As we're apparently debating lockdown again, remember this. We had a choice - a controlled lockdown, or an uncontrolled shutdown.
We chose the former, with massive government support for jobs and companies.
Alternately we could have told people to keep calm and carry on. Covid tears massive holes in workplaces which shut themselves down due to a lack of healthy workers willing to take the risk. With no massive financial support and thus the rapid collapse of a whole stack of businesses big and small that summer.
I have no problem with people arguing against lockdown. But they need to recognise that there was no alternative scenario where things carry on as normal.
The latter is far, far better.
It's more liberal, letting people decide.
It's more flexible, letting people return when they're ready rather than waiting for permission.
Sweden had it uncontrolled but that didn't mean a lack of support. They had furlough etc like us, but it was voluntary rather than mandatory. Much, much better.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Or it may be seen that they were a necessary evil, given what we knew at the time. Especially the first lockdown.
The first is the least controversial. Tho even there I wonder
The later lockdowns now seem like a kind of universal madness
The later lockdowns would have been shorter if the airports had not re-opened.
Eat Out to Help Out still looking like a top Sunak f*ck-up
Indeed. In my view, which I also stated at the time, the two biggest mistakes made by the government were:
1) Failing to lock down quickly enough, both in March and December 2020, which meant that the lockdowns were longer that they would otherwise had to have been.
2) The prioritisation of pubs and restaurants over schools. It seemed insane at the time that adults were encouraged to socialise while kids were kept isolated.
The problem with the argument that we should have locked down harder and sooner in March 2020 was the science team were unconvinced a lockdown could be maintained for more than a handful of weeks, at most, across an entire society. There was very good reason to be believe that we are not communist china and it would fall apart after a fortnight.
I am still waiting for the inquiry to interview Tegnell about Sweden.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
Zombie deer disease’ could spread to humans as cases surge across US
Experts say lab research indicates the chronic wasting ailment will spread to people in the future
“Zombie deer disease” could spread to humans, scientists have warned as cases surge across the United States.
Chronic wasting disease (CWD), which causes infected animals to become listless and jittery, often drooling and grinding their teeth with a zombie-like blank stare, has spread to 32 US states and four Canadian provinces, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The deadly disease has cropped up in Kansas, Wisconsin and Nebraska, where more than 40 counties have reported cases, USA Today reports, and has also been found in 800 samples of deer, elk and moose throughout Wyoming.
“We’re dealing with a disease that is invariably fatal, incurable and highly contagious,” Dr Cory Anderson, the co-director of a CWD programme at University of Minnesota, told The Guardian.
Zombie deer disease’ could spread to humans as cases surge across US
Experts say lab research indicates the chronic wasting ailment will spread to people in the future
“Zombie deer disease” could spread to humans, scientists have warned as cases surge across the United States.
Chronic wasting disease (CWD), which causes infected animals to become listless and jittery, often drooling and grinding their teeth with a zombie-like blank stare, has spread to 32 US states and four Canadian provinces, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The deadly disease has cropped up in Kansas, Wisconsin and Nebraska, where more than 40 counties have reported cases, USA Today reports, and has also been found in 800 samples of deer, elk and moose throughout Wyoming.
“We’re dealing with a disease that is invariably fatal, incurable and highly contagious,” Dr Cory Anderson, the co-director of a CWD programme at University of Minnesota, told The Guardian.
It’s deer BSE. Hopefully it will have the same transmissibility to humans as cow BSE did (very little). In terms of next pandemic, flu or another coronavirus remain the more likely.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I had a similar experience with weight and mental health. I look at some of the pictures I took of myself as lockdown ground on and its clear I was falling apart. There were also online evening drinks with friends where (although I don't remember) I would also fall apart.
Then things started to unlock. A few shafts of light but the unlocked world of shields and restrictions was also horrible - went to the pub with friends once and it was bad enough that we switched back to online. And then down came Covid and restrictions again. The most oppressive it got was that winter of 2020 where I lived in the Covid hotspot of the whole country and practically *nobody* went outside voluntarily.
Happily we moved to Scotland in February 2021 to an area that had hardly had any Covid, and was managing the pandemic better. And I was able to make the decision to wean myself off the happy pills I'd been on since the previous summer. Kept working (somehow), kept all the weight as well. 2024 is me making a Serious Effort to get this fat off.
Scotland was managing the pandemic better? Really?
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills. And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open. But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds. And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort. And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
As we're apparently debating lockdown again, remember this. We had a choice - a controlled lockdown, or an uncontrolled shutdown.
We chose the former, with massive government support for jobs and companies.
Alternately we could have told people to keep calm and carry on. Covid tears massive holes in workplaces which shut themselves down due to a lack of healthy workers willing to take the risk. With no massive financial support and thus the rapid collapse of a whole stack of businesses big and small that summer.
I have no problem with people arguing against lockdown. But they need to recognise that there was no alternative scenario where things carry on as normal.
Agree about that but for young people, the impact has been so terrible I now wonder if it was worth it.
1. Schools remained open throughout 2. This was difficult to manage as Covid tore through the staff in place who were teaching the essential worker kids 3. Had all students been allowed to attend in person, schools would have closed as Covid tore impossible holes in staff numbers
Again, a choice of a controlled lockdown or an uncontrolled shutdown. People are misremembering "Covid" as a monolithic thing. We are still being struck down by Covid but its not that serious is it? Why such a fuss for not that serious a thing back then?
Covid now is not Covid then, despite the continuity of name. There was No Option to leave the schools fully open and operational.
Zombie deer disease’ could spread to humans as cases surge across US
Experts say lab research indicates the chronic wasting ailment will spread to people in the future
“Zombie deer disease” could spread to humans, scientists have warned as cases surge across the United States.
Chronic wasting disease (CWD), which causes infected animals to become listless and jittery, often drooling and grinding their teeth with a zombie-like blank stare, has spread to 32 US states and four Canadian provinces, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The deadly disease has cropped up in Kansas, Wisconsin and Nebraska, where more than 40 counties have reported cases, USA Today reports, and has also been found in 800 samples of deer, elk and moose throughout Wyoming.
“We’re dealing with a disease that is invariably fatal, incurable and highly contagious,” Dr Cory Anderson, the co-director of a CWD programme at University of Minnesota, told The Guardian.
Although I heavily supported them at the time I’ve completely changed my mind. We locked down to protect the elderly who have been completely shielded from any impact, while nurses and doctors get shafted and young people get the largest tax burden in history. All this whilst being called thick, woke and lazy.
For that I say no, should have let young people get on with life.
No wonder you’re a labour fanboy. More Cpt Hindsight stuff.
I’d quite happily have Cameron back as PM.
And if planning reform doesn’t go through I’ll be resigning from the Labour Party.
As we're apparently debating lockdown again, remember this. We had a choice - a controlled lockdown, or an uncontrolled shutdown.
We chose the former, with massive government support for jobs and companies.
Alternately we could have told people to keep calm and carry on. Covid tears massive holes in workplaces which shut themselves down due to a lack of healthy workers willing to take the risk. With no massive financial support and thus the rapid collapse of a whole stack of businesses big and small that summer.
I have no problem with people arguing against lockdown. But they need to recognise that there was no alternative scenario where things carry on as normal.
Agree about that but for young people, the impact has been so terrible I now wonder if it was worth it.
They were terrible. But since we had a government and a system incapable of making good use of the lulls, there wasn't really an alternative. Letting it wash over us was never a realistic option.
But given that, the nation does have a debt of honour to young people, to key workers et cetera. And the older and more comfortable need to start paying that, because they haven't so far.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I had a similar experience with weight and mental health. I look at some of the pictures I took of myself as lockdown ground on and its clear I was falling apart. There were also online evening drinks with friends where (although I don't remember) I would also fall apart.
Then things started to unlock. A few shafts of light but the unlocked world of shields and restrictions was also horrible - went to the pub with friends once and it was bad enough that we switched back to online. And then down came Covid and restrictions again. The most oppressive it got was that winter of 2020 where I lived in the Covid hotspot of the whole country and practically *nobody* went outside voluntarily.
Happily we moved to Scotland in February 2021 to an area that had hardly had any Covid, and was managing the pandemic better. And I was able to make the decision to wean myself off the happy pills I'd been on since the previous summer. Kept working (somehow), kept all the weight as well. 2024 is me making a Serious Effort to get this fat off.
Scotland was managing the pandemic better? Really?
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills. And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open. But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds. And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort. And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
I have a real world comparison I can make between experiences in the NE vs the NE. Practically everything is better in the NE of Scotland vs the NE of England. "Better" is not the same as "good" - I have a long list of complaints against health and education up here. But an even longer list against life on Teesside.
I agree with you entirely about the impact on kids - my own included. But again again - there was no option to leave the schools fully open. None. And it is absurd revisionism to imagine it could have happened.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
They were schooled remotely via the web and it is ironic that staunch advocates of WFH for themselves can clearly see the disadvantages for their children.
Incidentally, Labour sees schools as glorified childminders, or at least that is the impression from their proposal to provide nursery places in schools.
Some were schooled remotely via the web. Especially those who have good parents who already read to them at home and gave them all the advantages of loving, supportive parents who could support them. I took time off work to go through my kids schooling with them - but many did not.
Disadvantaged children who get popped in front of the TV and left to their own devices, or with parents who can't comprehend what the teachers should be teaching them etc - they did not.
Children of educated, 'middle class' parents are already very advantageous before they even start school - schools are tasked in part with trying to close that gap by giving everyone an opportunity. Instead we did the polar opposite for years and aggravated that gap turning it into a chasm. Which was loudly supported and still defended primarily by those who claim to support equality.
Well said. Remember Starmer wanted even longer lockdowns. And the teaching unions couldn’t wait to go home and do nothing but Zoom
If the Covid inquiry does not question Starmer on his views and statements during the crisis, then it is even more useless and pointless than it already seems to be,
A good LOTO has a great deal of power in setting the mood and trajectory of discussion - and I'd argue that Starmer did reasonably well during the crisis. But he also made some absolute howlers.
Starmer was not part of government decision-making nor could he direct the civil service. What he might or might not have done or said differently should not be used to divert the inquiry even further.
Although I heavily supported them at the time I’ve completely changed my mind. We locked down to protect the elderly who have been completely shielded from any impact, while nurses and doctors get shafted and young people get the largest tax burden in history. All this whilst being called thick, woke and lazy.
For that I say no, should have let young people get on with life.
No wonder you’re a labour fanboy. More Cpt Hindsight stuff.
That's totally unfair - he made a mistake and he's owning it, and that is brave and deserves kudos.
Cpt Hindsight did the opposite, he refused to take a position then afterwards acted like it should have been his new one all along rather than admitting he'd changed his position.
Still discussing the rights and wrongs of lockdown I see. Well. It happened. The more crucial question is what are we doing now to ameliorate the effects identified? Sod all is the answer.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
They were schooled remotely via the web and it is ironic that staunch advocates of WFH for themselves can clearly see the disadvantages for their children.
Incidentally, Labour sees schools as glorified childminders, or at least that is the impression from their proposal to provide nursery places in schools.
Some were schooled remotely via the web. Especially those who have good parents who already read to them at home and gave them all the advantages of loving, supportive parents who could support them. I took time off work to go through my kids schooling with them - but many did not.
Disadvantaged children who get popped in front of the TV and left to their own devices, or with parents who can't comprehend what the teachers should be teaching them etc - they did not.
Children of educated, 'middle class' parents are already very advantageous before they even start school - schools are tasked in part with trying to close that gap by giving everyone an opportunity. Instead we did the polar opposite for years and aggravated that gap turning it into a chasm. Which was loudly supported and still defended primarily by those who claim to support equality.
Well said. Remember Starmer wanted even longer lockdowns. And the teaching unions couldn’t wait to go home and do nothing but Zoom
Unions maybe, anecdotally I wouldn't say teachers though. The teachers I know wanted to be in schools and wanted the kids in schools too.
The teachers I know went into education because they want to help children and care for the children they teach - people like that probably choose to stay teaching rather than get involved as much with union politics. They could see the harm that was done by shutting schools.
We wanted to be back in schools, but we also wanted sensible precautions taken to prevent Covid storming through them.
Which the DfE were unable or unwilling to put in place, leading to constant conflict. Not helped by the increasingly bizarre behaviour of the DfE itself, which on one memorable occasion issued four contradictory sets of instructions before 9am *on the same day*.
This, in turn, made managing schools in the face of soaring infection rates utterly impossible and meant that the only realistic outcome was closure.
This was explained more clearly when we found that senior officers at the DfE had been drinking throughout the process, and that their 'senior education adviser' was a twenty-something public schoolboy whose only experience of state education was when he had spent two not very successful years on the infamous TeachFirst programme.
And also, we would have needed a plan of how schools were to operate with ongoing substantial staff and pupil sickness. In most cases, there wasn't one and it's hard to imagine what that plan would have looked like.
That's a symptom of a wider question- has the UK got the balance of lean efficiency and resilience right? I'm not saying it hasn't, maybe running things tightly 95 percent of the time is worth the risk of collapse in the other 5 percent, but we ought to check.
More productive than assuming we can get what we want by saying it loudly enough.
You've nailed it in your first paragraph. All those crying out, with hindsight, "schools should never have been closed!" are ignoring the reality. Successful schooling depends on there being enough teachers present to teach. At the point of the various Covid peaks, too many teachers (and other staff) would have been absent (because the infected and/or ill would have still had to isolate) to keep schools open and provide anything like decent teaching.
I'd also remind folk that schools stayed open for the most vulnerable and the kids of key workers - which was about the best that was achievable under the circumstances.
Ukraine is going to be a European problem, with so much opposition from both sides in the US ahead of their elections.
The US are now pretty much happy that Russia isn’t a real threat to themselves, apart from the nukes, so it will be up to Europe to keep Russia back from their own territory.
As we're apparently debating lockdown again, remember this. We had a choice - a controlled lockdown, or an uncontrolled shutdown.
We chose the former, with massive government support for jobs and companies.
Alternately we could have told people to keep calm and carry on. Covid tears massive holes in workplaces which shut themselves down due to a lack of healthy workers willing to take the risk. With no massive financial support and thus the rapid collapse of a whole stack of businesses big and small that summer.
I have no problem with people arguing against lockdown. But they need to recognise that there was no alternative scenario where things carry on as normal.
The latter is far, far better.
It's more liberal, letting people decide.
It's more flexible, letting people return when they're ready rather than waiting for permission.
Sweden had it uncontrolled but that didn't mean a lack of support. They had furlough etc like us, but it was voluntary rather than mandatory. Much, much better.
This is revisionism again. The retrospective right wing (not you) complaint against lockdown is the economic impact. The "why didn't we just let people decide" argument from the Tory right (not you) is that we could have avoided both lockdown and the economic costs.
In the scenario where we opt to "let it rip" there would have been no furlough. We can look at Sweden and say "we should have done that". But that wasn't our alternative. The Tory right think we wasted all that money on furlough. There is No Way they would have voluntarily proffered up the cash in an "everything carry on as normal" scenario.
Still discussing the rights and wrongs of lockdown I see. Well. It happened. The more crucial question is what are we doing now to ameliorate the effects identified? Sod all is the answer.
I'd disagree. We're doing all the wrong things, so they're having no impact.
I don't know whether your PRU used the national catch-up tutoring service, but what a joke that was.
A friend of mine made colossal amounts of money out of it, but gave up in frustration because she'd never actually had anyone turn up to a lesson and the SLT who were meant to be compelling attendance couldn't be bothered to help.
Still discussing the rights and wrongs of lockdown I see. Well. It happened. The more crucial question is what are we doing now to ameliorate the effects identified? Sod all is the answer.
Sod all? We’re gonna make wine available in different sized bottles and cut inheritance tax!
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The biggest political story of 2023 is probably Nicola Strugeon, but close behind is the unravelling of the Post Office scandal.
I have my parents visiting at the moment, and they took turns reading chapters of Nick Wallis’ book for several hours a day.
The Post Office scandal is background noise in 2023 but the combination of its possible conclusion, the television drama and a general election might mean it dominates 2024.
As those who have followed the story will know, the settlement cost will formally bankrupt the PO leaving taxpayers to pick up the bill.
The Post Office has long been dependant on the government financing it. The government financed the extraordinarily expensive litigation which the Post Office has been using - and is still using - to resist the claims of the subpostmasters.
This is at heart a governmental failing - a failure of governance of a state owned institution, a failure of the criminal and civil justice system and a continuing failure by the government to put this right. So yes taxpayers will have to pay the compensation bill.
But they have already been paying the Post Office's unjustifiable bills - including large bonuses for their staff - for years. There is absolutely no justification for private citizens (the subpostmasters) who have done nothing wrong to bear - alone - the costs of the Post Office's and government's failings. They have already borne a far too heavy price already.
The current Post Office should be closed down, its existing management and most of its staff removed and they should start again. Its reputation is irretrievably ruined and, judging by its continuing behaviour, none of its management has a handle on the mess they've made let alone how to put matters right. They simply do not get it. A few new procedures and a pro forma apology simply will not do. A wholesale clear out is needed.
Yes, absolutely. The government will need to fund the compensation claims for those affected, and the PO should, like the Met Police, be reconstituted under totally new management.
The reconstitution of the RUC as the PSNI is the model to follow.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
They were schooled remotely via the web and it is ironic that staunch advocates of WFH for themselves can clearly see the disadvantages for their children.
Incidentally, Labour sees schools as glorified childminders, or at least that is the impression from their proposal to provide nursery places in schools.
Some were schooled remotely via the web. Especially those who have good parents who already read to them at home and gave them all the advantages of loving, supportive parents who could support them. I took time off work to go through my kids schooling with them - but many did not.
Disadvantaged children who get popped in front of the TV and left to their own devices, or with parents who can't comprehend what the teachers should be teaching them etc - they did not.
Children of educated, 'middle class' parents are already very advantageous before they even start school - schools are tasked in part with trying to close that gap by giving everyone an opportunity. Instead we did the polar opposite for years and aggravated that gap turning it into a chasm. Which was loudly supported and still defended primarily by those who claim to support equality.
Well said. Remember Starmer wanted even longer lockdowns. And the teaching unions couldn’t wait to go home and do nothing but Zoom
Unions maybe, anecdotally I wouldn't say teachers though. The teachers I know wanted to be in schools and wanted the kids in schools too.
The teachers I know went into education because they want to help children and care for the children they teach - people like that probably choose to stay teaching rather than get involved as much with union politics. They could see the harm that was done by shutting schools.
We wanted to be back in schools, but we also wanted sensible precautions taken to prevent Covid storming through them.
Which the DfE were unable or unwilling to put in place, leading to constant conflict. Not helped by the increasingly bizarre behaviour of the DfE itself, which on one memorable occasion issued four contradictory sets of instructions before 9am *on the same day*.
This, in turn, made managing schools in the face of soaring infection rates utterly impossible and meant that the only realistic outcome was closure.
This was explained more clearly when we found that senior officers at the DfE had been drinking throughout the process, and that their 'senior education adviser' was a twenty-something public schoolboy whose only experience of state education was when he had spent two not very successful years on the infamous TeachFirst programme.
And also, we would have needed a plan of how schools were to operate with ongoing substantial staff and pupil sickness. In most cases, there wasn't one and it's hard to imagine what that plan would have looked like.
That's a symptom of a wider question- has the UK got the balance of lean efficiency and resilience right? I'm not saying it hasn't, maybe running things tightly 95 percent of the time is worth the risk of collapse in the other 5 percent, but we ought to check.
More productive than assuming we can get what we want by saying it loudly enough.
You've nailed it in your first paragraph. All those crying out, with hindsight, "schools should never have been closed!" are ignoring the reality. Successful schooling depends on there being enough teachers present to teach. At the point of the various Covid peaks, too many teachers (and other staff) would have been absent (because the infected and/or ill would have still had to isolate) to keep schools open and provide anything like decent teaching.
I'd also remind folk that schools stayed open for the most vulnerable and the kids of key workers - which was about the best that was achievable under the circumstances.
BiB is increasingly a challenge on a normal day;
Teachers should be able to qualify without having GCSE maths to help solve the recruitment crisis, the chairman of the Independent Schools Council has said.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
PS. I am mostly agreeing with RCS.
Well yes. But I'd query total lack of concern for the climate. All public policy is about it. It's basically my job. And it's been so successful that Britain has become the first country to halve its carbin emissions from peak, and now emits less carbon per person than any time since 1855. Which is remarkable given the number of carbon-consuming things we have now like cars and central heating. And I'd query child poverty, which if it is true is surely only true in relative, not absolute terms (and in any case is a clear consequence of shutting down the economy, etc.). Housing I'm right with you.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Or it may be seen that they were a necessary evil, given what we knew at the time. Especially the first lockdown.
The first is the least controversial. Tho even there I wonder
The later lockdowns now seem like a kind of universal madness
The later lockdowns would have been shorter if the airports had not re-opened.
Eat Out to Help Out still looking like a top Sunak f*ck-up
Indeed. In my view, which I also stated at the time, the two biggest mistakes made by the government were:
1) Failing to lock down quickly enough, both in March and December 2020, which meant that the lockdowns were longer that they would otherwise had to have been.
2) The prioritisation of pubs and restaurants over schools. It seemed insane at the time that adults were encouraged to socialise while kids were kept isolated.
I dunno that I'd want to actively defend that second decision, but I think insane is a bit strong. My impression at the time was that the idea was that schools were thought to be possibly a very active vector for spread, because kids get diseases all the time and they would be in school all day every day, whereas if adults do a Saturday pub trip every week then that's less exposure time, they're more likely to skip it if feeling a bit under the weather, and so on net opening pubs is a lower population-level risk than opening schools. Plus if you're vulnerable or risk averse you can opt out of Saturday night beers, whereas you're obliged to send the kids to school when it's open.
(But I have no dog in the fight -- I have no kids, ditto most of my friends, and at the time my social circle was and remained pretty firmly in voluntary semi isolation and nobody was taking advantage of EOTHO or pubs. It seems quite likely we could have handled the pandemic's effect on education a lot better than we did.)
Still discussing the rights and wrongs of lockdown I see. Well. It happened. The more crucial question is what are we doing now to ameliorate the effects identified? Sod all is the answer.
Yes, if those who oppose lockdowns were now agitating for major investment and support of child and adult mental health services then I might have some respect for them.
More so if they wanted to rebalance society away from the rich and retired to the young, by funding housing, training and education.
It just isn't like that. They want continuing austerity to finance inheritance tax cuts. It's obscene.
As we're apparently debating lockdown again, remember this. We had a choice - a controlled lockdown, or an uncontrolled shutdown.
We chose the former, with massive government support for jobs and companies.
Alternately we could have told people to keep calm and carry on. Covid tears massive holes in workplaces which shut themselves down due to a lack of healthy workers willing to take the risk. With no massive financial support and thus the rapid collapse of a whole stack of businesses big and small that summer.
I have no problem with people arguing against lockdown. But they need to recognise that there was no alternative scenario where things carry on as normal.
The latter is far, far better.
It's more liberal, letting people decide.
It's more flexible, letting people return when they're ready rather than waiting for permission.
Sweden had it uncontrolled but that didn't mean a lack of support. They had furlough etc like us, but it was voluntary rather than mandatory. Much, much better.
This is revisionism again. The retrospective right wing (not you) complaint against lockdown is the economic impact. The "why didn't we just let people decide" argument from the Tory right (not you) is that we could have avoided both lockdown and the economic costs.
In the scenario where we opt to "let it rip" there would have been no furlough. We can look at Sweden and say "we should have done that". But that wasn't our alternative. The Tory right think we wasted all that money on furlough. There is No Way they would have voluntarily proffered up the cash in an "everything carry on as normal" scenario.
Yes, we could.
Because Sweden's furlough was voluntary rather than mandatory, and people could do it for short-term rather than for months until the Government gave permission to return to work, it cost a tiny fraction of what our furlough cost.
The delta between what we spent and what we would have spent had we done a Swedish model was wasted money - as well as taking away our civil liberties.
Still discussing the rights and wrongs of lockdown I see. Well. It happened. The more crucial question is what are we doing now to ameliorate the effects identified? Sod all is the answer.
I'd disagree. We're doing all the wrong things, so they're having no impact.
I don't know whether your PRU used the national catch-up tutoring service, but what a joke that was.
A friend of mine made colossal amounts of money out of it, but gave up in frustration because she'd never actually had anyone turn up to a lesson and the SLT who were meant to be compelling attendance couldn't be bothered to help.
Don't know a single child who's had access to it. Meanwhile, attendance has fallen off a cliff. And most of the support staff who used to do the pastoral care have been let go as "back office pen pushers". CAHMS has been more than decimated. As has CYPS. If you heart bleeds for kids hurt by lockdowns, then stick your hands in your pockets and push for summat to be done about it now, instead of whining about past decisions which can't be undone.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
They were schooled remotely via the web and it is ironic that staunch advocates of WFH for themselves can clearly see the disadvantages for their children.
Incidentally, Labour sees schools as glorified childminders, or at least that is the impression from their proposal to provide nursery places in schools.
Some were schooled remotely via the web. Especially those who have good parents who already read to them at home and gave them all the advantages of loving, supportive parents who could support them. I took time off work to go through my kids schooling with them - but many did not.
Disadvantaged children who get popped in front of the TV and left to their own devices, or with parents who can't comprehend what the teachers should be teaching them etc - they did not.
Children of educated, 'middle class' parents are already very advantageous before they even start school - schools are tasked in part with trying to close that gap by giving everyone an opportunity. Instead we did the polar opposite for years and aggravated that gap turning it into a chasm. Which was loudly supported and still defended primarily by those who claim to support equality.
Well said. Remember Starmer wanted even longer lockdowns. And the teaching unions couldn’t wait to go home and do nothing but Zoom
Unions maybe, anecdotally I wouldn't say teachers though. The teachers I know wanted to be in schools and wanted the kids in schools too.
The teachers I know went into education because they want to help children and care for the children they teach - people like that probably choose to stay teaching rather than get involved as much with union politics. They could see the harm that was done by shutting schools.
We wanted to be back in schools, but we also wanted sensible precautions taken to prevent Covid storming through them.
Which the DfE were unable or unwilling to put in place, leading to constant conflict. Not helped by the increasingly bizarre behaviour of the DfE itself, which on one memorable occasion issued four contradictory sets of instructions before 9am *on the same day*.
This, in turn, made managing schools in the face of soaring infection rates utterly impossible and meant that the only realistic outcome was closure.
This was explained more clearly when we found that senior officers at the DfE had been drinking throughout the process, and that their 'senior education adviser' was a twenty-something public schoolboy whose only experience of state education was when he had spent two not very successful years on the infamous TeachFirst programme.
And also, we would have needed a plan of how schools were to operate with ongoing substantial staff and pupil sickness. In most cases, there wasn't one and it's hard to imagine what that plan would have looked like.
That's a symptom of a wider question- has the UK got the balance of lean efficiency and resilience right? I'm not saying it hasn't, maybe running things tightly 95 percent of the time is worth the risk of collapse in the other 5 percent, but we ought to check.
More productive than assuming we can get what we want by saying it loudly enough.
You've nailed it in your first paragraph. All those crying out, with hindsight, "schools should never have been closed!" are ignoring the reality. Successful schooling depends on there being enough teachers present to teach. At the point of the various Covid peaks, too many teachers (and other staff) would have been absent (because the infected and/or ill would have still had to isolate) to keep schools open and provide anything like decent teaching.
I'd also remind folk that schools stayed open for the most vulnerable and the kids of key workers - which was about the best that was achievable under the circumstances.
Utter nonsense I'm afraid.
Sweden and others kept their schools open and never closed them, despite not having lockdowns and despite the fact that teachers would get infected as they weren't locking down.
Yes they stayed open for the kids of key workers. They should have stayed open for the kids of everyone - and there are millions of vulnerable kids who have been failed by shutting schools who were not classed at the time as "vulnerable".
We should look back on shutting schools as a moment of national shame and insist that no matter what, never again do we ever make such a horrendous mistake.
Still discussing the rights and wrongs of lockdown I see. Well. It happened. The more crucial question is what are we doing now to ameliorate the effects identified? Sod all is the answer.
Yes, if those who oppose lockdowns were now agitating for major investment and support of child and adult mental health services then I might have some respect for them.
More so if they wanted to rebalance society away from the rich and retired to the young, by funding housing, training and education.
It just isn't like that. They want continuing austerity to finance inheritance tax cuts. It's obscene.
Oh really? 🤔
I want massive investment in housing, think we need 10 million new houses built.
I want investment in training and education.
And as for inheritance tax, I think all inheritances should be taxed at the same rate as income tax and national insurance combined so earned via work and unearned incomes are treated the same. Which would be a huge tax rise not tax cut.
So do you want to rethink that obscene comment at all?
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Or it may be seen that they were a necessary evil, given what we knew at the time. Especially the first lockdown.
The first is the least controversial. Tho even there I wonder
The later lockdowns now seem like a kind of universal madness
The later lockdowns would have been shorter if the airports had not re-opened.
Eat Out to Help Out still looking like a top Sunak f*ck-up
Indeed. In my view, which I also stated at the time, the two biggest mistakes made by the government were:
1) Failing to lock down quickly enough, both in March and December 2020, which meant that the lockdowns were longer that they would otherwise had to have been.
2) The prioritisation of pubs and restaurants over schools. It seemed insane at the time that adults were encouraged to socialise while kids were kept isolated.
I dunno that I'd want to actively defend that second decision, but I think insane is a bit strong. My impression at the time was that the idea was that schools were thought to be possibly a very active vector for spread, because kids get diseases all the time and they would be in school all day every day, whereas if adults do a Saturday pub trip every week then that's less exposure time, they're more likely to skip it if feeling a bit under the weather, and so on net opening pubs is a lower population-level risk than opening schools. Plus if you're vulnerable or risk averse you can opt out of Saturday night beers, whereas you're obliged to send the kids to school when it's open.
(But I have no dog in the fight -- I have no kids, ditto most of my friends, and at the time my social circle was and remained pretty firmly in voluntary semi isolation and nobody was taking advantage of EOTHO or pubs. It seems quite likely we could have handled the pandemic's effect on education a lot better than we did.)
Also that government were funding schools anyway, whereas pubs and restaurants are all private businesses that were temporarily being paid by government to remain closed. It made sense financially, for the government to encourage economic activity as much as possible given the wider situation.
Ukraine is going to be a European problem, with so much opposition from both sides in the US ahead of their elections.
The US are now pretty much happy that Russia isn’t a real threat to themselves, apart from the nukes, so it will be up to Europe to keep Russia back from their own territory.
Any plan that involved the USA steadfastly staying the course, no matter what, was doomed from the start. I suspect everybody in European governments knew this too but were hoping, against all available evidence, for a quick-ish Ukrainian victory.
An American disengagement during the 2024 election campaign was always likely but the counter-offensive resulting in two cabbage patches changing hands and Netenyahu kicking off have accelerated things.
I don't see any European government, not least the British, stepping up to provide the torrent of money that Ukraine needs every month.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Or it may be seen that they were a necessary evil, given what we knew at the time. Especially the first lockdown.
The first is the least controversial. Tho even there I wonder
The later lockdowns now seem like a kind of universal madness
The later lockdowns would have been shorter if the airports had not re-opened.
Eat Out to Help Out still looking like a top Sunak f*ck-up
Indeed. In my view, which I also stated at the time, the two biggest mistakes made by the government were:
1) Failing to lock down quickly enough, both in March and December 2020, which meant that the lockdowns were longer that they would otherwise had to have been.
2) The prioritisation of pubs and restaurants over schools. It seemed insane at the time that adults were encouraged to socialise while kids were kept isolated.
The pubs and restaurants which were prioritised over schools weren't in this country but in Spanish tourist resorts.
Forget Iraq or trying to abolish the role of Lord Chancellor via a reshuffle this might be Blair’s biggest blunder.
Belfast might have had a football team playing in England’s Premier League if Tony Blair had got his way, newly released documents show.
The then prime minister was keen to relocate Wimbledon FC to the Northern Irish capital in the late 1990s, hoping it would be a unifying force in the divided city.
There was talk of a 40,000-seater stadium being built, as well as a sporting academy, if the south-west London side moved to the province and changed its name to Belfast United.
Previously confidential state papers include a note from 1997 described as “following up earlier informal discussions about the possibility of an English Premier League football club relocating to Belfast”.
Well, that's my vote lost to the Labour party for ever!
More seriously, it shows how far removed Blair was from normal people, nobody with an ounce of understanding of football would think that was a good idea. I doubt Starmer would make the same mistake. Even if he does support a team that moved from South London ;-)
I wonder, though, if it will move a few votes in Wimbledon?
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
A similar mystery to the one surrounding government spending. Perhaps even the same mystery.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
Agree totally. There needs to be thinking outside the box, as there was after WWII, and find ways to construct cheap but quality housing. Recent attempts at alternative contstruction methods have been shut down by banks which won’t mortgage them.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
Not all three.
Housing is still affordable in much of the country - its a problem concentrated in southern England.
I'd say that debt and education/training are the other two vital areas.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
The problem is there isn't the profit in small homes which is why builders concentrate on the bigger homes which will cost little more to build but can sell for 50-100% more.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
Not all three.
Housing is still affordable in much of the country - its a problem concentrated in southern England.
I'd say that debt and education/training are the other two vital areas.
Okay, I’ll amend to housing, housing, and government debt.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Or it may be seen that they were a necessary evil, given what we knew at the time. Especially the first lockdown.
The first is the least controversial. Tho even there I wonder
The later lockdowns now seem like a kind of universal madness
The problem is we cannot take back time and see what the alternative was. I am pretty certain that the first lockdown was correct, given what we knew at the time (and even with hindsight). And you should note that your paragraph above condemns *all* lockdowns, including the first.
For the second; was it correct? It's easy to look back now and say it wasn't, because you don't have to live with the consequences of your words. Did it save lives? Almost certainly yes. Were there consequences? Yes. So how do you weigh up an unquantifiable number of lives saved versus the unquantifiable consequences, especially compared to an alternative policy that was not tried?
IMV RCS has made a good point in the past: even if we had not locked down officially, we would have locked down unofficially. And that may have caused the worst of all worlds, with *more* disruption and deaths.
It's an experiment we cannot go back and repeat, thankfully.
I'll just repeat what I've said all along: I'm blooming glad I wasn't having to make the decisions.
The first lockdown, for example, started a week before the official announcement - companies started moving to WFH etc.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Zombie deer disease’ could spread to humans as cases surge across US
Experts say lab research indicates the chronic wasting ailment will spread to people in the future
“Zombie deer disease” could spread to humans, scientists have warned as cases surge across the United States.
Chronic wasting disease (CWD), which causes infected animals to become listless and jittery, often drooling and grinding their teeth with a zombie-like blank stare, has spread to 32 US states and four Canadian provinces, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The deadly disease has cropped up in Kansas, Wisconsin and Nebraska, where more than 40 counties have reported cases, USA Today reports, and has also been found in 800 samples of deer, elk and moose throughout Wyoming.
“We’re dealing with a disease that is invariably fatal, incurable and highly contagious,” Dr Cory Anderson, the co-director of a CWD programme at University of Minnesota, told The Guardian.
It’s deer BSE. Hopefully it will have the same transmissibility to humans as cow BSE did (very little). In terms of next pandemic, flu or another coronavirus remain the more likely.
Venison it is then. PB is astonishingly prescient at times.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
There was a massive wealth disparity in outcomes during the pandemic. Children from poorer backgrounds suffered much more, often there was a family of three kids with one computer between them.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Or it may be seen that they were a necessary evil, given what we knew at the time. Especially the first lockdown.
The first is the least controversial. Tho even there I wonder
The later lockdowns now seem like a kind of universal madness
The later lockdowns would have been shorter if the airports had not re-opened.
Eat Out to Help Out still looking like a top Sunak f*ck-up
Debatable according to this article but, you know, Tories innit.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
Your son coped, your son is not a poor kid from a challenging background. I'm guessing you read to your kid when he was a child etc, etc and gave him all the advantages you could - something not every child is fortunate enough to have regrettably which is where schools are the only place to step into that void, an opportunity ripped away from kids.
As I said the damage was far more for disadvantaged children and younger ones who couldn't do everything online.
Also your son was towards the tail-end of schooling. There are children approaching GCSEs now who missed critical, formative elements of their education that has set them behind both where they should be and their peers.
A lot of critical subjects, like Maths, rely upon a solid understanding of prior elements of the curriculum when developing the latter stages. Take that away from a child, and they're never going to get a good grasp of trigonometry or pre-calculus if they don't have a good foundation of understanding algebra.
Forget Iraq or trying to abolish the role of Lord Chancellor via a reshuffle this might be Blair’s biggest blunder.
Belfast might have had a football team playing in England’s Premier League if Tony Blair had got his way, newly released documents show.
The then prime minister was keen to relocate Wimbledon FC to the Northern Irish capital in the late 1990s, hoping it would be a unifying force in the divided city.
There was talk of a 40,000-seater stadium being built, as well as a sporting academy, if the south-west London side moved to the province and changed its name to Belfast United.
Previously confidential state papers include a note from 1997 described as “following up earlier informal discussions about the possibility of an English Premier League football club relocating to Belfast”.
Well, that's my vote lost to the Labour party for ever!
More seriously, it shows how far removed Blair was from normal people, nobody with an ounce of understanding of football would think that was a good idea. I doubt Starmer would make the same mistake. Even if he does support a team that moved from South London ;-)
I wonder, though, if it will move a few votes in Wimbledon?
Wimbledon was being moved anyway. The only question was where.
Zombie deer disease’ could spread to humans as cases surge across US
Experts say lab research indicates the chronic wasting ailment will spread to people in the future
“Zombie deer disease” could spread to humans, scientists have warned as cases surge across the United States.
Chronic wasting disease (CWD), which causes infected animals to become listless and jittery, often drooling and grinding their teeth with a zombie-like blank stare, has spread to 32 US states and four Canadian provinces, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The deadly disease has cropped up in Kansas, Wisconsin and Nebraska, where more than 40 counties have reported cases, USA Today reports, and has also been found in 800 samples of deer, elk and moose throughout Wyoming.
“We’re dealing with a disease that is invariably fatal, incurable and highly contagious,” Dr Cory Anderson, the co-director of a CWD programme at University of Minnesota, told The Guardian.
It’s deer BSE. Hopefully it will have the same transmissibility to humans as cow BSE did (very little). In terms of next pandemic, flu or another coronavirus remain the more likely.
Venison it is then. PB is astonishingly prescient at times.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
There was a massive wealth disparity in outcomes during the pandemic. Children from poorer backgrounds suffered much more, often there was a family of three kids with one computer between them.
I am afraid that the truth is much grimmer. My daughter's friend, who is a primary school teacher in a deprived area, found that Social Work were simply not checking on vulnerable children at all. For months. Home visits could not pass a risk assessment. Eventually she was so concerned that she started going around to see them herself, pretending this was an outreach aspect of their education. Some were in a truly terrible state.
My sister, also a primary school teacher found the same. The ones who really suffered were the thankfully small number for whom school was a refuge from violence and abuse, a source of food and a source of warmth. What we did to those children was truly terrible. But it was a very small minority.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
A 28-year-old British-born man who has never left the country has spoken of his devastation after being told he will be deported to Portugal, from where his parents arrived more than 30 years ago, under a post-Brexit policy towards EU nationals convicted of crimes.
Dmitry Lima was born in Lambeth, in south London, does not speak Portuguese and has never travelled abroad but he was given a deportation order by the Home Office after serving a prison sentence for drugs offences and for carrying a Taser.
Lima, who had no previous convictions, is appealing against the deportation decision on the grounds that he is British and had not previously applied for a UK passport as he could not afford to pay the fees. “I’m British and I have never left the country – I just don’t understand,” he said.
Zombie deer disease’ could spread to humans as cases surge across US
Experts say lab research indicates the chronic wasting ailment will spread to people in the future
“Zombie deer disease” could spread to humans, scientists have warned as cases surge across the United States.
Chronic wasting disease (CWD), which causes infected animals to become listless and jittery, often drooling and grinding their teeth with a zombie-like blank stare, has spread to 32 US states and four Canadian provinces, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The deadly disease has cropped up in Kansas, Wisconsin and Nebraska, where more than 40 counties have reported cases, USA Today reports, and has also been found in 800 samples of deer, elk and moose throughout Wyoming.
“We’re dealing with a disease that is invariably fatal, incurable and highly contagious,” Dr Cory Anderson, the co-director of a CWD programme at University of Minnesota, told The Guardian.
It’s deer BSE. Hopefully it will have the same transmissibility to humans as cow BSE did (very little). In terms of next pandemic, flu or another coronavirus remain the more likely.
Venison it is then. PB is astonishingly prescient at times.
Those vegans will have their days numbered!
I'd consider a vegan diet only if someone can give me a good method to cook vegans.
Forget Iraq or trying to abolish the role of Lord Chancellor via a reshuffle this might be Blair’s biggest blunder.
Belfast might have had a football team playing in England’s Premier League if Tony Blair had got his way, newly released documents show.
The then prime minister was keen to relocate Wimbledon FC to the Northern Irish capital in the late 1990s, hoping it would be a unifying force in the divided city.
There was talk of a 40,000-seater stadium being built, as well as a sporting academy, if the south-west London side moved to the province and changed its name to Belfast United.
Previously confidential state papers include a note from 1997 described as “following up earlier informal discussions about the possibility of an English Premier League football club relocating to Belfast”.
Well, that's my vote lost to the Labour party for ever!
More seriously, it shows how far removed Blair was from normal people, nobody with an ounce of understanding of football would think that was a good idea. I doubt Starmer would make the same mistake. Even if he does support a team that moved from South London ;-)
I wonder, though, if it will move a few votes in Wimbledon?
Wimbledon was being moved anyway. The only question was where.
The proposal was to shut down Wimbledon football club and start Belfast United, using the same financial structures. Pretty much.
Shirley, starting a Belfast United as a new club would have been easier?
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
There was a massive wealth disparity in outcomes during the pandemic. Children from poorer backgrounds suffered much more, often there was a family of three kids with one computer between them.
I am afraid that the truth is much grimmer. My daughter's friend, who is a primary school teacher in a deprived area, found that Social Work were simply not checking on vulnerable children at all. For months. Home visits could not pass a risk assessment. Eventually she was so concerned that she started going around to see them herself, pretending this was an outreach aspect of their education. Some were in a truly terrible state.
My sister, also a primary school teacher found the same. The ones who really suffered were the thankfully small number for whom school was a refuge from violence and abuse, a source of food and a source of warmth. What we did to those children was truly terrible. But it was a very small minority.
The police were in my tenement checking on some vulnerable kids about once a week. Quite an eye-opener tbh - this stuff stays hidden away most of the time.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Forget Iraq or trying to abolish the role of Lord Chancellor via a reshuffle this might be Blair’s biggest blunder.
Belfast might have had a football team playing in England’s Premier League if Tony Blair had got his way, newly released documents show.
The then prime minister was keen to relocate Wimbledon FC to the Northern Irish capital in the late 1990s, hoping it would be a unifying force in the divided city.
There was talk of a 40,000-seater stadium being built, as well as a sporting academy, if the south-west London side moved to the province and changed its name to Belfast United.
Previously confidential state papers include a note from 1997 described as “following up earlier informal discussions about the possibility of an English Premier League football club relocating to Belfast”.
Well, that's my vote lost to the Labour party for ever!
More seriously, it shows how far removed Blair was from normal people, nobody with an ounce of understanding of football would think that was a good idea. I doubt Starmer would make the same mistake. Even if he does support a team that moved from South London ;-)
I wonder, though, if it will move a few votes in Wimbledon?
Wimbledon was being moved anyway. The only question was where.
The proposal was to shut down Wimbledon football club and start Belfast United, using the same financial structures. Pretty much.
Shirley, starting a Belfast United as a new club would have been easier?
The problem would be having a position in the football pyramid. Belfast United wouldn't want to start in a Saturday pub league.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
They were schooled remotely via the web and it is ironic that staunch advocates of WFH for themselves can clearly see the disadvantages for their children.
Incidentally, Labour sees schools as glorified childminders, or at least that is the impression from their proposal to provide nursery places in schools.
Some were schooled remotely via the web. Especially those who have good parents who already read to them at home and gave them all the advantages of loving, supportive parents who could support them. I took time off work to go through my kids schooling with them - but many did not.
Disadvantaged children who get popped in front of the TV and left to their own devices, or with parents who can't comprehend what the teachers should be teaching them etc - they did not.
Children of educated, 'middle class' parents are already very advantageous before they even start school - schools are tasked in part with trying to close that gap by giving everyone an opportunity. Instead we did the polar opposite for years and aggravated that gap turning it into a chasm. Which was loudly supported and still defended primarily by those who claim to support equality.
Well said. Remember Starmer wanted even longer lockdowns. And the teaching unions couldn’t wait to go home and do nothing but Zoom
Unions maybe, anecdotally I wouldn't say teachers though. The teachers I know wanted to be in schools and wanted the kids in schools too.
The teachers I know went into education because they want to help children and care for the children they teach - people like that probably choose to stay teaching rather than get involved as much with union politics. They could see the harm that was done by shutting schools.
We wanted to be back in schools, but we also wanted sensible precautions taken to prevent Covid storming through them.
Which the DfE were unable or unwilling to put in place, leading to constant conflict. Not helped by the increasingly bizarre behaviour of the DfE itself, which on one memorable occasion issued four contradictory sets of instructions before 9am *on the same day*.
This, in turn, made managing schools in the face of soaring infection rates utterly impossible and meant that the only realistic outcome was closure.
This was explained more clearly when we found that senior officers at the DfE had been drinking throughout the process, and that their 'senior education adviser' was a twenty-something public schoolboy whose only experience of state education was when he had spent two not very successful years on the infamous TeachFirst programme.
And also, we would have needed a plan of how schools were to operate with ongoing substantial staff and pupil sickness. In most cases, there wasn't one and it's hard to imagine what that plan would have looked like.
That's a symptom of a wider question- has the UK got the balance of lean efficiency and resilience right? I'm not saying it hasn't, maybe running things tightly 95 percent of the time is worth the risk of collapse in the other 5 percent, but we ought to check.
More productive than assuming we can get what we want by saying it loudly enough.
You've nailed it in your first paragraph. All those crying out, with hindsight, "schools should never have been closed!" are ignoring the reality. Successful schooling depends on there being enough teachers present to teach. At the point of the various Covid peaks, too many teachers (and other staff) would have been absent (because the infected and/or ill would have still had to isolate) to keep schools open and provide anything like decent teaching.
I'd also remind folk that schools stayed open for the most vulnerable and the kids of key workers - which was about the best that was achievable under the circumstances.
Utter nonsense I'm afraid.
Sweden and others kept their schools open and never closed them, despite not having lockdowns and despite the fact that teachers would get infected as they weren't locking down.
Yes they stayed open for the kids of key workers. They should have stayed open for the kids of everyone - and there are millions of vulnerable kids who have been failed by shutting schools who were not classed at the time as "vulnerable".
We should look back on shutting schools as a moment of national shame and insist that no matter what, never again do we ever make such a horrendous mistake.
So who would have taught/supervised the pupils when a large number of staff was away with covid?....
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
Agree totally. There needs to be thinking outside the box, as there was after WWII, and find ways to construct cheap but quality housing. Recent attempts at alternative contstruction methods have been shut down by banks which won’t mortgage them.
Government does, of course, have the power to obtain very cheap building land.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
A 28-year-old British-born man who has never left the country has spoken of his devastation after being told he will be deported to Portugal, from where his parents arrived more than 30 years ago, under a post-Brexit policy towards EU nationals convicted of crimes.
Dmitry Lima was born in Lambeth, in south London, does not speak Portuguese and has never travelled abroad but he was given a deportation order by the Home Office after serving a prison sentence for drugs offences and for carrying a Taser.
Lima, who had no previous convictions, is appealing against the deportation decision on the grounds that he is British and had not previously applied for a UK passport as he could not afford to pay the fees. “I’m British and I have never left the country – I just don’t understand,” he said.
Shirley, starting a Belfast United as a new club would have been easier?
A new club would have to start at level 9 or 10 in the English football league if they eventually wanted to be in the Premiership - there is no promotion from Six Counties league system to the EPL. Having a Beal Feirste club playing in the English North West Counties League just would not be feasible for many reasons, not the least of which is that none of the other teams would be able to afford the away fixtures.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
There was a massive wealth disparity in outcomes during the pandemic. Children from poorer backgrounds suffered much more, often there was a family of three kids with one computer between them.
I am afraid that the truth is much grimmer. My daughter's friend, who is a primary school teacher in a deprived area, found that Social Work were simply not checking on vulnerable children at all. For months. Home visits could not pass a risk assessment. Eventually she was so concerned that she started going around to see them herself, pretending this was an outreach aspect of their education. Some were in a truly terrible state.
My sister, also a primary school teacher found the same. The ones who really suffered were the thankfully small number for whom school was a refuge from violence and abuse, a source of food and a source of warmth. What we did to those children was truly terrible. But it was a very small minority.
The police were in my tenement checking on some vulnerable kids about once a week. Quite an eye-opener tbh - this stuff stays hidden away most of the time.
My rowing club provides free rowing to the local state schools (lottery funding + charity fund raising).
During the school holidays they do rowing courses for kids - free for the ones attending the state schools. Which includes a free lunch.
The number that don’t want to go home at the end of the day…
A 28-year-old British-born man who has never left the country has spoken of his devastation after being told he will be deported to Portugal, from where his parents arrived more than 30 years ago, under a post-Brexit policy towards EU nationals convicted of crimes.
Dmitry Lima was born in Lambeth, in south London, does not speak Portuguese and has never travelled abroad but he was given a deportation order by the Home Office after serving a prison sentence for drugs offences and for carrying a Taser.
Lima, who had no previous convictions, is appealing against the deportation decision on the grounds that he is British and had not previously applied for a UK passport as he could not afford to pay the fees. “I’m British and I have never left the country – I just don’t understand,” he said.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
They were schooled remotely via the web and it is ironic that staunch advocates of WFH for themselves can clearly see the disadvantages for their children.
Incidentally, Labour sees schools as glorified childminders, or at least that is the impression from their proposal to provide nursery places in schools.
Some were schooled remotely via the web. Especially those who have good parents who already read to them at home and gave them all the advantages of loving, supportive parents who could support them. I took time off work to go through my kids schooling with them - but many did not.
Disadvantaged children who get popped in front of the TV and left to their own devices, or with parents who can't comprehend what the teachers should be teaching them etc - they did not.
Children of educated, 'middle class' parents are already very advantageous before they even start school - schools are tasked in part with trying to close that gap by giving everyone an opportunity. Instead we did the polar opposite for years and aggravated that gap turning it into a chasm. Which was loudly supported and still defended primarily by those who claim to support equality.
Well said. Remember Starmer wanted even longer lockdowns. And the teaching unions couldn’t wait to go home and do nothing but Zoom
Unions maybe, anecdotally I wouldn't say teachers though. The teachers I know wanted to be in schools and wanted the kids in schools too.
The teachers I know went into education because they want to help children and care for the children they teach - people like that probably choose to stay teaching rather than get involved as much with union politics. They could see the harm that was done by shutting schools.
We wanted to be back in schools, but we also wanted sensible precautions taken to prevent Covid storming through them.
Which the DfE were unable or unwilling to put in place, leading to constant conflict. Not helped by the increasingly bizarre behaviour of the DfE itself, which on one memorable occasion issued four contradictory sets of instructions before 9am *on the same day*.
This, in turn, made managing schools in the face of soaring infection rates utterly impossible and meant that the only realistic outcome was closure.
This was explained more clearly when we found that senior officers at the DfE had been drinking throughout the process, and that their 'senior education adviser' was a twenty-something public schoolboy whose only experience of state education was when he had spent two not very successful years on the infamous TeachFirst programme.
And also, we would have needed a plan of how schools were to operate with ongoing substantial staff and pupil sickness. In most cases, there wasn't one and it's hard to imagine what that plan would have looked like.
That's a symptom of a wider question- has the UK got the balance of lean efficiency and resilience right? I'm not saying it hasn't, maybe running things tightly 95 percent of the time is worth the risk of collapse in the other 5 percent, but we ought to check.
More productive than assuming we can get what we want by saying it loudly enough.
You've nailed it in your first paragraph. All those crying out, with hindsight, "schools should never have been closed!" are ignoring the reality. Successful schooling depends on there being enough teachers present to teach. At the point of the various Covid peaks, too many teachers (and other staff) would have been absent (because the infected and/or ill would have still had to isolate) to keep schools open and provide anything like decent teaching.
I'd also remind folk that schools stayed open for the most vulnerable and the kids of key workers - which was about the best that was achievable under the circumstances.
Utter nonsense I'm afraid.
Sweden and others kept their schools open and never closed them, despite not having lockdowns and despite the fact that teachers would get infected as they weren't locking down.
Yes they stayed open for the kids of key workers. They should have stayed open for the kids of everyone - and there are millions of vulnerable kids who have been failed by shutting schools who were not classed at the time as "vulnerable".
We should look back on shutting schools as a moment of national shame and insist that no matter what, never again do we ever make such a horrendous mistake.
So who would have taught/supervised the pupils when a large number of staff was away with covid?....
The same as happened in every other country across the planet who didn't shut schools - or our schools when they weren't shut but Covid was still prevalent in the country.
In the extremely unlikely event that a school couldn't open then that individual school should tell its pupils that it couldn't open for a couple of days.
Not months on end.
For most healthy adults Covid was something that people get and recover from within a week, not months. So even if teachers get it then it burns through the teaching staff and then you move on.
It comes back to the discussion I had with @RochdalePioneers before - uncontrolled shutdowns are far better than enforced ones. There's tens of thousands of schools across the country, if on an individual day 30 of them across the country have to be shut due to a lack of staff then so be it - at least the other 99.9% of schools are still open and within a week that 30 should be open once more.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
Shirley, starting a Belfast United as a new club would have been easier?
A new club would have to start at level 9 or 10 in the English football league if they eventually wanted to be in the Premiership - there is no promotion from Six Counties league system to the EPL. Having a Beal Feirste club playing in the English North West Counties League just would not be feasible for many reasons, not the least of which is that none of the other teams would be able to afford the away fixtures.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Where I am (Havering), we just need more homes of any sort. All the old people (nicely tucked up in their paid off 3-bed semis) are complaining about all the flats proposed for Romford Town Centre, but they don't notice that half the larger houses are subdivided anyway, to meet the demand for small flats. At the same time, many of the smaller houses are extended or being extended - there are lots of loft conversions, and I'm typing this in a loft room that needs extending with proper stairs - which points to a shortage of 3 and 4 bed family homes at the same time. And if I was in my 30s, I couldn't afford the small house I live in now, let alone the much larger one I did buy 20 years ago. And I certainly couldn't afford to rent.
Housing - in the south - is the number 1 issue affecting quality of life. There needs to be lots more built, until it costs about half the amount, both to buy and to rent.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
Agree totally. There needs to be thinking outside the box, as there was after WWII, and find ways to construct cheap but quality housing. Recent attempts at alternative contstruction methods have been shut down by banks which won’t mortgage them.
Government does, of course, have the power to obtain very cheap building land.
Which is one way of building cheaper homes.
Question - what stops councils buying up land, designing a layout, putting in services, then selling the plots to recoup costs?
Obviously reposte - Woking. But in the boom times of the housing market, that would have been money for old rope.
Shirley, starting a Belfast United as a new club would have been easier?
A new club would have to start at level 9 or 10 in the English football league if they eventually wanted to be in the Premiership - there is no promotion from Six Counties league system to the EPL. Having a Beal Feirste club playing in the English North West Counties League just would not be feasible for many reasons, not the least of which is that none of the other teams would be able to afford the away fixtures.
it didn't stop MK Dons starting in League 1 when they were moved. it's all up to the leagues who they want as members. there would have been an issue with travel costs even in league 1 (or bottom end of the championship).
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
A pity for that 15% if they only live in a flat as they can't afford an alternative.
We need to build more homes, so that the only people who are living in flats are doing so by choice, not because they can't afford a home of their own.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
My old flat in Germany was well insulated from noise from other flats in the building, is that the case in the UK? Also it was owned by a couple who lived in a much bigger flat in a nicer area - and they were also renting.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
They were schooled remotely via the web and it is ironic that staunch advocates of WFH for themselves can clearly see the disadvantages for their children.
Incidentally, Labour sees schools as glorified childminders, or at least that is the impression from their proposal to provide nursery places in schools.
Some were schooled remotely via the web. Especially those who have good parents who already read to them at home and gave them all the advantages of loving, supportive parents who could support them. I took time off work to go through my kids schooling with them - but many did not.
Disadvantaged children who get popped in front of the TV and left to their own devices, or with parents who can't comprehend what the teachers should be teaching them etc - they did not.
Children of educated, 'middle class' parents are already very advantageous before they even start school - schools are tasked in part with trying to close that gap by giving everyone an opportunity. Instead we did the polar opposite for years and aggravated that gap turning it into a chasm. Which was loudly supported and still defended primarily by those who claim to support equality.
Well said. Remember Starmer wanted even longer lockdowns. And the teaching unions couldn’t wait to go home and do nothing but Zoom
Unions maybe, anecdotally I wouldn't say teachers though. The teachers I know wanted to be in schools and wanted the kids in schools too.
The teachers I know went into education because they want to help children and care for the children they teach - people like that probably choose to stay teaching rather than get involved as much with union politics. They could see the harm that was done by shutting schools.
We wanted to be back in schools, but we also wanted sensible precautions taken to prevent Covid storming through them.
Which the DfE were unable or unwilling to put in place, leading to constant conflict. Not helped by the increasingly bizarre behaviour of the DfE itself, which on one memorable occasion issued four contradictory sets of instructions before 9am *on the same day*.
This, in turn, made managing schools in the face of soaring infection rates utterly impossible and meant that the only realistic outcome was closure.
This was explained more clearly when we found that senior officers at the DfE had been drinking throughout the process, and that their 'senior education adviser' was a twenty-something public schoolboy whose only experience of state education was when he had spent two not very successful years on the infamous TeachFirst programme.
And also, we would have needed a plan of how schools were to operate with ongoing substantial staff and pupil sickness. In most cases, there wasn't one and it's hard to imagine what that plan would have looked like.
That's a symptom of a wider question- has the UK got the balance of lean efficiency and resilience right? I'm not saying it hasn't, maybe running things tightly 95 percent of the time is worth the risk of collapse in the other 5 percent, but we ought to check.
More productive than assuming we can get what we want by saying it loudly enough.
You've nailed it in your first paragraph. All those crying out, with hindsight, "schools should never have been closed!" are ignoring the reality. Successful schooling depends on there being enough teachers present to teach. At the point of the various Covid peaks, too many teachers (and other staff) would have been absent (because the infected and/or ill would have still had to isolate) to keep schools open and provide anything like decent teaching.
I'd also remind folk that schools stayed open for the most vulnerable and the kids of key workers - which was about the best that was achievable under the circumstances.
Utter nonsense I'm afraid.
Sweden and others kept their schools open and never closed them, despite not having lockdowns and despite the fact that teachers would get infected as they weren't locking down.
Yes they stayed open for the kids of key workers. They should have stayed open for the kids of everyone - and there are millions of vulnerable kids who have been failed by shutting schools who were not classed at the time as "vulnerable".
We should look back on shutting schools as a moment of national shame and insist that no matter what, never again do we ever make such a horrendous mistake.
So who would have taught/supervised the pupils when a large number of staff was away with covid?....
Would it have been a large number ?
In some schools it would if all the staff were infected in a short time but that would have been only temporary with few subsequent infections.
In other schools it might have been only 5% or 10% for a few weeks now and then.
There would certainly have been uncertainty and randomness of effect but that's what other workplaces had to cope with, including my own.
Forget Iraq or trying to abolish the role of Lord Chancellor via a reshuffle this might be Blair’s biggest blunder.
Belfast might have had a football team playing in England’s Premier League if Tony Blair had got his way, newly released documents show.
The then prime minister was keen to relocate Wimbledon FC to the Northern Irish capital in the late 1990s, hoping it would be a unifying force in the divided city.
There was talk of a 40,000-seater stadium being built, as well as a sporting academy, if the south-west London side moved to the province and changed its name to Belfast United.
Previously confidential state papers include a note from 1997 described as “following up earlier informal discussions about the possibility of an English Premier League football club relocating to Belfast”.
Well, that's my vote lost to the Labour party for ever!
More seriously, it shows how far removed Blair was from normal people, nobody with an ounce of understanding of football would think that was a good idea. I doubt Starmer would make the same mistake. Even if he does support a team that moved from South London ;-)
I wonder, though, if it will move a few votes in Wimbledon?
Wimbledon was being moved anyway. The only question was where.
The proposal was to shut down Wimbledon football club and start Belfast United, using the same financial structures. Pretty much.
Shirley, starting a Belfast United as a new club would have been easier?
I don't want to open up the debate about whether clubs should have been able to move around like the Franchise system used in the USA, rather than represent their area and rise and fall on their merits. (Thankfully the outcome for both MK Dons and AFC Wimbledon has probably killed that off as an option for anyone in future). Or whether an Irish team should play in the English League.
Politically, the government would have been wise to keep out of it and waited to see what happened and perhaps provide some support for a Belfast option if it became the preferred option but not more. Maybe the Telegraph is making more of it than there was really at the time. I don't remember Belfast being talked about - Dublin was considered seriously as well as MK.
On this I was more interested that it showed Blair's political antennae to be faulty at an early date, on a small matter of little interest to anyone except me, admittedly.
Shirley, starting a Belfast United as a new club would have been easier?
A new club would have to start at level 9 or 10 in the English football league if they eventually wanted to be in the Premiership - there is no promotion from Six Counties league system to the EPL. Having a Beal Feirste club playing in the English North West Counties League just would not be feasible for many reasons, not the least of which is that none of the other teams would be able to afford the away fixtures.
it didn't stop MK Dons starting in League 1 when they were moved. it's all up to the leagues who they want as members. there would have been an issue with travel costs even in league 1 (or bottom end of the championship).
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
Agree totally. There needs to be thinking outside the box, as there was after WWII, and find ways to construct cheap but quality housing. Recent attempts at alternative contstruction methods have been shut down by banks which won’t mortgage them.
Government does, of course, have the power to obtain very cheap building land.
Which is one way of building cheaper homes.
Question - what stops councils buying up land, designing a layout, putting in services, then selling the plots to recoup costs?
Obviously reposte - Woking. But in the boom times of the housing market, that would have been money for old rope.
Let's see what Labour have to say when they get around to publishing their policies. A May ejection* is looking increasingly likely, so we should find out soon enough.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
And what percentage want to live in flats ?
What percentage want to move to NW England and live in a Barratt home adjacent to a motorway, with no public transport provision and no local services? I reckon Switzerland is a bit nicer.
The fact is we live in a densely populated country (including Scotland, with the vast majority living in cities and towns) yet have some of the least dense housing anywhere in Europe. It's infuriatingly obvious what the problem is.
Edinburgh is building detached houses inside the bypass amid a "housing crisis". The council is utterly beholden to developers who don't give a damn about increasing supply - it's in their interest to restrict it! They have suckered numpties like Barty into thinking no one will buy a flat, and the Swiss and Germans have low quality of living because they don't have a 10 square foot garden each.
Forget Iraq or trying to abolish the role of Lord Chancellor via a reshuffle this might be Blair’s biggest blunder.
Belfast might have had a football team playing in England’s Premier League if Tony Blair had got his way, newly released documents show.
The then prime minister was keen to relocate Wimbledon FC to the Northern Irish capital in the late 1990s, hoping it would be a unifying force in the divided city.
There was talk of a 40,000-seater stadium being built, as well as a sporting academy, if the south-west London side moved to the province and changed its name to Belfast United.
Previously confidential state papers include a note from 1997 described as “following up earlier informal discussions about the possibility of an English Premier League football club relocating to Belfast”.
Well, that's my vote lost to the Labour party for ever!
More seriously, it shows how far removed Blair was from normal people, nobody with an ounce of understanding of football would think that was a good idea. I doubt Starmer would make the same mistake. Even if he does support a team that moved from South London ;-)
I wonder, though, if it will move a few votes in Wimbledon?
Wimbledon was being moved anyway. The only question was where.
The proposal was to shut down Wimbledon football club and start Belfast United, using the same financial structures. Pretty much.
Shirley, starting a Belfast United as a new club would have been easier?
I don't want to open up the debate about whether clubs should have been able to move around like the Franchise system used in the USA, rather than represent their area and rise and fall on their merits. (Thankfully the outcome for both MK Dons and AFC Wimbledon has probably killed that off as an option for anyone in future). Or whether an Irish team should play in the English League.
Politically, the government would have been wise to keep out of it and waited to see what happened and perhaps provide some support for a Belfast option if it became the preferred option but not more. Maybe the Telegraph is making more of it than there was really at the time. I don't remember Belfast being talked about - Dublin was considered seriously as well as MK.
On this I was more interested that it showed Blair's political antennae to be faulty at an early date, on a small matter of little interest to anyone except me, admittedly.
And I see that while I was typing that the debate about the football pyramid reopened anyway!
Johnny Mercer lashes out at Carol Vorderman in sweary rage for raising broken promise
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/fury-tory-minister-johnny-mercer-31759289 Johnny Mercer hit out at TV star Carol Vorderman and his Labour election rival Fred Thomas after they shared figures revealing a rise in homelessness among armed forces veterans. Mr Thomas, a former Royal Marine, said he was "furious" and asked if Mr Mercer would apologise for his "abject failure".
Ms Vorderman shared the Labour candidate's post, sparking an angry reaction from the top Tory. Veterans' Minister Mr Mercer accused them of "deliberately misleading" the public "because that makes your s*** lonely life feel better."
And he went on to rant at Ms Vorderman, who he has clashed with before: "No one normal really cares about your view. They think you're mad. I'm changing veterans lives. What I came into politics to do."
In another dig at his Labour opponent, who he will battle for the Plymouth, Moor View seat, he claimed Mr Thomas “served five minutes in uniform” - even though he was in the Royal Marines for seven years becoming a Captain...
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
I live in a new build estate, made entirely out of three and four bed homes. No "starter" one or two bed homes have been built, no flats.
Literally every home on my road that has been sold is occupied. There's only one house on my street that's not been sold, and is thus unoccupied.
The idea that estates are being built which are not being sold is farcical - if it were true, then developers would go out of business, they need to sell whatever they build or they have no cashflow. 🤦♂️
We need more homes. Let the market decide, let people decide, if they want a semi they'll buy from developer building a semi - if they want a flat, let them go buy one there. We don't need to dictate "starter" homes or any other shit like flats, if that's not what people want. We just need to get out of the way and let millions more houses get built to resolve the shortage.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
The only reason that housing is expensive is due to a shortage of housing. We need more houses. Building more houses frees up pre-existing stock as we have a higher quantity of housing.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
My old flat in Germany was well insulated from noise from other flats in the building, is that the case in the UK? Also it was owned by a couple who lived in a much bigger flat in a nicer area - and they were also renting.
True of the one I’ve been living in for the last year. It was built around 2/3 years ago in a Docklands development and is the quietest place I’ve ever lived in.
Shirley, starting a Belfast United as a new club would have been easier?
A new club would have to start at level 9 or 10 in the English football league if they eventually wanted to be in the Premiership - there is no promotion from Six Counties league system to the EPL. Having a Beal Feirste club playing in the English North West Counties League just would not be feasible for many reasons, not the least of which is that none of the other teams would be able to afford the away fixtures.
And the Irish government would have demanded equivalent funding for GAA sports in Northern Ireland.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
I’m hearing that this new cohort is especially fucked from personal anecdotes - teacher/professor friends. But also seeing it online
It makes sense. Even a war arguably isn’t as traumatic as what we did to our own societies 2020-2022
I sincerely pray that you are right in your sunny Californian optimism
Absolutely, there has been damage inflicted on young people that will affect them the rest of their lives.
Which should be pretty bloody obvious. If I don't take my kids to school for a week as I want to take them on holiday then I'm breaking the law and can be fined, as its so crucial that children don't miss even a week of schooling - but we shut schools for months and people have a ladida its all fine attitude to it.
No its not all fine. What we did to children was terrible, unforgiveable, and all to save some people from a natural end to their life from a natural virus. It will affect children for decades to come.
There are children approaching GCSEs etc now who missed absolutely crucial formative time at school and never caught up.
I do think this is being massively overstated.
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
It would be nice if people showed as much concern for poor people in general as they do for them from the impacts of lockdown.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
You'll be pleased to know then that I do share my concern consistently and want to see ten million new houses built across the country so everyone, not just the well off, can have a house of their own with their own garden and off-road parking spaces etc.
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Percentage of people living in flats:
UK 15%
Switzerland 60% Germany 57% Sweden 40%
And what percentage want to live in flats ?
What percentage want to move to NW England and live in a Barratt home adjacent to a motorway, with no public transport provision and no local services? I reckon Switzerland is a bit nicer.
The fact is we live in a densely populated country (including Scotland, with the vast majority living in cities and towns) yet have some of the least dense housing anywhere in Europe. It's infuriatingly obvious what the problem is.
Edinburgh is building detached houses inside the bypass amid a "housing crisis". The council is utterly beholden to developers who don't give a damn about increasing supply - it's in their interest to restrict it! They have suckered numpties like Barty into thinking no one will buy a flat, and the Swiss and Germans have low quality of living because they don't have a 10 square foot garden each.
I've known people who lived in a flat and then moved to a house, detached if they could.
I've known people who lived in a flat and wanted to move to a house, detached if possible.
But I've never known anyone who lived in a house who either moved to or wanted to live in a flat.
Now perhaps you can force people to live in flats and then that becomes normalised after a few generations but its not going to happen in this country.
Viktor Orbán’s childhood friend, Lőrinc Mészáros, has retaken the title of Hungary’s richest person, according to Forbes Hungary’s new estimate (wealth: €1.6b).
I live in a new build estate, made entirely out of three and four bed homes. No "starter" one or two bed homes have been built, no flats.
Literally every home on my road that has been sold is occupied. There's only one house on my street that's not been sold, and is thus unoccupied.
The idea that estates are being built which are not being sold is farcical - if it were true, then developers would go out of business, they need to sell whatever they build or they have no cashflow. 🤦♂️
We need more homes. Let the market decide, let people decide, if they want a semi they'll buy from developer building a semi - if they want a flat, let them go buy one there. We don't need to dictate "starter" homes or any other shit like flats, if that's not what people want. We just need to get out of the way and let millions more houses get built to resolve the shortage.
A significant player in that market - the developer - doesn't give a shit about housing supply. They would much rather restrict it by building detached houses and eating up land, allowing them to charge exorbitant prices for poor workmanship.
Imagine how more people could have been housed your estate was apartment buildings instead.
P.s. there is an extraordinary amount of home building happening in the capital now. As yet, doesn’t appear to have had any impact on price/ affordability.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Had it happened, and had Boris subsequently died, then it is likely that lockdowns would not have been necessary. Simply, the population would have been so terrified, they would have locked themselves up voluntarily.
This was clearly Boris's plan all along.
Watch this. I predict this video will become iconic
Francis Collins of the NIH admits the lockdowns were possibly a tremendous mistake, because the “public health mindset” only thinks about saving lives, not about the collateral damage of closed schools, damaged economies, screwed up people
Pre-lockdown I was of a healthy weight, went to the gym four times a week, held down a full time job.
Now, long after lockdown ended, I still have a spare tyre round my gut, drink too much, struggle with anger and depression, and work only sporadically (thus paying far less tax than I did pre-lockdown).
I wouldn't be surprised if lockdowns have taken ten years off my life.
I am not entirely dissimilar. Billions more have suffered
I’ve also been reading, this morning, about the appalling impact of Covid on kids age 2-5 during lockdown - who are now going through education. They are asocial and retarded
Lockdowns might in future be seen as one of the greatest FAILURES in public health. Ironic
Interestingly, I was just reading an article about slightly older kids (9-11) in the US and how they'd made up almost all their lost academic performance.
But - of course - the US experience was very different. While schools in most places were closed, there was essentially no restrictions on meeting other kids your age in other situations.
It’s the the sociopathy of the younger cohort which is the big issue, apparently. They don’t know how to interact. They spent two years alone at a crucial age
We did this for a really really bad flu
Are kids that grow up on farms particularly prone to sociopathy?
HMG made plenty of mistakes.
But kids are pretty adaptable. German kids who went through the destruction of their families and country, and nightly bombings, and the like, turned out OK.
Sure, there were too many restrictions. And sure, it's possible there is long term damage. But kids are socialising now and their brains are pretty plastic.
Two things. Yes kids on farms are often a bit weird.
And We let down children all the time. When it suits us. Housing is out of reach, most will never own a home. Mental health services are low priority. Total lack of concern for the climate. Piling debt on debt. Massive rise in child poverty.
But it’s a disaster if we panic in a pandemic and lockdown schools for a few months?
They look a bit selective, these complaints.
Lets see for me.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing. 2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare. 3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies. 4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before. 5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The three biggest problems in the UK are housing, housing, and housing.
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
You certainly need a rethink. We need more quantity, but we don't need lesser quality.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
Stop And Think. What is the point in building houses that the people who need housing cannot afford? And don't say "all the people in older / cheaper homes trade up leaving those" because that isn't how the market or people work.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
It is how the market and people work.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
You have absolute blinkers on as you ideologically support your opinion - which is fine, but you need to step away and recognise that what you think isn't necessarily what everyone thinks.
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
The only reason that housing is expensive is due to a shortage of housing. We need more houses. Building more houses frees up pre-existing stock as we have a higher quantity of housing.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
problem one, but not the only one, with building 1 m houses a year:
The Home Builders Federation estimates 2,500 brickies are needed for every 10,000 homes built. That means around 75,000 are needed to hit the Government's target of building 300,000 new homes every year by 2025. But there are only 42,000 bricklayers in home building, meaning an extra 33,000 are now needed.
I see we’re now calling inheritance tax the death tax. “Taking the fight to Labour”, the Mail proclaims. It’s not very difficult to point out this will only impact the wealthy, how is this going to win any seats, can somebody explain this one?
Comments
It's more liberal, letting people decide.
It's more flexible, letting people return when they're ready rather than waiting for permission.
Sweden had it uncontrolled but that didn't mean a lack of support. They had furlough etc like us, but it was voluntary rather than mandatory. Much, much better.
I am still waiting for the inquiry to interview Tegnell about Sweden.
We will see. This has been around for years.
But my experience was similar. I was suicidal and also spent time on the happy pills.
And it was disastrous for my then-5-year-old daughter. Some sort of teaching continued for my older children, albeit online, but you can't teach a five year old online. And any sort of teaching basically stopped for about a year, even when the schools were open.
But the social impact was worse. 5 year olds need other 5 year olds.
And the data and anecdata I have seen is that that cohort - born 2014-2019 - are a bit fucked. Academically way behind where they should be, and SEN rates more than double that of the 2009-2014 cohort.
And, of course, they get to grow up in a country which has visibly impoverished itself by turning off the economy for the best part of a year.
2. This was difficult to manage as Covid tore through the staff in place who were teaching the essential worker kids
3. Had all students been allowed to attend in person, schools would have closed as Covid tore impossible holes in staff numbers
Again, a choice of a controlled lockdown or an uncontrolled shutdown. People are misremembering "Covid" as a monolithic thing. We are still being struck down by Covid but its not that serious is it? Why such a fuss for not that serious a thing back then?
Covid now is not Covid then, despite the continuity of name. There was No Option to leave the schools fully open and operational.
And if planning reform doesn’t go through I’ll be resigning from the Labour Party.
But given that, the nation does have a debt of honour to young people, to key workers et cetera. And the older and more comfortable need to start paying that, because they haven't so far.
I agree with you entirely about the impact on kids - my own included. But again again - there was no option to leave the schools fully open. None. And it is absurd revisionism to imagine it could have happened.
Cpt Hindsight did the opposite, he refused to take a position then afterwards acted like it should have been his new one all along rather than admitting he'd changed his position.
Well. It happened.
The more crucial question is what are we doing now to ameliorate the effects identified?
Sod all is the answer.
I'd also remind folk that schools stayed open for the most vulnerable and the kids of key workers - which was about the best that was achievable under the circumstances.
The US are now pretty much happy that Russia isn’t a real threat to themselves, apart from the nukes, so it will be up to Europe to keep Russia back from their own territory.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67831335
In the scenario where we opt to "let it rip" there would have been no furlough. We can look at Sweden and say "we should have done that". But that wasn't our alternative. The Tory right think we wasted all that money on furlough. There is No Way they would have voluntarily proffered up the cash in an "everything carry on as normal" scenario.
I don't know whether your PRU used the national catch-up tutoring service, but what a joke that was.
A friend of mine made colossal amounts of money out of it, but gave up in frustration because she'd never actually had anyone turn up to a lesson and the SLT who were meant to be compelling attendance couldn't be bothered to help.
1: Housing is for me the number one problem in this country that needs fixing.
2: Ironic, the claim is that there's more priorities than just healthcare and you want to talk about healthcare.
3: I care about the climate and want to address climate change with an investment in clean technologies.
4: I oppose piling debt on debt, indeed its why Brown was such a failure as we've discussed before.
5: Not true.
So housing, climate, debt and education - 4 out of 6 are priorities for me. Not a bad score.
The reconstitution of the RUC as the PSNI is the model to follow.
Teachers should be able to qualify without having GCSE maths to help solve the recruitment crisis, the chairman of the Independent Schools Council has said.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/6ff5b9f2-ca15-4ccb-92a0-9d8da45510b8?shareToken=7513a4dfc95d69748c6e2976ad12ca30
And I'd query child poverty, which if it is true is surely only true in relative, not absolute terms (and in any case is a clear consequence of shutting down the economy, etc.).
Housing I'm right with you.
(But I have no dog in the fight -- I have no kids, ditto most of my friends, and at the time my social circle was and remained pretty firmly in voluntary semi isolation and nobody was taking advantage of EOTHO or pubs. It seems quite likely we could have handled the pandemic's effect on education a lot better than we did.)
More so if they wanted to rebalance society away from the rich and retired to the young, by funding housing, training and education.
It just isn't like that. They want continuing austerity to finance inheritance tax cuts. It's obscene.
Because Sweden's furlough was voluntary rather than mandatory, and people could do it for short-term rather than for months until the Government gave permission to return to work, it cost a tiny fraction of what our furlough cost.
The delta between what we spent and what we would have spent had we done a Swedish model was wasted money - as well as taking away our civil liberties.
Sweden absolutely was an alternative.
And most of the support staff who used to do the pastoral care have been let go as "back office pen pushers". CAHMS has been more than decimated. As has CYPS.
If you heart bleeds for kids hurt by lockdowns, then stick your hands in your pockets and push for summat to be done about it now, instead of whining about past decisions which can't be undone.
Sweden and others kept their schools open and never closed them, despite not having lockdowns and despite the fact that teachers would get infected as they weren't locking down.
Yes they stayed open for the kids of key workers. They should have stayed open for the kids of everyone - and there are millions of vulnerable kids who have been failed by shutting schools who were not classed at the time as "vulnerable".
We should look back on shutting schools as a moment of national shame and insist that no matter what, never again do we ever make such a horrendous mistake.
I want massive investment in housing, think we need 10 million new houses built.
I want investment in training and education.
And as for inheritance tax, I think all inheritances should be taxed at the same rate as income tax and national insurance combined so earned via work and unearned incomes are treated the same. Which would be a huge tax rise not tax cut.
So do you want to rethink that obscene comment at all?
An American disengagement during the 2024 election campaign was always likely but the counter-offensive resulting in two cabbage patches changing hands and Netenyahu kicking off have accelerated things.
I don't see any European government, not least the British, stepping up to provide the torrent of money that Ukraine needs every month.
More seriously, it shows how far removed Blair was from normal people, nobody with an ounce of understanding of football would think that was a good idea. I doubt Starmer would make the same mistake. Even if he does support a team that moved from South London ;-)
I wonder, though, if it will move a few votes in Wimbledon?
Bartholomew on Covid: "Let the bodies pile high!"
There is a shortage of accommodation in places (not everywhere). We need to build houses that communities need as opposed to houses the builders want to build. We see estates being thrown up with 4 bed + "executive style houses" where the need is affordable starter houses.
The economy is screwed at least in a big part by housing costs. Mortgages are shooting up, rents are sky high - and landlords can't make a living either. Is anyone making money? We're spending so much, but what are we getting?
We *have* to talk quality. Apartment blocks thrown up with "rapid-burn" panelling. Houses by the big housebuilders with no cavity insulation and endless snags that need fixing. We're building terrible housing.
So yes, housing, housing, housing. But not more of the same. We need a rethink.
Housing is still affordable in much of the country - its a problem concentrated in southern England.
I'd say that debt and education/training are the other two vital areas.
We were watching Italy on TV…
My son is now 20. As a result of the lockdowns he lost about a year from school. He had quite a lot of classes online. He remained in contact with his friends through social media. He was denied the chance to shine in both his Highers and Advanced Highers in that he did not sit proper, national exams. People will always look somewhat askance at the marks given in those years and, frankly, rightly so. He missed out in respect of debating competitions. Although he did a lot of these online the social buzz simply wasn't there. At the risk of upsetting @TSE he still got to a good University.
It was not great for him, he missed out on quite a lot, especially socially. But he coped and so far as I can see his cohort did likewise. Children from poorer backgrounds and who were less able academically will undoubtedly have suffered more. But not much more.
Every "4 bed executive style" home built helps improve our stock. We don't need "starter" homes built (which is code for cheap shit), if someone moves out of a 3 bed "starter home" and into a 4 bed "executive" home, then that frees up the pre-existing 3 bed starter home.
Or if you want more 1 bed homes, then a chain still works. Someone moves from a 3 bed to a 4 bed, that frees up someone else to move from a 1 bed to the 3 bed, which means we now have the 1 bed free.
If we built 10 million high-quality all 4+ bed homes, then we'd have an abundance of starter homes available as a result, and a much better quality of housing stock.
Yes if houses are built that are poor quality that's a problem, though that's overwhelmingly not the case and would be more the case if developers were only building "starter" homes.
As I said the damage was far more for disadvantaged children and younger ones who couldn't do everything online.
Also your son was towards the tail-end of schooling. There are children approaching GCSEs now who missed critical, formative elements of their education that has set them behind both where they should be and their peers.
A lot of critical subjects, like Maths, rely upon a solid understanding of prior elements of the curriculum when developing the latter stages. Take that away from a child, and they're never going to get a good grasp of trigonometry or pre-calculus if they don't have a good foundation of understanding algebra.
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-12/ofsted-inspection-reform.pdf
Institute for Government, aka Sam Freedman who is not everyone's cup of tea.
My sister, also a primary school teacher found the same. The ones who really suffered were the thankfully small number for whom school was a refuge from violence and abuse, a source of food and a source of warmth. What we did to those children was truly terrible. But it was a very small minority.
The lack of resilience to COVID was often a result long term structural issues - a lesser example being a lack of high quality public spaces like parks and playing fields for people living in flats, while the middle class lounged in their gardens. Obesity, education, single parents and so on - long term factors associated with poverty that all made COVID worse.
For me, the deepest inequity was the insanely high savings rates that richer people had, which subsequently fuelled inflation even while high interest rates smashed renters and mortgage holders.
A 28-year-old British-born man who has never left the country has spoken of his devastation after being told he will be deported to Portugal, from where his parents arrived more than 30 years ago, under a post-Brexit policy towards EU nationals convicted of crimes.
Dmitry Lima was born in Lambeth, in south London, does not speak Portuguese and has never travelled abroad but he was given a deportation order by the Home Office after serving a prison sentence for drugs offences and for carrying a Taser.
Lima, who had no previous convictions, is appealing against the deportation decision on the grounds that he is British and had not previously applied for a UK passport as he could not afford to pay the fees. “I’m British and I have never left the country – I just don’t understand,” he said.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/27/british-born-man-who-has-never-left-uk-faces-deportation
Shirley, starting a Belfast United as a new club would have been easier?
Nobody in this country should be so poor that they are compelled to having to live in a flat.
Which is one way of building cheaper homes.
UK 15%
Switzerland 60%
Germany 57%
Sweden 40%
During the school holidays they do rowing courses for kids - free for the ones attending the state schools. Which includes a free lunch.
The number that don’t want to go home at the end of the day…
In the extremely unlikely event that a school couldn't open then that individual school should tell its pupils that it couldn't open for a couple of days.
Not months on end.
For most healthy adults Covid was something that people get and recover from within a week, not months. So even if teachers get it then it burns through the teaching staff and then you move on.
It comes back to the discussion I had with @RochdalePioneers before - uncontrolled shutdowns are far better than enforced ones. There's tens of thousands of schools across the country, if on an individual day 30 of them across the country have to be shut due to a lack of staff then so be it - at least the other 99.9% of schools are still open and within a week that 30 should be open once more.
You mention quality and "cheap shit". It is the so-called "executive homes" which are cheap shit. Ignore the vast selling price and look at the quality. They are shit. The build quality of Barratt homes is a national joke - and the others are just as bad.
We need to cut the builders out of the equation. They can't make profits hence throwing together only large cheap shit. So have Housing Associations commission them to build the homes people need and don't worry about profit.
Housing - in the south - is the number 1 issue affecting quality of life. There needs to be lots more built, until it costs about half the amount, both to buy and to rent.
Where are these mythical estates that are getting built that nobody is buying a single plot from and nobody lives in? I've never seen one, have you?
Pretty much all new houses that are getting built are getting occupied. That means other houses are getting freed up.
I own and live in a new build, its so much better quality than the house we were renting its ridiculous. Others should have the same opportunity.
Obviously reposte - Woking. But in the boom times of the housing market, that would have been money for old rope.
We need to build more homes, so that the only people who are living in flats are doing so by choice, not because they can't afford a home of their own.
Also it was owned by a couple who lived in a much bigger flat in a nicer area - and they were also renting.
In some schools it would if all the staff were infected in a short time but that would have been only temporary with few subsequent infections.
In other schools it might have been only 5% or 10% for a few weeks now and then.
There would certainly have been uncertainty and randomness of effect but that's what other workplaces had to cope with, including my own.
Politically, the government would have been wise to keep out of it and waited to see what happened and perhaps provide some support for a Belfast option if it became the preferred option but not more. Maybe the Telegraph is making more of it than there was really at the time. I don't remember Belfast being talked about - Dublin was considered seriously as well as MK.
On this I was more interested that it showed Blair's political antennae to be faulty at an early date, on a small matter of little interest to anyone except me, admittedly.
A May ejection* is looking increasingly likely, so we should find out soon enough.
* a typo which works, for me.
The fact is we live in a densely populated country (including Scotland, with the vast majority living in cities and towns) yet have some of the least dense housing anywhere in Europe. It's infuriatingly obvious what the problem is.
Edinburgh is building detached houses inside the bypass amid a "housing crisis". The council is utterly beholden to developers who don't give a damn about increasing supply - it's in their interest to restrict it! They have suckered numpties like Barty into thinking no one will buy a flat, and the Swiss and Germans have low quality of living because they don't have a 10 square foot garden each.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/fury-tory-minister-johnny-mercer-31759289
Johnny Mercer hit out at TV star Carol Vorderman and his Labour election rival Fred Thomas after they shared figures revealing a rise in homelessness among armed forces veterans. Mr Thomas, a former Royal Marine, said he was "furious" and asked if Mr Mercer would apologise for his "abject failure".
Ms Vorderman shared the Labour candidate's post, sparking an angry reaction from the top Tory. Veterans' Minister Mr Mercer accused them of "deliberately misleading" the public "because that makes your s*** lonely life feel better."
And he went on to rant at Ms Vorderman, who he has clashed with before: "No one normal really cares about your view. They think you're mad. I'm changing veterans lives. What I came into politics to do."
In another dig at his Labour opponent, who he will battle for the Plymouth, Moor View seat, he claimed Mr Thomas “served five minutes in uniform” - even though he was in the Royal Marines for seven years becoming a Captain...
We have a massive cost of living crisis. People need somewhere to live, so they buy houses they can't afford - or more likely rent them. Most of their cash goes on housing which takes it out of circulation.
You said on another post that nobody should have to live in a flat. So thats cities finished then...
Literally every home on my road that has been sold is occupied. There's only one house on my street that's not been sold, and is thus unoccupied.
The idea that estates are being built which are not being sold is farcical - if it were true, then developers would go out of business, they need to sell whatever they build or they have no cashflow. 🤦♂️
We need more homes. Let the market decide, let people decide, if they want a semi they'll buy from developer building a semi - if they want a flat, let them go buy one there. We don't need to dictate "starter" homes or any other shit like flats, if that's not what people want. We just need to get out of the way and let millions more houses get built to resolve the shortage.
As for Covid, I've succumbed again without needing to inject myself with it. Quite mild so far thankfully.
If the quantity of housing went up sufficiently, I'd want to see a million houses a year built over the next decade, then the price of both housing and rentals would fall. Ideally as many as possible of those should be good quality three/four plus houses with gardens so everyone can afford them rather than cheap tenements to throw people into and pile them high out of the way.
If people want to live in flat in a city, they should be able to choose to do so. That's their choice. Nobody should be obliged to do so against their will when they have another choice though.
I've known people who lived in a flat and wanted to move to a house, detached if possible.
But I've never known anyone who lived in a house who either moved to or wanted to live in a flat.
Now perhaps you can force people to live in flats and then that becomes normalised after a few generations but its not going to happen in this country.
Viktor Orbán’s childhood friend, Lőrinc Mészáros, has retaken the title of Hungary’s richest person, according to Forbes Hungary’s new estimate (wealth: €1.6b).
📈Orbán’s son-in-law, István Tiborcz, is rising fast too. His estimated wealth of €200m made him the 27th richest...
https://twitter.com/panyiszabolcs/status/1740098699043459402
Imagine how more people could have been housed your estate was apartment buildings instead.
The Home Builders Federation estimates 2,500 brickies are needed for every 10,000 homes built. That means around 75,000 are needed to hit the Government's target of building 300,000 new homes every year by 2025. But there are only 42,000 bricklayers in home building, meaning an extra 33,000 are now needed.