diminished Dave in the eyes of the Tory Right. He was living on borrowed time thereafter.
A long but worthwhile read from the brilliant Jennifer Williams in the FT. I went to college in Oldham so know the town well. To read so many problems at a big high school is disheartening.
The Tories have absolutely broken the ability of so many families to get by, and also broken the budgets of the schools who are left to pick up the pieces.
Christ, that is a tough read, it left me in tears. The Tories have utterly broken this country, and unforgivably they have ensured that children, and especially poor children, have borne the brunt of it. I find it hard to control my anger at them sometimes.
Is this really the country we want? The society we believe to be just? I know PB Tories and their fellow travellers excuse almost everything, but is this what we have been reduced to? For what other benefit?
If we remove the (often) justified anger, then there's four simple questions which the politicans of all sides need to ask.
1) What are we currently spending money on? 2) What could we spend more money or or less on to make the changes which people want (and what are those changes)? 3) How can we increase the money to make the gap from 1 to 2?
Anything other than that is really just details.
Given that there appears to be little appetite for tax rises (except for the idea of raising mythical billions from the top 1%), and the books are still a long way from balancing, the conversation really needs to be around the scope of government.
What does government do currently, that it could stop doing without too many adverse effects?
The obvious standout figures are £20bn on ‘Energy Security and Net Zero’, £10bn on “Science, Innovation and Technology”, and nearly £10bn on the Foreign Office. DWP also spends £8.5bn on its own admin, and HMRC £6.5bn, which suggests that reducing complexity in the tax and benefits system could lead to savings there.
In the current culture there is a problem. We are borrowing £100 bn per annum even now. So that needs to be found. But there isn't a single area of interest where there isn't pressure for government to spend more, usually much more. The media, especially the BBC give a perpetual free and unchallenged ride to all and everyone who are calling for higher expenditure on everything under the sun.
To see the size of the £100 bn deficit, if we abolished all state managed expenditure on education entirely, it still would not cover it. So bits of tinkering will make no real difference.
The philosophy that the solution is always cut, cut, cut has gotten us to where we are today.
We pay less in tax than many other developed countries that enjoy higher standards of living than us. Let’s be more like them. Well-funded public services are a worthwhile investment.
The £100 billion gap (current borrowing) is £3,300 per year from 30 million tax payers. I am totally sympathetic to the tax rise solution but it needs turning into real figures for actual people and I don't have any politically workable suggestions.
Answers on a postcard.
And BTW in overall expenditure there have been no cuts, and never have been.
The problem is that we are now poor, and utterly in denial. 25 years of living beyond our means has run up a massive bill, and somehow it's going to have to be paid. I'm not sure I can see how this is going to pan out, but the longer the issue is ignored, the worse it gets, and current all the major parties are doing bad impressions of ostriches...
Anyone offering National Service is an absolute idiot and onto a vote loser. Young people don't want to be patronised any further, build some fucking houses.
Don't think of it as National Service with any predetermined views on that. A different name for this should be used due to the horror of National Service in the past which is something completely different. And I'm 100% totally in favour of more house building, I've been pushing that for years.
Think of it as education, or opportunity. Is education a good thing? Is giving kids a well rounded education a good thing? Is giving kids opportunities a good thing.
For my own Communuty Action Service my school gave suggestions on things that could be done, and facilitated it for some things. Or I could pick entirely my own stuff.
Lots of kids do not get enough opportunities in life. Facilitating them having more opportunities is not a bad thing.
This should be something offered for young people, to help them, and to let them find their own path. Not something done to young people, like the abhorrent National Service of old
Anyone offering National Service is an absolute idiot and onto a vote loser. Young people don't want to be patronised any further, build some fucking houses.
Don't think of it as National Service with any predetermined views on that. A different name for this should be used due to the horror of National Service in the past which is something completely different. And I'm 100% totally in favour of more house building, I've been pushing that for years.
Think of it as education, or opportunity. Is education a good thing? Is giving kids a well rounded education a good thing? Is giving kids opportunities a good thing.
For my own Communuty Action Service my school gave suggestions on things that could be done, and facilitated it for some things. Or I could pick entirely my own stuff.
Lots of kids do not get enough opportunities in life. Facilitating them having more opportunities is not a bad thing.
This should be something offered for young people, to help them, and to let them find their own path. Not something done to young people, like the abhorrent National Service of old
If I had any confidence the Tories were not just doing this to distract I would consider it. But after 13 years of failure this is more not doing anything to actually help young people.
As I keep pointing out, Government policy - actual policy - is to import between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people a year to increase growth and repress wages.
As migrants tend to be younger, the percentage of twentysomethings who are British nationals will decrease. If this cohort are conscripted, we will have a large group in the British armed forces who do not have British passports[1], and, when that group is discharged, their jobs will have been taken by the cohort of migrants that came in after them
In short this policy will create a large number of unemployed and poorer younger citizens with weapons training.
They didn't think this thru, did they...
[incidentally, has anybody noticed that we have just gotten used to incompetent and lying government like it was normal? Does anybody believe they will bring back national service or an analogue? Does anybody believe Grant Shapps will be competent? Does anybody believe they will stop the boats, or even try?]
Notes [1] This is not necessarily weird, as Irish and Empire/Commonwealth citizens already do.
Anyone offering National Service is an absolute idiot and onto a vote loser. Young people don't want to be patronised any further, build some fucking houses.
Don't think of it as National Service with any predetermined views on that. A different name for this should be used due to the horror of National Service in the past which is something completely different. And I'm 100% totally in favour of more house building, I've been pushing that for years.
Think of it as education, or opportunity. Is education a good thing? Is giving kids a well rounded education a good thing? Is giving kids opportunities a good thing.
For my own Communuty Action Service my school gave suggestions on things that could be done, and facilitated it for some things. Or I could pick entirely my own stuff.
Lots of kids do not get enough opportunities in life. Facilitating them having more opportunities is not a bad thing.
This should be something offered for young people, to help them, and to let them find their own path. Not something done to young people, like the abhorrent National Service of old
If I had any confidence the Tories were not just doing this to distract I would consider it. But after 13 years of failure this is more not doing anything to actually help young people.
People like Lammy who have been pushing this for years are not doing so because of wanting to distract from Tory failure, or because they're Tories.
Take the Party Politics out of it. Is giving opportunities to young people a good thing? To me, it absolutely is. I'm grateful for the opportunities I had.
If it's done though, it should be done right. Not telling kids "you must do this".
The way the International Baccalaureate does it with Community Action Service is both remarkably simple and wonderful. It is something the UK can learn from.
As I keep pointing out, Government policy - actual policy - is to import between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people a year to increase growth and repress wages.
As migrants tend to be younger, the percentage of twentysomethings who are British nationals will decrease. If this cohort are conscripted, we will have a large group in the British armed forces who do not have British passports[1], and, when that group is discharged, their jobs will have been taken by the cohort of migrants that came in after them
In short this policy will create a large number of unemployed and poorer younger citizens with weapons training.
They didn't think this thru, did they...
[incidentally, has anybody noticed that we have just gotten used to incompetent and lying government like it was normal? Does anybody believe they will bring back national service or an analogue? Does anybody believe Grant Shapps will be competent? Does anybody believe they will stop the boats, or even try?]
Notes [1] This is not necessarily weird, as Irish and Empire/Commonwealth citizens already do.
The Swiss experience seems to show that weapons training makes people more responsible with weapons, not less.
As I keep pointing out, Government policy - actual policy - is to import between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people a year to increase growth and repress wages.
As migrants tend to be younger, the percentage of twentysomethings who are British nationals will decrease. If this cohort are conscripted, we will have a large group in the British armed forces who do not have British passports[1], and, when that group is discharged, their jobs will have been taken by the cohort of migrants that came in after them
In short this policy will create a large number of unemployed and poorer younger citizens with weapons training.
They didn't think this thru, did they...
[incidentally, has anybody noticed that we have just gotten used to incompetent and lying government like it was normal? Does anybody believe they will bring back national service or an analogue? Does anybody believe Grant Shapps will be competent? Does anybody believe they will stop the boats, or even try?]
Notes [1] This is not necessarily weird, as Irish and Empire/Commonwealth citizens already do.
The Swiss experience seems to show that weapons training makes people more responsible with weapons, not less.
Mind you, that is country where *not* possessing a fully automatic weapon can be a crime. And mowing your lawn on a Sunday almost certainly is.
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
coughcougcoughconfounderscoughcough
From memory, there is a famous apocryphal story about differential recruitment to Harvard. It was pointed out that women found it harder to gain entry. On closer examination it was found that this bias vanished when subject was taken into account, as women weren't applying for the obscure subjects with higher acceptance rates
Two obvious points
The current cohort of female surgeons making their way thru the profession are younger than the previous (male-dominated) cohort, and it is this latter older group that do the more complex ops with higher failure rates
I don't know if this bit is true, but if female surgeons pick different specialties than male surgeons, and those specialties have different failure rates, then that may explain
As I keep pointing out, Government policy - actual policy - is to import between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people a year to increase growth and repress wages.
As migrants tend to be younger, the percentage of twentysomethings who are British nationals will decrease. If this cohort are conscripted, we will have a large group in the British armed forces who do not have British passports[1], and, when that group is discharged, their jobs will have been taken by the cohort of migrants that came in after them
In short this policy will create a large number of unemployed and poorer younger citizens with weapons training.
They didn't think this thru, did they...
[incidentally, has anybody noticed that we have just gotten used to incompetent and lying government like it was normal? Does anybody believe they will bring back national service or an analogue? Does anybody believe Grant Shapps will be competent? Does anybody believe they will stop the boats, or even try?]
Notes [1] This is not necessarily weird, as Irish and Empire/Commonwealth citizens already do.
The Swiss experience seems to show that weapons training makes people more responsible with weapons, not less.
Oh, I'm sure they'll be responsible: good storage, trigger discipline, keep their guns clean and well-oiled etc. I'm just not sure what they'll use them for
As I keep pointing out, Government policy - actual policy - is to import between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people a year to increase growth and repress wages.
As migrants tend to be younger, the percentage of twentysomethings who are British nationals will decrease. If this cohort are conscripted, we will have a large group in the British armed forces who do not have British passports[1], and, when that group is discharged, their jobs will have been taken by the cohort of migrants that came in after them
In short this policy will create a large number of unemployed and poorer younger citizens with weapons training.
They didn't think this thru, did they...
[incidentally, has anybody noticed that we have just gotten used to incompetent and lying government like it was normal? Does anybody believe they will bring back national service or an analogue? Does anybody believe Grant Shapps will be competent? Does anybody believe they will stop the boats, or even try?]
Notes [1] This is not necessarily weird, as Irish and Empire/Commonwealth citizens already do.
The Swiss experience seems to show that weapons training makes people more responsible with weapons, not less.
Oh, I'm sure they'll be responsible: good storage, trigger discipline, keep their guns clean and well-oiled etc. I'm just not sure what they'll use them for
The boys came back. Bands played and flags were flying, And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit street To cheer the soldiers who’d refrained from dying, And hear the music of returning feet. ‘Of all the thrills and ardours War has brought, This moment is the finest.’ (So they thought.)
Snapping their bayonets on to charge the mob, Grim Fusiliers broke ranks with glint of steel, At last the boys had found a cushy job.
I heard the Yellow-Pressmen grunt and squeal; And with my trusty bombers turned and went To clear those Junkers out of Parliament.
Anyone offering National Service is an absolute idiot and onto a vote loser. Young people don't want to be patronised any further, build some fucking houses.
Building some fucking houses may also help with the incel problem afflicting some of the youth.
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
The paper suggests lady sawbones are slower and more methodical, which is interesting as didn't we used to be told that faster surgery (shorter time under anaesthetic) was better? And possibly before that, that more painstaking surgeons were better?
People like Lammy who have been pushing this for years are not doing so because of wanting to distract from Tory failure, or because they're Tories.
Take the Party Politics out of it. Is giving opportunities to young people a good thing? To me, it absolutely is. I'm grateful for the opportunities I had.
If it's done though, it should be done right. Not telling kids "you must do this".
The way the International Baccalaureate does it with Community Action Service is both remarkably simple and wonderful. It is something the UK can learn from.
I think Lammy absolutely would want to distract from any failure to help young people, he's a politician.
As I keep pointing out, Government policy - actual policy - is to import between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people a year to increase growth and repress wages.
As migrants tend to be younger, the percentage of twentysomethings who are British nationals will decrease. If this cohort are conscripted, we will have a large group in the British armed forces who do not have British passports[1], and, when that group is discharged, their jobs will have been taken by the cohort of migrants that came in after them
In short this policy will create a large number of unemployed and poorer younger citizens with weapons training.
They didn't think this thru, did they...
[incidentally, has anybody noticed that we have just gotten used to incompetent and lying government like it was normal? Does anybody believe they will bring back national service or an analogue? Does anybody believe Grant Shapps will be competent? Does anybody believe they will stop the boats, or even try?]
Notes [1] This is not necessarily weird, as Irish and Empire/Commonwealth citizens already do.
The Swiss experience seems to show that weapons training makes people more responsible with weapons, not less.
Oh, I'm sure they'll be responsible: good storage, trigger discipline, keep their guns clean and well-oiled etc. I'm just not sure what they'll use them for
A long but worthwhile read from the brilliant Jennifer Williams in the FT. I went to college in Oldham so know the town well. To read so many problems at a big high school is disheartening.
The Tories have absolutely broken the ability of so many families to get by, and also broken the budgets of the schools who are left to pick up the pieces.
Christ, that is a tough read, it left me in tears. The Tories have utterly broken this country, and unforgivably they have ensured that children, and especially poor children, have borne the brunt of it. I find it hard to control my anger at them sometimes.
Is this really the country we want? The society we believe to be just? I know PB Tories and their fellow travellers excuse almost everything, but is this what we have been reduced to? For what other benefit?
If we remove the (often) justified anger, then there's four simple questions which the politicans of all sides need to ask.
1) What are we currently spending money on? 2) What could we spend more money or or less on to make the changes which people want (and what are those changes)? 3) How can we increase the money to make the gap from 1 to 2?
Anything other than that is really just details.
Given that there appears to be little appetite for tax rises (except for the idea of raising mythical billions from the top 1%), and the books are still a long way from balancing, the conversation really needs to be around the scope of government.
What does government do currently, that it could stop doing without too many adverse effects?
The obvious standout figures are £20bn on ‘Energy Security and Net Zero’, £10bn on “Science, Innovation and Technology”, and nearly £10bn on the Foreign Office. DWP also spends £8.5bn on its own admin, and HMRC £6.5bn, which suggests that reducing complexity in the tax and benefits system could lead to savings there.
Extend NI to all income. Sorted.
Yes, I’d merge employee NI into income tax, which both simplifies the system and brings unearned income into scope. You could make it revenue-positive while cutting the ‘basic rate’ for most full-time employees and raising the basic rate threshold.
The legislation would be complex though, needing to calculate future entitlements from income tax rather than NI contributions, which is why it’s been in the ‘too-difficult’ box for so long.
I really don't get the difficulty with future entitlement calculation. E.g. qualifying years = qualifying NI years pre-2025 + qualifying ICT years post 2024. If you're paying any ICT in a year you're earning as much as the NI qualification.
We are already able to add in National Insurance credits for those who receive UC, JSA, ESA, Child Benefit or Carer’s Allowance.
The bigger challenge is the shock to those who have been used to preferential tax rates on unearned income (Malcom will burst a blood vessel). That shock* can be overcome by making the change gradually over several years - reduce employee's NI by 2% and increase ICT basic rate by 2% each year for 6 years.
(*Though I suspect nothing will mitigate Malc's apoplexy.)
The idea of persuading young people to engage in community activities to make them more fully-rounded is hardly new. Indeed, there have been nearly as many such efforts over the last 40 years as there have been to improve the status of vocational education and training; and they have been similarly half-baked and unsuccessful.
It'll be interesting to see a ULEZ poll in say 3 or 6 months time as ULEZ! becomes ULEZzzzzz
People are now realising daily that, remarkably, their Teslas are compliant (as are 80-90% of other cars in London), and that the Tories are full of shit.
Tbf, most people realised the latter point several years ago.
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
coughcougcoughconfounderscoughcough
From memory, there is a famous apocryphal story about differential recruitment to Harvard. It was pointed out that women found it harder to gain entry. On closer examination it was found that this bias vanished when subject was taken into account, as women weren't applying for the obscure subjects with higher acceptance rates
Two obvious points
The current cohort of female surgeons making their way thru the profession are younger than the previous (male-dominated) cohort, and it is this latter older group that do the more complex ops with higher failure rates
I don't know if this bit is true, but if female surgeons pick different specialties than male surgeons, and those specialties have different failure rates, then that may explain
No, it was adjusted for patient and procedure related factors:
A long but worthwhile read from the brilliant Jennifer Williams in the FT. I went to college in Oldham so know the town well. To read so many problems at a big high school is disheartening.
The Tories have absolutely broken the ability of so many families to get by, and also broken the budgets of the schools who are left to pick up the pieces.
Christ, that is a tough read, it left me in tears. The Tories have utterly broken this country, and unforgivably they have ensured that children, and especially poor children, have borne the brunt of it. I find it hard to control my anger at them sometimes.
Is this really the country we want? The society we believe to be just? I know PB Tories and their fellow travellers excuse almost everything, but is this what we have been reduced to? For what other benefit?
If we remove the (often) justified anger, then there's four simple questions which the politicans of all sides need to ask.
1) What are we currently spending money on? 2) What could we spend more money or or less on to make the changes which people want (and what are those changes)? 3) How can we increase the money to make the gap from 1 to 2?
Anything other than that is really just details.
Given that there appears to be little appetite for tax rises (except for the idea of raising mythical billions from the top 1%), and the books are still a long way from balancing, the conversation really needs to be around the scope of government.
What does government do currently, that it could stop doing without too many adverse effects?
The obvious standout figures are £20bn on ‘Energy Security and Net Zero’, £10bn on “Science, Innovation and Technology”, and nearly £10bn on the Foreign Office. DWP also spends £8.5bn on its own admin, and HMRC £6.5bn, which suggests that reducing complexity in the tax and benefits system could lead to savings there.
In the current culture there is a problem. We are borrowing £100 bn per annum even now. So that needs to be found. But there isn't a single area of interest where there isn't pressure for government to spend more, usually much more. The media, especially the BBC give a perpetual free and unchallenged ride to all and everyone who are calling for higher expenditure on everything under the sun.
To see the size of the £100 bn deficit, if we abolished all state managed expenditure on education entirely, it still would not cover it. So bits of tinkering will make no real difference.
The philosophy that the solution is always cut, cut, cut has gotten us to where we are today.
We pay less in tax than many other developed countries that enjoy higher standards of living than us. Let’s be more like them. Well-funded public services are a worthwhile investment.
The £100 billion gap (current borrowing) is £3,300 per year from 30 million tax payers. I am totally sympathetic to the tax rise solution but it needs turning into real figures for actual people and I don't have any politically workable suggestions.
Answers on a postcard.
And BTW in overall expenditure there have been no cuts, and never have been.
The problem is that we are now poor, and utterly in denial. 25 years of living beyond our means has run up a massive bill, and somehow it's going to have to be paid. I'm not sure I can see how this is going to pan out, but the longer the issue is ignored, the worse it gets, and current all the major parties are doing bad impressions of ostriches...
Nearer forty years, I fear.
Which has a couple of consequences. First, there is a savings/maintenance backlog that has built up and is increasingly hard to ignore. Second, we've become habituated to rates of tax that are too low to be sustainable. They're higher now than they used to be, but still low by continental standards.
But yes, the only way to avoid the reckoning is a time machine.
Anyone offering National Service is an absolute idiot and onto a vote loser. Young people don't want to be patronised any further, build some fucking houses.
Don't think of it as National Service with any predetermined views on that. A different name for this should be used due to the horror of National Service in the past which is something completely different. And I'm 100% totally in favour of more house building, I've been pushing that for years.
Think of it as education, or opportunity. Is education a good thing? Is giving kids a well rounded education a good thing? Is giving kids opportunities a good thing.
For my own Communuty Action Service my school gave suggestions on things that could be done, and facilitated it for some things. Or I could pick entirely my own stuff.
Lots of kids do not get enough opportunities in life. Facilitating them having more opportunities is not a bad thing.
This should be something offered for young people, to help them, and to let them find their own path. Not something done to young people, like the abhorrent National Service of old
Schools should be doing that, as should parents.
But schools can't cope even with the core curriculum.
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
coughcougcoughconfounderscoughcough
From memory, there is a famous apocryphal story about differential recruitment to Harvard. It was pointed out that women found it harder to gain entry. On closer examination it was found that this bias vanished when subject was taken into account, as women weren't applying for the obscure subjects with higher acceptance rates
Two obvious points
The current cohort of female surgeons making their way thru the profession are younger than the previous (male-dominated) cohort, and it is this latter older group that do the more complex ops with higher failure rates
I don't know if this bit is true, but if female surgeons pick different specialties than male surgeons, and those specialties have different failure rates, then that may explain
That sounds like a nasty cough you have there - you might want to see a female doctor.
As I keep pointing out, Government policy - actual policy - is to import between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people a year to increase growth and repress wages.
As migrants tend to be younger, the percentage of twentysomethings who are British nationals will decrease. If this cohort are conscripted, we will have a large group in the British armed forces who do not have British passports[1], and, when that group is discharged, their jobs will have been taken by the cohort of migrants that came in after them
In short this policy will create a large number of unemployed and poorer younger citizens with weapons training.
They didn't think this thru, did they...
[incidentally, has anybody noticed that we have just gotten used to incompetent and lying government like it was normal? Does anybody believe they will bring back national service or an analogue? Does anybody believe Grant Shapps will be competent? Does anybody believe they will stop the boats, or even try?]
Notes [1] This is not necessarily weird, as Irish and Empire/Commonwealth citizens already do.
The Swiss experience seems to show that weapons training makes people more responsible with weapons, not less.
Oh, I'm sure they'll be responsible: good storage, trigger discipline, keep their guns clean and well-oiled etc. I'm just not sure what they'll use them for
They'll use them for well-aimed, brief bursts, moving from firing spot to firing spot, and covering each other during moves.
Interesting (and more convincing), thank you. I'm not sure it was formally a Cochrane review, but it observed the form so that's good.
There’s no magic to being a Cochrane review. The last thing Archie Cochrane would have wanted is for his name to become a special marker of quality.
I agree with you, and yet again it raises the thorny point of qualitative assessment: how does one assess the quality of a review? Given the rising number of systematic reviews and metastudies, we need a way to distinguish between the good, the bad, and the impostors.
IIUC (I may not!) a formal Cochrane review has to register, whereas an informal one may observe the form but not register. Happy to be contradicted on this if wrong.
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
coughcougcoughconfounderscoughcough
From memory, there is a famous apocryphal story about differential recruitment to Harvard. It was pointed out that women found it harder to gain entry. On closer examination it was found that this bias vanished when subject was taken into account, as women weren't applying for the obscure subjects with higher acceptance rates
Two obvious points
The current cohort of female surgeons making their way thru the profession are younger than the previous (male-dominated) cohort, and it is this latter older group that do the more complex ops with higher failure rates
I don't know if this bit is true, but if female surgeons pick different specialties than male surgeons, and those specialties have different failure rates, then that may explain
That sounds like a nasty cough you have there - you might want to see a female doctor.
A long but worthwhile read from the brilliant Jennifer Williams in the FT. I went to college in Oldham so know the town well. To read so many problems at a big high school is disheartening.
The Tories have absolutely broken the ability of so many families to get by, and also broken the budgets of the schools who are left to pick up the pieces.
Christ, that is a tough read, it left me in tears. The Tories have utterly broken this country, and unforgivably they have ensured that children, and especially poor children, have borne the brunt of it. I find it hard to control my anger at them sometimes.
Is this really the country we want? The society we believe to be just? I know PB Tories and their fellow travellers excuse almost everything, but is this what we have been reduced to? For what other benefit?
If we remove the (often) justified anger, then there's four simple questions which the politicans of all sides need to ask.
1) What are we currently spending money on? 2) What could we spend more money or or less on to make the changes which people want (and what are those changes)? 3) How can we increase the money to make the gap from 1 to 2?
Anything other than that is really just details.
Given that there appears to be little appetite for tax rises (except for the idea of raising mythical billions from the top 1%), and the books are still a long way from balancing, the conversation really needs to be around the scope of government.
What does government do currently, that it could stop doing without too many adverse effects?
The obvious standout figures are £20bn on ‘Energy Security and Net Zero’, £10bn on “Science, Innovation and Technology”, and nearly £10bn on the Foreign Office. DWP also spends £8.5bn on its own admin, and HMRC £6.5bn, which suggests that reducing complexity in the tax and benefits system could lead to savings there.
Extend NI to all income. Sorted.
Yes, I’d merge employee NI into income tax, which both simplifies the system and brings unearned income into scope. You could make it revenue-positive while cutting the ‘basic rate’ for most full-time employees and raising the basic rate threshold.
The legislation would be complex though, needing to calculate future entitlements from income tax rather than NI contributions, which is why it’s been in the ‘too-difficult’ box for so long.
I really don't get the difficulty with future entitlement calculation. E.g. qualifying years = qualifying NI years pre-2025 + qualifying ICT years post 2024. If you're paying any ICT in a year you're earning as much as the NI qualification.
We are already able to add in National Insurance credits for those who receive UC, JSA, ESA, Child Benefit or Carer’s Allowance.
The bigger challenge is the shock to those who have been used to preferential tax rates on unearned income (Malcom will burst a blood vessel). That shock* can be overcome by making the change gradually over several years - reduce employee's NI by 2% and increase ICT basic rate by 2% each year for 6 years.
(*Though I suspect nothing will mitigate Malc's apoplexy.)
Won't happen under Tory gerontophilia.
Look at the cutoff for *upper* levels of NI Class 1. Imagine the shock from smoothing out what would otherwise be a massive anomaly at roughly 50K pa annual income.
Interesting (and more convincing), thank you. I'm not sure it was formally a Cochrane review, but it observed the form so that's good.
There’s no magic to being a Cochrane review. The last thing Archie Cochrane would have wanted is for his name to become a special marker of quality.
I agree with you, and yet again it raises the thorny point of qualitative assessment: how does one assess the quality of a review? Given the rising number of systematic reviews and metastudies, we need a way to distinguish between the good, the bad, and the impostors.
IIUC (I may not!) a formal Cochrane review has to register, whereas an informal one may observe the form but not register. Happy to be contradicted on this if wrong.
I think there’s a limit to checklist assessments and, ultimately, you just need to have some subject knowledge and dig into the details of the methods of the review, as with any study. That said, standards like PRISMA are useful.
Cochrane reviews have to register and go through a particularly thorough procedure and are then published through Cochrane. I don’t think it’s meaningful to talk about an informal Cochrane review. It’s just not a Cochrane review. You can’t separate the Cochrane process from the Cochrane bureaucracy.
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
coughcougcoughconfounderscoughcough
From memory, there is a famous apocryphal story about differential recruitment to Harvard. It was pointed out that women found it harder to gain entry. On closer examination it was found that this bias vanished when subject was taken into account, as women weren't applying for the obscure subjects with higher acceptance rates
Two obvious points
The current cohort of female surgeons making their way thru the profession are younger than the previous (male-dominated) cohort, and it is this latter older group that do the more complex ops with higher failure rates
I don't know if this bit is true, but if female surgeons pick different specialties than male surgeons, and those specialties have different failure rates, then that may explain
No, it was adjusted for patient and procedure related factors:
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
coughcougcoughconfounderscoughcough
From memory, there is a famous apocryphal story about differential recruitment to Harvard. It was pointed out that women found it harder to gain entry. On closer examination it was found that this bias vanished when subject was taken into account, as women weren't applying for the obscure subjects with higher acceptance rates
Two obvious points
The current cohort of female surgeons making their way thru the profession are younger than the previous (male-dominated) cohort, and it is this latter older group that do the more complex ops with higher failure rates
I don't know if this bit is true, but if female surgeons pick different specialties than male surgeons, and those specialties have different failure rates, then that may explain
No, it was adjusted for patient and procedure related factors:
Surely the interesting point is, trans WOMEN doctors are better than man doctors, because trans women are women, as any fule kno
In that case, all you have to do, @Foxy, is put on a dress and say "I am a woman", then you are indeed a woman, and you will be a better doctor ACCORDING TO THE SCIENCE
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
Plus smaller hands and fingers, on average, so helps with the cutting and stitching.
But I wonder about orthopods - from friends who work in that field, I gather orthopaedic surgery often needs a very heavy hand - sawbones, literally. Though the dentist who removed my positively Neandertaler-size molar the other month was a slim and petite female.
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
coughcougcoughconfounderscoughcough
From memory, there is a famous apocryphal story about differential recruitment to Harvard. It was pointed out that women found it harder to gain entry. On closer examination it was found that this bias vanished when subject was taken into account, as women weren't applying for the obscure subjects with higher acceptance rates
Two obvious points
The current cohort of female surgeons making their way thru the profession are younger than the previous (male-dominated) cohort, and it is this latter older group that do the more complex ops with higher failure rates
I don't know if this bit is true, but if female surgeons pick different specialties than male surgeons, and those specialties have different failure rates, then that may explain
No, it was adjusted for patient and procedure related factors:
Surely the interesting point is, trans WOMEN doctors are better than man doctors, because trans women are women, as any fule kno
In that case, all you have to do, @Foxy, is put on a dress and say "I am a woman", then you are indeed a woman, and you will be a better doctor ACCORDING TO THE SCIENCE
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
coughcougcoughconfounderscoughcough
From memory, there is a famous apocryphal story about differential recruitment to Harvard. It was pointed out that women found it harder to gain entry. On closer examination it was found that this bias vanished when subject was taken into account, as women weren't applying for the obscure subjects with higher acceptance rates
Two obvious points
The current cohort of female surgeons making their way thru the profession are younger than the previous (male-dominated) cohort, and it is this latter older group that do the more complex ops with higher failure rates
I don't know if this bit is true, but if female surgeons pick different specialties than male surgeons, and those specialties have different failure rates, then that may explain
No, it was adjusted for patient and procedure related factors:
Surely the interesting point is, trans WOMEN doctors are better than man doctors, because trans women are women, as any fule kno
In that case, all you have to do, @Foxy, is put on a dress and say "I am a woman", then you are indeed a woman, and you will be a better doctor ACCORDING TO THE SCIENCE
How hard is that?
Truly Molesworthian logic there as all on PB sa.
No, it's magic. If you're a guy doctor like Foxy, you literally just put on a dress, call yourself Foxella, and you become a better doctor. Because trans women are women, and women doctors are better
That is the truth, and if you dispute it you will be cancelled
A long but worthwhile read from the brilliant Jennifer Williams in the FT. I went to college in Oldham so know the town well. To read so many problems at a big high school is disheartening.
The Tories have absolutely broken the ability of so many families to get by, and also broken the budgets of the schools who are left to pick up the pieces.
Christ, that is a tough read, it left me in tears. The Tories have utterly broken this country, and unforgivably they have ensured that children, and especially poor children, have borne the brunt of it. I find it hard to control my anger at them sometimes.
Is this really the country we want? The society we believe to be just? I know PB Tories and their fellow travellers excuse almost everything, but is this what we have been reduced to? For what other benefit?
If we remove the (often) justified anger, then there's four simple questions which the politicans of all sides need to ask.
1) What are we currently spending money on? 2) What could we spend more money or or less on to make the changes which people want (and what are those changes)? 3) How can we increase the money to make the gap from 1 to 2?
Anything other than that is really just details.
Given that there appears to be little appetite for tax rises (except for the idea of raising mythical billions from the top 1%), and the books are still a long way from balancing, the conversation really needs to be around the scope of government.
What does government do currently, that it could stop doing without too many adverse effects?
The obvious standout figures are £20bn on ‘Energy Security and Net Zero’, £10bn on “Science, Innovation and Technology”, and nearly £10bn on the Foreign Office. DWP also spends £8.5bn on its own admin, and HMRC £6.5bn, which suggests that reducing complexity in the tax and benefits system could lead to savings there.
Extend NI to all income. Sorted.
Yes, I’d merge employee NI into income tax, which both simplifies the system and brings unearned income into scope. You could make it revenue-positive while cutting the ‘basic rate’ for most full-time employees and raising the basic rate threshold.
The legislation would be complex though, needing to calculate future entitlements from income tax rather than NI contributions, which is why it’s been in the ‘too-difficult’ box for so long.
I really don't get the difficulty with future entitlement calculation. E.g. qualifying years = qualifying NI years pre-2025 + qualifying ICT years post 2024. If you're paying any ICT in a year you're earning as much as the NI qualification.
We are already able to add in National Insurance credits for those who receive UC, JSA, ESA, Child Benefit or Carer’s Allowance.
The bigger challenge is the shock to those who have been used to preferential tax rates on unearned income (Malcom will burst a blood vessel). That shock* can be overcome by making the change gradually over several years - reduce employee's NI by 2% and increase ICT basic rate by 2% each year for 6 years.
(*Though I suspect nothing will mitigate Malc's apoplexy.)
Won't happen under Tory gerontophilia.
Look at the cutoff for *upper* levels of NI Class 1. Imagine the shock from smoothing out what would otherwise be a massive anomaly at roughly 50K pa annual income.
It is not Tory gerontophilia. The state pension is £200 a week and no-one is helicoptering to Loch Lomond on that. No, it is simpler than that. Conservatives favour the better-off, hence higher rate tax relief on pension contributions and child benefit up to £100,000.
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
coughcougcoughconfounderscoughcough
From memory, there is a famous apocryphal story about differential recruitment to Harvard. It was pointed out that women found it harder to gain entry. On closer examination it was found that this bias vanished when subject was taken into account, as women weren't applying for the obscure subjects with higher acceptance rates
Two obvious points
The current cohort of female surgeons making their way thru the profession are younger than the previous (male-dominated) cohort, and it is this latter older group that do the more complex ops with higher failure rates
I don't know if this bit is true, but if female surgeons pick different specialties than male surgeons, and those specialties have different failure rates, then that may explain
No, it was adjusted for patient and procedure related factors:
Surely the interesting point is, trans WOMEN doctors are better than man doctors, because trans women are women, as any fule kno
In that case, all you have to do, @Foxy, is put on a dress and say "I am a woman", then you are indeed a woman, and you will be a better doctor ACCORDING TO THE SCIENCE
How hard is that?
Truly Molesworthian logic there as all on PB sa.
No, it's magic. If you're a guy doctor like Foxy, you literally just put on a dress, call yourself Foxella, and you become a better doctor. Because trans women are women, and women doctors are better
That is the truth, and if you dispute it you will be cancelled
Rugby - as we know it - is finished. This guy is right:
"Neuropathologist and former World Rugby adviser Prof Willie Stewart told the Associated Press: "I think this World Cup is the end of rugby as we know it.
"I think the current form of rugby union as it is played will change straight after the World Cup.""
Kinda sad, but also kinda inevitable. It is hideously brutal, now. Huge players slamming into each other. Fun to watch, but relentlessly damaging. If I had sons rather than daughters I would not allow them to play rugby, if I had the choice
What will rugby evolve into, God knows. Something like rugby sevens? Rugby league with even less impact?
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
Plus smaller hands and fingers, on average, so helps with the cutting and stitching.
But I wonder about orthopods - from friends who work in that field, I gather orthopaedic surgery often needs a very heavy hand - sawbones, literally. Though the dentist who removed my positively Neandertaler-size molar the other month was a slim and petite female.
Obstetrics often needs a bit of muscle too for those forceps deliveries, and often no time to spare. We have had some smaller trainees do their backs in on delivery suite.
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
coughcougcoughconfounderscoughcough
From memory, there is a famous apocryphal story about differential recruitment to Harvard. It was pointed out that women found it harder to gain entry. On closer examination it was found that this bias vanished when subject was taken into account, as women weren't applying for the obscure subjects with higher acceptance rates
Two obvious points
The current cohort of female surgeons making their way thru the profession are younger than the previous (male-dominated) cohort, and it is this latter older group that do the more complex ops with higher failure rates
I don't know if this bit is true, but if female surgeons pick different specialties than male surgeons, and those specialties have different failure rates, then that may explain
No, it was adjusted for patient and procedure related factors:
Surely the interesting point is, trans WOMEN doctors are better than man doctors, because trans women are women, as any fule kno
In that case, all you have to do, @Foxy, is put on a dress and say "I am a woman", then you are indeed a woman, and you will be a better doctor ACCORDING TO THE SCIENCE
How hard is that?
Truly Molesworthian logic there as all on PB sa.
No, it's magic. If you're a guy doctor like Foxy, you literally just put on a dress, call yourself Foxella, and you become a better doctor. Because trans women are women, and women doctors are better
That is the truth, and if you dispute it you will be cancelled
Call me Vixen please!
Vixen. cool name
I believe I have actually encountered a few Vixens, in the shady kink-world of Fetlife, usually indicates a switchy pet-player, perhaps with brat tendencies
FPT: Let me quote again: HYUFD said: "The very poor in the US ie the unemployed and those without health insurance are worse off than our poor as they have little welfare state, public housing or NHS to fall back on"
From Wikipedia, we can learn that there are about 85 million poor Americans who receive Medicaid, and that the total expenditure is about $600 billion a year. So, per capita, the US governments spend about $7,000 for each poor person, just from Medicaid. (Older poor people, who are eligible for Medicare, as well as Medicaid, receive even more.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicaid
So, HYUFD, approximately what does the UK spend on the NHS each year? Are there any other signficant expenditures that should be included? How does that compare to the US expenditure on Medicaid alone, total, and per capita?
(I will say, as I have before, that I am not a defender of the many US health care systems. But I think most criticisms of them could be better informed.
Pro tip: Anyone who says there is an American health care system either doesn't know what they are talking about, or is being sloppy. There are many health care systems here.)
Interesting (and more convincing), thank you. I'm not sure it was formally a Cochrane review, but it observed the form so that's good.
There’s no magic to being a Cochrane review. The last thing Archie Cochrane would have wanted is for his name to become a special marker of quality.
I agree with you, and yet again it raises the thorny point of qualitative assessment: how does one assess the quality of a review? Given the rising number of systematic reviews and metastudies, we need a way to distinguish between the good, the bad, and the impostors.
IIUC (I may not!) a formal Cochrane review has to register, whereas an informal one may observe the form but not register. Happy to be contradicted on this if wrong.
I think there’s a limit to checklist assessments and, ultimately, you just need to have some subject knowledge and dig into the details of the methods of the review, as with any study. That said, standards like PRISMA are useful.
Cochrane reviews have to register and go through a particularly thorough procedure and are then published through Cochrane. I don’t think it’s meaningful to talk about an informal Cochrane review. It’s just not a Cochrane review. You can’t separate the Cochrane process from the Cochrane bureaucracy.
In the section "Methods" the study in question has this sentence "We used guidance published by PRISMA [10] and Cochrane [11] to guide our methodology", where [11] refers to the Cochrane handbook for systematic reviews of interventions.
So the question I'm asking is: did they register with Cochrane, or did they just use the methods? This isn't me being a dick (that comes for free ) but it illustrates the difficulty
Interesting (and more convincing), thank you. I'm not sure it was formally a Cochrane review, but it observed the form so that's good.
There’s no magic to being a Cochrane review. The last thing Archie Cochrane would have wanted is for his name to become a special marker of quality.
I agree with you, and yet again it raises the thorny point of qualitative assessment: how does one assess the quality of a review? Given the rising number of systematic reviews and metastudies, we need a way to distinguish between the good, the bad, and the impostors.
IIUC (I may not!) a formal Cochrane review has to register, whereas an informal one may observe the form but not register. Happy to be contradicted on this if wrong.
I think there’s a limit to checklist assessments and, ultimately, you just need to have some subject knowledge and dig into the details of the methods of the review, as with any study. That said, standards like PRISMA are useful.
Cochrane reviews have to register and go through a particularly thorough procedure and are then published through Cochrane. I don’t think it’s meaningful to talk about an informal Cochrane review. It’s just not a Cochrane review. You can’t separate the Cochrane process from the Cochrane bureaucracy.
In the section "Methods" the study in question has this sentence "We used guidance published by PRISMA [10] and Cochrane [11] to guide our methodology", where [11] refers to the Cochrane handbook for systematic reviews of interventions.
So the question I'm asking is: did they register with Cochrane, or did they just use the methods? This isn't me being a dick (that comes for free ) but it illustrates the difficulty
TBF, 'guide' doesn't mean "slavishly follow". Especially as they cite both PRISMA and the Cochrane Collaboration.
And, as our resident tree kangaroo says, Cochraneity involves inherently the formal review and publication process as part of it all. So, if not published by them it's not a Cochrane.
UBS has posted the biggest ever quarterly profit by a bank after an accounting gain following its emergency takeover of Credit Suisse propelled pre-tax earnings to $29 billion.
The huge gain underscores the cut-price nature of the state-orchestrated rescue deal that UBS agreed in March.
The Swiss bank bought its stricken rival for $3.8 billion in a hastily arranged transaction that was brokered by the authorities as fears mounted that Credit Suisse was poised to collapse.
This knockdown price has now resulted in a one-off accounting boost, known as “negative goodwill”, for UBS because it bought Credit Suisse for significantly less than its fair value.
The bank announced the record profit in its second-quarter results, when it also revealed it expected to cut about 3,000 jobs in Switzerland as a result of the deal in the coming years. Thousands more are expected to be lost around the world, including in the City of London, as Sergio Ermotti, the UBS boss, embarks on the complex and risky task of integrating Credit Suisse, the rescue of which has created a sprawling banking giant employing about 120,000 people.
A long but worthwhile read from the brilliant Jennifer Williams in the FT. I went to college in Oldham so know the town well. To read so many problems at a big high school is disheartening.
The Tories have absolutely broken the ability of so many families to get by, and also broken the budgets of the schools who are left to pick up the pieces.
Christ, that is a tough read, it left me in tears. The Tories have utterly broken this country, and unforgivably they have ensured that children, and especially poor children, have borne the brunt of it. I find it hard to control my anger at them sometimes.
Is this really the country we want? The society we believe to be just? I know PB Tories and their fellow travellers excuse almost everything, but is this what we have been reduced to? For what other benefit?
If we remove the (often) justified anger, then there's four simple questions which the politicans of all sides need to ask.
1) What are we currently spending money on? 2) What could we spend more money or or less on to make the changes which people want (and what are those changes)? 3) How can we increase the money to make the gap from 1 to 2?
Anything other than that is really just details.
Given that there appears to be little appetite for tax rises (except for the idea of raising mythical billions from the top 1%), and the books are still a long way from balancing, the conversation really needs to be around the scope of government.
What does government do currently, that it could stop doing without too many adverse effects?
The obvious standout figures are £20bn on ‘Energy Security and Net Zero’, £10bn on “Science, Innovation and Technology”, and nearly £10bn on the Foreign Office. DWP also spends £8.5bn on its own admin, and HMRC £6.5bn, which suggests that reducing complexity in the tax and benefits system could lead to savings there.
Extend NI to all income. Sorted.
Yes, I’d merge employee NI into income tax, which both simplifies the system and brings unearned income into scope. You could make it revenue-positive while cutting the ‘basic rate’ for most full-time employees and raising the basic rate threshold.
The legislation would be complex though, needing to calculate future entitlements from income tax rather than NI contributions, which is why it’s been in the ‘too-difficult’ box for so long.
I really don't get the difficulty with future entitlement calculation. E.g. qualifying years = qualifying NI years pre-2025 + qualifying ICT years post 2024. If you're paying any ICT in a year you're earning as much as the NI qualification.
We are already able to add in National Insurance credits for those who receive UC, JSA, ESA, Child Benefit or Carer’s Allowance.
The bigger challenge is the shock to those who have been used to preferential tax rates on unearned income (Malcom will burst a blood vessel). That shock* can be overcome by making the change gradually over several years - reduce employee's NI by 2% and increase ICT basic rate by 2% each year for 6 years.
(*Though I suspect nothing will mitigate Malc's apoplexy.)
Won't happen under Tory gerontophilia.
Look at the cutoff for *upper* levels of NI Class 1. Imagine the shock from smoothing out what would otherwise be a massive anomaly at roughly 50K pa annual income.
It is not Tory gerontophilia. The state pension is £200 a week and no-one is helicoptering to Loch Lomond on that. No, it is simpler than that. Conservatives favour the better-off, hence higher rate tax relief on pension contributions and child benefit up to £100,000.
Sure. But the NI thing affects rich and old Tory-loving folk. 2% NI on income above 50K or so becomes a markedly larger chunk of income tax once the two are merged.
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
The paper suggests lady sawbones are slower and more methodical, which is interesting as didn't we used to be told that faster surgery (shorter time under anaesthetic) was better? And possibly before that, that more painstaking surgeons were better?
I recall, as a child, a surgeon decrying, on Radio 4, this new fangled, American, microsurgery nonsense. Which would destroy the NHS*.
Proper surgery, according to him, required a big hole in the patient.
If he wasn’t actually dressed in three piece tweed, he should have been.
*I was young, so can’t remember if this was the second or third time Thatcher completely destroyed the NHS.
Anyone offering National Service is an absolute idiot and onto a vote loser. Young people don't want to be patronised any further, build some fucking houses.
National Housebuilding Service. Everyone satisfied ?
UBS has posted the biggest ever quarterly profit by a bank after an accounting gain following its emergency takeover of Credit Suisse propelled pre-tax earnings to $29 billion.
The huge gain underscores the cut-price nature of the state-orchestrated rescue deal that UBS agreed in March.
The Swiss bank bought its stricken rival for $3.8 billion in a hastily arranged transaction that was brokered by the authorities as fears mounted that Credit Suisse was poised to collapse.
This knockdown price has now resulted in a one-off accounting boost, known as “negative goodwill”, for UBS because it bought Credit Suisse for significantly less than its fair value.
The bank announced the record profit in its second-quarter results, when it also revealed it expected to cut about 3,000 jobs in Switzerland as a result of the deal in the coming years. Thousands more are expected to be lost around the world, including in the City of London, as Sergio Ermotti, the UBS boss, embarks on the complex and risky task of integrating Credit Suisse, the rescue of which has created a sprawling banking giant employing about 120,000 people.
Interesting (and more convincing), thank you. I'm not sure it was formally a Cochrane review, but it observed the form so that's good.
There’s no magic to being a Cochrane review. The last thing Archie Cochrane would have wanted is for his name to become a special marker of quality.
I agree with you, and yet again it raises the thorny point of qualitative assessment: how does one assess the quality of a review? Given the rising number of systematic reviews and metastudies, we need a way to distinguish between the good, the bad, and the impostors.
IIUC (I may not!) a formal Cochrane review has to register, whereas an informal one may observe the form but not register. Happy to be contradicted on this if wrong.
I think there’s a limit to checklist assessments and, ultimately, you just need to have some subject knowledge and dig into the details of the methods of the review, as with any study. That said, standards like PRISMA are useful.
Cochrane reviews have to register and go through a particularly thorough procedure and are then published through Cochrane. I don’t think it’s meaningful to talk about an informal Cochrane review. It’s just not a Cochrane review. You can’t separate the Cochrane process from the Cochrane bureaucracy.
In the section "Methods" the study in question has this sentence "We used guidance published by PRISMA [10] and Cochrane [11] to guide our methodology", where [11] refers to the Cochrane handbook for systematic reviews of interventions.
So the question I'm asking is: did they register with Cochrane, or did they just use the methods? This isn't me being a dick (that comes for free ) but it illustrates the difficulty
TBF, 'guide' doesn't mean "slavishly follow". Especially as they cite both PRISMA and the Cochrane Collaboration.
And, as our resident tree kangaroo says, Cochraneity involves inherently the formal review and publication process as part of it all. So, if not published by them it's not a Cochrane.
So the study in question is not a Cochrane review per se, it's more "school of Cochrane". Diet Cochrane, so to speak, not the full-fat. De Palma, not Hitchcock. Grant Shapps, not Denis Healey. B[That's enough strained metaphors - Ed]
Rugby - as we know it - is finished. This guy is right:
"Neuropathologist and former World Rugby adviser Prof Willie Stewart told the Associated Press: "I think this World Cup is the end of rugby as we know it.
"I think the current form of rugby union as it is played will change straight after the World Cup.""
Kinda sad, but also kinda inevitable. It is hideously brutal, now. Huge players slamming into each other. Fun to watch, but relentlessly damaging. If I had sons rather than daughters I would not allow them to play rugby, if I had the choice
What will rugby evolve into, God knows. Something like rugby sevens? Rugby league with even less impact?
England substantially ahead of the curve on the end of rugby thing.
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
coughcougcoughconfounderscoughcough
From memory, there is a famous apocryphal story about differential recruitment to Harvard. It was pointed out that women found it harder to gain entry. On closer examination it was found that this bias vanished when subject was taken into account, as women weren't applying for the obscure subjects with higher acceptance rates
Two obvious points
The current cohort of female surgeons making their way thru the profession are younger than the previous (male-dominated) cohort, and it is this latter older group that do the more complex ops with higher failure rates
I don't know if this bit is true, but if female surgeons pick different specialties than male surgeons, and those specialties have different failure rates, then that may explain
No, it was adjusted for patient and procedure related factors:
Surely the interesting point is, trans WOMEN doctors are better than man doctors, because trans women are women, as any fule kno
In that case, all you have to do, @Foxy, is put on a dress and say "I am a woman", then you are indeed a woman, and you will be a better doctor ACCORDING TO THE SCIENCE
How hard is that?
Truly Molesworthian logic there as all on PB sa.
No, it's magic. If you're a guy doctor like Foxy, you literally just put on a dress, call yourself Foxella, and you become a better doctor. Because trans women are women, and women doctors are better
That is the truth, and if you dispute it you will be cancelled
In the US, and probably in the UK, "exponentially greater" has become a way for too many to say "much", rather than take the trouble to find actual numbers. Which is odd, when you think about it, since exponents can be fractional, or even negative.
So, if I were to compare your PM's family wealth to that of the average family in the UK, I would quickly find some numbers with Google or Bing, and say something like this: Sunak's family has about 730 million pounds; the median UK family has about 300 thousand pounds.
(In contrast, I approve of using "orders of magnitudes", when appropriate. For example: As president, Obama told at least an order of magnitude more falsehoods than his predecessor; as president, Trump told at least an order of magnitude more falsehoods than his predecessor.)
Rugby - as we know it - is finished. This guy is right:
"Neuropathologist and former World Rugby adviser Prof Willie Stewart told the Associated Press: "I think this World Cup is the end of rugby as we know it.
"I think the current form of rugby union as it is played will change straight after the World Cup.""
Kinda sad, but also kinda inevitable. It is hideously brutal, now. Huge players slamming into each other. Fun to watch, but relentlessly damaging. If I had sons rather than daughters I would not allow them to play rugby, if I had the choice
What will rugby evolve into, God knows. Something like rugby sevens? Rugby league with even less impact?
Can't players decide for themselves whether they want to take the risk of playing rugby?
Rugby - as we know it - is finished. This guy is right:
"Neuropathologist and former World Rugby adviser Prof Willie Stewart told the Associated Press: "I think this World Cup is the end of rugby as we know it.
"I think the current form of rugby union as it is played will change straight after the World Cup.""
Kinda sad, but also kinda inevitable. It is hideously brutal, now. Huge players slamming into each other. Fun to watch, but relentlessly damaging. If I had sons rather than daughters I would not allow them to play rugby, if I had the choice
What will rugby evolve into, God knows. Something like rugby sevens? Rugby league with even less impact?
England substantially ahead of the curve on the end of rugby thing.
Yes, England should simply refuse to attend the World Cup, on the grounds of "player safety", and thus avoid the total and inevitable humiliation of getting whacked 78-0 by Chile
As I keep pointing out, Government policy - actual policy - is to import between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people a year to increase growth and repress wages.
As migrants tend to be younger, the percentage of twentysomethings who are British nationals will decrease. If this cohort are conscripted, we will have a large group in the British armed forces who do not have British passports[1], and, when that group is discharged, their jobs will have been taken by the cohort of migrants that came in after them
In short this policy will create a large number of unemployed and poorer younger citizens with weapons training.
They didn't think this thru, did they...
[incidentally, has anybody noticed that we have just gotten used to incompetent and lying government like it was normal? Does anybody believe they will bring back national service or an analogue? Does anybody believe Grant Shapps will be competent? Does anybody believe they will stop the boats, or even try?]
Notes [1] This is not necessarily weird, as Irish and Empire/Commonwealth citizens already do.
I'm still reeling from Sunak appointing Grant "Slimier than Gollum" Shapps to that position. Is there anyone in Government (except Boris, who has been defenestrated) with such a record of cynical .
Any of the Departmental Ministers would have been better. One can have a go at Mr Wallace, however he has made the big calls more or less correctly.
Anyone offering National Service is an absolute idiot and onto a vote loser. Young people don't want to be patronised any further, build some fucking houses.
Don't think of it as National Service with any predetermined views on that. A different name for this should be used due to the horror of National Service in the past which is something completely different. And I'm 100% totally in favour of more house building, I've been pushing that for years.
Think of it as education, or opportunity. Is education a good thing? Is giving kids a well rounded education a good thing? Is giving kids opportunities a good thing.
For my own Communuty Action Service my school gave suggestions on things that could be done, and facilitated it for some things. Or I could pick entirely my own stuff.
Lots of kids do not get enough opportunities in life. Facilitating them having more opportunities is not a bad thing.
This should be something offered for young people, to help them, and to let them find their own path. Not something done to young people, like the abhorrent National Service of old
Schools should be doing that, as should parents.
But schools can't cope even with the core curriculum.
Which is not a good thing.
If this is implemented then again, it should be implemented properly. Which means funding will be required too.
Education is a core function the state offers. It should be well and properly resourced.
Without good education we won't have good engineers, or doctors, lawyers, or anything else of the future.
Investing in education, in children, and giving them opportunities is not a matter for austerity in my eyes. It is one of the most critical things we as a society can and should do.
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
coughcougcoughconfounderscoughcough
From memory, there is a famous apocryphal story about differential recruitment to Harvard. It was pointed out that women found it harder to gain entry. On closer examination it was found that this bias vanished when subject was taken into account, as women weren't applying for the obscure subjects with higher acceptance rates
Two obvious points
The current cohort of female surgeons making their way thru the profession are younger than the previous (male-dominated) cohort, and it is this latter older group that do the more complex ops with higher failure rates
I don't know if this bit is true, but if female surgeons pick different specialties than male surgeons, and those specialties have different failure rates, then that may explain
No, it was adjusted for patient and procedure related factors:
Surely the interesting point is, trans WOMEN doctors are better than man doctors, because trans women are women, as any fule kno
In that case, all you have to do, @Foxy, is put on a dress and say "I am a woman", then you are indeed a woman, and you will be a better doctor ACCORDING TO THE SCIENCE
How hard is that?
Truly Molesworthian logic there as all on PB sa.
No, it's magic. If you're a guy doctor like Foxy, you literally just put on a dress, call yourself Foxella, and you become a better doctor. Because trans women are women, and women doctors are better
That is the truth, and if you dispute it you will be cancelled
You're very silly today.
But it is the absolute logic of trans rights married to @Foxy's evidence of female superiority. IF women doctors are better, just put on your bra and say you're a woman, Bingo. NigellaB MD. You are now probably a better doctor, because trans women are women
Unless, of course, you dispute the assertion that trans women are women, but that gets you ejected from society
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
coughcougcoughconfounderscoughcough
From memory, there is a famous apocryphal story about differential recruitment to Harvard. It was pointed out that women found it harder to gain entry. On closer examination it was found that this bias vanished when subject was taken into account, as women weren't applying for the obscure subjects with higher acceptance rates
Two obvious points
The current cohort of female surgeons making their way thru the profession are younger than the previous (male-dominated) cohort, and it is this latter older group that do the more complex ops with higher failure rates
I don't know if this bit is true, but if female surgeons pick different specialties than male surgeons, and those specialties have different failure rates, then that may explain
No, it was adjusted for patient and procedure related factors:
Surely the interesting point is, trans WOMEN doctors are better than man doctors, because trans women are women, as any fule kno
In that case, all you have to do, @Foxy, is put on a dress and say "I am a woman", then you are indeed a woman, and you will be a better doctor ACCORDING TO THE SCIENCE
How hard is that?
Truly Molesworthian logic there as all on PB sa.
No, it's magic. If you're a guy doctor like Foxy, you literally just put on a dress, call yourself Foxella, and you become a better doctor. Because trans women are women, and women doctors are better
That is the truth, and if you dispute it you will be cancelled
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
coughcougcoughconfounderscoughcough
From memory, there is a famous apocryphal story about differential recruitment to Harvard. It was pointed out that women found it harder to gain entry. On closer examination it was found that this bias vanished when subject was taken into account, as women weren't applying for the obscure subjects with higher acceptance rates
Two obvious points
The current cohort of female surgeons making their way thru the profession are younger than the previous (male-dominated) cohort, and it is this latter older group that do the more complex ops with higher failure rates
I don't know if this bit is true, but if female surgeons pick different specialties than male surgeons, and those specialties have different failure rates, then that may explain
No, it was adjusted for patient and procedure related factors:
Surely the interesting point is, trans WOMEN doctors are better than man doctors, because trans women are women, as any fule kno
In that case, all you have to do, @Foxy, is put on a dress and say "I am a woman", then you are indeed a woman, and you will be a better doctor ACCORDING TO THE SCIENCE
How hard is that?
Truly Molesworthian logic there as all on PB sa.
No, it's magic. If you're a guy doctor like Foxy, you literally just put on a dress, call yourself Foxella, and you become a better doctor. Because trans women are women, and women doctors are better
That is the truth, and if you dispute it you will be cancelled
You're very silly today.
But it is the absolute logic of trans rights married to @Foxy's evidence of female superiority. IF women doctors are better, just put on your bra and say you're a woman, Bingo. NigellaB MD. You are now probably a better doctor, because trans women are women
Unless, of course, you dispute the assertion that trans women are women, but that gets you ejected from society
You change the cohort, and therefore the statistics.
The ground difference remains, but the numbers have changed, slightly.
There's no paradox here, however much you like to bring your obsession with trans people into every discussion.
I think David Lammy is quite keen on some variant of this idea... to bring a better sense of national unity (teenagers from Buxton meet teenagers from Brixton kinda thing).
Genuinely I can see positives to this if done well. Probably not cheap though.
More by accident than design my Dad from Glasgow ended up in a squad with a bunch of lads from the South East of England.
Lifelong friends...
Better than being sexually harassed by a sergeant and eating pumpkins for the King in Malta, as my FiL did for a year in 1950.
Rugby - as we know it - is finished. This guy is right:
"Neuropathologist and former World Rugby adviser Prof Willie Stewart told the Associated Press: "I think this World Cup is the end of rugby as we know it.
"I think the current form of rugby union as it is played will change straight after the World Cup.""
Kinda sad, but also kinda inevitable. It is hideously brutal, now. Huge players slamming into each other. Fun to watch, but relentlessly damaging. If I had sons rather than daughters I would not allow them to play rugby, if I had the choice
What will rugby evolve into, God knows. Something like rugby sevens? Rugby league with even less impact?
Can't players decide for themselves whether they want to take the risk of playing rugby?
Perhaps, but that doesn't avoid the horror show of those players then getting early onset dementia, and suing the shit out of rugby authorities. See that article - 300 ex players are now litigating against the Rugby Unions
Would the authorities be able to argue "Well, he waived away his rights"? That might work for adults (this is the certain end of rugby as we know it for under-18s) but my hunch is that the courts will take a dim view of a sport enticing young men into danger, getting them to sign away their mental health, then ignoring them as they suffer horribly in middle age
Rugby Union, as we have loved it, is finished. I reckon
The NFL is wrestling with the same dilemma
"The largest study yet of dead former NFL players found that over 99% had permanent brain damage"
I think David Lammy is quite keen on some variant of this idea... to bring a better sense of national unity (teenagers from Buxton meet teenagers from Brixton kinda thing).
Genuinely I can see positives to this if done well. Probably not cheap though.
More by accident than design my Dad from Glasgow ended up in a squad with a bunch of lads from the South East of England.
Lifelong friends...
Better than being sexually harassed by a sergeant and eating pumpkins for the King in Malta, as my FiL did for a year in 1950.
FPT: Let me quote again: HYUFD said: "The very poor in the US ie the unemployed and those without health insurance are worse off than our poor as they have little welfare state, public housing or NHS to fall back on"
From Wikipedia, we can learn that there are about 85 million poor Americans who receive Medicaid, and that the total expenditure is about $600 billion a year. So, per capita, the US governments spend about $7,000 for each poor person, just from Medicaid. (Older poor people, who are eligible for Medicare, as well as Medicaid, receive even more.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicaid
So, HYUFD, approximately what does the UK spend on the NHS each year? Are there any other signficant expenditures that should be included? How does that compare to the US expenditure on Medicaid alone, total, and per capita?
(I will say, as I have before, that I am not a defender of the many US health care systems. But I think most criticisms of them could be better informed.
Pro tip: Anyone who says there is an American health care system either doesn't know what they are talking about, or is being sloppy. There are many health care systems here.)
Does the amount of money spent actually tell you anything about outcomes?
Rugby - as we know it - is finished. This guy is right:
"Neuropathologist and former World Rugby adviser Prof Willie Stewart told the Associated Press: "I think this World Cup is the end of rugby as we know it.
"I think the current form of rugby union as it is played will change straight after the World Cup.""
Kinda sad, but also kinda inevitable. It is hideously brutal, now. Huge players slamming into each other. Fun to watch, but relentlessly damaging. If I had sons rather than daughters I would not allow them to play rugby, if I had the choice
What will rugby evolve into, God knows. Something like rugby sevens? Rugby league with even less impact?
Can't players decide for themselves whether they want to take the risk of playing rugby?
Should we incentivise people to destroy their bodies and minds for our entertainment? Is it a fair and informed choice?
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
coughcougcoughconfounderscoughcough
From memory, there is a famous apocryphal story about differential recruitment to Harvard. It was pointed out that women found it harder to gain entry. On closer examination it was found that this bias vanished when subject was taken into account, as women weren't applying for the obscure subjects with higher acceptance rates
Two obvious points
The current cohort of female surgeons making their way thru the profession are younger than the previous (male-dominated) cohort, and it is this latter older group that do the more complex ops with higher failure rates
I don't know if this bit is true, but if female surgeons pick different specialties than male surgeons, and those specialties have different failure rates, then that may explain
No, it was adjusted for patient and procedure related factors:
Surely the interesting point is, trans WOMEN doctors are better than man doctors, because trans women are women, as any fule kno
In that case, all you have to do, @Foxy, is put on a dress and say "I am a woman", then you are indeed a woman, and you will be a better doctor ACCORDING TO THE SCIENCE
How hard is that?
Truly Molesworthian logic there as all on PB sa.
No, it's magic. If you're a guy doctor like Foxy, you literally just put on a dress, call yourself Foxella, and you become a better doctor. Because trans women are women, and women doctors are better
That is the truth, and if you dispute it you will be cancelled
You're very silly today.
But it is the absolute logic of trans rights married to @Foxy's evidence of female superiority. IF women doctors are better, just put on your bra and say you're a woman, Bingo. NigellaB MD. You are now probably a better doctor, because trans women are women
Unless, of course, you dispute the assertion that trans women are women, but that gets you ejected from society
UBS has posted the biggest ever quarterly profit by a bank after an accounting gain following its emergency takeover of Credit Suisse propelled pre-tax earnings to $29 billion.
The huge gain underscores the cut-price nature of the state-orchestrated rescue deal that UBS agreed in March.
The Swiss bank bought its stricken rival for $3.8 billion in a hastily arranged transaction that was brokered by the authorities as fears mounted that Credit Suisse was poised to collapse.
This knockdown price has now resulted in a one-off accounting boost, known as “negative goodwill”, for UBS because it bought Credit Suisse for significantly less than its fair value.
The bank announced the record profit in its second-quarter results, when it also revealed it expected to cut about 3,000 jobs in Switzerland as a result of the deal in the coming years. Thousands more are expected to be lost around the world, including in the City of London, as Sergio Ermotti, the UBS boss, embarks on the complex and risky task of integrating Credit Suisse, the rescue of which has created a sprawling banking giant employing about 120,000 people.
UBS has posted the biggest ever quarterly profit by a bank after an accounting gain following its emergency takeover of Credit Suisse propelled pre-tax earnings to $29 billion.
The huge gain underscores the cut-price nature of the state-orchestrated rescue deal that UBS agreed in March.
The Swiss bank bought its stricken rival for $3.8 billion in a hastily arranged transaction that was brokered by the authorities as fears mounted that Credit Suisse was poised to collapse.
This knockdown price has now resulted in a one-off accounting boost, known as “negative goodwill”, for UBS because it bought Credit Suisse for significantly less than its fair value.
The bank announced the record profit in its second-quarter results, when it also revealed it expected to cut about 3,000 jobs in Switzerland as a result of the deal in the coming years. Thousands more are expected to be lost around the world, including in the City of London, as Sergio Ermotti, the UBS boss, embarks on the complex and risky task of integrating Credit Suisse, the rescue of which has created a sprawling banking giant employing about 120,000 people.
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
coughcougcoughconfounderscoughcough
From memory, there is a famous apocryphal story about differential recruitment to Harvard. It was pointed out that women found it harder to gain entry. On closer examination it was found that this bias vanished when subject was taken into account, as women weren't applying for the obscure subjects with higher acceptance rates
Two obvious points
The current cohort of female surgeons making their way thru the profession are younger than the previous (male-dominated) cohort, and it is this latter older group that do the more complex ops with higher failure rates
I don't know if this bit is true, but if female surgeons pick different specialties than male surgeons, and those specialties have different failure rates, then that may explain
No, it was adjusted for patient and procedure related factors:
Surely the interesting point is, trans WOMEN doctors are better than man doctors, because trans women are women, as any fule kno
In that case, all you have to do, @Foxy, is put on a dress and say "I am a woman", then you are indeed a woman, and you will be a better doctor ACCORDING TO THE SCIENCE
How hard is that?
Truly Molesworthian logic there as all on PB sa.
No, it's magic. If you're a guy doctor like Foxy, you literally just put on a dress, call yourself Foxella, and you become a better doctor. Because trans women are women, and women doctors are better
That is the truth, and if you dispute it you will be cancelled
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
coughcougcoughconfounderscoughcough
From memory, there is a famous apocryphal story about differential recruitment to Harvard. It was pointed out that women found it harder to gain entry. On closer examination it was found that this bias vanished when subject was taken into account, as women weren't applying for the obscure subjects with higher acceptance rates
Two obvious points
The current cohort of female surgeons making their way thru the profession are younger than the previous (male-dominated) cohort, and it is this latter older group that do the more complex ops with higher failure rates
I don't know if this bit is true, but if female surgeons pick different specialties than male surgeons, and those specialties have different failure rates, then that may explain
No, it was adjusted for patient and procedure related factors:
Surely the interesting point is, trans WOMEN doctors are better than man doctors, because trans women are women, as any fule kno
In that case, all you have to do, @Foxy, is put on a dress and say "I am a woman", then you are indeed a woman, and you will be a better doctor ACCORDING TO THE SCIENCE
How hard is that?
Truly Molesworthian logic there as all on PB sa.
No, it's magic. If you're a guy doctor like Foxy, you literally just put on a dress, call yourself Foxella, and you become a better doctor. Because trans women are women, and women doctors are better
That is the truth, and if you dispute it you will be cancelled
You're very silly today.
But it is the absolute logic of trans rights married to @Foxy's evidence of female superiority. IF women doctors are better, just put on your bra and say you're a woman, Bingo. NigellaB MD. You are now probably a better doctor, because trans women are women
Unless, of course, you dispute the assertion that trans women are women, but that gets you ejected from society
You change the cohort, and therefore the statistics.
The ground difference remains, but the numbers have changed, slightly.
There's no paradox here, however much you like to bring your obsession with trans people into every discussion.
Er, what?
I have no "obsession" with trans issues. I do not often mention it compared to many other commenters, on both sides, who really DO harp on about it
It just struck me as an intersting cognitive dissonance. You cannot simultaneously say "women are better doctors" and believe this is a meaningful statement, if you also subscribe to mainstream trans theory, that "a man can be a woman simply by saying so" - because then the word "woman" is so vague as to be meaningless
Comments
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/student-accomadation-migrant-housing/
They are not exact on location, but there is a residence custom built a few years ago that has had problems - cladding, owners in
administration, unauthorised dual use as Airbnb rooms - which fits the descriptions.
Answers on a postcard.
And BTW in overall expenditure there have been no cuts, and never have been.
Genuinely I can see positives to this if done well. Probably not cheap though.
My late uncle loved his naval national service to the point of considering a career in it, and was RNR for the rest of his working life. Mind you he enjoyed his time at Edinburgh Academy so was perhaps a glass half full type of chap.
Actually to against the reflex people have had of rejecting this automatically, personally I had to do this while I was at school.
Instead of doing A Levels I studied the International Baccalaureate (as I was an ex pat living abroad intending to return to the UK).
To get a Baccalaureate as well as your six A Level equivalent subjects you study you have to do three further compulsory elements. An Extended Essay on any subject you choose, Theory of Knowledge (which is essentially Philosophy) and 150 hours of "CAS".
CAS is not graded unlike the other two elements and is a simple Boolean, if you haven't done it, you can't get your diploma. If you have, you can. It stands for Community, Action, Service. Over the two years of your Baccalaureate you need to do 50 hours of each.
How you choose to spend 50 hours in Action, or how you choose to do 50 hours of Service, or 50 hours for the Community is entirely up to you and entirely voluntary. But you must achieve all 50 in all 3 headings in order to graduate with your Baccalaureate.
A comparable thing many people do in this country is the Duke of Edinburgh award.
I don't think these things are bad ideas. Getting young people exposed to other things and not just pure academic studies is part of a well rounded education. And doing some of it voluntarily, like doing homework at home, helps too.
Almost all of my own CAS was stuff I wanted to do anyway, but structuring it such that my hours were registered and countersigned meant I had to think about it and be organised about it. And it did prompt some extra activities, which is not a bad thing.
Lifelong friends...
Clearly politicians often try to fetishise this as a harking back to national service and duty and all the rest of it as a way to appeal to certain demographics. But strip away the branding and I can really get on board with these kinds of initiatives.
Kyrees Sullivan, 16, and Harvey Evans, 15, died after the e-bike they were riding crashed in Ely, Cardiff, in May.
The driver of the police van, along with another officer in the vehicle, had previously been served with gross misconduct notices.
The deaths led to riots in Ely, which saw 15 officers injured.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-66671333
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsR4Nx-ELgc
as happened with my own Community Action Service is not in my view a bad thing.
If it gives young people opportunities and experiences they might not otherwise have, that can be a very good thing.
I'm not sure I can see how this is going to pan out, but the longer the issue is ignored, the worse it gets, and current all the major parties are doing bad impressions of ostriches...
Time for us guys to retire...
I expect part of the better results for women surgeons is from better behaviour and communication with the operating theatre staff.
Think of it as education, or opportunity. Is education a good thing? Is giving kids a well rounded education a good thing? Is giving kids opportunities a good thing.
For my own Communuty Action Service my school gave suggestions on things that could be done, and facilitated it for some things. Or I could pick entirely my own stuff.
Lots of kids do not get enough opportunities in life. Facilitating them having more opportunities is not a bad thing.
This should be something offered for young people, to help them, and to let them find their own path. Not something done to young people, like the abhorrent National Service of old
As migrants tend to be younger, the percentage of twentysomethings who are British nationals will decrease. If this cohort are conscripted, we will have a large group in the British armed forces who do not have British passports[1], and, when that group is discharged, their jobs will have been taken by the cohort of migrants that came in after them
In short this policy will create a large number of unemployed and poorer younger citizens with weapons training.
They didn't think this thru, did they...
[incidentally, has anybody noticed that we have just gotten used to incompetent and lying government like it was normal? Does anybody believe they will bring back national service or an analogue? Does anybody believe Grant Shapps will be competent? Does anybody believe they will stop the boats, or even try?]
Notes
[1] This is not necessarily weird, as Irish and Empire/Commonwealth citizens already do.
Take the Party Politics out of it. Is giving opportunities to young people a good thing? To me, it absolutely is. I'm grateful for the opportunities I had.
If it's done though, it should be done right. Not telling kids "you must do this".
The way the International Baccalaureate does it with Community Action Service is both remarkably simple and wonderful. It is something the UK can learn from.
From memory, there is a famous apocryphal story about differential recruitment to Harvard. It was pointed out that women found it harder to gain entry. On closer examination it was found that this bias vanished when subject was taken into account, as women weren't applying for the obscure subjects with higher acceptance rates
Two obvious points
The boys came back. Bands played and flags were flying,
And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit street
To cheer the soldiers who’d refrained from dying,
And hear the music of returning feet.
‘Of all the thrills and ardours War has brought,
This moment is the finest.’ (So they thought.)
Snapping their bayonets on to charge the mob,
Grim Fusiliers broke ranks with glint of steel,
At last the boys had found a cushy job.
I heard the Yellow-Pressmen grunt and squeal;
And with my trusty bombers turned and went
To clear those Junkers out of Parliament.
We are already able to add in National Insurance credits for those who receive UC, JSA, ESA, Child Benefit or Carer’s Allowance.
The bigger challenge is the shock to those who have been used to preferential tax rates on unearned income (Malcom will burst a blood vessel). That shock* can be overcome by making the change gradually over several years - reduce employee's NI by 2% and increase ICT basic rate by 2% each year for 6 years.
(*Though I suspect nothing will mitigate Malc's apoplexy.)
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/2808894
Which has a couple of consequences. First, there is a savings/maintenance backlog that has built up and is increasingly hard to ignore. Second, we've become habituated to rates of tax that are too low to be sustainable. They're higher now than they used to be, but still low by continental standards.
But yes, the only way to avoid the reckoning is a time machine.
But schools can't cope even with the core curriculum.
IIUC (I may not!) a formal Cochrane review has to register, whereas an informal one may observe the form but not register. Happy to be contradicted on this if wrong.
A suggestion which illustrates the failings of those who propose it.
Hugely expensive and probably not the best idea when the economy lacks labour in key areas.
Just another woeful showing by this undead Govt
Look at the cutoff for *upper* levels of NI Class 1. Imagine the shock from smoothing out what would otherwise be a massive anomaly at roughly 50K pa annual income.
https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance/how-much-you-pay
Cochrane reviews have to register and go through a particularly thorough procedure and are then published through Cochrane. I don’t think it’s meaningful to talk about an informal Cochrane review. It’s just not a Cochrane review. You can’t separate the Cochrane process from the Cochrane bureaucracy.
In that case, all you have to do, @Foxy, is put on a dress and say "I am a woman", then you are indeed a woman, and you will be a better doctor ACCORDING TO THE SCIENCE
How hard is that?
But I wonder about orthopods - from friends who work in that field, I gather orthopaedic surgery often needs a very heavy hand - sawbones, literally. Though the dentist who removed my positively Neandertaler-size molar the other month was a slim and petite female.
That is the truth, and if you dispute it you will be cancelled
"Neuropathologist and former World Rugby adviser Prof Willie Stewart told the Associated Press: "I think this World Cup is the end of rugby as we know it.
"I think the current form of rugby union as it is played will change straight after the World Cup.""
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-66662278
Kinda sad, but also kinda inevitable. It is hideously brutal, now. Huge players slamming into each other. Fun to watch, but relentlessly damaging. If I had sons rather than daughters I would not allow them to play rugby, if I had the choice
What will rugby evolve into, God knows. Something like rugby sevens? Rugby league with even less impact?
I believe I have actually encountered a few Vixens, in the shady kink-world of Fetlife, usually indicates a switchy pet-player, perhaps with brat tendencies
From Wikipedia, we can learn that there are about 85 million poor Americans who receive Medicaid, and that the total expenditure is about $600 billion a year. So, per capita, the US governments spend about $7,000 for each poor person, just from Medicaid. (Older poor people, who are eligible for Medicare, as well as Medicaid, receive even more.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicaid
So, HYUFD, approximately what does the UK spend on the NHS each year? Are there any other signficant expenditures that should be included? How does that compare to the US expenditure on Medicaid alone, total, and per capita?
(I will say, as I have before, that I am not a defender of the many US health care systems. But I think most criticisms of them could be better informed.
Pro tip: Anyone who says there is an American health care system either doesn't know what they are talking about, or is being sloppy. There are many health care systems here.)
So the question I'm asking is: did they register with Cochrane, or did they just use the methods? This isn't me being a dick (that comes for free
And, as our resident tree kangaroo says, Cochraneity involves inherently the formal review and publication process as part of it all. So, if not published by them it's not a Cochrane.
https://twitter.com/PoliticsJOE_UK
The huge gain underscores the cut-price nature of the state-orchestrated rescue deal that UBS agreed in March.
The Swiss bank bought its stricken rival for $3.8 billion in a hastily arranged transaction that was brokered by the authorities as fears mounted that Credit Suisse was poised to collapse.
This knockdown price has now resulted in a one-off accounting boost, known as “negative goodwill”, for UBS because it bought Credit Suisse for significantly less than its fair value.
The bank announced the record profit in its second-quarter results, when it also revealed it expected to cut about 3,000 jobs in Switzerland as a result of the deal in the coming years. Thousands more are expected to be lost around the world, including in the City of London, as Sergio Ermotti, the UBS boss, embarks on the complex and risky task of integrating Credit Suisse, the rescue of which has created a sprawling banking giant employing about 120,000 people.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ubs-posts-record-breaking-29bn-profit-after-credit-suisse-rescue-rkx82nmt5
Proper surgery, according to him, required a big hole in the patient.
If he wasn’t actually dressed in three piece tweed, he should have been.
*I was young, so can’t remember if this was the second or third time Thatcher completely destroyed the NHS.
Everyone satisfied ?
So, if I were to compare your PM's family wealth to that of the average family in the UK, I would quickly find some numbers with Google or Bing, and say something like this: Sunak's family has about 730 million pounds; the median UK family has about 300 thousand pounds.
(In contrast, I approve of using "orders of magnitudes", when appropriate. For example: As president, Obama told at least an order of magnitude more falsehoods than his predecessor; as president, Trump told at least an order of magnitude more falsehoods than his predecessor.)
Any of the Departmental Ministers would have been better. One can have a go at Mr Wallace, however he has made the big calls more or less correctly.
If this is implemented then again, it should be implemented properly. Which means funding will be required too.
Education is a core function the state offers. It should be well and properly resourced.
Without good education we won't have good engineers, or doctors, lawyers, or anything else of the future.
Investing in education, in children, and giving them opportunities is not a matter for austerity in my eyes. It is one of the most critical things we as a society can and should do.
Unless, of course, you dispute the assertion that trans women are women, but that gets you ejected from society
https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/
The ground difference remains, but the numbers have changed, slightly.
There's no paradox here, however much you like to bring your obsession with trans people into every discussion.
Would the authorities be able to argue "Well, he waived away his rights"? That might work for adults (this is the certain end of rugby as we know it for under-18s) but my hunch is that the courts will take a dim view of a sport enticing young men into danger, getting them to sign away their mental health, then ignoring them as they suffer horribly in middle age
Rugby Union, as we have loved it, is finished. I reckon
The NFL is wrestling with the same dilemma
"The largest study yet of dead former NFL players found that over 99% had permanent brain damage"
https://qz.com/1038120/over-99-of-nfl-players-brains-in-a-study-of-dead-players-have-cte-permanent-brain-damage
So far NFL has survived by accepting the law suits and paying money
https://www.brain-injury-law-center.com/blog/nfl-settles-head-injury-lawsuit/
The NFL is massively rich. Rugby is not
Stopping them juicing like mad might help.
I have no "obsession" with trans issues. I do not often mention it compared to many other commenters, on both sides, who really DO harp on about it
It just struck me as an intersting cognitive dissonance. You cannot simultaneously say "women are better doctors" and believe this is a meaningful statement, if you also subscribe to mainstream trans theory, that "a man can be a woman simply by saying so" - because then the word "woman" is so vague as to be meaningless