Mr. Scott, I find the food retailers aspect pretty weird.
They've been working hard and ensured supplies remained solid even when people were panic-buying, and their staff have been some of the few to be persistently in contact with the public on a daily basis.
Not sure why they should be subject to a pernicious tax on top of that.
Not a fan of windfall taxes generally but there's more of a case for one (or less of an argument against, to be precise) when it comes to online retailers.
Don't see why people doing business should be penalised. The money they make allows them to do helpful things like provide the public with food and the state with taxes.
There is a contradiction built into reality. To be taxed in any significant way you have to be honest and successful. There is no-one else to get all that money out of. Drug dealers, bank robbers and benefits junkies are not good sources of revenue. Hard working businesses are.
Legalising drugs would raise billions in tax and save a fortune on the police and prisons.
Shame about the brain damage.
But they’re only druggies, right?
Why would it be any different from now, they buy crappy illegal ones and get brain damage now.
Before drugs were illegal, the collateral damage levels were much less, IIRC.
Many illegal drug problems relate to -
- purity - strength (nuclear grade canabis etc) - horrible compounds, such as crystal meth, that were created to get round supply/transport issues
Exactly, it would benefit users and part of the taxes could help those unwell due to usage and it would help overcrowding in prisons and overall provide jobs , more taxes etc. It could only be a win win from current position.
guaranteed to be rubbish but absolutely shocking that you find this topic funny Harry. I know you have the Scottish cringe but that is bad. It is a hash of the usual no hopers saying SNPBasd, bit like my previous post on carcrash care home numbers, he mixed up Scottish and English numbers as he transferred them from his fingers. Keep trying and one day you will get your English badge.
I understand England has confirmed 17,000 tracers appointed to date and it will be up and running by the end of the month
Having a go at Scotland at zero is fair
G, you rage about anyone criticising Boris, government etc yet someone laughing at such a sensitive topic is ok in your book, have a think. PS: The Daily Record and the lying Tories in the article have no idea who has or has not been hired. Maybe you should be laughing at the 100K a day that was supposedly achieved once by Hancock booking himself 40K tests and never ever met again.
Malc, these lads are still raging' that Nicola is thought of more highly in England than their buffoonish hero. Be gentle with them.
No need to be gentle with me.
I have lived with the independence argument for most of my 76 years and indeed having been schooled at Berwick on Tweed and cannoed down the Tweed from source I have as good a knowledge of the subject as many
Indeed Berwick flipped between the two 13 times
Indeed I do not attack the nationalists for the sake of it but the idea Nicola is a saint and beyond reproach is nonsense. As this pans out she may well come under great pressure, especially in her own handling of the care sector
On another subject the 1,000 top wealthy people have lost 54 billion pounds in 2 months
Excellent thread @Foxy - I don't envy the task facing those working in the NHS. I would take issue with this:
Non surgical specialities including mental health will be similarly affected, though these get less media attention.
You can't turn on the news these days without hearing about mental health. Sure enough, the Sky News presenter Niall Paterson has just said he's starting to suffer and they'll be discussing it on (I think) the Sophy Ridge show.
Have to say the UK has turned into a bunch of wimps. Everybody seems to be ill and cannot cope with anything nowadays, why does it have top billing in every disorder known to man.
To be honest Malc we have a close family member suffering from PTSD after rescuing bodies in an earthquake zone. It is not something to dismiss so easily to be honest
G, I understand people can be really ill with these types of things but why does UK have so high a number for all these ailments and disabilities. It is the saddest , fattest , unhealthiest , most disabled country in the developed world.
See, when you put it like that you have a really good point.
That was my point , perhaps not well put the first time.
A friend of mine has been going on about this & it's really valid. How many obesity-related deaths occur each year in the UK? You don't see a lot of fuss being made about it but his argument is that we should accept coronavirus is around and focus rather on obesity and exercise.
Crisp tax anyone?
I doubt that these kinds of sin taxes have the intended effect. They simply make things that taste nice less affordable for poor people.
Positive nudge is probably cheaper, easier to implement. A Vitality type system for the general population would probably save the NHS money.
When this is finally over the Department of Health should consider paying for fat people to attend slimming clubs. If we could succeed even in getting a fifth of the obese population down into the overweight category and a tenth of the overweight population down into the healthy range then the benefits would be well worth the expenditure.
I agree and I think this virus is acting as a wake up call for quite a few overweight people. As it dawns on people that this could be around for a long time losing weight is so obviously a way of cutting your risk. I have let my weight creep up since I retired but have taken off a stone since lockdown and feel better for it. I need to keep at for a couple more months at least.
If you are prone to putting on weight it is a thankless task trying to maintain a healthy weight. We need to avoid moralising. Throughout my lifetime I have always found the most judgemental people to be those who drink 5 pints a night, eat what they want and never put on a pound.
My son is at private school. He is getting 3-4 online classes a day. He is set homework which is promptly marked, his teachers respond to his numerous emails, they are available for 1-1 explanations as required. It’s not quite school but for a highly motivated boy like him it’s pretty close.
His school already gets more science passes at higher than the 8 state schools in Dundee. Most of those he will be competing against for his advanced Highers next year are getting absolutely minimal educational input and are being left to their own devices. It’s frankly not close to being fair. It’s not that fair in normal times but Covid is increasing the disparities to breaking point.
Kids need to get back to school before their education is irredeemably ruined. Poor kids most of all. There is no acceptable alternative.
Same experience with my children. They are at different private schools and both are experiencing a very impressive online and zoom offering. Private emails to teachers whenever needed and telephone calls too.
So perhaps the question becomes: why are state schools not providing similar to private schools? Remember that state school teachers are on 100% of salary. Do state school teachers have a soft-touch employer? Is more demanded of private school teachers, employed by non-state actors funded by parents? He who pays the piper ....?
My sons are both at a local state comp.
My eldest has started A level work since the GCSEs were cancelled. He might be able to fit in an extra one.
My youngest has a special timetable. The whole thing is run though Google Docs. It’s excellent. He starts work at 830 and stops a 1400. Communal assemblies each week. We get emails if homework is not done on time.
As good as the best in the private sector. I imagine experiences vary by school across the country regardless of sector.
That`s impressive. Fair play. This doesn`t chime with what I`m hearing from parents with children in state schiools round here. They are reporting posted assigments (not even emailed), little or no marking/feedback. When they manage to get a teacher`s email address, it bounces back "mailbox not attended". That`s what I`m hearing.
Given such things (the issues of GPs we discussed the other day) - can we finally get rid of the idea that all of X in a public service are delivering Y levels of service?
Exactly. When the schools are functioning normally we hear regular bleats about the terror of Ofsted inspections, but the plain fact is that some schools are brilliant, some are average and some are total shite. Presumably it is not unreasonable to suppose that a mechanism should exist to differentiate between them.
Likewise with GPs. I have to say that the experiences I and my relatives have had recently with ours have been excellent. OTOH we heard downthread from another PBer who couldn't even get a repeat prescription sorted because his surgery had simply shut up shop and everyone had buggered off home.
What we absolutely must not allow to happen as a result of all of this is for a culture to become embedded within the public sector that regards the population as being there to serve it rather than the other way around. The treatment of the NHS as a deity to be worshipped is especially unhealthy and really ought to stop, although whether it will is another matter.
But GPs are semi-private already and patients are free to switch between practices. This is the paradox. If the free marketeers are right, general practice should be near perfect because of this consumer choice but in fact this is where we hear most complaints.
Have you tried switching between practises? I was once told that it was beneficial to the NHS that it was difficult, by an NHS manager.
The same person was very keen on the idea that you could swap your mobile provider in a day or so....
Yep. I think we can probably surmise what caused this. There was such a desperation to get rid of the elderly from hospitals, to clear capacity for new Covid patients, that they were just thrown at the care homes to get them out of the way. I seem to recall reading elsewhere that homes which initially refused to have them back were threatened (by councils?) with having funding withdrawn if they dug their heels in, so they gave in. We all know how this ended.
Looking at what's happened abroad it looks like pretty well everyone screwed up when it came to care homes, but that doesn't make the failure any more excusable.
In England and Wales, 9 039 out of 12 483 covid-related deaths, by 1st May, were in care homes and that is 72.4%. In Scotland, by 10th May: More than four in 10 coronavirus deaths have now been in care homes (44.8%). Jackson Carlaw ( TORY ) has been lying about Scottish figures
Up to 1 May, there had been 8,312 deaths in care homes in England and Wales where coronavirus was written on the death certificate, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This represents a quarter of all deaths associated with the virus to that date.
The number increases to 12,526 when care home residents who died outside care homes - such as in hospital - are included.
In Scotland, 1,438 people had died in care homes - or 45% of all deaths.
We don't have the COVID Care Home resident deaths in hospitals for Scotland.
This isn't a competition - but denying or minimising the problem is not the way to find a solution. (Like the NIKE cluster in Edinburgh that was hushed up).
Yep. I think we can probably surmise what caused this. There was such a desperation to get rid of the elderly from hospitals, to clear capacity for new Covid patients, that they were just thrown at the care homes to get them out of the way. I seem to recall reading elsewhere that homes which initially refused to have them back were threatened (by councils?) with having funding withdrawn if they dug their heels in, so they gave in. We all know how this ended.
Looking at what's happened abroad it looks like pretty well everyone screwed up when it came to care homes, but that doesn't make the failure any more excusable.
In England and Wales, 9 039 out of 12 483 covid-related deaths, by 1st May, were in care homes and that is 72.4%. In Scotland, by 10th May: More than four in 10 coronavirus deaths have now been in care homes (44.8%). Jackson Carlaw ( TORY ) has been lying about Scottish figures
Up to 1 May, there had been 8,312 deaths in care homes in England and Wales where coronavirus was written on the death certificate, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This represents a quarter of all deaths associated with the virus to that date.
The number increases to 12,526 when care home residents who died outside care homes - such as in hospital - are included.
In Scotland, 1,438 people had died in care homes - or 45% of all deaths.
We don't have the COVID Care Home resident deaths in hospitals for Scotland.
This isn't a competition - but denying or minimising the problem is not the way to find a solution. (Like the NIKE cluster in Edinburgh that was hushed up).
My original point was the fact that the clown Carlaw whilst trying to make political gain could not even get the numbers right
Carlaw isn't the only one to get his numbers wrong - you claimed Care Home deaths in England amount to 72% of the total - out by a factor of two (or three if you want to compare with Scotland's published numbers).
How are schools meant to move from classes of 31 to classes of 15 in a few weeks? As far as I know most of them don't operate with a full set of empty classrooms and teacher cloning technology is still in its infancy. This can only work if kids only attend school every other day. Is that the plan? Is there a plan?
That is the plan. This is what is happening in other countries that are reopening schools.
You can't do social distancing for 30 kids in the current classrooms. So they are being set out for 15 students.
So the teaching assistants will take half the kids into the classroom next door, etc.
Not all the students are returning, remember - only certain years. So you have less children that way.
And once all the kids are back (govt says in July)? You think every class has its own TA? You've obviously not been paying attention to what has happened as the govt has cut reall per pupil funding! Plus if they're only getting proper teaching half the time why bother? Our kids are doing fine working from home, with the added benefit of not bringing a potentially fatal disease home with them.
I have just been introduced to this site by a friend. I have to say that the name is quite mis-leading and I would not have given it a second thought if I had not been told to look! Although I am a non-betting man, I do understand what is meant by e.g. Odds of 10 to 1. However I have no idea what is meant by the three figures in the last paragraph: 1.9, 2.92 against and 2.62. Could someone please explain? Thanks.
Welcome, and don't be shy to ask. Not everyone here is a Punter and if those of that are use confusing terminolgy it's only because it saves times communicationg with other punters.
Try to think in percentage terms too. So, a 9/1 shot has exactly a 10% chance of winning (unless I've backed it, of course!)
I think I can safely make some observations:
A third of posters (let alone readers) bet little or nothing; maybe a third bet folding cash - but hobby stakes - and no more than a third would feel comfortable betting more than £100 on any given outcome.
Second, odds can be confusing at the best of times. In fact, that's what helps people who understand make their money.
Third, a majority of punters on here use the Betfair exchange. This means two things. First, they can bet against a particular horse, so to speak, in a way you can't at a bookmaker. Second, partially as a result, they might place dozens of bets on an event in the future (for example, the upcoming US presidential election), repeatedly backing or laying (betting against) candidates as the odds change over time. Indeed, the whole thing feels a bit like a stock market: buy low, sell high (in % chance) or sell high, buy low.
I have just been introduced to this site by a friend. I have to say that the name is quite mis-leading and I would not have given it a second thought if I had not been told to look! Although I am a non-betting man, I do understand what is meant by e.g. Odds of 10 to 1. However I have no idea what is meant by the three figures in the last paragraph: 1.9, 2.92 against and 2.62. Could someone please explain? Thanks.
Welcome, and don't be shy to ask. Not everyone here is a Punter and if those of that are use confusing terminolgy it's only because it saves times communicationg with other punters.
Try to think in percentage terms too. So, a 9/1 shot has exactly a 10% chance of winning (unless I've backed it, of course!)
And the prices in the header are from Betfair and include the return of the stake so that 2.62 = 1.62/1 and so on.
Mr. Scott, I find the food retailers aspect pretty weird.
They've been working hard and ensured supplies remained solid even when people were panic-buying, and their staff have been some of the few to be persistently in contact with the public on a daily basis.
Not sure why they should be subject to a pernicious tax on top of that.
Not a fan of windfall taxes generally but there's more of a case for one (or less of an argument against, to be precise) when it comes to online retailers.
Don't see why people doing business should be penalised. The money they make allows them to do helpful things like provide the public with food and the state with taxes.
There is a contradiction built into reality. To be taxed in any significant way you have to be honest and successful. There is no-one else to get all that money out of. Drug dealers, bank robbers and benefits junkies are not good sources of revenue. Hard working businesses are.
Legalising drugs would raise billions in tax and save a fortune on the police and prisons.
Shame about the brain damage.
But they’re only druggies, right?
Why would it be any different from now, they buy crappy illegal ones and get brain damage now.
I am not convinced it would raise any money - not without a huge HMRC crackdown on newly 'illegal' sources of supply, which would itself be an expensive use of police resources. When you can walk down the street smoking weed these days, what incentive is there to switch from your current dealer to the 'legal' supplier who will be far more expensive and probably offer a weaker version of the drug?
Yep. I think we can probably surmise what caused this. There was such a desperation to get rid of the elderly from hospitals, to clear capacity for new Covid patients, that they were just thrown at the care homes to get them out of the way. I seem to recall reading elsewhere that homes which initially refused to have them back were threatened (by councils?) with having funding withdrawn if they dug their heels in, so they gave in. We all know how this ended.
Looking at what's happened abroad it looks like pretty well everyone screwed up when it came to care homes, but that doesn't make the failure any more excusable.
In England and Wales, 9 039 out of 12 483 covid-related deaths, by 1st May, were in care homes and that is 72.4%. In Scotland, by 10th May: More than four in 10 coronavirus deaths have now been in care homes (44.8%). Jackson Carlaw ( TORY ) has been lying about Scottish figures
Up to 1 May, there had been 8,312 deaths in care homes in England and Wales where coronavirus was written on the death certificate, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This represents a quarter of all deaths associated with the virus to that date.
The number increases to 12,526 when care home residents who died outside care homes - such as in hospital - are included.
In Scotland, 1,438 people had died in care homes - or 45% of all deaths.
We don't have the COVID Care Home resident deaths in hospitals for Scotland.
This isn't a competition - but denying or minimising the problem is not the way to find a solution. (Like the NIKE cluster in Edinburgh that was hushed up).
guaranteed to be rubbish but absolutely shocking that you find this topic funny Harry. I know you have the Scottish cringe but that is bad. It is a hash of the usual no hopers saying SNPBasd, bit like my previous post on carcrash care home numbers, he mixed up Scottish and English numbers as he transferred them from his fingers. Keep trying and one day you will get your English badge.
I understand England has confirmed 17,000 tracers appointed to date and it will be up and running by the end of the month
Having a go at Scotland at zero is fair
G, you rage about anyone criticising Boris, government etc yet someone laughing at such a sensitive topic is ok in your book, have a think. PS: The Daily Record and the lying Tories in the article have no idea who has or has not been hired. Maybe you should be laughing at the 100K a day that was supposedly achieved once by Hancock booking himself 40K tests and never ever met again.
Malc, these lads are still raging' that Nicola is thought of more highly in England than their buffoonish hero. Be gentle with them.
No need to be gentle with me.
I have lived with the independence argument for most of my 76 years and indeed having been schooled at Berwick on Tweed and cannoed down the Tweed from source I have as good a knowledge of the subject as many
Indeed Berwick flipped between the two 13 times
Indeed I do not attack the nationalists for the sake of it but the idea Nicola is a saint and beyond reproach is nonsense. As this pans out she may well come under great pressure, especially in her own handling of the care sector
On another subject the 1,000 top wealthy people have lost 54 billion pounds in 2 months
My son is at private school. He is getting 3-4 online classes a day. He is set homework which is promptly marked, his teachers respond to his numerous emails, they are available for 1-1 explanations as required. It’s not quite school but for a highly motivated boy like him it’s pretty close.
His school already gets more science passes at higher than the 8 state schools in Dundee. Most of those he will be competing against for his advanced Highers next year are getting absolutely minimal educational input and are being left to their own devices. It’s frankly not close to being fair. It’s not that fair in normal times but Covid is increasing the disparities to breaking point.
Kids need to get back to school before their education is irredeemably ruined. Poor kids most of all. There is no acceptable alternative.
Same experience with my children. They are at different private schools and both are experiencing a very impressive online and zoom offering. Private emails to teachers whenever needed and telephone calls too.
So perhaps the question becomes: why are state schools not providing similar to private schools? Remember that state school teachers are on 100% of salary. Do state school teachers have a soft-touch employer? Is more demanded of private school teachers, employed by non-state actors funded by parents? He who pays the piper ....?
My partner works in a primary school, around 40% of children are doing their online work. The Unions are playing political games at the expense of children's education
Does your partner agree?
Yes, all but one of the teaching staff are back at work contrary to what the union is recommending
Oh, that`s good to hear. What`s motivated that given they would be paid the same for not going in. Peer pressure?
A sense of vocation, I would imagine. The reason they went into teaching in the first place.
Sixteen actually.....and with a bit of luck, today will be 17. And the politicians are on record that the quarantine will be the last restriction to be lifted.
Imagine a part of Britain having the temerity of having a different policy from that imposed by the English government. Where are the Tory fanboys/girls and why are they not wailing and gnashing their teeth.
How are schools meant to move from classes of 31 to classes of 15 in a few weeks? As far as I know most of them don't operate with a full set of empty classrooms and teacher cloning technology is still in its infancy. This can only work if kids only attend school every other day. Is that the plan? Is there a plan?
That is the plan. This is what is happening in other countries that are reopening schools.
You can't do social distancing for 30 kids in the current classrooms. So they are being set out for 15 students.
So the teaching assistants will take half the kids into the classroom next door, etc.
Not all the students are returning, remember - only certain years. So you have less children that way.
And once all the kids are back (govt says in July)? You think every class has its own TA? You've obviously not been paying attention to what has happened as the govt has cut reall per pupil funding! Plus if they're only getting proper teaching half the time why bother? Our kids are doing fine working from home, with the added benefit of not bringing a potentially fatal disease home with them.
It is selected classes only, before the summer holidays.
The point is that you will have about 30% or less of the children in the school.
I have just been introduced to this site by a friend. I have to say that the name is quite mis-leading and I would not have given it a second thought if I had not been told to look! Although I am a non-betting man, I do understand what is meant by e.g. Odds of 10 to 1. However I have no idea what is meant by the three figures in the last paragraph: 1.9, 2.92 against and 2.62. Could someone please explain? Thanks.
Hopefully you also know Tory = lying toerag and if you don't you will find out pretty soon.
I have just been introduced to this site by a friend. I have to say that the name is quite mis-leading and I would not have given it a second thought if I had not been told to look! Although I am a non-betting man, I do understand what is meant by e.g. Odds of 10 to 1. However I have no idea what is meant by the three figures in the last paragraph: 1.9, 2.92 against and 2.62. Could someone please explain? Thanks.
Welcome, and don't be shy to ask. Not everyone here is a Punter and if those of that are use confusing terminolgy it's only because it saves times communicationg with other punters.
Try to think in percentage terms too. So, a 9/1 shot has exactly a 10% chance of winning (unless I've backed it, of course!)
I think I can safely make some observations:
A third of posters (let alone readers) bet little or nothing; maybe a third bet folding cash - but hobby stakes - and no more than a third would feel comfortable betting more than £100 on any given outcome.
Second, odds can be confusing at the best of times. In fact, that's what helps people who understand make their money.
Third, a majority of punters on here use the Betfair exchange. This means two things. First, they can bet against a particular horse, so to speak, in a way you can't at a bookmaker. Second, partially as a result, they might place dozens of bets on an event in the future (for example, the upcoming US presidential election), repeatedly backing or laying (betting against) candidates as the odds change over time. Indeed, the whole thing feels a bit like a stock market: buy low, sell high (in % chance) or sell high, buy low.
Re: "no more than a third would feel comfortable betting more than £100 on any given outcome".
It would be interesting to know the actual stats on this. I`d be surprised if it was as low as a third.
I regularly go above £100, but probably not much above this. I`m well over £2,000 on Trump to lose the election, but that is exceptional for me.
Sixteen actually.....and with a bit of luck, today will be 17. And the politicians are on record that the quarantine will be the last restriction to be lifted.
Imagine a part of Britain having the temerity of having a different policy from that imposed by the English government. Where are the Tory fanboys/girls and why are they not wailing and gnashing their teeth.
They do not hide their money offshore in Scotland Malcolm
I have just been introduced to this site by a friend. I have to say that the name is quite mis-leading and I would not have given it a second thought if I had not been told to look! Although I am a non-betting man, I do understand what is meant by e.g. Odds of 10 to 1. However I have no idea what is meant by the three figures in the last paragraph: 1.9, 2.92 against and 2.62. Could someone please explain? Thanks.
Yes, many topics discussed here and many do not bet. There is rather a dearth of things to bet on at the moment!
PB is generally a civilised place for political discussion even between die hard foes of each other. The off topic stuff keeps it more civilised, such as @MarqueeMark "Moth of the Day", as I can admire his knowledge on natural history, even while bitterly opposing his politics for example.
The numbers are decimal odds, so 1.9 (on Con most seats) is slightly better than evens (2 = 1/1 in odds), while Con majority at 1.92 is almost 2/1, and 2.62 on hung Parliament is roughly 5/2).
I think these are probably about right, so agree with the market. I think Con will struggle to get so much of the blue collar and older vote next GE, and the NHS will be a considerable factor.
But GPs are semi-private already and patients are free to switch between practices. This is the paradox. If the free marketeers are right, general practice should be near perfect because of this consumer choice but in fact this is where we hear most complaints.
Can a GP just set up a practice anywhere and tout for customers? (genuine question).
The serious answer is that GP Practices provide services to the NHS under contracts arranged by the local CCG, for which they receive remuneration based on a number of factors, but most significantly the so-called patient list, i.e. the patients enrolled (as it were) at a Practice.
Where there is particular pressure on patient lists, owing to a growing population, or retiring GPs, a CCG would certainly consider services being provided by a new entrant. However it is worth noting that GP practices with only a single GP are, for several reasons, uncommon. So a single GP moving to a new area is likely to join an existing practice rather than start a new one.
The short version - it is a closed market. Entry is controlled - partly by the existing participants. What follows is what classic economic theory suggests will happen.
I have just been introduced to this site by a friend. I have to say that the name is quite mis-leading and I would not have given it a second thought if I had not been told to look! Although I am a non-betting man, I do understand what is meant by e.g. Odds of 10 to 1. However I have no idea what is meant by the three figures in the last paragraph: 1.9, 2.92 against and 2.62. Could someone please explain? Thanks.
Welcome, and don't be shy to ask. Not everyone here is a Punter and if those of that are use confusing terminolgy it's only because it saves times communicationg with other punters.
Try to think in percentage terms too. So, a 9/1 shot has exactly a 10% chance of winning (unless I've backed it, of course!)
I think I can safely make some observations:
A third of posters (let alone readers) bet little or nothing; maybe a third bet folding cash - but hobby stakes - and no more than a third would feel comfortable betting more than £100 on any given outcome.
Second, odds can be confusing at the best of times. In fact, that's what helps people who understand make their money.
Third, a majority of punters on here use the Betfair exchange. This means two things. First, they can bet against a particular horse, so to speak, in a way you can't at a bookmaker. Second, partially as a result, they might place dozens of bets on an event in the future (for example, the upcoming US presidential election), repeatedly backing or laying (betting against) candidates as the odds change over time. Indeed, the whole thing feels a bit like a stock market: buy low, sell high (in % chance) or sell high, buy low.
Re: "no more than a third would feel comfortable betting more than £100 on any given outcome".
It would be interesting to know the actual stats on this. I`d be surprised if it was as low as a third.
I regularly go above £100, but probably not much above this. I`m well over £2,000 on Trump to lose the election, but that is exceptional for me.
Obviously I don't know for sure. But that is my feel. I think the most prolific posters are over-represented in that group, if you like. There are many more posters who post only infrequently, that bring the percentage down.
I have just been introduced to this site by a friend. I have to say that the name is quite mis-leading and I would not have given it a second thought if I had not been told to look! Although I am a non-betting man, I do understand what is meant by e.g. Odds of 10 to 1. However I have no idea what is meant by the three figures in the last paragraph: 1.9, 2.92 against and 2.62. Could someone please explain? Thanks.
Hopefully you also know Tory = lying toerag and if you don't you will find out pretty soon.
The poster above is actually a hard core Tory. He just hides it well.
But GPs are semi-private already and patients are free to switch between practices. This is the paradox. If the free marketeers are right, general practice should be near perfect because of this consumer choice but in fact this is where we hear most complaints.
Can a GP just set up a practice anywhere and tout for customers? (genuine question).
The serious answer is that GP Practices provide services to the NHS under contracts arranged by the local CCG, for which they receive remuneration based on a number of factors, but most significantly the so-called patient list, i.e. the patients enrolled (as it were) at a Practice.
Where there is particular pressure on patient lists, owing to a growing population, or retiring GPs, a CCG would certainly consider services being provided by a new entrant. However it is worth noting that GP practices with only a single GP are, for several reasons, uncommon. So a single GP moving to a new area is likely to join an existing practice rather than start a new one.
The short version - it is a closed market. Entry is controlled - partly by the existing participants. What follows is what classic economic theory suggests will happen.
Controlled, certainly. It has some barriers to entry and it doesn't like market participants leaving (failing).
I have just been introduced to this site by a friend. I have to say that the name is quite mis-leading and I would not have given it a second thought if I had not been told to look! Although I am a non-betting man, I do understand what is meant by e.g. Odds of 10 to 1. However I have no idea what is meant by the three figures in the last paragraph: 1.9, 2.92 against and 2.62. Could someone please explain? Thanks.
Yes, many topics discussed here and many do not bet. There is rather a dearth of things to bet on at the moment!
PB is generally a civilised place for political discussion even between die hard foes of each other. The off topic stuff keeps it more civilised, such as @MarqueeMark "Moth of the Day", as I can admire his knowledge on natural history, even while bitterly opposing his politics for example.
The numbers are decimal odds, so 1.9 (on Con most seats) is slightly better than evens (2 = 1/1 in odds), while Con majority at 1.92 is almost 2/1, and 2.62 on hung Parliament is roughly 5/2).
I think these are probably about right, so agree with the market. I think Con will struggle to get so much of the blue collar and older vote next GE, and the NHS will be a considerable factor.
Sixteen actually.....and with a bit of luck, today will be 17. And the politicians are on record that the quarantine will be the last restriction to be lifted.
Imagine a part of Britain having the temerity of having a different policy from that imposed by the English government. Where are the Tory fanboys/girls and why are they not wailing and gnashing their teeth.
I am content with different policies across the nation driven by the science and R number
In a side-by-side comparison of evolutionary dynamics between the 2019/2020 SARS-CoV-2 and the 2003 SARS-CoV, we were surprised to find that SARS-CoV-2 resembles SARS-CoV in the late phase of the 2003 epidemic after SARS-CoV had developed several advantageous adaptations for human transmission. Our observations suggest that by the time SARS-CoV-2 was first detected in late 2019, it was already pre-adapted to human transmission to an extent similar to late epidemic SARS-CoV. However, no precursors or branches of evolution stemming from a less human-adapted SARS-CoV-2-like virus have been detected. The sudden appearance of a highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 presents a major cause for concern that should motivate stronger international efforts to identify the source and prevent near future re-emergence. Any existing pools of SARS-CoV-2 progenitors would be particularly dangerous if similarly well adapted for human transmission. To look for clues regarding intermediate hosts, we analyze recent key findings relating to how SARS-CoV-2 could have evolved and adapted for human transmission, and examine the environmental samples from the Wuhan Huanan seafood market. Importantly, the market samples are genetically identical to human SARS-CoV-2 isolates and were therefore most likely from human sources. We conclude by describing and advocating for measured and effective approaches implemented in the 2002-2004 SARS outbreaks to identify lingering population(s) of progenitor virus.
My son is at private school. He is getting 3-4 online classes a day. He is set homework which is promptly marked, his teachers respond to his numerous emails, they are available for 1-1 explanations as required. It’s not quite school but for a highly motivated boy like him it’s pretty close.
His school already gets more science passes at higher than the 8 state schools in Dundee. Most of those he will be competing against for his advanced Highers next year are getting absolutely minimal educational input and are being left to their own devices. It’s frankly not close to being fair. It’s not that fair in normal times but Covid is increasing the disparities to breaking point.
Kids need to get back to school before their education is irredeemably ruined. Poor kids most of all. There is no acceptable alternative.
Same experience with my children. They are at different private schools and both are experiencing a very impressive online and zoom offering. Private emails to teachers whenever needed and telephone calls too.
So perhaps the question becomes: why are state schools not providing similar to private schools? Remember that state school teachers are on 100% of salary. Do state school teachers have a soft-touch employer? Is more demanded of private school teachers, employed by non-state actors funded by parents? He who pays the piper ....?
My sons are both at a local state comp.
My eldest has started A level work since the GCSEs were cancelled. He might be able to fit in an extra one.
My youngest has a special timetable. The whole thing is run though Google Docs. It’s excellent. He starts work at 830 and stops a 1400. Communal assemblies each week. We get emails if homework is not done on time.
As good as the best in the private sector. I imagine experiences vary by school across the country regardless of sector.
That`s impressive. Fair play. This doesn`t chime with what I`m hearing from parents with children in state schiools round here. They are reporting posted assigments (not even emailed), little or no marking/feedback. When they manage to get a teacher`s email address, it bounces back "mailbox not attended". That`s what I`m hearing.
Given such things (the issues of GPs we discussed the other day) - can we finally get rid of the idea that all of X in a public service are delivering Y levels of service?
Exactly. When the schools are functioning normally we hear regular bleats about the terror of Ofsted inspections, but the plain fact is that some schools are brilliant, some are average and some are total shite. Presumably it is not unreasonable to suppose that a mechanism should exist to differentiate between them.
Likewise with GPs. I have to say that the experiences I and my relatives have had recently with ours have been excellent. OTOH we heard downthread from another PBer who couldn't even get a repeat prescription sorted because his surgery had simply shut up shop and everyone had buggered off home.
What we absolutely must not allow to happen as a result of all of this is for a culture to become embedded within the public sector that regards the population as being there to serve it rather than the other way around. The treatment of the NHS as a deity to be worshipped is especially unhealthy and really ought to stop, although whether it will is another matter.
But GPs are semi-private already and patients are free to switch between practices. This is the paradox. If the free marketeers are right, general practice should be near perfect because of this consumer choice but in fact this is where we hear most complaints.
Have you tried switching between practises? I was once told that it was beneficial to the NHS that it was difficult, by an NHS manager.
The same person was very keen on the idea that you could swap your mobile provider in a day or so....
The problem of switching is mostly list size, few GPS have the capacity to take more. Almost all CCGs would jump at the chance of new start ups.
Yep. I think we can probably surmise what caused this. There was such a desperation to get rid of the elderly from hospitals, to clear capacity for new Covid patients, that they were just thrown at the care homes to get them out of the way. I seem to recall reading elsewhere that homes which initially refused to have them back were threatened (by councils?) with having funding withdrawn if they dug their heels in, so they gave in. We all know how this ended.
Looking at what's happened abroad it looks like pretty well everyone screwed up when it came to care homes, but that doesn't make the failure any more excusable.
In England and Wales, 9 039 out of 12 483 covid-related deaths, by 1st May, were in care homes and that is 72.4%. In Scotland, by 10th May: More than four in 10 coronavirus deaths have now been in care homes (44.8%). Jackson Carlaw ( TORY ) has been lying about Scottish figures
Up to 1 May, there had been 8,312 deaths in care homes in England and Wales where coronavirus was written on the death certificate, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This represents a quarter of all deaths associated with the virus to that date.
The number increases to 12,526 when care home residents who died outside care homes - such as in hospital - are included.
In Scotland, 1,438 people had died in care homes - or 45% of all deaths.
We don't have the COVID Care Home resident deaths in hospitals for Scotland.
This isn't a competition - but denying or minimising the problem is not the way to find a solution. (Like the NIKE cluster in Edinburgh that was hushed up).
My original point was the fact that the clown Carlaw whilst trying to make political gain could not even get the numbers right
Carlaw isn't the only one to get his numbers wrong - you claimed Care Home deaths in England amount to 72% of the total - out by a factor of two (or three if you want to compare with Scotland's published numbers).
Maybe my info came from same site as Carcrash got his. Where did you get yours and how did you fiddle them.
My son is at private school. He is getting 3-4 online classes a day. He is set homework which is promptly marked, his teachers respond to his numerous emails, they are available for 1-1 explanations as required. It’s not quite school but for a highly motivated boy like him it’s pretty close.
His school already gets more science passes at higher than the 8 state schools in Dundee. Most of those he will be competing against for his advanced Highers next year are getting absolutely minimal educational input and are being left to their own devices. It’s frankly not close to being fair. It’s not that fair in normal times but Covid is increasing the disparities to breaking point.
Kids need to get back to school before their education is irredeemably ruined. Poor kids most of all. There is no acceptable alternative.
Same experience with my children. They are at different private schools and both are experiencing a very impressive online and zoom offering. Private emails to teachers whenever needed and telephone calls too.
So perhaps the question becomes: why are state schools not providing similar to private schools? Remember that state school teachers are on 100% of salary. Do state school teachers have a soft-touch employer? Is more demanded of private school teachers, employed by non-state actors funded by parents? He who pays the piper ....?
My sons are both at a local state comp.
My eldest has started A level work since the GCSEs were cancelled. He might be able to fit in an extra one.
My youngest has a special timetable. The whole thing is run though Google Docs. It’s excellent. He starts work at 830 and stops a 1400. Communal assemblies each week. We get emails if homework is not done on time.
As good as the best in the private sector. I imagine experiences vary by school across the country regardless of sector.
That`s impressive. Fair play. This doesn`t chime with what I`m hearing from parents with children in state schiools round here. They are reporting posted assigments (not even emailed), little or no marking/feedback. When they manage to get a teacher`s email address, it bounces back "mailbox not attended". That`s what I`m hearing.
Given such things (the issues of GPs we discussed the other day) - can we finally get rid of the idea that all of X in a public service are delivering Y levels of service?
Exactly. When the schools are functioning normally we hear regular bleats about the terror of Ofsted inspections, but the plain fact is that some schools are brilliant, some are average and some are total shite. Presumably it is not unreasonable to suppose that a mechanism should exist to differentiate between them.
Likewise with GPs. I have to say that the experiences I and my relatives have had recently with ours have been excellent. OTOH we heard downthread from another PBer who couldn't even get a repeat prescription sorted because his surgery had simply shut up shop and everyone had buggered off home.
What we absolutely must not allow to happen as a result of all of this is for a culture to become embedded within the public sector that regards the population as being there to serve it rather than the other way around. The treatment of the NHS as a deity to be worshipped is especially unhealthy and really ought to stop, although whether it will is another matter.
But GPs are semi-private already and patients are free to switch between practices. This is the paradox. If the free marketeers are right, general practice should be near perfect because of this consumer choice but in fact this is where we hear most complaints.
Have you tried switching between practises? I was once told that it was beneficial to the NHS that it was difficult, by an NHS manager.
The same person was very keen on the idea that you could swap your mobile provider in a day or so....
It might be the market does work and GP practices are set up so most of their patients are happy but the vocal ones are not. In particular, regarding appointment times, most patients want to go to the doctor during the normal working day and not before or after work. Most patients have chronic conditions, or are infants. And so on.
But if you think back to New Labour's time in office, there was a lot made of the need for out-of-hours access, and electronic transfer of records between practices. Who lives like that? Which group wants to visit GPs hundreds of miles apart so needs them both to see the same files? 600-ish MPs, mainly.
Obviously, no-one will have chosen their practice based on their pandemic response so it might be interesting to see if there are mass movements of patients after we are out of the woods.
Mr. Scott, I find the food retailers aspect pretty weird.
They've been working hard and ensured supplies remained solid even when people were panic-buying, and their staff have been some of the few to be persistently in contact with the public on a daily basis.
Not sure why they should be subject to a pernicious tax on top of that.
Not a fan of windfall taxes generally but there's more of a case for one (or less of an argument against, to be precise) when it comes to online retailers.
Don't see why people doing business should be penalised. The money they make allows them to do helpful things like provide the public with food and the state with taxes.
There is a contradiction built into reality. To be taxed in any significant way you have to be honest and successful. There is no-one else to get all that money out of. Drug dealers, bank robbers and benefits junkies are not good sources of revenue. Hard working businesses are.
Legalising drugs would raise billions in tax and save a fortune on the police and prisons.
Shame about the brain damage.
But they’re only druggies, right?
Why would it be any different from now, they buy crappy illegal ones and get brain damage now.
I am not convinced it would raise any money - not without a huge HMRC crackdown on newly 'illegal' sources of supply, which would itself be an expensive use of police resources. When you can walk down the street smoking weed these days, what incentive is there to switch from your current dealer to the 'legal' supplier who will be far more expensive and probably offer a weaker version of the drug?
The economics of the drug trade are thus
- drugs are very, very cheap at source - the supply chains are long and chaotic - they are run by criminals who spend much of the time stealing from each other - this is where the violence comes from and the attempts to organise the trade. With more violence.
Legal weed* is an order of magnitude cheaper than "street prices", so it can be heavily taxed, without the price exceeding the criminal price. This has been demonstrated.
What has become a problem in some places in the US, is that the politicians have gone loopy on the taxes and driven the price too high.
*It is literally a weed. *Stopping* it growing is hard.
Sixteen actually.....and with a bit of luck, today will be 17. And the politicians are on record that the quarantine will be the last restriction to be lifted.
Imagine a part of Britain having the temerity of having a different policy from that imposed by the English government. Where are the Tory fanboys/girls and why are they not wailing and gnashing their teeth.
Guernsey is not part of the UK and pays for itself.
And I've been critical of the UK (England, Wales, Scotland, NI - all four, not just one on Care Homes) and arrival quarantine (UK) for weeks.
I have just been introduced to this site by a friend. I have to say that the name is quite mis-leading and I would not have given it a second thought if I had not been told to look! Although I am a non-betting man, I do understand what is meant by e.g. Odds of 10 to 1. However I have no idea what is meant by the three figures in the last paragraph: 1.9, 2.92 against and 2.62. Could someone please explain? Thanks.
Hopefully you also know Tory = lying toerag and if you don't you will find out pretty soon.
The poster above is actually a hard core Tory. He just hides it well.
Malcolm is in fine form this morning. I think he must have had THREE Wheetabix for breakfast (or maybe an extra portion of Porridge) ...
How are schools meant to move from classes of 31 to classes of 15 in a few weeks? As far as I know most of them don't operate with a full set of empty classrooms and teacher cloning technology is still in its infancy. This can only work if kids only attend school every other day. Is that the plan? Is there a plan?
That is the plan. This is what is happening in other countries that are reopening schools.
You can't do social distancing for 30 kids in the current classrooms. So they are being set out for 15 students.
So the teaching assistants will take half the kids into the classroom next door, etc.
Not all the students are returning, remember - only certain years. So you have less children that way.
And once all the kids are back (govt says in July)? You think every class has its own TA? You've obviously not been paying attention to what has happened as the govt has cut reall per pupil funding! Plus if they're only getting proper teaching half the time why bother? Our kids are doing fine working from home, with the added benefit of not bringing a potentially fatal disease home with them.
It is selected classes only, before the summer holidays.
The point is that you will have about 30% or less of the children in the school.
Sorry that's not correct. The government wants all primary school children back for a month or so before the summer holidays according to the DofE. How is this going to be possible when they will need double the number of classrooms and teachers? The fact they don't seem to have even thought of this is staggering. Perhaps they all send their kids private and think that classes of 15 are the norm.
Sixteen actually.....and with a bit of luck, today will be 17. And the politicians are on record that the quarantine will be the last restriction to be lifted.
Imagine a part of Britain having the temerity of having a different policy from that imposed by the English government. Where are the Tory fanboys/girls and why are they not wailing and gnashing their teeth.
They do not hide their money offshore in Scotland Malcolm
Ireland has lower corporation tax for some (favoured) multinationals than the Channel Islands.....
I have just been introduced to this site by a friend. I have to say that the name is quite mis-leading and I would not have given it a second thought if I had not been told to look! Although I am a non-betting man, I do understand what is meant by e.g. Odds of 10 to 1. However I have no idea what is meant by the three figures in the last paragraph: 1.9, 2.92 against and 2.62. Could someone please explain? Thanks.
Yes, many topics discussed here and many do not bet. There is rather a dearth of things to bet on at the moment!
PB is generally a civilised place for political discussion even between die hard foes of each other. The off topic stuff keeps it more civilised, such as @MarqueeMark "Moth of the Day", as I can admire his knowledge on natural history, even while bitterly opposing his politics for example.
The numbers are decimal odds, so 1.9 (on Con most seats) is slightly better than evens (2 = 1/1 in odds), while Con majority at 1.92 is almost 2/1, and 2.62 on hung Parliament is roughly 5/2).
I think these are probably about right, so agree with the market. I think Con will struggle to get so much of the blue collar and older vote next GE, and the NHS will be a considerable factor.
You might want to check those odds Foxy
Sorry, Con majority is 2.92 so roughly 2/1 not 1.92.
BFx decimal odds correct on Thursday at time of writing!
I have just been introduced to this site by a friend. I have to say that the name is quite mis-leading and I would not have given it a second thought if I had not been told to look! Although I am a non-betting man, I do understand what is meant by e.g. Odds of 10 to 1. However I have no idea what is meant by the three figures in the last paragraph: 1.9, 2.92 against and 2.62. Could someone please explain? Thanks.
Hopefully you also know Tory = lying toerag and if you don't you will find out pretty soon.
The poster above is actually a hard core Tory. He just hides it well.
Malcolm is in fine form this morning. I think he must have had THREE Wheetabix for breakfast (or maybe an extra portion of Porridge) ...
Nah, FOUR weetabix, neeps and tatties, a bucket of haggis and a small child that dared cross the border.
Yep. I think we can probably surmise what caused this. There was such a desperation to get rid of the elderly from hospitals, to clear capacity for new Covid patients, that they were just thrown at the care homes to get them out of the way. I seem to recall reading elsewhere that homes which initially refused to have them back were threatened (by councils?) with having funding withdrawn if they dug their heels in, so they gave in. We all know how this ended.
Looking at what's happened abroad it looks like pretty well everyone screwed up when it came to care homes, but that doesn't make the failure any more excusable.
In England and Wales, 9 039 out of 12 483 covid-related deaths, by 1st May, were in care homes and that is 72.4%. In Scotland, by 10th May: More than four in 10 coronavirus deaths have now been in care homes (44.8%). Jackson Carlaw ( TORY ) has been lying about Scottish figures
Up to 1 May, there had been 8,312 deaths in care homes in England and Wales where coronavirus was written on the death certificate, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This represents a quarter of all deaths associated with the virus to that date.
The number increases to 12,526 when care home residents who died outside care homes - such as in hospital - are included.
In Scotland, 1,438 people had died in care homes - or 45% of all deaths.
We don't have the COVID Care Home resident deaths in hospitals for Scotland.
This isn't a competition - but denying or minimising the problem is not the way to find a solution. (Like the NIKE cluster in Edinburgh that was hushed up).
My original point was the fact that the clown Carlaw whilst trying to make political gain could not even get the numbers right
Carlaw isn't the only one to get his numbers wrong - you claimed Care Home deaths in England amount to 72% of the total - out by a factor of two (or three if you want to compare with Scotland's published numbers).
Maybe my info came from same site as Carcrash got his. Where did you get yours and how did you fiddle them.
I have just been introduced to this site by a friend. I have to say that the name is quite mis-leading and I would not have given it a second thought if I had not been told to look!
Welcome aboard. You will soon get the hang of the place. Like the House of Commons, PB has its own rather odd conventions and procedures. One or two characters too...
I have just been introduced to this site by a friend. I have to say that the name is quite mis-leading and I would not have given it a second thought if I had not been told to look! Although I am a non-betting man, I do understand what is meant by e.g. Odds of 10 to 1. However I have no idea what is meant by the three figures in the last paragraph: 1.9, 2.92 against and 2.62. Could someone please explain? Thanks.
Yes, many topics discussed here and many do not bet. There is rather a dearth of things to bet on at the moment!
PB is generally a civilised place for political discussion even between die hard foes of each other. The off topic stuff keeps it more civilised, such as @MarqueeMark "Moth of the Day", as I can admire his knowledge on natural history, even while bitterly opposing his politics for example.
The numbers are decimal odds, so 1.9 (on Con most seats) is slightly better than evens (2 = 1/1 in odds), while Con majority at 1.92 is almost 2/1, and 2.62 on hung Parliament is roughly 5/2).
I think these are probably about right, so agree with the market. I think Con will struggle to get so much of the blue collar and older vote next GE, and the NHS will be a considerable factor.
You might want to check those odds Foxy
Sorry, Con majority is 2.92 so roughly 2/1 not 1.92.
BFx decimal odds correct on Thursday at time of writing!
That's exactly what the local state school I know of are setting up, practicing and generally working on at the moment.
It is also what has been done in other countries, I believe.
Completely unworkable for a large number of schools unless you take only half the pupils back.
Serious question. Could you not have half in in the morning and half in the afternoon, extending the school day a bit if necessary? Surely that would be better than nothing
She managed office, but not power. The gap between the two is astronomical in our system.
Power is not an end in itself it's what you do with it. For Boris it was far more about getting it than any driving motivation ambition of what he would do with it once he got it. I'm not even convinced he's that bothered about Brexit - it was simply the vehicle to get him where he wanted.
I actually agree with you
I am beginning to wonder if Boris may seek a short extension to brexit or even move a little to see a deal
Why? The assertion that the Government has little to gain from delay appears sound.
The trading relationship being requested is relatively loose and both sides are insisting on terms that the other finds onerous. It may actually be easier for both the UK and the EU to give up than attempt a compromise.
Besides, hyperventilating media types and some export businesses in particular may fret at the prospect of a cliff-edge Brexit, but they're not the key voter groups that helped to deliver the Government its majority. Being seen to dither and prevaricate over Brexit risks driving a lot of its new support away and resuscitating the career of Farage.
Just a thought, provoked by something in the Observer. Trump is re-elected. Picks another row with China and leaves the WTO. Maybe even without having an overt row with China. Where does that leave WTO 'rules'? And what happens to a country whose trading relationship are based on those rules?
Piffle! Everything will be fine... (waves hand airly about) ... something will sort it out ... we are a mighty economy, we are GREAT Britain! (cue the National Anthem)
It should be interesting to watch, but probably best seen from a distance
We look for a trade deal with Trump's US instead, our largest single export destination
Yes we really need substandard food supplies like chlorinated chicken and hormone filled beef.
Not to mention Trump's fondness for breaking, ripping up or otherwise renegotiating deals.
My son is at private school. He is getting 3-4 online classes a day. He is set homework which is promptly marked, his teachers respond to his numerous emails, they are available for 1-1 explanations as required. It’s not quite school but for a highly motivated boy like him it’s pretty close.
His school already gets more science passes at higher than the 8 state schools in Dundee. Most of those he will be competing against for his advanced Highers next year are getting absolutely minimal educational input and are being left to their own devices. It’s frankly not close to being fair. It’s not that fair in normal times but Covid is increasing the disparities to breaking point.
Kids need to get back to school before their education is irredeemably ruined. Poor kids most of all. There is no acceptable alternative.
Isn't that proof that remote learning can be done, but simply isn't in the poorer parts pf the state sector ?
My son is at private school. He is getting 3-4 online classes a day. He is set homework which is promptly marked, his teachers respond to his numerous emails, they are available for 1-1 explanations as required. It’s not quite school but for a highly motivated boy like him it’s pretty close.
His school already gets more science passes at higher than the 8 state schools in Dundee. Most of those he will be competing against for his advanced Highers next year are getting absolutely minimal educational input and are being left to their own devices. It’s frankly not close to being fair. It’s not that fair in normal times but Covid is increasing the disparities to breaking point.
Kids need to get back to school before their education is irredeemably ruined. Poor kids most of all. There is no acceptable alternative.
Same experience with my children. They are at different private schools and both are experiencing a very impressive online and zoom offering. Private emails to teachers whenever needed and telephone calls too.
So perhaps the question becomes: why are state schools not providing similar to private schools? Remember that state school teachers are on 100% of salary. Do state school teachers have a soft-touch employer? Is more demanded of private school teachers, employed by non-state actors funded by parents? He who pays the piper ....?
My sons are both at a local state comp.
My eldest has started A level work since the GCSEs were cancelled. He might be able to fit in an extra one.
My youngest has a special timetable. The whole thing is run though Google Docs. It’s excellent. He starts work at 830 and stops a 1400. Communal assemblies each week. We get emails if homework is not done on time.
As good as the best in the private sector. I imagine experiences vary by school across the country regardless of sector.
That`s impressive. Fair play. This doesn`t chime with what I`m hearing from parents with children in state schiools round here. They are reporting posted assigments (not even emailed), little or no marking/feedback. When they manage to get a teacher`s email address, it bounces back "mailbox not attended". That`s what I`m hearing.
Given such things (the issues of GPs we discussed the other day) - can we finally get rid of the idea that all of X in a public service are delivering Y levels of service?
Exactly. When the schools are functioning normally we hear regular bleats about the terror of Ofsted inspections, but the plain fact is that some schools are brilliant, some are average and some are total shite. Presumably it is not unreasonable to suppose that a mechanism should exist to differentiate between them.
Likewise with GPs. I have to say that the experiences I and my relatives have had recently with ours have been excellent. OTOH we heard downthread from another PBer who couldn't even get a repeat prescription sorted because his surgery had simply shut up shop and everyone had buggered off home.
What we absolutely must not allow to happen as a result of all of this is for a culture to become embedded within the public sector that regards the population as being there to serve it rather than the other way around. The treatment of the NHS as a deity to be worshipped is especially unhealthy and really ought to stop, although whether it will is another matter.
But GPs are semi-private already and patients are free to switch between practices. This is the paradox. If the free marketeers are right, general practice should be near perfect because of this consumer choice but in fact this is where we hear most complaints.
Have you tried switching between practises? I was once told that it was beneficial to the NHS that it was difficult, by an NHS manager.
The same person was very keen on the idea that you could swap your mobile provider in a day or so....
The problem of switching is mostly list size, few GPS have the capacity to take more. Almost all CCGs would jump at the chance of new start ups.
A very good article Foxy and glad to hear your expert opinion. Also thank you for all your work during what has gone on with CV.
A quick question but I suspect a long answer. If you were the Health Secretary and were given a blank sheet of paper, what would be the key changes you would make?
Mr. Scott, I find the food retailers aspect pretty weird.
They've been working hard and ensured supplies remained solid even when people were panic-buying, and their staff have been some of the few to be persistently in contact with the public on a daily basis.
Not sure why they should be subject to a pernicious tax on top of that.
Not a fan of windfall taxes generally but there's more of a case for one (or less of an argument against, to be precise) when it comes to online retailers.
Don't see why people doing business should be penalised. The money they make allows them to do helpful things like provide the public with food and the state with taxes.
There is a contradiction built into reality. To be taxed in any significant way you have to be honest and successful. There is no-one else to get all that money out of. Drug dealers, bank robbers and benefits junkies are not good sources of revenue. Hard working businesses are.
Legalising drugs would raise billions in tax and save a fortune on the police and prisons.
Shame about the brain damage.
But they’re only druggies, right?
Why would it be any different from now, they buy crappy illegal ones and get brain damage now.
I am not convinced it would raise any money - not without a huge HMRC crackdown on newly 'illegal' sources of supply, which would itself be an expensive use of police resources. When you can walk down the street smoking weed these days, what incentive is there to switch from your current dealer to the 'legal' supplier who will be far more expensive and probably offer a weaker version of the drug?
The economics of the drug trade are thus
- drugs are very, very cheap at source - the supply chains are long and chaotic - they are run by criminals who spend much of the time stealing from each other - this is where the violence comes from and the attempts to organise the trade. With more violence.
Legal weed* is an order of magnitude cheaper than "street prices", so it can be heavily taxed, without the price exceeding the criminal price. This has been demonstrated.
What has become a problem in some places in the US, is that the politicians have gone loopy on the taxes and driven the price too high.
*It is literally a weed. *Stopping* it growing is hard.
Thanks, that's a really interesting insight - never imagined the legal stuff could be cheaper. And indeed, most stories I have heard have seemed to indicate the opposite.
Sixteen actually.....and with a bit of luck, today will be 17. And the politicians are on record that the quarantine will be the last restriction to be lifted.
Imagine a part of Britain having the temerity of having a different policy from that imposed by the English government. Where are the Tory fanboys/girls and why are they not wailing and gnashing their teeth.
Guernsey is not part of the UK and pays for itself.
And I've been critical of the UK (England, Wales, Scotland, NI - all four, not just one on Care Homes) and arrival quarantine (UK) for weeks.
The problem for all four is that each and every one of them has acted the same on care homes and no doubt that is from their participation in Cobra and the decisions
It looks to me as if the advice in february should have been changed in early march and that change came late and caused the nightmare that followed.
Also care homes has been a failure across most countries who seem to have acted in a similar manner
I expect the public enquiry that is coming will have some damning comments to make on the process and the lack of attention to 'time of essence'
guaranteed to be rubbish but absolutely shocking that you find this topic funny Harry. I know you have the Scottish cringe but that is bad. It is a hash of the usual no hopers saying SNPBasd, bit like my previous post on carcrash care home numbers, he mixed up Scottish and English numbers as he transferred them from his fingers. Keep trying and one day you will get your English badge.
I understand England has confirmed 17,000 tracers appointed to date and it will be up and running by the end of the month
Having a go at Scotland at zero is fair
G, you rage about anyone criticising Boris, government etc yet someone laughing at such a sensitive topic is ok in your book, have a think. PS: The Daily Record and the lying Tories in the article have no idea who has or has not been hired. Maybe you should be laughing at the 100K a day that was supposedly achieved once by Hancock booking himself 40K tests and never ever met again.
Malc, these lads are still raging' that Nicola is thought of more highly in England than their buffoonish hero. Be gentle with them.
No need to be gentle with me.
I have lived with the independence argument for most of my 76 years and indeed having been schooled at Berwick on Tweed and cannoed down the Tweed from source I have as good a knowledge of the subject as many
Indeed Berwick flipped between the two 13 times
Indeed I do not attack the nationalists for the sake of it but the idea Nicola is a saint and beyond reproach is nonsense. As this pans out she may well come under great pressure, especially in her own handling of the care sector
On another subject the 1,000 top wealthy people have lost 54 billion pounds in 2 months
Expect few will shed a tear
Is there some kind of psychological condition inherent in PB Unionism that makes its adherents revert to strawman assertions such as folk have been suggesting that 'Nicola is a saint and beyond reproach', something not said by any supporter of indy on here ever?
Otoh I can think of one politician who has recently inspired such glassy eyed fawning on PB, and I can think of the posters who have done it.
I have just been introduced to this site by a friend. I have to say that the name is quite mis-leading and I would not have given it a second thought if I had not been told to look! Although I am a non-betting man, I do understand what is meant by e.g. Odds of 10 to 1. However I have no idea what is meant by the three figures in the last paragraph: 1.9, 2.92 against and 2.62. Could someone please explain? Thanks.
Yes, many topics discussed here and many do not bet. There is rather a dearth of things to bet on at the moment!
PB is generally a civilised place for political discussion even between die hard foes of each other. The off topic stuff keeps it more civilised, such as @MarqueeMark "Moth of the Day", as I can admire his knowledge on natural history, even while bitterly opposing his politics for example.
The numbers are decimal odds, so 1.9 (on Con most seats) is slightly better than evens (2 = 1/1 in odds), while Con majority at 1.92 is almost 2/1, and 2.62 on hung Parliament is roughly 5/2).
I think these are probably about right, so agree with the market. I think Con will struggle to get so much of the blue collar and older vote next GE, and the NHS will be a considerable factor.
You might want to check those odds Foxy
Sorry, Con majority is 2.92 so roughly 2/1 not 1.92.
BFx decimal odds correct on Thursday at time of writing!
And 2.62 is very approx 6/4 not "roughly 5/2".
yes! I have tied myself in knots here. Too used to decimal odds.
Sixteen actually.....and with a bit of luck, today will be 17. And the politicians are on record that the quarantine will be the last restriction to be lifted.
Imagine a part of Britain having the temerity of having a different policy from that imposed by the English government. Where are the Tory fanboys/girls and why are they not wailing and gnashing their teeth.
They do not hide their money offshore in Scotland Malcolm
Ireland has lower corporation tax for some (favoured) multinationals than the Channel Islands.....
Tories are not multinationals. Quite the opposite in fact in these post Brexit days
Sixteen actually.....and with a bit of luck, today will be 17. And the politicians are on record that the quarantine will be the last restriction to be lifted.
Imagine a part of Britain having the temerity of having a different policy from that imposed by the English government. Where are the Tory fanboys/girls and why are they not wailing and gnashing their teeth.
Yep. I think we can probably surmise what caused this. There was such a desperation to get rid of the elderly from hospitals, to clear capacity for new Covid patients, that they were just thrown at the care homes to get them out of the way. I seem to recall reading elsewhere that homes which initially refused to have them back were threatened (by councils?) with having funding withdrawn if they dug their heels in, so they gave in. We all know how this ended.
Looking at what's happened abroad it looks like pretty well everyone screwed up when it came to care homes, but that doesn't make the failure any more excusable.
In England and Wales, 9 039 out of 12 483 covid-related deaths, by 1st May, were in care homes and that is 72.4%. In Scotland, by 10th May: More than four in 10 coronavirus deaths have now been in care homes (44.8%). Jackson Carlaw ( TORY ) has been lying about Scottish figures
Up to 1 May, there had been 8,312 deaths in care homes in England and Wales where coronavirus was written on the death certificate, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This represents a quarter of all deaths associated with the virus to that date.
The number increases to 12,526 when care home residents who died outside care homes - such as in hospital - are included.
In Scotland, 1,438 people had died in care homes - or 45% of all deaths.
We don't have the COVID Care Home resident deaths in hospitals for Scotland.
This isn't a competition - but denying or minimising the problem is not the way to find a solution. (Like the NIKE cluster in Edinburgh that was hushed up).
My original point was the fact that the clown Carlaw whilst trying to make political gain could not even get the numbers right
Carlaw isn't the only one to get his numbers wrong - you claimed Care Home deaths in England amount to 72% of the total - out by a factor of two (or three if you want to compare with Scotland's published numbers).
Maybe my info came from same site as Carcrash got his. Where did you get yours and how did you fiddle them.
Mr. Scott, I find the food retailers aspect pretty weird.
They've been working hard and ensured supplies remained solid even when people were panic-buying, and their staff have been some of the few to be persistently in contact with the public on a daily basis.
Not sure why they should be subject to a pernicious tax on top of that.
Not a fan of windfall taxes generally but there's more of a case for one (or less of an argument against, to be precise) when it comes to online retailers.
Don't see why people doing business should be penalised. The money they make allows them to do helpful things like provide the public with food and the state with taxes.
There is a contradiction built into reality. To be taxed in any significant way you have to be honest and successful. There is no-one else to get all that money out of. Drug dealers, bank robbers and benefits junkies are not good sources of revenue. Hard working businesses are.
Legalising drugs would raise billions in tax and save a fortune on the police and prisons.
Shame about the brain damage.
But they’re only druggies, right?
Why would it be any different from now, they buy crappy illegal ones and get brain damage now.
I am not convinced it would raise any money - not without a huge HMRC crackdown on newly 'illegal' sources of supply, which would itself be an expensive use of police resources. When you can walk down the street smoking weed these days, what incentive is there to switch from your current dealer to the 'legal' supplier who will be far more expensive and probably offer a weaker version of the drug?
The economics of the drug trade are thus
- drugs are very, very cheap at source - the supply chains are long and chaotic - they are run by criminals who spend much of the time stealing from each other - this is where the violence comes from and the attempts to organise the trade. With more violence.
Legal weed* is an order of magnitude cheaper than "street prices", so it can be heavily taxed, without the price exceeding the criminal price. This has been demonstrated.
What has become a problem in some places in the US, is that the politicians have gone loopy on the taxes and driven the price too high.
*It is literally a weed. *Stopping* it growing is hard.
Thanks, that's a really interesting insight - never imagined the legal stuff could be cheaper. And indeed, most stories I have heard have seemed to indicate the opposite.
Imagine it grown by, say, professional tobacco farmers. Farmed by the 1000 acre rather than in rented houses.
Processed in plants miles square, rather than in Fred's drying cupboard....
A long while ago, the Economist estimated that a major medical drug supplier could supply 100% pure cocaine - to the pharmacy - at a price per 100 grams roughly equal to the price per gram on the street. Literally 100 time cheaper.
Sixteen actually.....and with a bit of luck, today will be 17. And the politicians are on record that the quarantine will be the last restriction to be lifted.
Imagine a part of Britain having the temerity of having a different policy from that imposed by the English government. Where are the Tory fanboys/girls and why are they not wailing and gnashing their teeth.
Guernsey is not part of the UK and pays for itself.
And I've been critical of the UK (England, Wales, Scotland, NI - all four, not just one on Care Homes) and arrival quarantine (UK) for weeks.
I notic eyou choose to try and pretend it is not part of GB
It is the tax haven for those Tories that do not like it too warm and don't want to go as far as Cayman's , Virgin Isles etc.
That's exactly what the local state school I know of are setting up, practicing and generally working on at the moment.
It is also what has been done in other countries, I believe.
Completely unworkable for a large number of schools unless you take only half the pupils back.
Serious question. Could you not have half in in the morning and half in the afternoon, extending the school day a bit if necessary? Surely that would be better than nothing
Good luck negotiating overtime rates for "extending the school day a bit" but of course you would also lose much of the childminding function of schools, allowing mum and dad to put in a full shift at the salt mines while junior learns Latin and paints NHS rainbows.
Sixteen actually.....and with a bit of luck, today will be 17. And the politicians are on record that the quarantine will be the last restriction to be lifted.
Imagine a part of Britain having the temerity of having a different policy from that imposed by the English government. Where are the Tory fanboys/girls and why are they not wailing and gnashing their teeth.
They do not hide their money offshore in Scotland Malcolm
My son is at private school. He is getting 3-4 online classes a day. He is set homework which is promptly marked, his teachers respond to his numerous emails, they are available for 1-1 explanations as required. It’s not quite school but for a highly motivated boy like him it’s pretty close.
His school already gets more science passes at higher than the 8 state schools in Dundee. Most of those he will be competing against for his advanced Highers next year are getting absolutely minimal educational input and are being left to their own devices. It’s frankly not close to being fair. It’s not that fair in normal times but Covid is increasing the disparities to breaking point.
Kids need to get back to school before their education is irredeemably ruined. Poor kids most of all. There is no acceptable alternative.
Same experience with my children. They are at different private schools and both are experiencing a very impressive online and zoom offering. Private emails to teachers whenever needed and telephone calls too.
So perhaps the question becomes: why are state schools not providing similar to private schools? Remember that state school teachers are on 100% of salary. Do state school teachers have a soft-touch employer? Is more demanded of private school teachers, employed by non-state actors funded by parents? He who pays the piper ....?
My sons are both at a local state comp.
My eldest has started A level work since the GCSEs were cancelled. He might be able to fit in an extra one.
My youngest has a special timetable. The whole thing is run though Google Docs. It’s excellent. He starts work at 830 and stops a 1400. Communal assemblies each week. We get emails if homework is not done on time.
As good as the best in the private sector. I imagine experiences vary by school across the country regardless of sector.
That`s impressive. Fair play. This doesn`t chime with what I`m hearing from parents with children in state schiools round here. They are reporting posted assigments (not even emailed), little or no marking/feedback. When they manage to get a teacher`s email address, it bounces back "mailbox not attended". That`s what I`m hearing.
Given such things (the issues of GPs we discussed the other day) - can we finally get rid of the idea that all of X in a public service are delivering Y levels of service?
Exactly. When the schools are functioning normally we hear regular bleats about the terror of Ofsted inspections, but the plain fact is that some schools are brilliant, some are average and some are total shite. Presumably it is not unreasonable to suppose that a mechanism should exist to differentiate between them.
Likewise with GPs. I have to say that the experiences I and my relatives have had recently with ours have been excellent. OTOH we heard downthread from another PBer who couldn't even get a repeat prescription sorted because his surgery had simply shut up shop and everyone had buggered off home.
What we absolutely must not allow to happen as a result of all of this is for a culture to become embedded within the public sector that regards the population as being there to serve it rather than the other way around. The treatment of the NHS as a deity to be worshipped is especially unhealthy and really ought to stop, although whether it will is another matter.
But GPs are semi-private already and patients are free to switch between practices. This is the paradox. If the free marketeers are right, general practice should be near perfect because of this consumer choice but in fact this is where we hear most complaints.
Have you tried switching between practises? I was once told that it was beneficial to the NHS that it was difficult, by an NHS manager.
The same person was very keen on the idea that you could swap your mobile provider in a day or so....
The problem of switching is mostly list size, few GPS have the capacity to take more. Almost all CCGs would jump at the chance of new start ups.
A very good article Foxy and glad to hear your expert opinion. Also thank you for all your work during what has gone on with CV.
A quick question but I suspect a long answer. If you were the Health Secretary and were given a blank sheet of paper, what would be the key changes you would make?
I had best get on with my gardening, but my views haven't fundamentally changed since my first header on PB:
guaranteed to be rubbish but absolutely shocking that you find this topic funny Harry. I know you have the Scottish cringe but that is bad. It is a hash of the usual no hopers saying SNPBasd, bit like my previous post on carcrash care home numbers, he mixed up Scottish and English numbers as he transferred them from his fingers. Keep trying and one day you will get your English badge.
I understand England has confirmed 17,000 tracers appointed to date and it will be up and running by the end of the month
Having a go at Scotland at zero is fair
G, you rage about anyone criticising Boris, government etc yet someone laughing at such a sensitive topic is ok in your book, have a think. PS: The Daily Record and the lying Tories in the article have no idea who has or has not been hired. Maybe you should be laughing at the 100K a day that was supposedly achieved once by Hancock booking himself 40K tests and never ever met again.
Malc, these lads are still raging' that Nicola is thought of more highly in England than their buffoonish hero. Be gentle with them.
No need to be gentle with me.
I have lived with the independence argument for most of my 76 years and indeed having been schooled at Berwick on Tweed and cannoed down the Tweed from source I have as good a knowledge of the subject as many
Indeed Berwick flipped between the two 13 times
Indeed I do not attack the nationalists for the sake of it but the idea Nicola is a saint and beyond reproach is nonsense. As this pans out she may well come under great pressure, especially in her own handling of the care sector
On another subject the 1,000 top wealthy people have lost 54 billion pounds in 2 months
Expect few will shed a tear
Is there some kind of psychological condition inherent in PB Unionism that makes its adherents revert to strawman assertions such as folk have been suggesting that 'Nicola is a saint and beyond reproach', something not said by any supporter of indy on here ever?
Otoh I can think of one politician who has recently inspired such glassy eyed fawning on PB, and I can think of the posters who have done it.
Mmm. "Boris". And the adoration goes well beyond what you would expect to hear about a politician. One particularly exuberant poster the other day even said (with a totally straight face) that his excess weight was mainly muscle.
guaranteed to be rubbish but absolutely shocking that you find this topic funny Harry. I know you have the Scottish cringe but that is bad. It is a hash of the usual no hopers saying SNPBasd, bit like my previous post on carcrash care home numbers, he mixed up Scottish and English numbers as he transferred them from his fingers. Keep trying and one day you will get your English badge.
I understand England has confirmed 17,000 tracers appointed to date and it will be up and running by the end of the month
Having a go at Scotland at zero is fair
G, you rage about anyone criticising Boris, government etc yet someone laughing at such a sensitive topic is ok in your book, have a think. PS: The Daily Record and the lying Tories in the article have no idea who has or has not been hired. Maybe you should be laughing at the 100K a day that was supposedly achieved once by Hancock booking himself 40K tests and never ever met again.
Malc, these lads are still raging' that Nicola is thought of more highly in England than their buffoonish hero. Be gentle with them.
No need to be gentle with me.
I have lived with the independence argument for most of my 76 years and indeed having been schooled at Berwick on Tweed and cannoed down the Tweed from source I have as good a knowledge of the subject as many
Indeed Berwick flipped between the two 13 times
Indeed I do not attack the nationalists for the sake of it but the idea Nicola is a saint and beyond reproach is nonsense. As this pans out she may well come under great pressure, especially in her own handling of the care sector
On another subject the 1,000 top wealthy people have lost 54 billion pounds in 2 months
Expect few will shed a tear
Is there some kind of psychological condition inherent in PB Unionism that makes its adherents revert to strawman assertions such as folk have been suggesting that 'Nicola is a saint and beyond reproach', something not said by any supporter of indy on here ever?
Otoh I can think of one politician who has recently inspired such glassy eyed fawning on PB, and I can think of the posters who have done it.
Mmm. "Boris". And the adoration goes well beyond what you would expect to hear about a politician. One particularly exuberant poster the other day even said (with a totally straight face) that his excess weight was mainly muscle.
Mr. Scott, I find the food retailers aspect pretty weird.
They've been working hard and ensured supplies remained solid even when people were panic-buying, and their staff have been some of the few to be persistently in contact with the public on a daily basis.
Not sure why they should be subject to a pernicious tax on top of that.
Not a fan of windfall taxes generally but there's more of a case for one (or less of an argument against, to be precise) when it comes to online retailers.
Don't see why people doing business should be penalised. The money they make allows them to do helpful things like provide the public with food and the state with taxes.
There is a contradiction built into reality. To be taxed in any significant way you have to be honest and successful. There is no-one else to get all that money out of. Drug dealers, bank robbers and benefits junkies are not good sources of revenue. Hard working businesses are.
Legalising drugs would raise billions in tax and save a fortune on the police and prisons.
Shame about the brain damage.
But they’re only druggies, right?
Why would it be any different from now, they buy crappy illegal ones and get brain damage now.
I am not convinced it would raise any money - not without a huge HMRC crackdown on newly 'illegal' sources of supply, which would itself be an expensive use of police resources. When you can walk down the street smoking weed these days, what incentive is there to switch from your current dealer to the 'legal' supplier who will be far more expensive and probably offer a weaker version of the drug?
The economics of the drug trade are thus
- drugs are very, very cheap at source - the supply chains are long and chaotic - they are run by criminals who spend much of the time stealing from each other - this is where the violence comes from and the attempts to organise the trade. With more violence.
Legal weed* is an order of magnitude cheaper than "street prices", so it can be heavily taxed, without the price exceeding the criminal price. This has been demonstrated.
What has become a problem in some places in the US, is that the politicians have gone loopy on the taxes and driven the price too high.
*It is literally a weed. *Stopping* it growing is hard.
Thanks, that's a really interesting insight - never imagined the legal stuff could be cheaper. And indeed, most stories I have heard have seemed to indicate the opposite.
Imagine it grown by, say, professional tobacco farmers. Farmed by the 1000 acre rather than in rented houses.
Processed in plants miles square, rather than in Fred's drying cupboard....
A long while ago, the Economist estimated that a major medical drug supplier could supply 100% pure cocaine - to the pharmacy - at a price per 100 grams roughly equal to the price per gram on the street. Literally 100 time cheaper.
Isn't this what happened in America, that the small hippy local growers were forced out by proper farmers, who themselves were forced out by Big Weed?
My son is at private school. He is getting 3-4 online classes a day. He is set homework which is promptly marked, his teachers respond to his numerous emails, they are available for 1-1 explanations as required. It’s not quite school but for a highly motivated boy like him it’s pretty close.
His school already gets more science passes at higher than the 8 state schools in Dundee. Most of those he will be competing against for his advanced Highers next year are getting absolutely minimal educational input and are being left to their own devices. It’s frankly not close to being fair. It’s not that fair in normal times but Covid is increasing the disparities to breaking point.
Kids need to get back to school before their education is irredeemably ruined. Poor kids most of all. There is no acceptable alternative.
Same experience with my children. They are at different private schools and both are experiencing a very impressive online and zoom offering. Private emails to teachers whenever needed and telephone calls too.
So perhaps the question becomes: why are state schools not providing similar to private schools? Remember that state school teachers are on 100% of salary. Do state school teachers have a soft-touch employer? Is more demanded of private school teachers, employed by non-state actors funded by parents? He who pays the piper ....?
My sons are both at a local state comp.
My eldest has started A level work since the GCSEs were cancelled. He might be able to fit in an extra one.
My youngest has a special timetable. The whole thing is run though Google Docs. It’s excellent. He starts work at 830 and stops a 1400. Communal assemblies each week. We get emails if homework is not done on time.
As good as the best in the private sector. I imagine experiences vary by school across the country regardless of sector.
That`s impressive. Fair play. This doesn`t chime with what I`m hearing from parents with children in state schiools round here. They are reporting posted assigments (not even emailed), little or no marking/feedback. When they manage to get a teacher`s email address, it bounces back "mailbox not attended". That`s what I`m hearing.
Given such things (the issues of GPs we discussed the other day) - can we finally get rid of the idea that all of X in a public service are delivering Y levels of service?
Exactly. When the schools are functioning normally we hear regular bleats about the terror of Ofsted inspections, but the plain fact is that some schools are brilliant, some are average and some are total shite. Presumably it is not unreasonable to suppose that a mechanism should exist to differentiate between them.
Likewise with GPs. I have to say that the experiences I and my relatives have had recently with ours have been excellent. OTOH we heard downthread from another PBer who couldn't even get a repeat prescription sorted because his surgery had simply shut up shop and everyone had buggered off home.
What we absolutely must not allow to happen as a result of all of this is for a culture to become embedded within the public sector that regards the population as being there to serve it rather than the other way around. The treatment of the NHS as a deity to be worshipped is especially unhealthy and really ought to stop, although whether it will is another matter.
But GPs are semi-private already and patients are free to switch between practices. This is the paradox. If the free marketeers are right, general practice should be near perfect because of this consumer choice but in fact this is where we hear most complaints.
Have you tried switching between practises? I was once told that it was beneficial to the NHS that it was difficult, by an NHS manager.
The same person was very keen on the idea that you could swap your mobile provider in a day or so....
It might be the market does work and GP practices are set up so most of their patients are happy but the vocal ones are not. In particular, regarding appointment times, most patients want to go to the doctor during the normal working day and not before or after work. Most patients have chronic conditions, or are infants. And so on.
But if you think back to New Labour's time in office, there was a lot made of the need for out-of-hours access, and electronic transfer of records between practices. Who lives like that? Which group wants to visit GPs hundreds of miles apart so needs them both to see the same files? 600-ish MPs, mainly.
Obviously, no-one will have chosen their practice based on their pandemic response so it might be interesting to see if there are mass movements of patients after we are out of the woods.
In many places you have only one practise. In some areas practises refuse to take patients from another practise - they literally tell people they can't move.
guaranteed to be rubbish but absolutely shocking that you find this topic funny Harry. I know you have the Scottish cringe but that is bad. It is a hash of the usual no hopers saying SNPBasd, bit like my previous post on carcrash care home numbers, he mixed up Scottish and English numbers as he transferred them from his fingers. Keep trying and one day you will get your English badge.
I understand England has confirmed 17,000 tracers appointed to date and it will be up and running by the end of the month
Having a go at Scotland at zero is fair
G, you rage about anyone criticising Boris, government etc yet someone laughing at such a sensitive topic is ok in your book, have a think. PS: The Daily Record and the lying Tories in the article have no idea who has or has not been hired. Maybe you should be laughing at the 100K a day that was supposedly achieved once by Hancock booking himself 40K tests and never ever met again.
Malc, these lads are still raging' that Nicola is thought of more highly in England than their buffoonish hero. Be gentle with them.
No need to be gentle with me.
I have lived with the independence argument for most of my 76 years and indeed having been schooled at Berwick on Tweed and cannoed down the Tweed from source I have as good a knowledge of the subject as many
Indeed Berwick flipped between the two 13 times
Indeed I do not attack the nationalists for the sake of it but the idea Nicola is a saint and beyond reproach is nonsense. As this pans out she may well come under great pressure, especially in her own handling of the care sector
On another subject the 1,000 top wealthy people have lost 54 billion pounds in 2 months
Expect few will shed a tear
Is there some kind of psychological condition inherent in PB Unionism that makes its adherents revert to strawman assertions such as folk have been suggesting that 'Nicola is a saint and beyond reproach', something not said by any supporter of indy on here ever?
Otoh I can think of one politician who has recently inspired such glassy eyed fawning on PB, and I can think of the posters who have done it.
Exactly, I have slagged her a lot and would like to see her gone before next year's election. However she is streets ahead of the donkeys in Westminster ( a good few of those are SNP ones as well ) and Boris and his cabinet in particular.
The questions for Johnson are: Does he want Brexit "done" by end Dec? Does he want to cook the "oven-ready deal"? If yes, it means accepting EU core lines. This just wastes people's time and attention that should be on CV19
Surely the Irish Backstop was made obselete when the UK agreed an internal customs border in the Irish Sea? Barnier did not drop it, but rather won his earlier position.
PB has this weird obsession with anti-Independence and pro-Toryism. There's very little in between
They are shit scared of having to stand on their own two feet, terrified of what to call themselves , England and bits , rUK, bits of Britain, and cannot work out how to keep the Great.
Mr. Scott, I find the food retailers aspect pretty weird.
They've been working hard and ensured supplies remained solid even when people were panic-buying, and their staff have been some of the few to be persistently in contact with the public on a daily basis.
Not sure why they should be subject to a pernicious tax on top of that.
Not a fan of windfall taxes generally but there's more of a case for one (or less of an argument against, to be precise) when it comes to online retailers.
Don't see why people doing business should be penalised. The money they make allows them to do helpful things like provide the public with food and the state with taxes.
There is a contradiction built into reality. To be taxed in any significant way you have to be honest and successful. There is no-one else to get all that money out of. Drug dealers, bank robbers and benefits junkies are not good sources of revenue. Hard working businesses are.
Legalising drugs would raise billions in tax and save a fortune on the police and prisons.
Shame about the brain damage.
But they’re only druggies, right?
Why would it be any different from now, they buy crappy illegal ones and get brain damage now.
I am not convinced it would raise any money - not without a huge HMRC crackdown on newly 'illegal' sources of supply, which would itself be an expensive use of police resources. When you can walk down the street smoking weed these days, what incentive is there to switch from your current dealer to the 'legal' supplier who will be far more expensive and probably offer a weaker version of the drug?
The economics of the drug trade are thus
- drugs are very, very cheap at source - the supply chains are long and chaotic - they are run by criminals who spend much of the time stealing from each other - this is where the violence comes from and the attempts to organise the trade. With more violence.
Legal weed* is an order of magnitude cheaper than "street prices", so it can be heavily taxed, without the price exceeding the criminal price. This has been demonstrated.
What has become a problem in some places in the US, is that the politicians have gone loopy on the taxes and driven the price too high.
*It is literally a weed. *Stopping* it growing is hard.
Thanks, that's a really interesting insight - never imagined the legal stuff could be cheaper. And indeed, most stories I have heard have seemed to indicate the opposite.
Imagine it grown by, say, professional tobacco farmers. Farmed by the 1000 acre rather than in rented houses.
Processed in plants miles square, rather than in Fred's drying cupboard....
A long while ago, the Economist estimated that a major medical drug supplier could supply 100% pure cocaine - to the pharmacy - at a price per 100 grams roughly equal to the price per gram on the street. Literally 100 time cheaper.
Isn't this what happened in America, that the small hippy local growers were forced out by proper farmers, who themselves were forced out by Big Weed?
Efficiency will win in the end. I told my hippy friends that Big Agriculture and Big Tobacco were coming, and they didn't believe me.
Though there is a market for artisan weed, apparently. All farmers market style etc...
That's exactly what the local state school I know of are setting up, practicing and generally working on at the moment.
It is also what has been done in other countries, I believe.
Completely unworkable for a large number of schools unless you take only half the pupils back.
Serious question. Could you not have half in in the morning and half in the afternoon, extending the school day a bit if necessary? Surely that would be better than nothing
Good luck negotiating overtime rates for "extending the school day a bit" but of course you would also lose much of the childminding function of schools, allowing mum and dad to put in a full shift at the salt mines while junior learns Latin and paints NHS rainbows.
Teachers are already paid well for working a half day as it is, 20 weeks vacation etc , why would they need overtime.
Yep. I think we can probably surmise what caused this. There was such a desperation to get rid of the elderly from hospitals, to clear capacity for new Covid patients, that they were just thrown at the care homes to get them out of the way. I seem to recall reading elsewhere that homes which initially refused to have them back were threatened (by councils?) with having funding withdrawn if they dug their heels in, so they gave in. We all know how this ended.
Looking at what's happened abroad it looks like pretty well everyone screwed up when it came to care homes, but that doesn't make the failure any more excusable.
In England and Wales, 9 039 out of 12 483 covid-related deaths, by 1st May, were in care homes and that is 72.4%.
I presume that in a bad winter flu epidemic, the bulk of deaths are also in care homes?
Still shocking numbers mind. A tacit acceptance by the NHS that if they were over 80, there really was in all likelihood nothing that could be done for victims? Outcomes were proving very poor for the elderly taken into hospital - they just didn't respond. So let them die in the place they knew as home...
Have to say it has been a shocking failure across the UK and many other countries. In the main these homes have been run like puppy farms just to make venture capitalists money. Needs to be a complete rethink of the whole social care policy.
Absolutely right
We can't afford that, though, just like we can;t afford a new normal. The evidence is we will shortly be very, very bankrupt.
People talk about innovation and new ways of working for certain industries without giving a single detail of what those ways are. That is because those alternative ways do not exist.
We either live with coronavirus or, essentially, our society disintegrates. Health education, the economy, the whole thing
And for most people its pretty liveable with.
Good post Contrarian
Why doesn’t the government ‘level with the British public’ and say we’re broke and we can’t afford to lockdown any further regardless of the ongoing risks.
Agreed. They should do. They are not leading they are weathervaning.
They won`t take us out of lockdown until opinion polls and focus groups tell them it`s OK. The polls won`t say it`s OK while: 1) Sunak keeps chucking money at people for staying at home and 2) politicians and the media are terryfying people about the virus, saying things like "don`t go back to work until it`s safe".
Of course it`s not safe FFS. Public perception of risk is appalling. I told a family member the other day that Covid has a survival rate of over 99% and she flatly disbelieved me. I asked her what she though the survival rate was and she said 50/50.
The lockdown served a number of purposes.
The primary purpose was to avoid the horror of people dying in hospital corridors. And thankfully that was achieved.
The second purpose was to buy time. Time to figure a post lockdown policy and build up capacity in services like testing. I think the goal might have been to get cases down so that track and trace was viable again. Sadly that has not been achieved.
So where are we and why can't we lockdown a bit more?
In short, the public finances have collapsed. So we are now in the invidious position of having to exit lockdown into a very muddy context, where the possibility of returning to the pre-lockdown situation has not and can not be ruled out.
The government should be focusing on delivering and communicating mitigating measures that maintain (or regain) public confidence. Arguably as we leave lockdown, the best action would have been to be more stringent on certain things. It could have insisted on masks for example.
Instead it appears to be rushing the whole thing, probably driven by the critical state of the nations finances. It's saying 'it will be fine' doesn't really wash. Especially, when it hasn't told the whole story about how the lockdown has screwed the economy. As a result it does not add up.
In short, the government has made two mistakes.
1) It has not set out the economic picture. 2) It has done nothing to mitigate the risks of exiting lockdown.
Excellent post, Jonathan.
I`m forever arguing that the economic (and liberty) aspects of this have been undervalued and have not been communicated. Most of the public do not understand the first thing about public finances (e.g. believing that the government has its own money somehow, rather than just administering ours).
Scaring the public over health is easy (and appeals to the journos). The economy is dry and difficult.
My main beef at the moment is that this government`s populism is costing the country dearly.
As Jonathan says, why doesn't the government just level with the electorate?
I think it should have done. Ideally before Sunak extended the furlough scheme from three months to four.
One reason might be that honesty undermines their threat of a second lockdown if we are naughty and R goes up.
In reality the country simply cannot afford a second lockdown, and that is an empty threat.
I don't think most people will put up with a second lockdown.
As far as I can tell people have more or less divided into two camps, the pearl clutchers who will not accept a single covid 19 death as inevitable, despite the fact that life entails risk and for the vast majority of healthy people under 60 there is a greater risk of being run over by a bus tomorrow than of dying of covid 19.
The other camp is full of people who have realised this and are barely paying lip service to lockdown any more. Without truly draconian measures it will be impossible to lock this second camp up for round II, rendering a second lockdown pointless and ineffective.
There will be no second lockdown. Not only will it cost too much, it simply won't work. That means only one thing: we need to shield the elderly and the vulnerable, but find a way to get everyone else back into work.
Stay at home and save lives was a simple message, work and pay tax is equally as simple. It's the latter that we need now to save the NHS.
Very good post - though I would oppose "shielding" anyone if by that you mean by compulsory means.
I agree. I can't speak for everyone over 60, but all the ones I know (mostly family - a few colleagues and ex colleagues) would rather live with the risk than not see their grandkids again, not be able to socialise, etc. But we should make it easy for them to self isolate if they choose to.
I was thinking more of a way to shield the superannuated, the ones in care homes who aren't getting out much any more and may not have more years left to live. Ultimately they are the ones most at risk from covid 19. We need to protect life but not at the cost of the entire economy.
Most people of working age need to accept that there will be some risk and get back to work. The economy, and by implication the public services it supports, needs us all to do our duty.
Surely the Irish Backstop was made obselete when the UK agreed an internal customs border in the Irish Sea? Barnier did not drop it, but rather won his earlier position.
Yep, let's pretend that it was the EU that backed down and that Boris didn't actually go back to the original EU position that May had rejected on political grounds.
Surely the Irish Backstop was made obselete when the UK agreed an internal customs border in the Irish Sea? Barnier did not drop it, but rather won his earlier position.
Yep, let's pretend that it was the EU that backed down and that Boris didn't actually go back to the original EU position that May had rejected on political grounds.
Johnson insisted there would be no checks. I see they sneaked that through the other day, that indeed there will be checks.
Johnson didn't get anything new as you say. The EU got what they wanted.
[Cannabis] is literally a weed. *Stopping* it growing is hard.
My father actually grew it by mistake once; he threw some old birdseed on the garden and a plant he didn't recognise grew. Because it was so different he didn't dig it up. He even used to take gardening friends down to see it.
Then about a year later there was an article in the paper about someone being arrested for growing cannabis illegally. The article had a photo...
This is what I was talking about last week when I felt that the UK was fast approaching the limit of QE. The markets are starting to notice that there isn't any kind of long term plan in the UK and the government has completely lost control of the situation.
Excellent thread @Foxy - I don't envy the task facing those working in the NHS. I would take issue with this:
Non surgical specialities including mental health will be similarly affected, though these get less media attention.
You can't turn on the news these days without hearing about mental health. Sure enough, the Sky News presenter Niall Paterson has just said he's starting to suffer and they'll be discussing it on (I think) the Sophy Ridge show.
Have to say the UK has turned into a bunch of wimps. Everybody seems to be ill and cannot cope with anything nowadays, why does it have top billing in every disorder known to man.
To be honest Malc we have a close family member suffering from PTSD after rescuing bodies in an earthquake zone. It is not something to dismiss so easily to be honest
G, I understand people can be really ill with these types of things but why does UK have so high a number for all these ailments and disabilities. It is the saddest , fattest , unhealthiest , most disabled country in the developed world.
See, when you put it like that you have a really good point.
That was my point , perhaps not well put the first time.
A friend of mine has been going on about this & it's really valid. How many obesity-related deaths occur each year in the UK? You don't see a lot of fuss being made about it but his argument is that we should accept coronavirus is around and focus rather on obesity and exercise.
Crisp tax anyone?
I doubt that these kinds of sin taxes have the intended effect. They simply make things that taste nice less affordable for poor people.
Positive nudge is probably cheaper, easier to implement. A Vitality type system for the general population would probably save the NHS money.
When this is finally over the Department of Health should consider paying for fat people to attend slimming clubs. If we could succeed even in getting a fifth of the obese population down into the overweight category and a tenth of the overweight population down into the healthy range then the benefits would be well worth the expenditure.
I see your point, but - hmmm - that`s a bit too big brother for me.
I don't think a gym subsidy is "big brother". However it does risk the perception that by being fat you get a bonus that other people want but have to pay for.
Go to a french town of say 20,000 people and it will have public sports and leisure facilities equivalent to an English town of 100,000.
Thats why they get to eat croissants, cheese, four course meals for lunch and still be fitter than us.
Extra sports and leisure facilities will not help if people will not use them.
A walk every evening is free and very effective for weight loss.
I am finding it a pretty close run thing. 2 hours of walking versus way too many snacks whilst at home on lockdown. Weight goes up and down but my daughter is just making blueberry pancakes. This might be an up day.
I've been surprised just how much a long walk with the dog in the evening helps with weight loss. Gym visits I found didn't help much with weight because you didn't lose much and ate like a pig when you got back.
Walking doesn’t have the cardio workout. I have tried running but my knees and ankles remind me why I liked the non impact cross trainer in the gym. I am looking forward to getting back.
I am doing circuits of press-ups, sit-ups, squats and lunges every other day. Five sets of 13, 15, 18 and 18, pus another 10 press-ups on top. It takes about 25 minutes and is deeply unpleasant, but it has stopped me putting on even more weight than I have. Chocolate is a killer currently.
I do 10 press ups every time I go for a pee. Meaning with a weak bladder I have developed quite some biceps. Almost popeye standard.
I would have thought it would have developed a much stronger bladder first :-)
Or a very wet floor.
Clarification! -
I do 10 press ups every time I have a pee, not a pee every time I do 10 press ups.
[Cannabis] is literally a weed. *Stopping* it growing is hard.
My father actually grew it by mistake once; he threw some old birdseed on the garden and a plant he didn't recognise grew. Because it was so different he didn't dig it up. He even used to take gardening friends down to see it.
Then about a year later there was an article in the paper about someone being arrested for growing cannabis illegally. The article had a photo...
I was shown around a flat once that had a very large Pot plant.
Surely the Irish Backstop was made obselete when the UK agreed an internal customs border in the Irish Sea? Barnier did not drop it, but rather won his earlier position.
Yep, let's pretend that it was the EU that backed down and that Boris didn't actually go back to the original EU position that May had rejected on political grounds.
I was shown around a flat once that had a very large Pot plant.
Another anecdote: I had a friend that worked for a while for the police (as a civilian). The police office also had an unusual "pot" plant, apparently acquired on a raid.
This is what I was talking about last week when I felt that the UK was fast approaching the limit of QE. The markets are starting to notice that there isn't any kind of long term plan in the UK and the government has completely lost control of the situation.
The underlying problem is that you cannot permanently consume more goods and services than you produce.
The questions for Johnson are: Does he want Brexit "done" by end Dec? Does he want to cook the "oven-ready deal"? If yes, it means accepting EU core lines. This just wastes people's time and attention that should be on CV19
I think we might agree a time-limited deal that is quite close to membership with a target timetable for future negotiated divergence. In essence extending the transition but with just enough difference to allow it to be presented as a win.
That's exactly what the local state school I know of are setting up, practicing and generally working on at the moment.
It is also what has been done in other countries, I believe.
Completely unworkable for a large number of schools unless you take only half the pupils back.
Serious question. Could you not have half in in the morning and half in the afternoon, extending the school day a bit if necessary? Surely that would be better than nothing
Good luck negotiating overtime rates for "extending the school day a bit" but of course you would also lose much of the childminding function of schools, allowing mum and dad to put in a full shift at the salt mines while junior learns Latin and paints NHS rainbows.
I think anyone asking for overtime pay after sitting on their backsides for 2 months on full pay would get short shift from the public. I agree it doesn't solve the child minding problem
That's exactly what the local state school I know of are setting up, practicing and generally working on at the moment.
It is also what has been done in other countries, I believe.
Completely unworkable for a large number of schools unless you take only half the pupils back.
Serious question. Could you not have half in in the morning and half in the afternoon, extending the school day a bit if necessary? Surely that would be better than nothing
Good luck negotiating overtime rates for "extending the school day a bit" but of course you would also lose much of the childminding function of schools, allowing mum and dad to put in a full shift at the salt mines while junior learns Latin and paints NHS rainbows.
I think anyone asking for overtime pay after sitting on their backsides for 2 months on full pay would get short shift from the public.
Doesn't mean the teaching unions won't insist on it.
Mr. Scott, I find the food retailers aspect pretty weird.
They've been working hard and ensured supplies remained solid even when people were panic-buying, and their staff have been some of the few to be persistently in contact with the public on a daily basis.
Not sure why they should be subject to a pernicious tax on top of that.
Not a fan of windfall taxes generally but there's more of a case for one (or less of an argument against, to be precise) when it comes to online retailers.
Don't see why people doing business should be penalised. The money they make allows them to do helpful things like provide the public with food and the state with taxes.
There is a contradiction built into reality. To be taxed in any significant way you have to be honest and successful. There is no-one else to get all that money out of. Drug dealers, bank robbers and benefits junkies are not good sources of revenue. Hard working businesses are.
Legalising drugs would raise billions in tax and save a fortune on the police and prisons.
Shame about the brain damage.
But they’re only druggies, right?
Why would it be any different from now, they buy crappy illegal ones and get brain damage now.
I am not convinced it would raise any money - not without a huge HMRC crackdown on newly 'illegal' sources of supply, which would itself be an expensive use of police resources. When you can walk down the street smoking weed these days, what incentive is there to switch from your current dealer to the 'legal' supplier who will be far more expensive and probably offer a weaker version of the drug?
The economics of the drug trade are thus
- drugs are very, very cheap at source - the supply chains are long and chaotic - they are run by criminals who spend much of the time stealing from each other - this is where the violence comes from and the attempts to organise the trade. With more violence.
Legal weed* is an order of magnitude cheaper than "street prices", so it can be heavily taxed, without the price exceeding the criminal price. This has been demonstrated.
What has become a problem in some places in the US, is that the politicians have gone loopy on the taxes and driven the price too high.
*It is literally a weed. *Stopping* it growing is hard.
Thanks, that's a really interesting insight - never imagined the legal stuff could be cheaper. And indeed, most stories I have heard have seemed to indicate the opposite.
Imagine it grown by, say, professional tobacco farmers. Farmed by the 1000 acre rather than in rented houses.
Processed in plants miles square, rather than in Fred's drying cupboard....
A long while ago, the Economist estimated that a major medical drug supplier could supply 100% pure cocaine - to the pharmacy - at a price per 100 grams roughly equal to the price per gram on the street. Literally 100 time cheaper.
Isn't this what happened in America, that the small hippy local growers were forced out by proper farmers, who themselves were forced out by Big Weed?
guaranteed to be rubbish but absolutely shocking that you find this topic funny Harry. I know you have the Scottish cringe but that is bad. It is a hash of the usual no hopers saying SNPBasd, bit like my previous post on carcrash care home numbers, he mixed up Scottish and English numbers as he transferred them from his fingers. Keep trying and one day you will get your English badge.
I understand England has confirmed 17,000 tracers appointed to date and it will be up and running by the end of the month
Having a go at Scotland at zero is fair
G, you rage about anyone criticising Boris, government etc yet someone laughing at such a sensitive topic is ok in your book, have a think. PS: The Daily Record and the lying Tories in the article have no idea who has or has not been hired. Maybe you should be laughing at the 100K a day that was supposedly achieved once by Hancock booking himself 40K tests and never ever met again.
Malc, these lads are still raging' that Nicola is thought of more highly in England than their buffoonish hero. Be gentle with them.
No need to be gentle with me.
I have lived with the independence argument for most of my 76 years and indeed having been schooled at Berwick on Tweed and cannoed down the Tweed from source I have as good a knowledge of the subject as many
Indeed Berwick flipped between the two 13 times
Indeed I do not attack the nationalists for the sake of it but the idea Nicola is a saint and beyond reproach is nonsense. As this pans out she may well come under great pressure, especially in her own handling of the care sector
On another subject the 1,000 top wealthy people have lost 54 billion pounds in 2 months
Expect few will shed a tear
Is there some kind of psychological condition inherent in PB Unionism that makes its adherents revert to strawman assertions such as folk have been suggesting that 'Nicola is a saint and beyond reproach', something not said by any supporter of indy on here ever?
Otoh I can think of one politician who has recently inspired such glassy eyed fawning on PB, and I can think of the posters who have done it.
Mmm. "Boris". And the adoration goes well beyond what you would expect to hear about a politician. One particularly exuberant poster the other day even said (with a totally straight face) that his excess weight was mainly muscle.
This is what I was talking about last week when I felt that the UK was fast approaching the limit of QE. The markets are starting to notice that there isn't any kind of long term plan in the UK and the government has completely lost control of the situation.
That doesnt seem like that big an amount, there will be far more bet on todays Bayern Munich game. (Especially if the £750m is the notional risk if the £ strengthens against them, rather than an average win/loss for a typical currency trade).
I see Andrew Rawnsley has a 'senior Tory' briefing against Boris. I wonder who it is. IDS?
Last week the Labour leader skewered the prime minister on the grim death toll in care homes. “It didn’t take the brains of an archbishop to work out that he would go on care homes,” remarks one senior Tory with personal experience of doing PMQs. “Why wasn’t Boris properly prepared for that?”
That's exactly what the local state school I know of are setting up, practicing and generally working on at the moment.
It is also what has been done in other countries, I believe.
Completely unworkable for a large number of schools unless you take only half the pupils back.
Serious question. Could you not have half in in the morning and half in the afternoon, extending the school day a bit if necessary? Surely that would be better than nothing
Good luck negotiating overtime rates for "extending the school day a bit" but of course you would also lose much of the childminding function of schools, allowing mum and dad to put in a full shift at the salt mines while junior learns Latin and paints NHS rainbows.
Teachers are already paid well for working a half day as it is, 20 weeks vacation etc , why would they need overtime.
Comments
I have lived with the independence argument for most of my 76 years and indeed having been schooled at Berwick on Tweed and cannoed down the Tweed from source I have as good a knowledge of the subject as many
Indeed Berwick flipped between the two 13 times
Indeed I do not attack the nationalists for the sake of it but the idea Nicola is a saint and beyond reproach is nonsense. As this pans out she may well come under great pressure, especially in her own handling of the care sector
On another subject the 1,000 top wealthy people have lost 54 billion pounds in 2 months
Expect few will shed a tear
If you are prone to putting on weight it is a thankless task trying to maintain a healthy weight. We need to avoid moralising. Throughout my lifetime I have always found the most judgemental people to be those who drink 5 pints a night, eat what they want and never put on a pound.
The same person was very keen on the idea that you could swap your mobile provider in a day or so....
Plus if they're only getting proper teaching half the time why bother? Our kids are doing fine working from home, with the added benefit of not bringing a potentially fatal disease home with them.
A third of posters (let alone readers) bet little or nothing; maybe a third bet folding cash - but hobby stakes - and no more than a third would feel comfortable betting more than £100 on any given outcome.
Second, odds can be confusing at the best of times. In fact, that's what helps people who understand make their money.
Third, a majority of punters on here use the Betfair exchange. This means two things. First, they can bet against a particular horse, so to speak, in a way you can't at a bookmaker. Second, partially as a result, they might place dozens of bets on an event in the future (for example, the upcoming US presidential election), repeatedly backing or laying (betting against) candidates as the odds change over time. Indeed, the whole thing feels a bit like a stock market: buy low, sell high (in % chance) or sell high, buy low.
Actually, both probably equally true!
The point is that you will have about 30% or less of the children in the school.
It would be interesting to know the actual stats on this. I`d be surprised if it was as low as a third.
I regularly go above £100, but probably not much above this. I`m well over £2,000 on Trump to lose the election, but that is exceptional for me.
PB is generally a civilised place for political discussion even between die hard foes of each other. The off topic stuff keeps it more civilised, such as @MarqueeMark "Moth of the Day", as I can admire his knowledge on natural history, even while bitterly opposing his politics for example.
The numbers are decimal odds, so 1.9 (on Con most seats) is slightly better than evens (2 = 1/1 in odds), while Con majority at 1.92 is almost 2/1, and 2.62 on hung Parliament is roughly 5/2).
I think these are probably about right, so agree with the market. I think Con will struggle to get so much of the blue collar and older vote next GE, and the NHS will be a considerable factor.
The short version - it is a closed market. Entry is controlled - partly by the existing participants. What follows is what classic economic theory suggests will happen.
Indeed it makes sense
In a side-by-side comparison of evolutionary dynamics between the 2019/2020 SARS-CoV-2 and the 2003 SARS-CoV, we were surprised to find that SARS-CoV-2 resembles SARS-CoV in the late phase of the 2003 epidemic after SARS-CoV had developed several advantageous adaptations for human transmission. Our observations suggest that by the time SARS-CoV-2 was first detected in late 2019, it was already pre-adapted to human transmission to an extent similar to late epidemic SARS-CoV. However, no precursors or branches of evolution stemming from a less human-adapted SARS-CoV-2-like virus have been detected. The sudden appearance of a highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 presents a major cause for concern that should motivate stronger international efforts to identify the source and prevent near future re-emergence. Any existing pools of SARS-CoV-2 progenitors would be particularly dangerous if similarly well adapted for human transmission. To look for clues regarding intermediate hosts, we analyze recent key findings relating to how SARS-CoV-2 could have evolved and adapted for human transmission, and examine the environmental samples from the Wuhan Huanan seafood market. Importantly, the market samples are genetically identical to human SARS-CoV-2 isolates and were therefore most likely from human sources. We conclude by describing and advocating for measured and effective approaches implemented in the 2002-2004 SARS outbreaks to identify lingering population(s) of progenitor virus.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262v1
But if you think back to New Labour's time in office, there was a lot made of the need for out-of-hours access, and electronic transfer of records between practices. Who lives like that? Which group wants to visit GPs hundreds of miles apart so needs them both to see the same files? 600-ish MPs, mainly.
Obviously, no-one will have chosen their practice based on their pandemic response so it might be interesting to see if there are mass movements of patients after we are out of the woods.
- drugs are very, very cheap at source
- the supply chains are long and chaotic
- they are run by criminals who spend much of the time stealing from each other
- this is where the violence comes from and the attempts to organise the trade. With more violence.
Legal weed* is an order of magnitude cheaper than "street prices", so it can be heavily taxed, without the price exceeding the criminal price. This has been demonstrated.
What has become a problem in some places in the US, is that the politicians have gone loopy on the taxes and driven the price too high.
*It is literally a weed. *Stopping* it growing is hard.
And I've been critical of the UK (England, Wales, Scotland, NI - all four, not just one on Care Homes) and arrival quarantine (UK) for weeks.
BFx decimal odds correct on Thursday at time of writing!
Serious question. Could you not have half in in the morning and half in the afternoon, extending the school day a bit if necessary? Surely that would be better than nothing
A quick question but I suspect a long answer. If you were the Health Secretary and were given a blank sheet of paper, what would be the key changes you would make?
It looks to me as if the advice in february should have been changed in early march and that change came late and caused the nightmare that followed.
Also care homes has been a failure across most countries who seem to have acted in a similar manner
I expect the public enquiry that is coming will have some damning comments to make on the process and the lack of attention to 'time of essence'
https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1261980645426900992?s=20
https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1261981217664229378?s=20
Otoh I can think of one politician who has recently inspired such glassy eyed fawning on PB, and I can think of the posters who have done it.
https://twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/1261981892439674881?s=20
Processed in plants miles square, rather than in Fred's drying cupboard....
A long while ago, the Economist estimated that a major medical drug supplier could supply 100% pure cocaine - to the pharmacy - at a price per 100 grams roughly equal to the price per gram on the street. Literally 100 time cheaper.
It is the tax haven for those Tories that do not like it too warm and don't want to go as far as Cayman's , Virgin Isles etc.
https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2018/07/01/three-score-and-ten-has-the-nhs-reached-the-end-of-its-natural-life/
Though there is a market for artisan weed, apparently. All farmers market style etc...
I was thinking more of a way to shield the superannuated, the ones in care homes who aren't getting out much any more and may not have more years left to live. Ultimately they are the ones most at risk from covid 19. We need to protect life but not at the cost of the entire economy.
Most people of working age need to accept that there will be some risk and get back to work. The economy, and by implication the public services it supports, needs us all to do our duty.
Johnson didn't get anything new as you say. The EU got what they wanted.
Then about a year later there was an article in the paper about someone being arrested for growing cannabis illegally. The article had a photo...
This is what I was talking about last week when I felt that the UK was fast approaching the limit of QE. The markets are starting to notice that there isn't any kind of long term plan in the UK and the government has completely lost control of the situation.
I do 10 press ups every time I have a pee, not a pee every time I do 10 press ups.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s-zsPRhcwc
TBF, they do have about 80% of the UK's population (79% of it south of Watford
Last week the Labour leader skewered the prime minister on the grim death toll in care homes. “It didn’t take the brains of an archbishop to work out that he would go on care homes,” remarks one senior Tory with personal experience of doing PMQs. “Why wasn’t Boris properly prepared for that?”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/17/as-public-confidence-in-the-government-tumbles-the-coronavirus-truce-is-over
@Foxy might be able to opine?