To be fair to Cabinet Ministers, when they decided that social distancing could be achieved by limiting class sizes to 15, from their own and their children’s experience they had little notion that children would ever be taught in larger groups...
And once the private schools go back you can guarantee the urgency about opening schools attended by the kids of us plebs will somehow disappear.
Syria and Afghanistan are having culture wars. Centrist liberals and religious moderates get squeezed out. Libraries get burned. Minorities murdered. There's probably other stuff too.
Those are actual wars not culture wars.
All those incels in body armour cos playing Blackwater operatives are ready and willing when the culture war goes hot. Farage may even get his khaki out.
There is an airsoft place near me. Quite war-y. They certainly have all the kit. Not sure who is attracted to that. They all looked like FAMs so perhaps people coming back from Afghan, etc, or perhaps people who wished they could have come back from Afghan, etc.
I’ve just had a COVID swab. Gag city, population me.
Not that straight forward, is it!
Thanks everyone for all the kind wishes. My post wasn't intended so much to elicit sympathy (but nice of you all anyway) as to warn of the danger of a second wave. I'd suggest staying very alert wherever you are but especially if you are in London or another big city.
We are mystified as to how the Memsahib caught the bug. We were virtually self isolating until she came down to London but even there she had very little contact with outsiders and the epidemic had apparently eased. We suspect a walk on Hampstead Heath when it was very busy may be the culprit, but we really don't know.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
“Erected by citizens of Bristol as a memorial of one of the most virtuous and wise sons of their city”.
That is what it said.
To adapt your example to an equivalent it would be a 60/70s building stating Jimmy Savilles a great role model for kids and does so much for charity.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
“Erected by citizens of Bristol as a memorial of one of the most virtuous and wise sons of their city”.
That is what it said.
To adapt your example to an equivalent it would be a 60/70s building stating Jimmy Savilles a great role model for kids and does so much for charity.
Such a building wouldnt last long.
or at least the pictures of jimmy saville would get torn down.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you trying to equate changing tastes in architecture, with a monument celebrating a bloke who made his fortune in human trafficking?
If I were a North Korean citizen who's family had been sent to the camps or starved to death, I'd be pretty pissed off if I had to walk past a statue of the dear leader on a daily basis.
I have been having two slices of toast with a) marmalade (Frank Cooper, rough cut); and b) peanut butter (Pip 'n Nut) each day in lockdown.
Each slice of toast I would say is 150-200 calories (including the butter, etc).
So. I have henceforth decided to have only one slice of toast a day (alternating with peanut butter and marmalade) which means...by Friday I will have saved up enough calories to compensate for the bottle of wine I have on Friday evening!
Fantastic trade imo.
Yay me.
Or do what I do and skip either breakfast or lunch, combined with high protein dinners and a pretty tough exercise regime I'm in bettr shape than ever. Ready for the revolution...
I have in the past when I had to keep my weight low skipped breakfast and found it quite miserable. But if it works for you that's great.
I was never fitter than when I had every day (every day!) a sausage sandwich. My workouts, stamina, strength all improved. The energy boost from not hitting your workouts depleted was significant.
But then if you're up for it as I said that's great.
I'm finding it easier during lockdown than at the office where there was always an excuse to go out and get a coffee and inevitably a pastry from the amazing cafe in our building.
I think being home all day has definitely led to better home cooked meals and better overall eating as neither of us have the option of going out for lunch and getting a burger or whatever.
Syria and Afghanistan are having culture wars. Centrist liberals and religious moderates get squeezed out. Libraries get burned. Minorities murdered. There's probably other stuff too.
Those are actual wars not culture wars.
All those incels in body armour cos playing Blackwater operatives are ready and willing when the culture war goes hot. Farage may even get his khaki out.
There is an airsoft place near me. Quite war-y. They certainly have all the kit. Not sure who is attracted to that. They all looked like FAMs so perhaps people coming back from Afghan, etc, or perhaps people who wished they could have come back from Afghan, etc.
Am I right in thinking that some of the US cops are using paint ball guns for riot control? Vastly preferable to AR15s of course, but there seems to be quite a cultural mashup going on.
I have been having two slices of toast with a) marmalade (Frank Cooper, rough cut); and b) peanut butter (Pip 'n Nut) each day in lockdown.
Each slice of toast I would say is 150-200 calories (including the butter, etc).
So. I have henceforth decided to have only one slice of toast a day (alternating with peanut butter and marmalade) which means...by Friday I will have saved up enough calories to compensate for the bottle of wine I have on Friday evening!
That's swings of 8.5% and 6.5% away from Trump in Oklahoma and Kentucky. Senior retired Republicans are queuing up to be negative about Trump or even endorse Biden. But the White House is trailing a big "unity" address to the nation this week. The Donald, he can do anything. From the great polariser to the great unifier? Something "great" anyway. He's the greatest and realest, and nothing like a loser or a fake. He can be the unifiers' unifier if he chooses. Best of luck with that. Not sure I've ever seen a US leader so busted this far out.
Yep. Too late now. Some people are on the pitch. The fat lady is fingering her mike. Coronavirus was a golden opportunity to reinvent himself as a credible president. Indeed I was slightly scared that he would somehow manage to do so - it was his one clear chance to head off the big defeat in November that I have long thought inevitable.
But I needn't have worried. The situation merely exposed his almost comical limitations further. He simply does not have the capability to speak or lead in a 'national interest' manner. When he tries it looks and sounds ridiculous because it is so clearly phony. And on top of this you have the glaring lack of competence which is hard to hide when there is a genuine crisis on.
So, sure, he may have another go at 'presidential' but the result will be the same. It will come over as false. Few will be swayed and of those who are it will as likely be the other way. For his hardcore supporters it might still be a case of "To know him is to love him," but for everybody else the opposite now applies. He appears, he speaks, he net repels.
His best re-election strategy in my view would be one of minimalist blandness from here until polling day. Keep his head down. Stay out of the news. But of course it has no chance of being adopted. Instead it will be double down on Boast, Blame, Bluster. Chances of this securing many votes other than his base and those outside it who would vote Republican regardless? Slim to zero. He's toast.
This is a case of reductio ad absurdum. I really don't know what Adonis is playing at by conflating Colston with the likes of Cromwell.
There was every case for pulling down the Bristol statue and I for one am glad that something so insulting to so many has gone. The man was part of a company responsible for transporting 80,000 slaves and probably causing the death of the same number who didn't make it alive. It was erected in the late 19th Century due to the funding of its sponsor who stepped in following the failure of a public appeal, at a time when slavery was already utterly abhorrent, so it didn't really represent opinion even then. The fact that those casting around for other examples are finding it hard to identify anything else so abhorrent rather makes the point that the Bristol statue was pretty unique. Shame on the authorities for not getting rid of it years ago. Just occasionally, very occasionally, it's right for the public to intervene when the authorities fail so spectacularly.
The only issue that I have with its removal is the fact that the crowd should not have gathered in the midst of an infectious deadly pandemic. So I would have approved of the manner of its removal 6 months ago, but not at this precise moment when those gathering across the UK risk infecting themselves and others giving new legs to the pandemic. People will die as a result of the current wave of protests, including many others who did not take part. I think it is that, not the fact of removal, that limited support for the action to just 13%.
I don't see much evidence that those casting around for other examples are finding it hard to identify others. We've already had Churchill and now Rhodes, Cromwell, Gladstone and Henry Dundas are coming into play. It won't end there.
And can we see the evidence it was insulting to so many, rather than taking the word of those who say it was without challenging who they are and what their real motives are first, please? I'm very open to accepting it was and I'd like to hear directly from BAME people in Bristol, of all ages and backgrounds on their experiences and priorities, rather than being told what they find offensive and insulting.
Because up until last weekend the policy of Bristol Council, which has a Labour majority, and is led by Labour BAME mayor, was to put up a plaque, not pull it down, and residents didn't support pulling it down either.
Are we sure most normal people (of any race or background) get insulted by walking past an historic statute, many of whom don't know what it is or its context? Or do they see it as utterly irrelevant to their everyday lives and are more interested in focusing on the future? Are they worry such actions might actually cause divisions and end-up making their lives harder, rather than easier?
I don't know. I'd like to hear more before we take the protesters at their word.
There's not much thinking and challenge going on here, but an awful lot of judgement.
Tens of thousands of people can pack into a square together to topple a statue and nobody blinks an eye.
But two people standing closer together than 1m in a restaurant and everybody loses their minds.
Nobody blinks an eye! Im guessing you havent been reading the endless comments and threads about it the last 4 days.
Prediction - restaurants and pubs will be open with 1m social distancing between different groups by mid September.
I'm in the pub business and I'm afraid I disagree. Policing social distancing of any kind in a pub is impossible. I think you'll find that many pubs have already decided its over and the breweries are going to find a much reduced demand. Plenty of the smaller and micro breweries have already given up.
And factor in that people have become used to supermarket prices, a pizza and netflix on a friday night for less than half the price of a night at the pub.
The pub game as we all know it is finished.
That is one of the bleakest postings I have ever read on PB.
The pub game and the eating out game has been over for a long time for a lot of people. Its been out of their price range for the best part of a decade. Probably unusual on here as most of my friends are on average wage or less but I can say none of them consider going to a bar or restaurant these days because of cost. Even in the 00's it was mostly reserved for occasions such as birthdays. Now its round someones house with some beer from the supermarket
That's a very valuable perspective and I can absolutely see that. Perhaps pubs and pub landlords will be forced to do something to address that.
I dont think there is anything landlords can do, pubs dont make profit on a pint which is why most of them have turned to food as well. That is down to brewery rents, having to buy from breweries rather than cheaper outlets, business rates etc.
The average guy though by the time he has paid for his housing, bills food....well a night out and 5 pints is 20£ and thats a significant chunk of what was left over...a meal out is going to cost the same. Those 5 beers around a friends cost a fiver.
I suspect the typical view will be stop supermarkets charging so little but that won't get those people back in pubs they will just move to homebrew because its not the price differential stopping them its purely for a lot of people now they are priced out of a night out.
I would reduce the alcohol duty rate for on licence sales, increase the alcohol duty rate for off licence sales, break the power of the pub landlord companies (somehow).
Also generally doing something about housing costs in this country would help with so many other problems.
See exactly as I predicted....people arent drinking in pubs because its too expensive....well we will make it just as expensive to drink at home then....won't get them back into pubs because they cant spend money they don't have. They can afford 5 or 6 pounds for a few beers with friends....that would buy a pint and a half in most pubs and they won't bother going out for that
That's why housing costs have to be addressed, so people have more disposable income. There's no way to make pubs as cheap as supermarkets are now, so people need more spending money.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Remember, though that most other countries in Europe managed the epidemic substantially better than the UK, so the underlying risk of being out and about is much lower.
The two countries which had remotely comparable outbreaks- Italy and Spain- have kept schools closed until September (though a lot of that is because they have longer summer holidays anyway).
I know there are problems with international comparisons and 7 day smoothing, but if you take the FT compilation as indicative of something meaningful, the UK death rate is currently roughly where Germany at its peak;
Still being in partial lockdown when other countries are able to move out is unpleasant and expensive. Unfortunately, this is where we have to pay the price for botching the initial response.
And Adonis must know about the statue of James II outside the National Gallery and the equestrian one of Charles I on the other side of Trafalgar Square too.
Colston's company - 80000 slaves? Pah! That's nothing on the Royal African Company...
Charles, for one, got his comeuppance during his lifetime, so we might grant him a pass...
Maybe one plinth for his head and another for the rest?
I have to say that great care needs to be taken when trashing the reputations of those the country hold dear as Kay Burley did to Churchill this morning. The BLM have every right to see Colston removed (though legally). I support their cause and admire those who stand in the way of those who want to turn violent in the marches.
The BLM is far more important for it to be hijacked by the far left and anarchists with different agendas
However, if the country is not careful this could lead to even deeper divisions that is absolutely not anyone should want.
Common sense on all sides is required
I agree.
Nuanced assessments of historical figures, taking into account the environment of their times, is always worthwhile, but the temptation to trash popular icons is pointlessly divisive. Churchill was indisputably a great war leader - absolutely the right man at the right time - though with some dubious military judgments and some opinions on Empire and race which now may look ill-judged. I'm not sure it's helpful to go much further than that. It's obviously ridiculous to consider his statues in the same category as slave traders.
Syria and Afghanistan are having culture wars. Centrist liberals and religious moderates get squeezed out. Libraries get burned. Minorities murdered. There's probably other stuff too.
Those are actual wars not culture wars.
All those incels in body armour cos playing Blackwater operatives are ready and willing when the culture war goes hot. Farage may even get his khaki out.
There is an airsoft place near me. Quite war-y. They certainly have all the kit. Not sure who is attracted to that. They all looked like FAMs so perhaps people coming back from Afghan, etc, or perhaps people who wished they could have come back from Afghan, etc.
Am I right in thinking that some of the US cops are using paint ball guns for riot control? Vastly preferable to AR15s of course, but there seems to be quite cultural mashup going on.
It would certainly aid identification. No idea if it is the case, though.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Indeed.
I view this as similar to the rules of being a house guest: you have a duty as a host to make your guest feel at home, and the guest has to duty to remember they are not.
It's the same with "offence": you have a duty to be avoid causing offence and should apologise where you do, but the other should not be looking to take for reasons to take it.
I’ve just had a COVID swab. Gag city, population me.
Not that straight forward, is it!
Thanks everyone for all the kind wishes. My post wasn't intended so much to elicit sympathy (but nice of you all anyway) as to warn of the danger of a second wave. I'd suggest staying very alert wherever you are but especially if you are in London or another big city.
We are mystified as to how the Memsahib caught the bug. We were virtually self isolating until she came down to London but even there she had very little contact with outsiders and the epidemic had apparently eased. We suspect a walk on Hampstead Heath when it was very busy may be the culprit, but we really don't know.
Its seem quite a common thing for some people who get infected that they have no idea how they got it as their contact with the outside world is practically non-existent.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
The views of a Tory councillor in Bristol in 2018 who didnt like the proposed new plaque on the statue:
"any plan to unilaterally remove it might be justified’. "I have never been a believer in taking the law into one's own hands. However, if this partisan and nauseous plaque is approved, I can not find it in my heart to condemn anyone who damages or removes it,”
And Adonis must know about the statue of James II outside the National Gallery and the equestrian one of Charles I on the other side of Trafalgar Square too.
Colston's company - 80000 slaves? Pah! That's nothing on the Royal African Company...
Charles, for one, got his comeuppance during his lifetime, so we might grant him a pass...
Maybe one plinth for his head and another for the rest?
Cromwell was beheaded post mortem wasn't he? Perhaps he could join Charles in a decapitated brotherhood rendered in bronze.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
This is a case of reductio ad absurdum. I really don't know what Adonis is playing at by conflating Colston with the likes of Cromwell.
There was every case for pulling down the Bristol statue and I for one am glad that something so insulting to so many has gone. The man was part of a company responsible for transporting 80,000 slaves and probably causing the death of the same number who didn't make it alive. It was erected in the late 19th Century due to the funding of its sponsor who stepped in following the failure of a public appeal, at a time when slavery was already utterly abhorrent, so it didn't really represent opinion even then. The fact that those casting around for other examples are finding it hard to identify anything else so abhorrent rather makes the point that the Bristol statue was pretty unique. Shame on the authorities for not getting rid of it years ago. Just occasionally, very occasionally, it's right for the public to intervene when the authorities fail so spectacularly.
The only issue that I have with its removal is the fact that the crowd should not have gathered in the midst of an infectious deadly pandemic. So I would have approved of the manner of its removal 6 months ago, but not at this precise moment when those gathering across the UK risk infecting themselves and others giving new legs to the pandemic. People will die as a result of the current wave of protests, including many others who did not take part. I think it is that, not the fact of removal, that limited support for the action to just 13%.
I don't see much evidence that those casting around for other examples are finding it hard to identify others. We've already had Churchill and now Rhodes, Cromwell, Gladstone and Henry Dundas are coming into play. It won't end there.
And can we see the evidence it was insulting to so many, rather than taking the word of those who say it was without challenging who they are and what their real motives are first, please? I'm very open to accepting it was and I'd like to hear directly from BAME people in Bristol, of all ages and backgrounds on their experiences and priorities, rather than being told what they find offensive and insulting.
Because up until last weekend the policy of Bristol Council, which has a Labour majority, and is led by Labour BAME mayor, was to put up a plaque, not pull it down, and residents didn't support pulling it down either.
Are we sure most normal people (of any race or background) get insulted by walking past an historic statute, many of whom don't know what it is or its context? Or do they see it as utterly irrelevant to their everyday lives and are more interested in focusing on the future? Are they worry such actions might actually cause divisions and end-up making their lives harder, rather than easier?
I don't know. I'd like to hear more before we take the protesters at their word.
There's not much thinking and challenge going on here, but an awful lot of judgement.
The wording is egregious and offensive. I wouldnt get offended by a statue itself but yes am offended by venerating a slave trader and human brander as "of one of the most virtuous and wise sons of their city” whether its in print, said out loud or on a statue.
The solution of changing the plaque seems reasonable, but the local Tory councillor was encouraging vandalising and removing it.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
The views of a Tory councillor in Bristol in 2018 who didnt like the proposed new plaque on the statue:
"any plan to unilaterally remove it might be justified’. "I have never been a believer in taking the law into one's own hands. However, if this partisan and nauseous plaque is approved, I can not find it in my heart to condemn anyone who damages or removes it,”
And Adonis must know about the statue of James II outside the National Gallery and the equestrian one of Charles I on the other side of Trafalgar Square too.
Colston's company - 80000 slaves? Pah! That's nothing on the Royal African Company.
Incidentally a lot of the Leverhulme Trust money comes from what was slavery in all but name in the Belgian Congo where William Lever had a brutal fiefdom.
Charles II and, it must be said, Cromwell headed governemnts which sent plenty of indentured servants to the West Indies - as good as slaves: Irish and Scottish PoWs from the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Wars of the Covenant.
Yes indeed - I'm not seeking to be soft on Cromwell. As for Charles II, practically immediately upon restoration he licensed the Royal African Company which was involved on a large scale in slavery of a kind that nobody bothered calling anything other than slavery.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Indeed.
I view this as similar to the rules of being a house guest: you have a duty as a host to make your guest feel at home, and the guest has to duty to remember they are not.
It's the same with "offence": you have a duty to be avoid causing offence and should apologise where you do, but the other should not be looking to take for reasons to take it.
Who the f*** is a guest here? And then you wonder why people assume you might be racist.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Why? The Education budget would remain the same, and you'd have 7-10% extra pupils and no extra funding. They'd increase. And some teachers in the private sector would be put out of work too.
You might argue that the middle-class would then agitate for a higher education budget, as indeed they might, but the Government would have even less money.
It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring.
And Adonis must know about the statue of James II outside the National Gallery and the equestrian one of Charles I on the other side of Trafalgar Square too.
Colston's company - 80000 slaves? Pah! That's nothing on the Royal African Company.
Incidentally a lot of the Leverhulme Trust money comes from what was slavery in all but name in the Belgian Congo where William Lever had a brutal fiefdom.
Raze Leverburgh to the ground!
Actually reverting to its original name of Obbe might be more proportional.
An t-Ob or Obbe, though? We don't want any dodgy Anglicised names.
That's swings of 8.5% and 6.5% away from Trump in Oklahoma and Kentucky. Senior retired Republicans are queuing up to be negative about Trump or even endorse Biden. But the White House is trailing a big "unity" address to the nation this week. The Donald, he can do anything. From the great polariser to the great unifier? Something "great" anyway. He's the greatest and realest, and nothing like a loser or a fake. He can be the unifiers' unifier if he chooses. Best of luck with that. Not sure I've ever seen a US leader so busted this far out.
Yep. Too late now. Some people are on the pitch. The fat lady is fingering her mike. Coronavirus was a golden opportunity to reinvent himself as a credible president. Indeed I was slightly scared that he would somehow manage to do so - it was his one clear chance to head off the big defeat in November that I have long thought inevitable.
But I needn't have worried. The situation merely exposed his almost comical limitations further. He simply does not have the capability to speak or lead in a 'national interest' manner. When he tries it looks and sounds ridiculous because it is so clearly phony. And on top of this you have the glaring lack of competence which is hard to hide when there is a genuine crisis on.
So, sure, he may have another go at 'presidential' but the result will be the same. It will come over as false. Few will be swayed and of those who are it will as likely be the other way. For his hardcore supporters it might still be a case of "To know him is to love him," but for everybody else the opposite now applies. He appears, he speaks, he net repels.
His best re-election strategy in my view would be one of minimalist blandness from here until polling day. Keep his head down. Stay out of the news. But of course it has no chance of being adopted. Instead it will be double down on Boast, Blame, Bluster. Chances of this securing many votes other than his base and those outside it who would vote Republican regardless? Slim to zero. He's toast.
I do hope you are right. I agree with everything you have said but worry I/you might be wrong.
For me the big change in my view of what will happen is when I heard he plans to make a unifying speech. Previously that would have worried me that he could con his way out of all of this. Not so any more, as I feel certain he would just go off script and continue to expose himself as to the person he really is and whatever verbal cockup he made would be all over the media even more than normal and the downward spiral of exposure would just continue.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
I have been having two slices of toast with a) marmalade (Frank Cooper, rough cut); and b) peanut butter (Pip 'n Nut) each day in lockdown.
Each slice of toast I would say is 150-200 calories (including the butter, etc).
So. I have henceforth decided to have only one slice of toast a day (alternating with peanut butter and marmalade) which means...by Friday I will have saved up enough calories to compensate for the bottle of wine I have on Friday evening!
I would love to see the hospitality sector back - only this will signify to me a resumption of normal life - and I agree with the Header that the government should set clear rules and then allow individual businesses to use their judgement as to if in practice they can open - and if so how to do it.
I think the rules should be kept to a minimum and they should be hard rules - i.e. legally enforceable. All of these "guidelines" do little but confuse and create grey areas.
Is this legal? Yes/No. Could I be sued? Yes/No. Does my insurance work for this situation? Yes/No. Will I make money if I open? Yes/No.
These imo are the key questions a business owner needs to be able to answer with a high degree of confidence. You need a Yes, No, Yes, Yes. In which case open up and let the customers and supply & demand do the rest.
I have to say it comes as a complete surprise to me that I should expect to be an unconditional admirer of any historical figure whose statue I see, and offended if I'm not.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Indeed.
I view this as similar to the rules of being a house guest: you have a duty as a host to make your guest feel at home, and the guest has to duty to remember they are not.
It's the same with "offence": you have a duty to be avoid causing offence and should apologise where you do, but the other should not be looking to take for reasons to take it.
Who the f*** is a guest here? And then you wonder why people assume you might be racist.
Err he's talking about normal etiquette when you visit someone's house as a guest. You're reading into his words more than he's written.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
The views of a Tory councillor in Bristol in 2018 who didnt like the proposed new plaque on the statue:
"any plan to unilaterally remove it might be justified’. "I have never been a believer in taking the law into one's own hands. However, if this partisan and nauseous plaque is approved, I can not find it in my heart to condemn anyone who damages or removes it,”
One rule for their side, one rule for everyone else.
Needless to say, that Tory councillor represented his own views, not mine - although with reference to the proposed plaque, clearly the fact that the original draft mentioned Colston's role as a 'Tory MP' amongst his sins was a piece of flagrant political point-scoring.
I don't agree with the councillor, but more than a plaque, I would advocate Colston be supplemented by a sculpture commemorating the slaves upon which much of Bristol's wealth was built, and, in time (though I understand the gentleman is very much with us) a monument to Paul Stephenson OBE. Can we be a generation that builds things rather than rips them down please?
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Or alternatively, cut class sizes in the state sector and watch as private schools close for lack of pupils?
Honestly, some people are really dumb.
Your solution would increase class sizes, at least in the short term, not reduce them.
And Adonis must know about the statue of James II outside the National Gallery and the equestrian one of Charles I on the other side of Trafalgar Square too.
Colston's company - 80000 slaves? Pah! That's nothing on the Royal African Company.
Incidentally a lot of the Leverhulme Trust money comes from what was slavery in all but name in the Belgian Congo where William Lever had a brutal fiefdom.
Raze Leverburgh to the ground!
Actually reverting to its original name of Obbe might be more proportional.
An t-Ob or Obbe, though? We don't want any dodgy Anglicised names.
Are we going to remove all the Norse names too?
If you are feeling pedantic: surely it should have an accent grave on the O of Ob.
Or is that a local thing, ie variance within the Gaelic?
Was there ever a good reason why we (and I suppose everyone else in the world) didn't just ask the South Koreans if we could copy their app?
During the next pandemic, we just ask the Germans to draw up a plan and we all stick to it.
Actually the problem seems in part to be that we had a plan and stuck to it too long. It was just a plan for the wrong pandemic. In retrospect, making policy on the hoof in the early stages might have been better.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Why? The Education budget would remain the same, and you'd have 7-10% extra pupils and no extra funding. They'd increase. And some teachers in the private sector would be put out of work too.
You might argue that the middle-class would then agitate for a higher education budget, as indeed they might, but the Government would have even less money.
It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring.
Policy in this country is largely set by the preferences of the upper middle class, especially on issues that they care about disproportionately, like education. We know that they favour smaller class sizes, because that is what the private sector offers them to obtain their fees. If they were forced to send their kids to state schools I have no doubt that the weight of influential public opinion would soon channel more resources to education, lowering class sizes and raising standards. It will never happen, I am not even saying it should happen, but I have no doubt that it would have a net positive effect on education outcomes in this country.
I have been having two slices of toast with a) marmalade (Frank Cooper, rough cut); and b) peanut butter (Pip 'n Nut) each day in lockdown.
Each slice of toast I would say is 150-200 calories (including the butter, etc).
So. I have henceforth decided to have only one slice of toast a day (alternating with peanut butter and marmalade) which means...by Friday I will have saved up enough calories to compensate for the bottle of wine I have on Friday evening!
Syria and Afghanistan are having culture wars. Centrist liberals and religious moderates get squeezed out. Libraries get burned. Minorities murdered. There's probably other stuff too.
Those are actual wars not culture wars.
All those incels in body armour cos playing Blackwater operatives are ready and willing when the culture war goes hot. Farage may even get his khaki out.
There is an airsoft place near me. Quite war-y. They certainly have all the kit. Not sure who is attracted to that. They all looked like FAMs so perhaps people coming back from Afghan, etc, or perhaps people who wished they could have come back from Afghan, etc.
Am I right in thinking that some of the US cops are using paint ball guns for riot control? Vastly preferable to AR15s of course, but there seems to be quite a cultural mashup going on.
On my US Navy exchange we used to shoot each other with paintball guns quite regularly. They were allegedly for target practice as you're not allowed firearms on a Naval Air Station. They hurt but I don't think they'd slow down a committed rioter unless you copped one in the knackers (voice of experience). Three of us lit one guy up in the head the day before his wedding and he had to get married with his coupon covered in purple welts.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
And Adonis must know about the statue of James II outside the National Gallery and the equestrian one of Charles I on the other side of Trafalgar Square too.
Colston's company - 80000 slaves? Pah! That's nothing on the Royal African Company.
Incidentally a lot of the Leverhulme Trust money comes from what was slavery in all but name in the Belgian Congo where William Lever had a brutal fiefdom.
Raze Leverburgh to the ground!
Actually reverting to its original name of Obbe might be more proportional.
An t-Ob or Obbe, though? We don't want any dodgy Anglicised names.
Are we going to remove all the Norse names too?
Am I misremembering or is An t-Ob on the bilingual road signs?
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Why? The Education budget would remain the same, and you'd have 7-10% extra pupils and no extra funding. They'd increase. And some teachers in the private sector would be put out of work too.
You might argue that the middle-class would then agitate for a higher education budget, as indeed they might, but the Government would have even less money.
It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring.
Policy in this country is largely set by the preferences of the upper middle class, especially on issues that they care about disproportionately, like education. We know that they favour smaller class sizes, because that is what the private sector offers them to obtain their fees. If they were forced to send their kids to state schools I have no doubt that the weight of influential public opinion would soon channel more resources to education, lowering class sizes and raising standards. It will never happen, I am not even saying it should happen, but I have no doubt that it would have a net positive effect on education outcomes in this country.
Are there more upper middle classes than middle classes, lower middle classes, and lower classes?
Because if there aren't then how do they magically manage to achieve everything they want?
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Indeed.
I view this as similar to the rules of being a house guest: you have a duty as a host to make your guest feel at home, and the guest has to duty to remember they are not.
It's the same with "offence": you have a duty to be avoid causing offence and should apologise where you do, but the other should not be looking to take for reasons to take it.
Who the f*** is a guest here? And then you wonder why people assume you might be racist.
And it's comments like this which are part of the problem..
Are you seriously looking to engage, or are you more interested in looking to interpret my comments in the most hostile and negative light possible?
In the past, people were dismissive and careless about causing offence. They used words, phrases and behaviours that caused great hurt and pain. That was wrong. It needed to change. In some areas it still needs to change.
What I'm saying is that in addition to not doing that we should also not be looking to always take offence where none is intended. There will always be buildings, art, architecture and political views that some of us don't like. We can't just always act on loud objections to take them down on the grounds that some find them insulting or offensive or we'll have nothing left - we need to learn co-exist peacefully together.
I offered the house guest rules as an analogy because I thought it was a good behavioural example of this. You've decided to take it as a comment on immigration and the UK today.
To be fair to Cabinet Ministers, when they decided that social distancing could be achieved by limiting class sizes to 15, from their own and their children’s experience they had little notion that children would ever be taught in larger groups...
And once the private schools go back you can guarantee the urgency about opening schools attended by the kids of us plebs will somehow disappear.
Many private schools went straight to remote teaching, which they are continuing. As did a number of state schools.
And Adonis must know about the statue of James II outside the National Gallery and the equestrian one of Charles I on the other side of Trafalgar Square too.
Colston's company - 80000 slaves? Pah! That's nothing on the Royal African Company.
Incidentally a lot of the Leverhulme Trust money comes from what was slavery in all but name in the Belgian Congo where William Lever had a brutal fiefdom.
Raze Leverburgh to the ground!
Actually reverting to its original name of Obbe might be more proportional.
An t-Ob or Obbe, though? We don't want any dodgy Anglicised names.
Are we going to remove all the Norse names too?
Am I misremembering or is An t-Ob on the bilingual road signs?
A quick look at the Metropolis shows that the welcome sign (Failte ...) uses that form, with the article of course omitted.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Or alternatively, cut class sizes in the state sector and watch as private schools close for lack of pupils?
Honestly, some people are really dumb.
Your solution would increase class sizes, at least in the short term, not reduce them.
I am not dumb. I think the dumb people are those who think that there will be money to cut class sizes in the state sector as long as the rich and powerful can opt out of it.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Why? The Education budget would remain the same, and you'd have 7-10% extra pupils and no extra funding. They'd increase. And some teachers in the private sector would be put out of work too.
You might argue that the middle-class would then agitate for a higher education budget, as indeed they might, but the Government would have even less money.
It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring.
Policy in this country is largely set by the preferences of the upper middle class, especially on issues that they care about disproportionately, like education. We know that they favour smaller class sizes, because that is what the private sector offers them to obtain their fees. If they were forced to send their kids to state schools I have no doubt that the weight of influential public opinion would soon channel more resources to education, lowering class sizes and raising standards. It will never happen, I am not even saying it should happen, but I have no doubt that it would have a net positive effect on education outcomes in this country.
I think this is a myth. There's no shortage of such opinions at the moment, and even most of the upper middle class do send their children to state schools.
Where they don't they move to a house in the right catchment area, or leverage other advantages to get the best outcome for their children.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Why? The Education budget would remain the same, and you'd have 7-10% extra pupils and no extra funding. They'd increase. And some teachers in the private sector would be put out of work too.
You might argue that the middle-class would then agitate for a higher education budget, as indeed they might, but the Government would have even less money.
It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring.
Policy in this country is largely set by the preferences of the upper middle class, especially on issues that they care about disproportionately, like education. We know that they favour smaller class sizes, because that is what the private sector offers them to obtain their fees. If they were forced to send their kids to state schools I have no doubt that the weight of influential public opinion would soon channel more resources to education, lowering class sizes and raising standards. It will never happen, I am not even saying it should happen, but I have no doubt that it would have a net positive effect on education outcomes in this country.
Are there more upper middle classes than middle classes, lower middle classes, and lower classes?
Because if there aren't then how do they magically manage to achieve everything they want?
That's swings of 8.5% and 6.5% away from Trump in Oklahoma and Kentucky. Senior retired Republicans are queuing up to be negative about Trump or even endorse Biden. But the White House is trailing a big "unity" address to the nation this week. The Donald, he can do anything. From the great polariser to the great unifier? Something "great" anyway. He's the greatest and realest, and nothing like a loser or a fake. He can be the unifiers' unifier if he chooses. Best of luck with that. Not sure I've ever seen a US leader so busted this far out.
Yep. Too late now. Some people are on the pitch. The fat lady is fingering her mike. Coronavirus was a golden opportunity to reinvent himself as a credible president. Indeed I was slightly scared that he would somehow manage to do so - it was his one clear chance to head off the big defeat in November that I have long thought inevitable.
But I needn't have worried. The situation merely exposed his almost comical limitations further. He simply does not have the capability to speak or lead in a 'national interest' manner. When he tries it looks and sounds ridiculous because it is so clearly phony. And on top of this you have the glaring lack of competence which is hard to hide when there is a genuine crisis on.
So, sure, he may have another go at 'presidential' but the result will be the same. It will come over as false. Few will be swayed and of those who are it will as likely be the other way. For his hardcore supporters it might still be a case of "To know him is to love him," but for everybody else the opposite now applies. He appears, he speaks, he net repels.
His best re-election strategy in my view would be one of minimalist blandness from here until polling day. Keep his head down. Stay out of the news. But of course it has no chance of being adopted. Instead it will be double down on Boast, Blame, Bluster. Chances of this securing many votes other than his base and those outside it who would vote Republican regardless? Slim to zero. He's toast.
I kind of agree that it's a bit late for him to start acting presidential now. Part of Trump's appeal is that his supporters think that he "tells it likes it is". That doesn't mean he doesn't lie, but when he lies it is entirely in keeping with his character. That's also partly why things like "grab 'em by the pussy" weren't fatal for him. It was obnoxious, but consistent. He's a consistently obnoxious guy. To suddenly switch now would probably turn off his core vote, without convincing anyone else. His best chance is to try and reduce the numbers voting for the other guy, by whatever means. Like everyone says, it's probably going to get really dirty (unless he gives up and starts his own Trumped Up News Channel: "All fake, all of the time!").
I have been having two slices of toast with a) marmalade (Frank Cooper, rough cut); and b) peanut butter (Pip 'n Nut) each day in lockdown.
Each slice of toast I would say is 150-200 calories (including the butter, etc).
So. I have henceforth decided to have only one slice of toast a day (alternating with peanut butter and marmalade) which means...by Friday I will have saved up enough calories to compensate for the bottle of wine I have on Friday evening!
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Indeed.
I view this as similar to the rules of being a house guest: you have a duty as a host to make your guest feel at home, and the guest has to duty to remember they are not.
It's the same with "offence": you have a duty to be avoid causing offence and should apologise where you do, but the other should not be looking to take for reasons to take it.
Who the f*** is a guest here? And then you wonder why people assume you might be racist.
And it's comments like this which are part of the problem..
Are you seriously looking to engage, or are you more interested in looking to interpret my comments in the most hostile and negative light possible?
In the past, people were dismissive and careless about causing offence. They used words, phrases and behaviours that caused great hurt and pain. That was wrong. It needed to change. In some areas it still needs to change.
What I'm saying is that in addition to not doing that we should also not be looking to always take offence where none is intended. There will always be buildings, art, architecture and political views that some of us don't like. We can't just always act on loud objections to take them down on the grounds that some find them insulting or offensive or we'll have nothing left - we need to learn co-exist peacefully together.
I offered the house guest rules as an analogy because I thought it was a good behavioural example of this. You've decided to take it as a comment on immigration and the UK today.
That's a good example of what I'm talking about.
In a discussion about race, culture and identity, to talk about guests remembering that they are not at home is either explicitly seeking to cause offence or beyond careless in doing so.
Syria and Afghanistan are having culture wars. Centrist liberals and religious moderates get squeezed out. Libraries get burned. Minorities murdered. There's probably other stuff too.
Those are actual wars not culture wars.
All those incels in body armour cos playing Blackwater operatives are ready and willing when the culture war goes hot. Farage may even get his khaki out.
There is an airsoft place near me. Quite war-y. They certainly have all the kit. Not sure who is attracted to that. They all looked like FAMs so perhaps people coming back from Afghan, etc, or perhaps people who wished they could have come back from Afghan, etc.
Am I right in thinking that some of the US cops are using paint ball guns for riot control? Vastly preferable to AR15s of course, but there seems to be quite a cultural mashup going on.
On my US Navy exchange we used to shoot each other with paintball guns quite regularly. They were allegedly for target practice as you're not allowed firearms on a Naval Air Station. They hurt but I don't think they'd slow down a committed rioter unless you copped one in the knackers (voice of experience). Three of us lit one guy up in the head the day before his wedding and he had to get married with his coupon covered in purple welts.
Paintballs hurt. My only experience with them is when my company went en masse pre-deployment to the one in Woking. The guys working there were the worst kind of wannabes with their highly customised paintball guns and DPM facemasks.
My company sergeant major soon gripped them but needless to say there wasn't much social distancing in the ensuing battle.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
I am trying to remember the architects name - in the 60s he advocated moving everyone in cities in to vast linear apparent blocks. With motorways on the roofs.....
In a program on this, on the BBC, it was suggested that it was a shame that he hadn't got a chance to try out his magnificent dreams...
He lived in a Tudor manor house, where he indulged in setting out a funky garden, using mirrors to reflect the water in ponds etc. All very peaceful - he used his contacts in the development world to prevent anyone building anything within miles of his sanctuary.....
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Why? The Education budget would remain the same, and you'd have 7-10% extra pupils and no extra funding. They'd increase. And some teachers in the private sector would be put out of work too.
You might argue that the middle-class would then agitate for a higher education budget, as indeed they might, but the Government would have even less money.
It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring.
Policy in this country is largely set by the preferences of the upper middle class, especially on issues that they care about disproportionately, like education. We know that they favour smaller class sizes, because that is what the private sector offers them to obtain their fees. If they were forced to send their kids to state schools I have no doubt that the weight of influential public opinion would soon channel more resources to education, lowering class sizes and raising standards. It will never happen, I am not even saying it should happen, but I have no doubt that it would have a net positive effect on education outcomes in this country.
I think this is a myth. There's no shortage of such opinions at the moment, and even most of the upper middle class do send their children to state schools.
Where they don't they move to a house in the right catchment area, or leverage other advantages to get the best outcome for their children.
That's my point, state schools need those sharp elbowed people pushing to raise budgets and standards, not lobbying for tax cuts since they don't use public services.
Tens of thousands of people can pack into a square together to topple a statue and nobody blinks an eye.
But two people standing closer together than 1m in a restaurant and everybody loses their minds.
Nobody blinks an eye! Im guessing you havent been reading the endless comments and threads about it the last 4 days.
Prediction - restaurants and pubs will be open with 1m social distancing between different groups by mid September.
I'm in the pub business and I'm afraid I disagree. Policing social distancing of any kind in a pub is impossible. I think you'll find that many pubs have already decided its over and the breweries are going to find a much reduced demand. Plenty of the smaller and micro breweries have already given up.
And factor in that people have become used to supermarket prices, a pizza and netflix on a friday night for less than half the price of a night at the pub.
The pub game as we all know it is finished.
That is one of the bleakest postings I have ever read on PB.
The pub game and the eating out game has been over for a long time for a lot of people. Its been out of their price range for the best part of a decade. Probably unusual on here as most of my friends are on average wage or less but I can say none of them consider going to a bar or restaurant these days because of cost. Even in the 00's it was mostly reserved for occasions such as birthdays. Now its round someones house with some beer from the supermarket
That's a very valuable perspective and I can absolutely see that. Perhaps pubs and pub landlords will be forced to do something to address that.
I dont think there is anything landlords can do, pubs dont make profit on a pint which is why most of them have turned to food as well. That is down to brewery rents, having to buy from breweries rather than cheaper outlets, business rates etc.
The average guy though by the time he has paid for his housing, bills food....well a night out and 5 pints is 20£ and thats a significant chunk of what was left over...a meal out is going to cost the same. Those 5 beers around a friends cost a fiver.
I suspect the typical view will be stop supermarkets charging so little but that won't get those people back in pubs they will just move to homebrew because its not the price differential stopping them its purely for a lot of people now they are priced out of a night out.
I would reduce the alcohol duty rate for on licence sales, increase the alcohol duty rate for off licence sales, break the power of the pub landlord companies (somehow).
Also generally doing something about housing costs in this country would help with so many other problems.
See exactly as I predicted....people arent drinking in pubs because its too expensive....well we will make it just as expensive to drink at home then....won't get them back into pubs because they cant spend money they don't have. They can afford 5 or 6 pounds for a few beers with friends....that would buy a pint and a half in most pubs and they won't bother going out for that
That's why housing costs have to be addressed, so people have more disposable income. There's no way to make pubs as cheap as supermarkets are now, so people need more spending money.
I doubt that will make a difference anymore, people like my friends have got used to not going to pubs etc. More money left would merely mean instead of a few beers around someones house they might add a chinese takeaway to the evening.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Indeed.
I view this as similar to the rules of being a house guest: you have a duty as a host to make your guest feel at home, and the guest has to duty to remember they are not.
It's the same with "offence": you have a duty to be avoid causing offence and should apologise where you do, but the other should not be looking to take for reasons to take it.
Who the f*** is a guest here? And then you wonder why people assume you might be racist.
And it's comments like this which are part of the problem..
Are you seriously looking to engage, or are you more interested in looking to interpret my comments in the most hostile and negative light possible?
In the past, people were dismissive and careless about causing offence. They used words, phrases and behaviours that caused great hurt and pain. That was wrong. It needed to change. In some areas it still needs to change.
What I'm saying is that in addition to not doing that we should also not be looking to always take offence where none is intended. There will always be buildings, art, architecture and political views that some of us don't like. We can't just always act on loud objections to take them down on the grounds that some find them insulting or offensive or we'll have nothing left - we need to learn co-exist peacefully together.
I offered the house guest rules as an analogy because I thought it was a good behavioural example of this. You've decided to take it as a comment on immigration and the UK today.
That's a good example of what I'm talking about.
I have to say I thought exactly the same as noneoftheabove when I read about being a "guest", although I would have expressed the thought a bit less forcefully.
Syria and Afghanistan are having culture wars. Centrist liberals and religious moderates get squeezed out. Libraries get burned. Minorities murdered. There's probably other stuff too.
Those are actual wars not culture wars.
All those incels in body armour cos playing Blackwater operatives are ready and willing when the culture war goes hot. Farage may even get his khaki out.
There is an airsoft place near me. Quite war-y. They certainly have all the kit. Not sure who is attracted to that. They all looked like FAMs so perhaps people coming back from Afghan, etc, or perhaps people who wished they could have come back from Afghan, etc.
Am I right in thinking that some of the US cops are using paint ball guns for riot control? Vastly preferable to AR15s of course, but there seems to be quite cultural mashup going on.
It would certainly aid identification. No idea if it is the case, though.
They are using paintball type guns to shoot pepper balls. Which are actually rather nasty things.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
What a contradiction of terms.
Where do you think the 615,000 children will go to be educated
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Why? The Education budget would remain the same, and you'd have 7-10% extra pupils and no extra funding. They'd increase. And some teachers in the private sector would be put out of work too.
You might argue that the middle-class would then agitate for a higher education budget, as indeed they might, but the Government would have even less money.
It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring.
Policy in this country is largely set by the preferences of the upper middle class, especially on issues that they care about disproportionately, like education. We know that they favour smaller class sizes, because that is what the private sector offers them to obtain their fees. If they were forced to send their kids to state schools I have no doubt that the weight of influential public opinion would soon channel more resources to education, lowering class sizes and raising standards. It will never happen, I am not even saying it should happen, but I have no doubt that it would have a net positive effect on education outcomes in this country.
Are there more upper middle classes than middle classes, lower middle classes, and lower classes?
Because if there aren't then how do they magically manage to achieve everything they want?
You do live in this country, right?
I don't know where you are writing that from so I can't answer. Planet Zanussi perhaps?
Were the upper middle classes in this superior position between 1997 -2010 for example?
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
You do seem to conflate "suffer from" a virus with "die from" it. I wouldn't want to strawman your position on this, but it does seem to be focused solely on deaths rather than anything else.
In addition, I'm not sure waiting for overwhelming evidence that children are causing significant deaths is really the wisest course if we're in a pandemic with an infectious disease that's causing a lot of illness and deaths. There's a reasonable core assumption that they'll pass on the infectious disease unless there's strong evidence the other way. As you say, the evidence is not yet clear.
The decision matrix goes:
IF they cannot pass it on AND we keep schools open - ideal outcome IF they do pass it on AND we keep schools open - loads of negative outcomes to life an the economy IF they cannot pass it on AND we close schools - there are negatives to education and economy IF they do pass it on AND we close schools - we incur the negatives to education and the economy in the one above.
Keeping the schools open without solid evidence is a massive gamble with a lot of lives and the economy, especially when there are default assumptions that children can pass on this disease (after all - why shouldn't they?).
That's swings of 8.5% and 6.5% away from Trump in Oklahoma and Kentucky. Senior retired Republicans are queuing up to be negative about Trump or even endorse Biden. But the White House is trailing a big "unity" address to the nation this week. The Donald, he can do anything. From the great polariser to the great unifier? Something "great" anyway. He's the greatest and realest, and nothing like a loser or a fake. He can be the unifiers' unifier if he chooses. Best of luck with that. Not sure I've ever seen a US leader so busted this far out.
Yep. Too late now. Some people are on the pitch. The fat lady is fingering her mike. Coronavirus was a golden opportunity to reinvent himself as a credible president. Indeed I was slightly scared that he would somehow manage to do so - it was his one clear chance to head off the big defeat in November that I have long thought inevitable.
But I needn't have worried. The situation merely exposed his almost comical limitations further. He simply does not have the capability to speak or lead in a 'national interest' manner. When he tries it looks and sounds ridiculous because it is so clearly phony. And on top of this you have the glaring lack of competence which is hard to hide when there is a genuine crisis on.
So, sure, he may have another go at 'presidential' but the result will be the same. It will come over as false. Few will be swayed and of those who are it will as likely be the other way. For his hardcore supporters it might still be a case of "To know him is to love him," but for everybody else the opposite now applies. He appears, he speaks, he net repels.
His best re-election strategy in my view would be one of minimalist blandness from here until polling day. Keep his head down. Stay out of the news. But of course it has no chance of being adopted. Instead it will be double down on Boast, Blame, Bluster. Chances of this securing many votes other than his base and those outside it who would vote Republican regardless? Slim to zero. He's toast.
I kind of agree that it's a bit late for him to start acting presidential now. Part of Trump's appeal is that his supporters think that he "tells it likes it is". That doesn't mean he doesn't lie, but when he lies it is entirely in keeping with his character. That's also partly why things like "grab 'em by the pussy" weren't fatal for him. It was obnoxious, but consistent. He's a consistently obnoxious guy. To suddenly switch now would probably turn off his core vote, without convincing anyone else. His best chance is to try and reduce the numbers voting for the other guy, by whatever means. Like everyone says, it's probably going to get really dirty (unless he gives up and starts his own Trumped Up News Channel: "All fake, all of the time!").
It's like the Presidency has been in the hands of a pub boor. It's beginning to seem though that some of his boorish supporters are starting to notice it isn't a good way to run the show.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Indeed.
I view this as similar to the rules of being a house guest: you have a duty as a host to make your guest feel at home, and the guest has to duty to remember they are not.
It's the same with "offence": you have a duty to be avoid causing offence and should apologise where you do, but the other should not be looking to take for reasons to take it.
Who the f*** is a guest here? And then you wonder why people assume you might be racist.
And it's comments like this which are part of the problem..
Are you seriously looking to engage, or are you more interested in looking to interpret my comments in the most hostile and negative light possible?
In the past, people were dismissive and careless about causing offence. They used words, phrases and behaviours that caused great hurt and pain. That was wrong. It needed to change. In some areas it still needs to change.
What I'm saying is that in addition to not doing that we should also not be looking to always take offence where none is intended. There will always be buildings, art, architecture and political views that some of us don't like. We can't just always act on loud objections to take them down on the grounds that some find them insulting or offensive or we'll have nothing left - we need to learn co-exist peacefully together.
I offered the house guest rules as an analogy because I thought it was a good behavioural example of this. You've decided to take it as a comment on immigration and the UK today.
That's a good example of what I'm talking about.
I have to say I thought exactly the same as noneoftheabove when I read about being a "guest", although I would have expressed the thought a bit less forcefully.
If that's the case then perhaps you both need to take a rain-check on how you read and process comments from other posters who might challenge some of your assumptions, rather than twitching for secret racism in every post made by them followed up by hair-trigger reactions.
Jesus. It does explain why no-one with a public profile wants to say anything, doesn't it?
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
I've been posting here longer, Casino. You are not a racist. Take no notice.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Indeed. 19th-century housing designs were perfectly capable of achieving a high level of density and utility while enhancing the public realm. It's a concept most high-concept architects of the present are utterly incapable of grasping.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Why? The Education budget would remain the same, and you'd have 7-10% extra pupils and no extra funding. They'd increase. And some teachers in the private sector would be put out of work too.
You might argue that the middle-class would then agitate for a higher education budget, as indeed they might, but the Government would have even less money.
It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring.
Policy in this country is largely set by the preferences of the upper middle class, especially on issues that they care about disproportionately, like education. We know that they favour smaller class sizes, because that is what the private sector offers them to obtain their fees. If they were forced to send their kids to state schools I have no doubt that the weight of influential public opinion would soon channel more resources to education, lowering class sizes and raising standards. It will never happen, I am not even saying it should happen, but I have no doubt that it would have a net positive effect on education outcomes in this country.
I think this is a myth. There's no shortage of such opinions at the moment, and even most of the upper middle class do send their children to state schools.
Where they don't they move to a house in the right catchment area, or leverage other advantages to get the best outcome for their children.
That's my point, state schools need those sharp elbowed people pushing to raise budgets and standards, not lobbying for tax cuts since they don't use public services.
Those who sharp-elbows can question authority and challenge decisions better, and more articulately, but they cannot magic up extra budgets. It would be too hard and difficult to do it and it would be much easier for them to focus on their own kids.
I expect you'd just see increased class polarisation in the state sector and further spikes in house prices in certain areas.
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
Don`t worry about it CR - it says more about them than it does about you.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Indeed.
I view this as similar to the rules of being a house guest: you have a duty as a host to make your guest feel at home, and the guest has to duty to remember they are not.
It's the same with "offence": you have a duty to be avoid causing offence and should apologise where you do, but the other should not be looking to take for reasons to take it.
Who the f*** is a guest here? And then you wonder why people assume you might be racist.
Err he's talking about normal etiquette when you visit someone's house as a guest. You're reading into his words more than he's written.
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Why? The Education budget would remain the same, and you'd have 7-10% extra pupils and no extra funding. They'd increase. And some teachers in the private sector would be put out of work too.
You might argue that the middle-class would then agitate for a higher education budget, as indeed they might, but the Government would have even less money.
It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring.
Policy in this country is largely set by the preferences of the upper middle class, especially on issues that they care about disproportionately, like education. We know that they favour smaller class sizes, because that is what the private sector offers them to obtain their fees. If they were forced to send their kids to state schools I have no doubt that the weight of influential public opinion would soon channel more resources to education, lowering class sizes and raising standards. It will never happen, I am not even saying it should happen, but I have no doubt that it would have a net positive effect on education outcomes in this country.
I think this is a myth. There's no shortage of such opinions at the moment, and even most of the upper middle class do send their children to state schools.
Where they don't they move to a house in the right catchment area, or leverage other advantages to get the best outcome for their children.
That's my point, state schools need those sharp elbowed people pushing to raise budgets and standards, not lobbying for tax cuts since they don't use public services.
But when the Free School opened in my part of the world, it was attacked for having a lower proportion of free school meal children than neighbouring, failing schools.
Because the middle classes were sending their children there.
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
Don`t worry about it CR - it says more about them than it does about you.
And Adonis must know about the statue of James II outside the National Gallery and the equestrian one of Charles I on the other side of Trafalgar Square too.
Colston's company - 80000 slaves? Pah! That's nothing on the Royal African Company.
Incidentally a lot of the Leverhulme Trust money comes from what was slavery in all but name in the Belgian Congo where William Lever had a brutal fiefdom.
Raze Leverburgh to the ground!
Actually reverting to its original name of Obbe might be more proportional.
An t-Ob or Obbe, though? We don't want any dodgy Anglicised names.
Are we going to remove all the Norse names too?
If you are feeling pedantic: surely it should have an accent grave on the O of Ob.
Or is that a local thing, ie variance within the Gaelic?
It probably should if I could remember how to type one. I'm afraid I'm not an expert on this front, although I do spend a lot of time in places with Gaelic placenames (or rather did, Before Covid).
Seriously though, a lot of our placenames have a coloured history, many connected with different empires and invasions. Is it OK to have places named by invaders (Roman or Viking) as long as it wasn't "us" doing the invading?
Or are all these things just part of our history, dodgy or otherwise?
That's swings of 8.5% and 6.5% away from Trump in Oklahoma and Kentucky. Senior retired Republicans are queuing up to be negative about Trump or even endorse Biden. But the White House is trailing a big "unity" address to the nation this week. The Donald, he can do anything. From the great polariser to the great unifier? Something "great" anyway. He's the greatest and realest, and nothing like a loser or a fake. He can be the unifiers' unifier if he chooses. Best of luck with that. Not sure I've ever seen a US leader so busted this far out.
Yep. Too late now. Some people are on the pitch. The fat lady is fingering her mike. Coronavirus was a golden opportunity to reinvent himself as a credible president. Indeed I was slightly scared that he would somehow manage to do so - it was his one clear chance to head off the big defeat in November that I have long thought inevitable.
But I needn't have worried. The situation merely exposed his almost comical limitations further. He simply does not have the capability to speak or lead in a 'national interest' manner. When he tries it looks and sounds ridiculous because it is so clearly phony. And on top of this you have the glaring lack of competence which is hard to hide when there is a genuine crisis on.
So, sure, he may have another go at 'presidential' but the result will be the same. It will come over as false. Few will be swayed and of those who are it will as likely be the other way. For his hardcore supporters it might still be a case of "To know him is to love him," but for everybody else the opposite now applies. He appears, he speaks, he net repels.
His best re-election strategy in my view would be one of minimalist blandness from here until polling day. Keep his head down. Stay out of the news. But of course it has no chance of being adopted. Instead it will be double down on Boast, Blame, Bluster. Chances of this securing many votes other than his base and those outside it who would vote Republican regardless? Slim to zero. He's toast.
I kind of agree that it's a bit late for him to start acting presidential now. Part of Trump's appeal is that his supporters think that he "tells it likes it is". That doesn't mean he doesn't lie, but when he lies it is entirely in keeping with his character. That's also partly why things like "grab 'em by the pussy" weren't fatal for him. It was obnoxious, but consistent. He's a consistently obnoxious guy. To suddenly switch now would probably turn off his core vote, without convincing anyone else. His best chance is to try and reduce the numbers voting for the other guy, by whatever means. Like everyone says, it's probably going to get really dirty (unless he gives up and starts his own Trumped Up News Channel: "All fake, all of the time!").
I'm sure it will go exactly as you say. I expect the ugliest political campaign in modern US history. Suppress the vote in Dem areas. Dog whistle to white racists. Whip up anti-China sentiment and Islamophobia. Smear Biden. Portray the Dems as UnAmerican commies. Unleash a torrent of fake news, aided and abetted by foreign fascists. If it works, Nov 4th will be a dark dark day.
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Or alternatively, cut class sizes in the state sector and watch as private schools close for lack of pupils?
Honestly, some people are really dumb.
Your solution would increase class sizes, at least in the short term, not reduce them.
I am not dumb. I think the dumb people are those who think that there will be money to cut class sizes in the state sector as long as the rich and powerful can opt out of it.
I am not convinced you are the best judge of your own ability in light of some of your more bizarre recent posts. Do you seriously think that causing a train wreck in education would help poor students? All that would happen under your proposals in the short term is an explosion in class sizes and the implosion of the teetering state sector, coupled with a sharp rise in the amount of tuition, or even 'home schooling,' paid for by wealthier parents. Who's going to suffer in that scenario? Hint - it isn't the rich.
Of course, Covid-19 coupled with pension changes is going to close a lot of private schools anyway, so in some regions (e.g. round here) it's very possible we will see what happens when they go. But if you want to get rid of private schools, you don't do it by dropping ban hammers to satisfy the personal prejudices of a lot of hardcore near-fascists like the Corbynista Labour party. You do it by making the state sector so good almost nobody will bother to pay large sums of money for an alternative. And the key to that is cutting class sizes.
Blair understood that, but never worked out how to actually achieve it (the solution was to raise taxes, but he couldn't bring himself to order Brown to do it). Gove and Cummings unfortunately did not, and their misguided reforms actually made matters worse by increasing teacher attrition rates.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
What a contradiction of terms.
Where do you think the 615,000 children will go to be educated
In the medium term school capacity and hence class size is a policy choice, it's not in fixed supply. I am asking you to imagine an alternative education system in which the private sector has largely disappeared. In that system, do you think we would have smaller class sizes, more funding and better outcomes overall, or the opposite? I would argue that we would see the former, based on the precedent offered by other European countries. Imagine if the rich and politically connected all sent their kids to the local comprehensive school, how often they would be bending the ear of politicians to get more money or raise standards in their school. I have been privileged to see a fair amount of interaction between the extremely wealthy and politicians up close, and I can tell you that not once has the subject of state schools come up.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Why? The Education budget would remain the same, and you'd have 7-10% extra pupils and no extra funding. They'd increase. And some teachers in the private sector would be put out of work too.
You might argue that the middle-class would then agitate for a higher education budget, as indeed they might, but the Government would have even less money.
It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring.
Policy in this country is largely set by the preferences of the upper middle class, especially on issues that they care about disproportionately, like education. We know that they favour smaller class sizes, because that is what the private sector offers them to obtain their fees. If they were forced to send their kids to state schools I have no doubt that the weight of influential public opinion would soon channel more resources to education, lowering class sizes and raising standards. It will never happen, I am not even saying it should happen, but I have no doubt that it would have a net positive effect on education outcomes in this country.
I think this is a myth. There's no shortage of such opinions at the moment, and even most of the upper middle class do send their children to state schools.
Where they don't they move to a house in the right catchment area, or leverage other advantages to get the best outcome for their children.
That's my point, state schools need those sharp elbowed people pushing to raise budgets and standards, not lobbying for tax cuts since they don't use public services.
Those who sharp-elbows can question authority and challenge decisions better, and more articulately, but they cannot magic up extra budgets. It would be too hard and difficult to do it and it would be much easier for them to focus on their own kids.
I expect you'd just see increased class polarisation in the state sector and further spikes in house prices in certain areas.
Yes - like a certain state school in Hampstead.
You are completely free to send your children there.
Providing you live in a multi-million pound house. Or live in the servants quarters of one of the really big ones....
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Indeed. 19th-century housing designs were perfectly capable of achieving a high level of density and utility while enhancing the public realm. It's a concept most high-concept architects of the present are utterly incapable of grasping.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Indeed.
I view this as similar to the rules of being a house guest: you have a duty as a host to make your guest feel at home, and the guest has to duty to remember they are not.
It's the same with "offence": you have a duty to be avoid causing offence and should apologise where you do, but the other should not be looking to take for reasons to take it.
Who the f*** is a guest here? And then you wonder why people assume you might be racist.
And it's comments like this which are part of the problem..
Are you seriously looking to engage, or are you more interested in looking to interpret my comments in the most hostile and negative light possible?
In the past, people were dismissive and careless about causing offence. They used words, phrases and behaviours that caused great hurt and pain. That was wrong. It needed to change. In some areas it still needs to change.
What I'm saying is that in addition to not doing that we should also not be looking to always take offence where none is intended. There will always be buildings, art, architecture and political views that some of us don't like. We can't just always act on loud objections to take them down on the grounds that some find them insulting or offensive or we'll have nothing left - we need to learn co-exist peacefully together.
I offered the house guest rules as an analogy because I thought it was a good behavioural example of this. You've decided to take it as a comment on immigration and the UK today.
That's a good example of what I'm talking about.
I have to say I thought exactly the same as noneoftheabove when I read about being a "guest", although I would have expressed the thought a bit less forcefully.
If that's the case then perhaps you both need to take a rain-check on how you read and process comments from other posters who might challenge some of your assumptions, rather than twitching for secret racism in every post made by them followed up by hair-trigger reactions.
Jesus. It does explain why no-one with a public profile wants to say anything, doesn't it?
Have I said that you are racist? I'm not sure I have.
I do think that writing about how guests should behave while writing on this topic is inadvisable and might make people think you are being racist. So probably wise to avoid.
I also think we all have our prejudices and that saying (and I don't know if you have done this, although you seemed to agree) that tearing down this statue is the same as destroying buildings, or burning libraries, or dropping nuclear bombs on British cities is implicitly racist, and I would advise a little bit more thought and empathy before making such analogies.
This is a case of reductio ad absurdum. I really don't know what Adonis is playing at by conflating Colston with the likes of Cromwell.
There was every case for pulling down the Bristol statue and I for one am glad that something so insulting to so many has gone. The man was part of a company responsible for transporting 80,000 slaves and probably causing the death of the same number who didn't make it alive. It was erected in the late 19th Century due to the funding of its sponsor who stepped in following the failure of a public appeal, at a time when slavery was already utterly abhorrent, so it didn't really represent opinion even then. The fact that those casting around for other examples are finding it hard to identify anything else so abhorrent rather makes the point that the Bristol statue was pretty unique. Shame on the authorities for not getting rid of it years ago. Just occasionally, very occasionally, it's right for the public to intervene when the authorities fail so spectacularly.
The only issue that I have with its removal is the fact that the crowd should not have gathered in the midst of an infectious deadly pandemic. So I would have approved of the manner of its removal 6 months ago, but not at this precise moment when those gathering across the UK risk infecting themselves and others giving new legs to the pandemic. People will die as a result of the current wave of protests, including many others who did not take part. I think it is that, not the fact of removal, that limited support for the action to just 13%.
I don't see much evidence that those casting around for other examples are finding it hard to identify others. We've already had Churchill and now Rhodes, Cromwell, Gladstone and Henry Dundas are coming into play. It won't end there.
And can we see the evidence it was insulting to so many, rather than taking the word of those who say it was without challenging who they are and what their real motives are first, please? I'm very open to accepting it was and I'd like to hear directly from BAME people in Bristol, of all ages and backgrounds on their experiences and priorities, rather than being told what they find offensive and insulting.
Because up until last weekend the policy of Bristol Council, which has a Labour majority, and is led by Labour BAME mayor, was to put up a plaque, not pull it down, and residents didn't support pulling it down either.
Are we sure most normal people (of any race or background) get insulted by walking past an historic statute, many of whom don't know what it is or its context? Or do they see it as utterly irrelevant to their everyday lives and are more interested in focusing on the future? Are they worry such actions might actually cause divisions and end-up making their lives harder, rather than easier?
I don't know. I'd like to hear more before we take the protesters at their word.
There's not much thinking and challenge going on here, but an awful lot of judgement.
In the case of those five, it seems to be more a case of people wishing to take offence, rather than being actually insulted.
On reflection, I think that scientists and doctors do not want to relax social distancing and the government does. The pressure to get the country going again is going to increase exponentially. We have saved the NHS at the cost of destroying much of the rest of society, and this is a very high price.
I foresee a situation in which a vaccine becomes available later this year, and the scientists still refuse to relax social distancing saying that not enough people have been vaccinated or that the effectiveness of vaccination is unproven. PPE and the 2 metre rule will still be asked for by them. I don't see a way out of this before a crisis in which there is a major confrontation between the scientists and the government.
In a sense this is a crisis that is not about the coronavirus. This is about trust in experts and in the government, and about democratic safeguards. This is a battle about who controls the UK and it is not really about the virus.
And Adonis must know about the statue of James II outside the National Gallery and the equestrian one of Charles I on the other side of Trafalgar Square too.
Colston's company - 80000 slaves? Pah! That's nothing on the Royal African Company.
Incidentally a lot of the Leverhulme Trust money comes from what was slavery in all but name in the Belgian Congo where William Lever had a brutal fiefdom.
Raze Leverburgh to the ground!
Actually reverting to its original name of Obbe might be more proportional.
An t-Ob or Obbe, though? We don't want any dodgy Anglicised names.
Are we going to remove all the Norse names too?
If you are feeling pedantic: surely it should have an accent grave on the O of Ob.
Or is that a local thing, ie variance within the Gaelic?
It probably should if I could remember how to type one. I'm afraid I'm not an expert on this front, although I do spend a lot of time in places with Gaelic placenames (or rather did, Before Covid).
Seriously though, a lot of our placenames have a coloured history, many connected with different empires and invasions. Is it OK to have places named by invaders (Roman or Viking) as long as it wasn't "us" doing the invading?
Or are all these things just part of our history, dodgy or otherwise?
I'd be inclined to leave the history alone and just remember and reflect - though it is clear (as the Graun comments today) that the Colston statue was provocative and the treatment of recently expressed concerns still more so. And in any case in the case of Leverburgh the Gaels are still very much with us and still very keen on using their placenames, unsurprisingly so. Round where I live in the SE of Scotland, the Brythons have been assimilated long ago, though their placenames have survived - rather ironically for this discussion.
I'm also reminded how confused I was by reading accounts of the Easter Rising in Dublin, and so on, in terms of the modern city I knew, till I realised the streets had been renamed post independence!
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Or alternatively, cut class sizes in the state sector and watch as private schools close for lack of pupils?
Honestly, some people are really dumb.
Your solution would increase class sizes, at least in the short term, not reduce them.
I am not dumb. I think the dumb people are those who think that there will be money to cut class sizes in the state sector as long as the rich and powerful can opt out of it.
I am not convinced you are the best judge of your own ability in light of some of your more bizarre recent posts. Do you seriously think that causing a train wreck in education would help poor students? All that would happen under your proposals in the short term is an explosion in class sizes and the implosion of the teetering state sector, coupled with a sharp rise in the amount of tuition, or even 'home schooling,' paid for by wealthier parents. Who's going to suffer in that scenario? Hint - it isn't the rich.
Of course, Covid-19 coupled with pension changes is going to close a lot of private schools anyway, so in some regions (e.g. round here) it's very possible we will see what happens when they go. But if you want to get rid of private schools, you don't do it by dropping ban hammers to satisfy the personal prejudices of a lot of hardcore near-fascists like the Corbynista Labour party. You do it by making the state sector so good almost nobody will bother to pay large sums of money for an alternative. And the key to that is cutting class sizes.
Blair understood that, but never worked out how to actually achieve it (the solution was to raise taxes, but he couldn't bring himself to order Brown to do it). Gove and Cummings unfortunately did not, and their misguided reforms actually made matters worse by increasing teacher attrition rates.
I already said that I wasn't suggesting a ban, I don't think it would be feasible or consistent with human rights legislation, and it would most likely be too disruptive. I am simply saying that there is a reason the state sector is teetering, and that reason is that people of wealth and power don't care about it. If you have an alternative suggestion for getting state schools better resourced I'd love to hear it. Would love to know which of my posts you consider to be bizarre, I think I'm a pretty reasonable kind of person, certainly by PB standards.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Why? The Education budget would remain the same, and you'd have 7-10% extra pupils and no extra funding. They'd increase. And some teachers in the private sector would be put out of work too.
You might argue that the middle-class would then agitate for a higher education budget, as indeed they might, but the Government would have even less money.
It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring.
Policy in this country is largely set by the preferences of the upper middle class, especially on issues that they care about disproportionately, like education. We know that they favour smaller class sizes, because that is what the private sector offers them to obtain their fees. If they were forced to send their kids to state schools I have no doubt that the weight of influential public opinion would soon channel more resources to education, lowering class sizes and raising standards. It will never happen, I am not even saying it should happen, but I have no doubt that it would have a net positive effect on education outcomes in this country.
Very important point. Glad to see it being made. If the most affluent and influential members of society are fully invested in something - e.g. state education - it will lead over time to an increase in standards. This is one of the strongest arguments against private schools.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
This is a case of reductio ad absurdum. I really don't know what Adonis is playing at by conflating Colston with the likes of Cromwell.
There was every case for pulling down the Bristol statue and I for one am glad that something so insulting to so many has gone. The man was part of a company responsible for transporting 80,000 slaves and probably causing the death of the same number who didn't make it alive. It was erected in the late 19th Century due to the funding of its sponsor who stepped in following the failure of a public appeal, at a time when slavery was already utterly abhorrent, so it didn't really represent opinion even then. The fact that those casting around for other examples are finding it hard to identify anything else so abhorrent rather makes the point that the Bristol statue was pretty unique. Shame on the authorities for not getting rid of it years ago. Just occasionally, very occasionally, it's right for the public to intervene when the authorities fail so spectacularly.
The only issue that I have with its removal is the fact that the crowd should not have gathered in the midst of an infectious deadly pandemic. So I would have approved of the manner of its removal 6 months ago, but not at this precise moment when those gathering across the UK risk infecting themselves and others giving new legs to the pandemic. People will die as a result of the current wave of protests, including many others who did not take part. I think it is that, not the fact of removal, that limited support for the action to just 13%.
I don't see much evidence that those casting around for other examples are finding it hard to identify others. We've already had Churchill and now Rhodes, Cromwell, Gladstone and Henry Dundas are coming into play. It won't end there.
And can we see the evidence it was insulting to so many, rather than taking the word of those who say it was without challenging who they are and what their real motives are first, please? I'm very open to accepting it was and I'd like to hear directly from BAME people in Bristol, of all ages and backgrounds on their experiences and priorities, rather than being told what they find offensive and insulting.
Because up until last weekend the policy of Bristol Council, which has a Labour majority, and is led by Labour BAME mayor, was to put up a plaque, not pull it down, and residents didn't support pulling it down either.
Are we sure most normal people (of any race or background) get insulted by walking past an historic statute, many of whom don't know what it is or its context? Or do they see it as utterly irrelevant to their everyday lives and are more interested in focusing on the future? Are they worry such actions might actually cause divisions and end-up making their lives harder, rather than easier?
I don't know. I'd like to hear more before we take the protesters at their word.
There's not much thinking and challenge going on here, but an awful lot of judgement.
In the case of those five, it seems to be more a case of people wishing to take offence, rather than being actually insulted.
The Rhodes statue at Oriel of course has been the target of protests before. It was led by a Rhodes Scholar (and backed by 198 more) who had to contend with charges of hypocrisy that they wished to remove the statue but keep the money.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
I also think the comparison some are making to the bringing down of the Saddam statue in Baghdad are being completely dismissive of the millions of live blighted by a contemporary dictator who murdered by the thousands. Those people, not their ancestors, live under the brutal regime and suffered for years.
It's frankly insulting to the millions who suffered in Iraq and the families of those who lost loved ones to Saddam's regime.
Comments
Thanks everyone for all the kind wishes. My post wasn't intended so much to elicit sympathy (but nice of you all anyway) as to warn of the danger of a second wave. I'd suggest staying very alert wherever you are but especially if you are in London or another big city.
We are mystified as to how the Memsahib caught the bug. We were virtually self isolating until she came down to London but even there she had very little contact with outsiders and the epidemic had apparently eased. We suspect a walk on Hampstead Heath when it was very busy may be the culprit, but we really don't know.
That is what it said.
To adapt your example to an equivalent it would be a 60/70s building stating Jimmy Savilles a great role model for kids and does so much for charity.
Such a building wouldnt last long.
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1270286977007595525
Labour revealing its middle class bias again?
If I were a North Korean citizen who's family had been sent to the camps or starved to death, I'd be pretty pissed off if I had to walk past a statue of the dear leader on a daily basis.
I think being home all day has definitely led to better home cooked meals and better overall eating as neither of us have the option of going out for lunch and getting a burger or whatever.
But I needn't have worried. The situation merely exposed his almost comical limitations further. He simply does not have the capability to speak or lead in a 'national interest' manner. When he tries it looks and sounds ridiculous because it is so clearly phony. And on top of this you have the glaring lack of competence which is hard to hide when there is a genuine crisis on.
So, sure, he may have another go at 'presidential' but the result will be the same. It will come over as false. Few will be swayed and of those who are it will as likely be the other way. For his hardcore supporters it might still be a case of "To know him is to love him," but for everybody else the opposite now applies. He appears, he speaks, he net repels.
His best re-election strategy in my view would be one of minimalist blandness from here until polling day. Keep his head down. Stay out of the news. But of course it has no chance of being adopted. Instead it will be double down on Boast, Blame, Bluster. Chances of this securing many votes other than his base and those outside it who would vote Republican regardless? Slim to zero. He's toast.
And can we see the evidence it was insulting to so many, rather than taking the word of those who say it was without challenging who they are and what their real motives are first, please? I'm very open to accepting it was and I'd like to hear directly from BAME people in Bristol, of all ages and backgrounds on their experiences and priorities, rather than being told what they find offensive and insulting.
Because up until last weekend the policy of Bristol Council, which has a Labour majority, and is led by Labour BAME mayor, was to put up a plaque, not pull it down, and residents didn't support pulling it down either.
Are we sure most normal people (of any race or background) get insulted by walking past an historic statute, many of whom don't know what it is or its context? Or do they see it as utterly irrelevant to their everyday lives and are more interested in focusing on the future? Are they worry such actions might actually cause divisions and end-up making their lives harder, rather than easier?
I don't know. I'd like to hear more before we take the protesters at their word.
There's not much thinking and challenge going on here, but an awful lot of judgement.
The two countries which had remotely comparable outbreaks- Italy and Spain- have kept schools closed until September (though a lot of that is because they have longer summer holidays anyway).
I know there are problems with international comparisons and 7 day smoothing, but if you take the FT compilation as indicative of something meaningful, the UK death rate is currently roughly where Germany at its peak;
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&areas=gbr&areas=deu&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usnj&cumulative=0&logScale=1&perMillion=0&values=deaths
Still being in partial lockdown when other countries are able to move out is unpleasant and expensive. Unfortunately, this is where we have to pay the price for botching the initial response.
Nuanced assessments of historical figures, taking into account the environment of their times, is always worthwhile, but the temptation to trash popular icons is pointlessly divisive. Churchill was indisputably a great war leader - absolutely the right man at the right time - though with some dubious military judgments and some opinions on Empire and race which now may look ill-judged. I'm not sure it's helpful to go much further than that. It's obviously ridiculous to consider his statues in the same category as slave traders.
I view this as similar to the rules of being a house guest: you have a duty as a host to make your guest feel at home, and the guest has to duty to remember they are not.
It's the same with "offence": you have a duty to be avoid causing offence and should apologise where you do, but the other should not be looking to take for reasons to take it.
"any plan to unilaterally remove it might be justified’.
"I have never been a believer in taking the law into one's own hands. However, if this partisan and nauseous plaque is approved, I can not find it in my heart to condemn anyone who damages or removes it,”
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/theft-vandalism-second-colston-statue-1815967
One rule for their side, one rule for everyone else.
The solution of changing the plaque seems reasonable, but the local Tory councillor was encouraging vandalising and removing it.
You might argue that the middle-class would then agitate for a higher education budget, as indeed they might, but the Government would have even less money.
It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring.
Are we going to remove all the Norse names too?
For me the big change in my view of what will happen is when I heard he plans to make a unifying speech. Previously that would have worried me that he could con his way out of all of this. Not so any more, as I feel certain he would just go off script and continue to expose himself as to the person he really is and whatever verbal cockup he made would be all over the media even more than normal and the downward spiral of exposure would just continue.
https://shytechocolate.com/
I would love to see the hospitality sector back - only this will signify to me a resumption of normal life - and I agree with the Header that the government should set clear rules and then allow individual businesses to use their judgement as to if in practice they can open - and if so how to do it.
I think the rules should be kept to a minimum and they should be hard rules - i.e. legally enforceable. All of these "guidelines" do little but confuse and create grey areas.
Is this legal? Yes/No.
Could I be sued? Yes/No.
Does my insurance work for this situation? Yes/No.
Will I make money if I open? Yes/No.
These imo are the key questions a business owner needs to be able to answer with a high degree of confidence. You need a Yes, No, Yes, Yes. In which case open up and let the customers and supply & demand do the rest.
I don't agree with the councillor, but more than a plaque, I would advocate Colston be supplemented by a sculpture commemorating the slaves upon which much of Bristol's wealth was built, and, in time (though I understand the gentleman is very much with us) a monument to Paul Stephenson OBE. Can we be a generation that builds things rather than rips them down please?
Honestly, some people are really dumb.
Your solution would increase class sizes, at least in the short term, not reduce them.
Or is that a local thing, ie variance within the Gaelic?
Edit: I hope your better half recovers soon.
https://twitter.com/Trad_West_Arch/status/1268990863763529728
Because if there aren't then how do they magically manage to achieve everything they want?
Are you seriously looking to engage, or are you more interested in looking to interpret my comments in the most hostile and negative light possible?
In the past, people were dismissive and careless about causing offence. They used words, phrases and behaviours that caused great hurt and pain. That was wrong. It needed to change. In some areas it still needs to change.
What I'm saying is that in addition to not doing that we should also not be looking to always take offence where none is intended. There will always be buildings, art, architecture and political views that some of us don't like. We can't just always act on loud objections to take them down on the grounds that some find them insulting or offensive or we'll have nothing left - we need to learn co-exist peacefully together.
I offered the house guest rules as an analogy because I thought it was a good behavioural example of this. You've decided to take it as a comment on immigration and the UK today.
That's a good example of what I'm talking about.
https://www.google.com/maps/@57.764722,-7.000777,3a,15y,315.66h,85.35t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sRGm0Pm7N6qA3ctoq3li1rw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
https://twitter.com/BrandiKruse/status/1270112263890857984?s=19
Where they don't they move to a house in the right catchment area, or leverage other advantages to get the best outcome for their children.
My company sergeant major soon gripped them but needless to say there wasn't much social distancing in the ensuing battle.
In a program on this, on the BBC, it was suggested that it was a shame that he hadn't got a chance to try out his magnificent dreams...
He lived in a Tudor manor house, where he indulged in setting out a funky garden, using mirrors to reflect the water in ponds etc. All very peaceful - he used his contacts in the development world to prevent anyone building anything within miles of his sanctuary.....
Where do you think the 615,000 children will go to be educated
Were the upper middle classes in this superior position between 1997 -2010 for example?
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
I wouldn't want to strawman your position on this, but it does seem to be focused solely on deaths rather than anything else.
In addition, I'm not sure waiting for overwhelming evidence that children are causing significant deaths is really the wisest course if we're in a pandemic with an infectious disease that's causing a lot of illness and deaths. There's a reasonable core assumption that they'll pass on the infectious disease unless there's strong evidence the other way. As you say, the evidence is not yet clear.
The decision matrix goes:
IF they cannot pass it on AND we keep schools open - ideal outcome
IF they do pass it on AND we keep schools open - loads of negative outcomes to life an the economy
IF they cannot pass it on AND we close schools - there are negatives to education and economy
IF they do pass it on AND we close schools - we incur the negatives to education and the economy in the one above.
Keeping the schools open without solid evidence is a massive gamble with a lot of lives and the economy, especially when there are default assumptions that children can pass on this disease (after all - why shouldn't they?).
As in so many things, there is much to learn from our continental neighbours.
Jesus. It does explain why no-one with a public profile wants to say anything, doesn't it?
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Bristol:
https://twitter.com/BillCorcoran5/status/685899160562864128
I expect you'd just see increased class polarisation in the state sector and further spikes in house prices in certain areas.
Because the middle classes were sending their children there.
Seriously though, a lot of our placenames have a coloured history, many connected with different empires and invasions. Is it OK to have places named by invaders (Roman or Viking) as long as it wasn't "us" doing the invading?
Or are all these things just part of our history, dodgy or otherwise?
But it won't.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
Of course, Covid-19 coupled with pension changes is going to close a lot of private schools anyway, so in some regions (e.g. round here) it's very possible we will see what happens when they go. But if you want to get rid of private schools, you don't do it by dropping ban hammers to satisfy the personal prejudices of a lot of hardcore near-fascists like the Corbynista Labour party. You do it by making the state sector so good almost nobody will bother to pay large sums of money for an alternative. And the key to that is cutting class sizes.
Blair understood that, but never worked out how to actually achieve it (the solution was to raise taxes, but he couldn't bring himself to order Brown to do it). Gove and Cummings unfortunately did not, and their misguided reforms actually made matters worse by increasing teacher attrition rates.
You are completely free to send your children there.
Providing you live in a multi-million pound house. Or live in the servants quarters of one of the really big ones....
I do think that writing about how guests should behave while writing on this topic is inadvisable and might make people think you are being racist. So probably wise to avoid.
I also think we all have our prejudices and that saying (and I don't know if you have done this, although you seemed to agree) that tearing down this statue is the same as destroying buildings, or burning libraries, or dropping nuclear bombs on British cities is implicitly racist, and I would advise a little bit more thought and empathy before making such analogies.
I foresee a situation in which a vaccine becomes available later this year, and the scientists still refuse to relax social distancing saying that not enough people have been vaccinated or that the effectiveness of vaccination is unproven. PPE and the 2 metre rule will still be asked for by them. I don't see a way out of this before a crisis in which there is a major confrontation between the scientists and the government.
In a sense this is a crisis that is not about the coronavirus. This is about trust in experts and in the government, and about democratic safeguards. This is a battle about who controls the UK and it is not really about the virus.
I'm also reminded how confused I was by reading accounts of the Easter Rising in Dublin, and so on, in terms of the modern city I knew, till I realised the streets had been renamed post independence!
Would love to know which of my posts you consider to be bizarre, I think I'm a pretty reasonable kind of person, certainly by PB standards.
Not when you have urban planners and modern architects.
It's frankly insulting to the millions who suffered in Iraq and the families of those who lost loved ones to Saddam's regime.