AI news: I asked Chat GPT4 to give me words denoting two human body parts that differed only insofar as one had /θ/ where the other had /f/ (this was in connection with th-fronting and surgery), but I gave up because it was like conversing with an idiot. It pretended it understood the question, but I repeatedly had to say no no no, your suggestion doesn't fit the criteria, so it kept apologising and saying it hadn't understood the question properly BEFORE but it understood it well NOW, and here's your answer for you, Mr Human Sir. But it was obvious it couldn't wrap its little electronic circuits around the question.
Its good at bullshitting.
You can see why Leon is terrified it will eliminate jobs. It will eliminate his.
The rest of us, deal with more than peddling bullshit.
And being offensive. Don't forget being offensive.
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Golly, I know there are (many?) more admirals than RN ships, but I wouldn’t have thought so many that suitable candidates couldn’t be discreetly tapped up about the post.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Leaving aside the plagiarism issue, her academic profile seems rather thin for a professor, never mind head of one of the world's most prestigious universities.
May just be a website formatting thing. Some uni websites specify, for instance, only six recent significant publications per person on the departmental subsite.
Jesus Christ do some research. Its not a “formatting thing” as you’d realise if you spent 2 minutes reading the facts
Basic thing to check. Has it been done?
Remember the trans operations on children - turned out to be a website formatting thing too.
Secondary corporatese, like websites. That sort of distinction is very often lost in such things.
Just stop now. You’re wrong
On the contrary. I very often have to find where someone went wrong in a statement, and the sort of situation where the primary data get simplified for corporatese or a press release is a key reason.
And have you never heard of keeping a CV to two sides of a piece of A4?
Basically - you lot are drawing conclusions which may or may not be right but certainly cannot be validly drawn from the evidence you have submitted
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
The whys and wherefores of whether 50% of the population should experience university life is a different debate.
Those who advocate for University being available only to the top 10% may have a point (I don't agree) and their argument that "there is nothing wrong with being a plumber, we need plumbers" is also valid. My point was, when opportunities are rationed, often those people advocating for less graduates and more chippies assume their children will remain on the university list and mine can go down the tech to complete an NVQ2 in manicuring . They won't lose out, it's business as usual.
But that wasn't the point you made or that I am answering.
Your specific quote was "You enjoyed your three years at University College... (drinking, women, fun)... And all as a freebie from HMG."
And my reply is that, at that time, university places were limited in just the way you are now criticising so you cannot accuse Leon of the sort of hypocrisy you claimed. He made it under an extremely restrictive system just like I did (also a comprehensive boy and the first from muy family to go to University).
I have no idea about Leon's kids and whther they would benefit under a more restrictive system and, to be honest, neither do you.
My daughters have also been to state schools and I hope both will go on to uni, because both are highly academic and will benefit from it (perhaps too academic - I wish they were a bit wilder, sometimes!)
@Mexicanpete seems determined to argue with some gammony Tory version of me (“you want compulsory military service!”) which does not actually exist except as a phantom in his head
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Leaving aside the plagiarism issue, her academic profile seems rather thin for a professor, never mind head of one of the world's most prestigious universities.
May just be a website formatting thing. Some uni websites specify, for instance, only six recent significant publications per person on the departmental subsite.
Jesus Christ do some research. Its not a “formatting thing” as you’d realise if you spent 2 minutes reading the facts
Basic thing to check. Has it been done?
Remember the trans operations on children - turned out to be a website formatting thing too.
Secondary corporatese, like websites. That sort of distinction is very often lost in such things.
Just stop now. You’re wrong
On the contrary. I very often have to find where someone went wrong in a statement, and the sort of situation where the primary data get simplified for corporatese or a press release is a key reason.
And have you never heard of keeping a CV to two sides of a piece of A4?
Basically - you lot are drawing conclusions which may or may not be right but certainly cannot be validly drawn from the evidence you have submitted
Oh just fuck off and do some googling, you stupid Scottish twat
It will take you about 30 seconds to prove this one way or another. Fucked if we should keep spoon feeding you
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Needs rebranding. Who wants to be a rear admiral these days?
Traditions of the navy and all that. Rum, bum and the lash, to paraphrase W. Churchill. Presumably the drinks/hpositality allowance still survives, and the lash, well, that's for officerly initiative.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Leaving aside the plagiarism issue, her academic profile seems rather thin for a professor, never mind head of one of the world's most prestigious universities.
May just be a website formatting thing. Some uni websites specify, for instance, only six recent significant publications per person on the departmental subsite.
Jesus Christ do some research. Its not a “formatting thing” as you’d realise if you spent 2 minutes reading the facts
Basic thing to check. Has it been done?
Remember the trans operations on children - turned out to be a website formatting thing too.
Secondary corporatese, like websites. That sort of distinction is very often lost in such things.
Just stop now. You’re wrong
On the contrary. I very often have to find where someone went wrong in a statement, and the sort of situation where the primary data get simplified for corporatese or a press release is a key reason.
And have you never heard of keeping a CV to two sides of a piece of A4?
Basically - you lot are drawing conclusions which may or may not be right but certainly cannot be validly drawn from the evidence you have submitted
Oh just fuck off and do some googling, you stupid Scottish twat
It will take you about 30 seconds to prove this one way or another. Fucked if we should keep spoon feeding you
Why should I spoonfeed you? You're the one building whole castles inh the air on something that may or may not be dodgy. Viewcode has even told you where to look.
And why should you use 'Scottish' as if it is an insult?
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
The whys and wherefores of whether 50% of the population should experience university life is a different debate.
Those who advocate for University being available only to the top 10% may have a point (I don't agree) and their argument that "there is nothing wrong with being a plumber, we need plumbers" is also valid. My point was, when opportunities are rationed, often those people advocating for less graduates and more chippies assume their children will remain on the university list and mine can go down the tech to complete an NVQ2 in manicuring . They won't lose out, it's business as usual.
But that wasn't the point you made or that I am answering.
Your specific quote was "You enjoyed your three years at University College... (drinking, women, fun)... And all as a freebie from HMG."
And my reply is that, at that time, university places were limited in just the way you are now criticising so you cannot accuse Leon of the sort of hypocrisy you claimed. He made it under an extremely restrictive system just like I did (also a comprehensive boy and the first from muy family to go to University).
I have no idea about Leon's kids and whther they would benefit under a more restrictive system and, to be honest, neither do you.
My daughters have also been to state schools and I hope both will go on to uni, because both are highly academic and will benefit from it (perhaps too academic - I wish they were a bit wilder, sometimes!)
@Mexicanpete seems determined to argue with some gammony Tory version of me (“you want compulsory military service!”) which does not actually exist except as a phantom in his head
I was agreeing with your civic service idea. I quite like it. Had you stuck to that and not made reference to military conscription I was with you all the way.
As a serious point, it's a shame that Dave's vision of National Citizen Service (some soft skills, some community action, some adventure...) hasn't really reached critical mass. In it's most successful year, it reached about 1 in 6 of its target audience.
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
This is weird and something doesn't add up about advertising it on Nerd Facebook. There are probably 10 people in the country who are qualified to do the job and the MoD certainly know who they all are.
I will be strapping in on the deck of a QE by next Christmas at this rate.
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Needs rebranding. Who wants to be a rear admiral these days?
Traditions of the navy and all that. Rum, bum and the lash, to paraphrase W. Churchill. Presumably the drinks/hpositality allowance still survives, and the lash, well, that's for officerly initiative.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
It'd odd because I don't think anyone has ever asked to actually see my degrees before and I don't think they all check with the university in question, so unless its a more technical field where the first hiring requires demonstration of knowledge in that specific field, once you are in many organisations having a degree may not come up ever again.*
Makes me surprised there are not more stories about people just faking the qualifications. Hopefully not in your profession though.
*bizarrely some training course providers require proof of GCSE English and Maths proficiency, and won't accept, say, a PhD in statistics as a substitute.
There is an awful lot of places where No degree means you are removed at the very first step of filtering.
And it usually makes zero sense but then again most HR departments aren't bright, but have a degree and therefore assume everyone else should have 1 to.
Policing and nursing now require degrees, I believe - which is completely nuts
You don't need a degree to join the Police, and it isn't "nuts" to require a degree in nursing to become a nurse (& nursing degrees aren't conventional degrees - it's all quite practical I understand).
If they aren't conventional degrees, why do they have to be called degrees?
Why shouldn't they be? Degrees vary in content, including the amount of practical, hands on experience they give. Nursing degrees are on the more hands on end of the spectrum, that's all. I don't see why you want to deny nursing the status of a "degree" (well, I do see why, but there we are).
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
I know many people who've gone to university either in midlife or otherwise simply after 18, after working, and all have improved their lives by doing so.
There is too much of a notion that university is just for eighteen year olds, that's not to say that people shouldn't go at 18, but it should be open to those who want to go afterwards too.
Unfortunately if you've got children and responsibilities then taking three years out of work, and getting into debt, in order to improve things years down the line can seem very daunting.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
The whys and wherefores of whether 50% of the population should experience university life is a different debate.
Those who advocate for University being available only to the top 10% may have a point (I don't agree) and their argument that "there is nothing wrong with being a plumber, we need plumbers" is also valid. My point was, when opportunities are rationed, often those people advocating for less graduates and more chippies assume their children will remain on the university list and mine can go down the tech to complete an NVQ2 in manicuring . They won't lose out, it's business as usual.
But that wasn't the point you made or that I am answering.
Your specific quote was "You enjoyed your three years at University College... (drinking, women, fun)... And all as a freebie from HMG."
And my reply is that, at that time, university places were limited in just the way you are now criticising so you cannot accuse Leon of the sort of hypocrisy you claimed. He made it under an extremely restrictive system just like I did (also a comprehensive boy and the first from muy family to go to University).
I have no idea about Leon's kids and whther they would benefit under a more restrictive system and, to be honest, neither do you.
My daughters have also been to state schools and I hope both will go on to uni, because both are highly academic and will benefit from it (perhaps too academic - I wish they were a bit wilder, sometimes!)
@Mexicanpete seems determined to argue with some gammony Tory version of me (“you want compulsory military service!”) which does not actually exist except as a phantom in his head
I was agreeing with your civic service idea. I quite like it. Had you stuck to that and not made reference to military conscription I was with you all the way.
Coz I never said “military conscription” - I said military SERVICE should be one option. And a good option for many as the services need manpower
But I also and specifically said there MUST be other options - including voluntary work at home and abroad and it should be incentivised - it should be a really cool thing to have on your CV for unis or employers
It’s an excellent idea and I recommend it to Sir Kir Royale
As a serious point, it's a shame that Dave's vision of National Citizen Service (some soft skills, some community action, some adventure...) hasn't really reached critical mass. In it's most successful year, it reached about 1 in 6 of its target audience.
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
The real problem is that, in many cases, they get to toil in the coal mines. After their degree in shagging.
Meanwhile we have a number of skill shortages, for well paid jobs, in the U.K.
I understand all that, but you will invest in your child's education to ensure they get their opportunity for a three year BSc (Econ) (Hons) in Applied Fornication.
The Tories accuse everyone else of "the politics of envy" but are adamant fun should be the reserve of the right sort of elite, and the peasantry should know their place and conclude their Shelf Stacking Apprenticeship whilst working nights at Tesco.
A communal workshop where students and people in frustrating, dead end white collar jobs could turn metal and wood into noise.
Because they are frustrated by not actually doing things they want to do, in courses or jobs.
The irony is trying to maintain the class division of work - success is clean hands - in an age when many high paid jobs require a mix.
I understand all that, and I make a living out of mandatory ( paid by the learner or their employer) NVQ type vocational qualifications, and in the right context they have a value. In the wrong context state-funded NVQs are a waste of tax payers money.
My point is, despite (for the moment) plasterers earning big money, PB posters are still minded to spend their hard earned on private and university educations for their children. They haven't reached the road to Damascus and thought let's send the kids to a sink comp and then onto the local technical college for an NVQ2 in construction. But they think that's where mine belong. Bish, bash ,bish. Loafsamoney?
May I suggest that every single thought in the second para is either misleading or incorrect, except that plasterers are doing OK.
Two points: PB posters are a self selecting group, so no meaningful conclusions can be drawn from any self selection bias. Secondly, you fall into the fallacy of thinking that people can't think two compatible things at the same time. It is perfectly possible to think that it is good that X can do a PhD in Elamite cuneiform and that Y can be a brickie.
What is bad is compulsion or the narrowing of opportunity.
I’d argue that creating a special barrier between the X (cuneiform) and Y (brickie) is part of the problem.
We need mixed qualifications/degrees.
We already have them for some things. Medicine has lots of “dirty hands” work.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Leaving aside the plagiarism issue, her academic profile seems rather thin for a professor, never mind head of one of the world's most prestigious universities.
May just be a website formatting thing. Some uni websites specify, for instance, only six recent significant publications per person on the departmental subsite.
Jesus Christ do some research. Its not a “formatting thing” as you’d realise if you spent 2 minutes reading the facts
Basic thing to check. Has it been done?
Remember the trans operations on children - turned out to be a website formatting thing too.
Secondary corporatese, like websites. That sort of distinction is very often lost in such things.
Just stop now. You’re wrong
On the contrary. I very often have to find where someone went wrong in a statement, and the sort of situation where the primary data get simplified for corporatese or a press release is a key reason.
And have you never heard of keeping a CV to two sides of a piece of A4?
Basically - you lot are drawing conclusions which may or may not be right but certainly cannot be validly drawn from the evidence you have submitted
Oh just fuck off and do some googling, you stupid Scottish twat
It will take you about 30 seconds to prove this one way or another. Fucked if we should keep spoon feeding you
Why should I spoonfeed you? You're the one building whole castles inh the air on something that may or may not be dodgy. Viewcode has even told you where to look.
And why should you use 'Scottish' as if it is an insult?
Because, to believe that the figure “11” is wrong you have to believe that
The BBC The Boston Globe The Wall Street journal The Washington post The Harvard crimson And Wikipedia
Have all got it wrong and she’s published many more papers. Because they all say “11 published works”
Additionally: Gay herself has had ample opportunity to rubbish the “11” number in various quotes and op-Eds she has written. She has not disputed it. On that basis I’m saying it is true
But knock yourself out if you can prove she’s actually written six books and published 98 papers
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
This is weird and something doesn't add up about advertising it on Nerd Facebook. There are probably 10 people in the country who are qualified to do the job and the MoD certainly know who they all are.
I will be strapping in on the deck of a QE by next Christmas at this rate.
Got to say it doesn't make much sense - as you say there will be very few qualified candidates and those people have probably moved on for reasons that make returning to the Navy rather difficult / unappealing..
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
It'd odd because I don't think anyone has ever asked to actually see my degrees before and I don't think they all check with the university in question, so unless its a more technical field where the first hiring requires demonstration of knowledge in that specific field, once you are in many organisations having a degree may not come up ever again.*
Makes me surprised there are not more stories about people just faking the qualifications. Hopefully not in your profession though.
*bizarrely some training course providers require proof of GCSE English and Maths proficiency, and won't accept, say, a PhD in statistics as a substitute.
There is an awful lot of places where No degree means you are removed at the very first step of filtering.
And it usually makes zero sense but then again most HR departments aren't bright, but have a degree and therefore assume everyone else should have 1 to.
Policing and nursing now require degrees, I believe - which is completely nuts
You don't need a degree to join the Police, and it isn't "nuts" to require a degree in nursing to become a nurse (& nursing degrees aren't conventional degrees - it's all quite practical I understand).
If they aren't conventional degrees, why do they have to be called degrees?
Why shouldn't they be? Degrees vary in content, including the amount of practical, hands on experience they give. Nursing degrees are on the more hands on end of the spectrum, that's all. I don't see why you want to deny nursing the status of a "degree" (well, I do see why, but there we are).
If they are caveated as not 'conventional' degrees to distinguish from others, then I don't really see how status is gained by referring to them as such, or removed if they were called something else.
Sounds like more of a societal issue of us overly valuing what we regard as a conventional one over more practical, vocational kinds, and instead of solving that just using labels to get around it.
And I wouldn't make assumptions why people might ask the question either. My mum had a nursing degree, I don't see why it would be devaluing it when it was somone not seeking to devalue who made the distinction between conventional and non conventional.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
It'd odd because I don't think anyone has ever asked to actually see my degrees before and I don't think they all check with the university in question, so unless its a more technical field where the first hiring requires demonstration of knowledge in that specific field, once you are in many organisations having a degree may not come up ever again.*
Makes me surprised there are not more stories about people just faking the qualifications. Hopefully not in your profession though.
*bizarrely some training course providers require proof of GCSE English and Maths proficiency, and won't accept, say, a PhD in statistics as a substitute.
There is an awful lot of places where No degree means you are removed at the very first step of filtering.
And it usually makes zero sense but then again most HR departments aren't bright, but have a degree and therefore assume everyone else should have 1 to.
At one place I worked, they got a flood of CVs. Big name place etc.
The bottom of the rung job in HR was sorting the CVs according to degree - 2.1 or 1st from a uni on a list. Otherwise bin. Separate sorting for overseas degrees.
The sorting job was generally done by someone without a degree….
“The point may now be moot, but the important question for Harvard was never whether Gay should step down. It was why she was brought on in the first place, after one of the shortest presidential searches in Harvard’s recent history. How did someone with a scholarly record as thin as hers — she has not written a single book, has published only 11 journal articles in the past 26 years and made no seminal contributions to her field — reach the pinnacle of American academia?”
As a serious point, it's a shame that Dave's vision of National Citizen Service (some soft skills, some community action, some adventure...) hasn't really reached critical mass. In it's most successful year, it reached about 1 in 6 of its target audience.
NCS is basically give you some items to add to your personal statement if you don't do anything. I think the only people who did it when the Twins were eligible were those who never did music, sport or outdoor activities and suddenly discovered they had nothing on their CV.
“The point may now be moot, but the important question for Harvard was never whether Gay should step down. It was why she was brought on in the first place, after one of the shortest presidential searches in Harvard’s recent history. How did someone with a scholarly record as thin as hers — she has not written a single book, has published only 11 journal articles in the past 26 years and made no seminal contributions to her field — reach the pinnacle of American academia?”
Surely that should be pinnical of American academia administration?
I assume they'd want people who are pioneering academics and also good at administration, but would imagine they'd settle for one of the two if pushed. Doesn't really sound like they got it.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
It'd odd because I don't think anyone has ever asked to actually see my degrees before and I don't think they all check with the university in question, so unless its a more technical field where the first hiring requires demonstration of knowledge in that specific field, once you are in many organisations having a degree may not come up ever again.*
Makes me surprised there are not more stories about people just faking the qualifications. Hopefully not in your profession though.
*bizarrely some training course providers require proof of GCSE English and Maths proficiency, and won't accept, say, a PhD in statistics as a substitute.
There is an awful lot of places where No degree means you are removed at the very first step of filtering.
And it usually makes zero sense but then again most HR departments aren't bright, but have a degree and therefore assume everyone else should have 1 to.
At one place I worked, they got a flood of CVs. Big name place etc.
The bottom of the rung job in HR was sorting the CVs according to degree - 2.1 or 1st from a uni on a list. Otherwise bin. Separate sorting for overseas degrees.
The sorting job was generally done by someone without a degree….
But that sorting job was being done by a temp or admin worker with zero chance of their career going any higher...
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
The whys and wherefores of whether 50% of the population should experience university life is a different debate.
Those who advocate for University being available only to the top 10% may have a point (I don't agree) and their argument that "there is nothing wrong with being a plumber, we need plumbers" is also valid. My point was, when opportunities are rationed, often those people advocating for less graduates and more chippies assume their children will remain on the university list and mine can go down the tech to complete an NVQ2 in manicuring . They won't lose out, it's business as usual.
But that wasn't the point you made or that I am answering.
Your specific quote was "You enjoyed your three years at University College... (drinking, women, fun)... And all as a freebie from HMG."
And my reply is that, at that time, university places were limited in just the way you are now criticising so you cannot accuse Leon of the sort of hypocrisy you claimed. He made it under an extremely restrictive system just like I did (also a comprehensive boy and the first from muy family to go to University).
I have no idea about Leon's kids and whther they would benefit under a more restrictive system and, to be honest, neither do you.
My daughters have also been to state schools and I hope both will go on to uni, because both are highly academic and will benefit from it (perhaps too academic - I wish they were a bit wilder, sometimes!)
@Mexicanpete seems determined to argue with some gammony Tory version of me (“you want compulsory military service!”) which does not actually exist except as a phantom in his head
I was agreeing with your civic service idea. I quite like it. Had you stuck to that and not made reference to military conscription I was with you all the way.
Coz I never said “military conscription” - I said military SERVICE should be one option. And a good option for many as the services need manpower
But I also and specifically said there MUST be other options - including voluntary work at home and abroad and it should be incentivised - it should be a really cool thing to have on your CV for unis or employers
It’s an excellent idea and I recommend it to Sir Kir Royale
If you had any familiarity with 18 year olds beyond the particularly limber ones of Nana Plaza you would know it's a fucking stupid idea. Imagine trying to manage the welfare, training and motivation of thousands of teenagers in whichever countries were unlucky enough to receive them. It also has the unwholesome pong of imperialism about it.
“The point may now be moot, but the important question for Harvard was never whether Gay should step down. It was why she was brought on in the first place, after one of the shortest presidential searches in Harvard’s recent history. How did someone with a scholarly record as thin as hers — she has not written a single book, has published only 11 journal articles in the past 26 years and made no seminal contributions to her field — reach the pinnacle of American academia?”
Surely that should be pinnical of American academia administration?
I assume they'd want people who are pioneering academics and also good at administration, but would imagine they'd settle for one of the two if pushed. Doesn't really sound like they got it.
They got someone who ticked loads of DEI boxes. Black, female, family from a poor country, actually writes about race and DEI
That was enough. She was hurried into the job. Now it has all fallen apart
Are we that fucked as a country that we can't run a navy, build trainlines or dredge a few ditches to alleviate flooding? Why would Zambia want us to build wells? We'd be better off asking for their help.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Leaving aside the plagiarism issue, her academic profile seems rather thin for a professor, never mind head of one of the world's most prestigious universities.
May just be a website formatting thing. Some uni websites specify, for instance, only six recent significant publications per person on the departmental subsite.
Jesus Christ do some research. Its not a “formatting thing” as you’d realise if you spent 2 minutes reading the facts
Basic thing to check. Has it been done?
Remember the trans operations on children - turned out to be a website formatting thing too.
Secondary corporatese, like websites. That sort of distinction is very often lost in such things.
Just stop now. You’re wrong
On the contrary. I very often have to find where someone went wrong in a statement, and the sort of situation where the primary data get simplified for corporatese or a press release is a key reason.
And have you never heard of keeping a CV to two sides of a piece of A4?
Basically - you lot are drawing conclusions which may or may not be right but certainly cannot be validly drawn from the evidence you have submitted
Oh just fuck off and do some googling, you stupid Scottish twat
It will take you about 30 seconds to prove this one way or another. Fucked if we should keep spoon feeding you
Why should I spoonfeed you? You're the one building whole castles inh the air on something that may or may not be dodgy. Viewcode has even told you where to look.
And why should you use 'Scottish' as if it is an insult?
Re the Met investigating the Post Office - oh the irony!:-
1. The Met will wait until after the Inquiry has reported, I expect. They have, in theory, been investigating two Fujitsu employees for the last 3 years.
2. Why isn't the SFO involved? This is or should be seen as serious fraud. It is worth noting that in addition to the 900 or subpostmasters who were prosecuted, another 2,800 according to reports were made to repay money the PO claimed it was owed. However, the SFO declined to get involved in what remains until now the UK's biggest criminal fraud (£1.5 billion) and has had its own serious troubles lately. Its misconduct in the ENRC investigation means it is now liable to pay it a shedload of money for its behaviour. Proof - if proof were needed - that even being a supposed expert in a subject does not stop you behaving badly and unprofessionally. It has also recently appointed a new Head, an ex-Met policeman, Nick Ephgrave (allegedly the other candidate for the top Met role). He has no prior fraud experience so may not want this hot potato.
3.Then there is the NCA - what are they doing?
4. It is possible that this latest move is linked to the reported appointment of Tom Little KC by the CPS to look at possible charges. Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice is a hard charge to prove - as all conspiracy charges are, by their nature. So he may have advised that fraud charges are easier. After all, if there was no proof of any theft and the discrepancies were simply made up numbers not "missing money" in any sense, then the Post Office had no entitlement to demand its repayment by the subpostmasters, not even on the basis of the notoriously one-sided contracts.
5. The question is whether they go after individuals or the corporate body. Criminal charges against an organisation are always difficult and it raises the possibility of having to put in the dock those who were in charge during the time when most of the prosecutions were happening i.e. in the 2000 - 2012 period before the wretched Vennells came along.
6. Finally, I wonder whether this is linked in any way with the reports of recordings having been uncovered. Or whether it is all smoke and mirrors to give the impression of activity. The reality is that only 93 convictions have been overturned and the compensation process is very slow indeed, unnecessarily so.
The Met certainly gave the impression that they were investigating ‘now’ in their Press release.
The key words being "impression" and "press release".
What that will mean in practice is that they are getting to see the documents provided to the Inquiry and getting to hear the evidence and putting it all into a big file marked "Post Office" or Operation XXXX and then when the Inquiry is over on the basis of legal advice they will start doing some actual work.
You’re far more knowledgeable in this sort of thing than I am, so you’re probably right! Incidentally I wondered for a moment or two when I watched Monday’s part of the TV series, whether you were the helpful lady who questioned the chap who the Post Office had called in to investigate. Then someone named names and I realised I was wrong.
I do wonder though how long before we see the Inquiry report! Will it be in Alan Bates’ lifetime?
At the present rate of progress, I would give it about three more years before the Inquiry's final report is published. The PO continues to delay and obfuscate at every opportunity and this is clearly having an impact on time scales.
This could change if the Government, which owns the PO, were to tell the Board to stop effing about and give the Inquiry some genuine support. Perhaps the impact of the TV series will cause it to do so. Perhaps a change of Government might help.
I wouldn't hold breath for either eventuality though.
According to R4, only two individuals have so far been interviewed under caution.
Also noteworthy was the actor Toby Jones' comment that he'd heard of the case before being involved in the drama, but something about it "just caused my brain to switch off". That seems to have been a very wide reaction prior to the very recent public interest in it.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
The whys and wherefores of whether 50% of the population should experience university life is a different debate.
Those who advocate for University being available only to the top 10% may have a point (I don't agree) and their argument that "there is nothing wrong with being a plumber, we need plumbers" is also valid. My point was, when opportunities are rationed, often those people advocating for less graduates and more chippies assume their children will remain on the university list and mine can go down the tech to complete an NVQ2 in manicuring . They won't lose out, it's business as usual.
But that wasn't the point you made or that I am answering.
Your specific quote was "You enjoyed your three years at University College... (drinking, women, fun)... And all as a freebie from HMG."
And my reply is that, at that time, university places were limited in just the way you are now criticising so you cannot accuse Leon of the sort of hypocrisy you claimed. He made it under an extremely restrictive system just like I did (also a comprehensive boy and the first from muy family to go to University).
I have no idea about Leon's kids and whther they would benefit under a more restrictive system and, to be honest, neither do you.
Leon's initial point advocated rationing higher education. Now there may be a compelling case to do so on financial and employment prospect grounds
My point is Leon (and myself) who have benefitted from three fantastic years at University are somewhat hypocritical if we want to deny that three years to future generations. I would argue that the degree certificate is not even the most important element of the learning experience.
There are PB posters who do believe Higher Education should be exclusive to the elite group of their choice. Tbf I doubt Leon is one of those.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
The whys and wherefores of whether 50% of the population should experience university life is a different debate.
Those who advocate for University being available only to the top 10% may have a point (I don't agree) and their argument that "there is nothing wrong with being a plumber, we need plumbers" is also valid. My point was, when opportunities are rationed, often those people advocating for less graduates and more chippies assume their children will remain on the university list and mine can go down the tech to complete an NVQ2 in manicuring . They won't lose out, it's business as usual.
The issue is that 50% of people going university has created a situation where the degree is used as a barrier - no degree on your CV, instantly binned.
In the field I'm in I continually need to tell HR that a degree is not a sensible filter (it is for part of the job, but for a lot of the other bits - change management in particular it's the last thing you need).
In the free market this creates opportunities for outfits to say: 'We specialise in recruiting people who don't have degrees but are interesting and bright. It's not a free pass because we apply our own tests but a working knowledge of Sumerian cuneiform or the anthropology of hairdressing is not part of the test.'
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
The whys and wherefores of whether 50% of the population should experience university life is a different debate.
Those who advocate for University being available only to the top 10% may have a point (I don't agree) and their argument that "there is nothing wrong with being a plumber, we need plumbers" is also valid. My point was, when opportunities are rationed, often those people advocating for less graduates and more chippies assume their children will remain on the university list and mine can go down the tech to complete an NVQ2 in manicuring . They won't lose out, it's business as usual.
But that wasn't the point you made or that I am answering.
Your specific quote was "You enjoyed your three years at University College... (drinking, women, fun)... And all as a freebie from HMG."
And my reply is that, at that time, university places were limited in just the way you are now criticising so you cannot accuse Leon of the sort of hypocrisy you claimed. He made it under an extremely restrictive system just like I did (also a comprehensive boy and the first from muy family to go to University).
I have no idea about Leon's kids and whther they would benefit under a more restrictive system and, to be honest, neither do you.
My daughters have also been to state schools and I hope both will go on to uni, because both are highly academic and will benefit from it (perhaps too academic - I wish they were a bit wilder, sometimes!)
@Mexicanpete seems determined to argue with some gammony Tory version of me (“you want compulsory military service!”) which does not actually exist except as a phantom in his head
I was agreeing with your civic service idea. I quite like it. Had you stuck to that and not made reference to military conscription I was with you all the way.
Coz I never said “military conscription” - I said military SERVICE should be one option. And a good option for many as the services need manpower
But I also and specifically said there MUST be other options - including voluntary work at home and abroad and it should be incentivised - it should be a really cool thing to have on your CV for unis or employers
It’s an excellent idea and I recommend it to Sir Kir Royale
If you had any familiarity with 18 year olds beyond the particularly limber ones of Nana Plaza you would know it's a fucking stupid idea. Imagine trying to manage the welfare, training and motivation of thousands of teenagers in whichever countries were unlucky enough to receive them. It also has the unwholesome pong of imperialism about it.
My kids are exactly that age. Otherwise, good point
If the Labour opinion poll lead is under 10 points by the end of Q1 that speaks of Big Mo for the Tories. Surely Sunak would then be thinking early for the GE, not late.
On another point, is the American Revolution really the country’s first civil war?
If there were any remaining American Loyalists they would say yes. But there aren’t. Or they’re being very quiet.
The English Civil War was actually the first civil war in English America. Virginia, Maryland and Newfoundland, as well as the Caribbrean colonies, sided with Charles I and recognised Charles II after his execution. They were sanctioned by Parliament as a result. The more Puritan New England colonies sided, predictably, with Parliament. Then Parliament's navy smashed the Barbadian resistance in 1651, and the remaining Royalist colonies submitted without a fight.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
It'd odd because I don't think anyone has ever asked to actually see my degrees before and I don't think they all check with the university in question, so unless its a more technical field where the first hiring requires demonstration of knowledge in that specific field, once you are in many organisations having a degree may not come up ever again.*
Makes me surprised there are not more stories about people just faking the qualifications. Hopefully not in your profession though.
*bizarrely some training course providers require proof of GCSE English and Maths proficiency, and won't accept, say, a PhD in statistics as a substitute.
There is an awful lot of places where No degree means you are removed at the very first step of filtering.
And it usually makes zero sense but then again most HR departments aren't bright, but have a degree and therefore assume everyone else should have 1 to.
Policing and nursing now require degrees, I believe - which is completely nuts
You don't need a degree to join the Police, and it isn't "nuts" to require a degree in nursing to become a nurse (& nursing degrees aren't conventional degrees - it's all quite practical I understand).
If they aren't conventional degrees, why do they have to be called degrees?
Why shouldn't they be? Degrees vary in content, including the amount of practical, hands on experience they give. Nursing degrees are on the more hands on end of the spectrum, that's all. I don't see why you want to deny nursing the status of a "degree" (well, I do see why, but there we are).
With nursing, it’s a case of “they need X years of training, with a mix of theory and hands on work. Let’s call that a degree.”
Not calling it a degree doesn’t really change anything.
Re the Met investigating the Post Office - oh the irony!:-
1. The Met will wait until after the Inquiry has reported, I expect. They have, in theory, been investigating two Fujitsu employees for the last 3 years.
2. Why isn't the SFO involved? This is or should be seen as serious fraud. It is worth noting that in addition to the 900 or subpostmasters who were prosecuted, another 2,800 according to reports were made to repay money the PO claimed it was owed. However, the SFO declined to get involved in what remains until now the UK's biggest criminal fraud (£1.5 billion) and has had its own serious troubles lately. Its misconduct in the ENRC investigation means it is now liable to pay it a shedload of money for its behaviour. Proof - if proof were needed - that even being a supposed expert in a subject does not stop you behaving badly and unprofessionally. It has also recently appointed a new Head, an ex-Met policeman, Nick Ephgrave (allegedly the other candidate for the top Met role). He has no prior fraud experience so may not want this hot potato.
3.Then there is the NCA - what are they doing?
4. It is possible that this latest move is linked to the reported appointment of Tom Little KC by the CPS to look at possible charges. Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice is a hard charge to prove - as all conspiracy charges are, by their nature. So he may have advised that fraud charges are easier. After all, if there was no proof of any theft and the discrepancies were simply made up numbers not "missing money" in any sense, then the Post Office had no entitlement to demand its repayment by the subpostmasters, not even on the basis of the notoriously one-sided contracts.
5. The question is whether they go after individuals or the corporate body. Criminal charges against an organisation are always difficult and it raises the possibility of having to put in the dock those who were in charge during the time when most of the prosecutions were happening i.e. in the 2000 - 2012 period before the wretched Vennells came along.
6. Finally, I wonder whether this is linked in any way with the reports of recordings having been uncovered. Or whether it is all smoke and mirrors to give the impression of activity. The reality is that only 93 convictions have been overturned and the compensation process is very slow indeed, unnecessarily so.
The Met certainly gave the impression that they were investigating ‘now’ in their Press release.
The key words being "impression" and "press release".
What that will mean in practice is that they are getting to see the documents provided to the Inquiry and getting to hear the evidence and putting it all into a big file marked "Post Office" or Operation XXXX and then when the Inquiry is over on the basis of legal advice they will start doing some actual work.
You’re far more knowledgeable in this sort of thing than I am, so you’re probably right! Incidentally I wondered for a moment or two when I watched Monday’s part of the TV series, whether you were the helpful lady who questioned the chap who the Post Office had called in to investigate. Then someone named names and I realised I was wrong.
I do wonder though how long before we see the Inquiry report! Will it be in Alan Bates’ lifetime?
At the present rate of progress, I would give it about three more years before the Inquiry's final report is published. The PO continues to delay and obfuscate at every opportunity and this is clearly having an impact on time scales.
This could change if the Government, which owns the PO, were to tell the Board to stop effing about and give the Inquiry some genuine support. Perhaps the impact of the TV series will cause it to do so. Perhaps a change of Government might help.
I wouldn't hold breath for either eventuality though.
According to R4, only two individuals have so far been interviewed under caution.
Also noteworthy was the actor Toby Jones' comment that he'd heard of the case before being involved in the drama, but something about it "just caused my brain to switch off". That seems to have been a very wide reaction prior to the very recent public interest in it.
I think a lot of issues at the moment are too complex for people to fully grasp within their attention span so they give up and ignore the issue.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
It'd odd because I don't think anyone has ever asked to actually see my degrees before and I don't think they all check with the university in question, so unless its a more technical field where the first hiring requires demonstration of knowledge in that specific field, once you are in many organisations having a degree may not come up ever again.*
Makes me surprised there are not more stories about people just faking the qualifications. Hopefully not in your profession though.
*bizarrely some training course providers require proof of GCSE English and Maths proficiency, and won't accept, say, a PhD in statistics as a substitute.
There is an awful lot of places where No degree means you are removed at the very first step of filtering.
And it usually makes zero sense but then again most HR departments aren't bright, but have a degree and therefore assume everyone else should have 1 to.
Policing and nursing now require degrees, I believe - which is completely nuts
You don't need a degree to join the Police, and it isn't "nuts" to require a degree in nursing to become a nurse (& nursing degrees aren't conventional degrees - it's all quite practical I understand).
If they aren't conventional degrees, why do they have to be called degrees?
Why shouldn't they be? Degrees vary in content, including the amount of practical, hands on experience they give. Nursing degrees are on the more hands on end of the spectrum, that's all. I don't see why you want to deny nursing the status of a "degree" (well, I do see why, but there we are).
With nursing, it’s a case of “they need X years of training, with a mix of theory and hands on work. Let’s call that a degree.”
Not calling it a degree doesn’t really change anything.
It also saves money because if it was an apprenticeship you would need to pay the trainees, as students the work experience (and work) is done for free...
Re the Met investigating the Post Office - oh the irony!:-
1. The Met will wait until after the Inquiry has reported, I expect. They have, in theory, been investigating two Fujitsu employees for the last 3 years.
2. Why isn't the SFO involved? This is or should be seen as serious fraud. It is worth noting that in addition to the 900 or subpostmasters who were prosecuted, another 2,800 according to reports were made to repay money the PO claimed it was owed. However, the SFO declined to get involved in what remains until now the UK's biggest criminal fraud (£1.5 billion) and has had its own serious troubles lately. Its misconduct in the ENRC investigation means it is now liable to pay it a shedload of money for its behaviour. Proof - if proof were needed - that even being a supposed expert in a subject does not stop you behaving badly and unprofessionally. It has also recently appointed a new Head, an ex-Met policeman, Nick Ephgrave (allegedly the other candidate for the top Met role). He has no prior fraud experience so may not want this hot potato.
3.Then there is the NCA - what are they doing?
4. It is possible that this latest move is linked to the reported appointment of Tom Little KC by the CPS to look at possible charges. Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice is a hard charge to prove - as all conspiracy charges are, by their nature. So he may have advised that fraud charges are easier. After all, if there was no proof of any theft and the discrepancies were simply made up numbers not "missing money" in any sense, then the Post Office had no entitlement to demand its repayment by the subpostmasters, not even on the basis of the notoriously one-sided contracts.
5. The question is whether they go after individuals or the corporate body. Criminal charges against an organisation are always difficult and it raises the possibility of having to put in the dock those who were in charge during the time when most of the prosecutions were happening i.e. in the 2000 - 2012 period before the wretched Vennells came along.
6. Finally, I wonder whether this is linked in any way with the reports of recordings having been uncovered. Or whether it is all smoke and mirrors to give the impression of activity. The reality is that only 93 convictions have been overturned and the compensation process is very slow indeed, unnecessarily so.
The Met certainly gave the impression that they were investigating ‘now’ in their Press release.
The key words being "impression" and "press release".
What that will mean in practice is that they are getting to see the documents provided to the Inquiry and getting to hear the evidence and putting it all into a big file marked "Post Office" or Operation XXXX and then when the Inquiry is over on the basis of legal advice they will start doing some actual work.
You’re far more knowledgeable in this sort of thing than I am, so you’re probably right! Incidentally I wondered for a moment or two when I watched Monday’s part of the TV series, whether you were the helpful lady who questioned the chap who the Post Office had called in to investigate. Then someone named names and I realised I was wrong.
I do wonder though how long before we see the Inquiry report! Will it be in Alan Bates’ lifetime?
At the present rate of progress, I would give it about three more years before the Inquiry's final report is published. The PO continues to delay and obfuscate at every opportunity and this is clearly having an impact on time scales.
This could change if the Government, which owns the PO, were to tell the Board to stop effing about and give the Inquiry some genuine support. Perhaps the impact of the TV series will cause it to do so. Perhaps a change of Government might help.
I wouldn't hold breath for either eventuality though.
According to R4, only two individuals have so far been interviewed under caution.
Also noteworthy was the actor Toby Jones' comment that he'd heard of the case before being involved in the drama, but something about it "just caused my brain to switch off". That seems to have been a very wide reaction prior to the very recent public interest in it.
I think a lot of issues at the moment are too complex for people to fully grasp within their attention span so they give up and ignore the issue.
There is that - but the PO story is at root not very complex. I think people just heard 'computers' and 'Post Office', and thought "not interested".
Re the Met investigating the Post Office - oh the irony!:-
1. The Met will wait until after the Inquiry has reported, I expect. They have, in theory, been investigating two Fujitsu employees for the last 3 years.
2. Why isn't the SFO involved? This is or should be seen as serious fraud. It is worth noting that in addition to the 900 or subpostmasters who were prosecuted, another 2,800 according to reports were made to repay money the PO claimed it was owed. However, the SFO declined to get involved in what remains until now the UK's biggest criminal fraud (£1.5 billion) and has had its own serious troubles lately. Its misconduct in the ENRC investigation means it is now liable to pay it a shedload of money for its behaviour. Proof - if proof were needed - that even being a supposed expert in a subject does not stop you behaving badly and unprofessionally. It has also recently appointed a new Head, an ex-Met policeman, Nick Ephgrave (allegedly the other candidate for the top Met role). He has no prior fraud experience so may not want this hot potato.
3.Then there is the NCA - what are they doing?
4. It is possible that this latest move is linked to the reported appointment of Tom Little KC by the CPS to look at possible charges. Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice is a hard charge to prove - as all conspiracy charges are, by their nature. So he may have advised that fraud charges are easier. After all, if there was no proof of any theft and the discrepancies were simply made up numbers not "missing money" in any sense, then the Post Office had no entitlement to demand its repayment by the subpostmasters, not even on the basis of the notoriously one-sided contracts.
5. The question is whether they go after individuals or the corporate body. Criminal charges against an organisation are always difficult and it raises the possibility of having to put in the dock those who were in charge during the time when most of the prosecutions were happening i.e. in the 2000 - 2012 period before the wretched Vennells came along.
6. Finally, I wonder whether this is linked in any way with the reports of recordings having been uncovered. Or whether it is all smoke and mirrors to give the impression of activity. The reality is that only 93 convictions have been overturned and the compensation process is very slow indeed, unnecessarily so.
The Met certainly gave the impression that they were investigating ‘now’ in their Press release.
The key words being "impression" and "press release".
What that will mean in practice is that they are getting to see the documents provided to the Inquiry and getting to hear the evidence and putting it all into a big file marked "Post Office" or Operation XXXX and then when the Inquiry is over on the basis of legal advice they will start doing some actual work.
You’re far more knowledgeable in this sort of thing than I am, so you’re probably right! Incidentally I wondered for a moment or two when I watched Monday’s part of the TV series, whether you were the helpful lady who questioned the chap who the Post Office had called in to investigate. Then someone named names and I realised I was wrong.
I do wonder though how long before we see the Inquiry report! Will it be in Alan Bates’ lifetime?
At the present rate of progress, I would give it about three more years before the Inquiry's final report is published. The PO continues to delay and obfuscate at every opportunity and this is clearly having an impact on time scales.
This could change if the Government, which owns the PO, were to tell the Board to stop effing about and give the Inquiry some genuine support. Perhaps the impact of the TV series will cause it to do so. Perhaps a change of Government might help.
I wouldn't hold breath for either eventuality though.
According to R4, only two individuals have so far been interviewed under caution.
Also noteworthy was the actor Toby Jones' comment that he'd heard of the case before being involved in the drama, but something about it "just caused my brain to switch off". That seems to have been a very wide reaction prior to the very recent public interest in it.
I think a lot of issues at the moment are too complex for people to fully grasp within their attention span so they give up and ignore the issue.
And that is the power of good drama.
There are lots of complex details in the story, but the heart of it is that an institution ruined people's lives rather than admit error.
Good popular journalism can do the same, but we're rather short on that these days.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
It'd odd because I don't think anyone has ever asked to actually see my degrees before and I don't think they all check with the university in question, so unless its a more technical field where the first hiring requires demonstration of knowledge in that specific field, once you are in many organisations having a degree may not come up ever again.*
Makes me surprised there are not more stories about people just faking the qualifications. Hopefully not in your profession though.
*bizarrely some training course providers require proof of GCSE English and Maths proficiency, and won't accept, say, a PhD in statistics as a substitute.
There is an awful lot of places where No degree means you are removed at the very first step of filtering.
And it usually makes zero sense but then again most HR departments aren't bright, but have a degree and therefore assume everyone else should have 1 to.
Policing and nursing now require degrees, I believe - which is completely nuts
You don't need a degree to join the Police, and it isn't "nuts" to require a degree in nursing to become a nurse (& nursing degrees aren't conventional degrees - it's all quite practical I understand).
If they aren't conventional degrees, why do they have to be called degrees?
Why shouldn't they be? Degrees vary in content, including the amount of practical, hands on experience they give. Nursing degrees are on the more hands on end of the spectrum, that's all. I don't see why you want to deny nursing the status of a "degree" (well, I do see why, but there we are).
With nursing, it’s a case of “they need X years of training, with a mix of theory and hands on work. Let’s call that a degree.”
Not calling it a degree doesn’t really change anything.
Nursing has changed over the years. Basic personal care tasks are pretty much done by Health Care Assistants and Nurse Apprentices. Degree nurses are involved more in technical aspects, pharmacology, procedures, management and supervision. It's a vocational degree, like mine, but certainly degree level intellectual demands.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
I don’t think people minded a few Commie professors in the past. They were mostly harmless. But, the sorts of people who teach courses like Post Colonial Studies seem genuinely dangerous.
I've just finished The Boer War by Thomas Pakenham (a superbly balanced book) and I'm not sure it was our finest hour.
Our rationale for it in the first place was highly questionable, our military performance dire, our ethics poor (although the Boers were little better, and when it came to the natives worse) and it was entirely futile since it ended up with the Boers basically performing a reverse takeover of the whole of South Africa.
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
It'd odd because I don't think anyone has ever asked to actually see my degrees before and I don't think they all check with the university in question, so unless its a more technical field where the first hiring requires demonstration of knowledge in that specific field, once you are in many organisations having a degree may not come up ever again.*
Makes me surprised there are not more stories about people just faking the qualifications. Hopefully not in your profession though.
*bizarrely some training course providers require proof of GCSE English and Maths proficiency, and won't accept, say, a PhD in statistics as a substitute.
There is an awful lot of places where No degree means you are removed at the very first step of filtering.
And it usually makes zero sense but then again most HR departments aren't bright, but have a degree and therefore assume everyone else should have 1 to.
Policing and nursing now require degrees, I believe - which is completely nuts
You don't need a degree to join the Police, and it isn't "nuts" to require a degree in nursing to become a nurse (& nursing degrees aren't conventional degrees - it's all quite practical I understand).
If they aren't conventional degrees, why do they have to be called degrees?
Why shouldn't they be? Degrees vary in content, including the amount of practical, hands on experience they give. Nursing degrees are on the more hands on end of the spectrum, that's all. I don't see why you want to deny nursing the status of a "degree" (well, I do see why, but there we are).
With nursing, it’s a case of “they need X years of training, with a mix of theory and hands on work. Let’s call that a degree.”
Not calling it a degree doesn’t really change anything.
It also saves money because if it was an apprenticeship you would need to pay the trainees, as students the work experience (and work) is done for free...
One reason we have so many Nurse Apprentices (almost all HCAs with a few years experience) is that we can pay them out of the Apprenticeship levy. They get good career progression, and are solid members of the team, but do have to hit the books a fair but in order to pass the mark to become a Registered Nurse.
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Needs rebranding. Who wants to be a rear admiral these days?
I'm not sure what the issue is in the Royal Navy.
Is it a moral thing? A pay thing? A career thing? Entry standards too high? Lifestyle too regimented?
Why is it so hard to recruit across the UK and the whole Commonwealth?
It's the bodged recruitment privatisation by Capita that I linked to earlier.
They get loads of interest, but few to actual training stage. There is a big problem of retention too, particularly in certain skilled areas, a bit like my own employer.
This Sunderland - Newcastle FA Cup match is fascinating. First time I've seen a game where all the players are wearing the same kit! (Edit: Except the goalkeepers of course)
Why are we scrapping a frigate due to lack of staff when it could be mothballed until required (which might be much much sooner than we all hope and think)?
What the hell is happening to this country? It's just getting more and more nuts.
Mosquitoes have vanished from Bangkok. At least in the centre. I’m sitting on my balcony in my undercrackers (sorry) staring at this sky and there is not a whine or a buzz, not the merest hint
20 years ago you would have been shredded
What’s happened? Simply development? No standing water? Something more sinister?
This Sunderland - Newcastle FA Cup match is fascinating. First time I've seen a game where all the players are wearing the same kit! (Edit: Except the goalkeepers of course)
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
I don’t think people minded a few Commie professors in the past. They were mostly harmless. But, the sorts of people who teach courses like Post Colonial Studies seem genuinely dangerous.
I've just finished The Boer War by Thomas Pakenham (a superbly balanced book) and I'm not sure it was our finest hour.
Our rationale for it in the first place was highly questionable, our military performance dire, our ethics poor (although the Boers were little better, and when it came to the natives worse) and it was entirely futile since it ended up with the Boers basically performing a reverse takeover of the whole of South Africa.
The Boer War was also the moment when the British Empire definitively began its slow but inexorable decline
This Sunderland - Newcastle FA Cup match is fascinating. First time I've seen a game where all the players are wearing the same kit! (Edit: Except the goalkeepers of course)
You’re watching in black and white presumably?
No, but I might not have the best of TVs...
But seriously, a lot of the time it's bloody hard working out which team the players are. Newcastle should be wearing their away strip.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
I don’t think people minded a few Commie professors in the past. They were mostly harmless. But, the sorts of people who teach courses like Post Colonial Studies seem genuinely dangerous.
I've just finished The Boer War by Thomas Pakenham (a superbly balanced book) and I'm not sure it was our finest hour.
Our rationale for it in the first place was highly questionable, our military performance dire, our ethics poor (although the Boers were little better, and when it came to the natives worse) and it was entirely futile since it ended up with the Boers basically performing a reverse takeover of the whole of South Africa.
The Boer War was also the moment when the British Empire definitively began its slow but inexorable decline
On higher education, anybody who's worked in post-16 knows that the problem is parents more than kids. A typical conversation, repeated ad infinitum: Teacher: I think your son/daughter may be better suited to a vocational course. Parents: No, if s/he gets good enough GCSEs they've got to do A levels.
Just try suggesting that the kid may be better suited to plumbing rather than A-levels followed by a degree in business admin or similar. The only way to reduce HE applications would be to raise significantly the entry criteria for doing A levels, and then do the same for degrees. Not at all easy. And if any changes threatened the existence of the hundreds of small school sixth forms, there'd be political hell to pay.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
I don’t think people minded a few Commie professors in the past. They were mostly harmless. But, the sorts of people who teach courses like Post Colonial Studies seem genuinely dangerous.
I've just finished The Boer War by Thomas Pakenham (a superbly balanced book) and I'm not sure it was our finest hour.
Our rationale for it in the first place was highly questionable, our military performance dire, our ethics poor (although the Boers were little better, and when it came to the natives worse) and it was entirely futile since it ended up with the Boers basically performing a reverse takeover of the whole of South Africa.
The Boer War was also the moment when the British Empire definitively began its slow but inexorable decline
9/11 was the same for the USA
Vietnam shirley?
No. Their Vietnam was more like our Afghan adventure. Misguided imperialism but the empire sailed on
9/11 showed America as newly vulnerable. It also led to a momentously costly and failed distraction: the war on terror
Meanwhile China quietly ascended…. Like Germany and the USA as we fought on the Veldt
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Needs rebranding. Who wants to be a rear admiral these days?
I'm not sure what the issue is in the Royal Navy.
Is it a moral thing? A pay thing? A career thing? Entry standards too high? Lifestyle too regimented?
Why is it so hard to recruit across the UK and the whole Commonwealth?
Crap terms of service. Lack of SNCOs/POs to fill training billets leading to a very narrow training pipeline. Privatised recruitment by Capita that works exactly as well as you'd imagine forcing candidates into unsuitable roles from which they soon get chopped. 2024 young people do not appreciate or respond to the "Screaming Skull" school of motivation applied in shore establishments. It's different at sea but plenty never make it that far. Quite a few jobs in the Navy are crap and always have been so people will not do them for years on end. Even the jobs that aren't crap are becoming crap due to shortages of people forcing capability gaps, corner cutting, etc. Lots of the non crap interesting technical jobs are now contracted out to civvies so the overall proportion of crap jobs with retention issues is now higher.
All of this didn't matter so much when the recruitment system worked and was able to balance the outflow of pissed off jacks but now...
This applies less to the army where they just need dorks who can tell one end of an entrenching tool from the other. Or one end of a horse from the other for officers. The RAF is the civilian branch of the armed forces. You might as well be a fucking Red Coat at Butlins. So less hardship and discipline.
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Needs rebranding. Who wants to be a rear admiral these days?
I'm not sure what the issue is in the Royal Navy.
Is it a moral thing? A pay thing? A career thing? Entry standards too high? Lifestyle too regimented?
Why is it so hard to recruit across the UK and the whole Commonwealth?
Life in the navy sounds pretty shit to be honest. Would have no appeal to me whatsoever at triple the pay. Sounds a bit like paid prison with added sea sickness.
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Needs rebranding. Who wants to be a rear admiral these days?
I'm not sure what the issue is in the Royal Navy.
Is it a moral thing? A pay thing? A career thing? Entry standards too high? Lifestyle too regimented?
Why is it so hard to recruit across the UK and the whole Commonwealth?
Crap terms of service. Lack of SNCOs/POs to fill training billets leading to a very narrow training pipeline. Privatised recruitment by Capita that works exactly as well as you'd imagine forcing candidates into unsuitable roles from which they soon get chopped. 2024 young people do not appreciate or respond to the "Screaming Skull" school of motivation applied in shore establishments. It's different at sea but plenty never make it that far. Quite a few jobs in the Navy are crap and always have been so people will not do them for years on end. Even the jobs that aren't crap are becoming crap due to shortages of people forcing capability gaps, corner cutting, etc. Lots of the non crap interesting technical jobs are now contracted out to civvies so the overall proportion of crap jobs with retention issues is now higher.
All of this didn't matter so much when the recruitment system worked and was able to balance the outflow of pissed off jacks but now...
This applies less to the army where they just need dorks who can tell one end of an entrenching tool from the other. Or one end of a horse from the other for officers. The RAF is the civilian branch of the armed forces. You might as well be a fucking Red Coat at Butlins. So less hardship and discipline.
This Sunderland - Newcastle FA Cup match is fascinating. First time I've seen a game where all the players are wearing the same kit! (Edit: Except the goalkeepers of course)
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Needs rebranding. Who wants to be a rear admiral these days?
I'm not sure what the issue is in the Royal Navy.
Is it a moral thing? A pay thing? A career thing? Entry standards too high? Lifestyle too regimented?
Why is it so hard to recruit across the UK and the whole Commonwealth?
Could be demographics. We had a bit of a birth slump about twenty years ago. It'll reverse itself soon because of immigration from the 2000's on (immigrants=younger=have more babies) but for the next five or so years we are a bit stuck in the cannon fodder department
Could be cultural. All that nasty fighting and getting out of one's chair? In a world of gaming and drugs, why fight IRL? Why travel the world when you can have 60 inch screens? The Americans are also having recruitment problems and are blaming woke for it.
Could be physical. The Welsh Rugby Union used to be a powerhouse because you just had to whistle down a pit and three prop-forwards came up. But in a world full of office/WFH employment everybody is flabby and not good at fighting.
Could be societal. Why fight in a war you don't believe in? We are now more individualized and have less connection to the state. Citizens of Nowhere don't fight for a Somewhere, they just move to another house in another country and tut.
To adopt Goodhart terms for a moment, the Somewhere's got very engaged by Ukraine as the terms were simple: land was taken, home was invaded. People actually left their jobs and went there to fight. But in Israel/Hamas, the terms are looser: people are being killed in X, killed in Y, but the endgame is not defined. Given this, the Anywhere's are engaged and there are lots of "call for"s and marches. But Anywhere's don't fight.
So. The demographics are wrong, the culture is lazy, the people are flabby, the society is cynical, and Anywhere's don't fight. Result: recruitment crisis.
(Incidentally, it's not just UK/Commonwealth. USA has it as well, and Russia is reduced to pulling rapists out of prison and paying Wagner Group)
This Sunderland - Newcastle FA Cup match is fascinating. First time I've seen a game where all the players are wearing the same kit! (Edit: Except the goalkeepers of course)
You’re watching in black and white presumably?
No, but I might not have the best of TVs...
But seriously, a lot of the time it's bloody hard working out which team the players are. Newcastle should be wearing their away strip.
1. The smallest Labour lead with a BPC registered pollster in Q1 2024. = 13
2. Date of the next UK General Election. = November 14th 2024
3. Party leaders of Con, Lab, LD, SNP, and Reform when the GE is called = Same as current leaders
4. UK General Election outcome: winning party + majority (±10%).= Lab + majority 10.5% - 31
5. 2024 US Presidential Election: nominees for the GOP and Dems. = Trump > Biden
6. 2024 US Presidential Election: winner. = Biden (v. narrowly
7. UK base rate on 31 December 2024. = 3.4%
8. UK CPI figure for November 2024 (Nov 2023 = 3.9%). = 2.9%
9. UK borrowing in the financial year-to-November 2024 (Year to Nov 2023 = £116.4bn). = £125 billion
10. GB total medal haul at the 2024 Olympics ( 2020/21 = 64). = 59
I don't have insight on these and I've decided most of my predictions wouldn't be worth it, so I haven't done it. That said, all the Olympic predictions are for our medal tally to decrease, and I wonder if this is British pessimism. I know the woke brigade is doing its best to undermine our rowing etc., but I think we should stand a good chance in Paris. It's very close geographically, with very similar competing conditions, and that should advantage our athletes and horses. Sadly Ukraine will be sending less competitors I guess, Russia I doubt they've sent any of their Olympic team to Ukraine, but they might not have a great year either. I am not a great sport follower it must be said, so perhaps the predictors in the 50s have better reasons than I've given.
This Sunderland - Newcastle FA Cup match is fascinating. First time I've seen a game where all the players are wearing the same kit! (Edit: Except the goalkeepers of course)
You’re watching in black and white presumably?
No, but I might not have the best of TVs...
But seriously, a lot of the time it's bloody hard working out which team the players are. Newcastle should be wearing their away strip.
“Exclusive from us this morning. The government is quietly advancing plans for a major loosening of council budget rules to allow them to sell assets en masse to avert a wave of bankruptcies”
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Needs rebranding. Who wants to be a rear admiral these days?
I'm not sure what the issue is in the Royal Navy.
Is it a moral thing? A pay thing? A career thing? Entry standards too high? Lifestyle too regimented?
Why is it so hard to recruit across the UK and the whole Commonwealth?
It's the bodged recruitment privatisation by Capita that I linked to earlier.
They get loads of interest, but few to actual training stage. There is a big problem of retention too, particularly in certain skilled areas, a bit like my own employer.
Nope it's too early for that this is a job for someone 15-20 years into their Navy career I believe. What I suspect has happened is that it was clear that someone or other was going to get this role, everyone else at the same level decided at an appropriate leave point to leave because their career wasn't going to go any higher and then the people lined up for this role also left for 1 reason or another...
Wasn't there a recent scandal in the Submarine service that resulted in disciplinary actions?
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Needs rebranding. Who wants to be a rear admiral these days?
I'm not sure what the issue is in the Royal Navy.
Is it a moral thing? A pay thing? A career thing? Entry standards too high? Lifestyle too regimented?
Why is it so hard to recruit across the UK and the whole Commonwealth?
Could be demographics. We had a bit of a birth slump about twenty years ago. It'll reverse itself soon because of immigration from the 2000's on (immigrants=younger=have more babies) but for the next five or so years we are a bit stuck in the cannon fodder department
Could be cultural. All that nasty fighting and getting out of one's chair? In a world of gaming and drugs, why fight IRL? Why travel the world when you can have 60 inch screens? The Americans are also having recruitment problems and are blaming woke for it.
Could be physical. The Welsh Rugby Union used to be a powerhouse because you just had to whistle down a pit and three prop-forwards came up. But in a world full of office/WFH employment everybody is flabby and not good at fighting.
Could be societal. Why fight in a war you don't believe in? We are now more individualized and have less connection to the state. Citizens of Nowhere don't fight for a Somewhere, they just move to another house in another country and tut.
To adopt Goodhart terms for a moment, the Somewhere's got very engaged by Ukraine as the terms were simple: land was taken, home was invaded. People actually left their jobs and went there to fight. But in Israel/Hamas, the terms are looser: people are being killed in X, killed in Y, but the endgame is not defined. Given this, the Anywhere's are engaged and there are lots of "call for"s and marches. But Anywhere's don't fight.
So. The demographics are wrong, the culture is lazy, the people are flabby, the society is cynical, and Anywhere's don't fight. Result: recruitment crisis.
(Incidentally, it's not just UK/Commonwealth. USA has it as well, and Russia is reduced to pulling rapists out of prison and paying Wagner Group)
Re the Met investigating the Post Office - oh the irony!:-
1. The Met will wait until after the Inquiry has reported, I expect. They have, in theory, been investigating two Fujitsu employees for the last 3 years.
2. Why isn't the SFO involved? This is or should be seen as serious fraud. It is worth noting that in addition to the 900 or subpostmasters who were prosecuted, another 2,800 according to reports were made to repay money the PO claimed it was owed. However, the SFO declined to get involved in what remains until now the UK's biggest criminal fraud (£1.5 billion) and has had its own serious troubles lately. Its misconduct in the ENRC investigation means it is now liable to pay it a shedload of money for its behaviour. Proof - if proof were needed - that even being a supposed expert in a subject does not stop you behaving badly and unprofessionally. It has also recently appointed a new Head, an ex-Met policeman, Nick Ephgrave (allegedly the other candidate for the top Met role). He has no prior fraud experience so may not want this hot potato.
3.Then there is the NCA - what are they doing?
4. It is possible that this latest move is linked to the reported appointment of Tom Little KC by the CPS to look at possible charges. Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice is a hard charge to prove - as all conspiracy charges are, by their nature. So he may have advised that fraud charges are easier. After all, if there was no proof of any theft and the discrepancies were simply made up numbers not "missing money" in any sense, then the Post Office had no entitlement to demand its repayment by the subpostmasters, not even on the basis of the notoriously one-sided contracts.
5. The question is whether they go after individuals or the corporate body. Criminal charges against an organisation are always difficult and it raises the possibility of having to put in the dock those who were in charge during the time when most of the prosecutions were happening i.e. in the 2000 - 2012 period before the wretched Vennells came along.
6. Finally, I wonder whether this is linked in any way with the reports of recordings having been uncovered. Or whether it is all smoke and mirrors to give the impression of activity. The reality is that only 93 convictions have been overturned and the compensation process is very slow indeed, unnecessarily so.
The Met certainly gave the impression that they were investigating ‘now’ in their Press release.
The key words being "impression" and "press release".
What that will mean in practice is that they are getting to see the documents provided to the Inquiry and getting to hear the evidence and putting it all into a big file marked "Post Office" or Operation XXXX and then when the Inquiry is over on the basis of legal advice they will start doing some actual work.
You’re far more knowledgeable in this sort of thing than I am, so you’re probably right! Incidentally I wondered for a moment or two when I watched Monday’s part of the TV series, whether you were the helpful lady who questioned the chap who the Post Office had called in to investigate. Then someone named names and I realised I was wrong.
I do wonder though how long before we see the Inquiry report! Will it be in Alan Bates’ lifetime?
At the present rate of progress, I would give it about three more years before the Inquiry's final report is published. The PO continues to delay and obfuscate at every opportunity and this is clearly having an impact on time scales.
This could change if the Government, which owns the PO, were to tell the Board to stop effing about and give the Inquiry some genuine support. Perhaps the impact of the TV series will cause it to do so. Perhaps a change of Government might help.
I wouldn't hold breath for either eventuality though.
According to R4, only two individuals have so far been interviewed under caution.
Also noteworthy was the actor Toby Jones' comment that he'd heard of the case before being involved in the drama, but something about it "just caused my brain to switch off". That seems to have been a very wide reaction prior to the very recent public interest in it.
I think a lot of issues at the moment are too complex for people to fully grasp within their attention span so they give up and ignore the issue.
There is that - but the PO story is at root not very complex. I think people just heard 'computers' and 'Post Office', and thought "not interested".
Exactly this. At heart it is about an institution which extorted money with menaces by lying and threatening. A sort of English version of the Mafia - though without the violence.
The drama - in episode 4 - wrongly suggested that it was the Bates litigation which led to the successful appeals against conviction. That is not correct. That was down to a different set of lawyers who were advising Seema Misra and uncovered the external legal advice to the Post Office written in 2013 - 2013! - that said the convictions were unsafe and prosecutions must stop because of the evidence that Horizon was not reliable.
But I understand why the drama conflated the two in order to have some sort of happy ending because the rest of it was so bleak really. All the cast were excellent - and Toby Jones outstanding.
And @Peter_the_Punter: I have not been involved professionally in this though I do know some of the people who have been. At the time of the events I was busy dealing with what still remains the UK's biggest fraud case, which went from discovery to imprisonment in 15 months. Contrast that to the snail-like progress of this.
What's that quote again?
“Written laws are like spiders’ webs; they catch the weak and poor but are torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.”
Two dogs here in the pub badly disciplined, controlled and behaved barking every few seconds with the owners seemingly powerless (or unwilling) to do anything about it aside from shouting the very occasional "enough!" at them. And looking for sympathy from others.
Pathetic. Another bad effect of Covid. Far too many people got far too many dogs they are ill qualified to look after, and everyone else has to suffer because of it.
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Needs rebranding. Who wants to be a rear admiral these days?
I'm not sure what the issue is in the Royal Navy.
Is it a moral thing? A pay thing? A career thing? Entry standards too high? Lifestyle too regimented?
Why is it so hard to recruit across the UK and the whole Commonwealth?
It's the bodged recruitment privatisation by Capita that I linked to earlier.
They get loads of interest, but few to actual training stage. There is a big problem of retention too, particularly in certain skilled areas, a bit like my own employer.
Nope it's too early for that this is a job for someone 15-20 years into their Navy career I believe. What I suspect has happened is that it was clear that someone or other was going to get this role, everyone else at the same level decided at an appropriate leave point to leave because their career wasn't going to go any higher and then the people lined up for this role also left for 1 reason or another...
Wasn't there a recent scandal in the Submarine service that resulted in disciplinary actions?
There have been many. It's always been very druggy and certain boats have a reputation for being WMD armed underwater secure mental health facilities.
In the recent case of the Boomer Captain who got caught fucking one of his junior officers at sea, they relieved him of command and made him head of HR at a shore establishment. That about sums the service up.
“Exclusive from us this morning. The government is quietly advancing plans for a major loosening of council budget rules to allow them to sell assets en masse to avert a wave of bankruptcies”
Oh great! Forced sales. More opportunities for spivs.
Fuck it! Let's set up a PB company to do developments - unspecified. Find a friendly banker to lend us some money. Buy assets and use them to do something worthwhile.
Notice - Yours truly notes absence of my own humble nom de PB from the posted list of predictors, despite the fact I have submitted my entry.
WHY??????????
AND does this mean that this "election" has been rigged, by some conspiracy of the PB Powers That Be?
J'accuse!!!!!!!!
To underline the absurdity of this rank injustice, based on unreliable reports received via my custom-built tin-foil helmet, can reveal that 99.46% of my prognostications are destined to be fulfilled!
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Needs rebranding. Who wants to be a rear admiral these days?
I'm not sure what the issue is in the Royal Navy.
Is it a moral thing? A pay thing? A career thing? Entry standards too high? Lifestyle too regimented?
Why is it so hard to recruit across the UK and the whole Commonwealth?
Could be demographics. We had a bit of a birth slump about twenty years ago. It'll reverse itself soon because of immigration from the 2000's on (immigrants=younger=have more babies) but for the next five or so years we are a bit stuck in the cannon fodder department
Could be cultural. All that nasty fighting and getting out of one's chair? In a world of gaming and drugs, why fight IRL? Why travel the world when you can have 60 inch screens? The Americans are also having recruitment problems and are blaming woke for it.
Could be physical. The Welsh Rugby Union used to be a powerhouse because you just had to whistle down a pit and three prop-forwards came up. But in a world full of office/WFH employment everybody is flabby and not good at fighting.
Could be societal. Why fight in a war you don't believe in? We are now more individualized and have less connection to the state. Citizens of Nowhere don't fight for a Somewhere, they just move to another house in another country and tut.
To adopt Goodhart terms for a moment, the Somewhere's got very engaged by Ukraine as the terms were simple: land was taken, home was invaded. People actually left their jobs and went there to fight. But in Israel/Hamas, the terms are looser: people are being killed in X, killed in Y, but the endgame is not defined. Given this, the Anywhere's are engaged and there are lots of "call for"s and marches. But Anywhere's don't fight.
So. The demographics are wrong, the culture is lazy, the people are flabby, the society is cynical, and Anywhere's don't fight. Result: recruitment crisis.
(Incidentally, it's not just UK/Commonwealth. USA has it as well, and Russia is reduced to pulling rapists out of prison and paying Wagner Group)
AI news: I asked Chat GPT4 to give me words denoting two human body parts that differed only insofar as one had /θ/ where the other had /f/ (this was in connection with th-fronting and surgery), but I gave up because it was like conversing with an idiot. It pretended it understood the question, but I repeatedly had to say no no no, your suggestion doesn't fit the criteria, so it kept apologising and saying it hadn't understood the question properly BEFORE but it understood it well NOW, and here's your answer for you, Mr Human Sir. But it was obvious it couldn't wrap its little electronic circuits around the question.
Worried now that I may be AI after failing to unravel that post.
(Seriously, ChatGPT is great at writing doggerel quickly but rubbish at anything useful.)
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Needs rebranding. Who wants to be a rear admiral these days?
I'm not sure what the issue is in the Royal Navy.
Is it a moral thing? A pay thing? A career thing? Entry standards too high? Lifestyle too regimented?
Why is it so hard to recruit across the UK and the whole Commonwealth?
Could be demographics. We had a bit of a birth slump about twenty years ago. It'll reverse itself soon because of immigration from the 2000's on (immigrants=younger=have more babies) but for the next five or so years we are a bit stuck in the cannon fodder department
Could be cultural. All that nasty fighting and getting out of one's chair? In a world of gaming and drugs, why fight IRL? Why travel the world when you can have 60 inch screens? The Americans are also having recruitment problems and are blaming woke for it.
Could be physical. The Welsh Rugby Union used to be a powerhouse because you just had to whistle down a pit and three prop-forwards came up. But in a world full of office/WFH employment everybody is flabby and not good at fighting.
Could be societal. Why fight in a war you don't believe in? We are now more individualized and have less connection to the state. Citizens of Nowhere don't fight for a Somewhere, they just move to another house in another country and tut.
To adopt Goodhart terms for a moment, the Somewhere's got very engaged by Ukraine as the terms were simple: land was taken, home was invaded. People actually left their jobs and went there to fight. But in Israel/Hamas, the terms are looser: people are being killed in X, killed in Y, but the endgame is not defined. Given this, the Anywhere's are engaged and there are lots of "call for"s and marches. But Anywhere's don't fight.
So. The demographics are wrong, the culture is lazy, the people are flabby, the society is cynical, and Anywhere's don't fight. Result: recruitment crisis.
(Incidentally, it's not just UK/Commonwealth. USA has it as well, and Russia is reduced to pulling rapists out of prison and paying Wagner Group)
Two dogs here in the pub badly disciplined, controlled and behaved barking every few seconds with the owners seemingly powerless (or unwilling) to do anything about it aside from shouting the very occasional "enough!" at them. And looking for sympathy from others.
Pathetic. Another bad effect of Covid. Far too many people got far too many dogs they are ill qualified to look after, and everyone else has to suffer because of it.
I don't disagree with your last point but why doesn't the landlord tell them to leave?
“Exclusive from us this morning. The government is quietly advancing plans for a major loosening of council budget rules to allow them to sell assets en masse to avert a wave of bankruptcies”
Oh great! Forced sales. More opportunities for spivs.
Fuck it! Let's set up a PB company to do developments - unspecified. Find a friendly banker to lend us some money. Buy assets and use them to do something worthwhile.
Why should the spivs get everything?
Force councils to sell the family silver to delay the inevitable for another year or 2. What could possibly go wrong?
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Needs rebranding. Who wants to be a rear admiral these days?
I'm not sure what the issue is in the Royal Navy.
Is it a moral thing? A pay thing? A career thing? Entry standards too high? Lifestyle too regimented?
Why is it so hard to recruit across the UK and the whole Commonwealth?
Could be demographics. We had a bit of a birth slump about twenty years ago. It'll reverse itself soon because of immigration from the 2000's on (immigrants=younger=have more babies) but for the next five or so years we are a bit stuck in the cannon fodder department
Could be cultural. All that nasty fighting and getting out of one's chair? In a world of gaming and drugs, why fight IRL? Why travel the world when you can have 60 inch screens? The Americans are also having recruitment problems and are blaming woke for it.
Could be physical. The Welsh Rugby Union used to be a powerhouse because you just had to whistle down a pit and three prop-forwards came up. But in a world full of office/WFH employment everybody is flabby and not good at fighting.
Could be societal. Why fight in a war you don't believe in? We are now more individualized and have less connection to the state. Citizens of Nowhere don't fight for a Somewhere, they just move to another house in another country and tut.
To adopt Goodhart terms for a moment, the Somewhere's got very engaged by Ukraine as the terms were simple: land was taken, home was invaded. People actually left their jobs and went there to fight. But in Israel/Hamas, the terms are looser: people are being killed in X, killed in Y, but the endgame is not defined. Given this, the Anywhere's are engaged and there are lots of "call for"s and marches. But Anywhere's don't fight.
So. The demographics are wrong, the culture is lazy, the people are flabby, the society is cynical, and Anywhere's don't fight. Result: recruitment crisis.
(Incidentally, it's not just UK/Commonwealth. USA has it as well, and Russia is reduced to pulling rapists out of prison and paying Wagner Group)
Two dogs here in the pub badly disciplined, controlled and behaved barking every few seconds with the owners seemingly powerless (or unwilling) to do anything about it aside from shouting the very occasional "enough!" at them. And looking for sympathy from others.
Pathetic. Another bad effect of Covid. Far too many people got far too many dogs they are ill qualified to look after, and everyone else has to suffer because of it.
Since it doesn't happen often let me take the opportunity to agree with you 100%!
AI news: I asked Chat GPT4 to give me words denoting two human body parts that differed only insofar as one had /θ/ where the other had /f/ (this was in connection with th-fronting and surgery), but I gave up because it was like conversing with an idiot. It pretended it understood the question, but I repeatedly had to say no no no, your suggestion doesn't fit the criteria, so it kept apologising and saying it hadn't understood the question properly BEFORE but it understood it well NOW, and here's your answer for you, Mr Human Sir. But it was obvious it couldn't wrap its little electronic circuits around the question.
Worried now that I may be AI after failing to unravel that post.
(Seriously, ChatGPT is great at writing doggerel quickly but rubbish at anything useful.)
It is at least at the moment definitely in a state where you have to be cautious about what you use it for, and able to scrutinize the results. Questions that require it to break down words and deal with letters and pronunciation are a particular tricky spot for it, for instance. But I have used it successfully to do translation of paragraphs of text from Japanese to English, at which it is faster than me and where I can eyeball its three draft results and fix errors and pick the one I like the phrasing of best. (The technology is definitely improving here -- Japanese translation is awkward because of its tendency to omit clauses where they're clear in context, which means translation to languages like English that use pronouns instead of dropping requires the translator to understand the context enough to fill in the right pronoun, name or object. It used to be worse at this than it is now.) More anecdotally, I found the writeup in https://incident.io/blog/festive-macbooks interesting -- ignoring the specifics of what's being analysed, it's basically "feed a spreadsheet of data into ChatGPT, and then interactively iterate on 'draw me graphs of this, that and the other' in a way that is much faster than if you were doing it manually in excel. (I would not be surprised to see excel grow features based on that, in fact.)
I am by disposition more on the "this is being over hyped" end of the scale on AI (and for much new tech), but at absolute minimum this is going to be integrated into at least some aspects of working with computers, in the same way that "machine learning" turned into a lot of features in phones like recognizing faces in photos.
“Exclusive from us this morning. The government is quietly advancing plans for a major loosening of council budget rules to allow them to sell assets en masse to avert a wave of bankruptcies”
Oh great! Forced sales. More opportunities for spivs.
Fuck it! Let's set up a PB company to do developments - unspecified. Find a friendly banker to lend us some money. Buy assets and use them to do something worthwhile.
Notice - Yours truly notes absence of my own humble nom de PB from the posted list of predictors, despite the fact I have submitted my entry.
WHY??????????
AND does this mean that this "election" has been rigged, by some conspiracy of the PB Powers That Be?
J'accuse!!!!!!!!
To underline the absurdity of this rank injustice, based on unreliable reports received via my custom-built tin-foil helmet, can reveal that 99.46% of my prognostications are destined to be fulfilled!
Yeah, sorry about that - I'm afraid I had to disqualify your entry on account of it being totally pants bringing the noble art of PB Prediction into disrepute.
Notice - Yours truly notes absence of my own humble nom de PB from the posted list of predictors, despite the fact I have submitted my entry.
WHY??????????
AND does this mean that this "election" has been rigged, by some conspiracy of the PB Powers That Be?
J'accuse!!!!!!!!
To underline the absurdity of this rank injustice, based on unreliable reports received via my custom-built tin-foil helmet, can reveal that 99.46% of my prognostications are destined to be fulfilled!
Yeah, sorry about that - I'm afraid I had to disqualify your entry on account of it being totally pants bringing the noble art of PB Prediction into disrepute.
“Exclusive from us this morning. The government is quietly advancing plans for a major loosening of council budget rules to allow them to sell assets en masse to avert a wave of bankruptcies”
Oh great! Forced sales. More opportunities for spivs.
Fuck it! Let's set up a PB company to do developments - unspecified. Find a friendly banker to lend us some money. Buy assets and use them to do something worthwhile.
Why should the spivs get everything?
Shut Up And Take My Money
Planning permission incoming for that extension to The Lowry.
Notice - Yours truly notes absence of my own humble nom de PB from the posted list of predictors, despite the fact I have submitted my entry.
WHY??????????
AND does this mean that this "election" has been rigged, by some conspiracy of the PB Powers That Be?
J'accuse!!!!!!!!
To underline the absurdity of this rank injustice, based on unreliable reports received via my custom-built tin-foil helmet, can reveal that 99.46% of my prognostications are destined to be fulfilled!
Yeah, sorry about that - I'm afraid I had to disqualify your entry on account of it being totally pants bringing the noble art of PB Prediction into disrepute.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
Sounds like he should move to a decent employer.
The problem is that he cannot without paper qualifications in the field.
My own view is that 40-50% going to Tertiary education is about right for a developed economy. It is true of nearly all our economic competition. The thriving parts of our economy are in our university cities, and the Great Wen in particular.
There is a problem with people choosing courses poorly, and many of those courses being poor value in terms of educational content and supervision.
I would favour a system of grants rather than loans for students who have worked and paid NI for perhaps two years before commencing. I think students would be more mature, but also have seriously considered alternatives, and thought through what they want to get out of University.
The GI Bill comprised more than just education, but was a major factor in the long postwar American economic boom. The opportunities it gave the boomer generation in terms of education, careers and housing are not irrelevant today.
A plan for growth that targets academic and vocational educational and economic benefit for twenty-somethings is much more likely to succeed than one based on IHT cuts for the existing plutocrats.
Definitely needs pruning off courses, far too much rubbish that will get them nowhere.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
That’s a pretty mealy-mouthed article.
She did bad stuff but that’s ok because we don’t agree with her critics
“Exclusive from us this morning. The government is quietly advancing plans for a major loosening of council budget rules to allow them to sell assets en masse to avert a wave of bankruptcies”
Oh great! Forced sales. More opportunities for spivs.
Fuck it! Let's set up a PB company to do developments - unspecified. Find a friendly banker to lend us some money. Buy assets and use them to do something worthwhile.
Why should the spivs get everything?
What "assets" does central Government think local Councils possess? Presumably this is some notion there are millions of pounds locked up in land and buildings - here's the truth, there isn't.
What do Councils own in terms of property? Broadly speaking, land and buildings from which a service is provided (schools, fire stations, libraries, creamtoria, admin offices etc) and those from which there is no direct Service provided but which should provide an income stream (Investment properties, business centres, smallholdings).
In addition, land is required for the provision of additional SEN capacity or for residential care for older people or for dementia care etc.
Should a Council have to sell its Fire Stations to provide income - who would buy them since the provision of adequate fire cover remains a statutory function?
There's a stench of ignorance and a cheap headline - you'd better believe Councils short of cash are already looking at any and all means to achieve capital receipts - they don't need any help from that bunch of halfwits who allegedly run the country (though not for much longer with any luck).
Comments
Though that may just be because one of my favourite sketch videos called 'voluntourism'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmpVX-C21Qw
And have you never heard of keeping a CV to two sides of a piece of A4?
Basically - you lot are drawing conclusions which may or may not be right but certainly cannot be validly drawn from the evidence you have submitted
@Mexicanpete seems determined to argue with some gammony Tory version of me (“you want compulsory military service!”) which does not actually exist except as a phantom in his head
It will take you about 30 seconds to prove this one way or another. Fucked if we should keep spoon feeding you
And why should you use 'Scottish' as if it is an insult?
I will be strapping in on the deck of a QE by next Christmas at this rate.
But I also and specifically said there MUST be other options - including voluntary work at home and abroad and it should be incentivised - it should be a really cool thing to have on your CV for unis or employers
It’s an excellent idea and I recommend it to Sir Kir Royale
We need mixed qualifications/degrees.
We already have them for some things. Medicine has lots of “dirty hands” work.
The BBC
The Boston Globe
The Wall Street journal
The Washington post
The Harvard crimson
And
Wikipedia
Have all got it wrong and she’s published many more papers. Because they all say “11 published works”
Additionally: Gay herself has had ample opportunity to rubbish the “11” number in various quotes and op-Eds she has written. She has not disputed it. On that basis I’m saying it is true
But knock yourself out if you can prove she’s actually written six books and published 98 papers
Sounds like more of a societal issue of us overly valuing what we regard as a conventional one over more practical, vocational kinds, and instead of solving that just using labels to get around it.
And I wouldn't make assumptions why people might ask the question either. My mum had a nursing degree, I don't see why it would be devaluing it when it was somone not seeking to devalue who made the distinction between conventional and non conventional.
The bottom of the rung job in HR was sorting the CVs according to degree - 2.1 or 1st from a uni on a list. Otherwise bin. Separate sorting for overseas degrees.
The sorting job was generally done by someone without a degree….
“The point may now be moot, but the important question for Harvard was never whether Gay should step down. It was why she was brought on in the first place, after one of the shortest presidential searches in Harvard’s recent history. How did someone with a scholarly record as thin as hers — she has not written a single book, has published only 11 journal articles in the past 26 years and made no seminal contributions to her field — reach the pinnacle of American academia?”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/opinion/harvard-claudine-gay-resignation.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
I assume they'd want people who are pioneering academics and also good at administration, but would imagine they'd settle for one of the two if pushed. Doesn't really sound like they got it.
That was enough. She was hurried into the job. Now it has all fallen apart
Also noteworthy was the actor Toby Jones' comment that he'd heard of the case before being involved in the drama, but something about it "just caused my brain to switch off".
That seems to have been a very wide reaction prior to the very recent public interest in it.
My point is Leon (and myself) who have benefitted from three fantastic years at University are somewhat hypocritical if we want to deny that three years to future generations. I would argue that the degree certificate is not even the most important element of the learning experience.
There are PB posters who do believe Higher Education should be exclusive to the elite group of their choice. Tbf I doubt Leon is one of those.
Not calling it a degree doesn’t really change anything.
I think people just heard 'computers' and 'Post Office', and thought "not interested".
There are lots of complex details in the story, but the heart of it is that an institution ruined people's lives rather than admit error.
Good popular journalism can do the same, but we're rather short on that these days.
Our rationale for it in the first place was highly questionable, our military performance dire, our ethics poor (although the Boers were little better, and when it came to the natives worse) and it was entirely futile since it ended up with the Boers basically performing a reverse takeover of the whole of South Africa.
Is it a moral thing? A pay thing? A career thing? Entry standards too high? Lifestyle too regimented?
Why is it so hard to recruit across the UK and the whole Commonwealth?
They get loads of interest, but few to actual training stage. There is a big problem of retention too, particularly in certain skilled areas, a bit like my own employer.
What the hell is happening to this country? It's just getting more and more nuts.
20 years ago you would have been shredded
What’s happened? Simply development? No standing water? Something more sinister?
9/11 was the same for the USA
But seriously, a lot of the time it's bloody hard working out which team the players are. Newcastle should be wearing their away strip.
Teacher: I think your son/daughter may be better suited to a vocational course.
Parents: No, if s/he gets good enough GCSEs they've got to do A levels.
Just try suggesting that the kid may be better suited to plumbing rather than A-levels followed by a degree in business admin or similar. The only way to reduce HE applications would be to raise significantly the entry criteria for doing A levels, and then do the same for degrees. Not at all easy.
And if any changes threatened the existence of the hundreds of small school sixth forms, there'd be political hell to pay.
9/11 showed America as newly vulnerable. It also led to a momentously costly and failed distraction: the war on terror
Meanwhile China quietly ascended…. Like Germany and the USA as we fought on the Veldt
Lack of SNCOs/POs to fill training billets leading to a very narrow training pipeline.
Privatised recruitment by Capita that works exactly as well as you'd imagine forcing candidates into unsuitable roles from which they soon get chopped.
2024 young people do not appreciate or respond to the "Screaming Skull" school of motivation applied in shore establishments. It's different at sea but plenty never make it that far.
Quite a few jobs in the Navy are crap and always have been so people will not do them for years on end.
Even the jobs that aren't crap are becoming crap due to shortages of people forcing capability gaps, corner cutting, etc.
Lots of the non crap interesting technical jobs are now contracted out to civvies so the overall proportion of crap jobs with retention issues is now higher.
All of this didn't matter so much when the recruitment system worked and was able to balance the outflow of pissed off jacks but now...
This applies less to the army where they just need dorks who can tell one end of an entrenching tool from the other. Or one end of a horse from the other for officers. The RAF is the civilian branch of the armed forces. You might as well be a fucking Red Coat at Butlins. So less hardship and discipline.
- Could be demographics. We had a bit of a birth slump about twenty years ago. It'll reverse itself soon because of immigration from the 2000's on (immigrants=younger=have more babies) but for the next five or so years we are a bit stuck in the cannon fodder department
- Could be cultural. All that nasty fighting and getting out of one's chair? In a world of gaming and drugs, why fight IRL? Why travel the world when you can have 60 inch screens? The Americans are also having recruitment problems and are blaming woke for it.
- Could be physical. The Welsh Rugby Union used to be a powerhouse because you just had to whistle down a pit and three prop-forwards came up. But in a world full of office/WFH employment everybody is flabby and not good at fighting.
- Could be societal. Why fight in a war you don't believe in? We are now more individualized and have less connection to the state. Citizens of Nowhere don't fight for a Somewhere, they just move to another house in another country and tut.
- To adopt Goodhart terms for a moment, the Somewhere's got very engaged by Ukraine as the terms were simple: land was taken, home was invaded. People actually left their jobs and went there to fight. But in Israel/Hamas, the terms are looser: people are being killed in X, killed in Y, but the endgame is not defined. Given this, the Anywhere's are engaged and there are lots of "call for"s and marches. But Anywhere's don't fight.
So. The demographics are wrong, the culture is lazy, the people are flabby, the society is cynical, and Anywhere's don't fight. Result: recruitment crisis.(Incidentally, it's not just UK/Commonwealth. USA has it as well, and Russia is reduced to pulling rapists out of prison and paying Wagner Group)
https://t.co/A8RQJB7wh2
Really glad we have Sunak’s long term planning
Wasn't there a recent scandal in the Submarine service that resulted in disciplinary actions?
Go on, have a go!
The drama - in episode 4 - wrongly suggested that it was the Bates litigation which led to the successful appeals against conviction. That is not correct. That was down to a different set of lawyers who were advising Seema Misra and uncovered the external legal advice to the Post Office written in 2013 - 2013! - that said the convictions were unsafe and prosecutions must stop because of the evidence that Horizon was not reliable.
But I understand why the drama conflated the two in order to have some sort of happy ending because the rest of it was so bleak really. All the cast were excellent - and Toby Jones outstanding.
And @Peter_the_Punter: I have not been involved professionally in this though I do know some of the people who have been. At the time of the events I was busy dealing with what still remains the UK's biggest fraud case, which went from discovery to imprisonment in 15 months. Contrast that to the snail-like progress of this.
What's that quote again?
“Written laws are like spiders’ webs; they catch the weak and poor but are torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.”
Pathetic. Another bad effect of Covid. Far too many people got far too many dogs they are ill qualified to look after, and everyone else has to suffer because of it.
In the recent case of the Boomer Captain who got caught fucking one of his junior officers at sea, they relieved him of command and made him head of HR at a shore establishment. That about sums the service up.
Fuck it! Let's set up a PB company to do developments - unspecified. Find a friendly banker to lend us some money. Buy assets and use them to do something worthwhile.
Why should the spivs get everything?
WHY??????????
AND does this mean that this "election" has been rigged, by some conspiracy of the PB Powers That Be?
J'accuse!!!!!!!!
To underline the absurdity of this rank injustice, based on unreliable reports received via my custom-built tin-foil helmet, can reveal that 99.46% of my prognostications are destined to be fulfilled!
(Seriously, ChatGPT is great at writing doggerel quickly but rubbish at anything useful.)
1. The smallest Labour lead with a BPC registered pollster in Q1 2024.
12%
3. Date of the next UK General Election.
November 21, 2024
4. Party leaders of Con, Lab, LD, SNP, and Reform when the GE is called
No changes from current leadership
5. UK General Election outcome: winning party + majority (±10%).
Lab. 8%, 76 seat majority
6. 2024 US Presidential Election: nominees for the GOP and Dems.
Trump. Biden.
7. 2024 US Presidential Election: winner.
Biden
8. UK base rate on 31 December 2024.
4.75%
9. UK CPI figure for November 2024 (Nov 2023 = 3.9%).
3%
10. UK borrowing in the financial year-to-November 2024 (Year to Nov 2023 = £116.4bn).
112bn
10. GB total medal haul at the 2024 Olympics ( 2020/21 = 64).
54
I am by disposition more on the "this is being over hyped" end of the scale on AI (and for much new tech), but at absolute minimum this is going to be integrated into at least some aspects of working with computers, in the same way that "machine learning" turned into a lot of features in phones like recognizing faces in photos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_K9_E6l-6E&ab_channel=RepHankJohnson
*Sees conversation*
See you all tomorrow
Let the recipients of the Saudi blood money now go out in the 4th round.
Make PB Great Again!
11%
2. Date of the next UK General Election.
2nd May 2024
3. Party leaders of Con, Lab, LD, SNP, and Reform when the GE is called
Unchanged
4. UK General Election outcome: winning party + majority (±10%).
Labour + 128
5. 2024 US Presidential Election: nominees for the GOP and Dems.
Nikki Haley, Gavin Newsom.
6. 2024 US Presidential Election: winner.
Nikki Haley
7. UK base rate on 31 December 2024.
4.5
8. UK CPI figure for November 2024 (Nov 2023 = 3.9%).
2.8%
9. UK borrowing in the financial year-to-November 2024 (Year to Nov 2023 = £116.4bn).
£104bn
10. GB total medal haul at the 2024 Olympics ( 2020/21 = 64).
52
11%
2. Date of the next UK General Election.
14 November 2024
3. Party leaders of Con, Lab, LD, SNP, and Reform when the GE is called
Unchanged
4. UK General Election outcome: winning party + majority (±10%).
Labour maj. 162
5. 2024 US Presidential Election: nominees for the GOP and Dems.
Trump/Biden
6. 2024 US Presidential Election: winner.
Biden
7. UK base rate on 31 December 2024.
4.25%
8. UK CPI figure for November 2024 (Nov 2023 = 3.9%).
3.3%
9. UK borrowing in the financial year-to-November 2024 (Year to Nov 2023 = £116.4bn).
£89bn
10. GB total medal haul at the 2024 Olympics ( 2020/21 = 64).
54.
She did bad stuff but that’s ok because we don’t agree with her critics
What do Councils own in terms of property? Broadly speaking, land and buildings from which a service is provided (schools, fire stations, libraries, creamtoria, admin offices etc) and those from which there is no direct Service provided but which should provide an income stream (Investment properties, business centres, smallholdings).
In addition, land is required for the provision of additional SEN capacity or for residential care for older people or for dementia care etc.
Should a Council have to sell its Fire Stations to provide income - who would buy them since the provision of adequate fire cover remains a statutory function?
There's a stench of ignorance and a cheap headline - you'd better believe Councils short of cash are already looking at any and all means to achieve capital receipts - they don't need any help from that bunch of halfwits who allegedly run the country (though not for much longer with any luck).
@eek, @CJtheOptimist and @biggles
with outstanding minor queries.
If you guys could answer that would be great!
Cheers
8%
2. Date of the next UK General Election.
10th October 2024
3. Party leaders of Con, Lab, LD, SNP, and Reform when the GE is called
As now
4. UK General Election outcome: winning party + majority (±10%).
Labour maj.42
5. 2024 US Presidential Election: nominees for the GOP and Dems.
Trump/Biden
6. 2024 US Presidential Election: winner.
Biden
7. UK base rate on 31 December 2024.
3.25%
8. UK CPI figure for November 2024 (Nov 2023 = 3.9%).
1.9%
9. UK borrowing in the financial year-to-November 2024 (Year to Nov 2023 = £116.4bn).
£82bn
10. GB total medal haul at the 2024 Olympics ( 2020/21 = 64).
71