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Unusual correction.
Biden vs Trump.
Total war.
Also, my political antennae are a lot better than yours. Trust me this is going to get very messy for the government, a change in regulations that causes the death of nurses is literally our worst nightmare as a party. It reinforces literally every single incorrect stereotype about our support for the NHS. It's a rerun of the dementia tax in 2017, it plays up what people already think about us but have no recent evidence for.
It is a big difference as Germany is full of academically selective state schools as we used to have 50 years ago
Yes we need to test more but overall still not too bad
As Max and Foxy acknowledge, most medics will risk there own safety when push comes to shove. The question is whether government inadequacies are continuing to force them to do so.
stafe day avrybobby!!!²q
Take this recent report - from Japan, which is richer and has a very much smaller outbreak to contend with than the UK:
"The Japanese city of Osaka has issued an urgent plea for citizens to donate plastic raincoats to hospitals running short of protective gear for staff treating coronavirus patients, with some doctors resorting to wearing garbage bags.
...
"Desperately trying to bridge the gap in supplies of protective gowns for its hospitals, a notice on the Osaka city web site said any color and style of raincoat was acceptable, including ponchos, as long as they were meant for adults.
"Ichiro Matsui, Osaka’s mayor, told a gathering in the city on Tuesday that medical facilities were running dangerously short of all sorts of protective gear."
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-japan-raincoats/lacking-protective-gear-japans-osaka-pleads-for-plastic-raincoats-idUSKCN21X0RO
It doesn't help the workers in the hospitals who aren't getting the supplies they need in the quantities they need, of course - and after this is all over there will probably be considerable pressure to establish a domestic industry for making medical kit, and an agency to manage and stockpile the stuff - but perhaps the Government has a point when it protests that the whole world is after PPE at the moment and it's bound to be a bit of a challenge to get hold of enough of it?
Fifty years ago we had a tier of usually great grammar school, and then a tier of pretty awful secondary moderns that offered little to no sensible vocational training. Secondary moderns were starved of money, and did a terrible job of producing the people the economy needed.
The very fact that today the discussions are all about the grammar element demonstrates how f*cked up this is. We don't fail the top 10% of kids. They go to University and do very well. We fail the next 90%.
If we want to return to selective education, I sincerely hope that the effort will be spent on making the schools for the 90% as good as possible, not on saving middle class parents from having to spend on school fees.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.rcn.org.uk/-/media/royal-college-of-nursing/documents/publications/2020/april/009-231.pdf?la=en&ved=2ahUKEwjFv4rcrPDoAhUBYcAKHTghDygQFjADegQIBxAB&usg=AOvVaw1scJmk3enk6JdVQnHQfnhh&cshid=1587157144465
A lot of RBS's losses came from US residential mortgages via ABN, not British.
Similarly, testing.
Plus at 11, the difference in age between a September and an August baby is massively greater. (The stats for the 11 plus were staggering - you were three or four times as likely to pass if you were a September baby than an August one.)
If the top state schools are good enough middle class parents decide not to spend on school fees that can only be a good thing.
Personally I would not bring back grammars across the board but I would at least allow parents to ballot on reintroducing grammars in their area just as they can now ballot to close them
But I’d add that such a simple bifurcated structure (the technical schools barely got started) is way too rigid. As in politics, pluralism is a desirable thing.
I really don't understand why such a frenzy is now being whipped up by the media other than their desperation to try & find a sensational story & if not to fabricate one..
I spent my entire career working for the US multinational that invented & patented the SMS (Spunbond Meltdown Spunbond) fabric that is now globally used for surgical gowns.There are other workable options.
For example industrial coveralls (boiler suits)which again due the barrier properties of SMS are widely used for protection purposes in a variety of industries. The main difference is the colour of the fabric, blue for surgical gowns & white, grey for coveralls.
I alerted my MP to this option a couple of weeks ago as there must be literally hundreds of thousands of coveralls sitting in industrial companies warehouses & at their distributors.
The UK market is under developed in terms of single use surgical gowns (currently used as PPE gowns). With reusable linen gown still being widely used in Operating Theatres throughout the UK, they should be readily available for use with a plastic apron for additional protection.
It's curious how a certain kind of Tory is so keen on state rationing in this context.
https://twitter.com/DannyShawBBC/status/1251253970762436609
The British educational system doesn't fail people in the top 10% educationally. Now, maybe they could do a better job (as I'm sure everywhere could). Who it fails is the next 90%.
Grammar schools were not abolished because grammar schools failed. They were abolished because secondary moderns failed.
Parents whose kids ended up at secondary moderns were angry. And there will be 3-4x as many parents of kids who failed the 11+ as parents of kids who passed.
In Germany, the vocational track (which sensibly starts a little later) produces people with skills that make them highly employable. If you want to bring back selection, focus your efforts on the non-grammar schools, because that is where the vast majority of kids go, and it is where we failed spectacularly last time.
I don't pretend to have all the answers but this to me is the heart of the matter.
Presumably the total numbers in hospital would not be falling if the total numbers of people infected in the community hadn't already started falling, and so long as the latter continues to reduce so should the former.
I really hope it isn't that.
Secondary moderns were also never really abolished, they still exist in failing state schools across the country which still fail to even get more than half their pupils at least to C grade GCSEs.
I do agree we could learn from Germany in terms of more vocational schools and expanding apprenticeships, top apprentices earn more than most graduates bar those attending Russell Group universities
That equation might have influenced priorities, though I'd have thought it really ought not to have been an either/or.
One wonders what he might do if he loses the election . I doubt very much he’ll go quietly . Very dangerous times for the USA .
And one of the biggest educational differentiators is preschool parental attention and engagement.
There seems to be a story for almost every country.
The Netherlands receiving faulty P2 respirators from China, Spain & Finland receiving sub standard surgical masks which did not comply with European standards, Germany having to re-sterilise face masks & getting ripped off by a bogus manufacturer in Kenya!
As reported in L'Express, France commandeering Face mask orders for Italy & Spain produced by the Swedish manufacturer Molnlycke in France which took the intervention of the Swedish government to release the orders.
There is simply not the global capacity to cope with this level of demand.
It is not just a media fuss, it is a real concern to the front line, even here in Leicester where we have half the average coronovirus rate of the country.
The cabinet office was in charge of the ventilator challenge and the hospitals. Gove delivered both projects. Hancock has been in charge of PPE and testing, both have been a disaster. Hancock isn't up to the task.
Night all. Stay safe.
By rationing PPE, we are rationing treatment, as PPE is a prerequisite. No PPE? no Intubation, no ventilation.
The top decile of British students do pretty well today, they are comfortably ahead of their French and US brethren, in-line with the Germans, and only slightly behind the top performers in Asia.
I'll post some links.
Good night again.
Current figures (from memory) 132 deaths, 250 discharged, 200 confirmed inpatients, 40 suspects.
From 1964 to 1997 we also had 5 PMs all of whom went to state schools, 4 of them grammar schools.
From 1997 to now we have again had 5 PMs, 2 of whom went to Eton, one of whom went to Fettes and another of whom, May was at least partly privately educated.
And by social advantage I don't mean parents who care about their kids. Most parents do that. I mean parental finances. Affluence.
So, our setup, the most advantaged kids are educated in a gated community and have the most school resource devoted to them. The best facilities. The smallest class sizes. The most extra curricular opportunities. The links and networks into prestige higher education and so on and so forth.
In other words we take the already advantaged and we advantage them a whole lot more.
We should do the opposite. This is the essence of what I bang about. If you have egalitarian beliefs our education landscape - in particular the tolerance of the private schools - is an abomination.
Also with the decrease in elective surgery that reusable gowns are not available, is it the turn around time at the laundries?
Really makes me sad when I think about how badly it effects people's lives
If there is simply insufficient manufacturing capacity in the whole world to produce the amount of PPE needed for dealing with this pandemic, then it could alternatively be described as a collective failure of humanity. Whether you regard that as being the result of wilful negligence or an unfortunate lack of foresight, it is nonetheless something that is not limited to any one country or group of countries.
Now, fifty years ago, more people at the top of industry and the civil service and the like came from state schools.
So, more meritocratic, right?
Well. Hopefully. But not necessarily. According to the Independent Schools Council, in the late 1960s, before the abolition of grammar schools there were around 148,000 students at private schools. That number rose dramatically as the grammar schools were abolished (with a large number of direct grant schools becoming genuinely indepent). Today something like 600,000 kids are in private schools.
So, you've dramatically increased the percentage of kids in private schools.
As grammar schools have been abolished, many of those who could afford selective education have typically taken their kids out of the state sector and put them in private schools.
Are grammar schools, then, an opportunity for parents like me to save on school fees (whoopee!), or do they increase social mobility? If most of the kids who end up in grammar schools would have been privately educated anyway, then it's by no means clear that they do.