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Unapproved thoughts. The government and free speech – politicalbetting.com

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  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    stodge said:

    stodge said:


    Once again, I'm forced to question what seems to be uneven progress in the vaccination programme. In some areas, those over 50 seem to be vaccinated but in others those over 65 are still waiting for appointments.

    In order for restrictions to be eased, I'd have thought we'd need to see similar levels of vaccination across the whole country otherwise we'll be back to Tiers.

    Must be hard to get balance of supply right if there are some areas where there is a larger no-vaxx brigade than expected?

    But I must admit is getting a bit galling to read of fit 60 year olds getting the vaccine in some postcodes whilst I have family who are clinically vulnerable who are still waiting.
    Indeed and these anomalies or logistical failings or whatever you want to call them need to be addressed urgently. Simply counting up the vaccinations and assuming everything is going well is foolish - there are problems, not huge problems I would guess but clearly the numbers vaccinated and the speed the vulnerable groups are being contacted and vaccinated is starting to vary.

    All of this compromises the debate over the easing of restrictions - those areas with all in Groups 1-9 vaccinated (or more accurately those not refusing the vaccination) will be champing at the bit to unlock but that's no use if large numbers of unvaccinated people are just a few miles away because in that area the logistics haven't performed so well.
    via the Graun, a tale of two Londons:

    https://twitter.com/hammersmithandy/status/1362019143378165760

    https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1361982389761810434
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    Foxy said:

    eek said:

    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    This Conservative majority was elected with a majority partly to ensure conservative views and values got a fair hearing, including in academia

    If progressive minded students are to be forcibly exposed to conservative ideas it's only fair if it applies the other way too. All over 55s outside the big cities to be strapped to an armchair every weekday evening and pointed towards a TV tuned to Ch4. I can't see how anybody could possibly object.
    Not really. Students are supposed to be in “education”. They are there to learn - oddly enough. If that education is to be as broad and encompassing as possible they need exposure to a broad as possible spectrum of views - be that be in politics or anything else. Including the subject they are studying.

    Over 55’s tend not to be in education. They can think what they wish. As can the students when they cease to be - well - students. The clue is in their description. Are the students there to learn or just have their pre-disposition to “progressive” (whatever the hell that term means) ideas reinforced without challenge?
    It's fine to dictate what you are being taught and how when you aren't paying for it.

    If I'm paying £9k I year I would expect my opinion to be worth something...
    You choose what you are being taught by your subject. You are “taught” history for example. But does that mean you are only taught the views, opinions and conclusions of one historian who happens to have “acceptable” views at that time or are you taught different views of different historians, and it’s your role - as a student - to read, assess and agree/disagree with those historians conclusions and importantly provide your reasoning WHY.

    You don’t go to university to reinforce what you already know. You go there to, once again, learn.
    I think that you misunderstand the commercial and consumerist nature of modern university life. Higher education is now a consumer product, and students want to get a good experience, which means high marks for modules that they like. Increasingly these are taught by a casualised University workforce whose contracts are at the whim of the senior management.

    So students get taught what they want, not what they need. Universities are not Ivory towers of dreaming academics, they are degree factories with exploited workers selling cheap tat to the fashionably gullible.
    That makes me feel so much better about what I am going to be forking out for the next 3 years!
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Pulpstar said:

    Vaccinations: 7 day rolling average continues to decline. Does anyone know the cause?

    (Presumably supply issues, hopefully temporary.)

    My theory, we're now trying to vaccinate people who think Covid-19 doesn't impact them, so they don't need to be vaccinated.
    Almost all the group 5s I know are really keen to get jabbed ASAP.

    Yours truly got jabbed today (AZ).
    Last pb-er to get jabbed has to get the drinks in.....
    I think me, Max, Alistair, Phil Thompson, Casino are the live runners on this one.
    I had been nursing a vague hope being married to someone on the shielding list would bump me up the priority queue.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    rcs1000 said:

    Vaccinations: 7 day rolling average continues to decline. Does anyone know the cause?

    (Presumably supply issues, hopefully temporary.)

    My theory, we're now trying to vaccinate people who think Covid-19 doesn't impact them, so they don't need to be vaccinated.
    Almost all the group 5s I know are really keen to get jabbed ASAP.

    Yours truly got jabbed today (AZ).
    Last pb-er to get jabbed has to get the drinks in.....
    That could be expensive. I gain the impression that the under 50s are scarce round these parts...
    I'm under 50! (And jabbed.)
    US system favours proactive people ?
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    stodge said:

    stodge said:


    Once again, I'm forced to question what seems to be uneven progress in the vaccination programme. In some areas, those over 50 seem to be vaccinated but in others those over 65 are still waiting for appointments.

    In order for restrictions to be eased, I'd have thought we'd need to see similar levels of vaccination across the whole country otherwise we'll be back to Tiers.

    Must be hard to get balance of supply right if there are some areas where there is a larger no-vaxx brigade than expected?

    But I must admit is getting a bit galling to read of fit 60 year olds getting the vaccine in some postcodes whilst I have family who are clinically vulnerable who are still waiting.
    Indeed and these anomalies or logistical failings or whatever you want to call them need to be addressed urgently. Simply counting up the vaccinations and assuming everything is going well is foolish - there are problems, not huge problems I would guess but clearly the numbers vaccinated and the speed the vulnerable groups are being contacted and vaccinated is starting to vary.

    All of this compromises the debate over the easing of restrictions - those areas with all in Groups 1-9 vaccinated (or more accurately those not refusing the vaccination) will be champing at the bit to unlock but that's no use if large numbers of unvaccinated people are just a few miles away because in that area the logistics haven't performed so well.
    via the Graun, a tale of two Londons:

    https://twitter.com/hammersmithandy/status/1362019143378165760

    https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1361982389761810434
    Is this the "actually jabbed" vs "offered" dichotomy kicking in here and there is no difference?
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    MaxPB said:

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ministers-wont-give-up-covid-powers-easily-nw0g0mbpt

    Of interest @TOPPING, very much on the lines of what we've been discussing.

    And, interestingly, another critic from the centre-left, to add to the much needed voices from that wing of the political spectrum. David Blunkett, David Aaronovitch and Zoe Williams may be few in number, but at least they are there!
  • Vaccinations: 7 day rolling average continues to decline. Does anyone know the cause?

    (Presumably supply issues, hopefully temporary.)

    My theory, we're now trying to vaccinate people who think Covid-19 doesn't impact them, so they don't need to be vaccinated.
    Almost all the group 5s I know are really keen to get jabbed ASAP.

    Yours truly got jabbed today (AZ).
    Last pb-er to get jabbed has to get the drinks in.....
    That could be expensive. I gain the impression that the under 50s are scarce round these parts...
    I’m 43 next week. Getting old.
  • Foxy said:

    eek said:

    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    This Conservative majority was elected with a majority partly to ensure conservative views and values got a fair hearing, including in academia

    If progressive minded students are to be forcibly exposed to conservative ideas it's only fair if it applies the other way too. All over 55s outside the big cities to be strapped to an armchair every weekday evening and pointed towards a TV tuned to Ch4. I can't see how anybody could possibly object.
    Not really. Students are supposed to be in “education”. They are there to learn - oddly enough. If that education is to be as broad and encompassing as possible they need exposure to a broad as possible spectrum of views - be that be in politics or anything else. Including the subject they are studying.

    Over 55’s tend not to be in education. They can think what they wish. As can the students when they cease to be - well - students. The clue is in their description. Are the students there to learn or just have their pre-disposition to “progressive” (whatever the hell that term means) ideas reinforced without challenge?
    It's fine to dictate what you are being taught and how when you aren't paying for it.

    If I'm paying £9k I year I would expect my opinion to be worth something...
    You choose what you are being taught by your subject. You are “taught” history for example. But does that mean you are only taught the views, opinions and conclusions of one historian who happens to have “acceptable” views at that time or are you taught different views of different historians, and it’s your role - as a student - to read, assess and agree/disagree with those historians conclusions and importantly provide your reasoning WHY.

    You don’t go to university to reinforce what you already know. You go there to, once again, learn.
    I think that you misunderstand the commercial and consumerist nature of modern university life. Higher education is now a consumer product, and students want to get a good experience, which means high marks for modules that they like. Increasingly these are taught by a casualised University workforce whose contracts are at the whim of the senior management.

    So students get taught what they want, not what they need. Universities are not Ivory towers of dreaming academics, they are degree factories with exploited workers selling cheap tat to the fashionably gullible.
    The degrees may be tat but they're certainly not cheap.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    Pulpstar said:

    Vaccinations: 7 day rolling average continues to decline. Does anyone know the cause?

    (Presumably supply issues, hopefully temporary.)

    My theory, we're now trying to vaccinate people who think Covid-19 doesn't impact them, so they don't need to be vaccinated.
    Almost all the group 5s I know are really keen to get jabbed ASAP.

    Yours truly got jabbed today (AZ).
    Last pb-er to get jabbed has to get the drinks in.....
    I think me, Max, Alistair, Phil Thompson, Casino are the live runners on this one.
    @Mortimer and @Gallowgate are both very young chaps
  • eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    Err, that would be civil servants complaining that the post went to someone unelected rather than an unelected civil servant?
    He's taken on most of Gove's responsibilities, an elected politician.
    What's Gove doing then?

    But it's been common in the past that people have been appointed a Lord to deal with areas in their expertise.
    This maybe the harbinger of a cabinet reshuffle.

    There has been talk of Gove going to Health or Education.

    Personally I'd love to see him back at Justice, those 14 months he did there was the signs of some rather brilliant thinking and policies, rather than the hang them and flog them brigade, with the exception of Ken Clarke, seem to the type of Tory Justice Secretaries picked.
    I think Gove gets results wherever you put him.

    The trouble is he doesn't take any prisoners.
    It is just as well Gove "doesn't take any prisoners" because his time as Justice Secretary left us with record court delays and a shortage of prison places.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Foxy said:

    eek said:

    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    This Conservative majority was elected with a majority partly to ensure conservative views and values got a fair hearing, including in academia

    If progressive minded students are to be forcibly exposed to conservative ideas it's only fair if it applies the other way too. All over 55s outside the big cities to be strapped to an armchair every weekday evening and pointed towards a TV tuned to Ch4. I can't see how anybody could possibly object.
    Not really. Students are supposed to be in “education”. They are there to learn - oddly enough. If that education is to be as broad and encompassing as possible they need exposure to a broad as possible spectrum of views - be that be in politics or anything else. Including the subject they are studying.

    Over 55’s tend not to be in education. They can think what they wish. As can the students when they cease to be - well - students. The clue is in their description. Are the students there to learn or just have their pre-disposition to “progressive” (whatever the hell that term means) ideas reinforced without challenge?
    It's fine to dictate what you are being taught and how when you aren't paying for it.

    If I'm paying £9k I year I would expect my opinion to be worth something...
    You choose what you are being taught by your subject. You are “taught” history for example. But does that mean you are only taught the views, opinions and conclusions of one historian who happens to have “acceptable” views at that time or are you taught different views of different historians, and it’s your role - as a student - to read, assess and agree/disagree with those historians conclusions and importantly provide your reasoning WHY.

    You don’t go to university to reinforce what you already know. You go there to, once again, learn.
    I think that you misunderstand the commercial and consumerist nature of modern university life. Higher education is now a consumer product, and students want to get a good experience, which means high marks for modules that they like. Increasingly these are taught by a casualised University workforce whose contracts are at the whim of the senior management.

    So students get taught what they want, not what they need. Universities are not Ivory towers of dreaming academics, they are degree factories with exploited workers selling cheap tat to the fashionably gullible.
    The degrees may be tat but they're certainly not cheap.
    and because they aren't cheap they need to deliver what the student wants as otherwise in 2 years time the freshers are studying elsewhere and you trying to find another job outside academia.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Corporate affairs boss at Welsh-based fast food giant Iceland is SACKED from £102,000-a-year job after calling nation's language 'gibberish' and saying it sounds 'like bad catarrh'

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9269499/Iceland-apologises-insulting-Welsh-people-amid-threats-boycott.html

    I've publicly stated that the Welsh language was invented by someone crap at scrabble.

    Which is probably the nicest thing I've said about the Welsh.
    That's your plum job at Iceland scuppered right there.
    As if I'd ever work for or shop in Iceland.
    Where else can you get fresh ptarmigan?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408

    Pulpstar said:

    Vaccinations: 7 day rolling average continues to decline. Does anyone know the cause?

    (Presumably supply issues, hopefully temporary.)

    My theory, we're now trying to vaccinate people who think Covid-19 doesn't impact them, so they don't need to be vaccinated.
    Almost all the group 5s I know are really keen to get jabbed ASAP.

    Yours truly got jabbed today (AZ).
    Last pb-er to get jabbed has to get the drinks in.....
    I think me, Max, Alistair, Phil Thompson, Casino are the live runners on this one.
    @Mortimer and @Gallowgate are both very young chaps
    Ah, to be in the 20s again. I'm 34 and already nostalgic for it.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    Err, that would be civil servants complaining that the post went to someone unelected rather than an unelected civil servant?
    He's taken on most of Gove's responsibilities, an elected politician.
    What's Gove doing then?

    But it's been common in the past that people have been appointed a Lord to deal with areas in their expertise.
    This maybe the harbinger of a cabinet reshuffle.

    There has been talk of Gove going to Health or Education.

    Personally I'd love to see him back at Justice, those 14 months he did there was the signs of some rather brilliant thinking and policies, rather than the hang them and flog them brigade, with the exception of Ken Clarke, seem to the type of Tory Justice Secretaries picked.
    I think Gove gets results wherever you put him.

    The trouble is he doesn't take any prisoners.
    It is just as well Gove "doesn't take any prisoners" because his time as Justice Secretary left us with record court delays and a shortage of prison places.
    Lol.
  • Pulpstar said:

    Vaccinations: 7 day rolling average continues to decline. Does anyone know the cause?

    (Presumably supply issues, hopefully temporary.)

    My theory, we're now trying to vaccinate people who think Covid-19 doesn't impact them, so they don't need to be vaccinated.
    Almost all the group 5s I know are really keen to get jabbed ASAP.

    Yours truly got jabbed today (AZ).
    Last pb-er to get jabbed has to get the drinks in.....
    I think me, Max, Alistair, Phil Thompson, Casino are the live runners on this one.
    @Mortimer and @Gallowgate are both very young chaps
    I think Gallowgate has health issues which might change things.

    And isn't CHB even younger ?
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    rcs1000 said:

    Vaccinations: 7 day rolling average continues to decline. Does anyone know the cause?

    (Presumably supply issues, hopefully temporary.)

    My theory, we're now trying to vaccinate people who think Covid-19 doesn't impact them, so they don't need to be vaccinated.
    Almost all the group 5s I know are really keen to get jabbed ASAP.

    Yours truly got jabbed today (AZ).
    Last pb-er to get jabbed has to get the drinks in.....
    That could be expensive. I gain the impression that the under 50s are scarce round these parts...
    I'm under 50! (And jabbed.)
    but also in a country with a private health service and a state where a lot of people are running a service to identify where vaccines are available in almost realtime.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Professional hiring managers will be out of a job within 5 years

    https://twitter.com/hatr/status/1361756449802768387?s=19
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    Pulpstar said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Vaccinations: 7 day rolling average continues to decline. Does anyone know the cause?

    (Presumably supply issues, hopefully temporary.)

    My theory, we're now trying to vaccinate people who think Covid-19 doesn't impact them, so they don't need to be vaccinated.
    Almost all the group 5s I know are really keen to get jabbed ASAP.

    Yours truly got jabbed today (AZ).
    Last pb-er to get jabbed has to get the drinks in.....
    That could be expensive. I gain the impression that the under 50s are scarce round these parts...
    I'm under 50! (And jabbed.)
    US system favours proactive people ?
    Wealthy people anyway.

    "The affluent town of Woodbridge, Conn., has less than half the population of neighboring Ansonia, and yet it’s home to more people who have received a Covid-19 vaccine. The inequity is stark: In Woodbridge, where residents have a median household income of $138,320 a year, 19.3% of the population had been vaccinated as of Feb. 4, according to Connecticut health department data. In Ansonia, where the median income is $45,563 a year, just 7.1% have received their first shot."

    From:
    https://www.statnews.com/2021/02/11/covid19-vaccination-rates-follow-the-money-in-states-with-biggest-wealth-gaps/

    I suspect that the UK inequality rate is similar, if not quite so dramatic.
  • suppress the serpent, satisfy the skua & subpoena the snail
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    Alistair said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Vaccinations: 7 day rolling average continues to decline. Does anyone know the cause?

    (Presumably supply issues, hopefully temporary.)

    My theory, we're now trying to vaccinate people who think Covid-19 doesn't impact them, so they don't need to be vaccinated.
    Almost all the group 5s I know are really keen to get jabbed ASAP.

    Yours truly got jabbed today (AZ).
    Last pb-er to get jabbed has to get the drinks in.....
    I think me, Max, Alistair, Phil Thompson, Casino are the live runners on this one.
    I had been nursing a vague hope being married to someone on the shielding list would bump me up the priority queue.
    Me too. Chanced a little special pleading after the husband of a friend who's also shielding was promoted, but was politely turned down by the GP surgery. Best guess is that the aforementioned gentleman qualified either as a diabetic or as a carer (my friend doesn't actually need a carer, but her particular chronic illness means that she is counted as a disabled person.)

    Anyhow, I am resigned to being practically at the back of the queue. Even once the whole of phase one is completed, I suspect that there'll be a very long list of public sector workers who also qualify ahead of me.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408
    Alistair said:

    Professional hiring managers will be out of a job within 5 years

    https://twitter.com/hatr/status/1361756449802768387?s=19

    Love that. People really just inherently trust an algorithm.
  • Foxy said:

    Pulpstar said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Vaccinations: 7 day rolling average continues to decline. Does anyone know the cause?

    (Presumably supply issues, hopefully temporary.)

    My theory, we're now trying to vaccinate people who think Covid-19 doesn't impact them, so they don't need to be vaccinated.
    Almost all the group 5s I know are really keen to get jabbed ASAP.

    Yours truly got jabbed today (AZ).
    Last pb-er to get jabbed has to get the drinks in.....
    That could be expensive. I gain the impression that the under 50s are scarce round these parts...
    I'm under 50! (And jabbed.)
    US system favours proactive people ?
    Wealthy people anyway.

    "The affluent town of Woodbridge, Conn., has less than half the population of neighboring Ansonia, and yet it’s home to more people who have received a Covid-19 vaccine. The inequity is stark: In Woodbridge, where residents have a median household income of $138,320 a year, 19.3% of the population had been vaccinated as of Feb. 4, according to Connecticut health department data. In Ansonia, where the median income is $45,563 a year, just 7.1% have received their first shot."

    From:
    https://www.statnews.com/2021/02/11/covid19-vaccination-rates-follow-the-money-in-states-with-biggest-wealth-gaps/

    I suspect that the UK inequality rate is similar, if not quite so dramatic.
    I'd be amazed if it were not: wealth corelates well with age.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069

    Foxy said:

    eek said:

    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    This Conservative majority was elected with a majority partly to ensure conservative views and values got a fair hearing, including in academia

    If progressive minded students are to be forcibly exposed to conservative ideas it's only fair if it applies the other way too. All over 55s outside the big cities to be strapped to an armchair every weekday evening and pointed towards a TV tuned to Ch4. I can't see how anybody could possibly object.
    Not really. Students are supposed to be in “education”. They are there to learn - oddly enough. If that education is to be as broad and encompassing as possible they need exposure to a broad as possible spectrum of views - be that be in politics or anything else. Including the subject they are studying.

    Over 55’s tend not to be in education. They can think what they wish. As can the students when they cease to be - well - students. The clue is in their description. Are the students there to learn or just have their pre-disposition to “progressive” (whatever the hell that term means) ideas reinforced without challenge?
    It's fine to dictate what you are being taught and how when you aren't paying for it.

    If I'm paying £9k I year I would expect my opinion to be worth something...
    You choose what you are being taught by your subject. You are “taught” history for example. But does that mean you are only taught the views, opinions and conclusions of one historian who happens to have “acceptable” views at that time or are you taught different views of different historians, and it’s your role - as a student - to read, assess and agree/disagree with those historians conclusions and importantly provide your reasoning WHY.

    You don’t go to university to reinforce what you already know. You go there to, once again, learn.
    I think that you misunderstand the commercial and consumerist nature of modern university life. Higher education is now a consumer product, and students want to get a good experience, which means high marks for modules that they like. Increasingly these are taught by a casualised University workforce whose contracts are at the whim of the senior management.

    So students get taught what they want, not what they need. Universities are not Ivory towers of dreaming academics, they are degree factories with exploited workers selling cheap tat to the fashionably gullible.
    The degrees may be tat but they're certainly not cheap.
    Ah, but they are!

    They are on the "never-never" and the poorer the degree, the less will get paid back...
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,745

    stodge said:



    Indeed and these anomalies or logistical failings or whatever you want to call them need to be addressed urgently. Simply counting up the vaccinations and assuming everything is going well is foolish - there are problems, not huge problems I would guess but clearly the numbers vaccinated and the speed the vulnerable groups are being contacted and vaccinated is starting to vary.

    All of this compromises the debate over the easing of restrictions - those areas with all in Groups 1-9 vaccinated (or more accurately those not refusing the vaccination) will be champing at the bit to unlock but that's no use if large numbers of unvaccinated people are just a few miles away because in that area the logistics haven't performed so well.

    via the Graun, a tale of two Londons:

    https://twitter.com/hammersmithandy/status/1362019143378165760

    https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1361982389761810434
    Indeed and I begin to suspect there are big problems over here in East London.

    The Government, for all the credit it has picked up for getting the vaccine, has only done half the job if it can't get it to the population.

  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    edited February 2021

    Foxy said:

    Pulpstar said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Vaccinations: 7 day rolling average continues to decline. Does anyone know the cause?

    (Presumably supply issues, hopefully temporary.)

    My theory, we're now trying to vaccinate people who think Covid-19 doesn't impact them, so they don't need to be vaccinated.
    Almost all the group 5s I know are really keen to get jabbed ASAP.

    Yours truly got jabbed today (AZ).
    Last pb-er to get jabbed has to get the drinks in.....
    That could be expensive. I gain the impression that the under 50s are scarce round these parts...
    I'm under 50! (And jabbed.)
    US system favours proactive people ?
    Wealthy people anyway.

    "The affluent town of Woodbridge, Conn., has less than half the population of neighboring Ansonia, and yet it’s home to more people who have received a Covid-19 vaccine. The inequity is stark: In Woodbridge, where residents have a median household income of $138,320 a year, 19.3% of the population had been vaccinated as of Feb. 4, according to Connecticut health department data. In Ansonia, where the median income is $45,563 a year, just 7.1% have received their first shot."

    From:
    https://www.statnews.com/2021/02/11/covid19-vaccination-rates-follow-the-money-in-states-with-biggest-wealth-gaps/

    I suspect that the UK inequality rate is similar, if not quite so dramatic.
    I'd be amazed if it were not: wealth corelates well with age.
    Yes, but these are figures for income, not wealth, so would peak in middle age, not the elderly.

    Of course, we do know the risk of dying of covid correlates inversely with SE status.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    Alistair said:

    Professional hiring managers will be out of a job within 5 years

    https://twitter.com/hatr/status/1361756449802768387?s=19

    The tweet implies the opposite.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    Andy_JS said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    First Indian female president of Oxford University students' union QUITS amid backlash after she made 'pun' about the Holocaust, posted picture of her in Malaysia with words 'Ching Chang' and said trans women are not women

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9269815/First-Indian-female-president-Oxford-University-students-union-QUITS.html

    When I was at University, 1992 to 1995, a magazine I was involved in (called Judas) ran an interview I did with the leader of the BNP. Said magazine also ran an article by a man called Justin King called "White Pride", where he recounted the tale of a girlfriend of his who had dated a non-white.

    This led to the front page of Varsity running the story "BNP Cell Active at Trinity" and led to a motion at CUSU calling for myself, the editor of Judas, and Justin King to be expelled from the University.

    Fortunately, (a) I had a very good (Indian) friend who was on the board of CUSU, and (b) someone realised that Justin King was actually Chinese and the White Pride article was a delicious act of satire.

    Nevertheless, Trinity did cut off funding for Judas (that the editor kept exactly zero records of expenditure may also have played a role).

    So, I'm not 100% convinced that things are really radically different from 1994.
    I would also suggest rereading Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man, which is all about the academic persecution by right on (woke) Professors of a right wing student.

    If you added a few reference to iPhones, anyone would think it was written in 2020 not 1980, and would bemoan it as presenting an accurate portrayal of how academia now stifled right wing voices, and how it never used to be the case.
    Im in the middle of reading it at the moment. Ive heard that some people say the main character is based on BBC radio presenter Laurie Taylor.
    I remember the BBC TV adaptation about 1981, having just read the book. But I'm not sure hoiw balanced a portrayal oif academia it really is, any more than, say, Lucky Jim.
  • On-topic. Free Speech.

    Surely this is another imported culture war. The United States has free speech guaranteed by its constitution. We never have had free speech. It has always been restricted by laws on religion, defamation and decency, besides generally upsetting the government or Radio One DJs (though I think Mike Read claims it was more complicated than that).

    Free speech and flags. American.
  • Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    eek said:

    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    This Conservative majority was elected with a majority partly to ensure conservative views and values got a fair hearing, including in academia

    If progressive minded students are to be forcibly exposed to conservative ideas it's only fair if it applies the other way too. All over 55s outside the big cities to be strapped to an armchair every weekday evening and pointed towards a TV tuned to Ch4. I can't see how anybody could possibly object.
    Not really. Students are supposed to be in “education”. They are there to learn - oddly enough. If that education is to be as broad and encompassing as possible they need exposure to a broad as possible spectrum of views - be that be in politics or anything else. Including the subject they are studying.

    Over 55’s tend not to be in education. They can think what they wish. As can the students when they cease to be - well - students. The clue is in their description. Are the students there to learn or just have their pre-disposition to “progressive” (whatever the hell that term means) ideas reinforced without challenge?
    It's fine to dictate what you are being taught and how when you aren't paying for it.

    If I'm paying £9k I year I would expect my opinion to be worth something...
    You choose what you are being taught by your subject. You are “taught” history for example. But does that mean you are only taught the views, opinions and conclusions of one historian who happens to have “acceptable” views at that time or are you taught different views of different historians, and it’s your role - as a student - to read, assess and agree/disagree with those historians conclusions and importantly provide your reasoning WHY.

    You don’t go to university to reinforce what you already know. You go there to, once again, learn.
    I think that you misunderstand the commercial and consumerist nature of modern university life. Higher education is now a consumer product, and students want to get a good experience, which means high marks for modules that they like. Increasingly these are taught by a casualised University workforce whose contracts are at the whim of the senior management.

    So students get taught what they want, not what they need. Universities are not Ivory towers of dreaming academics, they are degree factories with exploited workers selling cheap tat to the fashionably gullible.
    The degrees may be tat but they're certainly not cheap.
    Ah, but they are!

    They are on the "never-never" and the poorer the degree, the less will get paid back...
    Get a good degree and then a well paid job and lots will be paid back.

    Get a tat degree and then a low paid job and be thought of as a failure.

    Neither seems ideal.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842

    Pulpstar said:

    Vaccinations: 7 day rolling average continues to decline. Does anyone know the cause?

    (Presumably supply issues, hopefully temporary.)

    My theory, we're now trying to vaccinate people who think Covid-19 doesn't impact them, so they don't need to be vaccinated.
    Almost all the group 5s I know are really keen to get jabbed ASAP.

    Yours truly got jabbed today (AZ).
    Last pb-er to get jabbed has to get the drinks in.....
    I think me, Max, Alistair, Phil Thompson, Casino are the live runners on this one.
    @Mortimer and @Gallowgate are both very young chaps
    Gallowgate is G6
  • What a sad, fatuous and ignorant thread header from Mr Meeks.

  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Alistair said:

    Professional hiring managers will be out of a job within 5 years

    https://twitter.com/hatr/status/1361756449802768387?s=19

    The tweet implies the opposite.
    Imagine I have the look of a man being incredibly sarcastic as I posted that.
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    stodge said:

    stodge said:



    Indeed and these anomalies or logistical failings or whatever you want to call them need to be addressed urgently. Simply counting up the vaccinations and assuming everything is going well is foolish - there are problems, not huge problems I would guess but clearly the numbers vaccinated and the speed the vulnerable groups are being contacted and vaccinated is starting to vary.

    All of this compromises the debate over the easing of restrictions - those areas with all in Groups 1-9 vaccinated (or more accurately those not refusing the vaccination) will be champing at the bit to unlock but that's no use if large numbers of unvaccinated people are just a few miles away because in that area the logistics haven't performed so well.

    via the Graun, a tale of two Londons:

    https://twitter.com/hammersmithandy/status/1362019143378165760

    https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1361982389761810434
    Indeed and I begin to suspect there are big problems over here in East London.

    The Government, for all the credit it has picked up for getting the vaccine, has only done half the job if it can't get it to the population.
    I actually find the fact that there aren't more widespread reports of this kind of thing encouraging. People are good at complaining loudly. If it were going pear-shaped all over the place then the screams would be deafening.

    There are bound to be some hiccups to do with differential supply, given how many thousands of vaccination points are now operating, but one still suspects that the main problem may well be hesitancy and the difficulty of squashing it.
  • Alistair said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Vaccinations: 7 day rolling average continues to decline. Does anyone know the cause?

    (Presumably supply issues, hopefully temporary.)

    My theory, we're now trying to vaccinate people who think Covid-19 doesn't impact them, so they don't need to be vaccinated.
    Almost all the group 5s I know are really keen to get jabbed ASAP.

    Yours truly got jabbed today (AZ).
    Last pb-er to get jabbed has to get the drinks in.....
    I think me, Max, Alistair, Phil Thompson, Casino are the live runners on this one.
    I had been nursing a vague hope being married to someone on the shielding list would bump me up the priority queue.
    Me too. Chanced a little special pleading after the husband of a friend who's also shielding was promoted, but was politely turned down by the GP surgery. Best guess is that the aforementioned gentleman qualified either as a diabetic or as a carer (my friend doesn't actually need a carer, but her particular chronic illness means that she is counted as a disabled person.)

    Anyhow, I am resigned to being practically at the back of the queue. Even once the whole of phase one is completed, I suspect that there'll be a very long list of public sector workers who also qualify ahead of me.
    I'm 60 and would snatch their hand off if they offered me a jab soon. According to the OMNI app in Wales I may need to wait till end of March.
  • Fysics_TeacherFysics_Teacher Posts: 6,060
    edited February 2021
    stodge said:

    stodge said:



    Indeed and these anomalies or logistical failings or whatever you want to call them need to be addressed urgently. Simply counting up the vaccinations and assuming everything is going well is foolish - there are problems, not huge problems I would guess but clearly the numbers vaccinated and the speed the vulnerable groups are being contacted and vaccinated is starting to vary.

    All of this compromises the debate over the easing of restrictions - those areas with all in Groups 1-9 vaccinated (or more accurately those not refusing the vaccination) will be champing at the bit to unlock but that's no use if large numbers of unvaccinated people are just a few miles away because in that area the logistics haven't performed so well.

    via the Graun, a tale of two Londons:

    https://twitter.com/hammersmithandy/status/1362019143378165760

    https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1361982389761810434
    Indeed and I begin to suspect there are big problems over here in East London.

    The Government, for all the credit it has picked up for getting the vaccine, has only done half the job if it can't get it to the population.

    I found the process pretty simple and there was both a phone call from my GP and a letter from the DHSC.

    Having said that, if I were not particularly computer literate and/or didn't have a good connection AND if I did not speak good English OR I didn't have access to a phone then it would have been much harder. I would not be surprised if there were a significant number of people who have struggled to get appointments (and that is ignoring those who for what ever reason have decided they do not want to be vaccinated).

    Edit: I also forgot those not registered with a GP.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069

    On-topic. Free Speech.

    Surely this is another imported culture war. The United States has free speech guaranteed by its constitution. We never have had free speech. It has always been restricted by laws on religion, defamation and decency, besides generally upsetting the government or Radio One DJs (though I think Mike Read claims it was more complicated than that).

    Free speech and flags. American.

    Very much so. Americans are flag idolators, and the pledge of allegiance was recited to the flag at the start of each school day when I was at High School. Each school also had a flagpole and there were all sorts of strange rituals surrounding flag handling.

    The Union flag has always had a more contested history, and not just in celtic parts of the UK. That is when we shall see if the Free Speech Champion is genuinely so, when they defend flag burning zealots.
  • Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Pulpstar said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Vaccinations: 7 day rolling average continues to decline. Does anyone know the cause?

    (Presumably supply issues, hopefully temporary.)

    My theory, we're now trying to vaccinate people who think Covid-19 doesn't impact them, so they don't need to be vaccinated.
    Almost all the group 5s I know are really keen to get jabbed ASAP.

    Yours truly got jabbed today (AZ).
    Last pb-er to get jabbed has to get the drinks in.....
    That could be expensive. I gain the impression that the under 50s are scarce round these parts...
    I'm under 50! (And jabbed.)
    US system favours proactive people ?
    Wealthy people anyway.

    "The affluent town of Woodbridge, Conn., has less than half the population of neighboring Ansonia, and yet it’s home to more people who have received a Covid-19 vaccine. The inequity is stark: In Woodbridge, where residents have a median household income of $138,320 a year, 19.3% of the population had been vaccinated as of Feb. 4, according to Connecticut health department data. In Ansonia, where the median income is $45,563 a year, just 7.1% have received their first shot."

    From:
    https://www.statnews.com/2021/02/11/covid19-vaccination-rates-follow-the-money-in-states-with-biggest-wealth-gaps/

    I suspect that the UK inequality rate is similar, if not quite so dramatic.
    I'd be amazed if it were not: wealth corelates well with age.
    Yes, but these are figures for income, not wealth, so would peak in middle age, not the elderly.

    Of course, we do know the risk of dying of covid correlates inversely with SE status.
    True: I didn't spot that.
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905

    Alistair said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Vaccinations: 7 day rolling average continues to decline. Does anyone know the cause?

    (Presumably supply issues, hopefully temporary.)

    My theory, we're now trying to vaccinate people who think Covid-19 doesn't impact them, so they don't need to be vaccinated.
    Almost all the group 5s I know are really keen to get jabbed ASAP.

    Yours truly got jabbed today (AZ).
    Last pb-er to get jabbed has to get the drinks in.....
    I think me, Max, Alistair, Phil Thompson, Casino are the live runners on this one.
    I had been nursing a vague hope being married to someone on the shielding list would bump me up the priority queue.
    Me too. Chanced a little special pleading after the husband of a friend who's also shielding was promoted, but was politely turned down by the GP surgery. Best guess is that the aforementioned gentleman qualified either as a diabetic or as a carer (my friend doesn't actually need a carer, but her particular chronic illness means that she is counted as a disabled person.)

    Anyhow, I am resigned to being practically at the back of the queue. Even once the whole of phase one is completed, I suspect that there'll be a very long list of public sector workers who also qualify ahead of me.
    I'm 60 and would snatch their hand off if they offered me a jab soon. According to the OMNI app in Wales I may need to wait till end of March.
    It's hard to know isn't it? The main delaying factor for people under 65 is being stuck behind the large cohort of the clinically-a-bit-vulnerable, plus the 800,000 extra unvaccinated shielders that have just been added to the priority list.

    At least the prize is now in sight for the over 50s. Some of us under 50s might still be waiting in July or August.
  • Carnyx said:

    Andy_JS said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    First Indian female president of Oxford University students' union QUITS amid backlash after she made 'pun' about the Holocaust, posted picture of her in Malaysia with words 'Ching Chang' and said trans women are not women

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9269815/First-Indian-female-president-Oxford-University-students-union-QUITS.html

    When I was at University, 1992 to 1995, a magazine I was involved in (called Judas) ran an interview I did with the leader of the BNP. Said magazine also ran an article by a man called Justin King called "White Pride", where he recounted the tale of a girlfriend of his who had dated a non-white.

    This led to the front page of Varsity running the story "BNP Cell Active at Trinity" and led to a motion at CUSU calling for myself, the editor of Judas, and Justin King to be expelled from the University.

    Fortunately, (a) I had a very good (Indian) friend who was on the board of CUSU, and (b) someone realised that Justin King was actually Chinese and the White Pride article was a delicious act of satire.

    Nevertheless, Trinity did cut off funding for Judas (that the editor kept exactly zero records of expenditure may also have played a role).

    So, I'm not 100% convinced that things are really radically different from 1994.
    I would also suggest rereading Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man, which is all about the academic persecution by right on (woke) Professors of a right wing student.

    If you added a few reference to iPhones, anyone would think it was written in 2020 not 1980, and would bemoan it as presenting an accurate portrayal of how academia now stifled right wing voices, and how it never used to be the case.
    Im in the middle of reading it at the moment. Ive heard that some people say the main character is based on BBC radio presenter Laurie Taylor.
    I remember the BBC TV adaptation about 1981, having just read the book. But I'm not sure hoiw balanced a portrayal oif academia it really is, any more than, say, Lucky Jim.
    Porterhouse Blue is my go-to for an accurate depiction of how Cambridge works.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,959
    stodge said:

    stodge said:



    Indeed and these anomalies or logistical failings or whatever you want to call them need to be addressed urgently. Simply counting up the vaccinations and assuming everything is going well is foolish - there are problems, not huge problems I would guess but clearly the numbers vaccinated and the speed the vulnerable groups are being contacted and vaccinated is starting to vary.

    All of this compromises the debate over the easing of restrictions - those areas with all in Groups 1-9 vaccinated (or more accurately those not refusing the vaccination) will be champing at the bit to unlock but that's no use if large numbers of unvaccinated people are just a few miles away because in that area the logistics haven't performed so well.

    via the Graun, a tale of two Londons:

    https://twitter.com/hammersmithandy/status/1362019143378165760

    https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1361982389761810434
    Indeed and I begin to suspect there are big problems over here in East London.

    The Government, for all the credit it has picked up for getting the vaccine, has only done half the job if it can't get it to the population.

    I really don't know what you do with a population that doesn't want to be jabbed.....

    You can't keep the whole region locked down. But against that, you have a sump of infection that can burst out into the wider population and potentially undo all the good work for everyone. Carrot and stick is going to require the threat of some lost freedoms - whilst you have a very local campaign of persuasion.

    It needs a top team working on it now. It is the next big challenge after vaccine creation and roll-out.

  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,758

    On-topic. Free Speech.

    Surely this is another imported culture war. The United States has free speech guaranteed by its constitution. We never have had free speech. It has always been restricted by laws on religion, defamation and decency, besides generally upsetting the government or Radio One DJs (though I think Mike Read claims it was more complicated than that).

    Free speech and flags. American.

    Don’t forget newspaper stamps (to 1855).

    The point is of course that the UK has always defined free speech as the ability to say what you like without *prior* constraint. It says nothing about any consequences.

    Whereas the US defines it as saying what you like without restraint unless it’s a deliberate falsehood designed to damage a public figure. Even then, they have to prove it was a falsehood.

    And we haven’t always had the lack of prior constraint either - the Lord Chamberlain’s Office springs to mind, and the BBFC (although the US had the Hays Production Code).
  • On-topic. Free Speech.

    Surely this is another imported culture war. The United States has free speech guaranteed by its constitution. We never have had free speech. It has always been restricted by laws on religion, defamation and decency, besides generally upsetting the government or Radio One DJs (though I think Mike Read claims it was more complicated than that).

    Free speech and flags. American.

    And as a direct result of the First Amendment each candidate in the senate run-offs in Georgia spent about the same amount as all the parties in the UK spent in total on the 2019 GE (and I do mean each candidate individually, not combined).
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited February 2021
    SPI-M bloke behind the crap firebreak mathematical model....

    https://youtu.be/Q3TV1OZgWmM
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Professional hiring managers will be out of a job within 5 years

    https://twitter.com/hatr/status/1361756449802768387?s=19

    The tweet implies the opposite.
    Imagine I have the look of a man being incredibly sarcastic as I posted that.
    Ah I see!
  • ydoethur said:

    On-topic. Free Speech.

    Surely this is another imported culture war. The United States has free speech guaranteed by its constitution. We never have had free speech. It has always been restricted by laws on religion, defamation and decency, besides generally upsetting the government or Radio One DJs (though I think Mike Read claims it was more complicated than that).

    Free speech and flags. American.

    Don’t forget newspaper stamps (to 1855).

    The point is of course that the UK has always defined free speech as the ability to say what you like without *prior* constraint. It says nothing about any consequences.

    Whereas the US defines it as saying what you like without restraint unless it’s a deliberate falsehood designed to damage a public figure. Even then, they have to prove it was a falsehood.

    And we haven’t always had the lack of prior constraint either - the Lord Chamberlain’s Office springs to mind, and the BBFC (although the US had the Hays Production Code).
    I think public figures get even less protection: you have to prove not only that the statement is false but there was "actual malice". The standard is lower for those not in the public gaze. They are also much more forgiving for opinion pieces on TV (a defence Fox News relies on heavily).
    Even then Elon Musk got away with saying what he did over the cave rescue.
  • Foxy said:

    On-topic. Free Speech.

    Surely this is another imported culture war. The United States has free speech guaranteed by its constitution. We never have had free speech. It has always been restricted by laws on religion, defamation and decency, besides generally upsetting the government or Radio One DJs (though I think Mike Read claims it was more complicated than that).

    Free speech and flags. American.

    Very much so. Americans are flag idolators, and the pledge of allegiance was recited to the flag at the start of each school day when I was at High School. Each school also had a flagpole and there were all sorts of strange rituals surrounding flag handling.

    The Union flag has always had a more contested history, and not just in celtic parts of the UK. That is when we shall see if the Free Speech Champion is genuinely so, when they defend flag burning zealots.
    To be fair to the Americans their nation is built entirely of immigrants from cultures all over the world and is very young; how else do you bind them together without the constitution and the flag that represents the ideals of the republic?
  • On topic. Disturbing differences between now and the recent past include the hounding of individuals often for a one sentence slip or for their past views with concerted attempts to get people sacked. Add to that the immoral and spineless leadership in many organisations including much of HE. In the past there was no shutting down of debate on entire issues with concomitant pressure on academic research. Would you really want to be an honest and intelligent researcher into the psychological and biological foundations of gender? Russian roulette would be less stressful. I would also add the poor intellectual quality of much of the debate including the contributions from academics on "hot topics".
  • solarflaresolarflare Posts: 3,623
    Seems a bit harsh on the Holiday Inn to liken it to prison, but hey.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56095362
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited February 2021
    The unHerd interview is so much better than friggin Sam Coates spending ages asking the vaccine delivery group scientist about Big Dom, Kate Bingham, the EU...

    Asking important questions about our future living with covid, rather than little known political figures...no asking how many times have they met Boris etc.
  • ydoethur said:

    On-topic. Free Speech.

    Surely this is another imported culture war. The United States has free speech guaranteed by its constitution. We never have had free speech. It has always been restricted by laws on religion, defamation and decency, besides generally upsetting the government or Radio One DJs (though I think Mike Read claims it was more complicated than that).

    Free speech and flags. American.

    Don’t forget newspaper stamps (to 1855).

    The point is of course that the UK has always defined free speech as the ability to say what you like without *prior* constraint. It says nothing about any consequences.

    Whereas the US defines it as saying what you like without restraint unless it’s a deliberate falsehood designed to damage a public figure. Even then, they have to prove it was a falsehood.

    And we haven’t always had the lack of prior constraint either - the Lord Chamberlain’s Office springs to mind, and the BBFC (although the US had the Hays Production Code).
    I think public figures get even less protection: you have to prove not only that the statement is false but there was "actual malice". The standard is lower for those not in the public gaze. They are also much more forgiving for opinion pieces on TV (a defence Fox News relies on heavily).
    Even then Elon Musk got away with saying what he did over the cave rescue.
    Just to add that this video covers it pretty well (6:40 - 13:25 is the relevant bit):
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz4aHIaLjp0&t=742s
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    London. Is that the place where if vacinnation rollout is a stunning success it's down to Sadiq Khan's inspired leadership whereas if it's half-baked it's down to the Government's hatred of the capital?

    Yup, same as Scotland. If it's slow it's the government's fault for holding back supply on purpose to make the SNP look bad, if it's good then it's because Nicola is a god or something.

    There's no inbetween.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,268
    Fuck Facebook. Fuck Google.

    C'mon Joe Biden. If you can do ONE GOOD THING in your stupid elderly presidency, apart from Not Being Donald, it is this. Break up the great internet monopolies. Facebook, Google. Apple, Twitter, Amazon,

    This is what America is FOR and if it can't do it, just hand over to China now, because they just might (on the grounds of healthy capitalism, not free speech)
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    eek said:

    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    This Conservative majority was elected with a majority partly to ensure conservative views and values got a fair hearing, including in academia

    If progressive minded students are to be forcibly exposed to conservative ideas it's only fair if it applies the other way too. All over 55s outside the big cities to be strapped to an armchair every weekday evening and pointed towards a TV tuned to Ch4. I can't see how anybody could possibly object.
    Not really. Students are supposed to be in “education”. They are there to learn - oddly enough. If that education is to be as broad and encompassing as possible they need exposure to a broad as possible spectrum of views - be that be in politics or anything else. Including the subject they are studying.

    Over 55’s tend not to be in education. They can think what they wish. As can the students when they cease to be - well - students. The clue is in their description. Are the students there to learn or just have their pre-disposition to “progressive” (whatever the hell that term means) ideas reinforced without challenge?
    It's fine to dictate what you are being taught and how when you aren't paying for it.

    If I'm paying £9k I year I would expect my opinion to be worth something...
    You choose what you are being taught by your subject. You are “taught” history for example. But does that mean you are only taught the views, opinions and conclusions of one historian who happens to have “acceptable” views at that time or are you taught different views of different historians, and it’s your role - as a student - to read, assess and agree/disagree with those historians conclusions and importantly provide your reasoning WHY.

    You don’t go to university to reinforce what you already know. You go there to, once again, learn.
    I think that you misunderstand the commercial and consumerist nature of modern university life. Higher education is now a consumer product, and students want to get a good experience, which means high marks for modules that they like. Increasingly these are taught by a casualised University workforce whose contracts are at the whim of the senior management.

    So students get taught what they want, not what they need. Universities are not Ivory towers of dreaming academics, they are degree factories with exploited workers selling cheap tat to the fashionably gullible.
    The degrees may be tat but they're certainly not cheap.
    Ah, but they are!

    They are on the "never-never" and the poorer the degree, the less will get paid back...
    Get a good degree and then a well paid job and lots will be paid back.

    Get a tat degree and then a low paid job and be thought of as a failure.

    Neither seems ideal.
    There is currently no immediate consequence for selling tat degrees that don't result in graduates earning enough to repay the loan.

    And separate to my comments on the freespeech that does need to be fixed and the consequences accepted as some universities are forced to close.
  • Pulpstar said:

    Vaccinations: 7 day rolling average continues to decline. Does anyone know the cause?

    (Presumably supply issues, hopefully temporary.)

    My theory, we're now trying to vaccinate people who think Covid-19 doesn't impact them, so they don't need to be vaccinated.
    Almost all the group 5s I know are really keen to get jabbed ASAP.

    Yours truly got jabbed today (AZ).
    Last pb-er to get jabbed has to get the drinks in.....
    I think me, Max, Alistair, Phil Thompson, Casino are the live runners on this one.
    I'm actually of a similar age to @TSE but he has underlying conditions so has already been jabbed.

    I'm estimating June for me because once the ball is rolling they'll find all and any fresh arms willing to take it.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    Leon said:

    Fuck Facebook. Fuck Google.

    C'mon Joe Biden. If you can do ONE GOOD THING in your stupid elderly presidency, apart from Not Being Donald, it is this. Break up the great internet monopolies. Facebook, Google. Apple, Twitter, Amazon,

    This is what America is FOR and if it can't do it, just hand over to China now, because they just might (on the grounds of healthy capitalism, not free speech)
    How would you do that.

    All those companies work because of the network effect that results in monopolies.

    One thing that the EU does understand is that monopolies are sometimes inevitable so breaking them up isn't a solution.

  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,758

    ydoethur said:

    On-topic. Free Speech.

    Surely this is another imported culture war. The United States has free speech guaranteed by its constitution. We never have had free speech. It has always been restricted by laws on religion, defamation and decency, besides generally upsetting the government or Radio One DJs (though I think Mike Read claims it was more complicated than that).

    Free speech and flags. American.

    Don’t forget newspaper stamps (to 1855).

    The point is of course that the UK has always defined free speech as the ability to say what you like without *prior* constraint. It says nothing about any consequences.

    Whereas the US defines it as saying what you like without restraint unless it’s a deliberate falsehood designed to damage a public figure. Even then, they have to prove it was a falsehood.

    And we haven’t always had the lack of prior constraint either - the Lord Chamberlain’s Office springs to mind, and the BBFC (although the US had the Hays Production Code).
    I think public figures get even less protection: you have to prove not only that the statement is false but there was "actual malice". The standard is lower for those not in the public gaze. They are also much more forgiving for opinion pieces on TV (a defence Fox News relies on heavily).
    Even then Elon Musk got away with saying what he did over the cave rescue.
    That’s the ‘designed to damage’ part.
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172



    Porterhouse Blue is my go-to for an accurate depiction of how Cambridge works.

    The portrayal of Sir Godber Evans and Lady Mary -- failed Labour politician and his wealthy Liberal wife -- is one of the most vicious in all satirical literature.

    The satirising of Oxford academics in Morse is also a lot of fun -- the episode where the Master is a devil-worshipper & the Bursar is a pornographer is a stand-out.
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905

    stodge said:

    stodge said:



    Indeed and these anomalies or logistical failings or whatever you want to call them need to be addressed urgently. Simply counting up the vaccinations and assuming everything is going well is foolish - there are problems, not huge problems I would guess but clearly the numbers vaccinated and the speed the vulnerable groups are being contacted and vaccinated is starting to vary.

    All of this compromises the debate over the easing of restrictions - those areas with all in Groups 1-9 vaccinated (or more accurately those not refusing the vaccination) will be champing at the bit to unlock but that's no use if large numbers of unvaccinated people are just a few miles away because in that area the logistics haven't performed so well.

    via the Graun, a tale of two Londons:

    https://twitter.com/hammersmithandy/status/1362019143378165760

    https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1361982389761810434
    Indeed and I begin to suspect there are big problems over here in East London.

    The Government, for all the credit it has picked up for getting the vaccine, has only done half the job if it can't get it to the population.

    I really don't know what you do with a population that doesn't want to be jabbed.....

    You can't keep the whole region locked down. But against that, you have a sump of infection that can burst out into the wider population and potentially undo all the good work for everyone. Carrot and stick is going to require the threat of some lost freedoms - whilst you have a very local campaign of persuasion.

    It needs a top team working on it now. It is the next big challenge after vaccine creation and roll-out.

    Hopefully persuasion will work well enough that the remaining holdouts aren't numerous enough to do any harm.

    Failing that, two possibilities:

    1. Virus burns through affected areas and kills quite a lot of people, but vaccination elsewhere acts as a firebreak whilst said areas attain communal immunity by disease spread. Lots of huffing and puffing over inequality, shit for people who live there, but won't cause the Earth to shake
    2. Virus successfully spreads enough from these areas to cause real problems for the rest of the population, in which case the public clamour to force the holdouts to take the jabs will quickly become overwhelming

    The general population won't tolerate being asked to go back into lockdown because some people saw a scary video on WhatsApp and decided to say no. They'll demand these people be strapped to tables and have the largest, most painful needles available stuck in their arses if need be.
  • ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    On-topic. Free Speech.

    Surely this is another imported culture war. The United States has free speech guaranteed by its constitution. We never have had free speech. It has always been restricted by laws on religion, defamation and decency, besides generally upsetting the government or Radio One DJs (though I think Mike Read claims it was more complicated than that).

    Free speech and flags. American.

    Don’t forget newspaper stamps (to 1855).

    The point is of course that the UK has always defined free speech as the ability to say what you like without *prior* constraint. It says nothing about any consequences.

    Whereas the US defines it as saying what you like without restraint unless it’s a deliberate falsehood designed to damage a public figure. Even then, they have to prove it was a falsehood.

    And we haven’t always had the lack of prior constraint either - the Lord Chamberlain’s Office springs to mind, and the BBFC (although the US had the Hays Production Code).
    I think public figures get even less protection: you have to prove not only that the statement is false but there was "actual malice". The standard is lower for those not in the public gaze. They are also much more forgiving for opinion pieces on TV (a defence Fox News relies on heavily).
    Even then Elon Musk got away with saying what he did over the cave rescue.
    That’s the ‘designed to damage’ part.
    Fair enough.
  • eek said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    eek said:

    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    This Conservative majority was elected with a majority partly to ensure conservative views and values got a fair hearing, including in academia

    If progressive minded students are to be forcibly exposed to conservative ideas it's only fair if it applies the other way too. All over 55s outside the big cities to be strapped to an armchair every weekday evening and pointed towards a TV tuned to Ch4. I can't see how anybody could possibly object.
    Not really. Students are supposed to be in “education”. They are there to learn - oddly enough. If that education is to be as broad and encompassing as possible they need exposure to a broad as possible spectrum of views - be that be in politics or anything else. Including the subject they are studying.

    Over 55’s tend not to be in education. They can think what they wish. As can the students when they cease to be - well - students. The clue is in their description. Are the students there to learn or just have their pre-disposition to “progressive” (whatever the hell that term means) ideas reinforced without challenge?
    It's fine to dictate what you are being taught and how when you aren't paying for it.

    If I'm paying £9k I year I would expect my opinion to be worth something...
    You choose what you are being taught by your subject. You are “taught” history for example. But does that mean you are only taught the views, opinions and conclusions of one historian who happens to have “acceptable” views at that time or are you taught different views of different historians, and it’s your role - as a student - to read, assess and agree/disagree with those historians conclusions and importantly provide your reasoning WHY.

    You don’t go to university to reinforce what you already know. You go there to, once again, learn.
    I think that you misunderstand the commercial and consumerist nature of modern university life. Higher education is now a consumer product, and students want to get a good experience, which means high marks for modules that they like. Increasingly these are taught by a casualised University workforce whose contracts are at the whim of the senior management.

    So students get taught what they want, not what they need. Universities are not Ivory towers of dreaming academics, they are degree factories with exploited workers selling cheap tat to the fashionably gullible.
    The degrees may be tat but they're certainly not cheap.
    Ah, but they are!

    They are on the "never-never" and the poorer the degree, the less will get paid back...
    Get a good degree and then a well paid job and lots will be paid back.

    Get a tat degree and then a low paid job and be thought of as a failure.

    Neither seems ideal.
    There is currently no immediate consequence for selling tat degrees that don't result in graduates earning enough to repay the loan.

    And separate to my comments on the freespeech that does need to be fixed and the consequences accepted as some universities are forced to close.
    The University of Nottingham held a meeting with students a couple of weeks ago to discuss the issues with the lack of teaching (which goes way beyond just moving it online and many courses have been slashed back in contact time (online) using Covid as an excuse) and why the students should be paying nine grand a year for substandard courses.

    One contributor on the university side apparently answered that it was nothing to do with the university as the fee loans were run by a private company and that besides, most of the students shouldn't worry as they would not get good enough jobs to have to pay it back anyway.

    Way to inspire your students.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    stodge said:

    stodge said:



    Indeed and these anomalies or logistical failings or whatever you want to call them need to be addressed urgently. Simply counting up the vaccinations and assuming everything is going well is foolish - there are problems, not huge problems I would guess but clearly the numbers vaccinated and the speed the vulnerable groups are being contacted and vaccinated is starting to vary.

    All of this compromises the debate over the easing of restrictions - those areas with all in Groups 1-9 vaccinated (or more accurately those not refusing the vaccination) will be champing at the bit to unlock but that's no use if large numbers of unvaccinated people are just a few miles away because in that area the logistics haven't performed so well.

    via the Graun, a tale of two Londons:

    https://twitter.com/hammersmithandy/status/1362019143378165760

    https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1361982389761810434
    Indeed and I begin to suspect there are big problems over here in East London.

    The Government, for all the credit it has picked up for getting the vaccine, has only done half the job if it can't get it to the population.

    I really don't know what you do with a population that doesn't want to be jabbed.....

    You can't keep the whole region locked down. But against that, you have a sump of infection that can burst out into the wider population and potentially undo all the good work for everyone. Carrot and stick is going to require the threat of some lost freedoms - whilst you have a very local campaign of persuasion.

    It needs a top team working on it now. It is the next big challenge after vaccine creation and roll-out.

    Hopefully persuasion will work well enough that the remaining holdouts aren't numerous enough to do any harm.

    Failing that, two possibilities:

    1. Virus burns through affected areas and kills quite a lot of people, but vaccination elsewhere acts as a firebreak whilst said areas attain communal immunity by disease spread. Lots of huffing and puffing over inequality, shit for people who live there, but won't cause the Earth to shake
    2. Virus successfully spreads enough from these areas to cause real problems for the rest of the population, in which case the public clamour to force the holdouts to take the jabs will quickly become overwhelming

    The general population won't tolerate being asked to go back into lockdown because some people saw a scary video on WhatsApp and decided to say no. They'll demand these people be strapped to tables and have the largest, most painful needles available stuck in their arses if need be.
    It wouldn't surprise me if we are threatened with local lockdowns attached to vaccination figures. Leicester is only 50% vaccinated say so it's remaining in lockdown for another x weeks.
  • eek said:

    Leon said:

    Fuck Facebook. Fuck Google.

    C'mon Joe Biden. If you can do ONE GOOD THING in your stupid elderly presidency, apart from Not Being Donald, it is this. Break up the great internet monopolies. Facebook, Google. Apple, Twitter, Amazon,

    This is what America is FOR and if it can't do it, just hand over to China now, because they just might (on the grounds of healthy capitalism, not free speech)
    How would you do that.

    All those companies work because of the network effect that results in monopolies.

    One thing that the EU does understand is that monopolies are sometimes inevitable so breaking them up isn't a solution.

    It looks like Facebook is trying to do an EU to an Australia that's Brexited from them.


  • Porterhouse Blue is my go-to for an accurate depiction of how Cambridge works.

    The portrayal of Sir Godber Evans and Lady Mary -- failed Labour politician and his wealthy Liberal wife -- is one of the most vicious in all satirical literature.

    The satirising of Oxford academics in Morse is also a lot of fun -- the episode where the Master is a devil-worshipper & the Bursar is a pornographer is a stand-out.
    Our Provost was apparently the inspiration for Sir Les Patterson...
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    eek said:

    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    This Conservative majority was elected with a majority partly to ensure conservative views and values got a fair hearing, including in academia

    If progressive minded students are to be forcibly exposed to conservative ideas it's only fair if it applies the other way too. All over 55s outside the big cities to be strapped to an armchair every weekday evening and pointed towards a TV tuned to Ch4. I can't see how anybody could possibly object.
    Not really. Students are supposed to be in “education”. They are there to learn - oddly enough. If that education is to be as broad and encompassing as possible they need exposure to a broad as possible spectrum of views - be that be in politics or anything else. Including the subject they are studying.

    Over 55’s tend not to be in education. They can think what they wish. As can the students when they cease to be - well - students. The clue is in their description. Are the students there to learn or just have their pre-disposition to “progressive” (whatever the hell that term means) ideas reinforced without challenge?
    It's fine to dictate what you are being taught and how when you aren't paying for it.

    If I'm paying £9k I year I would expect my opinion to be worth something...
    You choose what you are being taught by your subject. You are “taught” history for example. But does that mean you are only taught the views, opinions and conclusions of one historian who happens to have “acceptable” views at that time or are you taught different views of different historians, and it’s your role - as a student - to read, assess and agree/disagree with those historians conclusions and importantly provide your reasoning WHY.

    You don’t go to university to reinforce what you already know. You go there to, once again, learn.
    I think that you misunderstand the commercial and consumerist nature of modern university life. Higher education is now a consumer product, and students want to get a good experience, which means high marks for modules that they like. Increasingly these are taught by a casualised University workforce whose contracts are at the whim of the senior management.

    So students get taught what they want, not what they need. Universities are not Ivory towers of dreaming academics, they are degree factories with exploited workers selling cheap tat to the fashionably gullible.
    The degrees may be tat but they're certainly not cheap.
    Ah, but they are!

    They are on the "never-never" and the poorer the degree, the less will get paid back...
    Get a good degree and then a well paid job and lots will be paid back.

    Get a tat degree and then a low paid job and be thought of as a failure.

    Neither seems ideal.
    There is currently no immediate consequence for selling tat degrees that don't result in graduates earning enough to repay the loan.

    And separate to my comments on the freespeech that does need to be fixed and the consequences accepted as some universities are forced to close.
    The University of Nottingham held a meeting with students a couple of weeks ago to discuss the issues with the lack of teaching (which goes way beyond just moving it online and many courses have been slashed back in contact time (online) using Covid as an excuse) and why the students should be paying nine grand a year for substandard courses.

    One contributor on the university side apparently answered that it was nothing to do with the university as the fee loans were run by a private company and that besides, most of the students shouldn't worry as they would not get good enough jobs to have to pay it back anyway.

    Way to inspire your students.
    Is that documented anywhere - that's a Ratner's level type of post.
  • Leon said:

    Fuck Facebook. Fuck Google.

    C'mon Joe Biden. If you can do ONE GOOD THING in your stupid elderly presidency, apart from Not Being Donald, it is this. Break up the great internet monopolies. Facebook, Google. Apple, Twitter, Amazon,

    This is what America is FOR and if it can't do it, just hand over to China now, because they just might (on the grounds of healthy capitalism, not free speech)
    You are attacking the wrong people. This is entirely the result of idiotic Australian laws that mean that if anyone posts news items from Australian outlets then Facebook is liable for that. It is the Australians who are behaving like the Chinese in this case not Facebook or Google.
  • eek said:

    Leon said:

    Fuck Facebook. Fuck Google.

    C'mon Joe Biden. If you can do ONE GOOD THING in your stupid elderly presidency, apart from Not Being Donald, it is this. Break up the great internet monopolies. Facebook, Google. Apple, Twitter, Amazon,

    This is what America is FOR and if it can't do it, just hand over to China now, because they just might (on the grounds of healthy capitalism, not free speech)
    How would you do that.

    All those companies work because of the network effect that results in monopolies.

    One thing that the EU does understand is that monopolies are sometimes inevitable so breaking them up isn't a solution.

    It looks like Facebook is trying to do an EU to an Australia that's Brexited from them.
    Didn't Australia say to Facebook "if you do this thing we will charge you for it" to which Facebook replied "well we won't do that thing any more then"?
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    eek said:

    stodge said:

    stodge said:



    Indeed and these anomalies or logistical failings or whatever you want to call them need to be addressed urgently. Simply counting up the vaccinations and assuming everything is going well is foolish - there are problems, not huge problems I would guess but clearly the numbers vaccinated and the speed the vulnerable groups are being contacted and vaccinated is starting to vary.

    All of this compromises the debate over the easing of restrictions - those areas with all in Groups 1-9 vaccinated (or more accurately those not refusing the vaccination) will be champing at the bit to unlock but that's no use if large numbers of unvaccinated people are just a few miles away because in that area the logistics haven't performed so well.

    via the Graun, a tale of two Londons:

    https://twitter.com/hammersmithandy/status/1362019143378165760

    https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1361982389761810434
    Indeed and I begin to suspect there are big problems over here in East London.

    The Government, for all the credit it has picked up for getting the vaccine, has only done half the job if it can't get it to the population.

    I really don't know what you do with a population that doesn't want to be jabbed.....

    You can't keep the whole region locked down. But against that, you have a sump of infection that can burst out into the wider population and potentially undo all the good work for everyone. Carrot and stick is going to require the threat of some lost freedoms - whilst you have a very local campaign of persuasion.

    It needs a top team working on it now. It is the next big challenge after vaccine creation and roll-out.

    Hopefully persuasion will work well enough that the remaining holdouts aren't numerous enough to do any harm.

    Failing that, two possibilities:

    1. Virus burns through affected areas and kills quite a lot of people, but vaccination elsewhere acts as a firebreak whilst said areas attain communal immunity by disease spread. Lots of huffing and puffing over inequality, shit for people who live there, but won't cause the Earth to shake
    2. Virus successfully spreads enough from these areas to cause real problems for the rest of the population, in which case the public clamour to force the holdouts to take the jabs will quickly become overwhelming

    The general population won't tolerate being asked to go back into lockdown because some people saw a scary video on WhatsApp and decided to say no. They'll demand these people be strapped to tables and have the largest, most painful needles available stuck in their arses if need be.
    It wouldn't surprise me if we are threatened with local lockdowns attached to vaccination figures. Leicester is only 50% vaccinated say so it's remaining in lockdown for another x weeks.
    Well hopefully it won't come to that either. We know where that kind of thing will quickly lead: set of people A is imprisoned indefinitely because set of people B won't accept the jabs. Cue some of group A chucking rocks and such like at group B.
  • New York Times - Millions Endure Days Without Power, and a New Storm Arrives
    Millions in Texas were still without electricity, while more snow and ice was expected to sweep across the South and East in the coming days.

    Texas remained in the frigid grip of winter storms on Wednesday as a fresh arctic blast deepened an electricity supply crisis that has forced millions to endure days without power and heat.

    Pipes froze and burst across the state, and warming centers that had opened lost power. Icicles hung from kitchen faucets in Houston, ambulances in San Antonio were unable to meet the surging demand and the county government in coastal Galveston called for refrigerated trucks to hold the bodies they expect to find in freezing, powerless houses.

    On Wednesday, the state was facing a new onslaught of sleet and freezing rain that the National Weather Service office in Austin/San Antonio said could be “the worst of all the winter events over the past week.” Snow was falling around Dallas-Fort Worth, and some spots in Texas were expected to pick up more than a quarter inch of ice as the new storm moved through, making road travel extremely hazardous. . . .

    The power outages were national, with tens of thousands without electricity in Kentucky, West Virginia and Louisiana, according to PowerOutage.us, a website that tracks electricity outages. Around 160,000 people in Oregon remained without power on Wednesday morning.

    But the worst outages were in Texas. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state’s power grid, said on Wednesday that around 700,000 homes had electricity restored overnight but more than 3.4 million customers were still without power late Wednesday morning.

    “I understand we live in a less-cared-for neighborhood, but we’re human like everyone else,” said Justin Chavez, whose had been living with his wife and eight children in a home without power in San Antonio for days. “The city should have been on top of this. What am I paying my taxes for?”

    The Houston mayor’s office tweeted that the power outages there would “likely last another few days.”

    Austin Energy, which serves the state’s capital, said its customers should be prepared to not have power through Wednesday and possibly longer. Austin’s mayor, Steve Adler, had urged residents to use electricity as sparingly as possible in hopes of staving off further shutdowns, using flashlights and candles if able.

    “If you have power, please try to live almost like you don’t,” Mr. Adler said. “If you have heat, run it low. Run it lower.”

    The pleas for conservation were received with grim irony by many on social media, who pointed to the stark line separating a downtown Austin still brightly lit and a powerless East Austin, a traditionally Black and Hispanic part of the city.

    The strain revealed the vulnerabilities of a distressed system and set off a political fight as lawmakers called for hearings and an inquiry into the Electric Reliability Council.
  • SPI-M bloke says return to "normal", probably autumn....perhaps late summer if vaccine programme goes gangbusters both from supply and uptake side of things.
  • eek said:

    stodge said:

    stodge said:



    Indeed and these anomalies or logistical failings or whatever you want to call them need to be addressed urgently. Simply counting up the vaccinations and assuming everything is going well is foolish - there are problems, not huge problems I would guess but clearly the numbers vaccinated and the speed the vulnerable groups are being contacted and vaccinated is starting to vary.

    All of this compromises the debate over the easing of restrictions - those areas with all in Groups 1-9 vaccinated (or more accurately those not refusing the vaccination) will be champing at the bit to unlock but that's no use if large numbers of unvaccinated people are just a few miles away because in that area the logistics haven't performed so well.

    via the Graun, a tale of two Londons:

    https://twitter.com/hammersmithandy/status/1362019143378165760

    https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1361982389761810434
    Indeed and I begin to suspect there are big problems over here in East London.

    The Government, for all the credit it has picked up for getting the vaccine, has only done half the job if it can't get it to the population.

    I really don't know what you do with a population that doesn't want to be jabbed.....

    You can't keep the whole region locked down. But against that, you have a sump of infection that can burst out into the wider population and potentially undo all the good work for everyone. Carrot and stick is going to require the threat of some lost freedoms - whilst you have a very local campaign of persuasion.

    It needs a top team working on it now. It is the next big challenge after vaccine creation and roll-out.

    Hopefully persuasion will work well enough that the remaining holdouts aren't numerous enough to do any harm.

    Failing that, two possibilities:

    1. Virus burns through affected areas and kills quite a lot of people, but vaccination elsewhere acts as a firebreak whilst said areas attain communal immunity by disease spread. Lots of huffing and puffing over inequality, shit for people who live there, but won't cause the Earth to shake
    2. Virus successfully spreads enough from these areas to cause real problems for the rest of the population, in which case the public clamour to force the holdouts to take the jabs will quickly become overwhelming

    The general population won't tolerate being asked to go back into lockdown because some people saw a scary video on WhatsApp and decided to say no. They'll demand these people be strapped to tables and have the largest, most painful needles available stuck in their arses if need be.
    It wouldn't surprise me if we are threatened with local lockdowns attached to vaccination figures. Leicester is only 50% vaccinated say so it's remaining in lockdown for another x weeks.
    Well hopefully it won't come to that either. We know where that kind of thing will quickly lead: set of people A is imprisoned indefinitely because set of people B won't accept the jabs. Cue some of group A chucking rocks and such like at group B.
    I don't think we will see local measures. They don't work.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,688



    Porterhouse Blue is my go-to for an accurate depiction of how Cambridge works.

    The portrayal of Sir Godber Evans and Lady Mary -- failed Labour politician and his wealthy Liberal wife -- is one of the most vicious in all satirical literature.

    The satirising of Oxford academics in Morse is also a lot of fun -- the episode where the Master is a devil-worshipper & the Bursar is a pornographer is a stand-out.
    Our Provost was apparently the inspiration for Sir Les Patterson...
    Top chap then.
  • eek said:

    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    eek said:

    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    This Conservative majority was elected with a majority partly to ensure conservative views and values got a fair hearing, including in academia

    If progressive minded students are to be forcibly exposed to conservative ideas it's only fair if it applies the other way too. All over 55s outside the big cities to be strapped to an armchair every weekday evening and pointed towards a TV tuned to Ch4. I can't see how anybody could possibly object.
    Not really. Students are supposed to be in “education”. They are there to learn - oddly enough. If that education is to be as broad and encompassing as possible they need exposure to a broad as possible spectrum of views - be that be in politics or anything else. Including the subject they are studying.

    Over 55’s tend not to be in education. They can think what they wish. As can the students when they cease to be - well - students. The clue is in their description. Are the students there to learn or just have their pre-disposition to “progressive” (whatever the hell that term means) ideas reinforced without challenge?
    It's fine to dictate what you are being taught and how when you aren't paying for it.

    If I'm paying £9k I year I would expect my opinion to be worth something...
    You choose what you are being taught by your subject. You are “taught” history for example. But does that mean you are only taught the views, opinions and conclusions of one historian who happens to have “acceptable” views at that time or are you taught different views of different historians, and it’s your role - as a student - to read, assess and agree/disagree with those historians conclusions and importantly provide your reasoning WHY.

    You don’t go to university to reinforce what you already know. You go there to, once again, learn.
    I think that you misunderstand the commercial and consumerist nature of modern university life. Higher education is now a consumer product, and students want to get a good experience, which means high marks for modules that they like. Increasingly these are taught by a casualised University workforce whose contracts are at the whim of the senior management.

    So students get taught what they want, not what they need. Universities are not Ivory towers of dreaming academics, they are degree factories with exploited workers selling cheap tat to the fashionably gullible.
    The degrees may be tat but they're certainly not cheap.
    Ah, but they are!

    They are on the "never-never" and the poorer the degree, the less will get paid back...
    Get a good degree and then a well paid job and lots will be paid back.

    Get a tat degree and then a low paid job and be thought of as a failure.

    Neither seems ideal.
    There is currently no immediate consequence for selling tat degrees that don't result in graduates earning enough to repay the loan.

    And separate to my comments on the freespeech that does need to be fixed and the consequences accepted as some universities are forced to close.
    The University of Nottingham held a meeting with students a couple of weeks ago to discuss the issues with the lack of teaching (which goes way beyond just moving it online and many courses have been slashed back in contact time (online) using Covid as an excuse) and why the students should be paying nine grand a year for substandard courses.

    One contributor on the university side apparently answered that it was nothing to do with the university as the fee loans were run by a private company and that besides, most of the students shouldn't worry as they would not get good enough jobs to have to pay it back anyway.

    Way to inspire your students.
    Is that documented anywhere - that's a Ratner's level type of post.
    Not sure if it is documented. Came from someone who was actually in the conference call.
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,960

    Leon said:

    Fuck Facebook. Fuck Google.

    C'mon Joe Biden. If you can do ONE GOOD THING in your stupid elderly presidency, apart from Not Being Donald, it is this. Break up the great internet monopolies. Facebook, Google. Apple, Twitter, Amazon,

    This is what America is FOR and if it can't do it, just hand over to China now, because they just might (on the grounds of healthy capitalism, not free speech)
    You are attacking the wrong people. This is entirely the result of idiotic Australian laws that mean that if anyone posts news items from Australian outlets then Facebook is liable for that. It is the Australians who are behaving like the Chinese in this case not Facebook or Google.
    Facebook sodding well should be liable for that.

    The Australian law is a step in the right direction. It's the rest of the world that's been too timid in allowing the big social media firms to not be regulated like a media firm if it happens not to suit them in a particular situation. They also don't pay nearly enough tax anywhere in particular to justify the kid gloves treatment.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,019
    edited February 2021
    My experience of millennials and Gen-Z'ers is that you can influence their views, but only on a 1:1 basis and if they trust and respect you first.

    For example, my most common experience is that they will pull you up on the use of the suffix -man. I've pointed out to one or two before that this is tedious and annoying, particularly when correcting strawman to strawperson - which has happened to me - and ultimately results in such absurdities as that Woke Wally Justin Trudeau publicly correcting a journalist for using mankind as opposed to peoplekind.

    The effect isn't the one they hope for. I explain to them that rather than usher in fresh new attitudes and a nirvana of gender equality it instead results on people treading on eggshells whilst around them as they try to watch every word they use to avoid judgement and offence. And people otherwise try and avoid them because, funnily enough, they don't enjoy that very much, and nor do they like being corrected with the inference that they otherwise might still have one or two reactionary attitudes.

    Instead I explain to them it's better to share perspectives and experiences of how different groups have found they have been treated, for example designing a job to be inflexible so women with children can't do it, or experiences and anecdotes as to how black people can be prejudged (the classic being a careers advisor who advised a black friend of mine to go for being a mechanic rather than an engineer *because* everyone else was racist, so he didn't stand a chance), or a white working class boy of ability being overlooked because of his accent and background, so people can focus on and learn from those, and ditch the trivialities. And generally get a sense of humour about it and stop taking themselves and others so seriously.

    It works. Usually. But by Joe it wouldn't in a group or public situation.

    You'd be brought to heel.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,774
    TimT said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    rcs1000 said:

    On seasons, in Los Angeles we have the following:

    Summer March 1 to Nov 30
    Almost Summer Dec 1 to Feb 28/29

    I have just ruined California Dreamin' for myself for all time, by watching the video

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-aK6JnyFmk&ab_channel=MarkScawkes
    Read the allegations about the late John Phillips and you will like it even less.
    I think Michelle Phillips was one of my very first celebrity crushes - I was probably all of 8.
    Phew. I thought you wrote Melanie Phillips
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    Just been checking out the latest Covid heat map. Cases now under 100 per 100k per week in most local authorities in Essex and Kent. Southern England overall looks better than the Midlands and North, but there don't appear to be any places left with rampaging Plague.

    Exactly how low the cases will have to get before we're let out remains, of course, to be seen. I hope to God it's not as low as the 1,000 per day being talked about in some of the papers. That so low, and so many tests are being done, that it's quite possible the false positives alone would be enough to clear that low a bar - in which case we'd be stuck in lockdown forever.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,268

    stodge said:

    stodge said:



    Indeed and these anomalies or logistical failings or whatever you want to call them need to be addressed urgently. Simply counting up the vaccinations and assuming everything is going well is foolish - there are problems, not huge problems I would guess but clearly the numbers vaccinated and the speed the vulnerable groups are being contacted and vaccinated is starting to vary.

    All of this compromises the debate over the easing of restrictions - those areas with all in Groups 1-9 vaccinated (or more accurately those not refusing the vaccination) will be champing at the bit to unlock but that's no use if large numbers of unvaccinated people are just a few miles away because in that area the logistics haven't performed so well.

    via the Graun, a tale of two Londons:

    https://twitter.com/hammersmithandy/status/1362019143378165760

    https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1361982389761810434
    Indeed and I begin to suspect there are big problems over here in East London.

    The Government, for all the credit it has picked up for getting the vaccine, has only done half the job if it can't get it to the population.

    I really don't know what you do with a population that doesn't want to be jabbed.....

    You can't keep the whole region locked down. But against that, you have a sump of infection that can burst out into the wider population and potentially undo all the good work for everyone. Carrot and stick is going to require the threat of some lost freedoms - whilst you have a very local campaign of persuasion.

    It needs a top team working on it now. It is the next big challenge after vaccine creation and roll-out.

    Fuck 'em. That's what. Let the market, and Darwinism, sort it. Fuck the middle class white weirdo Green cretins, the white working class QAnoner halfwits, fuck the Hindu "there's beef in it" idiots, the Muslim "there's pork in it" twits, the black "They're injecting us with syphilis again" morons.

    If they don't want it, give it to those of us that do: of all creeds and races. That's about 80-85% of the population. It's a basic IQ test. Once the rest of them work out that they can't travel/work/do anything without a jab, a lot of them will have a jab. Sorted.
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,960
    Rush Limbaugh has died, apparently.
  • eek said:

    Leon said:

    Fuck Facebook. Fuck Google.

    C'mon Joe Biden. If you can do ONE GOOD THING in your stupid elderly presidency, apart from Not Being Donald, it is this. Break up the great internet monopolies. Facebook, Google. Apple, Twitter, Amazon,

    This is what America is FOR and if it can't do it, just hand over to China now, because they just might (on the grounds of healthy capitalism, not free speech)
    How would you do that.

    All those companies work because of the network effect that results in monopolies.

    One thing that the EU does understand is that monopolies are sometimes inevitable so breaking them up isn't a solution.

    It looks like Facebook is trying to do an EU to an Australia that's Brexited from them.
    Nope not at all. This is all fallout from idiotic new Australian laws that ban online companies from quoting or linking to news items in Australian publications. The sort of thing we do all the time. It makes those companies legally liable if they allow links. Basically this applies to everyone although it is supposed to be targeting Google.

    If anyone now posts a link from an Aussie paper on here for example that includes any of the headline then they are breaking Aussie law.

    https://apnews.com/article/technology-australia-legislation-social-media-media-43b336ff7edecd08beef4602e0cb4acc
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    eek said:

    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    eek said:

    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    This Conservative majority was elected with a majority partly to ensure conservative views and values got a fair hearing, including in academia

    If progressive minded students are to be forcibly exposed to conservative ideas it's only fair if it applies the other way too. All over 55s outside the big cities to be strapped to an armchair every weekday evening and pointed towards a TV tuned to Ch4. I can't see how anybody could possibly object.
    Not really. Students are supposed to be in “education”. They are there to learn - oddly enough. If that education is to be as broad and encompassing as possible they need exposure to a broad as possible spectrum of views - be that be in politics or anything else. Including the subject they are studying.

    Over 55’s tend not to be in education. They can think what they wish. As can the students when they cease to be - well - students. The clue is in their description. Are the students there to learn or just have their pre-disposition to “progressive” (whatever the hell that term means) ideas reinforced without challenge?
    It's fine to dictate what you are being taught and how when you aren't paying for it.

    If I'm paying £9k I year I would expect my opinion to be worth something...
    You choose what you are being taught by your subject. You are “taught” history for example. But does that mean you are only taught the views, opinions and conclusions of one historian who happens to have “acceptable” views at that time or are you taught different views of different historians, and it’s your role - as a student - to read, assess and agree/disagree with those historians conclusions and importantly provide your reasoning WHY.

    You don’t go to university to reinforce what you already know. You go there to, once again, learn.
    I think that you misunderstand the commercial and consumerist nature of modern university life. Higher education is now a consumer product, and students want to get a good experience, which means high marks for modules that they like. Increasingly these are taught by a casualised University workforce whose contracts are at the whim of the senior management.

    So students get taught what they want, not what they need. Universities are not Ivory towers of dreaming academics, they are degree factories with exploited workers selling cheap tat to the fashionably gullible.
    The degrees may be tat but they're certainly not cheap.
    Ah, but they are!

    They are on the "never-never" and the poorer the degree, the less will get paid back...
    Get a good degree and then a well paid job and lots will be paid back.

    Get a tat degree and then a low paid job and be thought of as a failure.

    Neither seems ideal.
    There is currently no immediate consequence for selling tat degrees that don't result in graduates earning enough to repay the loan.

    And separate to my comments on the freespeech that does need to be fixed and the consequences accepted as some universities are forced to close.
    The University of Nottingham held a meeting with students a couple of weeks ago to discuss the issues with the lack of teaching (which goes way beyond just moving it online and many courses have been slashed back in contact time (online) using Covid as an excuse) and why the students should be paying nine grand a year for substandard courses.

    One contributor on the university side apparently answered that it was nothing to do with the university as the fee loans were run by a private company and that besides, most of the students shouldn't worry as they would not get good enough jobs to have to pay it back anyway.

    Way to inspire your students.
    Is that documented anywhere - that's a Ratner's level type of post.
    It is true though. Estimates currently are that 83% of students will never repay all their debt, and will have it written off after 30 years. Ironically that means that it will be paid off by their higher earning peers.

    British Tertiary education is one of many areas that will need total overhaul after covid abates.

    The dependence on income from overseas students, and from expensive accommodation on campus, will not be a viable model. The sans-cullottes who threaten the University most are not the Woke radicals, so much as aggrieved consumers, and don't the VCs office know it!
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,774
    eek said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Vaccinations: 7 day rolling average continues to decline. Does anyone know the cause?

    (Presumably supply issues, hopefully temporary.)

    My theory, we're now trying to vaccinate people who think Covid-19 doesn't impact them, so they don't need to be vaccinated.
    Almost all the group 5s I know are really keen to get jabbed ASAP.

    Yours truly got jabbed today (AZ).
    Last pb-er to get jabbed has to get the drinks in.....
    That could be expensive. I gain the impression that the under 50s are scarce round these parts...
    I'm under 50! (And jabbed.)
    but also in a country with a private health service and a state where a lot of people are running a service to identify where vaccines are available in almost realtime.
    The US distribution system is completely f*cked up. The County of Los Angeles is basically out of vaccines, because they've persuaded people to book vaccines with them, rather than with their primary care provider. (And the City is then planning on getting money from insurance companies.)

    The problem with this is that the hospitals have lots of doses and no patients and no scheduling system. While the County has massive vaccination centres with people booked in and no vaccines.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575

    Who wants news that’s upside down anyway.
    Who wants to read Facebook ?
  • eek said:

    Leon said:

    Fuck Facebook. Fuck Google.

    C'mon Joe Biden. If you can do ONE GOOD THING in your stupid elderly presidency, apart from Not Being Donald, it is this. Break up the great internet monopolies. Facebook, Google. Apple, Twitter, Amazon,

    This is what America is FOR and if it can't do it, just hand over to China now, because they just might (on the grounds of healthy capitalism, not free speech)
    How would you do that.

    All those companies work because of the network effect that results in monopolies.

    One thing that the EU does understand is that monopolies are sometimes inevitable so breaking them up isn't a solution.

    It looks like Facebook is trying to do an EU to an Australia that's Brexited from them.
    Didn't Australia say to Facebook "if you do this thing we will charge you for it" to which Facebook replied "well we won't do that thing any more then"?
    To be fair I don't know.

    I have sympathy with both sides, haven't looked into all the detail and fancied being a bit trolly with the B-word.

    Bored.
  • Endillion said:

    Leon said:

    Fuck Facebook. Fuck Google.

    C'mon Joe Biden. If you can do ONE GOOD THING in your stupid elderly presidency, apart from Not Being Donald, it is this. Break up the great internet monopolies. Facebook, Google. Apple, Twitter, Amazon,

    This is what America is FOR and if it can't do it, just hand over to China now, because they just might (on the grounds of healthy capitalism, not free speech)
    You are attacking the wrong people. This is entirely the result of idiotic Australian laws that mean that if anyone posts news items from Australian outlets then Facebook is liable for that. It is the Australians who are behaving like the Chinese in this case not Facebook or Google.
    Facebook sodding well should be liable for that.

    The Australian law is a step in the right direction. It's the rest of the world that's been too timid in allowing the big social media firms to not be regulated like a media firm if it happens not to suit them in a particular situation. They also don't pay nearly enough tax anywhere in particular to justify the kid gloves treatment.
    Bollocks to that. I agree with making them pay taxes but that is completely separate from the issue that including a headline in the link - just like everyone does the world over - should not be copyright infringement.

    I hope both Google and Facebook make things as difficult as possible for the Australian Government. The twats need putting in their place over this.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,774

    Leon said:

    Fuck Facebook. Fuck Google.

    C'mon Joe Biden. If you can do ONE GOOD THING in your stupid elderly presidency, apart from Not Being Donald, it is this. Break up the great internet monopolies. Facebook, Google. Apple, Twitter, Amazon,

    This is what America is FOR and if it can't do it, just hand over to China now, because they just might (on the grounds of healthy capitalism, not free speech)
    You are attacking the wrong people. This is entirely the result of idiotic Australian laws that mean that if anyone posts news items from Australian outlets then Facebook is liable for that. It is the Australians who are behaving like the Chinese in this case not Facebook or Google.
    Spot on. It's a stupidly drafted law (a little like the EU one from a few years ago) that will achieve the exact opposite of their stated goals.
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,960

    London. Is that the place where if vacinnation rollout is a stunning success it's down to Sadiq Khan's inspired leadership whereas if it's half-baked it's down to the Government's hatred of the capital?

    Indeed. Although you forgot about if the richer suburban areas end up Covid free while the poorer, BAME-heavy Labour voting areas aren't, that's because... well, you can fill in the gaps yourselves.
  • eek said:

    Leon said:

    Fuck Facebook. Fuck Google.

    C'mon Joe Biden. If you can do ONE GOOD THING in your stupid elderly presidency, apart from Not Being Donald, it is this. Break up the great internet monopolies. Facebook, Google. Apple, Twitter, Amazon,

    This is what America is FOR and if it can't do it, just hand over to China now, because they just might (on the grounds of healthy capitalism, not free speech)
    How would you do that.

    All those companies work because of the network effect that results in monopolies.

    One thing that the EU does understand is that monopolies are sometimes inevitable so breaking them up isn't a solution.

    It looks like Facebook is trying to do an EU to an Australia that's Brexited from them.
    Didn't Australia say to Facebook "if you do this thing we will charge you for it" to which Facebook replied "well we won't do that thing any more then"?
    Yep. Seems reasonable to me.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408

    ydoethur said:

    On-topic. Free Speech.

    Surely this is another imported culture war. The United States has free speech guaranteed by its constitution. We never have had free speech. It has always been restricted by laws on religion, defamation and decency, besides generally upsetting the government or Radio One DJs (though I think Mike Read claims it was more complicated than that).

    Free speech and flags. American.

    Don’t forget newspaper stamps (to 1855).

    The point is of course that the UK has always defined free speech as the ability to say what you like without *prior* constraint. It says nothing about any consequences.

    Whereas the US defines it as saying what you like without restraint unless it’s a deliberate falsehood designed to damage a public figure. Even then, they have to prove it was a falsehood.

    And we haven’t always had the lack of prior constraint either - the Lord Chamberlain’s Office springs to mind, and the BBFC (although the US had the Hays Production Code).
    I think public figures get even less protection: you have to prove not only that the statement is false but there was "actual malice". The standard is lower for those not in the public gaze. They are also much more forgiving for opinion pieces on TV (a defence Fox News relies on heavily).
    Even then Elon Musk got away with saying what he did over the cave rescue.
    Just to add that this video covers it pretty well (6:40 - 13:25 is the relevant bit):
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz4aHIaLjp0&t=742s
    I do like that guy, I've seen stuff of his before, though with his caveating of not being a New York lawyer, it does make me wonder how difficult it might be to pass the Bar in another state, that is how much things can differ, as it seems a right pain.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,774
    Nigelb said:

    Who wants news that’s upside down anyway.
    Who wants to read Facebook ?
    Old people.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851

    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    This Conservative majority was elected with a majority partly to ensure conservative views and values got a fair hearing, including in academia

    If progressive minded students are to be forcibly exposed to conservative ideas it's only fair if it applies the other way too. All over 55s outside the big cities to be strapped to an armchair every weekday evening and pointed towards a TV tuned to Ch4. I can't see how anybody could possibly object.
    Not really. Students are supposed to be in “education”. They are there to learn - oddly enough. If that education is to be as broad and encompassing as possible they need exposure to a broad as possible spectrum of views - be that be in politics or anything else. Including the subject they are studying.

    Over 55’s tend not to be in education. They can think what they wish. As can the students when they cease to be - well - students. The clue is in their description. Are the students there to learn or just have their pre-disposition to “progressive” (whatever the hell that term means) ideas reinforced without challenge?
    Everyone's living room should be a bastion of free speech and diversity. Mine certainly is. I don't just watch CH4 news and CNN the whole time. I also watch Antiques Roadshow and Escape To The Country. Balance.
  • GaussianGaussian Posts: 793
    MaxPB said:

    Gaussian said:

    MaxPB said:

    I've been working on a new data point for our work dashboard but I'll share some of the findings here, it's case levels to hospitalisations by age. Obviously there is a huge reliance on the testing system catching cases evenly which is why I'll move it over to the ONS data at some point, but eventually it looks at the percentage of people in the three main age categories that end up being hospitalised by an infection. I'm provisionally using a two week delay between infection and hospitalisation but may change that after consulting with someone who knows better.

    Essentially I want to see what the vaccine effect is or if there even is one. So far the results are unsurprisingly a bit messy because it's a new data point and it needs some work, however, I think there is a significant effect of vaccines. What I can see is that in early Jan around 80-90% of over 85s who caught symptomatic COVID were being hospitalised for it and by by mid February that has fallen to 40% with a truly incredibly steep downwards slope, what's interesting is that there does seem to be a slowdown in this drop off over the last few days with around 40% of 85+ and around 30% of 65-84 year olds still ending up in hospital. I think that figure will continue to fall over the coming days but we may end up reaching the limit at around 10% because of vaccine refuseniks.

    This, to my mind, is the first bit of truly compelling evidence that the vaccines are taking effect. I'll keep PB updated on the progress of the series periodically but I've got to automate the process first as doing it manually is very time consuming.

    Great work, and great news. That's exactly the sort of data that needs to be used to weight the case data that feeds into reopening decisions.
    I actually got the idea from one of our earlier discussions! I figured there must be a way to tell from the data available and it actually looks like there is.
    I think there's three reasons why those percentages might stay surprisingly high:
    - Vaccine efficacy.
    - Vaccine refusal.
    - Catching only a minority of cases.

    The last one amplifies the first two, because it means the denominator is smaller than it should be. The vaccines might increase that effect further due to more cases staying asymptomatic or mild.

    Yet for the purposes of predicting hospitalisations from cases, it doesn't actually matter how much each of those factors contributes. Just mustn't let anyone think that the percentages directly reflect vaccine efficacy.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,774

    My experience of millennials and Gen-Z'ers is that you can influence their views, but only on a 1:1 basis and if they trust and respect you first.

    For example, my most common experience is that they will pull you up on the use of the suffix -man. I've pointed out to one or two before that this is tedious and annoying, particularly when correcting strawman to strawperson - which has happened to me - and ultimately results in such absurdities as that Woke Wally Justin Trudeau publicly correcting a journalist for using mankind as opposed to peoplekind.

    The effect isn't the one they hope for. I explain to them that rather than usher in fresh new attitudes and a nirvana of gender equality it instead results on people treading on eggshells whilst around them as they try to watch every word they use to avoid judgement and offence. And people otherwise try and avoid them because, funnily enough, they don't enjoy that very much, and nor do they like being corrected with the inference that they otherwise might still have one or two reactionary attitudes.

    Instead I explain to them it's better to share perspectives and experiences of how different groups have found they have been treated, for example designing a job to be inflexible so women with children can't do it, or experiences and anecdotes as to how black people can be prejudged (the classic being a careers advisor who advised a black friend of mine to go for being a mechanic rather than an engineer *because* everyone else was racist, so he didn't stand a chance), or a white working class boy of ability being overlooked because of his accent and background, so people can focus on and learn from those, and ditch the trivialities. And generally get a sense of humour about it and stop taking themselves and others so seriously.

    It works. Usually. But by Joe it wouldn't in a group or public situation.

    You'd be brought to heel.

    I mock them mercilessly.

    It may not change their minds, but it sure is fun.
  • rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Who wants news that’s upside down anyway.
    Who wants to read Facebook ?
    Old people.
    I assume you include yourself in that description my Facebook friend. :)
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,774

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Who wants news that’s upside down anyway.
    Who wants to read Facebook ?
    Old people.
    I assume you include yourself in that description my Facebook friend. :)
    Oh yes. I'm ancient.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,401
    eek said:

    stodge said:

    stodge said:



    Indeed and these anomalies or logistical failings or whatever you want to call them need to be addressed urgently. Simply counting up the vaccinations and assuming everything is going well is foolish - there are problems, not huge problems I would guess but clearly the numbers vaccinated and the speed the vulnerable groups are being contacted and vaccinated is starting to vary.

    All of this compromises the debate over the easing of restrictions - those areas with all in Groups 1-9 vaccinated (or more accurately those not refusing the vaccination) will be champing at the bit to unlock but that's no use if large numbers of unvaccinated people are just a few miles away because in that area the logistics haven't performed so well.

    via the Graun, a tale of two Londons:

    https://twitter.com/hammersmithandy/status/1362019143378165760

    https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1361982389761810434
    Indeed and I begin to suspect there are big problems over here in East London.

    The Government, for all the credit it has picked up for getting the vaccine, has only done half the job if it can't get it to the population.

    I really don't know what you do with a population that doesn't want to be jabbed.....

    You can't keep the whole region locked down. But against that, you have a sump of infection that can burst out into the wider population and potentially undo all the good work for everyone. Carrot and stick is going to require the threat of some lost freedoms - whilst you have a very local campaign of persuasion.

    It needs a top team working on it now. It is the next big challenge after vaccine creation and roll-out.

    Hopefully persuasion will work well enough that the remaining holdouts aren't numerous enough to do any harm.

    Failing that, two possibilities:

    1. Virus burns through affected areas and kills quite a lot of people, but vaccination elsewhere acts as a firebreak whilst said areas attain communal immunity by disease spread. Lots of huffing and puffing over inequality, shit for people who live there, but won't cause the Earth to shake
    2. Virus successfully spreads enough from these areas to cause real problems for the rest of the population, in which case the public clamour to force the holdouts to take the jabs will quickly become overwhelming

    The general population won't tolerate being asked to go back into lockdown because some people saw a scary video on WhatsApp and decided to say no. They'll demand these people be strapped to tables and have the largest, most painful needles available stuck in their arses if need be.
    It wouldn't surprise me if we are threatened with local lockdowns attached to vaccination figures. Leicester is only 50% vaccinated say so it's remaining in lockdown for another x weeks.
    There'll be riots on the streets of Ilkley if they have to stay in lockdown due to vaccine fuckwittery in Bradford.
This discussion has been closed.