I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
Or Herman Goering? Who did for a fair bit of the area around Teddy Colston's simulacrum?
Not when you have urban planners and modern architects.
Although it should be noted that the only thing named after Colston that burned down during the war was Colston Hall - which was the victim of a carelessly discarded cigarette in February 1945, not the Luftwaffe.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Indeed. 19th-century housing designs were perfectly capable of achieving a high level of density and utility while enhancing the public realm. It's a concept most high-concept architects of the present are utterly incapable of grasping.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Indeed. 19th-century housing designs were perfectly capable of achieving a high level of density and utility while enhancing the public realm. It's a concept most high-concept architects of the present are utterly incapable of grasping.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Or alternatively, cut class sizes in the state sector and watch as private schools close for lack of pupils?
Honestly, some people are really dumb.
Your solution would increase class sizes, at least in the short term, not reduce them.
We agreed on this before in theory. The best single thing to do in order to disincentivize parental opt-out would be to increase the state education budget to a level which brings the funding per pupil up to the same level as the average private school.
But 'in theory' is the operative term here - because in all honesty what do you rate the chances of this ever happening?
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
Fair enough and understood.
I cant honestly offer an unreserved apology but will say I should have handled it less aggressively and personally. Regardless of your intent I found it offensive and others will have done too.
I will take a break from posting for a while as not sure its productive. Will still lurk and enjoy reading comments.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
In fairness there are quite a lot of housing-business unit combos that have gone up in my area of Kent (though obviously not as beautiful as the Dresden example), I should know as I live in one. It does seem this is seen as a way forward in many areas.
That said, there has to be a balance between the needs of the residents and the needs of the businesses. Most shops these days, for example, blast out music during their opening hours, potentially not great for those living on the floor immediately above etc.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Or alternatively, cut class sizes in the state sector and watch as private schools close for lack of pupils?
Honestly, some people are really dumb.
Your solution would increase class sizes, at least in the short term, not reduce them.
I am not dumb. I think the dumb people are those who think that there will be money to cut class sizes in the state sector as long as the rich and powerful can opt out of it.
I am not convinced you are the best judge of your own ability in light of some of your more bizarre recent posts. Do you seriously think that causing a train wreck in education would help poor students? All that would happen under your proposals in the short term is an explosion in class sizes and the implosion of the teetering state sector, coupled with a sharp rise in the amount of tuition, or even 'home schooling,' paid for by wealthier parents. Who's going to suffer in that scenario? Hint - it isn't the rich.
Of course, Covid-19 coupled with pension changes is going to close a lot of private schools anyway, so in some regions (e.g. round here) it's very possible we will see what happens when they go. But if you want to get rid of private schools, you don't do it by dropping ban hammers to satisfy the personal prejudices of a lot of hardcore near-fascists like the Corbynista Labour party. You do it by making the state sector so good almost nobody will bother to pay large sums of money for an alternative. And the key to that is cutting class sizes.
Blair understood that, but never worked out how to actually achieve it (the solution was to raise taxes, but he couldn't bring himself to order Brown to do it). Gove and Cummings unfortunately did not, and their misguided reforms actually made matters worse by increasing teacher attrition rates.
I think this is probably true.
Encouraging the closure of private schools (via, for example the abolition of their charitable status) might over time, after the immediate stress effects have worked through, marginally improve schools in prosperous areas, but is unlikely to do much at all for those (particularly primaries) in disadvantaged areas.
The 'rich and powerful' will continue to 'opt out' by other means. It will do nothing for the hard pressed teachers with classes of 28-30, half a dozen of whom might have been in special schools a decade or so back.
This is a case of reductio ad absurdum. I really don't know what Adonis is playing at by conflating Colston with the likes of Cromwell.
There was every case for pulling down the Bristol statue and I for one am glad that something so insulting to so many has gone. The man was part of a company responsible for transporting 80,000 slaves and probably causing the death of the same number who didn't make it alive. It was erected in the late 19th Century due to the funding of its sponsor who stepped in following the failure of a public appeal, at a time when slavery was already utterly abhorrent, so it didn't really represent opinion even then. The fact that those casting around for other examples are finding it hard to identify anything else so abhorrent rather makes the point that the Bristol statue was pretty unique. Shame on the authorities for not getting rid of it years ago. Just occasionally, very occasionally, it's right for the public to intervene when the authorities fail so spectacularly.
The only issue that I have with its removal is the fact that the crowd should not have gathered in the midst of an infectious deadly pandemic. So I would have approved of the manner of its removal 6 months ago, but not at this precise moment when those gathering across the UK risk infecting themselves and others giving new legs to the pandemic. People will die as a result of the current wave of protests, including many others who did not take part. I think it is that, not the fact of removal, that limited support for the action to just 13%.
I don't see much evidence that those casting around for other examples are finding it hard to identify others. We've already had Churchill and now Rhodes, Cromwell, Gladstone and Henry Dundas are coming into play. It won't end there.
And can we see the evidence it was insulting to so many, rather than taking the word of those who say it was without challenging who they are and what their real motives are first, please? I'm very open to accepting it was and I'd like to hear directly from BAME people in Bristol, of all ages and backgrounds on their experiences and priorities, rather than being told what they find offensive and insulting.
Because up until last weekend the policy of Bristol Council, which has a Labour majority, and is led by Labour BAME mayor, was to put up a plaque, not pull it down, and residents didn't support pulling it down either.
Are we sure most normal people (of any race or background) get insulted by walking past an historic statute, many of whom don't know what it is or its context? Or do they see it as utterly irrelevant to their everyday lives and are more interested in focusing on the future? Are they worry such actions might actually cause divisions and end-up making their lives harder, rather than easier?
I don't know. I'd like to hear more before we take the protesters at their word.
There's not much thinking and challenge going on here, but an awful lot of judgement.
In the case of those five, it seems to be more a case of people wishing to take offence, rather than being actually insulted.
The Rhodes statue at Oriel of course has been the target of protests before. It was led by a Rhodes Scholar (and backed by 198 more) who had to contend with charges of hypocrisy that they wished to remove the statue but keep the money.
I thought the charges of hypocrisy were adequately dealt with - the scholarships was being paid for with money that Rhodes had plundered from their homeland to start with.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Or alternatively, cut class sizes in the state sector and watch as private schools close for lack of pupils?
Honestly, some people are really dumb.
Your solution would increase class sizes, at least in the short term, not reduce them.
We agreed on this before in theory. The best single thing to do in order to disincentivize parental opt-out would be to increase the state education budget to a level which brings the funding per pupil up to the same level as the average private school.
But 'in theory' is the operative term here - because in all honesty what do you rate the chances of this ever happening?
Yes. The problem is that neither party is interested in doing it. That has fuck all to do with private schools and everything to do with the Treasury which refuses to raise taxes or cut spending on unnecessary bureaucracy. A great many problems in education, including funding shortages, would be solved tomorrow by abolishing the DfE and OFQUAL, neither of whom are any use at all (as demonstrated when they were ignored over school closures) but both of whom soak up vast sums of money.
That said, LEAs being hopelessly corrupt and incompetent and being more interested in creaming off money for their lovely Mercedes cars rather than spending it on children's education doesn't help either.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Indeed. 19th-century housing designs were perfectly capable of achieving a high level of density and utility while enhancing the public realm. It's a concept most high-concept architects of the present are utterly incapable of grasping.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Why? The Education budget would remain the same, and you'd have 7-10% extra pupils and no extra funding. They'd increase. And some teachers in the private sector would be put out of work too.
You might argue that the middle-class would then agitate for a higher education budget, as indeed they might, but the Government would have even less money.
It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring.
Policy in this country is largely set by the preferences of the upper middle class, especially on issues that they care about disproportionately, like education. We know that they favour smaller class sizes, because that is what the private sector offers them to obtain their fees. If they were forced to send their kids to state schools I have no doubt that the weight of influential public opinion would soon channel more resources to education, lowering class sizes and raising standards. It will never happen, I am not even saying it should happen, but I have no doubt that it would have a net positive effect on education outcomes in this country.
Very important point. Glad to see it being made. If the most affluent and influential members of society are fully invested in something - e.g. state education - it will lead over time to an increase in standards. This is one of the strongest arguments against private schools.
They're not invested in education per se; they're invested in carving out advantages for their own children to give them the best chance in life. Banning private schools will just exacerbate the current differences between good state schools and bad state schools.
There will also be a mass increase in the use of private tutors, using the money they saved from private education. The increased use of Zoom et al for sessions will help with this and mean that the really in-demand tutors (ie the ones involved in setting the papers) will be able to reach more people, but this won't extend far enough to help the lower classes.
An excellent thread header and, dare I say it, slightly more temperate than some of the posts below the line yesterday. Apart from the small flaw of killing all the lawyers it is hard to find much to disagree with so I will simply add more detail on legal risks. S1(3) of the Occupiers Liability Act 1984 provides: (3)An occupier of premises owes a duty to another (not being his visitor) in respect of any such risk as is referred to in subsection (1) above if — (a) he is aware of the danger or has reasonable grounds to believe that it exists; (b) he knows or has reasonable grounds to believe that the other is in the vicinity of the danger concerned or that he may come into the vicinity of the danger (in either case, whether the other has lawful authority for being in that vicinity or not); and (c) the risk is one against which, in all the circumstances of the case, he may reasonably be expected to offer the other some protection. The obligation is to take reasonable care. So, applying this to Covid a premises that failed to take reasonable care to ensure that the tables were cleaned between customers etc could and arguably should be liable. Showing that the establishment has taken reasonable care would be a defence, even if the customer was unlucky enough to catch Covid there (and good luck with proving that by the way). An establishment that allowed people to jostle at the bar to get their drinks may have a more difficult time defending such a claim. So there would still be an obligation to comply with the guidance but there would be no strict liability for an infection.
This is a case of reductio ad absurdum. I really don't know what Adonis is playing at by conflating Colston with the likes of Cromwell.
There was every case for pulling down the Bristol statue and I for one am glad that something so insulting to so many has gone. The man was part of a company responsible for transporting 80,000 slaves and probably causing the death of the same number who didn't make it alive. It was erected in the late 19th Century due to the funding of its sponsor who stepped in following the failure of a public appeal, at a time when slavery was already utterly abhorrent, so it didn't really represent opinion even then. The fact that those casting around for other examples are finding it hard to identify anything else so abhorrent rather makes the point that the Bristol statue was pretty unique. Shame on the authorities for not getting rid of it years ago. Just occasionally, very occasionally, it's right for the public to intervene when the authorities fail so spectacularly.
The only issue that I have with its removal is the fact that the crowd should not have gathered in the midst of an infectious deadly pandemic. So I would have approved of the manner of its removal 6 months ago, but not at this precise moment when those gathering across the UK risk infecting themselves and others giving new legs to the pandemic. People will die as a result of the current wave of protests, including many others who did not take part. I think it is that, not the fact of removal, that limited support for the action to just 13%.
I don't see much evidence that those casting around for other examples are finding it hard to identify others. We've already had Churchill and now Rhodes, Cromwell, Gladstone and Henry Dundas are coming into play. It won't end there.
And can we see the evidence it was insulting to so many, rather than taking the word of those who say it was without challenging who they are and what their real motives are first, please? I'm very open to accepting it was and I'd like to hear directly from BAME people in Bristol, of all ages and backgrounds on their experiences and priorities, rather than being told what they find offensive and insulting.
Because up until last weekend the policy of Bristol Council, which has a Labour majority, and is led by Labour BAME mayor, was to put up a plaque, not pull it down, and residents didn't support pulling it down either.
Are we sure most normal people (of any race or background) get insulted by walking past an historic statute, many of whom don't know what it is or its context? Or do they see it as utterly irrelevant to their everyday lives and are more interested in focusing on the future? Are they worry such actions might actually cause divisions and end-up making their lives harder, rather than easier?
I don't know. I'd like to hear more before we take the protesters at their word.
There's not much thinking and challenge going on here, but an awful lot of judgement.
In the case of those five, it seems to be more a case of people wishing to take offence, rather than being actually insulted.
The Rhodes statue at Oriel of course has been the target of protests before. It was led by a Rhodes Scholar (and backed by 198 more) who had to contend with charges of hypocrisy that they wished to remove the statue but keep the money.
I thought the charges of hypocrisy were adequately dealt with - the scholarships was being paid for with money that Rhodes had plundered from their homeland to start with.
That's why I phrased it carefully. That is indeed the logical answer, although it didn't stop the criticism. It could be argued that as it only benefitted a few individuals rathert han the country as a whole, the fund should be wound up and distributed.
Personally, although I found it ironic I didn't think it was hypocritical. After all, if you start pondering about where money came from originally absolutely none of it is clean. Most of Britain's wealth now, for example, comes from our banking system and how many banks can honestly say they check the ethics of the clients?
I am not convinced you are the best judge of your own ability in light of some of your more bizarre recent posts. Do you seriously think that causing a train wreck in education would help poor students? All that would happen under your proposals in the short term is an explosion in class sizes and the implosion of the teetering state sector, coupled with a sharp rise in the amount of tuition, or even 'home schooling,' paid for by wealthier parents. Who's going to suffer in that scenario? Hint - it isn't the rich.
Of course, Covid-19 coupled with pension changes is going to close a lot of private schools anyway, so in some regions (e.g. round here) it's very possible we will see what happens when they go. But if you want to get rid of private schools, you don't do it by dropping ban hammers to satisfy the personal prejudices of a lot of hardcore near-fascists like the Corbynista Labour party. You do it by making the state sector so good almost nobody will bother to pay large sums of money for an alternative. And the key to that is cutting class sizes.
Blair understood that, but never worked out how to actually achieve it (the solution was to raise taxes, but he couldn't bring himself to order Brown to do it). Gove and Cummings unfortunately did not, and their misguided reforms actually made matters worse by increasing teacher attrition rates.
I think this is probably true.
Encouraging the closure of private schools (via, for example the abolition of their charitable status) might over time, after the immediate stress effects have worked through, marginally improve schools in prosperous areas, but is unlikely to do much at all for those (particularly primaries) in disadvantaged areas.
The 'rich and powerful' will continue to 'opt out' by other means. It will do nothing for the hard pressed teachers with classes of 28-30, half a dozen of whom might have been in special schools a decade or so back.
I love the optimism that class sizes would be less than 35!
Anyway, lunch, then more teaching. Have a good afternoon.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Indeed.
I view this as similar to the rules of being a house guest: you have a duty as a host to make your guest feel at home, and the guest has to duty to remember they are not.
It's the same with "offence": you have a duty to be avoid causing offence and should apologise where you do, but the other should not be looking to take for reasons to take it.
Who the f*** is a guest here? And then you wonder why people assume you might be racist.
if you want an example of someone trying, really trying, to find offence - look here.
and if you want an example of how transparently fake it is - also, look here.
An excellent thread header and, dare I say it, slightly more temperate than some of the posts below the line yesterday. Apart from the small flaw of killing all the lawyers it is hard to find much to disagree with so I will simply add more detail on legal risks. S1(3) of the Occupiers Liability Act 1984 provides: (3)An occupier of premises owes a duty to another (not being his visitor) in respect of any such risk as is referred to in subsection (1) above if — (a) he is aware of the danger or has reasonable grounds to believe that it exists; (b) he knows or has reasonable grounds to believe that the other is in the vicinity of the danger concerned or that he may come into the vicinity of the danger (in either case, whether the other has lawful authority for being in that vicinity or not); and (c) the risk is one against which, in all the circumstances of the case, he may reasonably be expected to offer the other some protection. The obligation is to take reasonable care. So, applying this to Covid a premises that failed to take reasonable care to ensure that the tables were cleaned between customers etc could and arguably should be liable. Showing that the establishment has taken reasonable care would be a defence, even if the customer was unlucky enough to catch Covid there (and good luck with proving that by the way). An establishment that allowed people to jostle at the bar to get their drinks may have a more difficult time defending such a claim. So there would still be an obligation to comply with the guidance but there would be no strict liability for an infection.
That matches what I was told with relation to other business (construction industry) - a documented plan & safety case, with evidence of actions taken to mitigate.
I also think the comparison some are making to the bringing down of the Saddam statue in Baghdad are being completely dismissive of the millions of live blighted by a contemporary dictator who murdered by the thousands. Those people, not their ancestors, live under the brutal regime and suffered for years.
It's frankly insulting to the millions who suffered in Iraq and the families of those who lost loved ones to Saddam's regime.
Comparing life in a democracy to life when a country sees the end of a dictatorship or occupation never makes much sense.
This is a case of reductio ad absurdum. I really don't know what Adonis is playing at by conflating Colston with the likes of Cromwell.
There was every case for pulling down the Bristol statue and I for one am glad that something so insulting to so many has gone. The man was part of a company responsible for transporting 80,000 slaves and probably causing the death of the same number who didn't make it alive. It was erected in the late 19th Century due to the funding of its sponsor who stepped in following the failure of a public appeal, at a time when slavery was already utterly abhorrent, so it didn't really represent opinion even then. The fact that those casting around for other examples are finding it hard to identify anything else so abhorrent rather makes the point that the Bristol statue was pretty unique. Shame on the authorities for not getting rid of it years ago. Just occasionally, very occasionally, it's right for the public to intervene when the authorities fail so spectacularly.
The only issue that I have with its removal is the fact that the crowd should not have gathered in the midst of an infectious deadly pandemic. So I would have approved of the manner of its removal 6 months ago, but not at this precise moment when those gathering across the UK risk infecting themselves and others giving new legs to the pandemic. People will die as a result of the current wave of protests, including many others who did not take part. I think it is that, not the fact of removal, that limited support for the action to just 13%.
I don't see much evidence that those casting around for other examples are finding it hard to identify others. We've already had Churchill and now Rhodes, Cromwell, Gladstone and Henry Dundas are coming into play. It won't end there.
And can we see the evidence it was insulting to so many, rather than taking the word of those who say it was without challenging who they are and what their real motives are first, please? I'm very open to accepting it was and I'd like to hear directly from BAME people in Bristol, of all ages and backgrounds on their experiences and priorities, rather than being told what they find offensive and insulting.
Because up until last weekend the policy of Bristol Council, which has a Labour majority, and is led by Labour BAME mayor, was to put up a plaque, not pull it down, and residents didn't support pulling it down either.
Are we sure most normal people (of any race or background) get insulted by walking past an historic statute, many of whom don't know what it is or its context? Or do they see it as utterly irrelevant to their everyday lives and are more interested in focusing on the future? Are they worry such actions might actually cause divisions and end-up making their lives harder, rather than easier?
I don't know. I'd like to hear more before we take the protesters at their word.
There's not much thinking and challenge going on here, but an awful lot of judgement.
In the case of those five, it seems to be more a case of people wishing to take offence, rather than being actually insulted.
The Rhodes statue at Oriel of course has been the target of protests before. It was led by a Rhodes Scholar (and backed by 198 more) who had to contend with charges of hypocrisy that they wished to remove the statue but keep the money.
I thought the charges of hypocrisy were adequately dealt with - the scholarships was being paid for with money that Rhodes had plundered from their homeland to start with.
That's why I phrased it carefully. That is indeed the logical answer, although it didn't stop the criticism. It could be argued that as it only benefitted a few individuals rathert han the country as a whole, the fund should be wound up and distributed.
Personally, although I found it ironic I didn't think it was hypocritical. After all, if you start pondering about where money came from originally absolutely none of it is clean. Most of Britain's wealth now, for example, comes from our banking system and how many banks can honestly say they check the ethics of the clients?
You'd probably lose your job if you probed too closely into your clients' ethics.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
In fairness there are quite a lot of housing-business unit combos that have gone up in my area of Kent (though obviously not as beautiful as the Dresden example), I should know as I live in one. It does seem this is seen as a way forward in many areas.
That said, there has to be a balance between the needs of the residents and the needs of the businesses. Most shops these days, for example, blast out music during their opening hours, potentially not great for those living on the floor immediately above etc.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently being locked down in a small, once beautiful, still partly beautiful, Scottish town. I think what might be needed is a bonfire of commercial landlordism (not a real bonfire), and for owner-occupiers to unite both shop and house, renting any additional accommodation to others.
The High Street is very paint-peely. There are many retail units empty on the High Street. One empty shop is advertising a rent of £30,000 PA for its two floors. How on earth is a small business in a small town to make that rent, after they've done up the shop, bought stock, paid staff, paid taxes, etc.?
On a more positive note, immediately off the High Street, where rents are clearly lower, the situation is a lot better with many independent shops seeming to make a go of it.
The problem here, as I see it, is commercial landlords charging exorbitant rent, not seeming to care very much whether the building is occupied, and not looking after the fabric of the building (partly because the building often isn't generating income). Perhaps I'm wrong, but surely the tax system could be usefully employed to encourage more beneficial behaviour.
Very important point. Glad to see it being made. If the most affluent and influential members of society are fully invested in something - e.g. state education - it will lead over time to an increase in standards. This is one of the strongest arguments against private schools.
I tend to agree with Casino - It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring....
Certainly if you're talking about 'the most affluent and influential'.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
Or Herman Goering? Who did for a fair bit of the area around Teddy Colston's simulacrum?
Not when you have urban planners and modern architects.
Well yes, Clydebank suggests we don't do well with a clean slate. Tbh I was thinking more of friendly bombs falling on what the urban planners and modern architects have produced.
There's a recurring meme in Glasgow that a lot of the tenement housing (eg in the Gorbals) was of such poor quality that it couldn't be upgraded or preserved, so the year zero guys were allowed to run riot in the 50s and 60s on the basis that something had to be be done. That seems quite odd nowadays when expensive extreme measures in terms of new foundations and shoring up are taken to keep tenements literally on the road. Also strange that since the tenement is absolutely THE vernacular style of housing in Glasgow and other Scottish cities hardly anything is done to faithfully reproduce it as in the form of the Dresden developments highlighted by William Glenn, or much of Berlin, a city with which I'm slightly familiar.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Indeed.
I view this as similar to the rules of being a house guest: you have a duty as a host to make your guest feel at home, and the guest has to duty to remember they are not.
It's the same with "offence": you have a duty to be avoid causing offence and should apologise where you do, but the other should not be looking to take for reasons to take it.
So, just as if one is a guest in somebody's house and one hates the wallpaper one should not say so - and should certainly not tear it down! - so a black Briton who comes across (say) a slaver statue in Bristol, and who perhaps has an instinctive aversion to it, should take a leaf and be similarly sensitive?
Very important point. Glad to see it being made. If the most affluent and influential members of society are fully invested in something - e.g. state education - it will lead over time to an increase in standards. This is one of the strongest arguments against private schools.
I tend to agree with Casino - It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring....
Certainly if you're talking about 'the most affluent and influential'.
Homeschooling with 4-6 other children and teachers paid for by the parents of those children, perhaps?
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
In fairness there are quite a lot of housing-business unit combos that have gone up in my area of Kent (though obviously not as beautiful as the Dresden example), I should know as I live in one. It does seem this is seen as a way forward in many areas.
That said, there has to be a balance between the needs of the residents and the needs of the businesses. Most shops these days, for example, blast out music during their opening hours, potentially not great for those living on the floor immediately above etc.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently being locked down in a small, once beautiful, still partly beautiful, Scottish town. I think what might be needed is a bonfire of commercial landlordism (not a real bonfire), and for owner-occupiers to unite both shop and house, renting any additional accommodation to others.
The High Street is very paint-peely. There are many retail units empty on the High Street. One empty shop is advertising a rent of £30,000 PA for its two floors. How on earth is a small business in a small town to make that rent, after they've done up the shop, bought stock, paid staff, paid taxes, etc.?
On a more positive note, immediately off the High Street, where rents are clearly lower, the situation is a lot better with many independent shops seeming to make a go of it.
The problem here, as I see it, is commercial landlords charging exorbitant rent, not seeming to care very much whether the building is occupied, and not looking after the fabric of the building (partly because the building often isn't generating income). Perhaps I'm wrong, but surely the tax system could be usefully employed to encourage more beneficial behaviour.
It's a massive stack of peverse incentives.
Essentially, people are a cost to local government. They then tried to shift costs via* businesses.
*The theory being that business would charge more, and the residents (in effect) pay for the local services that way....
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
In fairness there are quite a lot of housing-business unit combos that have gone up in my area of Kent (though obviously not as beautiful as the Dresden example), I should know as I live in one. It does seem this is seen as a way forward in many areas.
That said, there has to be a balance between the needs of the residents and the needs of the businesses. Most shops these days, for example, blast out music during their opening hours, potentially not great for those living on the floor immediately above etc.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently being locked down in a small, once beautiful, still partly beautiful, Scottish town. I think what might be needed is a bonfire of commercial landlordism (not a real bonfire), and for owner-occupiers to unite both shop and house, renting any additional accommodation to others.
The High Street is very paint-peely. There are many retail units empty on the High Street. One empty shop is advertising a rent of £30,000 PA for its two floors. How on earth is a small business in a small town to make that rent, after they've done up the shop, bought stock, paid staff, paid taxes, etc.?
On a more positive note, immediately off the High Street, where rents are clearly lower, the situation is a lot better with many independent shops seeming to make a go of it.
The problem here, as I see it, is commercial landlords charging exorbitant rent, not seeming to care very much whether the building is occupied, and not looking after the fabric of the building (partly because the building often isn't generating income). Perhaps I'm wrong, but surely the tax system could be usefully employed to encourage more beneficial behaviour.
It's not just the external appearance. A lot of those High Street shops were designed to have the owner living above his or her business in a sometimes double flat (though the often separate entrance door and stair to the flat meant that didn't have to be the case). The standards of the buildings built in the late C19 and early C20 are often much higher than you would expect, both in terms of space and also quality of design and detail. Think of a middle class villa c 1900 plonked on top of a shop. Edit: my gandfather had a house above a shop like that - the interior is lovely.
But part of the problem is split ownership - for instance trying to get a shop owner to pay up for a share in the repair of the roof which only directly affects the flat owner and occupier. Pedestiranisation and other things which damage amenity - such as the music you cite, but also demolition of neighbouring buildings and replacement with less appropriate stuff such as car parks - are also problems for asttracting residents.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
Or Herman Goering? Who did for a fair bit of the area around Teddy Colston's simulacrum?
Not when you have urban planners and modern architects.
Well yes, Clydebank suggests we don't do well with a clean slate. Tbh I was thinking more of friendly bombs falling on what the urban planners and modern architects have produced.
There's a recurring meme in Glasgow that a lot of the tenement housing (eg in the Gorbals) was of such poor quality that it couldn't be upgraded or preserved, so the year zero guys were allowed to run riot in the 50s and 60s on the basis that something had to be be done. That seems quite odd nowadays when expensive extreme measures in terms of new foundations and shoring up are taken to keep tenements literally on the road. Also strange that since the tenement is absolutely THE vernacular style of housing in Glasgow and other Scottish cities hardly anything is done to faithfully reproduce it as in the form of the Dresden developments highlighted by William Glenn, or much of Berlin, a city with which I'm slightly familiar.
Even Edinburgh hasn't been immune. If you look at Princes Street (still beautiful by the way), it contains various monstrosities, as part of a brave new plan (in the 60's) to demolish all the Victorian and Georgian shop frontages, and replace them with a modern shopping precinct on two levels, with a one storey walkable balcony running the length of it.
It truly boggles the mind.
What slightly bothers me is that now we've woken up a lot more to looking after our heritage, but we've fallen into the trap of thinking that the 60's carbuncles somehow deserve preservation too.
That's swings of 8.5% and 6.5% away from Trump in Oklahoma and Kentucky. Senior retired Republicans are queuing up to be negative about Trump or even endorse Biden. But the White House is trailing a big "unity" address to the nation this week. The Donald, he can do anything. From the great polariser to the great unifier? Something "great" anyway. He's the greatest and realest, and nothing like a loser or a fake. He can be the unifiers' unifier if he chooses. Best of luck with that. Not sure I've ever seen a US leader so busted this far out.
Yep. Too late now. Some people are on the pitch. The fat lady is fingering her mike. Coronavirus was a golden opportunity to reinvent himself as a credible president. Indeed I was slightly scared that he would somehow manage to do so - it was his one clear chance to head off the big defeat in November that I have long thought inevitable.
But I needn't have worried. The situation merely exposed his almost comical limitations further. He simply does not have the capability to speak or lead in a 'national interest' manner. When he tries it looks and sounds ridiculous because it is so clearly phony. And on top of this you have the glaring lack of competence which is hard to hide when there is a genuine crisis on.
So, sure, he may have another go at 'presidential' but the result will be the same. It will come over as false. Few will be swayed and of those who are it will as likely be the other way. For his hardcore supporters it might still be a case of "To know him is to love him," but for everybody else the opposite now applies. He appears, he speaks, he net repels.
His best re-election strategy in my view would be one of minimalist blandness from here until polling day. Keep his head down. Stay out of the news. But of course it has no chance of being adopted. Instead it will be double down on Boast, Blame, Bluster. Chances of this securing many votes other than his base and those outside it who would vote Republican regardless? Slim to zero. He's toast.
I do hope you are right. I agree with everything you have said but worry I/you might be wrong.
For me the big change in my view of what will happen is when I heard he plans to make a unifying speech. Previously that would have worried me that he could con his way out of all of this. Not so any more, as I feel certain he would just go off script and continue to expose himself as to the person he really is and whatever verbal cockup he made would be all over the media even more than normal and the downward spiral of exposure would just continue.
I'll let you into a secret if you promise not to tell. I'm slightly nervous too.
There's 5 months to go and therefore a non-trivial risk that something I cannot possibly foresee happens.
An excellent thread header and, dare I say it, slightly more temperate than some of the posts below the line yesterday. Apart from the small flaw of killing all the lawyers it is hard to find much to disagree with so I will simply add more detail on legal risks. S1(3) of the Occupiers Liability Act 1984 provides: (3)An occupier of premises owes a duty to another (not being his visitor) in respect of any such risk as is referred to in subsection (1) above if — (a) he is aware of the danger or has reasonable grounds to believe that it exists; (b) he knows or has reasonable grounds to believe that the other is in the vicinity of the danger concerned or that he may come into the vicinity of the danger (in either case, whether the other has lawful authority for being in that vicinity or not); and (c) the risk is one against which, in all the circumstances of the case, he may reasonably be expected to offer the other some protection. The obligation is to take reasonable care. So, applying this to Covid a premises that failed to take reasonable care to ensure that the tables were cleaned between customers etc could and arguably should be liable. Showing that the establishment has taken reasonable care would be a defence, even if the customer was unlucky enough to catch Covid there (and good luck with proving that by the way). An establishment that allowed people to jostle at the bar to get their drinks may have a more difficult time defending such a claim. So there would still be an obligation to comply with the guidance but there would be no strict liability for an infection.
One other thing which could be looked at relatively cost effectively is the adequacy of ventilation. That makes a very large difference to the persistence of aerosols.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
In fairness there are quite a lot of housing-business unit combos that have gone up in my area of Kent (though obviously not as beautiful as the Dresden example), I should know as I live in one. It does seem this is seen as a way forward in many areas.
That said, there has to be a balance between the needs of the residents and the needs of the businesses. Most shops these days, for example, blast out music during their opening hours, potentially not great for those living on the floor immediately above etc.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently being locked down in a small, once beautiful, still partly beautiful, Scottish town. I think what might be needed is a bonfire of commercial landlordism (not a real bonfire), and for owner-occupiers to unite both shop and house, renting any additional accommodation to others.
The High Street is very paint-peely. There are many retail units empty on the High Street. One empty shop is advertising a rent of £30,000 PA for its two floors. How on earth is a small business in a small town to make that rent, after they've done up the shop, bought stock, paid staff, paid taxes, etc.?
On a more positive note, immediately off the High Street, where rents are clearly lower, the situation is a lot better with many independent shops seeming to make a go of it.
The problem here, as I see it, is commercial landlords charging exorbitant rent, not seeming to care very much whether the building is occupied, and not looking after the fabric of the building (partly because the building often isn't generating income). Perhaps I'm wrong, but surely the tax system could be usefully employed to encourage more beneficial behaviour.
Most of these shops will be let on an FRI (full repairing and insuring) basis which puts the obligation on the tenants. The more sophisticated will have an obligation to paint externally every 3-4 years. But legal obligations are one thing and practicalities another. Most of the tenants will have marginal businesses at best (even in normal times) and imposing a dilapidations claim on them may well drive them out of business leaving the landlord with a vacant property and a potential rates bill in due course. Many landlords will sensibly choose to turn a blind eye until the end of the lease then do a deal with the tenant and pocket the money. The fundamental problem is that these properties do not generate a profit for anyone because the businesses in them struggle and generally fail within relatively short periods of time. This results in dilapidation and a reluctance to invest further capital. We have to accept that much of our current retail space will no longer be used as such and facilitate its conversion to more productive uses.
An excellent thread header and, dare I say it, slightly more temperate than some of the posts below the line yesterday. Apart from the small flaw of killing all the lawyers it is hard to find much to disagree with so I will simply add more detail on legal risks. S1(3) of the Occupiers Liability Act 1984 provides: (3)An occupier of premises owes a duty to another (not being his visitor) in respect of any such risk as is referred to in subsection (1) above if — (a) he is aware of the danger or has reasonable grounds to believe that it exists; (b) he knows or has reasonable grounds to believe that the other is in the vicinity of the danger concerned or that he may come into the vicinity of the danger (in either case, whether the other has lawful authority for being in that vicinity or not); and (c) the risk is one against which, in all the circumstances of the case, he may reasonably be expected to offer the other some protection. The obligation is to take reasonable care. So, applying this to Covid a premises that failed to take reasonable care to ensure that the tables were cleaned between customers etc could and arguably should be liable. Showing that the establishment has taken reasonable care would be a defence, even if the customer was unlucky enough to catch Covid there (and good luck with proving that by the way). An establishment that allowed people to jostle at the bar to get their drinks may have a more difficult time defending such a claim. So there would still be an obligation to comply with the guidance but there would be no strict liability for an infection.
One other thing which could be looked at relatively cost effectively is the adequacy of ventilation. That makes a very large difference to the persistence of aerosols.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
In fairness there are quite a lot of housing-business unit combos that have gone up in my area of Kent (though obviously not as beautiful as the Dresden example), I should know as I live in one. It does seem this is seen as a way forward in many areas.
That said, there has to be a balance between the needs of the residents and the needs of the businesses. Most shops these days, for example, blast out music during their opening hours, potentially not great for those living on the floor immediately above etc.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently being locked down in a small, once beautiful, still partly beautiful, Scottish town. I think what might be needed is a bonfire of commercial landlordism (not a real bonfire), and for owner-occupiers to unite both shop and house, renting any additional accommodation to others.
The High Street is very paint-peely. There are many retail units empty on the High Street. One empty shop is advertising a rent of £30,000 PA for its two floors. How on earth is a small business in a small town to make that rent, after they've done up the shop, bought stock, paid staff, paid taxes, etc.?
On a more positive note, immediately off the High Street, where rents are clearly lower, the situation is a lot better with many independent shops seeming to make a go of it.
The problem here, as I see it, is commercial landlords charging exorbitant rent, not seeming to care very much whether the building is occupied, and not looking after the fabric of the building (partly because the building often isn't generating income). Perhaps I'm wrong, but surely the tax system could be usefully employed to encourage more beneficial behaviour.
Internet retail has completely disrupted the economics of high street retail, and that has only been exacerbated by the pandemic. That is not going to reverse. I wouldn't lay all the blame on landlords, as local planners and councils have reacted no more quickly, and the rating system still reflects the commercial realities of a decade or more back.
Indeed it's far more difficult for any given landlord to adapt in isolation than it would be for forward thinking planners to rethink their towns.
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
https://hillreporter.com/trumps-pollster-gives-loaded-questions-to-respondents-to-make-impeachment-look-unpopular-analysis-49337 “Historic precedent has always been that to begin an impeachment inquiry the House of Representatives has always held a vote,” the poll question begins. “Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats are now breaking with precedent to conduct a purely partisan impeachment. In your opinion do you think that unless Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats hold a vote, the President is right NOT to cooperate with this inquiry?”...
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
Or Herman Goering? Who did for a fair bit of the area around Teddy Colston's simulacrum?
Not when you have urban planners and modern architects.
Well yes, Clydebank suggests we don't do well with a clean slate. Tbh I was thinking more of friendly bombs falling on what the urban planners and modern architects have produced.
There's a recurring meme in Glasgow that a lot of the tenement housing (eg in the Gorbals) was of such poor quality that it couldn't be upgraded or preserved, so the year zero guys were allowed to run riot in the 50s and 60s on the basis that something had to be be done. That seems quite odd nowadays when expensive extreme measures in terms of new foundations and shoring up are taken to keep tenements literally on the road. Also strange that since the tenement is absolutely THE vernacular style of housing in Glasgow and other Scottish cities hardly anything is done to faithfully reproduce it as in the form of the Dresden developments highlighted by William Glenn, or much of Berlin, a city with which I'm slightly familiar.
Even Edinburgh hasn't been immune. If you look at Princes Street (still beautiful by the way), it contains various monstrosities, as part of a brave new plan (in the 60's) to demolish all the Victorian and Georgian shop frontages, and replace them with a modern shopping precinct on two levels, with a one storey walkable balcony running the length of it.
It truly boggles the mind.
What slightly bothers me is that now we've woken up a lot more to looking after our heritage, but we've fallen into the trap of thinking that the 60's carbuncles somehow deserve preservation too.
Golly, I hadn't realised that they were thinking quite that far outside the envelope re. Princes St. Actually in Glasgow they seem to have come up with quite a decent cunning plan, to cover over the M8 where it runs through Charing Cross and turn it into an open pedestrian space. Whether that'll come off now in these straitened times, who knows?
I'm not entirely anti brutalism, I quite like the South Bank for its absolute unwillingness to ingratiate for example, and the likes of Poundbury leave me a little queasy.
edit: I see the brave new plan for Princes St is from the 60s, still wouldn't put it past them today though.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
In fairness there are quite a lot of housing-business unit combos that have gone up in my area of Kent (though obviously not as beautiful as the Dresden example), I should know as I live in one. It does seem this is seen as a way forward in many areas.
That said, there has to be a balance between the needs of the residents and the needs of the businesses. Most shops these days, for example, blast out music during their opening hours, potentially not great for those living on the floor immediately above etc.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently being locked down in a small, once beautiful, still partly beautiful, Scottish town. I think what might be needed is a bonfire of commercial landlordism (not a real bonfire), and for owner-occupiers to unite both shop and house, renting any additional accommodation to others.
The High Street is very paint-peely. There are many retail units empty on the High Street. One empty shop is advertising a rent of £30,000 PA for its two floors. How on earth is a small business in a small town to make that rent, after they've done up the shop, bought stock, paid staff, paid taxes, etc.?
On a more positive note, immediately off the High Street, where rents are clearly lower, the situation is a lot better with many independent shops seeming to make a go of it.
The problem here, as I see it, is commercial landlords charging exorbitant rent, not seeming to care very much whether the building is occupied, and not looking after the fabric of the building (partly because the building often isn't generating income). Perhaps I'm wrong, but surely the tax system could be usefully employed to encourage more beneficial behaviour.
Most of these shops will be let on an FRI (full repairing and insuring) basis which puts the obligation on the tenants. The more sophisticated will have an obligation to paint externally every 3-4 years. But legal obligations are one thing and practicalities another. Most of the tenants will have marginal businesses at best (even in normal times) and imposing a dilapidations claim on them may well drive them out of business leaving the landlord with a vacant property and a potential rates bill in due course. Many landlords will sensibly choose to turn a blind eye until the end of the lease then do a deal with the tenant and pocket the money. The fundamental problem is that these properties do not generate a profit for anyone because the businesses in them struggle and generally fail within relatively short periods of time. This results in dilapidation and a reluctance to invest further capital. We have to accept that much of our current retail space will no longer be used as such and facilitate its conversion to more productive uses.
The radical changes in the economics of the high street have hit landlords and tenants alike. Your last point I agree with entirely, and needs councils to take a lead.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
In fairness there are quite a lot of housing-business unit combos that have gone up in my area of Kent (though obviously not as beautiful as the Dresden example), I should know as I live in one. It does seem this is seen as a way forward in many areas.
That said, there has to be a balance between the needs of the residents and the needs of the businesses. Most shops these days, for example, blast out music during their opening hours, potentially not great for those living on the floor immediately above etc.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently being locked down in a small, once beautiful, still partly beautiful, Scottish town. I think what might be needed is a bonfire of commercial landlordism (not a real bonfire), and for owner-occupiers to unite both shop and house, renting any additional accommodation to others.
The High Street is very paint-peely. There are many retail units empty on the High Street. One empty shop is advertising a rent of £30,000 PA for its two floors. How on earth is a small business in a small town to make that rent, after they've done up the shop, bought stock, paid staff, paid taxes, etc.?
On a more positive note, immediately off the High Street, where rents are clearly lower, the situation is a lot better with many independent shops seeming to make a go of it.
The problem here, as I see it, is commercial landlords charging exorbitant rent, not seeming to care very much whether the building is occupied, and not looking after the fabric of the building (partly because the building often isn't generating income). Perhaps I'm wrong, but surely the tax system could be usefully employed to encourage more beneficial behaviour.
Most of these shops will be let on an FRI (full repairing and insuring) basis which puts the obligation on the tenants. The more sophisticated will have an obligation to paint externally every 3-4 years. But legal obligations are one thing and practicalities another. Most of the tenants will have marginal businesses at best (even in normal times) and imposing a dilapidations claim on them may well drive them out of business leaving the landlord with a vacant property and a potential rates bill in due course. Many landlords will sensibly choose to turn a blind eye until the end of the lease then do a deal with the tenant and pocket the money. The fundamental problem is that these properties do not generate a profit for anyone because the businesses in them struggle and generally fail within relatively short periods of time. This results in dilapidation and a reluctance to invest further capital. We have to accept that much of our current retail space will no longer be used as such and facilitate its conversion to more productive uses.
The actual issue is that the rent is £30,000 and the property was probably sold to a pension fund on a combination of that rent and the desired yield.
The pension fund would then prefer to keep the property empty rather than discovering that the actual market rent isn't £30,000 it's £10,000 which would require them to consolidate a loss.
And Adonis must know about the statue of James II outside the National Gallery and the equestrian one of Charles I on the other side of Trafalgar Square too.
Colston's company - 80000 slaves? Pah! That's nothing on the Royal African Company.
Incidentally a lot of the Leverhulme Trust money comes from what was slavery in all but name in the Belgian Congo where William Lever had a brutal fiefdom.
Raze Leverburgh to the ground!
Actually reverting to its original name of Obbe might be more proportional.
Have you ever seen it?! It's mostly Lewisian Gneiss and peat already ...
I had occasion to look into the matter of the Clearances in the Highlands and Islands for work purposes. What I do remember is that some lairds tried to do the best for their tenants when the potato famine came on, and so on, and yet the money for that often came from commercial activities in Empire ...
Aye, my dad lived there for the last 10 years of his life. I guess it's a sort of half way house between the flinty east side and the softer machair of the west.
Yes, unfortunately life on the islands has had an element of subsidy for quite a long time. I imagine commercial activities in Empire might cover quite a lot of dubious stuff, though a bodach with his barrel of salt herring and tatty patch might need a bit of convincing that he was rolling about in the wages of sin.
I sailed Shetland-Orkney-lewis last year, and the difference between having oil income and not, is painful to see.
There's a well known poem about leverburgh by someone like Hugh MacDiarmid. Google seems not to know about it. It is striking how enraging it is these days not to be able to track that sort of thing down in 2 seconds.
And Adonis must know about the statue of James II outside the National Gallery and the equestrian one of Charles I on the other side of Trafalgar Square too.
Colston's company - 80000 slaves? Pah! That's nothing on the Royal African Company.
Incidentally a lot of the Leverhulme Trust money comes from what was slavery in all but name in the Belgian Congo where William Lever had a brutal fiefdom.
Raze Leverburgh to the ground!
Actually reverting to its original name of Obbe might be more proportional.
Have you ever seen it?! It's mostly Lewisian Gneiss and peat already ...
I had occasion to look into the matter of the Clearances in the Highlands and Islands for work purposes. What I do remember is that some lairds tried to do the best for their tenants when the potato famine came on, and so on, and yet the money for that often came from commercial activities in Empire ...
Aye, my dad lived there for the last 10 years of his life. I guess it's a sort of half way house between the flinty east side and the softer machair of the west.
Yes, unfortunately life on the islands has had an element of subsidy for quite a long time. I imagine commercial activities in Empire might cover quite a lot of dubious stuff, though a bodach with his barrel of salt herring and tatty patch might need a bit of convincing that he was rolling about in the wages of sin.
I sailed Shetland-Orkney-lewis last year, and the difference between having oil income and not, is painful to see.
There's a well known poem about leverburgh by someone like Hugh MacDiarmid. Google seems not to know about it. It is striking how enraging it is these days not to be able to track that sort of thing down in 2 seconds.
MacNeice ?
Leverburgh was meant to be The hub of the fishing industry; All that remained at Lever’s death Was a waste of money and a waste of breath....
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
I`ve worked in the Middle East (Bahrain), and visited places such as Gibraltar many times, and witnessed (to my disappointment) British expats living there, setting up little communities within communities, UK themed pubs, Union Jacks displayed, no attempt whatsoever to learn the local language or join in with local customs or even make friends with local people. They are trying to export a chunk of Britain abroad. I find this depressing, unintelligent and downright rude.
I think that "house guest" is an unwise phrase to use. But the British expats I cite above are house guests in the loose sort of way that I think CR means. And they warrant our disapproval. And I wouldn`t call Bahraini or Spanish people racist in pointing this out.
I'm not entirely anti brutalism, I quite like the South Bank for its absolute unwillingness to ingratiate for example, and the likes of Poundbury leave me a little queasy.
Poundbury is a terrible pastiche and an example of how not to do it. You can't build somewhere dependent on cars while thinking that if you don't plan for the cars, you can pretend they won't exist.
Now that Patel and Sunak are leading the Indian community off the labour reservation, they can expect the same treatment as the Jewish community recently - minority non grata.
Witness labour MP Mark Hendrick saying Indian Asians are 'over reprented' in senior medical and dentistry jobs.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
And Adonis must know about the statue of James II outside the National Gallery and the equestrian one of Charles I on the other side of Trafalgar Square too.
Colston's company - 80000 slaves? Pah! That's nothing on the Royal African Company.
Incidentally a lot of the Leverhulme Trust money comes from what was slavery in all but name in the Belgian Congo where William Lever had a brutal fiefdom.
Raze Leverburgh to the ground!
Actually reverting to its original name of Obbe might be more proportional.
Have you ever seen it?! It's mostly Lewisian Gneiss and peat already ...
I had occasion to look into the matter of the Clearances in the Highlands and Islands for work purposes. What I do remember is that some lairds tried to do the best for their tenants when the potato famine came on, and so on, and yet the money for that often came from commercial activities in Empire ...
Aye, my dad lived there for the last 10 years of his life. I guess it's a sort of half way house between the flinty east side and the softer machair of the west.
Yes, unfortunately life on the islands has had an element of subsidy for quite a long time. I imagine commercial activities in Empire might cover quite a lot of dubious stuff, though a bodach with his barrel of salt herring and tatty patch might need a bit of convincing that he was rolling about in the wages of sin.
I sailed Shetland-Orkney-lewis last year, and the difference between having oil income and not, is painful to see.
There's a well known poem about leverburgh by someone like Hugh MacDiarmid. Google seems not to know about it. It is striking how enraging it is these days not to be able to track that sort of thing down in 2 seconds.
MacNeice ?
Leverburgh was meant to be The hub of the fishing industry; All that remained at Lever’s death Was a waste of money and a waste of breath....
And Adonis must know about the statue of James II outside the National Gallery and the equestrian one of Charles I on the other side of Trafalgar Square too.
Colston's company - 80000 slaves? Pah! That's nothing on the Royal African Company.
Incidentally a lot of the Leverhulme Trust money comes from what was slavery in all but name in the Belgian Congo where William Lever had a brutal fiefdom.
Raze Leverburgh to the ground!
Actually reverting to its original name of Obbe might be more proportional.
Have you ever seen it?! It's mostly Lewisian Gneiss and peat already ...
I had occasion to look into the matter of the Clearances in the Highlands and Islands for work purposes. What I do remember is that some lairds tried to do the best for their tenants when the potato famine came on, and so on, and yet the money for that often came from commercial activities in Empire ...
Aye, my dad lived there for the last 10 years of his life. I guess it's a sort of half way house between the flinty east side and the softer machair of the west.
Yes, unfortunately life on the islands has had an element of subsidy for quite a long time. I imagine commercial activities in Empire might cover quite a lot of dubious stuff, though a bodach with his barrel of salt herring and tatty patch might need a bit of convincing that he was rolling about in the wages of sin.
I sailed Shetland-Orkney-lewis last year, and the difference between having oil income and not, is painful to see.
There's a well known poem about leverburgh by someone like Hugh MacDiarmid. Google seems not to know about it. It is striking how enraging it is these days not to be able to track that sort of thing down in 2 seconds.
All I can think of is Norman MacCaig's poem about his Aunt Julia who lived in Harris, though it doesn't mention Leverburgh.
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
I`ve worked in the Middle East (Bahrain), and visited places such as Gibraltar many times, and witnessed (to my disappointment) British expats living there, setting up little communities within communities, UK themed pubs, Union Jacks displayed, no attempt whatsoever to learn the local language or join in with local customs or even make friends with local people. They are trying to export a chunk of Britain abroad. I find this depressing, unintelligent and downright rude.
I think that "house guest" is an unwise phrase to use. But the British expats I cite above are house guests in the loose sort of way that I think CR means. And they warrant our disapproval. And I wouldn`t call Bahraini or Spanish people racist in pointing this out.
It's not at all how CR meant the analogy, but Gibraltar is 'our house' (For now at least).
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
In fairness there are quite a lot of housing-business unit combos that have gone up in my area of Kent (though obviously not as beautiful as the Dresden example), I should know as I live in one. It does seem this is seen as a way forward in many areas.
That said, there has to be a balance between the needs of the residents and the needs of the businesses. Most shops these days, for example, blast out music during their opening hours, potentially not great for those living on the floor immediately above etc.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently being locked down in a small, once beautiful, still partly beautiful, Scottish town. I think what might be needed is a bonfire of commercial landlordism (not a real bonfire), and for owner-occupiers to unite both shop and house, renting any additional accommodation to others.
The High Street is very paint-peely. There are many retail units empty on the High Street. One empty shop is advertising a rent of £30,000 PA for its two floors. How on earth is a small business in a small town to make that rent, after they've done up the shop, bought stock, paid staff, paid taxes, etc.?
On a more positive note, immediately off the High Street, where rents are clearly lower, the situation is a lot better with many independent shops seeming to make a go of it.
The problem here, as I see it, is commercial landlords charging exorbitant rent, not seeming to care very much whether the building is occupied, and not looking after the fabric of the building (partly because the building often isn't generating income). Perhaps I'm wrong, but surely the tax system could be usefully employed to encourage more beneficial behaviour.
Most of these shops will be let on an FRI (full repairing and insuring) basis which puts the obligation on the tenants. The more sophisticated will have an obligation to paint externally every 3-4 years. But legal obligations are one thing and practicalities another. Most of the tenants will have marginal businesses at best (even in normal times) and imposing a dilapidations claim on them may well drive them out of business leaving the landlord with a vacant property and a potential rates bill in due course. Many landlords will sensibly choose to turn a blind eye until the end of the lease then do a deal with the tenant and pocket the money. The fundamental problem is that these properties do not generate a profit for anyone because the businesses in them struggle and generally fail within relatively short periods of time. This results in dilapidation and a reluctance to invest further capital. We have to accept that much of our current retail space will no longer be used as such and facilitate its conversion to more productive uses.
The actual issue is that the rent is £30,000 and the property was probably sold to a pension fund on a combination of that rent and the desired yield.
The pension fund would then prefer to keep the property empty rather than discovering that the actual market rent isn't £30,000 it's £10,000 which would require them to consolidate a loss.
Who in God's name does such an accounting fiction benefit ?
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
In fairness there are quite a lot of housing-business unit combos that have gone up in my area of Kent (though obviously not as beautiful as the Dresden example), I should know as I live in one. It does seem this is seen as a way forward in many areas.
That said, there has to be a balance between the needs of the residents and the needs of the businesses. Most shops these days, for example, blast out music during their opening hours, potentially not great for those living on the floor immediately above etc.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently being locked down in a small, once beautiful, still partly beautiful, Scottish town. I think what might be needed is a bonfire of commercial landlordism (not a real bonfire), and for owner-occupiers to unite both shop and house, renting any additional accommodation to others.
The High Street is very paint-peely. There are many retail units empty on the High Street. One empty shop is advertising a rent of £30,000 PA for its two floors. How on earth is a small business in a small town to make that rent, after they've done up the shop, bought stock, paid staff, paid taxes, etc.?
On a more positive note, immediately off the High Street, where rents are clearly lower, the situation is a lot better with many independent shops seeming to make a go of it.
The problem here, as I see it, is commercial landlords charging exorbitant rent, not seeming to care very much whether the building is occupied, and not looking after the fabric of the building (partly because the building often isn't generating income). Perhaps I'm wrong, but surely the tax system could be usefully employed to encourage more beneficial behaviour.
Most of these shops will be let on an FRI (full repairing and insuring) basis which puts the obligation on the tenants. The more sophisticated will have an obligation to paint externally every 3-4 years. But legal obligations are one thing and practicalities another. Most of the tenants will have marginal businesses at best (even in normal times) and imposing a dilapidations claim on them may well drive them out of business leaving the landlord with a vacant property and a potential rates bill in due course. Many landlords will sensibly choose to turn a blind eye until the end of the lease then do a deal with the tenant and pocket the money. The fundamental problem is that these properties do not generate a profit for anyone because the businesses in them struggle and generally fail within relatively short periods of time. This results in dilapidation and a reluctance to invest further capital. We have to accept that much of our current retail space will no longer be used as such and facilitate its conversion to more productive uses.
The actual issue is that the rent is £30,000 and the property was probably sold to a pension fund on a combination of that rent and the desired yield.
The pension fund would then prefer to keep the property empty rather than discovering that the actual market rent isn't £30,000 it's £10,000 which would require them to consolidate a loss.
Who in God's name does such an accounting fiction benefit ?
You will recall the coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons, feet pedalling in empty air after he'd run off a cliff ?
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Or alternatively, cut class sizes in the state sector and watch as private schools close for lack of pupils?
Honestly, some people are really dumb.
Your solution would increase class sizes, at least in the short term, not reduce them.
I am not dumb. I think the dumb people are those who think that there will be money to cut class sizes in the state sector as long as the rich and powerful can opt out of it.
I am not convinced you are the best judge of your own ability in light of some of your more bizarre recent posts. Do you seriously think that causing a train wreck in education would help poor students? All that would happen under your proposals in the short term is an explosion in class sizes and the implosion of the teetering state sector, coupled with a sharp rise in the amount of tuition, or even 'home schooling,' paid for by wealthier parents. Who's going to suffer in that scenario? Hint - it isn't the rich.
Of course, Covid-19 coupled with pension changes is going to close a lot of private schools anyway, so in some regions (e.g. round here) it's very possible we will see what happens when they go. But if you want to get rid of private schools, you don't do it by dropping ban hammers to satisfy the personal prejudices of a lot of hardcore near-fascists like the Corbynista Labour party. You do it by making the state sector so good almost nobody will bother to pay large sums of money for an alternative. And the key to that is cutting class sizes.
Blair understood that, but never worked out how to actually achieve it (the solution was to raise taxes, but he couldn't bring himself to order Brown to do it). Gove and Cummings unfortunately did not, and their misguided reforms actually made matters worse by increasing teacher attrition rates.
I already said that I wasn't suggesting a ban, I don't think it would be feasible or consistent with human rights legislation, and it would most likely be too disruptive. I am simply saying that there is a reason the state sector is teetering, and that reason is that people of wealth and power don't care about it. If you have an alternative suggestion for getting state schools better resourced I'd love to hear it. Would love to know which of my posts you consider to be bizarre, I think I'm a pretty reasonable kind of person, certainly by PB standards.
This subject touches a nerve and I am glad you are having a bash at it. There is a great attachment to private schools from many PB posters who will at the same time maintain that equality of opportunity in education and life is one of their top priorities. For me, this does not scan at all, but there you go.
What you will find - I predict - is that in order to convince you will need to roll out a complete white paper which describes in close and compelling detail exactly how you will phase out private schools by disincentivization rather than compulsion over (say) 10 years and realize tremendous tangible benefits to all without a single negative impact, however transitory, on anything or anybody.
And even that didn't work when I did it.
Not that I'm frustrated or anything you understand.
The key is to give people confidence that they are tolerably safe. Since the key spenders are women and the elderly have most of the wealth, that generally means reassuring the most cautious.
As with anything, unlockdown will have early adopters and others will follow at their own pace. It will be in the interests of venues to show that they have given great thought to the risks posed.
The government needs to give simple, consistent and well-publicised instructions. Pretty well the reverse of what it is doing now.
If anyone has simple consistent instructions that will work for both defeating covid and restoring hospitality lets hear them! The problem is the solutions are complex and different, not simple and consistent.
We need rules that don’t aim to guarantee not catching Covid-19 but which sharply reduce risks. The rules at present are far too geared towards absolute prevention rather than reduction.
The consequences of some current rules are silly (for instance, allowing couples who don’t cohabit to have sex outdoors but not indoors). No one in Whitehall seems capable at present of creating straw men to test their rules. The result is that their fussy complex rules are ignored by many.
We need some simple situational rules: eg At Home; On The Street; At Public Leisure; In Public Buildings.
BiB - I have to say, the only place I've encountered this sort of thinking is on here. You want simple rules and yet you're complaining that the results aren't nuanced enough to deal with something like this. What would you like the government to say? No, you can't have sex outside or Yes, you can go inside to have sex? Both seem to add complexity to the rules, which is what you're arguing against.
If only you’d bolded the bit after the bit you actually bolded, you’d have your answer.
Can you expand on that then? The rules seem fairly simple and straight-forward to me.
A Cabinet minister spent a day last month trying to explain whether you could meet one or both of your parents and whether you could do so in your garden or if you had to meet in a public park. You can decide for yourself whether that’s a deficiency in the rules or in the Foreign Secretary.
Isn't that rather down to our infantile media playing infantile games?
Now that Patel and Sunak are leading the Indian community off the labour reservation, they can expect the same treatment as the Jewish community recently - minority non grata.
Witness labour MP Mark Hendrick saying Indian Asians are 'over reprented' in senior medical and dentistry jobs.
I refer you to my post yesterday saying exactly this, which was then dismissed by a few of our lefty commenters (though thankfully not even close to all). I'm genuinely worried that racism towards Indians is going to be stepped up by the left who will see us as enemies of their agenda just as Jews are.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Indeed.
I view this as similar to the rules of being a house guest: you have a duty as a host to make your guest feel at home, and the guest has to duty to remember they are not.
It's the same with "offence": you have a duty to be avoid causing offence and should apologise where you do, but the other should not be looking to take for reasons to take it.
So, just as if one is a guest in somebody's house and one hates the wallpaper one should not say so - and should certainly not tear it down! - so a black Briton who comes across (say) a slaver statue in Bristol, and who perhaps has an instinctive aversion to it, should take a leaf and be similarly sensitive?
Is that how your thinking is going here?
No. I have already said I would like to hear more from the broader BAME in Bristol, of all ages and backgrounds.
What I’m not clear on is whether this was genuinely a real problem or if it was only a handful of activists getting offended on their behalf with their priorities and concerns being rather different.
The majority Labour council with a BAME Mayor had already decided a new plaque with a more honest description of his history was a better solution as it allowed an ongoing debate about him, his legacy and Bristol’s history.
There’s a difference between choosing to be offended and something being intrinsically offensive. Sometimes the boundaries of that distinction aren’t clear.
I’d like to explore that further. You’d prefer to insinuate and cast stones.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
In fairness there are quite a lot of housing-business unit combos that have gone up in my area of Kent (though obviously not as beautiful as the Dresden example), I should know as I live in one. It does seem this is seen as a way forward in many areas.
That said, there has to be a balance between the needs of the residents and the needs of the businesses. Most shops these days, for example, blast out music during their opening hours, potentially not great for those living on the floor immediately above etc.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently being locked down in a small, once beautiful, still partly beautiful, Scottish town. I think what might be needed is a bonfire of commercial landlordism (not a real bonfire), and for owner-occupiers to unite both shop and house, renting any additional accommodation to others.
The High Street is very paint-peely. There are many retail units empty on the High Street. One empty shop is advertising a rent of £30,000 PA for its two floors. How on earth is a small business in a small town to make that rent, after they've done up the shop, bought stock, paid staff, paid taxes, etc.?
On a more positive note, immediately off the High Street, where rents are clearly lower, the situation is a lot better with many independent shops seeming to make a go of it.
The problem here, as I see it, is commercial landlords charging exorbitant rent, not seeming to care very much whether the building is occupied, and not looking after the fabric of the building (partly because the building often isn't generating income). Perhaps I'm wrong, but surely the tax system could be usefully employed to encourage more beneficial behaviour.
Most of these shops will be let on an FRI (full repairing and insuring) basis which puts the obligation on the tenants. The more sophisticated will have an obligation to paint externally every 3-4 years. But legal obligations are one thing and practicalities another. Most of the tenants will have marginal businesses at best (even in normal times) and imposing a dilapidations claim on them may well drive them out of business leaving the landlord with a vacant property and a potential rates bill in due course. Many landlords will sensibly choose to turn a blind eye until the end of the lease then do a deal with the tenant and pocket the money. The fundamental problem is that these properties do not generate a profit for anyone because the businesses in them struggle and generally fail within relatively short periods of time. This results in dilapidation and a reluctance to invest further capital. We have to accept that much of our current retail space will no longer be used as such and facilitate its conversion to more productive uses.
The actual issue is that the rent is £30,000 and the property was probably sold to a pension fund on a combination of that rent and the desired yield.
The pension fund would then prefer to keep the property empty rather than discovering that the actual market rent isn't £30,000 it's £10,000 which would require them to consolidate a loss.
Who in God's name does such an accounting fiction benefit ?
You will recall the coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons, feet pedalling in empty air after he'd run off a cliff ?
That is large sectors of our economy.
Yes but that's mostly about keeping the plates spinning with more and more (And more) debt. Not having shops occupied due to a fictisiously high rent has zero economic value whatsoever.
The key is to give people confidence that they are tolerably safe. Since the key spenders are women and the elderly have most of the wealth, that generally means reassuring the most cautious.
As with anything, unlockdown will have early adopters and others will follow at their own pace. It will be in the interests of venues to show that they have given great thought to the risks posed.
The government needs to give simple, consistent and well-publicised instructions. Pretty well the reverse of what it is doing now.
If anyone has simple consistent instructions that will work for both defeating covid and restoring hospitality lets hear them! The problem is the solutions are complex and different, not simple and consistent.
We need rules that don’t aim to guarantee not catching Covid-19 but which sharply reduce risks. The rules at present are far too geared towards absolute prevention rather than reduction.
The consequences of some current rules are silly (for instance, allowing couples who don’t cohabit to have sex outdoors but not indoors). No one in Whitehall seems capable at present of creating straw men to test their rules. The result is that their fussy complex rules are ignored by many.
We need some simple situational rules: eg At Home; On The Street; At Public Leisure; In Public Buildings.
BiB - I have to say, the only place I've encountered this sort of thinking is on here. You want simple rules and yet you're complaining that the results aren't nuanced enough to deal with something like this. What would you like the government to say? No, you can't have sex outside or Yes, you can go inside to have sex? Both seem to add complexity to the rules, which is what you're arguing against.
If only you’d bolded the bit after the bit you actually bolded, you’d have your answer.
Can you expand on that then? The rules seem fairly simple and straight-forward to me.
A Cabinet minister spent a day last month trying to explain whether you could meet one or both of your parents and whether you could do so in your garden or if you had to meet in a public park. You can decide for yourself whether that’s a deficiency in the rules or in the Foreign Secretary.
Isn't that rather down to our infantile media playing infantile games?
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
In fairness there are quite a lot of housing-business unit combos that have gone up in my area of Kent (though obviously not as beautiful as the Dresden example), I should know as I live in one. It does seem this is seen as a way forward in many areas.
That said, there has to be a balance between the needs of the residents and the needs of the businesses. Most shops these days, for example, blast out music during their opening hours, potentially not great for those living on the floor immediately above etc.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently being locked down in a small, once beautiful, still partly beautiful, Scottish town. I think what might be needed is a bonfire of commercial landlordism (not a real bonfire), and for owner-occupiers to unite both shop and house, renting any additional accommodation to others.
The High Street is very paint-peely. There are many retail units empty on the High Street. One empty shop is advertising a rent of £30,000 PA for its two floors. How on earth is a small business in a small town to make that rent, after they've done up the shop, bought stock, paid staff, paid taxes, etc.?
On a more positive note, immediately off the High Street, where rents are clearly lower, the situation is a lot better with many independent shops seeming to make a go of it.
The problem here, as I see it, is commercial landlords charging exorbitant rent, not seeming to care very much whether the building is occupied, and not looking after the fabric of the building (partly because the building often isn't generating income). Perhaps I'm wrong, but surely the tax system could be usefully employed to encourage more beneficial behaviour.
Most of these shops will be let on an FRI (full repairing and insuring) basis which puts the obligation on the tenants. The more sophisticated will have an obligation to paint externally every 3-4 years. But legal obligations are one thing and practicalities another. Most of the tenants will have marginal businesses at best (even in normal times) and imposing a dilapidations claim on them may well drive them out of business leaving the landlord with a vacant property and a potential rates bill in due course. Many landlords will sensibly choose to turn a blind eye until the end of the lease then do a deal with the tenant and pocket the money. The fundamental problem is that these properties do not generate a profit for anyone because the businesses in them struggle and generally fail within relatively short periods of time. This results in dilapidation and a reluctance to invest further capital. We have to accept that much of our current retail space will no longer be used as such and facilitate its conversion to more productive uses.
The actual issue is that the rent is £30,000 and the property was probably sold to a pension fund on a combination of that rent and the desired yield.
The pension fund would then prefer to keep the property empty rather than discovering that the actual market rent isn't £30,000 it's £10,000 which would require them to consolidate a loss.
Who in God's name does such an accounting fiction benefit ?
You will recall the coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons, feet pedalling in empty air after he'd run off a cliff ?
That is large sectors of our economy.
Yes but that's mostly about keeping the plates spinning with more and more (And more) debt. Not having shops occupied due to a fictisiously high rent has zero economic value whatsoever.
It does for the property / pension firm when it avoids them booking a loss of £250,000 say on the accounts (assuming an 8% yield and a rent of £10,000 rather than £30,000).
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
I`ve worked in the Middle East (Bahrain), and visited places such as Gibraltar many times, and witnessed (to my disappointment) British expats living there, setting up little communities within communities, UK themed pubs, Union Jacks displayed, no attempt whatsoever to learn the local language or join in with local customs or even make friends with local people. They are trying to export a chunk of Britain abroad. I find this depressing, unintelligent and downright rude.
I think that "house guest" is an unwise phrase to use. But the British expats I cite above are house guests in the loose sort of way that I think CR means. And they warrant our disapproval. And I wouldn`t call Bahraini or Spanish people racist in pointing this out.
It's not at all how CR meant the analogy, but Gibraltar is 'our house' (For now at least).
It isn’t at all.
Nevertheless if I was a public figure I’d probably be resigning by the end of the day. What would happen is people like @kinabalu@kamski and @noneoftheabove would whip up a twitterstorm about it, selectively quote it, ascribe a motive, demand action and then the BBC/C4 would pick up on it and report it. And then authority figures would be challenged as to why I was still in post. It would matter about the nuance. Most wouldn’t care.
It does explain why so few people in authority want to challenge simple assumptions in complex ways in highly emotional times.
Why take the risk? The upside is minimal and the downside huge.
Now that Patel and Sunak are leading the Indian community off the labour reservation, they can expect the same treatment as the Jewish community recently - minority non grata.
Witness labour MP Mark Hendrick saying Indian Asians are 'over reprented' in senior medical and dentistry jobs.
I refer you to my post yesterday saying exactly this, which was then dismissed by a few of our lefty commenters (though thankfully not even close to all). I'm genuinely worried that racism towards Indians is going to be stepped up by the left who will see us as enemies of their agenda just as Jews are.
It is noticeable that when a lot of people talk about BAME issues, they really mean Black, because they sure as hell do not spend much time talking about the AME part of BAME. Not I think there's a great deal of validity in lumping together essentially every non-white person as though they all share the same views and experiences.
The key is to give people confidence that they are tolerably safe. Since the key spenders are women and the elderly have most of the wealth, that generally means reassuring the most cautious.
As with anything, unlockdown will have early adopters and others will follow at their own pace. It will be in the interests of venues to show that they have given great thought to the risks posed.
The government needs to give simple, consistent and well-publicised instructions. Pretty well the reverse of what it is doing now.
If anyone has simple consistent instructions that will work for both defeating covid and restoring hospitality lets hear them! The problem is the solutions are complex and different, not simple and consistent.
We need rules that don’t aim to guarantee not catching Covid-19 but which sharply reduce risks. The rules at present are far too geared towards absolute prevention rather than reduction.
The consequences of some current rules are silly (for instance, allowing couples who don’t cohabit to have sex outdoors but not indoors). No one in Whitehall seems capable at present of creating straw men to test their rules. The result is that their fussy complex rules are ignored by many.
We need some simple situational rules: eg At Home; On The Street; At Public Leisure; In Public Buildings.
BiB - I have to say, the only place I've encountered this sort of thinking is on here. You want simple rules and yet you're complaining that the results aren't nuanced enough to deal with something like this. What would you like the government to say? No, you can't have sex outside or Yes, you can go inside to have sex? Both seem to add complexity to the rules, which is what you're arguing against.
If only you’d bolded the bit after the bit you actually bolded, you’d have your answer.
Can you expand on that then? The rules seem fairly simple and straight-forward to me.
A Cabinet minister spent a day last month trying to explain whether you could meet one or both of your parents and whether you could do so in your garden or if you had to meet in a public park. You can decide for yourself whether that’s a deficiency in the rules or in the Foreign Secretary.
Isn't that rather down to our infantile media playing infantile games?
On one level, however the fact they don't have examples prepared means that the media has to ask questions to get elaborations which then quickly (as with the interviews above) fall apart.
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
I am not going to be open-minded about being accused of racism.
It could still get messy if League One doesn't start next season. The EFL statement from about a month ago was laying the foundations for not having relegation from the Championship if there wasn't a league for the relegated clubs to play in.
You will recall the coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons, feet pedalling in empty air after he'd run off a cliff ?
That is large sectors of our economy.
Yes but that's mostly about keeping the plates spinning with more and more (And more) debt. Not having shops occupied due to a fictisiously high rent has zero economic value whatsoever.
I'm aware of that. Though once in a dozen or so episodes it actually worked for the coyote - and similarly the owners are hoping for unlikely event of a greater fool turning up and relieving them of their overvalued asset.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Indeed.
I view this as similar to the rules of being a house guest: you have a duty as a host to make your guest feel at home, and the guest has to duty to remember they are not.
It's the same with "offence": you have a duty to be avoid causing offence and should apologise where you do, but the other should not be looking to take for reasons to take it.
Who the f*** is a guest here? And then you wonder why people assume you might be racist.
And it's comments like this which are part of the problem..
Are you seriously looking to engage, or are you more interested in looking to interpret my comments in the most hostile and negative light possible?
In the past, people were dismissive and careless about causing offence. They used words, phrases and behaviours that caused great hurt and pain. That was wrong. It needed to change. In some areas it still needs to change.
What I'm saying is that in addition to not doing that we should also not be looking to always take offence where none is intended. There will always be buildings, art, architecture and political views that some of us don't like. We can't just always act on loud objections to take them down on the grounds that some find them insulting or offensive or we'll have nothing left - we need to learn co-exist peacefully together.
I offered the house guest rules as an analogy because I thought it was a good behavioural example of this. You've decided to take it as a comment on immigration and the UK today.
That's a good example of what I'm talking about.
I have to say I thought exactly the same as noneoftheabove when I read about being a "guest", although I would have expressed the thought a bit less forcefully.
If that's the case then perhaps you both need to take a rain-check on how you read and process comments from other posters who might challenge some of your assumptions, rather than twitching for secret racism in every post made by them followed up by hair-trigger reactions.
Jesus. It does explain why no-one with a public profile wants to say anything, doesn't it?
Have I said that you are racist? I'm not sure I have.
I do think that writing about how guests should behave while writing on this topic is inadvisable and might make people think you are being racist. So probably wise to avoid.
I also think we all have our prejudices and that saying (and I don't know if you have done this, although you seemed to agree) that tearing down this statue is the same as destroying buildings, or burning libraries, or dropping nuclear bombs on British cities is implicitly racist, and I would advise a little bit more thought and empathy before making such analogies.
I need to choose my words sensitively and thoughtfully, yes. You need to take them in the interested and constructive spirit that I intended.
Now that Patel and Sunak are leading the Indian community off the labour reservation, they can expect the same treatment as the Jewish community recently - minority non grata.
Witness labour MP Mark Hendrick saying Indian Asians are 'over reprented' in senior medical and dentistry jobs.
I refer you to my post yesterday saying exactly this, which was then dismissed by a few of our lefty commenters (though thankfully not even close to all). I'm genuinely worried that racism towards Indians is going to be stepped up by the left who will see us as enemies of their agenda just as Jews are.
It is noticeable that when a lot of people talk about BAME issues, they really mean Black, because they sure as hell do not spend much time talking about the AME part of BAME. Not I think there's a great deal of validity in lumping together essentially every non-white person as though they all share the same views and experiences.
I think a lot of the AME part of the society had the same or similar life lesson taught to them by their parents "blaming white people for your issues isn't going to change anything so why bother". Lots of black people I know also live by a similar life lesson. It is noticeable that the rioters in the UK are much more white than the protestors asking for changes to policing.
Very important point. Glad to see it being made. If the most affluent and influential members of society are fully invested in something - e.g. state education - it will lead over time to an increase in standards. This is one of the strongest arguments against private schools.
I tend to agree with Casino - It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring....
Certainly if you're talking about 'the most affluent and influential'.
That will be a bummer for the kids given they will be at school Mon to Fri, 8 hours a day. And home schooling instead of school? I don't see a ton of that. That is quite a decision to take and imo will be something very few opt for (as now).
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
Fair enough and understood.
I cant honestly offer an unreserved apology but will say I should have handled it less aggressively and personally. Regardless of your intent I found it offensive and others will have done too.
I will take a break from posting for a while as not sure its productive. Will still lurk and enjoy reading comments.
I've also been at the local District Hospital this morning (more later, maybe).
Interesting little vignette. 2 shops were open inside - Costa and WH Smiths.
Costa are refusing to take cash. Point blank. Due to the risk.
OTOH, WHS have a self-service machine that refuses to handle your transaction unless you touch the screen with your finger to tell it how many carrier bags you have taken.
"Patient Experience" initial response: "You'll have to talk to WH Smiths directly; we wouldn't be able to deal with that."
After a bit of pressure, they agreed to talk to them but no formal reporting route exists. Interestingly, the nurse I mentioned it too was already reporting the thing up through management.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
In fairness there are quite a lot of housing-business unit combos that have gone up in my area of Kent (though obviously not as beautiful as the Dresden example), I should know as I live in one. It does seem this is seen as a way forward in many areas.
That said, there has to be a balance between the needs of the residents and the needs of the businesses. Most shops these days, for example, blast out music during their opening hours, potentially not great for those living on the floor immediately above etc.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently being locked down in a small, once beautiful, still partly beautiful, Scottish town. I think what might be needed is a bonfire of commercial landlordism (not a real bonfire), and for owner-occupiers to unite both shop and house, renting any additional accommodation to others.
The High Street is very paint-peely. There are many retail units empty on the High Street. One empty shop is advertising a rent of £30,000 PA for its two floors. How on earth is a small business in a small town to make that rent, after they've done up the shop, bought stock, paid staff, paid taxes, etc.?
On a more positive note, immediately off the High Street, where rents are clearly lower, the situation is a lot better with many independent shops seeming to make a go of it.
The problem here, as I see it, is commercial landlords charging exorbitant rent, not seeming to care very much whether the building is occupied, and not looking after the fabric of the building (partly because the building often isn't generating income). Perhaps I'm wrong, but surely the tax system could be usefully employed to encourage more beneficial behaviour.
Most of these shops will be let on an FRI (full repairing and insuring) basis which puts the obligation on the tenants. The more sophisticated will have an obligation to paint externally every 3-4 years. But legal obligations are one thing and practicalities another. Most of the tenants will have marginal businesses at best (even in normal times) and imposing a dilapidations claim on them may well drive them out of business leaving the landlord with a vacant property and a potential rates bill in due course. Many landlords will sensibly choose to turn a blind eye until the end of the lease then do a deal with the tenant and pocket the money. The fundamental problem is that these properties do not generate a profit for anyone because the businesses in them struggle and generally fail within relatively short periods of time. This results in dilapidation and a reluctance to invest further capital. We have to accept that much of our current retail space will no longer be used as such and facilitate its conversion to more productive uses.
The actual issue is that the rent is £30,000 and the property was probably sold to a pension fund on a combination of that rent and the desired yield.
The pension fund would then prefer to keep the property empty rather than discovering that the actual market rent isn't £30,000 it's £10,000 which would require them to consolidate a loss.
Who in God's name does such an accounting fiction benefit ?
My partner was looking for commercial property to rent over the New Year in our village. A ground floor of a semi detached house was perfect. Was quoted a frankly ludicrous rent. When asked if they would negotiate told no. Because "that's the market rate." When asked why, if that was the market rate, had the previous occupant, a busy and competent hairdresser gone bust and it stood empty for 2 years? No answer was forthcoming. It's still vacant.
It could still get messy if League One doesn't start next season. The EFL statement from about a month ago was laying the foundations for not having relegation from the Championship if there wasn't a league for the relegated clubs to play in.
When I looked at things ages ago in league 2 it is very easy to see who was going to be promoted hit the playoffs and be relegated. In league 1 there is no sane way of doing it Coventry is just about clear but beneath them it literally could be anyone depending on the method used.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Or alternatively, cut class sizes in the state sector and watch as private schools close for lack of pupils?
Honestly, some people are really dumb.
Your solution would increase class sizes, at least in the short term, not reduce them.
I am not dumb. I think the dumb people are those who think that there will be money to cut class sizes in the state sector as long as the rich and powerful can opt out of it.
I am not convinced you are the best judge of your own ability in light of some of your more bizarre recent posts. Do you seriously think that causing a train wreck in education would help poor students? All that would happen under your proposals in the short term is an explosion in class sizes and the implosion of the teetering state sector, coupled with a sharp rise in the amount of tuition, or even 'home schooling,' paid for by wealthier parents. Who's going to suffer in that scenario? Hint - it isn't the rich.
Of course, Covid-19 coupled with pension changes is going to close a lot of private schools anyway, so in some regions (e.g. round here) it's very possible we will see what happens when they go. But if you want to get rid of private schools, you don't do it by dropping ban hammers to satisfy the personal prejudices of a lot of hardcore near-fascists like the Corbynista Labour party. You do it by making the state sector so good almost nobody will bother to pay large sums of money for an alternative. And the key to that is cutting class sizes.
Blair understood that, but never worked out how to actually achieve it (the solution was to raise taxes, but he couldn't bring himself to order Brown to do it). Gove and Cummings unfortunately did not, and their misguided reforms actually made matters worse by increasing teacher attrition rates.
I already said that I wasn't suggesting a ban, I don't think it would be feasible or consistent with human rights legislation, and it would most likely be too disruptive. I am simply saying that there is a reason the state sector is teetering, and that reason is that people of wealth and power don't care about it. If you have an alternative suggestion for getting state schools better resourced I'd love to hear it. Would love to know which of my posts you consider to be bizarre, I think I'm a pretty reasonable kind of person, certainly by PB standards.
This subject touches a nerve and I am glad you are having a bash at it. There is a great attachment to private schools from many PB posters who will at the same time maintain that equality of opportunity in education and life is one of their top priorities. For me, this does not scan at all, but there you go.
What you will find - I predict - is that in order to convince you will need to roll out a complete white paper which describes in close and compelling detail exactly how you will phase out private schools by disincentivization rather than compulsion over (say) 10 years and realize tremendous tangible benefits to all without a single negative impact, however transitory, on anything or anybody.
And even that didn't work when I did it.
Not that I'm frustrated or anything you understand.
I think a good place to start would be a royal commission on the whole education system to figure out where we are succeeding, where we are failing, what works internationally, how much money we want to spend on it and how it interacts with broader goals to increase social mobility and reduce social exclusion. Efforts should be made to have maximum political buy in and there should be a ten year programme of transformation that transcends party political divides. If the commission finds that private schools are a barrier to creating the kind of system we need then there should be a long term programme to deal with that. Nothing needs to be done hastily.
Now that Patel and Sunak are leading the Indian community off the labour reservation, they can expect the same treatment as the Jewish community recently - minority non grata.
Witness labour MP Mark Hendrick saying Indian Asians are 'over reprented' in senior medical and dentistry jobs.
I refer you to my post yesterday saying exactly this, which was then dismissed by a few of our lefty commenters (though thankfully not even close to all). I'm genuinely worried that racism towards Indians is going to be stepped up by the left who will see us as enemies of their agenda just as Jews are.
It is noticeable that when a lot of people talk about BAME issues, they really mean Black, because they sure as hell do not spend much time talking about the AME part of BAME. Not I think there's a great deal of validity in lumping together essentially every non-white person as though they all share the same views and experiences.
I think a lot of the AME part of the society had the same or similar life lesson taught to them by their parents "blaming white people for your issues isn't going to change anything so why bother". Lots of black people I know also live by a similar life lesson. It is noticeable that the rioters in the UK are much more white than the protestors asking for changes to policing.
I didn't get to say anything yesterday as it was crazy busy at work, but your comment on this situation was spot on IMO.
It does seem very relevant to the post earlier by @Fox327 on pols vs scientists.
This may highlight a problem within the government - a lack of scientific expertise. Does the government have to take on trust everything the scientists say because it has no scientific expertise of its own? Does the government have to believe everything that lawyers say because they are lawyers? Sir Keir Starmer is a lawyer. Does the government agree with what he says?
No, the government has its own legal experts, including the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney General. They take primary responsibility for advising the government on legal matters, including Brexit.
There is a culture in the UK that scientists are experts who are not part of the select group from which senior politicians are drawn. Margaret Thatcher was an exception, but she did go to Oxford and later became a lawyer. Therefore, an Oxford Classics graduate would not dream of disagreeing with scientific advisors - it simply would not be done by a gentleman like Boris Johnson.
Consequently, the government has lost control of the government to a group of disparate scientists who have who knows what personal agendas. Perhaps the time has come for the Chief Scientific Advisor to be a member of the government, i.e. a minister, even a cabinet minister. That way the government could get the benefit of scientific advice while remaining in control of the development of policy. The problem is that not many Conservative MPs have a suitable background but there are a few, e.g. Steve Baker.
I tried wading into an argument with PG Tips and Yorkshire Tea on Twitter this morning.
That was a mistake. I basically disagree with everyone.
Twitter is utterly moronic.
You are aware it all started because a Right wing facist tried to go point scoring using Yorkshire Tea as an example.
Yorkshire tea not being idiots didn't want to get involved in something that wasn't their concern but had no choice but to which resulted in their response.
So if you are on the anti- Yorkshire tea / PG Tips side of the argument you've proved Sunil's previous statement about you to be correct.
An excellent thread header and, dare I say it, slightly more temperate than some of the posts below the line yesterday. Apart from the small flaw of killing all the lawyers it is hard to find much to disagree with so I will simply add more detail on legal risks. S1(3) of the Occupiers Liability Act 1984 provides: (3)An occupier of premises owes a duty to another (not being his visitor) in respect of any such risk as is referred to in subsection (1) above if — (a) he is aware of the danger or has reasonable grounds to believe that it exists; (b) he knows or has reasonable grounds to believe that the other is in the vicinity of the danger concerned or that he may come into the vicinity of the danger (in either case, whether the other has lawful authority for being in that vicinity or not); and (c) the risk is one against which, in all the circumstances of the case, he may reasonably be expected to offer the other some protection. The obligation is to take reasonable care. So, applying this to Covid a premises that failed to take reasonable care to ensure that the tables were cleaned between customers etc could and arguably should be liable. Showing that the establishment has taken reasonable care would be a defence, even if the customer was unlucky enough to catch Covid there (and good luck with proving that by the way). An establishment that allowed people to jostle at the bar to get their drinks may have a more difficult time defending such a claim. So there would still be an obligation to comply with the guidance but there would be no strict liability for an infection.
We are all allowed to be intemperate now and again, especially when it is our livelihoods at stake ..... 😀
Very important point. Glad to see it being made. If the most affluent and influential members of society are fully invested in something - e.g. state education - it will lead over time to an increase in standards. This is one of the strongest arguments against private schools.
I tend to agree with Casino - It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring....
Certainly if you're talking about 'the most affluent and influential'.
That will be a bummer for the kids given they will be at school Mon to Fri, 8 hours a day. And home schooling instead of school? I don't see a ton of that. That is quite a decision to take and imo will be something very few opt for (as now).
No, you don't at the moment, as there's no incentive for it. The abolition of private schools would likely alter that - and the economics definitely favour what MaxPB suggested above.
To be clear, I am no enthusiast for private education - I attended a boarding school and loathed it; my children went to state schools. But I think there are far better avenues for enthusiasts of educational reform than abolition.
FWIW, I'd concentrate at the beginning - early years' teaching impacts everything that follows it - and beyond that would look at greatly expanding the provision of large sixth form colleges, which if done well might render grammar schools unnecessary/unviable.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you trying to equate changing tastes in architecture, with a monument celebrating a bloke who made his fortune in human trafficking?
If I were a North Korean citizen who's family had been sent to the camps or starved to death, I'd be pretty pissed off if I had to walk past a statue of the dear leader on a daily basis.
I could just as easily argue that it is wrong equate vast buildings where communities are still forced to live, and therefore arguably still inflict misery, with a small figurative statue of a long dead man. One inspires idle curiosity, one inflicts daily despair.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Why? The Education budget would remain the same, and you'd have 7-10% extra pupils and no extra funding. They'd increase. And some teachers in the private sector would be put out of work too.
You might argue that the middle-class would then agitate for a higher education budget, as indeed they might, but the Government would have even less money.
It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring.
Policy in this country is largely set by the preferences of the upper middle class, especially on issues that they care about disproportionately, like education. We know that they favour smaller class sizes, because that is what the private sector offers them to obtain their fees. If they were forced to send their kids to state schools I have no doubt that the weight of influential public opinion would soon channel more resources to education, lowering class sizes and raising standards. It will never happen, I am not even saying it should happen, but I have no doubt that it would have a net positive effect on education outcomes in this country.
Very important point. Glad to see it being made. If the most affluent and influential members of society are fully invested in something - e.g. state education - it will lead over time to an increase in standards. This is one of the strongest arguments against private schools.
They're not invested in education per se; they're invested in carving out advantages for their own children to give them the best chance in life. Banning private schools will just exacerbate the current differences between good state schools and bad state schools.
There will also be a mass increase in the use of private tutors, using the money they saved from private education. The increased use of Zoom et al for sessions will help with this and mean that the really in-demand tutors (ie the ones involved in setting the papers) will be able to reach more people, but this won't extend far enough to help the lower classes.
If fewer or no private schools would make the state sector worse and less equal, we should have more private schools then?
I tried wading into an argument with PG Tips and Yorkshire Tea on Twitter this morning.
That was a mistake. I basically disagree with everyone.
Twitter is utterly moronic.
You are aware it all started because a Right wing facist tried to go point scoring using Yorkshire Tea as an example.
Yorkshire tea not being idiots didn't want to get involved in something that wasn't their concern but had no choice but to which resulted in their response.
So if you are on the anti- Yorkshire tea / PG Tips side of the argument you've proved Sunil's previous statement about you to be correct.
I don't think you can make that claim without seeing what was said.
Comments
But 'in theory' is the operative term here - because in all honesty what do you rate the chances of this ever happening?
I cant honestly offer an unreserved apology but will say I should have handled it less aggressively and personally. Regardless of your intent I found it offensive and others will have done too.
I will take a break from posting for a while as not sure its productive. Will still lurk and enjoy reading comments.
That said, there has to be a balance between the needs of the residents and the needs of the businesses. Most shops these days, for example, blast out music during their opening hours, potentially not great for those living on the floor immediately above etc.
Encouraging the closure of private schools (via, for example the abolition of their charitable status) might over time, after the immediate stress effects have worked through, marginally improve schools in prosperous areas, but is unlikely to do much at all for those (particularly primaries) in disadvantaged areas.
The 'rich and powerful' will continue to 'opt out' by other means.
It will do nothing for the hard pressed teachers with classes of 28-30, half a dozen of whom might have been in special schools a decade or so back.
That said, LEAs being hopelessly corrupt and incompetent and being more interested in creaming off money for their lovely Mercedes cars rather than spending it on children's education doesn't help either.
Sorry, was thinking back to days in the oil industry.
There will also be a mass increase in the use of private tutors, using the money they saved from private education. The increased use of Zoom et al for sessions will help with this and mean that the really in-demand tutors (ie the ones involved in setting the papers) will be able to reach more people, but this won't extend far enough to help the lower classes.
https://twitter.com/KayBurley/status/1270243672353837064
Apart from the small flaw of killing all the lawyers it is hard to find much to disagree with so I will simply add more detail on legal risks.
S1(3) of the Occupiers Liability Act 1984 provides:
(3)An occupier of premises owes a duty to another (not being his visitor) in respect of any such risk as is referred to in subsection (1) above if —
(a) he is aware of the danger or has reasonable grounds to believe that it exists;
(b) he knows or has reasonable grounds to believe that the other is in the vicinity of the danger concerned or that he may come into the vicinity of the danger (in either case, whether the other has lawful authority for being in that vicinity or not); and
(c) the risk is one against which, in all the circumstances of the case, he may reasonably be expected to offer the other some protection.
The obligation is to take reasonable care.
So, applying this to Covid a premises that failed to take reasonable care to ensure that the tables were cleaned between customers etc could and arguably should be liable. Showing that the establishment has taken reasonable care would be a defence, even if the customer was unlucky enough to catch Covid there (and good luck with proving that by the way). An establishment that allowed people to jostle at the bar to get their drinks may have a more difficult time defending such a claim. So there would still be an obligation to comply with the guidance but there would be no strict liability for an infection.
Personally, although I found it ironic I didn't think it was hypocritical. After all, if you start pondering about where money came from originally absolutely none of it is clean. Most of Britain's wealth now, for example, comes from our banking system and how many banks can honestly say they check the ethics of the clients?
Anyway, lunch, then more teaching. Have a good afternoon.
and if you want an example of how transparently fake it is - also, look here.
The High Street is very paint-peely. There are many retail units empty on the High Street. One empty shop is advertising a rent of £30,000 PA for its two floors. How on earth is a small business in a small town to make that rent, after they've done up the shop, bought stock, paid staff, paid taxes, etc.?
On a more positive note, immediately off the High Street, where rents are clearly lower, the situation is a lot better with many independent shops seeming to make a go of it.
The problem here, as I see it, is commercial landlords charging exorbitant rent, not seeming to care very much whether the building is occupied, and not looking after the fabric of the building (partly because the building often isn't generating income). Perhaps I'm wrong, but surely the tax system could be usefully employed to encourage more beneficial behaviour.
It's far more likely there'd be a boom in home-schooling, private tuition, coaching and mentoring....
Certainly if you're talking about 'the most affluent and influential'.
There's a recurring meme in Glasgow that a lot of the tenement housing (eg in the Gorbals) was of such poor quality that it couldn't be upgraded or preserved, so the year zero guys were allowed to run riot in the 50s and 60s on the basis that something had to be be done. That seems quite odd nowadays when expensive extreme measures in terms of new foundations and shoring up are taken to keep tenements literally on the road. Also strange that since the tenement is absolutely THE vernacular style of housing in Glasgow and other Scottish cities hardly anything is done to faithfully reproduce it as in the form of the Dresden developments highlighted by William Glenn, or much of Berlin, a city with which I'm slightly familiar.
Is that how your thinking is going here?
Essentially, people are a cost to local government. They then tried to shift costs via* businesses.
*The theory being that business would charge more, and the residents (in effect) pay for the local services that way....
But part of the problem is split ownership - for instance trying to get a shop owner to pay up for a share in the repair of the roof which only directly affects the flat owner and occupier. Pedestiranisation and other things which damage amenity - such as the music you cite, but also demolition of neighbouring buildings and replacement with less appropriate stuff such as car parks - are also problems for asttracting residents.
It truly boggles the mind.
What slightly bothers me is that now we've woken up a lot more to looking after our heritage, but we've fallen into the trap of thinking that the 60's carbuncles somehow deserve preservation too.
There's 5 months to go and therefore a non-trivial risk that something I cannot possibly foresee happens.
But other than this, TOAST.
Followed by multiple months and years of trying to avoid jail.
The fundamental problem is that these properties do not generate a profit for anyone because the businesses in them struggle and generally fail within relatively short periods of time. This results in dilapidation and a reluctance to invest further capital. We have to accept that much of our current retail space will no longer be used as such and facilitate its conversion to more productive uses.
I wouldn't lay all the blame on landlords, as local planners and councils have reacted no more quickly, and the rating system still reflects the commercial realities of a decade or more back.
Indeed it's far more difficult for any given landlord to adapt in isolation than it would be for forward thinking planners to rethink their towns.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
I'm shocked, I tell you...
https://hillreporter.com/trumps-pollster-gives-loaded-questions-to-respondents-to-make-impeachment-look-unpopular-analysis-49337
“Historic precedent has always been that to begin an impeachment inquiry the House of Representatives has always held a vote,” the poll question begins. “Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats are now breaking with precedent to conduct a purely partisan impeachment. In your opinion do you think that unless Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats hold a vote, the President is right NOT to cooperate with this inquiry?”...
Trump's pollsters are the greatest.
I'm not entirely anti brutalism, I quite like the South Bank for its absolute unwillingness to ingratiate for example, and the likes of Poundbury leave me a little queasy.
edit: I see the brave new plan for Princes St is from the 60s, still wouldn't put it past them today though.
The pension fund would then prefer to keep the property empty rather than discovering that the actual market rent isn't £30,000 it's £10,000 which would require them to consolidate a loss.
There's a well known poem about leverburgh by someone like Hugh MacDiarmid. Google seems not to know about it. It is striking how enraging it is these days not to be able to track that sort of thing down in 2 seconds.
Leverburgh was meant to be
The hub of the fishing industry;
All that remained at Lever’s death
Was a waste of money and a waste of breath....
I think that "house guest" is an unwise phrase to use. But the British expats I cite above are house guests in the loose sort of way that I think CR means. And they warrant our disapproval. And I wouldn`t call Bahraini or Spanish people racist in pointing this out.
Witness labour MP Mark Hendrick saying Indian Asians are 'over reprented' in senior medical and dentistry jobs.
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/aunt-julia/
That is large sectors of our economy.
Are we sure the Republicans are the stupid, crazy ones?
What you will find - I predict - is that in order to convince you will need to roll out a complete white paper which describes in close and compelling detail exactly how you will phase out private schools by disincentivization rather than compulsion over (say) 10 years and realize tremendous tangible benefits to all without a single negative impact, however transitory, on anything or anybody.
And even that didn't work when I did it.
Not that I'm frustrated or anything you understand.
What I’m not clear on is whether this was genuinely a real problem or if it was only a handful of activists getting offended on their behalf with their priorities and concerns being rather different.
The majority Labour council with a BAME Mayor had already decided a new plaque with a more honest description of his history was a better solution as it allowed an ongoing debate about him, his legacy and Bristol’s history.
There’s a difference between choosing to be offended and something being intrinsically offensive. Sometimes the boundaries of that distinction aren’t clear.
I’d like to explore that further. You’d prefer to insinuate and cast stones.
Nevertheless if I was a public figure I’d probably be resigning by the end of the day. What would happen is people like @kinabalu @kamski and @noneoftheabove would whip up a twitterstorm about it, selectively quote it, ascribe a motive, demand action and then the BBC/C4 would pick up on it and report it. And then authority figures would be challenged as to why I was still in post. It would matter about the nuance. Most wouldn’t care.
It does explain why so few people in authority want to challenge simple assumptions in complex ways in highly emotional times.
Why take the risk? The upside is minimal and the downside huge.
Though once in a dozen or so episodes it actually worked for the coyote - and similarly the owners are hoping for unlikely event of a greater fool turning up and relieving them of their overvalued asset.
Thank you for making my point for me.
I've also been at the local District Hospital this morning (more later, maybe).
Interesting little vignette. 2 shops were open inside - Costa and WH Smiths.
Costa are refusing to take cash. Point blank. Due to the risk.
OTOH, WHS have a self-service machine that refuses to handle your transaction unless you touch the screen with your finger to tell it how many carrier bags you have taken.
"Patient Experience" initial response: "You'll have to talk to WH Smiths directly; we wouldn't be able to deal with that."
After a bit of pressure, they agreed to talk to them but no formal reporting route exists. Interestingly, the nurse I mentioned it too was already reporting the thing up through management.
Was quoted a frankly ludicrous rent.
When asked if they would negotiate told no. Because "that's the market rate."
When asked why, if that was the market rate, had the previous occupant, a busy and competent hairdresser gone bust and it stood empty for 2 years? No answer was forthcoming.
It's still vacant.
I'm not a fan of Colston. But its not where they start, but where they finish, thats the problem.
Churchill? Cromwell?
That was a mistake. I basically disagree with everyone.
Twitter is utterly moronic.
Don't worry, I'll get my coat.
No, the government has its own legal experts, including the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney General. They take primary responsibility for advising the government on legal matters, including Brexit.
There is a culture in the UK that scientists are experts who are not part of the select group from which senior politicians are drawn. Margaret Thatcher was an exception, but she did go to Oxford and later became a lawyer. Therefore, an Oxford Classics graduate would not dream of disagreeing with scientific advisors - it simply would not be done by a gentleman like Boris Johnson.
Consequently, the government has lost control of the government to a group of disparate scientists who have who knows what personal agendas. Perhaps the time has come for the Chief Scientific Advisor to be a member of the government, i.e. a minister, even a cabinet minister. That way the government could get the benefit of scientific advice while remaining in control of the development of policy. The problem is that not many Conservative MPs have a suitable background but there are a few, e.g. Steve Baker.
It's taken less than 36 hours.
Yorkshire tea not being idiots didn't want to get involved in something that wasn't their concern but had no choice but to which resulted in their response.
So if you are on the anti- Yorkshire tea / PG Tips side of the argument you've proved Sunil's previous statement about you to be correct.
To be clear, I am no enthusiast for private education - I attended a boarding school and loathed it; my children went to state schools. But I think there are far better avenues for enthusiasts of educational reform than abolition.
FWIW, I'd concentrate at the beginning - early years' teaching impacts everything that follows it - and beyond that would look at greatly expanding the provision of large sixth form colleges, which if done well might render grammar schools unnecessary/unviable.