All sub 15C 0700 temps this week, after a long run of warm mornings up to 21C. Have we seen the best of the summer already?
12.6C here. At least it's sunny, and I think the forecast is optimistic after the weekend.
So possibly Good Morning is appropriate.
And Ydoethur, two (so far) teachers in my family plan to continue to do so, although another has left the classroom to become an Ed Psych. Currently just finished, satisfactorily, the first year.
So we have @Nigelb with 100% out, me with 67% out, and you with 33% out.
We need somebody with 0% here to complete the set.
Incidentally, I am seriously pissed off with Essex after yesterday. How on earth did you win from the position five overs out?
Do other countries have such ferocious attrition of teachers? Or is it a British problem? Apart from the staffing issues it seems very wasteful.
Or is it like the loss of Foundation Doctors a symptom of much deeper malaise within the system?
Difficult to compare with other countries because teacher systems tend to be quite idiosyncratic. So for example in France it is expected a large number of graduates go into teaching, are assigned to a school, do it for 2-3 years and then do something else. But in the USA, where many state systems would be roughly comparable, around 8% a year leave teaching whereas a ‘natural’ rate would be about 3%. That’s a bit lower than ours but it’s not ridiculously different.
There are reasons for it. First of all, it’s bloody hard work, and not jus pt because of the nature of the beast. Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish, so you will (true story) hear a primary school teacher boast that she takes her marking everywhere, even to her daughter’s swimming lessons. Such an attitude does bring pressure on the others and to those who don’t know how to find their own pace and stick to it, can be fatal.
There is also far too much pointless meddling by non-experts in media and the government which makes it very difficult to do effectively. Spielman is the epitome of this with her comical ineptitude designed to generate click bait in the Mail, but it affects most of the DfE. Woodhead was of course another example. It’s rather demoralising to be told you’re useless and lazy by functionally illiterate lowlifes who work 37 hour weeks in cosy offices when working 60 hour weeks under tough conditions.
And, of course, a lot go into teaching with high ideals and/or the expectation of short hours and long holidays and find the reality so different they just can’t take it. Woodhead, again, being an example, although he was forced out of teaching for other reasons.
But I think ultimately teaching in the British way is just very hard to do. To encourage discussion, thought, creativity and do it among 30 people a significant minority of whom don’t want to be there and can actually be violent is very, very tough. To do it on average 4.6 times a day forty weeks a year is even harder.
So it's tough because it's hard at the coalface working long hours in almost unbearably exhausting and physically dangerous conditions, because nobody thanks them or even understands what they have to endure, and because in their innocence they thought it would be a breeze but it turned out differently. Does that work as a précis?
News from the sunny surface, far away from the pit props: we almost all know what school is like, even if most people have experience only of schools for one social caste. Most don't ever want to go back to school once they've left. Perhaps they understand the institution about a million times better than those who do rush back there. Schoolteachers could quit their whingeing and try and get jobs in restaurants.
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
The Scotland Act 1998 is clear union matters are reserved to the UK government and the UK government has made clear it will not allow a legal indyref2 before the 2024 general election.
Sturgeon has made clear she will not hold a wildcat referendum and will not declare UDI so that is the end of the matter. The SNP failed to get a majority in May and so needed a coalition partner. Had Alba won some MSPs and been in coalition with her she might have been forced to go down the route of a wildcat referendum or even UDI. As it is her partners are the Scottish Greens who are more concerned with reforming the Gender Recognition Act than pushing for independence at all costs https://planetradio.co.uk/clyde/local/news/too-soon-indyref2-scottish-greens/
Now here's a headline you really don't ever want to read:
"Chipmunks near Lake Tahoe test positive for the plague"
Between escalating nuclear stockpiles, a rapidly deteriorating geopolitical climate, indications of Cold War II, a multi-year pandemic, the Greenland ice sheet close to total failure, the Arctic soon history, self-sufficiency being unfashionable, trade friction beginning to hamper food supplies, a population explosion and concomitant annihilation of other species and habitats and astonishingly poor world leaders, one wonders if we’re not about to get an uncomfortably realistic exposition of life in the Middle Ages.
… and now The Plague.
The only thing missing is the asteroid strike or imminent destruction of Japan, California and the Pacific rim by earthquake and associated tsunamis.
I am slightly shocked to learn that the average age of a civilisation is only 336 years!! That’s tiny! And then ponder how long ago The Enlightenment was.
Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.
Now here's a headline you really don't ever want to read:
"Chipmunks near Lake Tahoe test positive for the plague"
Between escalating nuclear stockpiles, a rapidly deteriorating geopolitical climate, indications of Cold War II, a multi-year pandemic, the Greenland ice sheet close to total failure, the Arctic soon history, self-sufficiency being unfashionable, trade friction beginning to hamper food supplies, a population explosion and concomitant annihilation of other species and habitats and astonishingly poor world leaders, one wonders if we’re not about to get an uncomfortably realistic exposition of life in the Middle Ages.
… and now The Plague.
The only thing missing is the asteroid strike or imminent destruction of Japan, California and the Pacific rim by earthquake and associated tsunamis.
I am slightly shocked to learn that the average age of a civilisation is only 336 years!! That’s tiny! And then ponder how long ago The Enlightenment was.
Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.
Having just turned 60 I've decided I don't really mind dying. I used to regret missing out on the advances humanity would make, the expansion towards the stars etc. Now I think I know how it ends. A couple of hundred years left max, Mars is peak expansion, just hope for my sons sake The Road is not too much of a documentary.
I've children almost your age and most of the time I look to the future. I don't always like what I see, but generally speaking I want to be part of it. Although I know I won't be.
Interesting thought that the average age of a civilisation is only 336 years. There's a book which keeps being advertised to me about the end of the (a) pharaonic civilisation as a result to the Sea People. in 1177BC.
President Macron’s government has angered traditionalists by launching national identity cards featuring the English language.
The cards, which were brought in this week, provide an English translation of the French terms, including nom (surname), prénoms (given names) or nationalité (nationality) — a formula that critics say is belittling.
Now here's a headline you really don't ever want to read:
"Chipmunks near Lake Tahoe test positive for the plague"
Between escalating nuclear stockpiles, a rapidly deteriorating geopolitical climate, indications of Cold War II, a multi-year pandemic, the Greenland ice sheet close to total failure, the Arctic soon history, self-sufficiency being unfashionable, trade friction beginning to hamper food supplies, a population explosion and concomitant annihilation of other species and habitats and astonishingly poor world leaders, one wonders if we’re not about to get an uncomfortably realistic exposition of life in the Middle Ages.
… and now The Plague.
The only thing missing is the asteroid strike or imminent destruction of Japan, California and the Pacific rim by earthquake and associated tsunamis.
I am slightly shocked to learn that the average age of a civilisation is only 336 years!! That’s tiny! And then ponder how long ago The Enlightenment was.
Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.
Now here's a headline you really don't ever want to read:
"Chipmunks near Lake Tahoe test positive for the plague"
Between escalating nuclear stockpiles, a rapidly deteriorating geopolitical climate, indications of Cold War II, a multi-year pandemic, the Greenland ice sheet close to total failure, the Arctic soon history, self-sufficiency being unfashionable, trade friction beginning to hamper food supplies, a population explosion and concomitant annihilation of other species and habitats and astonishingly poor world leaders, one wonders if we’re not about to get an uncomfortably realistic exposition of life in the Middle Ages.
… and now The Plague.
The only thing missing is the asteroid strike or imminent destruction of Japan, California and the Pacific rim by earthquake and associated tsunamis.
I am slightly shocked to learn that the average age of a civilisation is only 336 years!! That’s tiny! And then ponder how long ago The Enlightenment was.
Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.
Now here's a headline you really don't ever want to read:
"Chipmunks near Lake Tahoe test positive for the plague"
Between escalating nuclear stockpiles, a rapidly deteriorating geopolitical climate, indications of Cold War II, a multi-year pandemic, the Greenland ice sheet close to total failure, the Arctic soon history, self-sufficiency being unfashionable, trade friction beginning to hamper food supplies, a population explosion and concomitant annihilation of other species and habitats and astonishingly poor world leaders, one wonders if we’re not about to get an uncomfortably realistic exposition of life in the Middle Ages.
… and now The Plague.
The only thing missing is the asteroid strike or imminent destruction of Japan, California and the Pacific rim by earthquake and associated tsunamis.
I am slightly shocked to learn that the average age of a civilisation is only 336 years!! That’s tiny! And then ponder how long ago The Enlightenment was.
Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.
Moscow Narodny Bank on King William Street EC4 and "vodka cola" and "chemical towns" notwithstanding, the western and Chinese economies are far too bound up with each other for a re-run of either the real Soviet-US cold war of 1948-62, or the following period of Soviet-US relations leading up to 1991, to be repeated with China. "The greatest victory is that which requires no battle." Which is not to say a "hot" war is off the table. Far from it. But a cold war almost certainly is. Some commentators mean very little by "Cold War", or what they do mean is wrong, but a low level of trade was a feature both in the real CW and the subsequent period.
Now here's a headline you really don't ever want to read:
"Chipmunks near Lake Tahoe test positive for the plague"
Between escalating nuclear stockpiles, a rapidly deteriorating geopolitical climate, indications of Cold War II, a multi-year pandemic, the Greenland ice sheet close to total failure, the Arctic soon history, self-sufficiency being unfashionable, trade friction beginning to hamper food supplies, a population explosion and concomitant annihilation of other species and habitats and astonishingly poor world leaders, one wonders if we’re not about to get an uncomfortably realistic exposition of life in the Middle Ages.
… and now The Plague.
The only thing missing is the asteroid strike or imminent destruction of Japan, California and the Pacific rim by earthquake and associated tsunamis.
I am slightly shocked to learn that the average age of a civilisation is only 336 years!! That’s tiny! And then ponder how long ago The Enlightenment was.
Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.
Now here's a headline you really don't ever want to read:
"Chipmunks near Lake Tahoe test positive for the plague"
Between escalating nuclear stockpiles, a rapidly deteriorating geopolitical climate, indications of Cold War II, a multi-year pandemic, the Greenland ice sheet close to total failure, the Arctic soon history, self-sufficiency being unfashionable, trade friction beginning to hamper food supplies, a population explosion and concomitant annihilation of other species and habitats and astonishingly poor world leaders, one wonders if we’re not about to get an uncomfortably realistic exposition of life in the Middle Ages.
… and now The Plague.
The only thing missing is the asteroid strike or imminent destruction of Japan, California and the Pacific rim by earthquake and associated tsunamis.
I am slightly shocked to learn that the average age of a civilisation is only 336 years!! That’s tiny! And then ponder how long ago The Enlightenment was.
Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.
Moscow Narodny Bank on King William Street EC4 and "vodka cola" and "chemical towns" apart, the western and Chinese economies are far too bound up with each other for a re-run of either the real Soviet-US cold war of 1948-62, or the following period of Soviet-US relations leading up to 1991, to be repeated with China. "The greatest victory is that which requires no battle."
Keir Starmer would sit down with Nicola Sturgeon to tackle the climate change emergency but has ruled out any deal with the SNP leader on the constitution. Ahead of a two-day campaign visit to Scotland, during which he will attack the nationalist government for failing to reach green targets, the Labour leader made it clear he is willing to talk with Sturgeon on anything but the independence question....
Starmer said it was a mistake to see the SNP government as a progressive force, as many on Labour’s left still do. He said: “A test of how progressive you are is what you’re doing on climate change and they’ve manifestly failed on that. The SNP has failed to live up to the promises it made the people of Scotland.”
He added: “Take, for example, wind turbines, an obvious part the next generation’s power supply. It is beyond belief that those wind turbines are coming from places such as Indonesia instead of being built in Scotland, which is where they should be built.” Research has revealed just one in 20 of the Scottish offshore wind jobs the SNP promised to create by 2020 has materialised.
Now here's a headline you really don't ever want to read:
"Chipmunks near Lake Tahoe test positive for the plague"
Between escalating nuclear stockpiles, a rapidly deteriorating geopolitical climate, indications of Cold War II, a multi-year pandemic, the Greenland ice sheet close to total failure, the Arctic soon history, self-sufficiency being unfashionable, trade friction beginning to hamper food supplies, a population explosion and concomitant annihilation of other species and habitats and astonishingly poor world leaders, one wonders if we’re not about to get an uncomfortably realistic exposition of life in the Middle Ages.
… and now The Plague.
The only thing missing is the asteroid strike or imminent destruction of Japan, California and the Pacific rim by earthquake and associated tsunamis.
I am slightly shocked to learn that the average age of a civilisation is only 336 years!! That’s tiny! And then ponder how long ago The Enlightenment was.
Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.
All sub 15C 0700 temps this week, after a long run of warm mornings up to 21C. Have we seen the best of the summer already?
12.6C here. At least it's sunny, and I think the forecast is optimistic after the weekend.
So possibly Good Morning is appropriate.
And Ydoethur, two (so far) teachers in my family plan to continue to do so, although another has left the classroom to become an Ed Psych. Currently just finished, satisfactorily, the first year.
So we have @Nigelb with 100% out, me with 67% out, and you with 33% out.
We need somebody with 0% here to complete the set.
Incidentally, I am seriously pissed off with Essex after yesterday. How on earth did you win from the position five overs out?
Do other countries have such ferocious attrition of teachers? Or is it a British problem? Apart from the staffing issues it seems very wasteful.
Or is it like the loss of Foundation Doctors a symptom of much deeper malaise within the system?
Difficult to compare with other countries because teacher systems tend to be quite idiosyncratic. So for example in France it is expected a large number of graduates go into teaching, are assigned to a school, do it for 2-3 years and then do something else. But in the USA, where many state systems would be roughly comparable, around 8% a year leave teaching whereas a ‘natural’ rate would be about 3%. That’s a bit lower than ours but it’s not ridiculously different.
There are reasons for it. First of all, it’s bloody hard work, and not jus pt because of the nature of the beast. Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish, so you will (true story) hear a primary school teacher boast that she takes her marking everywhere, even to her daughter’s swimming lessons. Such an attitude does bring pressure on the others and to those who don’t know how to find their own pace and stick to it, can be fatal.
There is also far too much pointless meddling by non-experts in media and the government which makes it very difficult to do effectively. Spielman is the epitome of this with her comical ineptitude designed to generate click bait in the Mail, but it affects most of the DfE. Woodhead was of course another example. It’s rather demoralising to be told you’re useless and lazy by functionally illiterate lowlifes who work 37 hour weeks in cosy offices when working 60 hour weeks under tough conditions.
And, of course, a lot go into teaching with high ideals and/or the expectation of short hours and long holidays and find the reality so different they just can’t take it. Woodhead, again, being an example, although he was forced out of teaching for other reasons.
But I think ultimately teaching in the British way is just very hard to do. To encourage discussion, thought, creativity and do it among 30 people a significant minority of whom don’t want to be there and can actually be violent is very, very tough. To do it on average 4.6 times a day forty weeks a year is even harder.
So it's tough because it's hard at the coalface working long hours in almost unbearably exhausting and physically dangerous conditions, because nobody thanks them or even understands what they have to endure, and because in their innocence they thought it would be a breeze but it turned out differently. Does that work as a précis?
News from the sunny surface, far away from the pit props: we almost all know what school is like, even if most people have experience only of schools for one social caste. Most don't ever want to go back to school once they've left. Perhaps they understand the institution about a million times better than those who do rush back there. Schoolteachers could quit their whingeing and try and get jobs in restaurants.
I’ve worked in a restaurant, actually. For six years.
Another reason we get out? Nasty bullying by unpleasant people with no idea of what they’re talking about and a burning hatred of people who do. I’ll add your name to that of the other three on this board.
All sub 15C 0700 temps this week, after a long run of warm mornings up to 21C. Have we seen the best of the summer already?
12.6C here. At least it's sunny, and I think the forecast is optimistic after the weekend.
So possibly Good Morning is appropriate.
And Ydoethur, two (so far) teachers in my family plan to continue to do so, although another has left the classroom to become an Ed Psych. Currently just finished, satisfactorily, the first year.
So we have @Nigelb with 100% out, me with 67% out, and you with 33% out.
We need somebody with 0% here to complete the set.
Incidentally, I am seriously pissed off with Essex after yesterday. How on earth did you win from the position five overs out?
Do other countries have such ferocious attrition of teachers? Or is it a British problem? Apart from the staffing issues it seems very wasteful.
Or is it like the loss of Foundation Doctors a symptom of much deeper malaise within the system?
Difficult to compare with other countries because teacher systems tend to be quite idiosyncratic. So for example in France it is expected a large number of graduates go into teaching, are assigned to a school, do it for 2-3 years and then do something else. But in the USA, where many state systems would be roughly comparable, around 8% a year leave teaching whereas a ‘natural’ rate would be about 3%. That’s a bit lower than ours but it’s not ridiculously different.
There are reasons for it. First of all, it’s bloody hard work, and not jus pt because of the nature of the beast. Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish, so you will (true story) hear a primary school teacher boast that she takes her marking everywhere, even to her daughter’s swimming lessons. Such an attitude does bring pressure on the others and to those who don’t know how to find their own pace and stick to it, can be fatal.
There is also far too much pointless meddling by non-experts in media and the government which makes it very difficult to do effectively. Spielman is the epitome of this with her comical ineptitude designed to generate click bait in the Mail, but it affects most of the DfE. Woodhead was of course another example. It’s rather demoralising to be told you’re useless and lazy by functionally illiterate lowlifes who work 37 hour weeks in cosy offices when working 60 hour weeks under tough conditions.
And, of course, a lot go into teaching with high ideals and/or the expectation of short hours and long holidays and find the reality so different they just can’t take it. Woodhead, again, being an example, although he was forced out of teaching for other reasons.
But I think ultimately teaching in the British way is just very hard to do. To encourage discussion, thought, creativity and do it among 30 people a significant minority of whom don’t want to be there and can actually be violent is very, very tough. To do it on average 4.6 times a day forty weeks a year is even harder.
"Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish" - try solicitors or accountants, both obsessed with chargeable hours and presenteeism.
What confuses me is all the folk around here who claim to have high-powered jobs, but spend all day on an obscure blog. I think most of you are actually sitting in stained string vests, surrounded by pizza boxes and still living off the Bank of Mum and Dad.
At least I have an excuse. I have ridiculously long holidays, an easy time at work and I am not the chief income earner (hurrah for feminism!!)
Incidentally, “presenteeism” is the pest of our age: lots of people holding positions just for the sake of it but being horrifically poor at their actual jobs. Eg The Clown.
Snap. I'm retired and spend a fraction of the time of others and still spend too much time here, as my wife tells me. There are several who tell us they have full time jobs who appear here full time. Confused.
Without reference to the veracity of the story, or otherwise, it should be no surprise that line of attack is on the non-white woman in the White House. The Dems must have discussed strategy for this before the nomination, surely?
I think it’s more that Biden has given her a bunch of really difficult stuff to do (eg solve immigration across the Mexican border). He’s basically stitched her up
Choosing a medocrity because of her race and gender and giving her difficult stuff to do without the means to do it - how could that possibly end badly?
A lesson for Labour anyway: try and pick the best candidate, not the one with the right genitalia.
I'm sure that no mediocre white men have ever got the job because they were a white man. It's merely a remarkable coincidence that every previous occupant of Ms Harris's office has been white and male.
She is showing every sign of being another in the long list of VPs to whom the answer is "No" when it comes to the big job.
The problem is that she was the classic political choice for a different era.
Female and minority ticks boxes. Hard charging prosecutor, in classic American politics, would head off the charges that she is a "Community Activist"*, Anti-Police, Anti-Law-And-Order etc etc
So the perfectly structured product.
The problem is that she is a bit crap on the implementation side. More importantly, her backstory is wrong for modern America. Her prosecutorial.... history... massively ticks off the groups she is supposed to represent and a big chunk of the left of the Democratic party as well.
So she has a constituency of the right hand side of the Democratic party, only.
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
Good morning
I agree with you about an indyref2 mandate but I genuinely believe it will not happen this side of the next GE
@HYUFD make lots of antagonistic comments on the subject but in truth we are little over 2 and a half years from GE 24 believe it or not and that is not long, especially with covid still an issue
Furthermore and notwithstanding the gung-ho nature of the Nationalists they have not even started to provide an answer to the big issues including
Currency Hard border Pensions The timing of re-admittance to the EU Investment decision deferred due to unknowns and uncertainty
(to name a few)
Additionally, there has been a drift away by the Scots themselves to even holding indyref2, let alone voting for it, that it seems to me that it is unlikely to happen anytime soon
They are all mouth and no trousers, but they *are* the 4 times elected government with their biggest ever vote this time on the biggest ever turnout.
On the issues you raise they need to say some fairly simple things. Currency: will maintain the existing sterling currency union until admitted to the Euro Border: the same solution as GB eventually reaches with the EU will apply (so not really a Scotland-specific problem) Pensions: a positive migration policy to have sufficient workers to pay them EU timing - apply for membership on morning 1 of independence etc
They won't. There seems to be a fear that if they go into detail people may start ignoring heart and feel and instead start making considered judgements...
What time does today’s pointlessly circular argument on Scottish Independence start? I think I’ll skip the repeat of the Brexit “debate” too.
Sorry, got up on the wrong side of bed today…
Dave Allen joke:
A young nun is walking across the quad. Another nun looks at her and says, ‘somebody got out of the wrong side of bed this morning.’
Puzzled, the nun keeps going. Another nun stops, grins and says, ‘who got out of the wrong side of bed this morning?’
Now getting cross, the nun keeps walking and meets the Mother Superior. Before the revered mother can say anything, the nun snaps, ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me I got out of bed the wrong side this morning.’
‘Well, no actually,’ replied the abbess. ‘But I was going to ask why you’re wearing the Bishop’s shoes.’
All sub 15C 0700 temps this week, after a long run of warm mornings up to 21C. Have we seen the best of the summer already?
12.6C here. At least it's sunny, and I think the forecast is optimistic after the weekend.
So possibly Good Morning is appropriate.
And Ydoethur, two (so far) teachers in my family plan to continue to do so, although another has left the classroom to become an Ed Psych. Currently just finished, satisfactorily, the first year.
So we have @Nigelb with 100% out, me with 67% out, and you with 33% out.
We need somebody with 0% here to complete the set.
Incidentally, I am seriously pissed off with Essex after yesterday. How on earth did you win from the position five overs out?
Do other countries have such ferocious attrition of teachers? Or is it a British problem? Apart from the staffing issues it seems very wasteful.
Or is it like the loss of Foundation Doctors a symptom of much deeper malaise within the system?
Difficult to compare with other countries because teacher systems tend to be quite idiosyncratic. So for example in France it is expected a large number of graduates go into teaching, are assigned to a school, do it for 2-3 years and then do something else. But in the USA, where many state systems would be roughly comparable, around 8% a year leave teaching whereas a ‘natural’ rate would be about 3%. That’s a bit lower than ours but it’s not ridiculously different.
There are reasons for it. First of all, it’s bloody hard work, and not jus pt because of the nature of the beast. Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish, so you will (true story) hear a primary school teacher boast that she takes her marking everywhere, even to her daughter’s swimming lessons. Such an attitude does bring pressure on the others and to those who don’t know how to find their own pace and stick to it, can be fatal.
There is also far too much pointless meddling by non-experts in media and the government which makes it very difficult to do effectively. Spielman is the epitome of this with her comical ineptitude designed to generate click bait in the Mail, but it affects most of the DfE. Woodhead was of course another example. It’s rather demoralising to be told you’re useless and lazy by functionally illiterate lowlifes who work 37 hour weeks in cosy offices when working 60 hour weeks under tough conditions.
And, of course, a lot go into teaching with high ideals and/or the expectation of short hours and long holidays and find the reality so different they just can’t take it. Woodhead, again, being an example, although he was forced out of teaching for other reasons.
But I think ultimately teaching in the British way is just very hard to do. To encourage discussion, thought, creativity and do it among 30 people a significant minority of whom don’t want to be there and can actually be violent is very, very tough. To do it on average 4.6 times a day forty weeks a year is even harder.
So it's tough because it's hard at the coalface working long hours in almost unbearably exhausting and physically dangerous conditions, because nobody thanks them or even understands what they have to endure, and because in their innocence they thought it would be a breeze but it turned out differently. Does that work as a précis?
News from the sunny surface, far away from the pit props: we almost all know what school is like, even if most people have experience only of schools for one social caste. Most don't ever want to go back to school once they've left. Perhaps they understand the institution about a million times better than those who do rush back there. Schoolteachers could quit their whingeing and try and get jobs in restaurants.
All sub 15C 0700 temps this week, after a long run of warm mornings up to 21C. Have we seen the best of the summer already?
12.6C here. At least it's sunny, and I think the forecast is optimistic after the weekend.
So possibly Good Morning is appropriate.
And Ydoethur, two (so far) teachers in my family plan to continue to do so, although another has left the classroom to become an Ed Psych. Currently just finished, satisfactorily, the first year.
So we have @Nigelb with 100% out, me with 67% out, and you with 33% out.
We need somebody with 0% here to complete the set.
Incidentally, I am seriously pissed off with Essex after yesterday. How on earth did you win from the position five overs out?
Do other countries have such ferocious attrition of teachers? Or is it a British problem? Apart from the staffing issues it seems very wasteful.
Or is it like the loss of Foundation Doctors a symptom of much deeper malaise within the system?
Difficult to compare with other countries because teacher systems tend to be quite idiosyncratic. So for example in France it is expected a large number of graduates go into teaching, are assigned to a school, do it for 2-3 years and then do something else. But in the USA, where many state systems would be roughly comparable, around 8% a year leave teaching whereas a ‘natural’ rate would be about 3%. That’s a bit lower than ours but it’s not ridiculously different.
There are reasons for it. First of all, it’s bloody hard work, and not jus pt because of the nature of the beast. Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish, so you will (true story) hear a primary school teacher boast that she takes her marking everywhere, even to her daughter’s swimming lessons. Such an attitude does bring pressure on the others and to those who don’t know how to find their own pace and stick to it, can be fatal.
There is also far too much pointless meddling by non-experts in media and the government which makes it very difficult to do effectively. Spielman is the epitome of this with her comical ineptitude designed to generate click bait in the Mail, but it affects most of the DfE. Woodhead was of course another example. It’s rather demoralising to be told you’re useless and lazy by functionally illiterate lowlifes who work 37 hour weeks in cosy offices when working 60 hour weeks under tough conditions.
And, of course, a lot go into teaching with high ideals and/or the expectation of short hours and long holidays and find the reality so different they just can’t take it. Woodhead, again, being an example, although he was forced out of teaching for other reasons.
But I think ultimately teaching in the British way is just very hard to do. To encourage discussion, thought, creativity and do it among 30 people a significant minority of whom don’t want to be there and can actually be violent is very, very tough. To do it on average 4.6 times a day forty weeks a year is even harder.
So it's tough because it's hard at the coalface working long hours in almost unbearably exhausting and physically dangerous conditions, because nobody thanks them or even understands what they have to endure, and because in their innocence they thought it would be a breeze but it turned out differently. Does that work as a précis?
News from the sunny surface, far away from the pit props: we almost all know what school is like, even if most people have experience only of schools for one social caste. Most don't ever want to go back to school once they've left. Perhaps they understand the institution about a million times better than those who do rush back there. Schoolteachers could quit their whingeing and try and get jobs in restaurants.
I’ve worked in a restaurant, actually. For six years.
Another reason we get out? Nasty bullying by unpleasant people with no idea of what they’re talking about and a burning hatred of people who do. I’ll add your name to that of the other three on this board.
"we almost all know what school is like..." And assume it gives us some special knowledge of what teaching is like. Or in some particular risible cases, "about a million times" more knowledge.
All sub 15C 0700 temps this week, after a long run of warm mornings up to 21C. Have we seen the best of the summer already?
12.6C here. At least it's sunny, and I think the forecast is optimistic after the weekend.
So possibly Good Morning is appropriate.
And Ydoethur, two (so far) teachers in my family plan to continue to do so, although another has left the classroom to become an Ed Psych. Currently just finished, satisfactorily, the first year.
So we have @Nigelb with 100% out, me with 67% out, and you with 33% out.
We need somebody with 0% here to complete the set.
Incidentally, I am seriously pissed off with Essex after yesterday. How on earth did you win from the position five overs out?
Do other countries have such ferocious attrition of teachers? Or is it a British problem? Apart from the staffing issues it seems very wasteful.
Or is it like the loss of Foundation Doctors a symptom of much deeper malaise within the system?
Difficult to compare with other countries because teacher systems tend to be quite idiosyncratic. So for example in France it is expected a large number of graduates go into teaching, are assigned to a school, do it for 2-3 years and then do something else. But in the USA, where many state systems would be roughly comparable, around 8% a year leave teaching whereas a ‘natural’ rate would be about 3%. That’s a bit lower than ours but it’s not ridiculously different.
There are reasons for it. First of all, it’s bloody hard work, and not jus pt because of the nature of the beast. Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish, so you will (true story) hear a primary school teacher boast that she takes her marking everywhere, even to her daughter’s swimming lessons. Such an attitude does bring pressure on the others and to those who don’t know how to find their own pace and stick to it, can be fatal.
There is also far too much pointless meddling by non-experts in media and the government which makes it very difficult to do effectively. Spielman is the epitome of this with her comical ineptitude designed to generate click bait in the Mail, but it affects most of the DfE. Woodhead was of course another example. It’s rather demoralising to be told you’re useless and lazy by functionally illiterate lowlifes who work 37 hour weeks in cosy offices when working 60 hour weeks under tough conditions.
And, of course, a lot go into teaching with high ideals and/or the expectation of short hours and long holidays and find the reality so different they just can’t take it. Woodhead, again, being an example, although he was forced out of teaching for other reasons.
But I think ultimately teaching in the British way is just very hard to do. To encourage discussion, thought, creativity and do it among 30 people a significant minority of whom don’t want to be there and can actually be violent is very, very tough. To do it on average 4.6 times a day forty weeks a year is even harder.
So it's tough because it's hard at the coalface working long hours in almost unbearably exhausting and physically dangerous conditions, because nobody thanks them or even understands what they have to endure, and because in their innocence they thought it would be a breeze but it turned out differently. Does that work as a précis?
News from the sunny surface, far away from the pit props: we almost all know what school is like, even if most people have experience only of schools for one social caste. Most don't ever want to go back to school once they've left. Perhaps they understand the institution about a million times better than those who do rush back there. Schoolteachers could quit their whingeing and try and get jobs in restaurants.
I’ve worked in a restaurant, actually. For six years.
Another reason we get out? Nasty bullying by unpleasant people with no idea of what they’re talking about and a burning hatred of people who do. I’ll add your name to that of the other three on this board.
Chill, he's the guy who is living in the 70s TV adaptation of Tom Brown's Schooldays. He is quite entertaining.
All sub 15C 0700 temps this week, after a long run of warm mornings up to 21C. Have we seen the best of the summer already?
12.6C here. At least it's sunny, and I think the forecast is optimistic after the weekend.
So possibly Good Morning is appropriate.
And Ydoethur, two (so far) teachers in my family plan to continue to do so, although another has left the classroom to become an Ed Psych. Currently just finished, satisfactorily, the first year.
So we have @Nigelb with 100% out, me with 67% out, and you with 33% out.
We need somebody with 0% here to complete the set.
Incidentally, I am seriously pissed off with Essex after yesterday. How on earth did you win from the position five overs out?
Do other countries have such ferocious attrition of teachers? Or is it a British problem? Apart from the staffing issues it seems very wasteful.
Or is it like the loss of Foundation Doctors a symptom of much deeper malaise within the system?
Difficult to compare with other countries because teacher systems tend to be quite idiosyncratic. So for example in France it is expected a large number of graduates go into teaching, are assigned to a school, do it for 2-3 years and then do something else. But in the USA, where many state systems would be roughly comparable, around 8% a year leave teaching whereas a ‘natural’ rate would be about 3%. That’s a bit lower than ours but it’s not ridiculously different.
There are reasons for it. First of all, it’s bloody hard work, and not jus pt because of the nature of the beast. Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish, so you will (true story) hear a primary school teacher boast that she takes her marking everywhere, even to her daughter’s swimming lessons. Such an attitude does bring pressure on the others and to those who don’t know how to find their own pace and stick to it, can be fatal.
There is also far too much pointless meddling by non-experts in media and the government which makes it very difficult to do effectively. Spielman is the epitome of this with her comical ineptitude designed to generate click bait in the Mail, but it affects most of the DfE. Woodhead was of course another example. It’s rather demoralising to be told you’re useless and lazy by functionally illiterate lowlifes who work 37 hour weeks in cosy offices when working 60 hour weeks under tough conditions.
And, of course, a lot go into teaching with high ideals and/or the expectation of short hours and long holidays and find the reality so different they just can’t take it. Woodhead, again, being an example, although he was forced out of teaching for other reasons.
But I think ultimately teaching in the British way is just very hard to do. To encourage discussion, thought, creativity and do it among 30 people a significant minority of whom don’t want to be there and can actually be violent is very, very tough. To do it on average 4.6 times a day forty weeks a year is even harder.
"Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish" - try solicitors or accountants, both obsessed with chargeable hours and presenteeism.
Er...yes. That doesn’t surprise me.
But we don’t get paid extra for it.
Our contracts are based on working 1263 hours a year. 31.5 hours a week for 40 weeks a year.
No full time teacher works 31.5 hours per week. You have to spend 22 hours in the classroom alone, ignoring tutor time, break duties and then planning and marking.
All those long lazy summer holidays, a cushy number
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
AIUI It allows the Greens to vote against the government on certain votes. In particular opening up new oil fields. Presumably the Government hope to get that through with the support of another party.
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
Good morning
I agree with you about an indyref2 mandate but I genuinely believe it will not happen this side of the next GE
@HYUFD make lots of antagonistic comments on the subject but in truth we are little over 2 and a half years from GE 24 believe it or not and that is not long, especially with covid still an issue
Furthermore and notwithstanding the gung-ho nature of the Nationalists they have not even started to provide an answer to the big issues including
Currency Hard border Pensions The timing of re-admittance to the EU Investment decision deferred due to unknowns and uncertainty
(to name a few)
Additionally, there has been a drift away by the Scots themselves to even holding indyref2, let alone voting for it, that it seems to me that it is unlikely to happen anytime soon
If the Scottish Government had published the referendum manifesto in the midst of a pandemic, I can just imagine the faux rage on here.
I realise the attraction of “SNP BAD”: it obviates the need for thought and effort, but it really is a trap that Unionists have set for themselves and willingly fling themselves into. Day in, day out.
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
- “ Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is.”
On topic, anyone who has paid attention to US politics over the past 2 years knows that Harris is a poor candidate both because of her background and her personality. As Malmesbury said, when you are AG of somewhere, you have a lot of decisions that can be picked over and which will piss off certain groups. But she is also awkward, has that weird laugh and just isn't good on her feet.
The problem the Democrats have is that she wants to become President and there is a question mark whether Biden can make it to 2024, never mind 2028. What they could do with is some scandal that either forces her to step down or damages her so much that she cannot run in 2024. Otherwise, I suspect they are stuck with her unless they can find another Black female candidate with whom to run.
They are all mouth and no trousers, but they *are* the 4 times elected government with their biggest ever vote this time on the biggest ever turnout.
On the issues you raise they need to say some fairly simple things. Currency: will maintain the existing sterling currency union until admitted to the Euro Border: the same solution as GB eventually reaches with the EU will apply (so not really a Scotland-specific problem) Pensions: a positive migration policy to have sufficient workers to pay them EU timing - apply for membership on morning 1 of independence etc
They won't. There seems to be a fear that if they go into detail people may start ignoring heart and feel and instead start making considered judgements...
on entry to the EU, Entry into the EU wouldn't be automatic and would take a number of years of negotiating and implementing. all other things would follow on from that delay. the SNP would also be forced to hold a referendum on EU membership which they'd not be certain to win (although it's highly likely). The EU might also say that Scotland needs to finish negotiating with rUK first before they can start negotiating with them. on the currency, they said that they'd keep sterling in the last indiref and the UK said no. That wouldn't change in indiref2. There's no saying that people would vote for joining the Euro and the SNP couldn't force it on the country on the border, even if Scotland joins the EU it will take a fair amount of time and a medium term position on the border would be required which the UK would be stupid to base the timing of anything on the entry of Scotland into the EU. A fixed and determined situation needs to be agreed initially. Pensions, it's not about the new liabilities which is the problems it is the share of existing liabilities which will be the problem. (plus the share of accumulated debt).
Now here's a headline you really don't ever want to read:
"Chipmunks near Lake Tahoe test positive for the plague"
Between escalating nuclear stockpiles, a rapidly deteriorating geopolitical climate, indications of Cold War II, a multi-year pandemic, the Greenland ice sheet close to total failure, the Arctic soon history, self-sufficiency being unfashionable, trade friction beginning to hamper food supplies, a population explosion and concomitant annihilation of other species and habitats and astonishingly poor world leaders, one wonders if we’re not about to get an uncomfortably realistic exposition of life in the Middle Ages.
… and now The Plague.
The only thing missing is the asteroid strike or imminent destruction of Japan, California and the Pacific rim by earthquake and associated tsunamis.
I am slightly shocked to learn that the average age of a civilisation is only 336 years!! That’s tiny! And then ponder how long ago The Enlightenment was.
Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.
All sub 15C 0700 temps this week, after a long run of warm mornings up to 21C. Have we seen the best of the summer already?
12.6C here. At least it's sunny, and I think the forecast is optimistic after the weekend.
So possibly Good Morning is appropriate.
And Ydoethur, two (so far) teachers in my family plan to continue to do so, although another has left the classroom to become an Ed Psych. Currently just finished, satisfactorily, the first year.
So we have @Nigelb with 100% out, me with 67% out, and you with 33% out.
We need somebody with 0% here to complete the set.
Incidentally, I am seriously pissed off with Essex after yesterday. How on earth did you win from the position five overs out?
Do other countries have such ferocious attrition of teachers? Or is it a British problem? Apart from the staffing issues it seems very wasteful.
Or is it like the loss of Foundation Doctors a symptom of much deeper malaise within the system?
Difficult to compare with other countries because teacher systems tend to be quite idiosyncratic. So for example in France it is expected a large number of graduates go into teaching, are assigned to a school, do it for 2-3 years and then do something else. But in the USA, where many state systems would be roughly comparable, around 8% a year leave teaching whereas a ‘natural’ rate would be about 3%. That’s a bit lower than ours but it’s not ridiculously different.
There are reasons for it. First of all, it’s bloody hard work, and not jus pt because of the nature of the beast. Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish, so you will (true story) hear a primary school teacher boast that she takes her marking everywhere, even to her daughter’s swimming lessons. Such an attitude does bring pressure on the others and to those who don’t know how to find their own pace and stick to it, can be fatal.
There is also far too much pointless meddling by non-experts in media and the government which makes it very difficult to do effectively. Spielman is the epitome of this with her comical ineptitude designed to generate click bait in the Mail, but it affects most of the DfE. Woodhead was of course another example. It’s rather demoralising to be told you’re useless and lazy by functionally illiterate lowlifes who work 37 hour weeks in cosy offices when working 60 hour weeks under tough conditions.
And, of course, a lot go into teaching with high ideals and/or the expectation of short hours and long holidays and find the reality so different they just can’t take it. Woodhead, again, being an example, although he was forced out of teaching for other reasons.
But I think ultimately teaching in the British way is just very hard to do. To encourage discussion, thought, creativity and do it among 30 people a significant minority of whom don’t want to be there and can actually be violent is very, very tough. To do it on average 4.6 times a day forty weeks a year is even harder.
So it's tough because it's hard at the coalface working long hours in almost unbearably exhausting and physically dangerous conditions, because nobody thanks them or even understands what they have to endure, and because in their innocence they thought it would be a breeze but it turned out differently. Does that work as a précis?
News from the sunny surface, far away from the pit props: we almost all know what school is like, even if most people have experience only of schools for one social caste. Most don't ever want to go back to school once they've left. Perhaps they understand the institution about a million times better than those who do rush back there. Schoolteachers could quit their whingeing and try and get jobs in restaurants.
I’ve worked in a restaurant, actually. For six years.
Another reason we get out? Nasty bullying by unpleasant people with no idea of what they’re talking about and a burning hatred of people who do. I’ll add your name to that of the other three on this board.
"we almost all know what school is like..." And assume it gives us some special knowledge of what teaching is like. Or in some particular risible cases, "about a million times" more knowledge.
I get a similar, related issue about being a university lecturer. Anyone who has been an undergrad thinks they know what university is like. They are wrong. UG is just one small part of university life. If I had a pound for everyone who thinks we all close down for three months when the students go home in June I'd be a lot better off. Universities are not just schools for older people. We live and die on research (funding and publication). Summer is time to try to achieve some of that with marginally fewer distractions. It is only marginally though - wrapping up the previous year (marking, collating, getting grades agree etc) and then planning next year goes all through summer. Next week sees the annual chaos of A level results. My prediction - expect problems with too many students getting places... Already one medical school has been trying bribes (money plus free rent if the student defers) to cope with this. They won't be the last.
All sub 15C 0700 temps this week, after a long run of warm mornings up to 21C. Have we seen the best of the summer already?
12.6C here. At least it's sunny, and I think the forecast is optimistic after the weekend.
So possibly Good Morning is appropriate.
And Ydoethur, two (so far) teachers in my family plan to continue to do so, although another has left the classroom to become an Ed Psych. Currently just finished, satisfactorily, the first year.
So we have @Nigelb with 100% out, me with 67% out, and you with 33% out.
We need somebody with 0% here to complete the set.
Incidentally, I am seriously pissed off with Essex after yesterday. How on earth did you win from the position five overs out?
Do other countries have such ferocious attrition of teachers? Or is it a British problem? Apart from the staffing issues it seems very wasteful.
Or is it like the loss of Foundation Doctors a symptom of much deeper malaise within the system?
Difficult to compare with other countries because teacher systems tend to be quite idiosyncratic. So for example in France it is expected a large number of graduates go into teaching, are assigned to a school, do it for 2-3 years and then do something else. But in the USA, where many state systems would be roughly comparable, around 8% a year leave teaching whereas a ‘natural’ rate would be about 3%. That’s a bit lower than ours but it’s not ridiculously different.
There are reasons for it. First of all, it’s bloody hard work, and not jus pt because of the nature of the beast. Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish, so you will (true story) hear a primary school teacher boast that she takes her marking everywhere, even to her daughter’s swimming lessons. Such an attitude does bring pressure on the others and to those who don’t know how to find their own pace and stick to it, can be fatal.
There is also far too much pointless meddling by non-experts in media and the government which makes it very difficult to do effectively. Spielman is the epitome of this with her comical ineptitude designed to generate click bait in the Mail, but it affects most of the DfE. Woodhead was of course another example. It’s rather demoralising to be told you’re useless and lazy by functionally illiterate lowlifes who work 37 hour weeks in cosy offices when working 60 hour weeks under tough conditions.
And, of course, a lot go into teaching with high ideals and/or the expectation of short hours and long holidays and find the reality so different they just can’t take it. Woodhead, again, being an example, although he was forced out of teaching for other reasons.
But I think ultimately teaching in the British way is just very hard to do. To encourage discussion, thought, creativity and do it among 30 people a significant minority of whom don’t want to be there and can actually be violent is very, very tough. To do it on average 4.6 times a day forty weeks a year is even harder.
"Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish" - try solicitors or accountants, both obsessed with chargeable hours and presenteeism.
What confuses me is all the folk around here who claim to have high-powered jobs, but spend all day on an obscure blog. I think most of you are actually sitting in stained string vests, surrounded by pizza boxes and still living off the Bank of Mum and Dad.
At least I have an excuse. I have ridiculously long holidays, an easy time at work and I am not the chief income earner (hurrah for feminism!!)
Incidentally, “presenteeism” is the pest of our age: lots of people holding positions just for the sake of it but being horrifically poor at their actual jobs. Eg The Clown.
Snap. I'm retired and spend a fraction of the time of others and still spend too much time here, as my wife tells me. There are several who tell us they have full time jobs who appear here full time. Confused.
I hear there's good money to be made being an 'influencer'. How much those who seem to make this a full time job actually influence anyone is debatable.
I like to think Philip and HY are employed by warring factions at Con Central Office, fighting over the soul* of the party. (In)correctHB was employed by the Corbynite NEC, but managed to survive the cull and get a position with Starmer NEC. SNP (and even an Alba) employees. The LDs play a clever game by not obviously employing any posters directly, but sponsoring occasional thread headers.
Me, I'm engaged in an ethnographic research project on the disfunctionality of online communities in the 21st century and the continued dominance of old white men in political discourse
*heh, yep 'soul' of the Conservative party, I know
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
Good morning
I agree with you about an indyref2 mandate but I genuinely believe it will not happen this side of the next GE
@HYUFD make lots of antagonistic comments on the subject but in truth we are little over 2 and a half years from GE 24 believe it or not and that is not long, especially with covid still an issue
Furthermore and notwithstanding the gung-ho nature of the Nationalists they have not even started to provide an answer to the big issues including
Currency Hard border Pensions The timing of re-admittance to the EU Investment decision deferred due to unknowns and uncertainty
(to name a few)
Additionally, there has been a drift away by the Scots themselves to even holding indyref2, let alone voting for it, that it seems to me that it is unlikely to happen anytime soon
They are all mouth and no trousers, but they *are* the 4 times elected government with their biggest ever vote this time on the biggest ever turnout.
On the issues you raise they need to say some fairly simple things. Currency: will maintain the existing sterling currency union until admitted to the Euro Border: the same solution as GB eventually reaches with the EU will apply (so not really a Scotland-specific problem) Pensions: a positive migration policy to have sufficient workers to pay them EU timing - apply for membership on morning 1 of independence etc
They won't. There seems to be a fear that if they go into detail people may start ignoring heart and feel and instead start making considered judgements...
1) There is no "currency union" currently. There is a single currency for a single country. London parties last time around said there would be no currency union with iScotland. 2) The act of Union created the common travel and customs area - repealing that ends both. What it is replaced with is not within the gift of the Scottish government. Also, see below. 3) Positive immigration militates against a common travel area. 4) EU membership militates against a common customs area.
All sub 15C 0700 temps this week, after a long run of warm mornings up to 21C. Have we seen the best of the summer already?
12.6C here. At least it's sunny, and I think the forecast is optimistic after the weekend.
So possibly Good Morning is appropriate.
And Ydoethur, two (so far) teachers in my family plan to continue to do so, although another has left the classroom to become an Ed Psych. Currently just finished, satisfactorily, the first year.
So we have @Nigelb with 100% out, me with 67% out, and you with 33% out.
We need somebody with 0% here to complete the set.
Incidentally, I am seriously pissed off with Essex after yesterday. How on earth did you win from the position five overs out?
Do other countries have such ferocious attrition of teachers? Or is it a British problem? Apart from the staffing issues it seems very wasteful.
Or is it like the loss of Foundation Doctors a symptom of much deeper malaise within the system?
Difficult to compare with other countries because teacher systems tend to be quite idiosyncratic. So for example in France it is expected a large number of graduates go into teaching, are assigned to a school, do it for 2-3 years and then do something else. But in the USA, where many state systems would be roughly comparable, around 8% a year leave teaching whereas a ‘natural’ rate would be about 3%. That’s a bit lower than ours but it’s not ridiculously different.
There are reasons for it. First of all, it’s bloody hard work, and not jus pt because of the nature of the beast. Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish, so you will (true story) hear a primary school teacher boast that she takes her marking everywhere, even to her daughter’s swimming lessons. Such an attitude does bring pressure on the others and to those who don’t know how to find their own pace and stick to it, can be fatal.
There is also far too much pointless meddling by non-experts in media and the government which makes it very difficult to do effectively. Spielman is the epitome of this with her comical ineptitude designed to generate click bait in the Mail, but it affects most of the DfE. Woodhead was of course another example. It’s rather demoralising to be told you’re useless and lazy by functionally illiterate lowlifes who work 37 hour weeks in cosy offices when working 60 hour weeks under tough conditions.
And, of course, a lot go into teaching with high ideals and/or the expectation of short hours and long holidays and find the reality so different they just can’t take it. Woodhead, again, being an example, although he was forced out of teaching for other reasons.
But I think ultimately teaching in the British way is just very hard to do. To encourage discussion, thought, creativity and do it among 30 people a significant minority of whom don’t want to be there and can actually be violent is very, very tough. To do it on average 4.6 times a day forty weeks a year is even harder.
"Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish" - try solicitors or accountants, both obsessed with chargeable hours and presenteeism.
What confuses me is all the folk around here who claim to have high-powered jobs, but spend all day on an obscure blog. I think most of you are actually sitting in stained string vests, surrounded by pizza boxes and still living off the Bank of Mum and Dad.
At least I have an excuse. I have ridiculously long holidays, an easy time at work and I am not the chief income earner (hurrah for feminism!!)
Incidentally, “presenteeism” is the pest of our age: lots of people holding positions just for the sake of it but being horrifically poor at their actual jobs. Eg The Clown.
Snap. I'm retired and spend a fraction of the time of others and still spend too much time here, as my wife tells me. There are several who tell us they have full time jobs who appear here full time. Confused.
My favourite is the one who claims to be a high-powered lawyer, but spends every waking hour on this blog and is unaware that some of his posts break the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors, RELs and RFLs and the SRA Code of Conduct for Firms.
His mum serves him bowls of Heinz tomato soup to keep his pecker up.
All sub 15C 0700 temps this week, after a long run of warm mornings up to 21C. Have we seen the best of the summer already?
12.6C here. At least it's sunny, and I think the forecast is optimistic after the weekend.
So possibly Good Morning is appropriate.
And Ydoethur, two (so far) teachers in my family plan to continue to do so, although another has left the classroom to become an Ed Psych. Currently just finished, satisfactorily, the first year.
So we have @Nigelb with 100% out, me with 67% out, and you with 33% out.
We need somebody with 0% here to complete the set.
Incidentally, I am seriously pissed off with Essex after yesterday. How on earth did you win from the position five overs out?
Do other countries have such ferocious attrition of teachers? Or is it a British problem? Apart from the staffing issues it seems very wasteful.
Or is it like the loss of Foundation Doctors a symptom of much deeper malaise within the system?
Difficult to compare with other countries because teacher systems tend to be quite idiosyncratic. So for example in France it is expected a large number of graduates go into teaching, are assigned to a school, do it for 2-3 years and then do something else. But in the USA, where many state systems would be roughly comparable, around 8% a year leave teaching whereas a ‘natural’ rate would be about 3%. That’s a bit lower than ours but it’s not ridiculously different.
There are reasons for it. First of all, it’s bloody hard work, and not jus pt because of the nature of the beast. Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish, so you will (true story) hear a primary school teacher boast that she takes her marking everywhere, even to her daughter’s swimming lessons. Such an attitude does bring pressure on the others and to those who don’t know how to find their own pace and stick to it, can be fatal.
There is also far too much pointless meddling by non-experts in media and the government which makes it very difficult to do effectively. Spielman is the epitome of this with her comical ineptitude designed to generate click bait in the Mail, but it affects most of the DfE. Woodhead was of course another example. It’s rather demoralising to be told you’re useless and lazy by functionally illiterate lowlifes who work 37 hour weeks in cosy offices when working 60 hour weeks under tough conditions.
And, of course, a lot go into teaching with high ideals and/or the expectation of short hours and long holidays and find the reality so different they just can’t take it. Woodhead, again, being an example, although he was forced out of teaching for other reasons.
But I think ultimately teaching in the British way is just very hard to do. To encourage discussion, thought, creativity and do it among 30 people a significant minority of whom don’t want to be there and can actually be violent is very, very tough. To do it on average 4.6 times a day forty weeks a year is even harder.
So it's tough because it's hard at the coalface working long hours in almost unbearably exhausting and physically dangerous conditions, because nobody thanks them or even understands what they have to endure, and because in their innocence they thought it would be a breeze but it turned out differently. Does that work as a précis?
News from the sunny surface, far away from the pit props: we almost all know what school is like, even if most people have experience only of schools for one social caste. Most don't ever want to go back to school once they've left. Perhaps they understand the institution about a million times better than those who do rush back there. Schoolteachers could quit their whingeing and try and get jobs in restaurants.
I’ve worked in a restaurant, actually. For six years.
Another reason we get out? Nasty bullying by unpleasant people with no idea of what they’re talking about and a burning hatred of people who do. I’ll add your name to that of the other three on this board.
"we almost all know what school is like..." And assume it gives us some special knowledge of what teaching is like. Or in some particular risible cases, "about a million times" more knowledge.
I get a similar, related issue about being a university lecturer. Anyone who has been an undergrad thinks they know what university is like. They are wrong. UG is just one small part of university life. If I had a pound for everyone who thinks we all close down for three months when the students go home in June I'd be a lot better off. Universities are not just schools for older people. We live and die on research (funding and publication). Summer is time to try to achieve some of that with marginally fewer distractions. It is only marginally though - wrapping up the previous year (marking, collating, getting grades agree etc) and then planning next year goes all through summer. Next week sees the annual chaos of A level results. My prediction - expect problems with too many students getting places... Already one medical school has been trying bribes (money plus free rent if the student defers) to cope with this. They won't be the last.
I'm fortunate to work in a department that is almost free of undergrads (and associated lecturing/marking work - although lots of postgrad supervision). Does mean lecturer posts are devilishly rare and so - unusually - there are a majority of research only positions all the way up the food chain. The downside is that you really have to bring in research funding otherwise your job evaporates pretty quickly as there's no baseline lecturing work to keep you on the books.
These protesters are united against France’s new system of vaccine passes, which was announced with much fanfare by the government on July 12 and is gradually coming into effect.......
.....Though to some extent successful in its primary aim — in the weeks since, 6.5 million people have been vaccinated, taking the level to 47 percent of the population, about the same proportion as in the United States — the move has rebounded badly against the government. Many people, unhappy at the act of coercion, are taking to the streets in a collective display of defiance, potentially coalescing into a substantial protest movement that could mar President Emmanuel Macron’s re-election efforts next year. As governments across the world consider similar policies, France’s experience is a cautionary tale.
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
Good morning
I agree with you about an indyref2 mandate but I genuinely believe it will not happen this side of the next GE
@HYUFD make lots of antagonistic comments on the subject but in truth we are little over 2 and a half years from GE 24 believe it or not and that is not long, especially with covid still an issue
Furthermore and notwithstanding the gung-ho nature of the Nationalists they have not even started to provide an answer to the big issues including
Currency Hard border Pensions The timing of re-admittance to the EU Investment decision deferred due to unknowns and uncertainty
(to name a few)
Additionally, there has been a drift away by the Scots themselves to even holding indyref2, let alone voting for it, that it seems to me that it is unlikely to happen anytime soon
They are all mouth and no trousers, but they *are* the 4 times elected government with their biggest ever vote this time on the biggest ever turnout.
On the issues you raise they need to say some fairly simple things. Currency: will maintain the existing sterling currency union until admitted to the Euro Border: the same solution as GB eventually reaches with the EU will apply (so not really a Scotland-specific problem) Pensions: a positive migration policy to have sufficient workers to pay them EU timing - apply for membership on morning 1 of independence etc
They won't. There seems to be a fear that if they go into detail people may start ignoring heart and feel and instead start making considered judgements...
They should come up with answers. Answers are entirely possible, plenty of countries have become independent before.
Currency your answer doesn't work, since there's literally no such thing as "the existing sterling currency union".
Sterling is a currency for the unitary state of the United Kingdom, ultimately controlled by the Bank of England, Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Westminster Parliament. The Euro has a collegiate union decision making process because it is a currency union, sterling does not.
I get a similar, related issue about being a university lecturer. Anyone who has been an undergrad thinks they know what university is like. They are wrong. UG is just one small part of university life. If I had a pound for everyone who thinks we all close down for three months when the students go home in June I'd be a lot better off. Universities are not just schools for older people. We live and die on research (funding and publication). Summer is time to try to achieve some of that with marginally fewer distractions. It is only marginally though - wrapping up the previous year (marking, collating, getting grades agree etc) and then planning next year goes all through summer. Next week sees the annual chaos of A level results. My prediction - expect problems with too many students getting places... Already one medical school has been trying bribes (money plus free rent if the student defers) to cope with this. They won't be the last.
I'm fortunate to work in a department that is almost free of undergrads (and associated lecturing/marking work - although lots of postgrad supervision). Does mean lecturer posts are devilishly rare and so - unusually - there are a majority of research only positions all the way up the food chain. The downside is that you really have to bring in research funding otherwise your job evaporates pretty quickly as there's no baseline lecturing work to keep you on the books.
Interesting discussion. As a student at uni I was annoyed by the emphasis on lecturers doing research (most of which was ending up in a publication in some journal or other with no follow-up), with the really good lecturers who were interested in students not having the prestige of the research specialists. In fact, the ones who weren't quite so outstanding were often better lecturers, as they understood what was difficult - the boffins swanned through everything briskly without lingering on the tough parts.
My feeling is still that unis should be mostly about teaching, with research a potentially valuable by-product, not the other way round. The fact that research is (somewhat) easier to measure distorts the funding paradigm, I think.
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
Good morning
I agree with you about an indyref2 mandate but I genuinely believe it will not happen this side of the next GE
@HYUFD make lots of antagonistic comments on the subject but in truth we are little over 2 and a half years from GE 24 believe it or not and that is not long, especially with covid still an issue
Furthermore and notwithstanding the gung-ho nature of the Nationalists they have not even started to provide an answer to the big issues including
Currency Hard border Pensions The timing of re-admittance to the EU Investment decision deferred due to unknowns and uncertainty
(to name a few)
Additionally, there has been a drift away by the Scots themselves to even holding indyref2, let alone voting for it, that it seems to me that it is unlikely to happen anytime soon
They are all mouth and no trousers, but they *are* the 4 times elected government with their biggest ever vote this time on the biggest ever turnout.
On the issues you raise they need to say some fairly simple things. Currency: will maintain the existing sterling currency union until admitted to the Euro Border: the same solution as GB eventually reaches with the EU will apply (so not really a Scotland-specific problem) Pensions: a positive migration policy to have sufficient workers to pay them EU timing - apply for membership on morning 1 of independence etc
They won't. There seems to be a fear that if they go into detail people may start ignoring heart and feel and instead start making considered judgements...
They should come up with answers. Answers are entirely possible, plenty of countries have become independent before.
Currency your answer doesn't work, since there's literally no such thing as "the existing sterling currency union".
Sterling is a currency for the unitary state of the United Kingdom, ultimately controlled by the Bank of England, Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Westminster Parliament. The Euro has a collegiate union decision making process because it is a currency union, sterling does not.
Pedant mode, but there is a Sterling currency union for the overseas territories. The UK is a part of that, but Scotland is not in its own right.
What time does today’s pointlessly circular argument on Scottish Independence start? I think I’ll skip the repeat of the Brexit “debate” too.
Sorry, got up on the wrong side of bed today…
Would you prefer a discussion on Brussels Sprouts exports?
In all honesty, yes
Can't we just open a discussion on
- The Reformation - Dreyfus - Schleswig-Holstein Question
Pick one, any one.
The Reformation gets my vote. I did it at University
I'm up for that. I have an epic tome upstairs - 'The Stripping of the Altars'. Fascinating about the real world impact of changes in religious practice through the reformation. I think it is easy to underestimate just how much religion dominated everyday life in the middle ages, and how huge the changes were. An incredible period, driven in part, by an old man wanting to get his end away...
Now here's a headline you really don't ever want to read:
"Chipmunks near Lake Tahoe test positive for the plague"
Between escalating nuclear stockpiles, a rapidly deteriorating geopolitical climate, indications of Cold War II, a multi-year pandemic, the Greenland ice sheet close to total failure, the Arctic soon history, self-sufficiency being unfashionable, trade friction beginning to hamper food supplies, a population explosion and concomitant annihilation of other species and habitats and astonishingly poor world leaders, one wonders if we’re not about to get an uncomfortably realistic exposition of life in the Middle Ages.
… and now The Plague.
The only thing missing is the asteroid strike or imminent destruction of Japan, California and the Pacific rim by earthquake and associated tsunamis.
I am slightly shocked to learn that the average age of a civilisation is only 336 years!! That’s tiny! And then ponder how long ago The Enlightenment was.
Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
Good morning
I agree with you about an indyref2 mandate but I genuinely believe it will not happen this side of the next GE
@HYUFD make lots of antagonistic comments on the subject but in truth we are little over 2 and a half years from GE 24 believe it or not and that is not long, especially with covid still an issue
Furthermore and notwithstanding the gung-ho nature of the Nationalists they have not even started to provide an answer to the big issues including
Currency Hard border Pensions The timing of re-admittance to the EU Investment decision deferred due to unknowns and uncertainty
(to name a few)
Additionally, there has been a drift away by the Scots themselves to even holding indyref2, let alone voting for it, that it seems to me that it is unlikely to happen anytime soon
If the Scottish Government had published the referendum manifesto in the midst of a pandemic, I can just imagine the faux rage on here.
I realise the attraction of “SNP BAD”: it obviates the need for thought and effort, but it really is a trap that Unionists have set for themselves and willingly fling themselves into. Day in, day out.
It would add to the debate if you would provide answers to the questions I have posed
What time does today’s pointlessly circular argument on Scottish Independence start? I think I’ll skip the repeat of the Brexit “debate” too.
Sorry, got up on the wrong side of bed today…
Would you prefer a discussion on Brussels Sprouts exports?
In all honesty, yes
Can't we just open a discussion on
- The Reformation - Dreyfus - Schleswig-Holstein Question
Pick one, any one.
The Reformation gets my vote. I did it at University
I'm up for that. I have an epic tome upstairs - 'The Stripping of the Altars'. Fascinating about the real world impact of changes in religious practice through the reformation. I think it is easy to underestimate just how much religion dominated everyday life in the middle ages, and how huge the changes were. An incredible period, driven in part, by an old man wanting to get his end away...
Great book, Eammon Duffy. Read it as part of my undergraduate degree. However, underestimated is the effect of the old man getting kicked in the head by a horse as a younger man -
What time does today’s pointlessly circular argument on Scottish Independence start? I think I’ll skip the repeat of the Brexit “debate” too.
Sorry, got up on the wrong side of bed today…
Would you prefer a discussion on Brussels Sprouts exports?
In all honesty, yes
Can't we just open a discussion on
- The Reformation - Dreyfus - Schleswig-Holstein Question
Pick one, any one.
I’ll start with Dreyfuss; I thought he was very good as the Player King in the film version of “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead”, a sadly underrated film of what might be my favourite play.
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
The Scotland Act 1998 is clear union matters are reserved to the UK government and the UK government has made clear it will not allow a legal indyref2 before the 2024 general election.
Sturgeon has made clear she will not hold a wildcat referendum and will not declare UDI so that is the end of the matter. The SNP failed to get a majority in May and so needed a coalition partner. Had Alba won some MSPs and been in coalition with her she might have been forced to go down the route of a wildcat referendum or even UDI. As it is her partners are the Scottish Greens who are more concerned with reforming the Gender Recognition Act than pushing for independence at all costs https://planetradio.co.uk/clyde/local/news/too-soon-indyref2-scottish-greens/
On topic, anyone who has paid attention to US politics over the past 2 years knows that Harris is a poor candidate both because of her background and her personality. As Malmesbury said, when you are AG of somewhere, you have a lot of decisions that can be picked over and which will piss off certain groups. But she is also awkward, has that weird laugh and just isn't good on her feet.
The problem the Democrats have is that she wants to become President and there is a question mark whether Biden can make it to 2024, never mind 2028. What they could do with is some scandal that either forces her to step down or damages her so much that she cannot run in 2024. Otherwise, I suspect they are stuck with her unless they can find another Black female candidate with whom to run.
Yes, it's quite an impressive feat of triangulation that floating voters think she wants to defund the police, while the left thinks she's a cop.
If he makes it to 2024 Biden should switch her out for Stacey Abrams. Practically considered a saint by the base, born in one swing state, leads her party in another.
People will mock but if Harris does run to succeed Biden I reckon AOC could give her a run for her money. You need a (preferably minority) woman to unseat a woman who's next in line, and although primary voters may be wary of going too far left and losing the general, what's the point in compromising if it gets you someone who's bad at politics instead of somebody who's good? Hillary Clinton should have taught them that...
I get a similar, related issue about being a university lecturer. Anyone who has been an undergrad thinks they know what university is like. They are wrong. UG is just one small part of university life. If I had a pound for everyone who thinks we all close down for three months when the students go home in June I'd be a lot better off. Universities are not just schools for older people. We live and die on research (funding and publication). Summer is time to try to achieve some of that with marginally fewer distractions. It is only marginally though - wrapping up the previous year (marking, collating, getting grades agree etc) and then planning next year goes all through summer. Next week sees the annual chaos of A level results. My prediction - expect problems with too many students getting places... Already one medical school has been trying bribes (money plus free rent if the student defers) to cope with this. They won't be the last.
I'm fortunate to work in a department that is almost free of undergrads (and associated lecturing/marking work - although lots of postgrad supervision). Does mean lecturer posts are devilishly rare and so - unusually - there are a majority of research only positions all the way up the food chain. The downside is that you really have to bring in research funding otherwise your job evaporates pretty quickly as there's no baseline lecturing work to keep you on the books.
Interesting discussion. As a student at uni I was annoyed by the emphasis on lecturers doing research (most of which was ending up in a publication in some journal or other with no follow-up), with the really good lecturers who were interested in students not having the prestige of the research specialists. In fact, the ones who weren't quite so outstanding were often better lecturers, as they understood what was difficult - the boffins swanned through everything briskly without lingering on the tough parts.
My feeling is still that unis should be mostly about teaching, with research a potentially valuable by-product, not the other way round. The fact that research is (somewhat) easier to measure distorts the funding paradigm, I think.
The uni world is much changed since then. Research now is very much linked to 'impact' - what will the benefit be to society of the research, be it medicinal chemistry, engineering, biology etc. Blue skies stuff that might be useful one day is very hard to get funded. The idea of lots of research ending up in journals with no follow up is not something that anyone who wants to get on would do - impact is everything.
There is a clear balance to be struck. The idea that a top, world ranked researcher should also be a great teacher is interesting and probably rarely true. That universities under value non-research staff is abundantly true, partly because of how many governments have determined that Universities should be ranked (currently by the REF), with knock on effects on funding to said university. Many academics note that MP's don't have to show 'impact' or get assessed by an equivalent of REF, especially in safe seats...
I listened to the First Minister’s statement to the chamber yesterday and the first questions. (I ought to have held out for the entire 90 minutes as it was fascinating.)
Sturgeon was rock solid, as ever, but I was curious to listen to the SCon and SLab leaders, as they are still fresh in their roles. I must say I was very surprised. Douglas Ross (Con) did a *much* better job than Anas Sarwar (Lab).
Sarwar is, on paper, the much more experienced politician, but he doesn’t sound it! A very bland, tentative and reedy presentation.
Ross has an engaging voice and calm style, and sounds young and fresh. I think he could be good. Much better than gobby Davidson or auntie Annabel.
I get a similar, related issue about being a university lecturer. Anyone who has been an undergrad thinks they know what university is like. They are wrong. UG is just one small part of university life. If I had a pound for everyone who thinks we all close down for three months when the students go home in June I'd be a lot better off. Universities are not just schools for older people. We live and die on research (funding and publication). Summer is time to try to achieve some of that with marginally fewer distractions. It is only marginally though - wrapping up the previous year (marking, collating, getting grades agree etc) and then planning next year goes all through summer. Next week sees the annual chaos of A level results. My prediction - expect problems with too many students getting places... Already one medical school has been trying bribes (money plus free rent if the student defers) to cope with this. They won't be the last.
I'm fortunate to work in a department that is almost free of undergrads (and associated lecturing/marking work - although lots of postgrad supervision). Does mean lecturer posts are devilishly rare and so - unusually - there are a majority of research only positions all the way up the food chain. The downside is that you really have to bring in research funding otherwise your job evaporates pretty quickly as there's no baseline lecturing work to keep you on the books.
Interesting discussion. As a student at uni I was annoyed by the emphasis on lecturers doing research (most of which was ending up in a publication in some journal or other with no follow-up), with the really good lecturers who were interested in students not having the prestige of the research specialists. In fact, the ones who weren't quite so outstanding were often better lecturers, as they understood what was difficult - the boffins swanned through everything briskly without lingering on the tough parts.
My feeling is still that unis should be mostly about teaching, with research a potentially valuable by-product, not the other way round. The fact that research is (somewhat) easier to measure distorts the funding paradigm, I think.
Often true, I think. Some of the new universities with less research emphasis do well on the TEF. When I worked at one of those I had a colleague who had come from a Russell Group uni as he wanted mainly to be a teacher and he was very good.
In research intensive unis you need to be good at research funding, being average at teaching won't really hinder career.
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
Good morning
I agree with you about an indyref2 mandate but I genuinely believe it will not happen this side of the next GE
@HYUFD make lots of antagonistic comments on the subject but in truth we are little over 2 and a half years from GE 24 believe it or not and that is not long, especially with covid still an issue
Furthermore and notwithstanding the gung-ho nature of the Nationalists they have not even started to provide an answer to the big issues including
Currency Hard border Pensions The timing of re-admittance to the EU Investment decision deferred due to unknowns and uncertainty
(to name a few)
Additionally, there has been a drift away by the Scots themselves to even holding indyref2, let alone voting for it, that it seems to me that it is unlikely to happen anytime soon
If the Scottish Government had published the referendum manifesto in the midst of a pandemic, I can just imagine the faux rage on here.
I realise the attraction of “SNP BAD”: it obviates the need for thought and effort, but it really is a trap that Unionists have set for themselves and willingly fling themselves into. Day in, day out.
It would add to the debate if you would provide answers to the questions I have posed
I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer I gave earlier.
You wonder if they have measured the 400m for the hurdles correctly…
If they haven't stride patterns would be wrong and I suspect times slower as athletes adapt to a changed length. I may be talking rubbish (as usual).
You are probably right if the hurdles were spaced closer. But the initial runup or finishing section could be wrong. Of course this isn’t a serious concern, but it is remarkable that world records have been beaten by three competitors now in the same event.
Re the flurry of world records at the Olympics.
The Telegraph has a piece on running shoe technology and in a throwaway line mentions also that the track was engineered to be "the quickest in history, with greater energy response".
400m world-record breaking gold medallist Karsten Warholm is critical of the Nike shoes worn by silver medallist Benjamin but his own shoes were developed between Puma and the Mercedes Formula One team.
Advances were first seen in road-running shoes after the Rio Olympics when Nike combined a carbon-fibre plate with vast amounts of hyper-responsive foam - a development that has seen marathon and half-marathon times tumble in recent years.
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Surely even the NS is not *that* crazy?
You wouldn't give the vaccine brief to Piers Corbyn.
Can somebody document that Scottish Greens are more like German Greens than English / Welsh Greens?
You wonder if they have measured the 400m for the hurdles correctly…
If they haven't stride patterns would be wrong and I suspect times slower as athletes adapt to a changed length. I may be talking rubbish (as usual).
You are probably right if the hurdles were spaced closer. But the initial runup or finishing section could be wrong. Of course this isn’t a serious concern, but it is remarkable that world records have been beaten by three competitors now in the same event.
Re the flurry of world records at the Olympics.
The Telegraph has a piece on running shoe technology and in a throwaway line mentions also that the track was engineered to be "the quickest in history, with greater energy response".
400m world-record breaking gold medallist Karsten Warholm is critical of the Nike shoes worn by silver medallist Benjamin but his own shoes were developed between Puma and the Mercedes Formula One team.
Advances were first seen in road-running shoes after the Rio Olympics when Nike combined a carbon-fibre plate with vast amounts of hyper-responsive foam - a development that has seen marathon and half-marathon times tumble in recent years.
All sub 15C 0700 temps this week, after a long run of warm mornings up to 21C. Have we seen the best of the summer already?
12.6C here. At least it's sunny, and I think the forecast is optimistic after the weekend.
So possibly Good Morning is appropriate.
And Ydoethur, two (so far) teachers in my family plan to continue to do so, although another has left the classroom to become an Ed Psych. Currently just finished, satisfactorily, the first year.
So we have @Nigelb with 100% out, me with 67% out, and you with 33% out.
We need somebody with 0% here to complete the set.
Incidentally, I am seriously pissed off with Essex after yesterday. How on earth did you win from the position five overs out?
Do other countries have such ferocious attrition of teachers? Or is it a British problem? Apart from the staffing issues it seems very wasteful.
Or is it like the loss of Foundation Doctors a symptom of much deeper malaise within the system?
Difficult to compare with other countries because teacher systems tend to be quite idiosyncratic. So for example in France it is expected a large number of graduates go into teaching, are assigned to a school, do it for 2-3 years and then do something else. But in the USA, where many state systems would be roughly comparable, around 8% a year leave teaching whereas a ‘natural’ rate would be about 3%. That’s a bit lower than ours but it’s not ridiculously different.
There are reasons for it. First of all, it’s bloody hard work, and not jus pt because of the nature of the beast. Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish, so you will (true story) hear a primary school teacher boast that she takes her marking everywhere, even to her daughter’s swimming lessons. Such an attitude does bring pressure on the others and to those who don’t know how to find their own pace and stick to it, can be fatal.
There is also far too much pointless meddling by non-experts in media and the government which makes it very difficult to do effectively. Spielman is the epitome of this with her comical ineptitude designed to generate click bait in the Mail, but it affects most of the DfE. Woodhead was of course another example. It’s rather demoralising to be told you’re useless and lazy by functionally illiterate lowlifes who work 37 hour weeks in cosy offices when working 60 hour weeks under tough conditions.
And, of course, a lot go into teaching with high ideals and/or the expectation of short hours and long holidays and find the reality so different they just can’t take it. Woodhead, again, being an example, although he was forced out of teaching for other reasons.
But I think ultimately teaching in the British way is just very hard to do. To encourage discussion, thought, creativity and do it among 30 people a significant minority of whom don’t want to be there and can actually be violent is very, very tough. To do it on average 4.6 times a day forty weeks a year is even harder.
"Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish" - try solicitors or accountants, both obsessed with chargeable hours and presenteeism.
What confuses me is all the folk around here who claim to have high-powered jobs, but spend all day on an obscure blog. I think most of you are actually sitting in stained string vests, surrounded by pizza boxes and still living off the Bank of Mum and Dad.
At least I have an excuse. I have ridiculously long holidays, an easy time at work and I am not the chief income earner (hurrah for feminism!!)
Incidentally, “presenteeism” is the pest of our age: lots of people holding positions just for the sake of it but being horrifically poor at their actual jobs. Eg The Clown.
Snap. I'm retired and spend a fraction of the time of others and still spend too much time here, as my wife tells me. There are several who tell us they have full time jobs who appear here full time. Confused.
Typical hours awake per week 115 hrs Typical job 40 hrs per week
Typical time when people could choose to post on here 75 hrs, someone who didn't sleep much and was working 32 hrs per week (neither that unusual), might have 90 available hrs.
Is it really confusing you? Or are you disapproving of their time management and/or pb addiction?
Keir Starmer would sit down with Nicola Sturgeon to tackle the climate change emergency but has ruled out any deal with the SNP leader on the constitution.
Ahead of a two-day campaign visit to Scotland, during which he will attack the nationalist government for failing to reach green targets, the Labour leader made it clear he is willing to talk with Sturgeon on anything but the independence question.
It is his prerogative to reject his only feasible route to office, and according to the Daily Record (cough) that is exactly what he has chosen to do. This is (supposedly) a betting blog, so the wagers will now flood in. Not.
The last thing that the SNP wants is a successful Labour government in Westminster. It ruins one of the central arguments the party makes for independence. If the SNP wants to actually vote with the Tories to prevent the creation of a progressive redistributive, minority Labour government that is their prerogative - but it's a decision they would have to justify to Scottish voters at the subsequent general election.
1 in 60 travellers returning from amber or red countries test positive for covid according to the Tel - so that's roughly 3 infected people on each plane, on average. https://t.co/5KnK4w8gYn
All sub 15C 0700 temps this week, after a long run of warm mornings up to 21C. Have we seen the best of the summer already?
12.6C here. At least it's sunny, and I think the forecast is optimistic after the weekend.
So possibly Good Morning is appropriate.
And Ydoethur, two (so far) teachers in my family plan to continue to do so, although another has left the classroom to become an Ed Psych. Currently just finished, satisfactorily, the first year.
So we have @Nigelb with 100% out, me with 67% out, and you with 33% out.
We need somebody with 0% here to complete the set.
Incidentally, I am seriously pissed off with Essex after yesterday. How on earth did you win from the position five overs out?
Do other countries have such ferocious attrition of teachers? Or is it a British problem? Apart from the staffing issues it seems very wasteful.
Or is it like the loss of Foundation Doctors a symptom of much deeper malaise within the system?
Difficult to compare with other countries because teacher systems tend to be quite idiosyncratic. So for example in France it is expected a large number of graduates go into teaching, are assigned to a school, do it for 2-3 years and then do something else. But in the USA, where many state systems would be roughly comparable, around 8% a year leave teaching whereas a ‘natural’ rate would be about 3%. That’s a bit lower than ours but it’s not ridiculously different.
There are reasons for it. First of all, it’s bloody hard work, and not jus pt because of the nature of the beast. Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish, so you will (true story) hear a primary school teacher boast that she takes her marking everywhere, even to her daughter’s swimming lessons. Such an attitude does bring pressure on the others and to those who don’t know how to find their own pace and stick to it, can be fatal.
There is also far too much pointless meddling by non-experts in media and the government which makes it very difficult to do effectively. Spielman is the epitome of this with her comical ineptitude designed to generate click bait in the Mail, but it affects most of the DfE. Woodhead was of course another example. It’s rather demoralising to be told you’re useless and lazy by functionally illiterate lowlifes who work 37 hour weeks in cosy offices when working 60 hour weeks under tough conditions.
And, of course, a lot go into teaching with high ideals and/or the expectation of short hours and long holidays and find the reality so different they just can’t take it. Woodhead, again, being an example, although he was forced out of teaching for other reasons.
But I think ultimately teaching in the British way is just very hard to do. To encourage discussion, thought, creativity and do it among 30 people a significant minority of whom don’t want to be there and can actually be violent is very, very tough. To do it on average 4.6 times a day forty weeks a year is even harder.
"Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish" - try solicitors or accountants, both obsessed with chargeable hours and presenteeism.
Er...yes. That doesn’t surprise me.
But we don’t get paid extra for it.
Our contracts are based on working 1263 hours a year. 31.5 hours a week for 40 weeks a year.
No full time teacher works 31.5 hours per week. You have to spend 22 hours in the classroom alone, ignoring tutor time, break duties and then planning and marking.
All those long lazy summer holidays, a cushy number
You as as right as ever @malcolmg: have you considered becoming a teacher? I’m sure you would find it very easy.
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
The Scotland Act 1998 is clear union matters are reserved to the UK government and the UK government has made clear it will not allow a legal indyref2 before the 2024 general election.
Sturgeon has made clear she will not hold a wildcat referendum and will not declare UDI so that is the end of the matter. The SNP failed to get a majority in May and so needed a coalition partner. Had Alba won some MSPs and been in coalition with her she might have been forced to go down the route of a wildcat referendum or even UDI. As it is her partners are the Scottish Greens who are more concerned with reforming the Gender Recognition Act than pushing for independence at all costs https://planetradio.co.uk/clyde/local/news/too-soon-indyref2-scottish-greens/
1 in 60 travellers returning from amber or red countries test positive for covid according to the Tel - so that's roughly 3 infected people on each plane, on average. https://t.co/5KnK4w8gYn
So about the same as current incidence in England.....
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
The Scotland Act 1998 is clear union matters are reserved to the UK government and the UK government has made clear it will not allow a legal indyref2 before the 2024 general election.
Sturgeon has made clear she will not hold a wildcat referendum and will not declare UDI so that is the end of the matter. The SNP failed to get a majority in May and so needed a coalition partner. Had Alba won some MSPs and been in coalition with her she might have been forced to go down the route of a wildcat referendum or even UDI. As it is her partners are the Scottish Greens who are more concerned with reforming the Gender Recognition Act than pushing for independence at all costs https://planetradio.co.uk/clyde/local/news/too-soon-indyref2-scottish-greens/
Can you define what a wildcat referendum is?
Anything the Scots want which he doesn't?
It ought to be a referendum of the wildcat population. That would be interesting to organise, and probably quite useful from a conservation point of view.
You wonder if they have measured the 400m for the hurdles correctly…
If they haven't stride patterns would be wrong and I suspect times slower as athletes adapt to a changed length. I may be talking rubbish (as usual).
You are probably right if the hurdles were spaced closer. But the initial runup or finishing section could be wrong. Of course this isn’t a serious concern, but it is remarkable that world records have been beaten by three competitors now in the same event.
Re the flurry of world records at the Olympics.
The Telegraph has a piece on running shoe technology and in a throwaway line mentions also that the track was engineered to be "the quickest in history, with greater energy response".
400m world-record breaking gold medallist Karsten Warholm is critical of the Nike shoes worn by silver medallist Benjamin but his own shoes were developed between Puma and the Mercedes Formula One team.
Advances were first seen in road-running shoes after the Rio Olympics when Nike combined a carbon-fibre plate with vast amounts of hyper-responsive foam - a development that has seen marathon and half-marathon times tumble in recent years.
We definitely heard similar at Beijing and London, perhaps not Rio but that was done on a budget. Nothing new about track design being cutting edge to favour faster times than previous Olympics.
Now here's a headline you really don't ever want to read:
"Chipmunks near Lake Tahoe test positive for the plague"
Between escalating nuclear stockpiles, a rapidly deteriorating geopolitical climate, indications of Cold War II, a multi-year pandemic, the Greenland ice sheet close to total failure, the Arctic soon history, self-sufficiency being unfashionable, trade friction beginning to hamper food supplies, a population explosion and concomitant annihilation of other species and habitats and astonishingly poor world leaders, one wonders if we’re not about to get an uncomfortably realistic exposition of life in the Middle Ages.
… and now The Plague.
The only thing missing is the asteroid strike or imminent destruction of Japan, California and the Pacific rim by earthquake and associated tsunamis.
I am slightly shocked to learn that the average age of a civilisation is only 336 years!! That’s tiny! And then ponder how long ago The Enlightenment was.
Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.
A more pertinent question is whether we'll be recognisably human in a century's time.
The prime minister is recognisably simian.
It's only 8.30 and you are already insulting the Prime Minister. A pretty lane insult anyway.
Well, he's an anthropoid ape. As are all the rest of us. More specifically, we living hominines are all neotenic chimpanzees with a few detail changes.
Re the chipmunks, bubonic plague has been endemic in [edit] rodents in the mid-west for decades, maybe centuries, so it's nothing very new. (It even became endemic in part of Essex a century or so ago, but the gmt was very prompt in controlling it, so ...).
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
The Scotland Act 1998 is clear union matters are reserved to the UK government and the UK government has made clear it will not allow a legal indyref2 before the 2024 general election.
Sturgeon has made clear she will not hold a wildcat referendum and will not declare UDI so that is the end of the matter. The SNP failed to get a majority in May and so needed a coalition partner. Had Alba won some MSPs and been in coalition with her she might have been forced to go down the route of a wildcat referendum or even UDI. As it is her partners are the Scottish Greens who are more concerned with reforming the Gender Recognition Act than pushing for independence at all costs https://planetradio.co.uk/clyde/local/news/too-soon-indyref2-scottish-greens/
Can you define what a wildcat referendum is?
Anything the Scots want which he doesn't?
It ought to be a referendum of the wildcat population. That would be interesting to organise, and probably quite useful from a conservation point of view.
1 in 60 travellers returning from amber or red countries test positive for covid according to the Tel - so that's roughly 3 infected people on each plane, on average. https://t.co/5KnK4w8gYn
1 in 65 people not returning from amber or red countries also having covid according to ONS.
I’ve been accepted for the part time Renaissance Studies MA I applied for on a whim. Not sure I am ready for the brave new world of early to mid 21st century academia…
On Wednesday 18 March 2020, with just two days’ notice, Boris Johnson, in the second of his televised broadcasts from Downing Street, announced that England’s 24,000 schools were to close “until further notice” from that Friday evening. Exams, due to take place three months later, were cancelled.
What followed was easily the most disruptive period in children’s education since at least the start of the Second World War. Schools closed only to be opened, closed, and then re-opened again. Exams were cancelled, not once but twice, with knock- on effects to university admissions that will be felt for years to come. Parents, heads and teachers struggled – with access to laptops for home schooling, with the home schooling itself, and with coronavirus testing regimes for pupils and staff. Free school meals became a burning political issue. When it came to education, U-turn was to follow U-turn. Well into March 2021, and indeed beyond, pupils taking GCSEs, A-levels and BTecs remained unclear about precisely how they were to be assessed. At times it felt as though the school system was in chaos.
What follows is an analysis of what went wrong – and a few things that went right – in the hope that some lessons might be learnt should the education system ever have to go through anything similar again.
Now here's a headline you really don't ever want to read:
"Chipmunks near Lake Tahoe test positive for the plague"
Between escalating nuclear stockpiles, a rapidly deteriorating geopolitical climate, indications of Cold War II, a multi-year pandemic, the Greenland ice sheet close to total failure, the Arctic soon history, self-sufficiency being unfashionable, trade friction beginning to hamper food supplies, a population explosion and concomitant annihilation of other species and habitats and astonishingly poor world leaders, one wonders if we’re not about to get an uncomfortably realistic exposition of life in the Middle Ages.
… and now The Plague.
The only thing missing is the asteroid strike or imminent destruction of Japan, California and the Pacific rim by earthquake and associated tsunamis.
I am slightly shocked to learn that the average age of a civilisation is only 336 years!! That’s tiny! And then ponder how long ago The Enlightenment was.
Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.
A more pertinent question is whether we'll be recognisably human in a century's time.
The prime minister is recognisably simian.
It's only 8.30 and you are already insulting the Prime Minister. A pretty lane insult anyway.
Well, he's an anthropoid ape. As are all the rest of us. More specifically, we living hominines are all neotenic chimpanzees with a few detail changes.
Re the chipmunks, bubonic plague has been endemic in [edit] rodents in the mid-west for decades, maybe centuries, so it's nothing very new. (It even became endemic in part of Essex a century or so ago, but the gmt was very prompt in controlling it, so ...).
When I visited Mongolia about twenty years ago we were warned not to go near the marmots as they carry bubonic plague.
All sub 15C 0700 temps this week, after a long run of warm mornings up to 21C. Have we seen the best of the summer already?
12.6C here. At least it's sunny, and I think the forecast is optimistic after the weekend.
So possibly Good Morning is appropriate.
And Ydoethur, two (so far) teachers in my family plan to continue to do so, although another has left the classroom to become an Ed Psych. Currently just finished, satisfactorily, the first year.
So we have @Nigelb with 100% out, me with 67% out, and you with 33% out.
We need somebody with 0% here to complete the set.
Incidentally, I am seriously pissed off with Essex after yesterday. How on earth did you win from the position five overs out?
Do other countries have such ferocious attrition of teachers? Or is it a British problem? Apart from the staffing issues it seems very wasteful.
Or is it like the loss of Foundation Doctors a symptom of much deeper malaise within the system?
Difficult to compare with other countries because teacher systems tend to be quite idiosyncratic. So for example in France it is expected a large number of graduates go into teaching, are assigned to a school, do it for 2-3 years and then do something else. But in the USA, where many state systems would be roughly comparable, around 8% a year leave teaching whereas a ‘natural’ rate would be about 3%. That’s a bit lower than ours but it’s not ridiculously different.
There are reasons for it. First of all, it’s bloody hard work, and not jus pt because of the nature of the beast. Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish, so you will (true story) hear a primary school teacher boast that she takes her marking everywhere, even to her daughter’s swimming lessons. Such an attitude does bring pressure on the others and to those who don’t know how to find their own pace and stick to it, can be fatal.
There is also far too much pointless meddling by non-experts in media and the government which makes it very difficult to do effectively. Spielman is the epitome of this with her comical ineptitude designed to generate click bait in the Mail, but it affects most of the DfE. Woodhead was of course another example. It’s rather demoralising to be told you’re useless and lazy by functionally illiterate lowlifes who work 37 hour weeks in cosy offices when working 60 hour weeks under tough conditions.
And, of course, a lot go into teaching with high ideals and/or the expectation of short hours and long holidays and find the reality so different they just can’t take it. Woodhead, again, being an example, although he was forced out of teaching for other reasons.
But I think ultimately teaching in the British way is just very hard to do. To encourage discussion, thought, creativity and do it among 30 people a significant minority of whom don’t want to be there and can actually be violent is very, very tough. To do it on average 4.6 times a day forty weeks a year is even harder.
"Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish" - try solicitors or accountants, both obsessed with chargeable hours and presenteeism.
What confuses me is all the folk around here who claim to have high-powered jobs, but spend all day on an obscure blog. I think most of you are actually sitting in stained string vests, surrounded by pizza boxes and still living off the Bank of Mum and Dad.
At least I have an excuse. I have ridiculously long holidays, an easy time at work and I am not the chief income earner (hurrah for feminism!!)
Incidentally, “presenteeism” is the pest of our age: lots of people holding positions just for the sake of it but being horrifically poor at their actual jobs. Eg The Clown.
Snap. I'm retired and spend a fraction of the time of others and still spend too much time here, as my wife tells me. There are several who tell us they have full time jobs who appear here full time. Confused.
I hear there's good money to be made being an 'influencer'. How much those who seem to make this a full time job actually influence anyone is debatable.
I like to think Philip and HY are employed by warring factions at Con Central Office, fighting over the soul* of the party. (In)correctHB was employed by the Corbynite NEC, but managed to survive the cull and get a position with Starmer NEC. SNP (and even an Alba) employees. The LDs play a clever game by not obviously employing any posters directly, but sponsoring occasional thread headers.
Me, I'm engaged in an ethnographic research project on the disfunctionality of online communities in the 21st century and the continued dominance of old white men in political discourse
*heh, yep 'soul' of the Conservative party, I know
My personal opinion is that everyone here, who is not me, is an alter-ego of an English author and journalist. He plays out different characters as practice for his novels. Occasionally one of the alter egos is heavily implied as being the man himself, I'm not sure why this happens, but possibly to maintain the illusion.
All sub 15C 0700 temps this week, after a long run of warm mornings up to 21C. Have we seen the best of the summer already?
12.6C here. At least it's sunny, and I think the forecast is optimistic after the weekend.
So possibly Good Morning is appropriate.
And Ydoethur, two (so far) teachers in my family plan to continue to do so, although another has left the classroom to become an Ed Psych. Currently just finished, satisfactorily, the first year.
So we have @Nigelb with 100% out, me with 67% out, and you with 33% out.
We need somebody with 0% here to complete the set.
Incidentally, I am seriously pissed off with Essex after yesterday. How on earth did you win from the position five overs out?
Do other countries have such ferocious attrition of teachers? Or is it a British problem? Apart from the staffing issues it seems very wasteful.
Or is it like the loss of Foundation Doctors a symptom of much deeper malaise within the system?
Difficult to compare with other countries because teacher systems tend to be quite idiosyncratic. So for example in France it is expected a large number of graduates go into teaching, are assigned to a school, do it for 2-3 years and then do something else. But in the USA, where many state systems would be roughly comparable, around 8% a year leave teaching whereas a ‘natural’ rate would be about 3%. That’s a bit lower than ours but it’s not ridiculously different.
There are reasons for it. First of all, it’s bloody hard work, and not jus pt because of the nature of the beast. Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish, so you will (true story) hear a primary school teacher boast that she takes her marking everywhere, even to her daughter’s swimming lessons. Such an attitude does bring pressure on the others and to those who don’t know how to find their own pace and stick to it, can be fatal.
There is also far too much pointless meddling by non-experts in media and the government which makes it very difficult to do effectively. Spielman is the epitome of this with her comical ineptitude designed to generate click bait in the Mail, but it affects most of the DfE. Woodhead was of course another example. It’s rather demoralising to be told you’re useless and lazy by functionally illiterate lowlifes who work 37 hour weeks in cosy offices when working 60 hour weeks under tough conditions.
And, of course, a lot go into teaching with high ideals and/or the expectation of short hours and long holidays and find the reality so different they just can’t take it. Woodhead, again, being an example, although he was forced out of teaching for other reasons.
But I think ultimately teaching in the British way is just very hard to do. To encourage discussion, thought, creativity and do it among 30 people a significant minority of whom don’t want to be there and can actually be violent is very, very tough. To do it on average 4.6 times a day forty weeks a year is even harder.
"Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish" - try solicitors or accountants, both obsessed with chargeable hours and presenteeism.
What confuses me is all the folk around here who claim to have high-powered jobs, but spend all day on an obscure blog. I think most of you are actually sitting in stained string vests, surrounded by pizza boxes and still living off the Bank of Mum and Dad.
At least I have an excuse. I have ridiculously long holidays, an easy time at work and I am not the chief income earner (hurrah for feminism!!)
Incidentally, “presenteeism” is the pest of our age: lots of people holding positions just for the sake of it but being horrifically poor at their actual jobs. Eg The Clown.
Snap. I'm retired and spend a fraction of the time of others and still spend too much time here, as my wife tells me. There are several who tell us they have full time jobs who appear here full time. Confused.
I hear there's good money to be made being an 'influencer'. How much those who seem to make this a full time job actually influence anyone is debatable.
I like to think Philip and HY are employed by warring factions at Con Central Office, fighting over the soul* of the party. (In)correctHB was employed by the Corbynite NEC, but managed to survive the cull and get a position with Starmer NEC. SNP (and even an Alba) employees. The LDs play a clever game by not obviously employing any posters directly, but sponsoring occasional thread headers.
Me, I'm engaged in an ethnographic research project on the disfunctionality of online communities in the 21st century and the continued dominance of old white men in political discourse
*heh, yep 'soul' of the Conservative party, I know
My personal opinion is that everyone here, who is not me, is an alter-ego of an English author and journalist. He plays out different characters as practice for his novels. Occasionally one of the alter egos is heavily implied as being the man himself, I'm not sure why this happens, but possibly to maintain the illusion.
Does anyone know which other countries are conducting such surveys? This rather explains why cases are falling despite vaccination not covering "absolutely everybody".
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
The Scotland Act 1998 is clear union matters are reserved to the UK government and the UK government has made clear it will not allow a legal indyref2 before the 2024 general election.
Sturgeon has made clear she will not hold a wildcat referendum and will not declare UDI so that is the end of the matter. The SNP failed to get a majority in May and so needed a coalition partner. Had Alba won some MSPs and been in coalition with her she might have been forced to go down the route of a wildcat referendum or even UDI. As it is her partners are the Scottish Greens who are more concerned with reforming the Gender Recognition Act than pushing for independence at all costs https://planetradio.co.uk/clyde/local/news/too-soon-indyref2-scottish-greens/
Can you define what a wildcat referendum is?
Anything the Scots want which he doesn't?
It ought to be a referendum of the wildcat population. That would be interesting to organise, and probably quite useful from a conservation point of view.
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
The Scotland Act 1998 is clear union matters are reserved to the UK government and the UK government has made clear it will not allow a legal indyref2 before the 2024 general election.
Sturgeon has made clear she will not hold a wildcat referendum and will not declare UDI so that is the end of the matter. The SNP failed to get a majority in May and so needed a coalition partner. Had Alba won some MSPs and been in coalition with her she might have been forced to go down the route of a wildcat referendum or even UDI. As it is her partners are the Scottish Greens who are more concerned with reforming the Gender Recognition Act than pushing for independence at all costs https://planetradio.co.uk/clyde/local/news/too-soon-indyref2-scottish-greens/
Can you define what a wildcat referendum is?
Anything the Scots want which he doesn't?
It ought to be a referendum of the wildcat population. That would be interesting to organise, and probably quite useful from a conservation point of view.
Some interesting taxonomic issues, however.
Surely all referenda have the problem of working out who is eligible to take part?
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
The Scotland Act 1998 is clear union matters are reserved to the UK government and the UK government has made clear it will not allow a legal indyref2 before the 2024 general election.
Sturgeon has made clear she will not hold a wildcat referendum and will not declare UDI so that is the end of the matter. The SNP failed to get a majority in May and so needed a coalition partner. Had Alba won some MSPs and been in coalition with her she might have been forced to go down the route of a wildcat referendum or even UDI. As it is her partners are the Scottish Greens who are more concerned with reforming the Gender Recognition Act than pushing for independence at all costs https://planetradio.co.uk/clyde/local/news/too-soon-indyref2-scottish-greens/
Can you define what a wildcat referendum is?
Anything the Scots want which he doesn't?
It ought to be a referendum of the wildcat population. That would be interesting to organise, and probably quite useful from a conservation point of view.
Some interesting taxonomic issues, however.
Surely all referenda have the problem of working out who is eligible to take part?
Not as if the moggies have a passport to wave, I suppose.
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
The Scotland Act 1998 is clear union matters are reserved to the UK government and the UK government has made clear it will not allow a legal indyref2 before the 2024 general election.
Sturgeon has made clear she will not hold a wildcat referendum and will not declare UDI so that is the end of the matter. The SNP failed to get a majority in May and so needed a coalition partner. Had Alba won some MSPs and been in coalition with her she might have been forced to go down the route of a wildcat referendum or even UDI. As it is her partners are the Scottish Greens who are more concerned with reforming the Gender Recognition Act than pushing for independence at all costs https://planetradio.co.uk/clyde/local/news/too-soon-indyref2-scottish-greens/
Can you define what a wildcat referendum is?
Anything the Scots want which he doesn't?
It ought to be a referendum of the wildcat population. That would be interesting to organise, and probably quite useful from a conservation point of view.
Herding cats?
JUst ask Cyclefree's dog - she was remarking the other day that it likes to do that.
I get a similar, related issue about being a university lecturer. Anyone who has been an undergrad thinks they know what university is like. They are wrong. UG is just one small part of university life. If I had a pound for everyone who thinks we all close down for three months when the students go home in June I'd be a lot better off. Universities are not just schools for older people. We live and die on research (funding and publication). Summer is time to try to achieve some of that with marginally fewer distractions. It is only marginally though - wrapping up the previous year (marking, collating, getting grades agree etc) and then planning next year goes all through summer. Next week sees the annual chaos of A level results. My prediction - expect problems with too many students getting places... Already one medical school has been trying bribes (money plus free rent if the student defers) to cope with this. They won't be the last.
I'm fortunate to work in a department that is almost free of undergrads (and associated lecturing/marking work - although lots of postgrad supervision). Does mean lecturer posts are devilishly rare and so - unusually - there are a majority of research only positions all the way up the food chain. The downside is that you really have to bring in research funding otherwise your job evaporates pretty quickly as there's no baseline lecturing work to keep you on the books.
Interesting discussion. As a student at uni I was annoyed by the emphasis on lecturers doing research (most of which was ending up in a publication in some journal or other with no follow-up), with the really good lecturers who were interested in students not having the prestige of the research specialists. In fact, the ones who weren't quite so outstanding were often better lecturers, as they understood what was difficult - the boffins swanned through everything briskly without lingering on the tough parts.
My feeling is still that unis should be mostly about teaching, with research a potentially valuable by-product, not the other way round. The fact that research is (somewhat) easier to measure distorts the funding paradigm, I think.
Often true, I think. Some of the new universities with less research emphasis do well on the TEF. When I worked at one of those I had a colleague who had come from a Russell Group uni as he wanted mainly to be a teacher and he was very good.
In research intensive unis you need to be good at research funding, being average at teaching won't really hinder career.
Emphasis on research funding rather than research!
All sub 15C 0700 temps this week, after a long run of warm mornings up to 21C. Have we seen the best of the summer already?
12.6C here. At least it's sunny, and I think the forecast is optimistic after the weekend.
So possibly Good Morning is appropriate.
And Ydoethur, two (so far) teachers in my family plan to continue to do so, although another has left the classroom to become an Ed Psych. Currently just finished, satisfactorily, the first year.
So we have @Nigelb with 100% out, me with 67% out, and you with 33% out.
We need somebody with 0% here to complete the set.
Incidentally, I am seriously pissed off with Essex after yesterday. How on earth did you win from the position five overs out?
Do other countries have such ferocious attrition of teachers? Or is it a British problem? Apart from the staffing issues it seems very wasteful.
Or is it like the loss of Foundation Doctors a symptom of much deeper malaise within the system?
Difficult to compare with other countries because teacher systems tend to be quite idiosyncratic. So for example in France it is expected a large number of graduates go into teaching, are assigned to a school, do it for 2-3 years and then do something else. But in the USA, where many state systems would be roughly comparable, around 8% a year leave teaching whereas a ‘natural’ rate would be about 3%. That’s a bit lower than ours but it’s not ridiculously different.
There are reasons for it. First of all, it’s bloody hard work, and not jus pt because of the nature of the beast. Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish, so you will (true story) hear a primary school teacher boast that she takes her marking everywhere, even to her daughter’s swimming lessons. Such an attitude does bring pressure on the others and to those who don’t know how to find their own pace and stick to it, can be fatal.
There is also far too much pointless meddling by non-experts in media and the government which makes it very difficult to do effectively. Spielman is the epitome of this with her comical ineptitude designed to generate click bait in the Mail, but it affects most of the DfE. Woodhead was of course another example. It’s rather demoralising to be told you’re useless and lazy by functionally illiterate lowlifes who work 37 hour weeks in cosy offices when working 60 hour weeks under tough conditions.
And, of course, a lot go into teaching with high ideals and/or the expectation of short hours and long holidays and find the reality so different they just can’t take it. Woodhead, again, being an example, although he was forced out of teaching for other reasons.
But I think ultimately teaching in the British way is just very hard to do. To encourage discussion, thought, creativity and do it among 30 people a significant minority of whom don’t want to be there and can actually be violent is very, very tough. To do it on average 4.6 times a day forty weeks a year is even harder.
"Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish" - try solicitors or accountants, both obsessed with chargeable hours and presenteeism.
Er...yes. That doesn’t surprise me.
But we don’t get paid extra for it.
Our contracts are based on working 1263 hours a year. 31.5 hours a week for 40 weeks a year.
No full time teacher works 31.5 hours per week. You have to spend 22 hours in the classroom alone, ignoring tutor time, break duties and then planning and marking.
Also assumes that solicitors and accountants work particularly hard during those hours they're present and/or bill. No doubt a few do.
That gets to another aspect of why a lot of people don't remain as teachers. The system as currently set up is very bad at putting aside spare capacity- pretty much every hour gets filled with high urgency, high intensity work. And some of that spills into evenings and weekends. That means that when a crisis comes along (as they do) it's very hard to make headspace to deal with the crisis.
Very good for efficiency most of the time, a bit like running hospitals at 98% bed occupancy or whatever it is. Or building houses on convenient flood plains. But you are setting things up to go, from time to time, horribly wrong.
This burning up resilience to get more efficiency isn't unique to teaching, but it is endemic there.
Scottish Government PR machine in overdrive to try to persuade people that the shameful record of drug deaths under their governance is actually someone else's fault, and they they are actually the brave underdogs fighting for the right to improve lives. Revoltingly dishonest.
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
The Scotland Act 1998 is clear union matters are reserved to the UK government and the UK government has made clear it will not allow a legal indyref2 before the 2024 general election.
Sturgeon has made clear she will not hold a wildcat referendum and will not declare UDI so that is the end of the matter. The SNP failed to get a majority in May and so needed a coalition partner. Had Alba won some MSPs and been in coalition with her she might have been forced to go down the route of a wildcat referendum or even UDI. As it is her partners are the Scottish Greens who are more concerned with reforming the Gender Recognition Act than pushing for independence at all costs https://planetradio.co.uk/clyde/local/news/too-soon-indyref2-scottish-greens/
Can you define what a wildcat referendum is?
Anything the Scots want which he doesn't?
It ought to be a referendum of the wildcat population. That would be interesting to organise, and probably quite useful from a conservation point of view.
Some interesting taxonomic issues, however.
Surely all referenda have the problem of working out who is eligible to take part?
Not as if the moggies have a passport to wave, I suppose.
It turns out that wildcats are endangered in Scotland (and not found in the rest of the UK): https://savingwildcats.org.uk/
They are all mouth and no trousers, but they *are* the 4 times elected government with their biggest ever vote this time on the biggest ever turnout.
On the issues you raise they need to say some fairly simple things. Currency: will maintain the existing sterling currency union until admitted to the Euro Border: the same solution as GB eventually reaches with the EU will apply (so not really a Scotland-specific problem) Pensions: a positive migration policy to have sufficient workers to pay them EU timing - apply for membership on morning 1 of independence etc
They won't. There seems to be a fear that if they go into detail people may start ignoring heart and feel and instead start making considered judgements...
on entry to the EU, Entry into the EU wouldn't be automatic and would take a number of years of negotiating and implementing. all other things would follow on from that delay. the SNP would also be forced to hold a referendum on EU membership which they'd not be certain to win (although it's highly likely). The EU might also say that Scotland needs to finish negotiating with rUK first before they can start negotiating with them. on the currency, they said that they'd keep sterling in the last indiref and the UK said no. That wouldn't change in indiref2. There's no saying that people would vote for joining the Euro and the SNP couldn't force it on the country on the border, even if Scotland joins the EU it will take a fair amount of time and a medium term position on the border would be required which the UK would be stupid to base the timing of anything on the entry of Scotland into the EU. A fixed and determined situation needs to be agreed initially. Pensions, it's not about the new liabilities which is the problems it is the share of existing liabilities which will be the problem. (plus the share of accumulated debt).
I get all of that, I am just saying that none of it is the insurmountable "see, you can't go" barrier that is suggested.
EU membership? They are well practised at adding new countries, and in this case they would be reincorporating a territory. Easy enough to show alignment as Scotland is already aligned, and even as a UK nation it won't become particularly unaligned in the next few years.
On the currency the situation has changed from 2014. A 2023 (?) question where "independence means the EU and the Euro" is different to 2014 where EU membership wasn't part of the equation. It doesn't matter what the position was back then or what people thought, things have changed.
I think you are trying to complicate the border issue. Scotland will become an EU member state. By the time independence happens GB would already have a settled operating model for its EU border. Whatever we eventually end up doing with France is what you would do with Scotland, and as GB doesn't recognise the EU as anything other than a 3rd country it hardly matters if Scotland is an actual EU member or just an ascension state.
All sub 15C 0700 temps this week, after a long run of warm mornings up to 21C. Have we seen the best of the summer already?
12.6C here. At least it's sunny, and I think the forecast is optimistic after the weekend.
So possibly Good Morning is appropriate.
And Ydoethur, two (so far) teachers in my family plan to continue to do so, although another has left the classroom to become an Ed Psych. Currently just finished, satisfactorily, the first year.
So we have @Nigelb with 100% out, me with 67% out, and you with 33% out.
We need somebody with 0% here to complete the set.
Incidentally, I am seriously pissed off with Essex after yesterday. How on earth did you win from the position five overs out?
Do other countries have such ferocious attrition of teachers? Or is it a British problem? Apart from the staffing issues it seems very wasteful.
Or is it like the loss of Foundation Doctors a symptom of much deeper malaise within the system?
Difficult to compare with other countries because teacher systems tend to be quite idiosyncratic. So for example in France it is expected a large number of graduates go into teaching, are assigned to a school, do it for 2-3 years and then do something else. But in the USA, where many state systems would be roughly comparable, around 8% a year leave teaching whereas a ‘natural’ rate would be about 3%. That’s a bit lower than ours but it’s not ridiculously different.
There are reasons for it. First of all, it’s bloody hard work, and not jus pt because of the nature of the beast. Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish, so you will (true story) hear a primary school teacher boast that she takes her marking everywhere, even to her daughter’s swimming lessons. Such an attitude does bring pressure on the others and to those who don’t know how to find their own pace and stick to it, can be fatal.
There is also far too much pointless meddling by non-experts in media and the government which makes it very difficult to do effectively. Spielman is the epitome of this with her comical ineptitude designed to generate click bait in the Mail, but it affects most of the DfE. Woodhead was of course another example. It’s rather demoralising to be told you’re useless and lazy by functionally illiterate lowlifes who work 37 hour weeks in cosy offices when working 60 hour weeks under tough conditions.
And, of course, a lot go into teaching with high ideals and/or the expectation of short hours and long holidays and find the reality so different they just can’t take it. Woodhead, again, being an example, although he was forced out of teaching for other reasons.
But I think ultimately teaching in the British way is just very hard to do. To encourage discussion, thought, creativity and do it among 30 people a significant minority of whom don’t want to be there and can actually be violent is very, very tough. To do it on average 4.6 times a day forty weeks a year is even harder.
"Teachers are the only profession I know where hard work is almost a fetish" - try solicitors or accountants, both obsessed with chargeable hours and presenteeism.
What confuses me is all the folk around here who claim to have high-powered jobs, but spend all day on an obscure blog. I think most of you are actually sitting in stained string vests, surrounded by pizza boxes and still living off the Bank of Mum and Dad.
At least I have an excuse. I have ridiculously long holidays, an easy time at work and I am not the chief income earner (hurrah for feminism!!)
Incidentally, “presenteeism” is the pest of our age: lots of people holding positions just for the sake of it but being horrifically poor at their actual jobs. Eg The Clown.
Snap. I'm retired and spend a fraction of the time of others and still spend too much time here, as my wife tells me. There are several who tell us they have full time jobs who appear here full time. Confused.
I hear there's good money to be made being an 'influencer'. How much those who seem to make this a full time job actually influence anyone is debatable.
I like to think Philip and HY are employed by warring factions at Con Central Office, fighting over the soul* of the party. (In)correctHB was employed by the Corbynite NEC, but managed to survive the cull and get a position with Starmer NEC. SNP (and even an Alba) employees. The LDs play a clever game by not obviously employing any posters directly, but sponsoring occasional thread headers.
Me, I'm engaged in an ethnographic research project on the disfunctionality of online communities in the 21st century and the continued dominance of old white men in political discourse
*heh, yep 'soul' of the Conservative party, I know
My personal opinion is that everyone here, who is not me, is an alter-ego of an English author and journalist. He plays out different characters as practice for his novels. Occasionally one of the alter egos is heavily implied as being the man himself, I'm not sure why this happens, but possibly to maintain the illusion.
On Wednesday 18 March 2020, with just two days’ notice, Boris Johnson, in the second of his televised broadcasts from Downing Street, announced that England’s 24,000 schools were to close “until further notice” from that Friday evening. Exams, due to take place three months later, were cancelled.
What followed was easily the most disruptive period in children’s education since at least the start of the Second World War. Schools closed only to be opened, closed, and then re-opened again. Exams were cancelled, not once but twice, with knock- on effects to university admissions that will be felt for years to come. Parents, heads and teachers struggled – with access to laptops for home schooling, with the home schooling itself, and with coronavirus testing regimes for pupils and staff. Free school meals became a burning political issue. When it came to education, U-turn was to follow U-turn. Well into March 2021, and indeed beyond, pupils taking GCSEs, A-levels and BTecs remained unclear about precisely how they were to be assessed. At times it felt as though the school system was in chaos.
What follows is an analysis of what went wrong – and a few things that went right – in the hope that some lessons might be learnt should the education system ever have to go through anything similar again.
Now here's a headline you really don't ever want to read:
"Chipmunks near Lake Tahoe test positive for the plague"
Between escalating nuclear stockpiles, a rapidly deteriorating geopolitical climate, indications of Cold War II, a multi-year pandemic, the Greenland ice sheet close to total failure, the Arctic soon history, self-sufficiency being unfashionable, trade friction beginning to hamper food supplies, a population explosion and concomitant annihilation of other species and habitats and astonishingly poor world leaders, one wonders if we’re not about to get an uncomfortably realistic exposition of life in the Middle Ages.
… and now The Plague.
The only thing missing is the asteroid strike or imminent destruction of Japan, California and the Pacific rim by earthquake and associated tsunamis.
I am slightly shocked to learn that the average age of a civilisation is only 336 years!! That’s tiny! And then ponder how long ago The Enlightenment was.
Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.
A more pertinent question is whether we'll be recognisably human in a century's time.
The prime minister is recognisably simian.
It's only 8.30 and you are already insulting the Prime Minister. A pretty lane insult anyway.
Well, he's an anthropoid ape. As are all the rest of us. More specifically, we living hominines are all neotenic chimpanzees with a few detail changes.
Re the chipmunks, bubonic plague has been endemic in [edit] rodents in the mid-west for decades, maybe centuries, so it's nothing very new. (It even became endemic in part of Essex a century or so ago, but the gmt was very prompt in controlling it, so ...).
When I visited Mongolia about twenty years ago we were warned not to go near the marmots as they carry bubonic plague.
Being retired, and (I hope only temporarily) with reduced mobility, therefore having time, I looked up Carnyx's reference to Essex rats and the plague, and find it was indeed about a century, but in defence of my home county the outbreak appears to have been centred in Suffolk, around Ipswich. Possibly seaborne therefore, Ipswich being a port at the time
Sturgeon on brink of cooperation deal with Scottish Greens Exclusive: agreement would cement a pro-independence majority at Holyrood and may give Greens ministerial seats
The formal deal, which will stop short of a full coalition of the kind agreed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010, would give the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens a clear majority of seats at Holyrood.
It would allow the first minister to present a strong pro-climate agenda in advance of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow this November, and outvote anti-independence parties in Holyrood.
It would be the first time after 14 years in power the SNP had signed a formal deal with another party
The deal will present Scottish Labour, currently Holyrood’s third-largest party, with a significant political challenge. It is likely to give Sturgeon a resilient centre-left majority and removes her need to seek deals with Labour to get policies through the devolved parliament.
the Conservatives are taking a softer line on the potential for a fresh independence referendum
Forgive my pedantry, but if there is a formal deal which gives Greens ministerial seats then in what way does it stop short of full coalition?
Very good question, which the article fails to answer.
Any agreement which gives both parties seats in Cabinet, a shared programme of legislation and an agreed Budget is a coalition. End of.
It would be a sensible assumption that the Green Party will get the Environment brief. If they are in government but not in coalition then what? Are the SNP handing the entire environment brief and policy over to the Green Party to run independently?
Either way, Scotland elected 73 explicitly pro-independence MSPs giving a comfortable majority. Despite HYUFD's endless whining that it isn't a majority, it is. I will be greatly entertained to watch nippy bleat on about a referendum without actually producing one, but that is the "settled will of the Scottish people" or whatever the Tories latest phrase is.
The Scotland Act 1998 is clear union matters are reserved to the UK government and the UK government has made clear it will not allow a legal indyref2 before the 2024 general election.
Sturgeon has made clear she will not hold a wildcat referendum and will not declare UDI so that is the end of the matter. The SNP failed to get a majority in May and so needed a coalition partner. Had Alba won some MSPs and been in coalition with her she might have been forced to go down the route of a wildcat referendum or even UDI. As it is her partners are the Scottish Greens who are more concerned with reforming the Gender Recognition Act than pushing for independence at all costs https://planetradio.co.uk/clyde/local/news/too-soon-indyref2-scottish-greens/
Can you define what a wildcat referendum is?
An independence referendum with no legal effect. Effectively a glorified opinion poll like the Catalan independence referendum in 2017 which was not recognised by the Spanish government rather than a referendum legally recognised by the UK government like the 2014 independence referendum
Comments
News from the sunny surface, far away from the pit props: we almost all know what school is like, even if most people have experience only of schools for one social caste. Most don't ever want to go back to school once they've left. Perhaps they understand the institution about a million times better than those who do rush back there. Schoolteachers could quit their whingeing and try and get jobs in restaurants.
Sturgeon has made clear she will not hold a wildcat referendum and will not declare UDI so that is the end of the matter. The SNP failed to get a majority in May and so needed a coalition partner. Had Alba won some MSPs and been in coalition with her she might have been forced to go down the route of a wildcat referendum or even UDI. As it is her partners are the Scottish Greens who are more concerned with reforming the Gender Recognition Act than pushing for independence at all costs
https://planetradio.co.uk/clyde/local/news/too-soon-indyref2-scottish-greens/
But someone or something will.
https://twitter.com/TheSun/status/1422824625583575041?s=20
In Indonesia orangutang are called "orang hutang" - people of the forest
Although I know I won't be.
Interesting thought that the average age of a civilisation is only 336 years. There's a book which keeps being advertised to me about the end of the (a) pharaonic civilisation as a result to the Sea People. in 1177BC.
President Macron’s government has angered traditionalists by launching national identity cards featuring the English language.
The cards, which were brought in this week, provide an English translation of the French terms, including nom (surname), prénoms (given names) or nationalité (nationality) — a formula that critics say is belittling.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/56979da4-f46b-11eb-8f01-2c678acbb979?shareToken=eb9686a3c2e2ef26abfa8f03bc79e3a8
https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1422825690051842048?s=20
Tories don’t like it up em.
https://twitter.com/GalloVOA/status/1422541430929518594?s=20
Sorry, got up on the wrong side of bed today…
We're a Jock Tamson's bairns.
Another reason we get out? Nasty bullying by unpleasant people with no idea of what they’re talking about and a burning hatred of people who do. I’ll add your name to that of the other three on this board.
The problem is that she was the classic political choice for a different era.
Female and minority ticks boxes. Hard charging prosecutor, in classic American politics, would head off the charges that she is a "Community Activist"*, Anti-Police, Anti-Law-And-Order etc etc
So the perfectly structured product.
The problem is that she is a bit crap on the implementation side. More importantly, her backstory is wrong for modern America. Her prosecutorial.... history... massively ticks off the groups she is supposed to represent and a big chunk of the left of the Democratic party as well.
So she has a constituency of the right hand side of the Democratic party, only.
On the issues you raise they need to say some fairly simple things.
Currency: will maintain the existing sterling currency union until admitted to the Euro
Border: the same solution as GB eventually reaches with the EU will apply (so not really a Scotland-specific problem)
Pensions: a positive migration policy to have sufficient workers to pay them
EU timing - apply for membership on morning 1 of independence
etc
They won't. There seems to be a fear that if they go into detail people may start ignoring heart and feel and instead start making considered judgements...
A young nun is walking across the quad. Another nun looks at her and says, ‘somebody got out of the wrong side of bed this morning.’
Puzzled, the nun keeps going. Another nun stops, grins and says, ‘who got out of the wrong side of bed this morning?’
Now getting cross, the nun keeps walking and meets the Mother Superior. Before the revered mother can say anything, the nun snaps, ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me I got out of bed the wrong side this morning.’
‘Well, no actually,’ replied the abbess. ‘But I was going to ask why you’re wearing the Bishop’s shoes.’
I have a day out planned. Have a good morning.
And assume it gives us some special knowledge of what teaching is like. Or in some particular risible cases, "about a million times" more knowledge.
It's also why I disappear for a few hours, write a post, then bugger off again.
- The Reformation
- Dreyfus
- Schleswig-Holstein Question
Pick one, any one.
I realise the attraction of “SNP BAD”: it obviates the need for thought and effort, but it really is a trap that Unionists have set for themselves and willingly fling themselves into. Day in, day out.
FUDHY doesn’t do arithmetic.
The problem the Democrats have is that she wants to become President and there is a question mark whether Biden can make it to 2024, never mind 2028. What they could do with is some scandal that either forces her to step down or damages her so much that she cannot run in 2024. Otherwise, I suspect they are stuck with her unless they can find another Black female candidate with whom to run.
on the currency, they said that they'd keep sterling in the last indiref and the UK said no. That wouldn't change in indiref2. There's no saying that people would vote for joining the Euro and the SNP couldn't force it on the country
on the border, even if Scotland joins the EU it will take a fair amount of time and a medium term position on the border would be required which the UK would be stupid to base the timing of anything on the entry of Scotland into the EU. A fixed and determined situation needs to be agreed initially.
Pensions, it's not about the new liabilities which is the problems it is the share of existing liabilities which will be the problem. (plus the share of accumulated debt).
I like to think Philip and HY are employed by warring factions at Con Central Office, fighting over the soul* of the party. (In)correctHB was employed by the Corbynite NEC, but managed to survive the cull and get a position with Starmer NEC. SNP (and even an Alba) employees. The LDs play a clever game by not obviously employing any posters directly, but sponsoring occasional thread headers.
Me, I'm engaged in an ethnographic research project on the disfunctionality of online communities in the 21st century and the continued dominance of old white men in political discourse
*heh, yep 'soul' of the Conservative party, I know
2) The act of Union created the common travel and customs area - repealing that ends both. What it is replaced with is not within the gift of the Scottish government. Also, see below.
3) Positive immigration militates against a common travel area.
4) EU membership militates against a common customs area.
His mum serves him bowls of Heinz tomato soup to keep his pecker up.
.....Though to some extent successful in its primary aim — in the weeks since, 6.5 million people have been vaccinated, taking the level to 47 percent of the population, about the same proportion as in the United States — the move has rebounded badly against the government. Many people, unhappy at the act of coercion, are taking to the streets in a collective display of defiance, potentially coalescing into a substantial protest movement that could mar President Emmanuel Macron’s re-election efforts next year. As governments across the world consider similar policies, France’s experience is a cautionary tale.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/opinion/france-vaccine-passports-macron.html
Currency your answer doesn't work, since there's literally no such thing as "the existing sterling currency union".
Sterling is a currency for the unitary state of the United Kingdom, ultimately controlled by the Bank of England, Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Westminster Parliament. The Euro has a collegiate union decision making process because it is a currency union, sterling does not.
My feeling is still that unis should be mostly about teaching, with research a potentially valuable by-product, not the other way round. The fact that research is (somewhat) easier to measure distorts the funding paradigm, I think.
Age standardised drug mortality rate per million:
Wales: 51.1
England: 52.1
Scotland: 252.0
https://twitter.com/tomhfh/status/1422833564140380160?s=20
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(16)30006-0/fulltext
If he makes it to 2024 Biden should switch her out for Stacey Abrams. Practically considered a saint by the base, born in one swing state, leads her party in another.
People will mock but if Harris does run to succeed Biden I reckon AOC could give her a run for her money. You need a (preferably minority) woman to unseat a woman who's next in line, and although primary voters may be wary of going too far left and losing the general, what's the point in compromising if it gets you someone who's bad at politics instead of somebody who's good? Hillary Clinton should have taught them that...
There is a clear balance to be struck. The idea that a top, world ranked researcher should also be a great teacher is interesting and probably rarely true. That universities under value non-research staff is abundantly true, partly because of how many governments have determined that Universities should be ranked (currently by the REF), with knock on effects on funding to said university. Many academics note that MP's don't have to show 'impact' or get assessed by an equivalent of REF, especially in safe seats...
Sturgeon was rock solid, as ever, but I was curious to listen to the SCon and SLab leaders, as they are still fresh in their roles. I must say I was very surprised. Douglas Ross (Con) did a *much* better job than Anas Sarwar (Lab).
Sarwar is, on paper, the much more experienced politician, but he doesn’t sound it! A very bland, tentative and reedy presentation.
Ross has an engaging voice and calm style, and sounds young and fresh. I think he could be good. Much better than gobby Davidson or auntie Annabel.
In research intensive unis you need to be good at research funding, being average at teaching won't really hinder career.
The Telegraph has a piece on running shoe technology and in a throwaway line mentions also that the track was engineered to be "the quickest in history, with greater energy response".
400m world-record breaking gold medallist Karsten Warholm is critical of the Nike shoes worn by silver medallist Benjamin but his own shoes were developed between Puma and the Mercedes Formula One team.
Advances were first seen in road-running shoes after the Rio Olympics when Nike combined a carbon-fibre plate with vast amounts of hyper-responsive foam - a development that has seen marathon and half-marathon times tumble in recent years.
That same technology was then transferred to track spikes in 2019, with a number of middle- and long-distance records falling in quick succession.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/olympics/2021/08/03/having-trampoline-b-super-shoes-controversy-reignited/ (£££)
You wouldn't give the vaccine brief to Piers Corbyn.
Can somebody document that Scottish Greens are more like German Greens than English / Welsh Greens?
Typical job 40 hrs per week
Typical time when people could choose to post on here 75 hrs, someone who didn't sleep much and was working 32 hrs per week (neither that unusual), might have 90 available hrs.
Is it really confusing you? Or are you disapproving of their time management and/or pb addiction?
The Health Secretary's wife, Nadia El-Nakla, says there is an “underbelly of racism” in Scotland
https://twitter.com/heraldscotland/status/1422838215384342534?s=20
Re the chipmunks, bubonic plague has been endemic in [edit] rodents in the mid-west for decades, maybe centuries, so it's nothing very new. (It even became endemic in part of Essex a century or so ago, but the gmt was very prompt in controlling it, so ...).
Edit: linky to ref here. Jowett would approve.
http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC1034015&blobtype=pdf
https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/art-culture/100094/coronavirus-belgium-cancels-school-classes-closes-bars/
And France:
https://www.garda.com/crisis24/news-alerts/322486/france-government-closes-all-schools-nurseries-and-universities-due-to-covid-19-from-march-16-update-6
And a German example:
https://www.thelocal.de/20200313/coronavirus-bavaria-and-saarland-to-close-all-schools/
Latest @ONS estimates:
England: 93.6% (was 91.9%)
Wales: 93.2% (was 92.6%)
Scotland: 92.5% (was 88.6%)
N. Ireland: 90.7% (was 90.0%)
https://twitter.com/fact_covid/status/1422841916375420932?s=20
Does anyone know which other countries are conducting such surveys? This rather explains why cases are falling despite vaccination not covering "absolutely everybody".
Very good for efficiency most of the time, a bit like running hospitals at 98% bed occupancy or whatever it is. Or building houses on convenient flood plains. But you are setting things up to go, from time to time, horribly wrong.
This burning up resilience to get more efficiency isn't unique to teaching, but it is endemic there.
Or I am Donald crowhurst redux broadcasting from my mum's basement. One or the other.
https://twitter.com/dhothersall/status/1422815451961307140?s=20
EU membership? They are well practised at adding new countries, and in this case they would be reincorporating a territory. Easy enough to show alignment as Scotland is already aligned, and even as a UK nation it won't become particularly unaligned in the next few years.
On the currency the situation has changed from 2014. A 2023 (?) question where "independence means the EU and the Euro" is different to 2014 where EU membership wasn't part of the equation. It doesn't matter what the position was back then or what people thought, things have changed.
I think you are trying to complicate the border issue. Scotland will become an EU member state. By the time independence happens GB would already have a settled operating model for its EU border. Whatever we eventually end up doing with France is what you would do with Scotland, and as GB doesn't recognise the EU as anything other than a 3rd country it hardly matters if Scotland is an actual EU member or just an ascension state.
John Knox was an English agent. Any thoughts?