Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Absolutely. 20mph speed limits on our motorways I say.
Already in operation on the M25 between J10 and J16.
Good point. It would be a dream and trouble-free motoring to get up to that speed on much of it.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Absolutely. 20mph speed limits on our motorways I say.
Already in operation on the M25 between J10 and J16.
Edinburgh bypass every time there is a crash too. (Actually an argument for slower speed limits to reduce the number of collisions, and thereby increase average speeds).
Exciting news on Good Morning Scotland whilst driving in that the escaped prisoner could be trying to leave the UK. An All Ports Bulletin issued so expect delays at airports.
It took an age to get to the carpark here at Aberdeen Airport. Not because the polis are looking for the escapee, because of the huge Offshore expo nearby. The extra security delays at the airport? Naah - the usual 'don't stop moving until you load stuff into the scanner trays.'
Oh yes. Should have warned you about that. Offshore Europe. It bounces back and forth between Aberdeen and Stavagner every 2 years. Time was when you siply didn't bother trying to book a hotel in Aberdeen for the week it was on. In Norway people book hotels in Oslo or Bergen and fly back and forth to Stavanger every day for the Expo.
Doing their bit for global warming.
It is very much the norm in Norway. Daily commute by air is common in many occupations there.
Anyone know what the going rate for non-domestic electricity is? Just found out our village hall is paying £1.35 per kWh. The hall is unsustainable at this rate.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Absolutely. 20mph speed limits on our motorways I say.
Already in operation on the M25 between J10 and J16.
Edinburgh bypass every time there is a crash too. (Actually an argument for slower speed limits to reduce the number of collisions, and thereby increase average speeds).
Am I allowed to say that since they introduced the average speed cameras (70mph) on the A14 the traffic flows more freely.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Absolutely. 20mph speed limits on our motorways I say.
Already in operation on the M25 between J10 and J16.
What makes a job crappy? Serious question - let’s try and define it.
I think it’s a simple 3 x 3 matrix.
- is it well paid or poorly paid - is it an interesting or fulfilling job to do - does it come with excessive levels of pressure or stress
So the worst jobs are pointless and unfulfilling, highly stressful and poorly paid. The best are high paid, fascinating and with manageable levels of stress. David Attenborough’s job for example, or Michael Palin.
I think that misses out a significant factor -- what are the other people, and especially your immediate boss, like? An otherwise mundane job with a group of friendly people who all get along can be a lot less awful than a job that's theoretically interesting but full of office politics and where the boss is a terrible micromanager (or worse).
I agree with your matrix, but people vary a lot on which part really matters. The key for me is simply whether I can do the job well, though clearly that reflects an adequate financial position so the level of pay isn't crucial. Any irritating managers or colleagues can then be shrugged off. I've had times when I felt I wasn't solving the issues I faced adequately, and that was horrible even with friendly colleagues and boss.
When I'm solving problems, hopefully helping people or animals, everything's fine, and high pressure is good fun. Yesterday, I had a complex, urgent report to write which took 7 hours of screen time with a short break, and I felt really happy about it by the end of the day.
Our HR department worries about stress and has signed us all up for https://www.calm.com/ - I asked only half-jokingly whether we couldn't have an excite.com app for dull moments. The adrenalin that you get from productive stress is underrated.
Oh I do agree with this!
One reason I love doing investigations is because of the adrenalin, the uncertainty, the chaos, trying to make sense of it all, the high you get from that, etc.,. Stick me at a desk writing out a contract and I'd die from boredom.
Tell me that the police are at the front desk, a journalist is on the phone and I've got to brief a load of worried senior people in 30 minutes and I'm in my happy place.
Hand One: the need to refurbish the schools estate which had as yet not killed or injured anyone but which is a high priority because buildings don't last forever.
Hand Two: gigantic huge fucking juggernaut of expense as a result of Covid measures including lockdown, furlough, PPE, younameit.
In those circumstances you deal with what is in front of you, not what might happen but has not to date. I would imagine that routinely building inspectors visit schools and make comments on structural integrity.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
You have to balance risk and cost (not just financial but also the disruption to education, etc)
So, how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Greater than zero.
Remarkable attitude. Truly remarkable.
There's always a risk of roof collapse, of any roof. You have to balance risk of doing nothing (kids die in roof collapse multiplied by very unlikely) against the risk of doing something (kids never leave the house, and don't get an education multiplied by very likely). Clearly you can't go reacting to every risk no matter how small.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
It’s more the stupid precautionary principle that has infected so much of our decision making in the public sphere.
The “right” answer is to survey all the school , mitigate, secure and fix. Not to close schools. But our politicians, driven by social media, are liable to panic. There is no upside for them doing the right thing and if even one kid gets hurt their career is over. So they overreact.
"if even one kid gets hurt their career is over"
I don't know if you have kids, but if that one kid was yours would you go "well, the balance of probabilities was my kid wouldn't be the one to get hurt / die" or would you go "the government knew this was going to happen eventually, why didn't they sort it out before it got to this point?". The problem is that the government dragged their feet and so that means the risk is higher than it was, and so have to be seen to do something now or kids will start getting hurt and people can point to No 10 as the responsible party. If they had done this 4-5 years ago (or even potentially used lockdown as a time to do this, although that would have been iffy from a health and safety pov, and the supply lines being buggered meant building materials were very expensive) we wouldn't be in this mess.
Of course I’d be angry if it was my kid. But that’s why we have politicians who are supposed to look at the macro picture not the micro detail.
Closing 100 schools disrupts the education of 100k kids. Is that a price worth paying vs a small risk of a collapse potentially hurting a kid?
On your second paragraph hindsight is a wonderful thing
How many dead / injured kids is acceptable, then? You say greater than zero, but less than what? 5? 15? 100? If we're going to trolley problem this, where's the line? Utilitarianism is all very well, but then you have to accept that then the PM is going to be the one selling that to the public. And already Farquad and Jaws comparisons are happening, and no one is hurt yet.
It's not just about hindsight, it's about a government that actually plans and does things before they become a crisis. If you're constantly fire fighting then you'll lose control of a fire or two, and that is not good governance.
The "don't close them & keep on using the classrooms" gets problematic when the first Primary School child (or class of children) is injured or killed because the risk was ignored.How do the poliics of that work?
Morning all.
It's liability and the politics of who is responsible, plus variable risk tolerance.
There is recklessness as to risk to children in many respects esp. if the parents of the children are responsible - eg school run parents running children and parents down by dangerous driving. But I think bits of school buildings landing on childrens' heads is not in that category, as the school authorities are responsible.
You can see that in the Govt which opted not to invest in schools has been tripping over its own feet to rush to respond & spend money, which it previously alleged was not available, to fix the issue.
On lactual iability, can a school operate legally once there is a known risk like this? Surely that will cause insurance problems.
Is this actually closing entire schools, or is it just parts of schools?
I'm not sure whether Portakabins are a quite the problem painted (tents or marquees would be) - they have been used as short term buildings everywhere, forever.
This Trump 14th Amendment issue feels really weird - SCOTUS will not uphold this without Trump being found guilty and will likely argue that the only body who can do that would be Congress in an impeachment trial, or SCOTUS themselves? Would they really allow individual states to choose who counts as an insurrectionist on their own individual criteria? I think that's a bad idea, and I think the very right wing SCOTUS will too (for different reasons). I wouldn't want Ron DeSantis to be able to pressure his Secretary of State to declare any politician who supported BLM as someone engaged in "insurrection or rebellion", or Georgia declare any politician trying to stop Cop City as ineligible to run for POTUS. The US body politick needs to accept that even if their constitution is supposed to have the means to prevent demagoguery (which is highly questionable), the political reality is Trump will be the GOP nominee. If the GOP and their supporters are happy with that then the rot is really deep and needs radical action to change.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Absolutely. 20mph speed limits on our motorways I say.
Already in operation on the M25 between J10 and J16.
Edinburgh bypass every time there is a crash too. (Actually an argument for slower speed limits to reduce the number of collisions, and thereby increase average speeds).
Am I allowed to say that since they introduced the average speed cameras (70mph) on the A14 the traffic flows more freely.
Agreed - but in the Cambridge area, didn't they come in with the new road upgrades?
I'm heading out but we possibly could reach a sensible moderate consensus here?
I'm all for schools generally staying open. Lockdowns were dreadful for them. My son suffered through it. They were awful for the children. It wasn't the right decision because covid didn't really put children's lives at risk.
However, if there's a danger of roof collapse - and there clearly is - you can't sit children underneath them until they are made safe. It would be madness.
It is interesting that the arguments around school closures for RAAC are slightly different from those around closures for Covid, even though both amount to balancing risks to life with harm to education.
And as I keep reminding people, the idea of lockdown/online learning is now a working tool to address all kinds of issues when we were assured it was a unique set of circumstances, once in a lifetime, etc. It is rapidly moving to BAU which is shocking and very troubling.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
You have to balance risk and cost (not just financial but also the disruption to education, etc)
Yeah but it's the same kind of solely capitalist-driven argument which led to the Zeebrugge ferry disaster in which 193 people died or, indeed, Aberfan in which 116 school children were crushed / suffocated to death whilst at school along with 28 adults.
The cost here is disrupted education for children. That needs to be factored in vs the risk of a localised collapse.
A localised collapse? As opposed to what? Every school building collapsing at once? Don't worry, kids, when your roof collapses on you, it will only be your class. 3B down the hall will be fine.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
But they are doing something. So non-zero is the amount of injuries that should occur before it's treated like they are occurring.
The issue isn't that they are or are not acting on RAAC (they are, and before injuries).
The issue is the utterly shambolic way they're doing so.
This was an issue known about weeks ago, they could have made announcements weeks ago but instead it was shambolically mismanaged and done at the last possible minute.
Which as a parent bears an eerie similarity to the completely shambolic "return to school for one day, ok now we are in immediate lockdown no school tomorrow" in January 2021.
Morning Bart. My comment was not directed towards the Government but towards a handful of PB posters who feel we shouldn't be taking kids out of schools just because the ceiling might collapse on them. I concur with your thoughts on the Government response.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Absolutely. 20mph speed limits on our motorways I say.
Already in operation on the M25 between J10 and J16.
Edinburgh bypass every time there is a crash too. (Actually an argument for slower speed limits to reduce the number of collisions, and thereby increase average speeds).
Am I allowed to say that since they introduced the average speed cameras (70mph) on the A14 the traffic flows more freely.
Agreed - but in the Cambridge area, didn't they come in with the new road upgrades?
They were introduced on the Huntingdon stretch some years ago.
This Trump 14th Amendment issue feels really weird - SCOTUS will not uphold this without Trump being found guilty and will likely argue that the only body who can do that would be Congress in an impeachment trial, or SCOTUS themselves? Would they really allow individual states to choose who counts as an insurrectionist on their own individual criteria? I think that's a bad idea, and I think the very right wing SCOTUS will too (for different reasons). I wouldn't want Ron DeSantis to be able to pressure his Secretary of State to declare any politician who supported BLM as someone engaged in "insurrection or rebellion", or Georgia declare any politician trying to stop Cop City as ineligible to run for POTUS. The US body politick needs to accept that even if their constitution is supposed to have the means to prevent demagoguery (which is highly questionable), the political reality is Trump will be the GOP nominee. If the GOP and their supporters are happy with that then the rot is really deep and needs radical action to change.
Maybe we should be more conciliatory towards the PB Tories who don't think we should be taking kids out of affected buildings. I've got an idea for a compromise solution that they might like. We take the kids out, but we put asylum seekers in. Would that work for you, LuckyGuy and NerysHughes?
It is genuinely heartwarming to see PB Tories scrambling to defend the RAAC scandal. This is the free pass for Starmer - it doesn't matter if he is boring or his policies tame. He isn't a mendacious incompetent and that is good enough.
As I always point out, today's toxic Tories have a terrible tendency to sneer at ordinary people and their issues. The "yebbut it's no problem I blame those complaining" attitude only deepens the electoral demolition which is surely coming.
Approaching the till at perhaps 9:40pm and there were a couple with 3 baskets on the conveyor belt, one guarding and the other running up and down the shop collecting last minute items (no self-service tills btw).
Asked them a simple, perhaps over short, question: "Guys, are you shopping or queueng?".
They started chuntering like Ronnie Corbett in Four Candles.
This Trump 14th Amendment issue feels really weird - SCOTUS will not uphold this without Trump being found guilty and will likely argue that the only body who can do that would be Congress in an impeachment trial, or SCOTUS themselves? Would they really allow individual states to choose who counts as an insurrectionist on their own individual criteria? I think that's a bad idea, and I think the very right wing SCOTUS will too (for different reasons). I wouldn't want Ron DeSantis to be able to pressure his Secretary of State to declare any politician who supported BLM as someone engaged in "insurrection or rebellion", or Georgia declare any politician trying to stop Cop City as ineligible to run for POTUS. The US body politick needs to accept that even if their constitution is supposed to have the means to prevent demagoguery (which is highly questionable), the political reality is Trump will be the GOP nominee. If the GOP and their supporters are happy with that then the rot is really deep and needs radical action to change.
Surely the question hangs on whether the candidate has been convicted of insurrection or rebellion? Otherwise how is it determined that a person has been involved in such activities?
It is genuinely heartwarming to see PB Tories scrambling to defend the RAAC scandal. This is the free pass for Starmer - it doesn't matter if he is boring or his policies tame. He isn't a mendacious incompetent and that is good enough.
As I always point out, today's toxic Tories have a terrible tendency to sneer at ordinary people and their issues. The "yebbut it's no problem I blame those complaining" attitude only deepens the electoral demolition which is surely coming.
It is the timing that is the issue, as Bart points out. (2-3% of) schools have building materials which are coming to the end of their natural life. That's no one's problem and in a world of resource prioritisation I can understand Rishi saving money on a future, as yet unrealised problem while dealing with a problem that is sitting on his face right now.
Schools are not exploding everywhere and I'd wager if we looked at school fatalities, or even serious injuries we would unearth scandal upon scandal from all different directions.
But as you say, it is yet one more shovel of shit on the perception of the Cons' handling of the UK and will likely exacerbate the kicking they will get at the next GE.
Maybe we should be more conciliatory towards the PB Tories who don't think we should be taking kids out of affected buildings. I've got an idea for a compromise solution that they might like. We take the kids out, but we put asylum seekers in. Would that work for you, LuckyGuy and NerysHughes?
Why don't we take the kids out and put their kids in?
It's not remarkable at all. Every day people in all sorts of jobs, in government and public services as much as the private sector, make such risk assessments, and judgements about what to do or spend in response. Anyone who thinks life should have or even can have "no risk", and that "spare no expense" to make that so is possible or desirable, is a crank.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Absolutely. 20mph speed limits on our motorways I say.
Already in operation on the M25 between J10 and J16.
Edinburgh bypass every time there is a crash too. (Actually an argument for slower speed limits to reduce the number of collisions, and thereby increase average speeds).
Am I allowed to say that since they introduced the average speed cameras (70mph) on the A14 the traffic flows more freely.
Agreed - but in the Cambridge area, didn't they come in with the new road upgrades?
They were introduced on the Huntingdon stretch some years ago.
The A14 is a terrific road. One of the reasons I go to Norfolk so much these days is so I can use it.
This Trump 14th Amendment issue feels really weird - SCOTUS will not uphold this without Trump being found guilty and will likely argue that the only body who can do that would be Congress in an impeachment trial, or SCOTUS themselves? Would they really allow individual states to choose who counts as an insurrectionist on their own individual criteria? I think that's a bad idea, and I think the very right wing SCOTUS will too (for different reasons). I wouldn't want Ron DeSantis to be able to pressure his Secretary of State to declare any politician who supported BLM as someone engaged in "insurrection or rebellion", or Georgia declare any politician trying to stop Cop City as ineligible to run for POTUS. The US body politick needs to accept that even if their constitution is supposed to have the means to prevent demagoguery (which is highly questionable), the political reality is Trump will be the GOP nominee. If the GOP and their supporters are happy with that then the rot is really deep and needs radical action to change.
In any event, it won't happen because all sides seem to accept that this will end up with SCOTUS who are likely to block it (and may even do so on an unanimous (or near unanimous) count.
This Trump 14th Amendment issue feels really weird - SCOTUS will not uphold this without Trump being found guilty and will likely argue that the only body who can do that would be Congress in an impeachment trial, or SCOTUS themselves? Would they really allow individual states to choose who counts as an insurrectionist on their own individual criteria? I think that's a bad idea, and I think the very right wing SCOTUS will too (for different reasons). I wouldn't want Ron DeSantis to be able to pressure his Secretary of State to declare any politician who supported BLM as someone engaged in "insurrection or rebellion", or Georgia declare any politician trying to stop Cop City as ineligible to run for POTUS. The US body politick needs to accept that even if their constitution is supposed to have the means to prevent demagoguery (which is highly questionable), the political reality is Trump will be the GOP nominee. If the GOP and their supporters are happy with that then the rot is really deep and needs radical action to change.
Surely the question hangs on whether the candidate has been convicted of insurrection or rebellion? Otherwise how is it determined that a person has been involved in such activities?
That's going to be the issue, though, right? Like, Georgia might find him guilty of that - but is a single state's definition of that crime acceptable for federal elections? I think that SCOTUS will say the only acceptable trial to decide this is the impeachment trial.
And as I keep reminding people, the idea of lockdown/online learning is now a working tool to address all kinds of issues when we were assured it was a unique set of circumstances, once in a lifetime, etc. It is rapidly moving to BAU which is shocking and very troubling.
Yes, if heavy snow in winter means "online teaching" rather than "free day off" a key part of our childhood experience will have been lost...
This Trump 14th Amendment issue feels really weird - SCOTUS will not uphold this without Trump being found guilty and will likely argue that the only body who can do that would be Congress in an impeachment trial, or SCOTUS themselves? Would they really allow individual states to choose who counts as an insurrectionist on their own individual criteria? I think that's a bad idea, and I think the very right wing SCOTUS will too (for different reasons). I wouldn't want Ron DeSantis to be able to pressure his Secretary of State to declare any politician who supported BLM as someone engaged in "insurrection or rebellion", or Georgia declare any politician trying to stop Cop City as ineligible to run for POTUS. The US body politick needs to accept that even if their constitution is supposed to have the means to prevent demagoguery (which is highly questionable), the political reality is Trump will be the GOP nominee. If the GOP and their supporters are happy with that then the rot is really deep and needs radical action to change.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
I'm shocked that you ever read it. It was always only for reactionary granddads, and that was when it at least tried to be a serious newspaper.
A very big part of its circulation now is freebies to hotels and the like, and cheapo subscription deals pitched at the elderly.
Like so much of what you say - about anything - what you say here was maybe true: 15 years ago
The Telegraph now has 1m paid subscribers, makes a fat wodge from digital ads (so they’re clearly not all pensioners) and is in healthy profit
This Trump 14th Amendment issue feels really weird - SCOTUS will not uphold this without Trump being found guilty and will likely argue that the only body who can do that would be Congress in an impeachment trial, or SCOTUS themselves? Would they really allow individual states to choose who counts as an insurrectionist on their own individual criteria? I think that's a bad idea, and I think the very right wing SCOTUS will too (for different reasons). I wouldn't want Ron DeSantis to be able to pressure his Secretary of State to declare any politician who supported BLM as someone engaged in "insurrection or rebellion", or Georgia declare any politician trying to stop Cop City as ineligible to run for POTUS. The US body politick needs to accept that even if their constitution is supposed to have the means to prevent demagoguery (which is highly questionable), the political reality is Trump will be the GOP nominee. If the GOP and their supporters are happy with that then the rot is really deep and needs radical action to change.
So, how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Greater than zero.
I was peripherally involved in the design of NICE, which partly has to decide what treatments can be paid for on the NHS, and hence has to weigh up "small chance of saving some life" against "large chance of making life slightly better for many people" within any budgetary level. IIRC the decision was to set a price of £20,000 (I believe it's now about £30K?) for "one year of satisfactory life", so if drug A would make you on average live a year longer without a lot of pain and side-effects, it would be approved if it cost less than £20K/year. One that on average improved life a bit for 3 months and only cost £10K probably wouldn't.
A lot of people find this chilling - "You can't measure the cost of a life!" - but I think you really have to, no matter how generous or parsimonious your budget. Deciding on the size of the budget is a quite different issue, and much more about political priorities - that's the sort of thing that keeps me interested in politics.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
You have to balance risk and cost (not just financial but also the disruption to education, etc)
Yeah but it's the same kind of solely capitalist-driven argument which led to the Zeebrugge ferry disaster in which 193 people died or, indeed, Aberfan in which 116 school children were crushed / suffocated to death whilst at school along with 28 adults.
The cost here is disrupted education for children. That needs to be factored in vs the risk of a localised collapse.
A localised collapse? As opposed to what? Every school building collapsing at once? Don't worry, kids, when your roof collapses on you, it will only be your class. 3B down the hall will be fine.
Or, it's just Sir, Jimmy, and Mary who get squashed in front of your childrens' eyes, so it's OK if one element fails ...
This Trump 14th Amendment issue feels really weird - SCOTUS will not uphold this without Trump being found guilty and will likely argue that the only body who can do that would be Congress in an impeachment trial, or SCOTUS themselves? Would they really allow individual states to choose who counts as an insurrectionist on their own individual criteria? I think that's a bad idea, and I think the very right wing SCOTUS will too (for different reasons). I wouldn't want Ron DeSantis to be able to pressure his Secretary of State to declare any politician who supported BLM as someone engaged in "insurrection or rebellion", or Georgia declare any politician trying to stop Cop City as ineligible to run for POTUS. The US body politick needs to accept that even if their constitution is supposed to have the means to prevent demagoguery (which is highly questionable), the political reality is Trump will be the GOP nominee. If the GOP and their supporters are happy with that then the rot is really deep and needs radical action to change.
In any event, it won't happen because all sides seem to accept that this will end up with SCOTUS who are likely to block it (and may even do so on an unanimous (or near unanimous) count.
Yeah, I think it would be 9-0. I think the right wing justices would make any argument they want, and the left ones will probably hem and haw a bit and then go "look, this can't just be one state's definition, it kinda needs to be a federal definition or impeachment that defines this"
I'm heading out but we possibly could reach a sensible moderate consensus here?
I'm all for schools generally staying open. Lockdowns were dreadful for them. My son suffered through it. They were awful for the children. It wasn't the right decision because covid didn't really put children's lives at risk.
However, if there's a danger of roof collapse - and there clearly is - you can't sit children underneath them until they are made safe. It would be madness.
It is interesting that the arguments around school closures for RAAC are slightly different from those around closures for Covid, even though both amount to balancing risks to life with harm to education.
And as I keep reminding people, the idea of lockdown/online learning is now a working tool to address all kinds of issues when we were assured it was a unique set of circumstances, once in a lifetime, etc. It is rapidly moving to BAU which is shocking and very troubling.
On the other side, it may be that parents find it easier to imagine their children being crushed than being killed by an infection, as their scale for the latter is low since most childhood infections are trivial. Or it could be that there is (so far) no alt right conspiracy theory that RAAC is a hoax.
On learning from home being BAU, maybe that is seen as less serious because children have just spent the last six weeks at home anyway.
And as I keep reminding people, the idea of lockdown/online learning is now a working tool to address all kinds of issues when we were assured it was a unique set of circumstances, once in a lifetime, etc. It is rapidly moving to BAU which is shocking and very troubling.
Yes, if heavy snow in winter means "online teaching" rather than "free day off" a key part of our childhood experience will have been lost...
I don’t recall any time off for snow, or any other climate-related issues, in my school career in the 40’s and 50’s. Or, come to that, the war.
On topic - is it correct that Labour's support in Scotland is a bit more efficient, in terms of geographical spread, than the SNP's? If so, a poll like this ought to give Labour the most seats in Scotland, no? The SNP might take some seats off the Tories, but Labour should take a lot of central belt seats back. Interesting times.
The SNP vote is very evenly spread across the constituencies. As its vote share drops it goes from being first everywhere to second everywhere under FPTP. The reverse of 2015. It's a bit complex where Labour and SNP total vote is the same as Labour vote distribution is a bit lumpier
The question remains where is the SNP losing votes? Is it uniform or is it concentrated?
It's very easy to see Labour winning many seats from the SNP, but also not hard to see SNP winning seats like Caithness, or Moray. But that all depends on the assumption that the SNP's vote is declining in the central belt and holding up in the north. For all I know it could be the other way around, or across the board. The important point to remember is that Scotland itself is quite "lumpy" and the headline VI could mask a few different scenarios.
The Caithness (etc) constituency is currently held by Jamie Stone of the LibDems.
Just saying!
Yes, and my point is that it's not beyond the realms of possibility to see the SNP vote to decline in the central belt and for the SNP to still gain that kind of seat. The Lib Dems are also not polling very well in Scotland at the moment. The top three parties in that seat are all struggling in their own way, but almost certainly one of them will win it. Probably the Lib Dems, but quite possibly SNP.
Although it's not impossible for the SNP to gain a seat where they missed out by a couple of hundred votes last time, and swings may vary between the central belt and more rural areas, if the poll is correct and the SNP are down around 10pp on their 2019 position, that'd need to mask some enormous regional differences to entail them making gains.
By comparison, the Tories were down around 10% across GB in 1997. They did less badly in some areas than others but they weren't even close to gaining any seats they'd missed out on in 1992.
I'd also note the financial aspect for the SNP. They have well-publicised, er, difficulties on that front. It'd be a really eccentric decision to devote what resources they have to pushing for unlikely gains rather than defending vulnerable held seats in the current climate.
So, how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Greater than zero.
I was peripherally involved in the design of NICE, which partly has to decide what treatments can be paid for on the NHS, and hence has to weigh up "small chance of saving some life" against "large chance of making life slightly better for many people" within any budgetary level. IIRC the decision was to set a price of £20,000 (I believe it's now about £30K?) for "one year of satisfactory life", so if drug A would make you on average live a year longer without a lot of pain and side-effects, it would be approved if it cost less than £20K/year. One that on average improved life a bit for 3 months and only cost £10K probably wouldn't.
A lot of people find this chilling - "You can't measure the cost of a life!" - but I think you really have to, no matter how generous or parsimonious your budget. Deciding on the size of the budget is a quite different issue, and much more about political priorities - that's the sort of thing that keeps me interested in politics.
Of course, schoolchildren a priori have a much higher number of QALYs to lose if they get squashed and killed - or, let's not forget, and which is germane also to your point - permanently injured, than you or I do, ay our ages. Which some of us perhaps forget.
It is genuinely heartwarming to see PB Tories scrambling to defend the RAAC scandal. This is the free pass for Starmer - it doesn't matter if he is boring or his policies tame. He isn't a mendacious incompetent and that is good enough.
As I always point out, today's toxic Tories have a terrible tendency to sneer at ordinary people and their issues. The "yebbut it's no problem I blame those complaining" attitude only deepens the electoral demolition which is surely coming.
It is the timing that is the issue, as Bart points out. (2-3% of) schools have building materials which are coming to the end of their natural life. That's no one's problem and in a world of resource prioritisation I can understand Rishi saving money on a future, as yet unrealised problem while dealing with a problem that is sitting on his face right now.
Schools are not exploding everywhere and I'd wager if we looked at school fatalities, or even serious injuries we would unearth scandal upon scandal from all different directions.
But as you say, it is yet one more shovel of shit on the perception of the Cons' handling of the UK and will likely exacerbate the kicking they will get at the next GE.
Should one of these roofs collapse on children that would be horrific. It's unlikely, but it's the end game of what is really going on.
You says it's no-ones problem and that it's a future problem. This is the attitude that will see the kicking given to the Tories get even harder.
This is a live problem. Today. Yesterday. And for years before. Some of these schools are genuinely awful places to be. Run down. Tatty. Minimal maintenance because the building will have to get replaced at some point soon so why bother.
What the Tories have done is put these kids and their education bottom of the list, whether their school has RAAC or not and whether it is on the risk of collapse list or not.
The money has been stolen from the pot to replace ordinary schools and given to spivs founding free schools. They get all the cash, leaving the rest stuck in decaying and crumbling environments getting ever-decaying education.
The props holding the roofs up is symbolic of the party attitude to public services and to normal people. Not important enough to care.
This Trump 14th Amendment issue feels really weird - SCOTUS will not uphold this without Trump being found guilty and will likely argue that the only body who can do that would be Congress in an impeachment trial, or SCOTUS themselves? Would they really allow individual states to choose who counts as an insurrectionist on their own individual criteria? I think that's a bad idea, and I think the very right wing SCOTUS will too (for different reasons). I wouldn't want Ron DeSantis to be able to pressure his Secretary of State to declare any politician who supported BLM as someone engaged in "insurrection or rebellion", or Georgia declare any politician trying to stop Cop City as ineligible to run for POTUS. The US body politick needs to accept that even if their constitution is supposed to have the means to prevent demagoguery (which is highly questionable), the political reality is Trump will be the GOP nominee. If the GOP and their supporters are happy with that then the rot is really deep and needs radical action to change.
In any event, it won't happen because all sides seem to accept that this will end up with SCOTUS who are likely to block it (and may even do so on an unanimous (or near unanimous) count.
Yeah, I think it would be 9-0. I think the right wing justices would make any argument they want, and the left ones will probably hem and haw a bit and then go "look, this can't just be one state's definition, it kinda needs to be a federal definition or impeachment that defines this"
Based on the Berger case, anyone convicted of insurrection or rebellion (or espionage in Berger's case) should not be prevented from standing but may be barred from taking office if elected. Presumably that would require both houses of Congress to vote to bar, but we would be deeply into uncharted territory.
And as I keep reminding people, the idea of lockdown/online learning is now a working tool to address all kinds of issues when we were assured it was a unique set of circumstances, once in a lifetime, etc. It is rapidly moving to BAU which is shocking and very troubling.
Yes, if heavy snow in winter means "online teaching" rather than "free day off" a key part of our childhood experience will have been lost...
I don’t recall any time off for snow, or any other climate-related issues, in my school career in the 40’s and 50’s. Or, come to that, the war.
My grandad used to tell me how he'd wish for air raid sirens before school, because if that happened the day of school was cancelled...
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
It’s more the stupid precautionary principle that has infected so much of our decision making in the public sphere.
The “right” answer is to survey all the school , mitigate, secure and fix. Not to close schools. But our politicians, driven by social media, are liable to panic. There is no upside for them doing the right thing and if even one kid gets hurt their career is over. So they overreact.
"if even one kid gets hurt their career is over"
I don't know if you have kids, but if that one kid was yours would you go "well, the balance of probabilities was my kid wouldn't be the one to get hurt / die" or would you go "the government knew this was going to happen eventually, why didn't they sort it out before it got to this point?". The problem is that the government dragged their feet and so that means the risk is higher than it was, and so have to be seen to do something now or kids will start getting hurt and people can point to No 10 as the responsible party. If they had done this 4-5 years ago (or even potentially used lockdown as a time to do this, although that would have been iffy from a health and safety pov, and the supply lines being buggered meant building materials were very expensive) we wouldn't be in this mess.
Of course I’d be angry if it was my kid. But that’s why we have politicians who are supposed to look at the macro picture not the micro detail.
Closing 100 schools disrupts the education of 100k kids. Is that a price worth paying vs a small risk of a collapse potentially hurting a kid?
On your second paragraph hindsight is a wonderful thing
The point is that if the government had been on this earlier and forked out to fix the problem we wouldn't be facing this horrible trade-off. If the government is asking parents whether they'd rather face a high probability of their child's education being disrupted or a small chance of their child being crushed to death then they have manifestly failed in their job. The fact that the guy who chose not to fork out for the repairs has made sure his own kids will never face this trade-off makes it utterly toxic.
I think it's more fundamental than 'being on this earlier"; it's about basic attitudes to long term maintenance and investment, and long-term plans vs short-term politics.
And I'd blame the attitudes of the whole of society rather than just politicians - political reactions are a response to their political customers ie the electorate, ie *us*.
That's why are present government revenue is being diverted / investment is not being made, to fund attempts to win the next Election by short term fell-good policies, decisions that should have been taken 1 or 2 or 5 years ago are being treated with slopey-shoulders or nonsensical assertions, and on and on and on.
So, how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Greater than zero.
I was peripherally involved in the design of NICE, which partly has to decide what treatments can be paid for on the NHS, and hence has to weigh up "small chance of saving some life" against "large chance of making life slightly better for many people" within any budgetary level. IIRC the decision was to set a price of £20,000 (I believe it's now about £30K?) for "one year of satisfactory life", so if drug A would make you on average live a year longer without a lot of pain and side-effects, it would be approved if it cost less than £20K/year. One that on average improved life a bit for 3 months and only cost £10K probably wouldn't.
A lot of people find this chilling - "You can't measure the cost of a life!" - but I think you really have to, no matter how generous or parsimonious your budget. Deciding on the size of the budget is a quite different issue, and much more about political priorities - that's the sort of thing that keeps me interested in politics.
I didn't know you were involved (peripherally) in the design of NICE! That's a good line on a CV.
And as I keep reminding people, the idea of lockdown/online learning is now a working tool to address all kinds of issues when we were assured it was a unique set of circumstances, once in a lifetime, etc. It is rapidly moving to BAU which is shocking and very troubling.
Yes, if heavy snow in winter means "online teaching" rather than "free day off" a key part of our childhood experience will have been lost...
I don’t recall any time off for snow, or any other climate-related issues, in my school career in the 40’s and 50’s. Or, come to that, the war.
This Trump 14th Amendment issue feels really weird - SCOTUS will not uphold this without Trump being found guilty and will likely argue that the only body who can do that would be Congress in an impeachment trial, or SCOTUS themselves? Would they really allow individual states to choose who counts as an insurrectionist on their own individual criteria? I think that's a bad idea, and I think the very right wing SCOTUS will too (for different reasons). I wouldn't want Ron DeSantis to be able to pressure his Secretary of State to declare any politician who supported BLM as someone engaged in "insurrection or rebellion", or Georgia declare any politician trying to stop Cop City as ineligible to run for POTUS. The US body politick needs to accept that even if their constitution is supposed to have the means to prevent demagoguery (which is highly questionable), the political reality is Trump will be the GOP nominee. If the GOP and their supporters are happy with that then the rot is really deep and needs radical action to change.
In any event, it won't happen because all sides seem to accept that this will end up with SCOTUS who are likely to block it (and may even do so on an unanimous (or near unanimous) count.
Yeah, I think it would be 9-0. I think the right wing justices would make any argument they want, and the left ones will probably hem and haw a bit and then go "look, this can't just be one state's definition, it kinda needs to be a federal definition or impeachment that defines this"
Based on the Berger case, anyone convicted of insurrection or rebellion (or espionage in Berger's case) should not be prevented from standing but may be barred from taking office if elected. Presumably that would require both houses of Congress to vote to bar, but we would be deeply into uncharted territory.
Well, Trump has already sworn his oath to the constitution when he became POTUS - and the amendment is clearly about those individuals. Berger was not (as I can tell) elected and then tried, so when found guilty hadn't taken such an oath? So the right series of choice would be to allow him to run and then not let him fill the seat?
It is genuinely heartwarming to see PB Tories scrambling to defend the RAAC scandal. This is the free pass for Starmer - it doesn't matter if he is boring or his policies tame. He isn't a mendacious incompetent and that is good enough.
As I always point out, today's toxic Tories have a terrible tendency to sneer at ordinary people and their issues. The "yebbut it's no problem I blame those complaining" attitude only deepens the electoral demolition which is surely coming.
It is the timing that is the issue, as Bart points out. (2-3% of) schools have building materials which are coming to the end of their natural life. That's no one's problem and in a world of resource prioritisation I can understand Rishi saving money on a future, as yet unrealised problem while dealing with a problem that is sitting on his face right now.
Schools are not exploding everywhere and I'd wager if we looked at school fatalities, or even serious injuries we would unearth scandal upon scandal from all different directions.
But as you say, it is yet one more shovel of shit on the perception of the Cons' handling of the UK and will likely exacerbate the kicking they will get at the next GE.
Should one of these roofs collapse on children that would be horrific. It's unlikely, but it's the end game of what is really going on.
You says it's no-ones problem and that it's a future problem. This is the attitude that will see the kicking given to the Tories get even harder.
This is a live problem. Today. Yesterday. And for years before. Some of these schools are genuinely awful places to be. Run down. Tatty. Minimal maintenance because the building will have to get replaced at some point soon so why bother.
What the Tories have done is put these kids and their education bottom of the list, whether their school has RAAC or not and whether it is on the risk of collapse list or not.
The money has been stolen from the pot to replace ordinary schools and given to spivs founding free schools. They get all the cash, leaving the rest stuck in decaying and crumbling environments getting ever-decaying education.
The props holding the roofs up is symbolic of the party attitude to public services and to normal people. Not important enough to care.
As regards current standards - it isn't just a matter of 30 year old RAAC, but this sort of thing. Note the building of new academies and free schools is involved here (which inherently deprioritised the replacement of existing schools and therefore the children and adults in them).
So, how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Greater than zero.
I was peripherally involved in the design of NICE, which partly has to decide what treatments can be paid for on the NHS, and hence has to weigh up "small chance of saving some life" against "large chance of making life slightly better for many people" within any budgetary level. IIRC the decision was to set a price of £20,000 (I believe it's now about £30K?) for "one year of satisfactory life", so if drug A would make you on average live a year longer without a lot of pain and side-effects, it would be approved if it cost less than £20K/year. One that on average improved life a bit for 3 months and only cost £10K probably wouldn't.
A lot of people find this chilling - "You can't measure the cost of a life!" - but I think you really have to, no matter how generous or parsimonious your budget. Deciding on the size of the budget is a quite different issue, and much more about political priorities - that's the sort of thing that keeps me interested in politics.
Absolutley, Nick.
You not only can measure the cost of a life, you have to. I'm glad I don't have to do it myself, it would keep me awake nights, but I acknowledge and admire those that do. It is essentially what good government is about.
Take speed limits, for example, since the topic has cropped up here. There are about 1,500 deaths on our roads each year now (way down on what it was when I passed my test in 1966, though these facts are not necessarily linked) and we could easily get that down to a few dozen if we reduce the speed limit to 5mph. Such a reductio ad absurdum makes the point.
Somebody has to decide where to draw the line, which implies evaluation of the cost of a life. Tough, but somebody really has to do it.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
You have to balance risk and cost (not just financial but also the disruption to education, etc)
So, how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Greater than zero.
Remarkable attitude. Truly remarkable.
There's always a risk of roof collapse, of any roof. You have to balance risk of doing nothing (kids die in roof collapse multiplied by very unlikely) against the risk of doing something (kids never leave the house, and don't get an education multiplied by very likely). Clearly you can't go reacting to every risk no matter how small.
You can't go reacting to every risk no matter how small. RAAC is not a small risk. That's the point.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
You have to balance risk and cost (not just financial but also the disruption to education, etc)
Yeah but it's the same kind of solely capitalist-driven argument which led to the Zeebrugge ferry disaster in which 193 people died or, indeed, Aberfan in which 116 school children were crushed / suffocated to death whilst at school along with 28 adults.
Aberfan happened under a nationalised industry and the failings that led to the disaster were due to ignorance and negligence, not the capitalist pursuit of profit. There were no great cost implications about siting the spoil heaps on the other side of the mountain - as had been done to the earlier spoil heaps during the privatised era. People just didn't think and really didn't care - until it was too late.
Fair summary.
Zeebrugge though. Aptly involving a ship called the Herald of Free Enterprise.
That was the disaster that personally felt closest to home for me. The captain of the vessel was taken to the hospital next to my school in Canterbury and there was a police guard at the door as a result.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
You have to balance risk and cost (not just financial but also the disruption to education, etc)
So, how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Greater than zero.
Remarkable attitude. Truly remarkable.
There's always a risk of roof collapse, of any roof. You have to balance risk of doing nothing (kids die in roof collapse multiplied by very unlikely) against the risk of doing something (kids never leave the house, and don't get an education multiplied by very likely). Clearly you can't go reacting to every risk no matter how small.
You can't go reacting to every risk no matter how small. RAAC is not a small risk. That's the point.
Nor is it same to consider that school replacements can just be deferred. Even the ones not in danger of collapse will get tatty and worn out
Another in the long list of Government cock-ups that will come back to bite us.
The latest auction for offshore wind farm developments has flopped because the Government set the CfD* price too low. It is not viable for energy companies to bid because they will lose money. With the massive increase in build costs (which will affect onshore as well as offshore) it simply isn't worth them bidding.
*CfD price is set by the Government. It is the price companies can charge the customer for electricity generated by wind power. The Government set it at £44MW/hr for this auction. If electricity prices fall below that amount then the Government pays the energy company the difference and anything over that amount the company pays the Government.
So, how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Greater than zero.
I was peripherally involved in the design of NICE, which partly has to decide what treatments can be paid for on the NHS, and hence has to weigh up "small chance of saving some life" against "large chance of making life slightly better for many people" within any budgetary level. IIRC the decision was to set a price of £20,000 (I believe it's now about £30K?) for "one year of satisfactory life", so if drug A would make you on average live a year longer without a lot of pain and side-effects, it would be approved if it cost less than £20K/year. One that on average improved life a bit for 3 months and only cost £10K probably wouldn't.
A lot of people find this chilling - "You can't measure the cost of a life!" - but I think you really have to, no matter how generous or parsimonious your budget. Deciding on the size of the budget is a quite different issue, and much more about political priorities - that's the sort of thing that keeps me interested in politics.
I didn't know you were involved (peripherally) in the design of NICE! That's a good line on a CV.
I think he's talking about the Health outfit, not the English progressive rock band of the late 1960s. That would have been something.
Edit: Anyway don't encourage him. What with his troilism in Berne and Hungarian Wolf porn, he's been doing quite enough bragging lately.
I guess SCOTUS will probably say the States can't keep people off the ballot, but maybe...
As I understand it, the General Election is not Federally run. Each state decides where and how the ballots are cast, and how the votes translate into Electoral College votes.
I think it's hard to say the States can do all that but have no say on what names are on the ballot.
Do some States not also allow write-ins? If you can have any name you want, is it really just to have a name you don't want?
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
You have to balance risk and cost (not just financial but also the disruption to education, etc)
So, how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Greater than zero.
Remarkable attitude. Truly remarkable.
There's always a risk of roof collapse, of any roof. You have to balance risk of doing nothing (kids die in roof collapse multiplied by very unlikely) against the risk of doing something (kids never leave the house, and don't get an education multiplied by very likely). Clearly you can't go reacting to every risk no matter how small.
You can't go reacting to every risk no matter how small. RAAC is not a small risk. That's the point.
But there seems to be some disagreement over how big the risk is. Anyway, my point was just that it's not necessarily a remarkable attitude to do nothing if you think the risk is small.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
You have to balance risk and cost (not just financial but also the disruption to education, etc)
So, how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Greater than zero.
Remarkable attitude. Truly remarkable.
There's always a risk of roof collapse, of any roof. You have to balance risk of doing nothing (kids die in roof collapse multiplied by very unlikely) against the risk of doing something (kids never leave the house, and don't get an education multiplied by very likely). Clearly you can't go reacting to every risk no matter how small.
You can't go reacting to every risk no matter how small. RAAC is not a small risk. That's the point.
But there seems to be some disagreement over how big the risk is. Anyway, my point was just that it's not necessarily a remarkable attitude to do nothing if you think the risk is small.
There is some disagreement over how big the risk is, yes. The Government, surveyors, and most people think it's a significant risk. A couple of PB Tories think it isn't.
On topic - is it correct that Labour's support in Scotland is a bit more efficient, in terms of geographical spread, than the SNP's? If so, a poll like this ought to give Labour the most seats in Scotland, no? The SNP might take some seats off the Tories, but Labour should take a lot of central belt seats back. Interesting times.
The SNP vote is very evenly spread across the constituencies. As its vote share drops it goes from being first everywhere to second everywhere under FPTP. The reverse of 2015. It's a bit complex where Labour and SNP total vote is the same as Labour vote distribution is a bit lumpier
The question remains where is the SNP losing votes? Is it uniform or is it concentrated?
It's very easy to see Labour winning many seats from the SNP, but also not hard to see SNP winning seats like Caithness, or Moray. But that all depends on the assumption that the SNP's vote is declining in the central belt and holding up in the north. For all I know it could be the other way around, or across the board. The important point to remember is that Scotland itself is quite "lumpy" and the headline VI could mask a few different scenarios.
The Caithness (etc) constituency is currently held by Jamie Stone of the LibDems.
Just saying!
Yes, and my point is that it's not beyond the realms of possibility to see the SNP vote to decline in the central belt and for the SNP to still gain that kind of seat. The Lib Dems are also not polling very well in Scotland at the moment. The top three parties in that seat are all struggling in their own way, but almost certainly one of them will win it. Probably the Lib Dems, but quite possibly SNP.
The key to the Highland Constituencies, my Highland partner tells me, is an intense localism. Charles Kennedy was returned so often in part because he was a local. There's a greater emphasis on having a local candidate than in places where safe seats have been traditionally used to reward party people. I think this also gives the local MP a strong incumbency bonus (as an aside, Caro remarks in the Years of Lyndon Johnson, the voters of the Hill Country elect their representatives and then they keep electing him year after year - perhaps there might be a general rural incumbency bonus?)
I think there's something to this. Danny Alexander and Charles Kennedy lost their seats in 2015 in the SNP landslide. But the LibDem vote share held up pretty well. In 2017, where the LibDems fielded candidates from out with the Constituency, their vote share collapsed.
What this means for the future? I suspect Drew Hendry of Inverness (and the other places) will retain his seat but, with Blackford going, the Ross, Skye and Lochaber constituency could be in play depending on the candidates chosen.
Actually, disregard all the above, the boundaries are going to change at the next GE which complicates my thesis somewhat (I've left it up because I spent a long time writing it!). Ross, Skye and Lochaber won't be going SNP because it is being abolished (and the poor Black Isle is going to Caithness!)
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
You have to balance risk and cost (not just financial but also the disruption to education, etc)
Yeah but it's the same kind of solely capitalist-driven argument which led to the Zeebrugge ferry disaster in which 193 people died or, indeed, Aberfan in which 116 school children were crushed / suffocated to death whilst at school along with 28 adults.
Aberfan happened under a nationalised industry and the failings that led to the disaster were due to ignorance and negligence, not the capitalist pursuit of profit. There were no great cost implications about siting the spoil heaps on the other side of the mountain - as had been done to the earlier spoil heaps during the privatised era. People just didn't think and really didn't care - until it was too late.
Fair summary.
Zeebrugge though. Aptly involving a ship called the Herald of Free Enterprise.
That was the disaster that personally felt closest to home for me. The captain of the vessel was taken to the hospital next to my school in Canterbury and there was a police guard at the door as a result.
It wasn't his fault, either. It came down to a single crew member who fell asleep when he should have been minding the doors.
Of course the responsibilty spreads a lot wider than that - general safety standards were inadequate and the company sailed far to close to the wind. Aberfan was not entirely dissimilar, although a 'couldn't care less attitude' seems to have been a big factor there.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
You have to balance risk and cost (not just financial but also the disruption to education, etc)
So, how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Greater than zero.
Remarkable attitude. Truly remarkable.
There's always a risk of roof collapse, of any roof. You have to balance risk of doing nothing (kids die in roof collapse multiplied by very unlikely) against the risk of doing something (kids never leave the house, and don't get an education multiplied by very likely). Clearly you can't go reacting to every risk no matter how small.
You can't go reacting to every risk no matter how small. RAAC is not a small risk. That's the point.
But there seems to be some disagreement over how big the risk is. Anyway, my point was just that it's not necessarily a remarkable attitude to do nothing if you think the risk is small.
There is some disagreement over how big the risk is, yes. The Government, surveyors, and most people think it's a significant risk. A couple of PB Tories think it isn't.
As the designs of the affected buildings will be different on a case-by-case basis, so will the risks. The mitigations will also be different. In some, a watching brief may be all that is required. In others, a couple of handily-placed Acrow props might be enough (though they are far from childproof). In others, something more structural. In others, the risk may be much more significant.
The only people who can really judge the risk are structural engineers working in conjunction with other experts and the schools in question. Numpties on the Internet certainly cannot.
On topic, Yousef is about to make himself very unpopular with “wealthy” Scots - most of whom definitely wouldn’t class themselves using that word.
The First Minister said “we shouldn’t rule wealth taxes off the table” in the upcoming Scottish Budget thanks to the “extraordinary pressures” his government’s finances are under.
In particular, he cited a recent STUC report that proposed raising £1.4 billion per year by imposing a one per cent annual tax on wealth, including property, pension pots and expensive possessions such as jewellery and art.
If imposed on wealth above a £1 million threshold, it estimated that it would affect 12 per cent of households, each of which would pay an average £8,000 per year.
Interesting to actually see some numbers on this idea though. I’d be especially interested in how they value public-sector defined-benefits pensions, many of which would cost at least a million to purchase in the private sector
It is genuinely heartwarming to see PB Tories scrambling to defend the RAAC scandal. This is the free pass for Starmer - it doesn't matter if he is boring or his policies tame. He isn't a mendacious incompetent and that is good enough.
As I always point out, today's toxic Tories have a terrible tendency to sneer at ordinary people and their issues. The "yebbut it's no problem I blame those complaining" attitude only deepens the electoral demolition which is surely coming.
It is the timing that is the issue, as Bart points out. (2-3% of) schools have building materials which are coming to the end of their natural life. That's no one's problem and in a world of resource prioritisation I can understand Rishi saving money on a future, as yet unrealised problem while dealing with a problem that is sitting on his face right now.
Schools are not exploding everywhere and I'd wager if we looked at school fatalities, or even serious injuries we would unearth scandal upon scandal from all different directions.
But as you say, it is yet one more shovel of shit on the perception of the Cons' handling of the UK and will likely exacerbate the kicking they will get at the next GE.
Should one of these roofs collapse on children that would be horrific. It's unlikely, but it's the end game of what is really going on.
You says it's no-ones problem and that it's a future problem. This is the attitude that will see the kicking given to the Tories get even harder.
This is a live problem. Today. Yesterday. And for years before. Some of these schools are genuinely awful places to be. Run down. Tatty. Minimal maintenance because the building will have to get replaced at some point soon so why bother.
What the Tories have done is put these kids and their education bottom of the list, whether their school has RAAC or not and whether it is on the risk of collapse list or not.
The money has been stolen from the pot to replace ordinary schools and given to spivs founding free schools. They get all the cash, leaving the rest stuck in decaying and crumbling environments getting ever-decaying education.
The props holding the roofs up is symbolic of the party attitude to public services and to normal people. Not important enough to care.
As regards current standards - it isn't just a matter of 30 year old RAAC, but this sort of thing. Note the building of new academies and free schools is involved here (which inherently deprioritised the replacement of existing schools and therefore the children and adults in them).
When I looked at the plans for a new school, locally, either the architects were insane or…
Glass box, facing East/West. Sealed windows, no air conditioning, and a pathetic attempt at natural ventilation.
The board were mounted in front of the windows. So the children would be staring at the board, while being blinded by the sun. Due to contrast, they wouldn’t be able to read anything on the board.
Exciting news on Good Morning Scotland whilst driving in that the escaped prisoner could be trying to leave the UK. An All Ports Bulletin issued so expect delays at airports.
It took an age to get to the carpark here at Aberdeen Airport. Not because the polis are looking for the escapee, because of the huge Offshore expo nearby. The extra security delays at the airport? Naah - the usual 'don't stop moving until you load stuff into the scanner trays.'
The usual gridlock at Barra Airport, chaos at Tiree.
On topic - is it correct that Labour's support in Scotland is a bit more efficient, in terms of geographical spread, than the SNP's? If so, a poll like this ought to give Labour the most seats in Scotland, no? The SNP might take some seats off the Tories, but Labour should take a lot of central belt seats back. Interesting times.
The SNP vote is very evenly spread across the constituencies. As its vote share drops it goes from being first everywhere to second everywhere under FPTP. The reverse of 2015. It's a bit complex where Labour and SNP total vote is the same as Labour vote distribution is a bit lumpier
The question remains where is the SNP losing votes? Is it uniform or is it concentrated?
It's very easy to see Labour winning many seats from the SNP, but also not hard to see SNP winning seats like Caithness, or Moray. But that all depends on the assumption that the SNP's vote is declining in the central belt and holding up in the north. For all I know it could be the other way around, or across the board. The important point to remember is that Scotland itself is quite "lumpy" and the headline VI could mask a few different scenarios.
The Caithness (etc) constituency is currently held by Jamie Stone of the LibDems.
Just saying!
Yes, and my point is that it's not beyond the realms of possibility to see the SNP vote to decline in the central belt and for the SNP to still gain that kind of seat. The Lib Dems are also not polling very well in Scotland at the moment. The top three parties in that seat are all struggling in their own way, but almost certainly one of them will win it. Probably the Lib Dems, but quite possibly SNP.
Although it's not impossible for the SNP to gain a seat where they missed out by a couple of hundred votes last time, and swings may vary between the central belt and more rural areas, if the poll is correct and the SNP are down around 10pp on their 2019 position, that'd need to mask some enormous regional differences to entail them making gains.
By comparison, the Tories were down around 10% across GB in 1997. They did less badly in some areas than others but they weren't even close to gaining any seats they'd missed out on in 1992.
I'd also note the financial aspect for the SNP. They have well-publicised, er, difficulties on that front. It'd be a really eccentric decision to devote what resources they have to pushing for unlikely gains rather than defending vulnerable held seats in the current climate.
If the SNP finish on about 35%, that's a 10pp drop, or a bit under a quarter of their vote. If the Lib Dems finish on about 6%, that's a 3.5pp drop, or a bit over a quarter of their vote.
It not unreasonable to think that some Lib Dem voters last time were motivated by distaste for Corbyn, Boris, and Nicola and could disappear in any direction come the next election. And if (IF!) that were to happen uniformly, who then wins Caithness?
It's a good point about targeting resources, but I'm far from clear how much of a difference that makes. All I know is that given the current polling I wouldn't bet my house on the SNP failing to make the odd gain like Caithness even if they are likely to lose quite a few seats net.
I know there has long been debate in swingometer world as to whether you take a proportionate swing or the absolute approach, and they have pros and cons to each, but it's pretty fanciful to think that Jamie Stone losing a quarter of his 2019 vote is at all likely to happen. With the SNP polling badly too, where are those votes realistically going? Neither Conservatives nor Labour are going to be targeting the seat and their vote won't exactly be rocketing - indeed, there is a decent Tory vote from last time that will be more fertile ground for Stone than the SNP.
The Lib Dems will also doubtless be disappointed not to be getting more traction in the polls both sides of the border, but will rightly take quite a lot of comfort from the fact that in both local and by-elections where they are seen to be in contention (which they are where they already have an MP) they are doing very well.
On the betting front, when constituency markets go up, I'd need to see very tasty odds indeed before I bet on an SNP gain in Caithness. An SNP gain from the Tories is more possible, as the Tories are also polling at least 10pp lower than they got in 2019.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
I'm shocked that you ever read it. It was always only for reactionary granddads, and that was when it at least tried to be a serious newspaper.
A very big part of its circulation now is freebies to hotels and the like, and cheapo subscription deals pitched at the elderly.
Like so much of what you say - about anything - what you say here was maybe true: 15 years ago
The Telegraph now has 1m paid subscribers, makes a fat wodge from digital ads (so they’re clearly not all pensioners) and is in healthy profit
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
That’s an interesting perspective. Perhaps it is being blown up out of proportion, but as with the air traffic control system, it only needs one spectacular failure to upset an awful lot of people.
What makes a job crappy? Serious question - let’s try and define it.
I think it’s a simple 3 x 3 matrix.
- is it well paid or poorly paid - is it an interesting or fulfilling job to do - does it come with excessive levels of pressure or stress
So the worst jobs are pointless and unfulfilling, highly stressful and poorly paid. The best are high paid, fascinating and with manageable levels of stress. David Attenborough’s job for example, or Michael Palin.
I think that misses out a significant factor -- what are the other people, and especially your immediate boss, like? An otherwise mundane job with a group of friendly people who all get along can be a lot less awful than a job that's theoretically interesting but full of office politics and where the boss is a terrible micromanager (or worse).
I agree with your matrix, but people vary a lot on which part really matters. The key for me is simply whether I can do the job well, though clearly that reflects an adequate financial position so the level of pay isn't crucial. Any irritating managers or colleagues can then be shrugged off. I've had times when I felt I wasn't solving the issues I faced adequately, and that was horrible even with friendly colleagues and boss.
When I'm solving problems, hopefully helping people or animals, everything's fine, and high pressure is good fun. Yesterday, I had a complex, urgent report to write which took 7 hours of screen time with a short break, and I felt really happy about it by the end of the day.
Our HR department worries about stress and has signed us all up for https://www.calm.com/ - I asked only half-jokingly whether we couldn't have an excite.com app for dull moments. The adrenalin that you get from productive stress is underrated.
Oh I do agree with this!
One reason I love doing investigations is because of the adrenalin, the uncertainty, the chaos, trying to make sense of it all, the high you get from that, etc.,. Stick me at a desk writing out a contract and I'd die from boredom.
Tell me that the police are at the front desk, a journalist is on the phone and I've got to brief a load of worried senior people in 30 minutes and I'm in my happy place.
It is what psychologists, I think, call experiencing flow - becoming so absorbed in a task that you don't notice time passing. For some, this will be a people-based task (from what you say, Cyclefree, interactions with people are an important part of a fulfilling and absorbing task for you), for others (like me), it will be when doing a head-down piece of complicated spreadsheet work. It's something I've experienced fewer times than I'd have liked in my career. I used to be a computer programmer, but weirdly that didn't do it for me most of the time - both too stressful (why isn't this program working?!) and too boring (95% of what I did didn't actually require that much thinking). What I really like is having a one-off bit of complex analysis to do (if we change this system in this way, what will the impact be?).
Anyway, despite the relative infrequency of experiencing flow, I have what I think is a very good job - the right balance between well paid, but rarely occupies my time outside of my contracted hours; I can work from home half the time, and get home from the office in 35 minutes the other half of the time; I like the people I work with, I find the subject matter interesting. I still wouldn't be doing it if I was financially independent - though work is agreeable, there is a long and impossible list of things I need or want to get done which work is getting in the way of: I would rather spend my time on the kids, my wife, the house, my health, and doing pleasant and interesting and enjoyable things like walking - but that's why they have to pay you to work, isn't it?
I guess SCOTUS will probably say the States can't keep people off the ballot, but maybe...
As I understand it, the General Election is not Federally run. Each state decides where and how the ballots are cast, and how the votes translate into Electoral College votes.
I think it's hard to say the States can do all that but have no say on what names are on the ballot.
Do some States not also allow write-ins? If you can have any name you want, is it really just to have a name you don't want?
States have technical rules on filing, nominating signatures etc.
But in terms of not allowing someone on the ballot due to a constitutional argument that the person is ineligible to serve due to participation in an insurrection, that is clearly a federal matter because the US Constitution has a clause about it.
State rights don't mean a state can say, "notwithstanding that the US Supreme Court has confirmed Donald J Trump is qualified under the US Constitution to serve as President, we don't reckon he is, so he's not on the ballot." That's just not how federalism works.
Interesting times. The worry for Labour must be that, as in Britain as a whole, it is not enthusiasm for Labour's programme that is driving its poll ratings but rather voters giving up on shambolic governing parties.
On topic, they should pick up at least 20 seats in Scotland, and I can't see them winning less then 100 off the Tories in England, so unlike Mike, I do think they will win an Overall Majority, quite possibly a clear one.
The present Government is the rats arse. No limit to how low it can go,
You and I have just said the same thing in different ways.
As it it happens, that is unlikely as I am attending a family funeral .
THe Tories have been too long in power and will be booted out. The idea that a weak unappealing leader like Starmer will sort the UK out is risible. E. The UK will still have the same problems after Starmer gets into No 10... Its quite likely it will be a hung Parliament. Sunak's best hope is to steer the ship so it just misses the rocks and is beached.
The Times is even referring to Reeves as an Iron Chancellor. This will prove to be equally risible, but the direction of travel is there. The Media are against the Govt. The BBC will have champagne bottles popping in the Newsroom once again.
Oh, I see Chris Pincher has resigned. Quelle dommage!
Wonder what will happen to his seat. Will anyone pinch it, d'ya think?
Will Rishi give him a peerage? If not for the Pinchergate scandal (amongst many others, it must be said) Boris might not have been forced out so Rishi would not be prime minister.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
You have to balance risk and cost (not just financial but also the disruption to education, etc)
So, how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Greater than zero.
Indeed. @StillWaters 's point is correct. We forget about the existence of thresholds: perfection is impossible and there must be a line between "big" and "too big", "small" and "too small", "good enough" and "not good enough".
It is genuinely heartwarming to see PB Tories scrambling to defend the RAAC scandal. This is the free pass for Starmer - it doesn't matter if he is boring or his policies tame. He isn't a mendacious incompetent and that is good enough.
As I always point out, today's toxic Tories have a terrible tendency to sneer at ordinary people and their issues. The "yebbut it's no problem I blame those complaining" attitude only deepens the electoral demolition which is surely coming.
It is the timing that is the issue, as Bart points out. (2-3% of) schools have building materials which are coming to the end of their natural life. That's no one's problem and in a world of resource prioritisation I can understand Rishi saving money on a future, as yet unrealised problem while dealing with a problem that is sitting on his face right now.
Schools are not exploding everywhere and I'd wager if we looked at school fatalities, or even serious injuries we would unearth scandal upon scandal from all different directions.
But as you say, it is yet one more shovel of shit on the perception of the Cons' handling of the UK and will likely exacerbate the kicking they will get at the next GE.
Should one of these roofs collapse on children that would be horrific. It's unlikely, but it's the end game of what is really going on.
You says it's no-ones problem and that it's a future problem. This is the attitude that will see the kicking given to the Tories get even harder.
This is a live problem. Today. Yesterday. And for years before. Some of these schools are genuinely awful places to be. Run down. Tatty. Minimal maintenance because the building will have to get replaced at some point soon so why bother.
What the Tories have done is put these kids and their education bottom of the list, whether their school has RAAC or not and whether it is on the risk of collapse list or not.
The money has been stolen from the pot to replace ordinary schools and given to spivs founding free schools. They get all the cash, leaving the rest stuck in decaying and crumbling environments getting ever-decaying education.
The props holding the roofs up is symbolic of the party attitude to public services and to normal people. Not important enough to care.
As regards current standards - it isn't just a matter of 30 year old RAAC, but this sort of thing. Note the building of new academies and free schools is involved here (which inherently deprioritised the replacement of existing schools and therefore the children and adults in them).
When I looked at the plans for a new school, locally, either the architects were insane or…
Glass box, facing East/West. Sealed windows, no air conditioning, and a pathetic attempt at natural ventilation.
The board were mounted in front of the windows. So the children would be staring at the board, while being blinded by the sun. Due to contrast, they wouldn’t be able to read anything on the board.
I think that the number above that 2-3% of schools are coming to the end of their design life is likely an underestimate.
In Notts / Derbys we have a system called CLASP (which I have mentioned before), which is concrete panels on a steel framework build on a concrete raft designed to be subsidence resilient (at which it succeeds), This is the famous "do not put drawing pins in walls due to the asbestos in the mix" system that we were having yet another gormless media panic about last week from sawdust-brained pundits.
But just in Notts we have 100-120 schools built with the system which was used between 195x and 197x with a 50-60 year design life. Also used in Derbys as mentioned and areas in the North East.
We did relatively well in the recent schools-rebuilding allocations, with several school selected - but we 8-10 schools rebuilt here *every year* not 3-6 once every 5 years or once a decade.
Political short-termism and lack of consistent investment. Cameron & his successors all over. Even Gove admits that killing the Ed Balls rebuilding programme was his biggest mistake.
Interesting times. The worry for Labour must be that, as in Britain as a whole, it is not enthusiasm for Labour's programme that is driving its poll ratings but rather voters giving up on shambolic governing parties.
On topic, they should pick up at least 20 seats in Scotland, and I can't see them winning less then 100 off the Tories in England, so unlike Mike, I do think they will win an Overall Majority, quite possibly a clear one.
The present Government is the rats arse. No limit to how low it can go,
You and I have just said the same thing in different ways.
As it it happens, that is unlikely as I am attending a family funeral .
THe Tories have been too long in power and will be booted out. The idea that a weak unappealing leader like Starmer will sort the UK out is risible. E. The UK will still have the same problems after Starmer gets into No 10... Its quite likely it will be a hung Parliament. Sunak's best hope is to steer the ship so it just misses the rocks and is beached.
The Times is even referring to Reeves as an Iron Chancellor. This will prove to be equally risible, but the direction of travel is there. The Media are against the Govt. The BBC will have champagne bottles popping in the Newsroom once again.
Her comments don't seem to be in support of Starmer/Labour just that she thinks the Tories will get a kicking in the election and Labour will win handsomely. You seem to think the same.
That feels accurate to me also, but we must not forget 1992.
Oh, I see Chris Pincher has resigned. Quelle dommage!
Wonder what will happen to his seat. Will anyone pinch it, d'ya think?
dommage = masculin. Quel dommage.
Nice safe seat for the return of Johnson. I'll say this for him, he would be able to lie convincingly about how much he has always been passionate about Staffordshire.
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
I'm shocked that you ever read it. It was always only for reactionary granddads, and that was when it at least tried to be a serious newspaper.
A very big part of its circulation now is freebies to hotels and the like, and cheapo subscription deals pitched at the elderly.
Hi Ian. Well I thought the journalism was pretty high standard once. The Saturday paper was a great buy. I'd counter it with the Guardian website, mind
I don't mind reading views that are different from my own, it's good for me, as long as they're well reasoned. But two or three years ago the Telegraph just seemed to lose it. People like Allison Pearson and Charles Moore went off the edge. And then they were joined by the Economics / Business & Money section, which used to be really good, but which also seemed to go full tonto. They had a particularly bad patch when they were still defending Trussonomics long after it was derided.
The DT was a decent Tory paper, with a set of core principles which made sense to the middling middle class, aspirationals, small business folks and bright non graduates - of whom in the 60s and 70s there were millions in highish positions.
It had prodigious news coverage, high quality city pages, a daily report on every first class cricket match.
In Peter Simple (Michael Wharton) who would by now probably be in prison for his opinions it had a rare comic and satiric genius who foretold and predicted many aspects of modernity.
Obviously the internet has destroyed any such model, but further destruction is wrought by the complete absence of a workable overall centre right polity. About which see Matthew Parris in the Speccie this week
I can't remember contrarian. Was he the one who thought Covid came from space? SD hated tories and so was ok. MrEd can fuck the fuck off and fuck off again when he gets there.
So, how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Greater than zero.
I was peripherally involved in the design of NICE, which partly has to decide what treatments can be paid for on the NHS, and hence has to weigh up "small chance of saving some life" against "large chance of making life slightly better for many people" within any budgetary level. IIRC the decision was to set a price of £20,000 (I believe it's now about £30K?) for "one year of satisfactory life", so if drug A would make you on average live a year longer without a lot of pain and side-effects, it would be approved if it cost less than £20K/year. One that on average improved life a bit for 3 months and only cost £10K probably wouldn't.
A lot of people find this chilling - "You can't measure the cost of a life!" - but I think you really have to, no matter how generous or parsimonious your budget. Deciding on the size of the budget is a quite different issue, and much more about political priorities - that's the sort of thing that keeps me interested in politics.
Of course, schoolchildren a priori have a much higher number of QALYs to lose if they get squashed and killed - or, let's not forget, and which is germane also to your point - permanently injured, than you or I do, ay our ages. Which some of us perhaps forget.
Yes, though we must not forget that construction sites are hardly risk free. How many builders lives will be lost in replacing crumbling schools?
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
I'm shocked that you ever read it. It was always only for reactionary granddads, and that was when it at least tried to be a serious newspaper.
A very big part of its circulation now is freebies to hotels and the like, and cheapo subscription deals pitched at the elderly.
Like so much of what you say - about anything - what you say here was maybe true: 15 years ago
The Telegraph now has 1m paid subscribers, makes a fat wodge from digital ads (so they’re clearly not all pensioners) and is in healthy profit
Yeah, but be fair, Leon. It is a crap paper.
Didn't use to be. I blame Boris.
I haven't read a physical copy of the Telegraph in years. The inference I take from their website is that the paper has gone a bit clickbaity - it's only one stop away from Daily Mail style capitalisations of headlines - and is also a bit too lifestyley for my liking - but it's quite possible that this is just a manifestation of the online presence - and it's certainly no more clickbaity than the Guardian: it knows what motivates its readers to click. It's puzzlingly furious about a few issues (house prices and working from home, amongst others) and its headline writers have definitely got triter - but again, this might be me comparing its online presence to what I remember of its physical presence, and again, isn't this true of all newspapers?
But does all this equal a bad paper? Certainly it's less to my tastes than it was. But as Leon points out, it's profitable. It does its job to the satisfaction of its customers. I'd say that makes it a good paper. It's certainly an unusual paper in that regard.
So, how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Greater than zero.
I was peripherally involved in the design of NICE, which partly has to decide what treatments can be paid for on the NHS, and hence has to weigh up "small chance of saving some life" against "large chance of making life slightly better for many people" within any budgetary level. IIRC the decision was to set a price of £20,000 (I believe it's now about £30K?) for "one year of satisfactory life", so if drug A would make you on average live a year longer without a lot of pain and side-effects, it would be approved if it cost less than £20K/year. One that on average improved life a bit for 3 months and only cost £10K probably wouldn't.
A lot of people find this chilling - "You can't measure the cost of a life!" - but I think you really have to, no matter how generous or parsimonious your budget. Deciding on the size of the budget is a quite different issue, and much more about political priorities - that's the sort of thing that keeps me interested in politics.
Absolutley, Nick.
You not only can measure the cost of a life, you have to. I'm glad I don't have to do it myself, it would keep me awake nights, but I acknowledge and admire those that do. It is essentially what good government is about.
Take speed limits, for example, since the topic has cropped up here. There are about 1,500 deaths on our roads each year now (way down on what it was when I passed my test in 1966, though these facts are not necessarily linked) and we could easily get that down to a few dozen if we reduce the speed limit to 5mph. Such a reductio ad absurdum makes the point.
Somebody has to decide where to draw the line, which implies evaluation of the cost of a life. Tough, but somebody really has to do it.
I always remember that the day of the Hatfield Train Crash, which killed 4 people, a family of 4 were killed in a head on collission on the Newark Bypass. This made me go and look at the relative 'value per human life saved' numbers.
In 2000 this was aproximately £3 million person on the railways and £500,000 per person on the roads.
What makes a job crappy? Serious question - let’s try and define it.
I think it’s a simple 3 x 3 matrix.
- is it well paid or poorly paid - is it an interesting or fulfilling job to do - does it come with excessive levels of pressure or stress
So the worst jobs are pointless and unfulfilling, highly stressful and poorly paid. The best are high paid, fascinating and with manageable levels of stress. David Attenborough’s job for example, or Michael Palin.
I think that misses out a significant factor -- what are the other people, and especially your immediate boss, like? An otherwise mundane job with a group of friendly people who all get along can be a lot less awful than a job that's theoretically interesting but full of office politics and where the boss is a terrible micromanager (or worse).
I agree with your matrix, but people vary a lot on which part really matters. The key for me is simply whether I can do the job well, though clearly that reflects an adequate financial position so the level of pay isn't crucial. Any irritating managers or colleagues can then be shrugged off. I've had times when I felt I wasn't solving the issues I faced adequately, and that was horrible even with friendly colleagues and boss.
When I'm solving problems, hopefully helping people or animals, everything's fine, and high pressure is good fun. Yesterday, I had a complex, urgent report to write which took 7 hours of screen time with a short break, and I felt really happy about it by the end of the day.
Our HR department worries about stress and has signed us all up for https://www.calm.com/ - I asked only half-jokingly whether we couldn't have an excite.com app for dull moments. The adrenalin that you get from productive stress is underrated.
Oh I do agree with this!
One reason I love doing investigations is because of the adrenalin, the uncertainty, the chaos, trying to make sense of it all, the high you get from that, etc.,. Stick me at a desk writing out a contract and I'd die from boredom.
Tell me that the police are at the front desk, a journalist is on the phone and I've got to brief a load of worried senior people in 30 minutes and I'm in my happy place.
It is what psychologists, I think, call experiencing flow - becoming so absorbed in a task that you don't notice time passing. For some, this will be a people-based task (from what you say, Cyclefree, interactions with people are an important part of a fulfilling and absorbing task for you), for others (like me), it will be when doing a head-down piece of complicated spreadsheet work. It's something I've experienced fewer times than I'd have liked in my career. I used to be a computer programmer, but weirdly that didn't do it for me most of the time - both too stressful (why isn't this program working?!) and too boring (95% of what I did didn't actually require that much thinking). What I really like is having a one-off bit of complex analysis to do (if we change this system in this way, what will the impact be?).
Anyway, despite the relative infrequency of experiencing flow, I have what I think is a very good job - the right balance between well paid, but rarely occupies my time outside of my contracted hours; I can work from home half the time, and get home from the office in 35 minutes the other half of the time; I like the people I work with, I find the subject matter interesting. I still wouldn't be doing it if I was financially independent - though work is agreeable, there is a long and impossible list of things I need or want to get done which work is getting in the way of: I would rather spend my time on the kids, my wife, the house, my health, and doing pleasant and interesting and enjoyable things like walking - but that's why they have to pay you to work, isn't it?
What makes a job crappy? Serious question - let’s try and define it.
I think it’s a simple 3 x 3 matrix.
- is it well paid or poorly paid - is it an interesting or fulfilling job to do - does it come with excessive levels of pressure or stress
So the worst jobs are pointless and unfulfilling, highly stressful and poorly paid. The best are high paid, fascinating and with manageable levels of stress. David Attenborough’s job for example, or Michael Palin.
I think that misses out a significant factor -- what are the other people, and especially your immediate boss, like? An otherwise mundane job with a group of friendly people who all get along can be a lot less awful than a job that's theoretically interesting but full of office politics and where the boss is a terrible micromanager (or worse).
I agree with your matrix, but people vary a lot on which part really matters. The key for me is simply whether I can do the job well, though clearly that reflects an adequate financial position so the level of pay isn't crucial. Any irritating managers or colleagues can then be shrugged off. I've had times when I felt I wasn't solving the issues I faced adequately, and that was horrible even with friendly colleagues and boss.
When I'm solving problems, hopefully helping people or animals, everything's fine, and high pressure is good fun. Yesterday, I had a complex, urgent report to write which took 7 hours of screen time with a short break, and I felt really happy about it by the end of the day.
Our HR department worries about stress and has signed us all up for https://www.calm.com/ - I asked only half-jokingly whether we couldn't have an excite.com app for dull moments. The adrenalin that you get from productive stress is underrated.
Oh I do agree with this!
One reason I love doing investigations is because of the adrenalin, the uncertainty, the chaos, trying to make sense of it all, the high you get from that, etc.,. Stick me at a desk writing out a contract and I'd die from boredom.
Tell me that the police are at the front desk, a journalist is on the phone and I've got to brief a load of worried senior people in 30 minutes and I'm in my happy place.
It is what psychologists, I think, call experiencing flow - becoming so absorbed in a task that you don't notice time passing. For some, this will be a people-based task (from what you say, Cyclefree, interactions with people are an important part of a fulfilling and absorbing task for you), for others (like me), it will be when doing a head-down piece of complicated spreadsheet work. It's something I've experienced fewer times than I'd have liked in my career. I used to be a computer programmer, but weirdly that didn't do it for me most of the time - both too stressful (why isn't this program working?!) and too boring (95% of what I did didn't actually require that much thinking). What I really like is having a one-off bit of complex analysis to do (if we change this system in this way, what will the impact be?).
Anyway, despite the relative infrequency of experiencing flow, I have what I think is a very good job - the right balance between well paid, but rarely occupies my time outside of my contracted hours; I can work from home half the time, and get home from the office in 35 minutes the other half of the time; I like the people I work with, I find the subject matter interesting. I still wouldn't be doing it if I was financially independent - though work is agreeable, there is a long and impossible list of things I need or want to get done which work is getting in the way of: I would rather spend my time on the kids, my wife, the house, my health, and doing pleasant and interesting and enjoyable things like walking - but that's why they have to pay you to work, isn't it?
So, how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
Greater than zero.
I was peripherally involved in the design of NICE, which partly has to decide what treatments can be paid for on the NHS, and hence has to weigh up "small chance of saving some life" against "large chance of making life slightly better for many people" within any budgetary level. IIRC the decision was to set a price of £20,000 (I believe it's now about £30K?) for "one year of satisfactory life", so if drug A would make you on average live a year longer without a lot of pain and side-effects, it would be approved if it cost less than £20K/year. One that on average improved life a bit for 3 months and only cost £10K probably wouldn't.
A lot of people find this chilling - "You can't measure the cost of a life!" - but I think you really have to, no matter how generous or parsimonious your budget. Deciding on the size of the budget is a quite different issue, and much more about political priorities - that's the sort of thing that keeps me interested in politics.
Absolutley, Nick.
You not only can measure the cost of a life, you have to. I'm glad I don't have to do it myself, it would keep me awake nights, but I acknowledge and admire those that do. It is essentially what good government is about.
Take speed limits, for example, since the topic has cropped up here. There are about 1,500 deaths on our roads each year now (way down on what it was when I passed my test in 1966, though these facts are not necessarily linked) and we could easily get that down to a few dozen if we reduce the speed limit to 5mph. Such a reductio ad absurdum makes the point.
Somebody has to decide where to draw the line, which implies evaluation of the cost of a life. Tough, but somebody really has to do it.
I always remember that the day of the Hatfield Train Crash, which killed 4 people, a family of 4 were killed in a head on collission on the Newark Bypass. This made me go and look at the relative 'value per human life saved' numbers.
In 2000 this was aproximately £3 million person on the railways and £500,000 per person on the roads.
Thanks Richard.
I suspect I'm being dumb but could you briefly explain how such a differential arises?
This Trump 14th Amendment issue feels really weird - SCOTUS will not uphold this without Trump being found guilty and will likely argue that the only body who can do that would be Congress in an impeachment trial, or SCOTUS themselves? Would they really allow individual states to choose who counts as an insurrectionist on their own individual criteria? I think that's a bad idea, and I think the very right wing SCOTUS will too (for different reasons). I wouldn't want Ron DeSantis to be able to pressure his Secretary of State to declare any politician who supported BLM as someone engaged in "insurrection or rebellion", or Georgia declare any politician trying to stop Cop City as ineligible to run for POTUS. The US body politick needs to accept that even if their constitution is supposed to have the means to prevent demagoguery (which is highly questionable), the political reality is Trump will be the GOP nominee. If the GOP and their supporters are happy with that then the rot is really deep and needs radical action to change.
Surely the question hangs on whether the candidate has been convicted of insurrection or rebellion? Otherwise how is it determined that a person has been involved in such activities?
Which is important, since the charges against him are specifically around the disruption of proceedings, rather than insurrection or sedition.
I fear that the US is going down a very large rabbit hole, by trying to defeat Trump in court rather than at the ballot box.
I can't remember contrarian. Was he the one who thought Covid came from space? SD hated tories and so was ok. MrEd can fuck the fuck off and fuck off again when he gets there.
Oh, I see Chris Pincher has resigned. Quelle dommage!
Wonder what will happen to his seat. Will anyone pinch it, d'ya think?
dommage = masculin. Quel dommage.
Nice safe seat for the return of Johnson. I'll say this for him, he would be able to lie convincingly about how much he has always been passionate about Staffordshire.
What makes a job crappy? Serious question - let’s try and define it.
I think it’s a simple 3 x 3 matrix.
- is it well paid or poorly paid - is it an interesting or fulfilling job to do - does it come with excessive levels of pressure or stress
So the worst jobs are pointless and unfulfilling, highly stressful and poorly paid. The best are high paid, fascinating and with manageable levels of stress. David Attenborough’s job for example, or Michael Palin.
I think that misses out a significant factor -- what are the other people, and especially your immediate boss, like? An otherwise mundane job with a group of friendly people who all get along can be a lot less awful than a job that's theoretically interesting but full of office politics and where the boss is a terrible micromanager (or worse).
I agree with your matrix, but people vary a lot on which part really matters. The key for me is simply whether I can do the job well, though clearly that reflects an adequate financial position so the level of pay isn't crucial. Any irritating managers or colleagues can then be shrugged off. I've had times when I felt I wasn't solving the issues I faced adequately, and that was horrible even with friendly colleagues and boss.
When I'm solving problems, hopefully helping people or animals, everything's fine, and high pressure is good fun. Yesterday, I had a complex, urgent report to write which took 7 hours of screen time with a short break, and I felt really happy about it by the end of the day.
Our HR department worries about stress and has signed us all up for https://www.calm.com/ - I asked only half-jokingly whether we couldn't have an excite.com app for dull moments. The adrenalin that you get from productive stress is underrated.
Oh I do agree with this!
One reason I love doing investigations is because of the adrenalin, the uncertainty, the chaos, trying to make sense of it all, the high you get from that, etc.,. Stick me at a desk writing out a contract and I'd die from boredom.
Tell me that the police are at the front desk, a journalist is on the phone and I've got to brief a load of worried senior people in 30 minutes and I'm in my happy place.
It is what psychologists, I think, call experiencing flow - becoming so absorbed in a task that you don't notice time passing. For some, this will be a people-based task (from what you say, Cyclefree, interactions with people are an important part of a fulfilling and absorbing task for you), for others (like me), it will be when doing a head-down piece of complicated spreadsheet work. It's something I've experienced fewer times than I'd have liked in my career. I used to be a computer programmer, but weirdly that didn't do it for me most of the time - both too stressful (why isn't this program working?!) and too boring (95% of what I did didn't actually require that much thinking). What I really like is having a one-off bit of complex analysis to do (if we change this system in this way, what will the impact be?).
Anyway, despite the relative infrequency of experiencing flow, I have what I think is a very good job - the right balance between well paid, but rarely occupies my time outside of my contracted hours; I can work from home half the time, and get home from the office in 35 minutes the other half of the time; I like the people I work with, I find the subject matter interesting. I still wouldn't be doing it if I was financially independent - though work is agreeable, there is a long and impossible list of things I need or want to get done which work is getting in the way of: I would rather spend my time on the kids, my wife, the house, my health, and doing pleasant and interesting and enjoyable things like walking - but that's why they have to pay you to work, isn't it?
You guys should try betting for a living!
Ticks every imaginable box.
To be honest, I did get the feeling of absorbtion and exhileration a few years back when I was making odds and ends matching bets with the online bookies using a spreadsheet I'd knocked up. Didn't last though - most of them banned me! But match betting isn't really gambling, it's just taking advantage of opportunities. I just wouldn't have enough confidence in my predictive abilities to gamble for a living. It's an occasional hobby, and done much more for the pleasure of being right than for any notable financial gain. I take my hat off to those who can do it professionally!
Joe Oakley 🏳️🌈 @JRLOakley · 21h Labour-run Birmingham has an £87m deficit; it has a population of 1.1million. Tory-run Woking council (taken over by LibDems in 2023) has a £1.2BILLION deficit; population just over 100,000.
Do the Tories REALLY want to talk about who’s good with money? #BirminghamCityCouncil
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
That’s an interesting perspective. Perhaps it is being blown up out of proportion, but as with the air traffic control system, it only needs one spectacular failure to upset an awful lot of people.
The thing is we've had the spectacular failure - the only reason it wasn't front page news was the because the school was closed when it happened. If it had been 2pm on a Tuesday this story with added crushed kids would have been news for at least a week...
Without reading it let me guess the gist: we just need to believe in ourselves more so that we can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit?
I used to read the Telegraph but I've given up. Not so much its politics per se but the reactionary nature of it now. Take today's front page. 5 of the 6 pieces on the front are reactionary anti-woke. There's even one having a dig about climate change. It's not that there aren't news stories embedded within. It's that they are dressed up in increasingly embittered language by old people raging against the dying of the light.
A neat summation of the current government. Notable in the Rees-Mogg spat the other day was that he criticised the lack of things being done by the government. Parliament sits with short days because there is nothing being done by the government.
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
I asked my Dad, who is a buildings surveyor working for a local authority, about the concrete. He was quite dismissive, feeling it's been blown out of proportion by structural engineers who stand to gain masses of work by the crisis. I tend to agree.
He is exactly right, people keep using the term "crumbling" when talking about Schools. How many school buildings have collapsed, how many injuries have occured?
Er… how many injuries is an acceptable number to have before doing anything?
You have to balance risk and cost (not just financial but also the disruption to education, etc)
Yeah but it's the same kind of solely capitalist-driven argument which led to the Zeebrugge ferry disaster in which 193 people died or, indeed, Aberfan in which 116 school children were crushed / suffocated to death whilst at school along with 28 adults.
Aberfan happened under a nationalised industry and the failings that led to the disaster were due to ignorance and negligence, not the capitalist pursuit of profit. There were no great cost implications about siting the spoil heaps on the other side of the mountain - as had been done to the earlier spoil heaps during the privatised era. People just didn't think and really didn't care - until it was too late.
Fair summary.
Zeebrugge though. Aptly involving a ship called the Herald of Free Enterprise.
That was the disaster that personally felt closest to home for me. The captain of the vessel was taken to the hospital next to my school in Canterbury and there was a police guard at the door as a result.
It wasn't his fault, either. It came down to a single crew member who fell asleep when he should have been minding the doors.
Of course the responsibilty spreads a lot wider than that - general safety standards were inadequate and the company sailed far to close to the wind. Aberfan was not entirely dissimilar, although a 'couldn't care less attitude' seems to have been a big factor there.
But if you’re the Captain, you’re the Captain. He set sail without absolute confirmation that the door was closed.
As with, for example, Paula Vennels or Cressida Dick, if the ship goes down on your watch, the buck stops with you.
As @Malmesbury constantly says with his #Nu10k comments, many of modern society’s problems come from the fact that the people in charge are allowed to fail upwards, protected by their peers, rather than being fired and told to stack shelves for a living.
Oh, I see Chris Pincher has resigned. Quelle dommage!
Wonder what will happen to his seat. Will anyone pinch it, d'ya think?
Now that should be a nice gain for Labour.
The Conservatives had a 43% majority over Labour in Tamworth in 2019 so on UNS even on current polls they should hold it.
However, it was Labour from 1997 to 2010 in the Blair years and it is a by election and on the 23% swing Labour got in the Selby election they would win it
Comments
Sheep art.
https://twitter.com/TourofBritain/status/1699497203130060903
One reason I love doing investigations is because of the adrenalin, the uncertainty, the chaos, trying to make sense of it all, the high you get from that, etc.,. Stick me at a desk writing out a contract and I'd die from boredom.
Tell me that the police are at the front desk, a journalist is on the phone and I've got to brief a load of worried senior people in 30 minutes and I'm in my happy place.
Hand One: the need to refurbish the schools estate which had as yet not killed or injured anyone but which is a high priority because buildings don't last forever.
Hand Two: gigantic huge fucking juggernaut of expense as a result of Covid measures including lockdown, furlough, PPE, younameit.
In those circumstances you deal with what is in front of you, not what might happen but has not to date. I would imagine that routinely building inspectors visit schools and make comments on structural integrity.
Morning all.
It's liability and the politics of who is responsible, plus variable risk tolerance.
There is recklessness as to risk to children in many respects esp. if the parents of the children are responsible - eg school run parents running children and parents down by dangerous driving. But I think bits of school buildings landing on childrens' heads is not in that category, as the school authorities are responsible.
You can see that in the Govt which opted not to invest in schools has been tripping over its own feet to rush to respond & spend money, which it previously alleged was not available, to fix the issue.
On lactual iability, can a school operate legally once there is a known risk like this? Surely that will cause insurance problems.
Is this actually closing entire schools, or is it just parts of schools?
I'm not sure whether Portakabins are a quite the problem painted (tents or marquees would be) - they have been used as short term buildings everywhere, forever.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/06/colorado-14amendment-trump-00114339
As I always point out, today's toxic Tories have a terrible tendency to sneer at ordinary people and their issues. The "yebbut it's no problem I blame those complaining" attitude only deepens the electoral demolition which is surely coming.
Approaching the till at perhaps 9:40pm and there were a couple with 3 baskets on the conveyor belt, one guarding and the other running up and down the shop collecting last minute items (no self-service tills btw).
Asked them a simple, perhaps over short, question: "Guys, are you shopping or queueng?".
They started chuntering like Ronnie Corbett in Four Candles.
Schools are not exploding everywhere and I'd wager if we looked at school fatalities, or even serious injuries we would unearth scandal upon scandal from all different directions.
But as you say, it is yet one more shovel of shit on the perception of the Cons' handling of the UK and will likely exacerbate the kicking they will get at the next GE.
In any event, it won't happen because all sides seem to accept that this will end up with SCOTUS who are likely to block it (and may even do so on an unanimous (or near unanimous) count.
The Telegraph now has 1m paid subscribers, makes a fat wodge from digital ads (so they’re clearly not all pensioners) and is in healthy profit
A lot of people find this chilling - "You can't measure the cost of a life!" - but I think you really have to, no matter how generous or parsimonious your budget. Deciding on the size of the budget is a quite different issue, and much more about political priorities - that's the sort of thing that keeps me interested in politics.
On learning from home being BAU, maybe that is seen as less serious because children have just spent the last six weeks at home anyway.
Or, come to that, the war.
By comparison, the Tories were down around 10% across GB in 1997. They did less badly in some areas than others but they weren't even close to gaining any seats they'd missed out on in 1992.
I'd also note the financial aspect for the SNP. They have well-publicised, er, difficulties on that front. It'd be a really eccentric decision to devote what resources they have to pushing for unlikely gains rather than defending vulnerable held seats in the current climate.
You says it's no-ones problem and that it's a future problem. This is the attitude that will see the kicking given to the Tories get even harder.
This is a live problem. Today. Yesterday. And for years before. Some of these schools are genuinely awful places to be. Run down. Tatty. Minimal maintenance because the building will have to get replaced at some point soon so why bother.
What the Tories have done is put these kids and their education bottom of the list, whether their school has RAAC or not and whether it is on the risk of collapse list or not.
The money has been stolen from the pot to replace ordinary schools and given to spivs founding free schools. They get all the cash, leaving the rest stuck in decaying and crumbling environments getting ever-decaying education.
The props holding the roofs up is symbolic of the party attitude to public services and to normal people. Not important enough to care.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_L._Berger
In any event, of all the possible ways of stopping Trump, this must be the very worst.
And I'd blame the attitudes of the whole of society rather than just politicians - political reactions are a response to their political customers ie the electorate, ie *us*.
That's why are present government revenue is being diverted / investment is not being made, to fund attempts to win the next Election by short term fell-good policies, decisions that should have been taken 1 or 2 or 5 years ago are being treated with slopey-shoulders or nonsensical assertions, and on and on and on.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_1946–47_in_the_United_Kingdom
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/aug/23/staggering-incompetence-dfe-under-fire-new-school-buildings-closed
You not only can measure the cost of a life, you have to. I'm glad I don't have to do it myself, it would keep me awake nights, but I acknowledge and admire those that do. It is essentially what good government is about.
Take speed limits, for example, since the topic has cropped up here. There are about 1,500 deaths on our roads each year now (way down on what it was when I passed my test in 1966, though these facts are not necessarily linked) and we could easily get that down to a few dozen if we reduce the speed limit to 5mph. Such a reductio ad absurdum makes the point.
Somebody has to decide where to draw the line, which implies evaluation of the cost of a life. Tough, but somebody really has to do it.
Another in the long list of Government cock-ups that will come back to bite us.
The latest auction for offshore wind farm developments has flopped because the Government set the CfD* price too low. It is not viable for energy companies to bid because they will lose money. With the massive increase in build costs (which will affect onshore as well as offshore) it simply isn't worth them bidding.
*CfD price is set by the Government. It is the price companies can charge the customer for electricity generated by wind power. The Government set it at £44MW/hr for this auction. If electricity prices fall below that amount then the Government pays the energy company the difference and anything over that amount the company pays the Government.
Edit: Anyway don't encourage him. What with his troilism in Berne and Hungarian Wolf porn, he's been doing quite enough bragging lately.
As I understand it, the General Election is not Federally run. Each state decides where and how the ballots are cast, and how the votes translate into Electoral College votes.
I think it's hard to say the States can do all that but have no say on what names are on the ballot.
Do some States not also allow write-ins? If you can have any name you want, is it really just to have a name you don't want?
Anyway, my point was just that it's not necessarily a remarkable attitude to do nothing if you think the risk is small.
I think there's something to this. Danny Alexander and Charles Kennedy lost their seats in 2015 in the SNP landslide. But the LibDem vote share held up pretty well. In 2017, where the LibDems fielded candidates from out with the Constituency, their vote share collapsed.
What this means for the future? I suspect Drew Hendry of Inverness (and the other places) will retain his seat but, with Blackford going, the Ross, Skye and Lochaber constituency could be in play depending on the candidates chosen.
Actually, disregard all the above, the boundaries are going to change at the next GE which complicates my thesis somewhat (I've left it up because I spent a long time writing it!). Ross, Skye and Lochaber won't be going SNP because it is being abolished (and the poor Black Isle is going to Caithness!)
Of course the responsibilty spreads a lot wider than that - general safety standards were inadequate and the company sailed far to close to the wind. Aberfan was not entirely dissimilar, although a 'couldn't care less attitude' seems to have been a big factor there.
The only people who can really judge the risk are structural engineers working in conjunction with other experts and the schools in question. Numpties on the Internet certainly cannot.
The First Minister said “we shouldn’t rule wealth taxes off the table” in the upcoming Scottish Budget thanks to the “extraordinary pressures” his government’s finances are under.
In particular, he cited a recent STUC report that proposed raising £1.4 billion per year by imposing a one per cent annual tax on wealth, including property, pension pots and expensive possessions such as jewellery and art.
If imposed on wealth above a £1 million threshold, it estimated that it would affect 12 per cent of households, each of which would pay an average £8,000 per year.
Mr Yousaf said this would also help him afford extra spending on tackling poverty after campaigners said they were “bitterly disappointed” at his first programme for government since he became First Minister.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/06/humza-yousaf-snp-wealth-tax-proposal/
Interesting to actually see some numbers on this idea though. I’d be especially interested in how they value public-sector defined-benefits pensions, many of which would cost at least a million to purchase in the private sector
Glass box, facing East/West. Sealed windows, no air conditioning, and a pathetic attempt at natural ventilation.
The board were mounted in front of the windows. So the children would be staring at the board, while being blinded by the sun. Due to contrast, they wouldn’t be able to read anything on the board.
The Lib Dems will also doubtless be disappointed not to be getting more traction in the polls both sides of the border, but will rightly take quite a lot of comfort from the fact that in both local and by-elections where they are seen to be in contention (which they are where they already have an MP) they are doing very well.
On the betting front, when constituency markets go up, I'd need to see very tasty odds indeed before I bet on an SNP gain in Caithness. An SNP gain from the Tories is more possible, as the Tories are also polling at least 10pp lower than they got in 2019.
Didn't use to be. I blame Boris.
Wonder what will happen to his seat. Will anyone pinch it, d'ya think?
Anyway, despite the relative infrequency of experiencing flow, I have what I think is a very good job - the right balance between well paid, but rarely occupies my time outside of my contracted hours; I can work from home half the time, and get home from the office in 35 minutes the other half of the time; I like the people I work with, I find the subject matter interesting. I still wouldn't be doing it if I was financially independent - though work is agreeable, there is a long and impossible list of things I need or want to get done which work is getting in the way of: I would rather spend my time on the kids, my wife, the house, my health, and doing pleasant and interesting and enjoyable things like walking - but that's why they have to pay you to work, isn't it?
But in terms of not allowing someone on the ballot due to a constitutional argument that the person is ineligible to serve due to participation in an insurrection, that is clearly a federal matter because the US Constitution has a clause about it.
State rights don't mean a state can say, "notwithstanding that the US Supreme Court has confirmed Donald J Trump is qualified under the US Constitution to serve as President, we don't reckon he is, so he's not on the ballot." That's just not how federalism works.
THe Tories have been too long in power and will be booted out. The idea that a weak unappealing leader like Starmer will sort the UK out is risible. E. The UK will still have the same problems after Starmer gets into No 10... Its quite likely it will be a hung Parliament. Sunak's best hope is to steer the ship so it just misses the rocks and is beached.
The Times is even referring to Reeves as an Iron Chancellor. This will prove to be equally risible, but the direction of travel is there. The Media are against the Govt. The BBC will have champagne bottles popping in the Newsroom once again.
In Notts / Derbys we have a system called CLASP (which I have mentioned before), which is concrete panels on a steel framework build on a concrete raft designed to be subsidence resilient (at which it succeeds), This is the famous "do not put drawing pins in walls due to the asbestos in the mix" system that we were having yet another gormless media panic about last week from sawdust-brained pundits.
But just in Notts we have 100-120 schools built with the system which was used between 195x and 197x with a 50-60 year design life. Also used in Derbys as mentioned and areas in the North East.
We did relatively well in the recent schools-rebuilding allocations, with several school selected - but we 8-10 schools rebuilt here *every year* not 3-6 once every 5 years or once a decade.
Political short-termism and lack of consistent investment. Cameron & his successors all over. Even Gove admits that killing the Ed Balls rebuilding programme was his biggest mistake.
Her comments don't seem to be in support of Starmer/Labour just that she thinks the Tories will get a kicking in the election and Labour will win handsomely. You seem to think the same.
That feels accurate to me also, but we must not forget 1992.
PS Sorry to hear you have a funeral to attend.
Nice safe seat for the return of Johnson. I'll say this for him, he would be able to lie convincingly about how much he has always been passionate about Staffordshire.
It had prodigious news coverage, high quality city pages, a daily report on every first class cricket match.
In Peter Simple (Michael Wharton) who would by now probably be in prison for his opinions it had a rare comic and satiric genius who foretold and predicted many aspects of modernity.
Obviously the internet has destroyed any such model, but further destruction is wrought by the complete absence of a workable overall centre right polity. About which see Matthew Parris in the Speccie this week
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/britain-has-an-entitlement-problem/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=WEEK 20230907 AL+CID_7c5bcd24666ab76ed6327fad1da73c14
And like the rest of us he sees no solution in sight.
It's puzzlingly furious about a few issues (house prices and working from home, amongst others) and its headline writers have definitely got triter - but again, this might be me comparing its online presence to what I remember of its physical presence, and again, isn't this true of all newspapers?
But does all this equal a bad paper? Certainly it's less to my tastes than it was. But as Leon points out, it's profitable. It does its job to the satisfaction of its customers. I'd say that makes it a good paper. It's certainly an unusual paper in that regard.
In 2000 this was aproximately £3 million person on the railways and £500,000 per person on the roads.
Ticks every imaginable box.
I suspect I'm being dumb but could you briefly explain how such a differential arises?
I fear that the US is going down a very large rabbit hole, by trying to defeat Trump in court rather than at the ballot box.
But match betting isn't really gambling, it's just taking advantage of opportunities. I just wouldn't have enough confidence in my predictive abilities to gamble for a living. It's an occasional hobby, and done much more for the pleasure of being right than for any notable financial gain.
I take my hat off to those who can do it professionally!
@JRLOakley
·
21h
Labour-run Birmingham has an £87m deficit; it has a population of 1.1million.
Tory-run Woking council (taken over by LibDems in 2023) has a £1.2BILLION deficit; population just over 100,000.
Do the Tories REALLY want to talk about who’s good with money? #BirminghamCityCouncil
https://twitter.com/JRLOakley/status/1699381651170586651
Cost of rejoining Horizon programme £2bn a year
Science Secretary Michelle Donelan said that UK membership of the EU’s Horizon research programme would cost around £2billion a year.
She told LBC Radio: “It costs £2billion per year, but it does unlock access to the world’s largest research collaboration programme.”"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/09/07/rishi-sunak-news-live-tories-starmer-labour-latest/
As with, for example, Paula Vennels or Cressida Dick, if the ship goes down on your watch, the buck stops with you.
As @Malmesbury constantly says with his #Nu10k comments, many of modern society’s problems come from the fact that the people in charge are allowed to fail upwards, protected by their peers, rather than being fired and told to stack shelves for a living.
However, it was Labour from 1997 to 2010 in the Blair years and it is a by election and on the 23% swing Labour got in the Selby election they would win it