Apropos nothing else my son has his 3 interviews for PPE at St Annes on Monday. Going to be a slightly nervous weekend.
Fingers crossed for him. Presumably these are virtual interviews? Difficult both for your son and for the dons, I would think.
Yes, all virtual. Which is a great shame. He is in a very strong year at his school and 7 of them have Oxbridge interviews, 5 at Oxford. Normally they would all be going down on the train together and getting a proper feel of the college etc. as well as sharing their anxieties.
I agree it will be tough for the Dons too. Much harder to get a proper feel on someone on a screen in my experience.
Given the limited evidence for the predictive power of interviews, I'd have dropped them completely. Mind you, I never went to Oxford. Good luck to the @DavidL 7.
Many thanks.
To state the bleeding obvious, there might be a case for checking his connection beforehand, making sure dad is not using all the wifi bandwidth next door, camera works, microphone works, there is sufficient contrast between him and the background, no embarrassing books behind him, enough soft furnishings to soften the audio. If you've got more than one laptop, compare them all.
And the same goes for anyone making Zoom calls or similar.
A selection of the interviewer's books in the backdrop probably wouldn't hurt!
Coronavirus cases increased in 20 of Wales’s 22 local authority areas on Thursday, with a “rising tide” of infections seen in both urban and rural areas, health minister Vaughan Gething said.
On the back of what, 17 last week?
The different national lockdown regimes to allow petty nationalistic point-scoring have been pathetic.
I am surprised at your calm non-partisan analysis. Has someone hijacked your account?
Mr Urquhart does seem rather enthusiastic as to our dropping like flies here in Wales.
Whereas, I agree Drakeford is an idiot, I don't want to be a statistic used to prove it. For what it's worth I think the responses to Covid across the four home nations have been universally pretty piss-poor, as they have across Europe and North America.
Why are people saying the 2 week firebreak was a bad idea?
Surely without it the situation now would be worse than it is, no?
Because its useless at worst and counterproductive at best as was called out at the time.
A fortnight just isn't that long to drive down numbers. Then combine that with the fact that people party and have "last nights of freedom" before the fortnight and then have "hooray free from Covid lockdown" parties afterwards and you've achieved diddly squat apart from deeply damaging the businesses that had to shut down and throw away all their stock etc.
But oh well, at least there was tape stopping people from buying a new kettle from a supermarket if theirs broke during the fortnight.
Contrast with England - did it for twice as long giving time for case numbers to actually drop, then put stricter tiers in place afterwards.
Ok. Schooling me there, I confess. Quite the role reversal. My pandemic following dial has been slipping for some time now. Still I'd have thought the aggregate net impact on infections of a 14 day Lockdown would be a reduction compared to the counterfactual of No Lockdown. Is Drakeford admitting this is not the case?
Just extrapolating the timeline from before the firebreak; cases in Wales would probably be 3-4x higher than they currently are if there were no firebreak.
And what no-one knows or will ever know is what numbers would be like if the firebreaks had occured when SAGE suggested, aligned with half term. They were never proposed as one off fixes that would last forever, yet get judged as if they were.
George Russell sets the fastest lap in Free Practice 1.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha Bottas.
And ha ha ha Lewis if Russell goes pole, win, fastest lap?
Hamilton needs someone challenging him. Bottas just isn't quick enough. If Russell beats Bottas they should ditch Valtteri and offer him to Williams as a swap deal.
Yes. Bottas started the season well but has really dropped off. But my point is, if this young replacement gets into Lewis' car and performs as well as or better than him, this would not help the HAM = GOAT case.
One race doesn't make for 7 championships. Hamilton has won multiple titles in multiple teams in multiple formula. I don't think you can every accurately compare drivers from different eras and formulas because the cars are so different. Yes I think Hamilton easily demolishes Michael Schumacher. But the number of titles isn't the big thing its how you win. Which is why however epic Ayrton Senna was he wasn't even the best driver of his era never mind in the all time list.
As Nate Silver said yesterday be very wary of these Georgia polls, they imply a much lower GOP turnout than at the Presidential election.
Which might happen given the orange hued Love Object is not on the ballot for this.
That will lower Democratic turnout too and the prospect of AOC and the far left driving the agenda will push GOP turnout once Biden is confirmed as EC winner by the EC on Dec 14th
There is no prospect of that, except in the fevered imagination of the Trumpaloopas.
A Republican win would mean at least two years of legislative standstill, if not outright budget sabotage.
It would mean Biden forced to compromise with the GOP, not the Democrats in control of every branch of Federal Government and AOC and Pelosi pushing the agenda leading to Tea Party 2 with bells on and a huge conservative backlash in the 2022 midterms
There is no compromise with the GOP - did you not follow Obama's presidency at all ? And that was when they were relatively moderate compared to the present incarnation. As has been pointed out to you above, a 50/50 Senate (with a Harris casting vote) would still need the votes of the right of centre Democrats to get any legislation through. The chances of AOC "pushing the agenda" are zero. A Republican majority led by McConnell would block everything, as they did before.
Yes, it's a nonsense - Manchin won't vote for court expansion for instance.
As Nate Silver said yesterday be very wary of these Georgia polls, they imply a much lower GOP turnout than at the Presidential election.
Which might happen given the orange hued Love Object is not on the ballot for this.
That will lower Democratic turnout too and the prospect of AOC and the far left driving the agenda will push GOP turnout once Biden is confirmed as EC winner by the EC on Dec 14th
There is no prospect of that, except in the fevered imagination of the Trumpaloopas.
A Republican win would mean at least two years of legislative standstill, if not outright budget sabotage.
It would mean Biden forced to compromise with the GOP, not the Democrats in control of every branch of Federal Government and AOC and Pelosi pushing the agenda leading to Tea Party 2 with bells on and a huge conservative backlash in the 2022 midterms
There is no compromise with the GOP - did you not follow Obama's presidency at all ? And that was when they were relatively moderate compared to the present incarnation. As has been pointed out to you above, a 50/50 Senate (with a Harris casting vote) would still need the votes of the right of centre Democrats to get any legislation through. The chances of AOC "pushing the agenda" are zero. A Republican majority led by McConnell would block everything, as they did before.
Yes, it's a nonsense - Manchin won't vote for court expansion for instance.
If the Democrats win all 3 branches of government the GOP will win a landslide in the 2022 midterms that will make 2010 look like a damp squib, Americans voted to get rid of Trump, narrowly, that was it, they did not vote for any shift left at all and certainly not on cultural matters
Impressive predictive skills. How was Trump's margin in Orange County California this time out compared to 2016?
Irrelevant as California is now safe Democratic anyway, Trump did however hold Florida and Ohio, the first losing presidential candidate to do since 1960
I could have sworn someone on here made a firm prediction about Trump going to do much better in OC this time round yet in the end he lost by an even larger margin than last time.
Whoever it was, we best take their predictions with a pinch of salt this time round.
Maybe you could help me track down the prediction.
Clinton won Orange by 51% to 42% in 2016, the latest numbers have Biden on 53% in Orange but Trump on 44.5%.
So I was in fact correct and Trump has done better in Orange County with a higher voteshare there than he did in 2016, so put that in your pompous, patronising pipe and smoke it!!!
He's really off the pace recently. I am wondering whether, even if this late stage, his seat is safe for next year.
It would need for Mercedes to buy Bottas out and also pay Williams compensation to get Russell. It's probably not worth it, but it does make him a dead cert for 2022.
Maybe, but if Russell wins on Sunday they might want to think about it. They will be very conscious that Hamilton is not going to go on for ever and right now Verstappen is looking the next big thing.
So we are all going to reduced to the tiers we should be on then for Christmas? Not. A. Chance.
Mammy knows best.
So in Angus we currently have 51 cases per 100k in the last week which means we are about to fall out the bottom of tier 1. We are currently in tier 3. It is nuts.
One useful aspect of a relatively stable tier system in Scotland is that you can actually measure the effects of each over time. If you are happy with the current level of cases you want Tier 3 (actually a very gradual decline); if you need to get cases down it's Tier 4 / lockdown; if you go to Tier 2, cases will rise, as has happened in most previously Tier 2 areas including, I think, Angus.
On current compliance levels. Hopefully a vaccine will see the edge coming off these Tier levels.
This might seem a bit depressing but getting a virus that has a natural R rate of about 3.5 down to 1 takes a fair bit of work and care. It's what it is.
Incidentally this chart shows why a firebreak was both necessary and effective for Wales. The problem wasn't the firebreak; it was that Wales didn't continue with sufficiently rigorous interventions after the firebreak was over
That's certainly very good evidence of the effectiveness of lockdowns, if nothing else.
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
There is no doubt a solid PHD thesis somewhere on this topic with randomized trials, placebos, independent observers, the works.
Coronavirus cases increased in 20 of Wales’s 22 local authority areas on Thursday, with a “rising tide” of infections seen in both urban and rural areas, health minister Vaughan Gething said.
On the back of what, 17 last week?
The different national lockdown regimes to allow petty nationalistic point-scoring have been pathetic.
I am surprised at your calm non-partisan analysis. Has someone hijacked your account?
Mr Urquhart does seem rather enthusiastic as to our dropping like flies here in Wales.
Whereas, I agree Drakeford is an idiot, I don't want to be a statistic used to prove it. For what it's worth I think the responses to Covid across the four home nations have been universally pretty piss-poor, as they have across Europe and North America.
Why are people saying the 2 week firebreak was a bad idea?
Surely without it the situation now would be worse than it is, no?
Because its useless at worst and counterproductive at best as was called out at the time.
A fortnight just isn't that long to drive down numbers. Then combine that with the fact that people party and have "last nights of freedom" before the fortnight and then have "hooray free from Covid lockdown" parties afterwards and you've achieved diddly squat apart from deeply damaging the businesses that had to shut down and throw away all their stock etc.
But oh well, at least there was tape stopping people from buying a new kettle from a supermarket if theirs broke during the fortnight.
Contrast with England - did it for twice as long giving time for case numbers to actually drop, then put stricter tiers in place afterwards.
Ok. Schooling me there, I confess. Quite the role reversal. My pandemic following dial has been slipping for some time now. Still I'd have thought the aggregate net impact on infections of a 14 day Lockdown would be a reduction compared to the counterfactual of No Lockdown. Is Drakeford admitting this is not the case?
Just extrapolating the timeline from before the firebreak; cases in Wales would probably be 3-4x higher than they currently are if there were no firebreak.
And what no-one knows or will ever know is what numbers would be like if the firebreaks had occured when SAGE suggested, aligned with half term. They were never proposed as one off fixes that would last forever, yet get judged as if they were.
Drakeford was adamant that there would be only one firebreak and his biggest error was to allow everyone to go back to normal the day we came out
The activity in our area was crazy and I said it before that we even experienced traffic queues going into town (very rare) and most everyone acted as if covid was over
There is only one person responsible for that and it is Drakeford
Apropos nothing else my son has his 3 interviews for PPE at St Annes on Monday. Going to be a slightly nervous weekend.
Fingers crossed for him. Presumably these are virtual interviews? Difficult both for your son and for the dons, I would think.
Yes, all virtual. Which is a great shame. He is in a very strong year at his school and 7 of them have Oxbridge interviews, 5 at Oxford. Normally they would all be going down on the train together and getting a proper feel of the college etc. as well as sharing their anxieties.
I agree it will be tough for the Dons too. Much harder to get a proper feel on someone on a screen in my experience.
Given the limited evidence for the predictive power of interviews, I'd have dropped them completely. Mind you, I never went to Oxford. Good luck to the @DavidL 7.
Many thanks.
To state the bleeding obvious, there might be a case for checking his connection beforehand, making sure dad is not using all the wifi bandwidth next door, camera works, microphone works, there is sufficient contrast between him and the background, no embarrassing books behind him, enough soft furnishings to soften the audio. If you've got more than one laptop, compare them all.
And the same goes for anyone making Zoom calls or similar.
A selection of the interviewer's books in the backdrop probably wouldn't hurt!
Word of warning [edit] - it has to be a genuine interest. Dons spot bullshit like Scatophaga flies do, only they don't like it nearly so much.
And always, always be able to back it up convincingly when they ask, as they might.
I turned up for my interview with a bag from the UNiversity Bookshop and a parasitology book in it - but I was able to speak convincingly about why it was interesting and why I was so pleased to have it ...
As Nate Silver said yesterday be very wary of these Georgia polls, they imply a much lower GOP turnout than at the Presidential election.
Which might happen given the orange hued Love Object is not on the ballot for this.
That will lower Democratic turnout too and the prospect of AOC and the far left driving the agenda will push GOP turnout once Biden is confirmed as EC winner by the EC on Dec 14th
There is no prospect of that, except in the fevered imagination of the Trumpaloopas.
A Republican win would mean at least two years of legislative standstill, if not outright budget sabotage.
It would mean Biden forced to compromise with the GOP, not the Democrats in control of every branch of Federal Government and AOC and Pelosi pushing the agenda leading to Tea Party 2 with bells on and a huge conservative backlash in the 2022 midterms
There is no compromise with the GOP - did you not follow Obama's presidency at all ? And that was when they were relatively moderate compared to the present incarnation. As has been pointed out to you above, a 50/50 Senate (with a Harris casting vote) would still need the votes of the right of centre Democrats to get any legislation through. The chances of AOC "pushing the agenda" are zero. A Republican majority led by McConnell would block everything, as they did before.
Yes, it's a nonsense - Manchin won't vote for court expansion for instance.
As Nate Silver said yesterday be very wary of these Georgia polls, they imply a much lower GOP turnout than at the Presidential election.
Which might happen given the orange hued Love Object is not on the ballot for this.
That will lower Democratic turnout too and the prospect of AOC and the far left driving the agenda will push GOP turnout once Biden is confirmed as EC winner by the EC on Dec 14th
There is no prospect of that, except in the fevered imagination of the Trumpaloopas.
A Republican win would mean at least two years of legislative standstill, if not outright budget sabotage.
It would mean Biden forced to compromise with the GOP, not the Democrats in control of every branch of Federal Government and AOC and Pelosi pushing the agenda leading to Tea Party 2 with bells on and a huge conservative backlash in the 2022 midterms
There is no compromise with the GOP - did you not follow Obama's presidency at all ? And that was when they were relatively moderate compared to the present incarnation. As has been pointed out to you above, a 50/50 Senate (with a Harris casting vote) would still need the votes of the right of centre Democrats to get any legislation through. The chances of AOC "pushing the agenda" are zero. A Republican majority led by McConnell would block everything, as they did before.
Yes, it's a nonsense - Manchin won't vote for court expansion for instance.
If the Democrats win all 3 branches of government the GOP will win a landslide in the 2022 midterms that will make 2010 look like a damp squib, Americans voted to get rid of Trump, narrowly, that was it, they did not vote for any shift left at all and certainly not on cultural matters
Impressive predictive skills. How was Trump's margin in Orange County California this time out compared to 2016?
Irrelevant as California is now safe Democratic anyway, Trump did however hold Florida and Ohio, the first losing presidential candidate to do since 1960
I could have sworn someone on here made a firm prediction about Trump going to do much better in OC this time round yet in the end he lost by an even larger margin than last time.
Whoever it was, we best take their predictions with a pinch of salt this time round.
Maybe you could help me track down the prediction.
Clinton won Orange by 51% to 42% in 2016, the latest numbers have Biden on 53% in Orange but Trump on 44.5%.
So I was in fact correct and Trump has done better in Orange County with a higher voteshare there than he did in 2016, so put that in your pompous, patronising pipe and smoke it!!!
Coronavirus cases increased in 20 of Wales’s 22 local authority areas on Thursday, with a “rising tide” of infections seen in both urban and rural areas, health minister Vaughan Gething said.
On the back of what, 17 last week?
The different national lockdown regimes to allow petty nationalistic point-scoring have been pathetic.
I am surprised at your calm non-partisan analysis. Has someone hijacked your account?
Mr Urquhart does seem rather enthusiastic as to our dropping like flies here in Wales.
Whereas, I agree Drakeford is an idiot, I don't want to be a statistic used to prove it. For what it's worth I think the responses to Covid across the four home nations have been universally pretty piss-poor, as they have across Europe and North America.
Why are people saying the 2 week firebreak was a bad idea?
Surely without it the situation now would be worse than it is, no?
Because its useless at worst and counterproductive at best as was called out at the time.
A fortnight just isn't that long to drive down numbers. Then combine that with the fact that people party and have "last nights of freedom" before the fortnight and then have "hooray free from Covid lockdown" parties afterwards and you've achieved diddly squat apart from deeply damaging the businesses that had to shut down and throw away all their stock etc.
But oh well, at least there was tape stopping people from buying a new kettle from a supermarket if theirs broke during the fortnight.
Contrast with England - did it for twice as long giving time for case numbers to actually drop, then put stricter tiers in place afterwards.
Ok. Schooling me there, I confess. Quite the role reversal. My pandemic following dial has been slipping for some time now. Still I'd have thought the aggregate net impact on infections of a 14 day Lockdown would be a reduction compared to the counterfactual of No Lockdown. Is Drakeford admitting this is not the case?
Just extrapolating the timeline from before the firebreak; cases in Wales would probably be 3-4x higher than they currently are if there were no firebreak.
And what no-one knows or will ever know is what numbers would be like if the firebreaks had occured when SAGE suggested, aligned with half term. They were never proposed as one off fixes that would last forever, yet get judged as if they were.
Drakeford was adamant that there would be only one firebreak and his biggest error was to allow everyone to go back to normal the day we came out
The activity in our area was crazy and I said it before that we even experienced traffic queues going into town (very rare) and most everyone acted as if covid was over
There is only one person responsible for that and it is Drakeford
He may have implemented it badly, I dont know, from outside certainly the supermarket fiasco suggests attention to detail wasnt any stronger in the Welsh govt than it is in Westminster. My support is for the SAGE firebreaks, as SAGE intended, not what Drakeford did (or didnt do).
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
A bit of a generalisation, the cleaning stuff at No 10 apparently thought Fettes and Oxford educated Blair was wonderful but hated Kirckaldy High School and Edinburgh educated Brown who was extremely bad tempered and rude at times
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
LOL, I'll stop there, you've given me a good laugh by saying you're not generalising, and then, in the very same paragraph, generalising like mad.
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
A bit of a generalisation, the cleaning stuff at No 10 apparently thought Fettes and Oxford educated Blair was wonderful but hated Kirckaldy High School and Edinburgh educated Brown who was extremely bad tempered and rude at times
By "the cleaning stuff" I assume you mean Henry the Hoover?
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
LOL, I'll stop there, you've given me a good laugh by saying you're not generalising, and then, in the very same paragraph, generalising like mad.
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
Coronavirus cases increased in 20 of Wales’s 22 local authority areas on Thursday, with a “rising tide” of infections seen in both urban and rural areas, health minister Vaughan Gething said.
On the back of what, 17 last week?
The different national lockdown regimes to allow petty nationalistic point-scoring have been pathetic.
I am surprised at your calm non-partisan analysis. Has someone hijacked your account?
Mr Urquhart does seem rather enthusiastic as to our dropping like flies here in Wales.
Whereas, I agree Drakeford is an idiot, I don't want to be a statistic used to prove it. For what it's worth I think the responses to Covid across the four home nations have been universally pretty piss-poor, as they have across Europe and North America.
Why are people saying the 2 week firebreak was a bad idea?
Surely without it the situation now would be worse than it is, no?
Because its useless at worst and counterproductive at best as was called out at the time.
A fortnight just isn't that long to drive down numbers. Then combine that with the fact that people party and have "last nights of freedom" before the fortnight and then have "hooray free from Covid lockdown" parties afterwards and you've achieved diddly squat apart from deeply damaging the businesses that had to shut down and throw away all their stock etc.
But oh well, at least there was tape stopping people from buying a new kettle from a supermarket if theirs broke during the fortnight.
Contrast with England - did it for twice as long giving time for case numbers to actually drop, then put stricter tiers in place afterwards.
Ok. Schooling me there, I confess. Quite the role reversal. My pandemic following dial has been slipping for some time now. Still I'd have thought the aggregate net impact on infections of a 14 day Lockdown would be a reduction compared to the counterfactual of No Lockdown. Is Drakeford admitting this is not the case?
Just extrapolating the timeline from before the firebreak; cases in Wales would probably be 3-4x higher than they currently are if there were no firebreak.
And what no-one knows or will ever know is what numbers would be like if the firebreaks had occured when SAGE suggested, aligned with half term. They were never proposed as one off fixes that would last forever, yet get judged as if they were.
Drakeford was adamant that there would be only one firebreak and his biggest error was to allow everyone to go back to normal the day we came out
The activity in our area was crazy and I said it before that we even experienced traffic queues going into town (very rare) and most everyone acted as if covid was over
There is only one person responsible for that and it is Drakeford
He may have implemented it badly, I dont know, from outside certainly the supermarket fiasco suggests attention to detail wasnt any stronger in the Welsh govt than it is in Westminster. My support is for the SAGE firebreaks, as SAGE intended, not what Drakeford did (or didnt do).
I accept that and Drakeford demonstrated just how not to do it
Apropos nothing else my son has his 3 interviews for PPE at St Annes on Monday. Going to be a slightly nervous weekend.
Fingers crossed for him. Presumably these are virtual interviews? Difficult both for your son and for the dons, I would think.
Yes, all virtual. Which is a great shame. He is in a very strong year at his school and 7 of them have Oxbridge interviews, 5 at Oxford. Normally they would all be going down on the train together and getting a proper feel of the college etc. as well as sharing their anxieties.
I agree it will be tough for the Dons too. Much harder to get a proper feel on someone on a screen in my experience.
Given the limited evidence for the predictive power of interviews, I'd have dropped them completely. Mind you, I never went to Oxford. Good luck to the @DavidL 7.
Many thanks.
To state the bleeding obvious, there might be a case for checking his connection beforehand, making sure dad is not using all the wifi bandwidth next door, camera works, microphone works, there is sufficient contrast between him and the background, no embarrassing books behind him, enough soft furnishings to soften the audio. If you've got more than one laptop, compare them all.
And the same goes for anyone making Zoom calls or similar.
A selection of the interviewer's books in the backdrop probably wouldn't hurt!
Probably fatal. It's not about blatant gamesmanship, just making sure you are not handicapping yourself with a dodgy microphone or echoing that sounds like you are in the bath. (And applies to all remote calls.)
Or maybe a vaccine to protect the people who make up most of the deaths and hospitalised? I have a nagging suspicion that for some out there, when the crisis is over and they can no longer exert such huge levels of control on everyone's lives, there will be a profound emptiness.
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
It is almost as if they have a chip on their shoulder.....
As Nate Silver said yesterday be very wary of these Georgia polls, they imply a much lower GOP turnout than at the Presidential election.
Which might happen given the orange hued Love Object is not on the ballot for this.
That will lower Democratic turnout too and the prospect of AOC and the far left driving the agenda will push GOP turnout once Biden is confirmed as EC winner by the EC on Dec 14th
There is no prospect of that, except in the fevered imagination of the Trumpaloopas.
A Republican win would mean at least two years of legislative standstill, if not outright budget sabotage.
It would mean Biden forced to compromise with the GOP, not the Democrats in control of every branch of Federal Government and AOC and Pelosi pushing the agenda leading to Tea Party 2 with bells on and a huge conservative backlash in the 2022 midterms
There is no compromise with the GOP - did you not follow Obama's presidency at all ? And that was when they were relatively moderate compared to the present incarnation. As has been pointed out to you above, a 50/50 Senate (with a Harris casting vote) would still need the votes of the right of centre Democrats to get any legislation through. The chances of AOC "pushing the agenda" are zero. A Republican majority led by McConnell would block everything, as they did before.
Yes, it's a nonsense - Manchin won't vote for court expansion for instance.
As Nate Silver said yesterday be very wary of these Georgia polls, they imply a much lower GOP turnout than at the Presidential election.
Which might happen given the orange hued Love Object is not on the ballot for this.
That will lower Democratic turnout too and the prospect of AOC and the far left driving the agenda will push GOP turnout once Biden is confirmed as EC winner by the EC on Dec 14th
There is no prospect of that, except in the fevered imagination of the Trumpaloopas.
A Republican win would mean at least two years of legislative standstill, if not outright budget sabotage.
It would mean Biden forced to compromise with the GOP, not the Democrats in control of every branch of Federal Government and AOC and Pelosi pushing the agenda leading to Tea Party 2 with bells on and a huge conservative backlash in the 2022 midterms
There is no compromise with the GOP - did you not follow Obama's presidency at all ? And that was when they were relatively moderate compared to the present incarnation. As has been pointed out to you above, a 50/50 Senate (with a Harris casting vote) would still need the votes of the right of centre Democrats to get any legislation through. The chances of AOC "pushing the agenda" are zero. A Republican majority led by McConnell would block everything, as they did before.
Yes, it's a nonsense - Manchin won't vote for court expansion for instance.
If the Democrats win all 3 branches of government the GOP will win a landslide in the 2022 midterms that will make 2010 look like a damp squib, Americans voted to get rid of Trump, narrowly, that was it, they did not vote for any shift left at all and certainly not on cultural matters
Impressive predictive skills. How was Trump's margin in Orange County California this time out compared to 2016?
Irrelevant as California is now safe Democratic anyway, Trump did however hold Florida and Ohio, the first losing presidential candidate to do since 1960
I could have sworn someone on here made a firm prediction about Trump going to do much better in OC this time round yet in the end he lost by an even larger margin than last time.
Whoever it was, we best take their predictions with a pinch of salt this time round.
Maybe you could help me track down the prediction.
Clinton won Orange by 51% to 42% in 2016, the latest numbers have Biden on 53% in Orange but Trump on 44.5%.
So I was in fact correct and Trump has done better in Orange County with a higher voteshare there than he did in 2016, so put that in your pompous, patronising pipe and smoke it!!!
Current odds for the Dems taking both GA senate seats are quite long but I will bet with you at EVENS that they do.
Keep the stake modest - say TWELVE POUNDS + 50 PENCE.
Agreed, I think the GOP will hold at least one
Right you are. Done. That's £25 or quits then.
We just have to be careful you don't lose too many of these in a row, otherwise the "doubling" effect (like with Covid) will have you in the deep doo doo.
Apropos nothing else my son has his 3 interviews for PPE at St Annes on Monday. Going to be a slightly nervous weekend.
Fingers crossed for him. Presumably these are virtual interviews? Difficult both for your son and for the dons, I would think.
Yes, all virtual. Which is a great shame. He is in a very strong year at his school and 7 of them have Oxbridge interviews, 5 at Oxford. Normally they would all be going down on the train together and getting a proper feel of the college etc. as well as sharing their anxieties.
I agree it will be tough for the Dons too. Much harder to get a proper feel on someone on a screen in my experience.
Yes, the whole interview experience, including being dumped in an Oxford college just before Christmas with no one I knew was quite formative. Took away any fears I might have had of being dumped a few months later at university with no one I knew. It changed me, for the better.
When I had my interview, there was a written exam (maths) that formed part of the process in addition to two interviews. I wonder how those are being handled, if done at all? Hard to enforce no cheating on an online version. The feedback my school got strongly implied that I got the offer on the back of the exam performance, rather than my interviews, which I recall being quite poor (particularly the first, where I was intimidated and didn't give a very good account of myself at all, I suspect). Relying only on interview may give different results and favour those with more paid/school provided preparation and more of a sense that they really are good enough to be there.
Coronavirus cases increased in 20 of Wales’s 22 local authority areas on Thursday, with a “rising tide” of infections seen in both urban and rural areas, health minister Vaughan Gething said.
On the back of what, 17 last week?
The different national lockdown regimes to allow petty nationalistic point-scoring have been pathetic.
I am surprised at your calm non-partisan analysis. Has someone hijacked your account?
Mr Urquhart does seem rather enthusiastic as to our dropping like flies here in Wales.
Whereas, I agree Drakeford is an idiot, I don't want to be a statistic used to prove it. For what it's worth I think the responses to Covid across the four home nations have been universally pretty piss-poor, as they have across Europe and North America.
Why are people saying the 2 week firebreak was a bad idea?
Surely without it the situation now would be worse than it is, no?
Because its useless at worst and counterproductive at best as was called out at the time.
A fortnight just isn't that long to drive down numbers. Then combine that with the fact that people party and have "last nights of freedom" before the fortnight and then have "hooray free from Covid lockdown" parties afterwards and you've achieved diddly squat apart from deeply damaging the businesses that had to shut down and throw away all their stock etc.
But oh well, at least there was tape stopping people from buying a new kettle from a supermarket if theirs broke during the fortnight.
Contrast with England - did it for twice as long giving time for case numbers to actually drop, then put stricter tiers in place afterwards.
Ok. Schooling me there, I confess. Quite the role reversal. My pandemic following dial has been slipping for some time now. Still I'd have thought the aggregate net impact on infections of a 14 day Lockdown would be a reduction compared to the counterfactual of No Lockdown. Is Drakeford admitting this is not the case?
Just extrapolating the timeline from before the firebreak; cases in Wales would probably be 3-4x higher than they currently are if there were no firebreak.
And what no-one knows or will ever know is what numbers would be like if the firebreaks had occured when SAGE suggested, aligned with half term. They were never proposed as one off fixes that would last forever, yet get judged as if they were.
Drakeford was adamant that there would be only one firebreak and his biggest error was to allow everyone to go back to normal the day we came out
The activity in our area was crazy and I said it before that we even experienced traffic queues going into town (very rare) and most everyone acted as if covid was over
There is only one person responsible for that and it is Drakeford
I don't like Drakeford, but your final comment is plain silly. He is not blame free, but neither is Johnson. I take it you are planning to give all those Covid naysayers who have flouted the law, a free pass.
Gove went to a private school too, albeit a not very highly rated one in Aberdeen. Rees-Mogg is in the Cabinet too. We also had Cameron and Osborne in the previous regime. You really don't think these people exude an arrogant vibe? Really? People like Patel and Williamson have their own problems of course but they don't come across as arrogant or entitled to be honest, at least not to me. Of course people are all individuals - I offered up some counterexamples of my own. But we are all products of our upbringing.
Ah yes, Rees-Mogg, I forgot him. Sui generis, I would say!
It's interesting now that you've switched to talking about an 'arrogant vibe', because of course no-one in remotely anything like a right mind could accuse David Cameron of (to use your original phrase) "lacking in basic compassion, self-awareness or decency". (If anything I would accuse him of being over-sentimental, but be that as it may). So I think it is you reacting to a manner, nothing to do with the compassion or decency of the individuals concerned. In that sense, no different to someone from the more well-off parts of the South East having a prejudiced reaction to someone with a Geordie accent.
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
But for the pandemic I could have met JRM. He's four or five years older than me but we were both down to attend our mutual history tutor's retirement dinner on March 21. Oh, does the tragedy of this pandemic never end!
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
You don't, really. I am happy to compromise on Orwell: "five years in a bath of lukewarm snobbery." But I am not happy with prejudiced generalisations about any group of people, I think Patel and Williamson blow a huge hole in your argument, and I think private education is just a symptom of wealth and status inequality rather than a cause.
Probably fatal. It's not about blatant gamesmanship, just making sure you are not handicapping yourself with a dodgy microphone or echoing that sounds like you are in the bath. (And applies to all remote calls.)
That's a serious point: candidates from less well-off backgrounds, who don't live in a nice detached house where there's a quiet room in which to set up the call, and who don't necessarily have a good broadband connection and decent hardware, may well be severely disadvantaged by virtual interviews - even more so than in the traditional face-to-face ones.
Gove went to a private school too, albeit a not very highly rated one in Aberdeen. Rees-Mogg is in the Cabinet too. We also had Cameron and Osborne in the previous regime. You really don't think these people exude an arrogant vibe? Really? People like Patel and Williamson have their own problems of course but they don't come across as arrogant or entitled to be honest, at least not to me. Of course people are all individuals - I offered up some counterexamples of my own. But we are all products of our upbringing.
Ah yes, Rees-Mogg, I forgot him. Sui generis, I would say!
It's interesting now that you've switched to talking about an 'arrogant vibe', because of course no-one in remotely anything like a right mind could accuse David Cameron of (to use your original phrase) "lacking in basic compassion, self-awareness or decency". (If anything I would accuse him of being over-sentimental, but be that as it may). So I think it is you reacting to a manner, nothing to do with the compassion or decency of the individuals concerned. In that sense, no different to someone from the more well-off parts of the South East having a prejudiced reaction to someone with a Geordie accent.
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
But for the pandemic I could have met JRM. He's four or five years older than me but we were both down to attend our mutual history tutor's retirement dinner on March 21. Oh, does the tragedy of this pandemic never end!
Coronavirus cases increased in 20 of Wales’s 22 local authority areas on Thursday, with a “rising tide” of infections seen in both urban and rural areas, health minister Vaughan Gething said.
On the back of what, 17 last week?
The different national lockdown regimes to allow petty nationalistic point-scoring have been pathetic.
I am surprised at your calm non-partisan analysis. Has someone hijacked your account?
Mr Urquhart does seem rather enthusiastic as to our dropping like flies here in Wales.
Whereas, I agree Drakeford is an idiot, I don't want to be a statistic used to prove it. For what it's worth I think the responses to Covid across the four home nations have been universally pretty piss-poor, as they have across Europe and North America.
Why are people saying the 2 week firebreak was a bad idea?
Surely without it the situation now would be worse than it is, no?
Because its useless at worst and counterproductive at best as was called out at the time.
A fortnight just isn't that long to drive down numbers. Then combine that with the fact that people party and have "last nights of freedom" before the fortnight and then have "hooray free from Covid lockdown" parties afterwards and you've achieved diddly squat apart from deeply damaging the businesses that had to shut down and throw away all their stock etc.
But oh well, at least there was tape stopping people from buying a new kettle from a supermarket if theirs broke during the fortnight.
Contrast with England - did it for twice as long giving time for case numbers to actually drop, then put stricter tiers in place afterwards.
Ok. Schooling me there, I confess. Quite the role reversal. My pandemic following dial has been slipping for some time now. Still I'd have thought the aggregate net impact on infections of a 14 day Lockdown would be a reduction compared to the counterfactual of No Lockdown. Is Drakeford admitting this is not the case?
Just extrapolating the timeline from before the firebreak; cases in Wales would probably be 3-4x higher than they currently are if there were no firebreak.
And what no-one knows or will ever know is what numbers would be like if the firebreaks had occured when SAGE suggested, aligned with half term. They were never proposed as one off fixes that would last forever, yet get judged as if they were.
Drakeford was adamant that there would be only one firebreak and his biggest error was to allow everyone to go back to normal the day we came out
The activity in our area was crazy and I said it before that we even experienced traffic queues going into town (very rare) and most everyone acted as if covid was over
There is only one person responsible for that and it is Drakeford
He may have implemented it badly, I dont know, from outside certainly the supermarket fiasco suggests attention to detail wasnt any stronger in the Welsh govt than it is in Westminster. My support is for the SAGE firebreaks, as SAGE intended, not what Drakeford did (or didnt do).
I accept that and Drakeford demonstrated just how not to do it
I think your utter hatred for Mark Drakeford is clouding your judgement on how equally poorly other leaders have performed.
Apropos nothing else my son has his 3 interviews for PPE at St Annes on Monday. Going to be a slightly nervous weekend.
Fingers crossed for him. Presumably these are virtual interviews? Difficult both for your son and for the dons, I would think.
Yes, all virtual. Which is a great shame. He is in a very strong year at his school and 7 of them have Oxbridge interviews, 5 at Oxford. Normally they would all be going down on the train together and getting a proper feel of the college etc. as well as sharing their anxieties.
I agree it will be tough for the Dons too. Much harder to get a proper feel on someone on a screen in my experience.
Given the limited evidence for the predictive power of interviews, I'd have dropped them completely. Mind you, I never went to Oxford. Good luck to the @DavidL 7.
Many thanks.
To state the bleeding obvious, there might be a case for checking his connection beforehand, making sure dad is not using all the wifi bandwidth next door, camera works, microphone works, there is sufficient contrast between him and the background, no embarrassing books behind him, enough soft furnishings to soften the audio. If you've got more than one laptop, compare them all.
And the same goes for anyone making Zoom calls or similar.
A selection of the interviewer's books in the backdrop probably wouldn't hurt!
Word of warning [edit] - it has to be a genuine interest. Dons spot bullshit like Scatophaga flies do, only they don't like it nearly so much.
And always, always be able to back it up convincingly when they ask, as they might.
I turned up for my interview with a bag from the UNiversity Bookshop and a parasitology book in it - but I was able to speak convincingly about why it was interesting and why I was so pleased to have it ...
When I was in the Sixth Form I put in the narrative section on my UCCA/PCAS form (they had merged the forms in readiness for the merger to become UCAS the following year) that I enjoyed reading Chekhov's plays - simply because I was in a production of Three Sisters when I filled it out. I thought it made me sound intellectual. Only on my way to interview at Liverpool did I realise that Three Sisters was about the only Chekhov play I could name, let alone talk about. Cue panicked search in WH Smiths on Euston for a copy of anything whatsoever by Chekhov I could get my hands on. Amazingly I found a paperback copy of the 4 major plays and spent most of my lunch money on it. On the train I practically memorised the introduction, skim read The Seagull, and when it came up extemorised some complete crap based on that. Amazingly, I got a BCC offer, and would have gone there if I hadn't passed the Oxford entrance.
29 years later I still keep that very same copy near my desk to remind me that bullshitters always, always, get found out.
Bulgaria was loudly trumpeting its success at beating the first wave. They were coming up with many and varied reasons why their society was less likely to contract the disease.
Covid 19. Making fools of everybody since, well, 2019....
Probably fatal. It's not about blatant gamesmanship, just making sure you are not handicapping yourself with a dodgy microphone or echoing that sounds like you are in the bath. (And applies to all remote calls.)
That's a serious point: candidates from less well-off backgrounds, who don't live in a nice detached house where there's a quiet room in which to set up the call, and who don't necessarily have a good broadband connection and decent hardware, may well be severely disadvantaged by virtual interviews - even more so than in the traditional face-to-face ones.
Alternatively, pity will be taken and positive discrimination will happen.
"He needs the leg up in life only Oxford can give him..."
George Russell sets the fastest lap in Free Practice 1.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha Bottas.
And ha ha ha Lewis if Russell goes pole, win, fastest lap?
Hamilton needs someone challenging him. Bottas just isn't quick enough. If Russell beats Bottas they should ditch Valtteri and offer him to Williams as a swap deal.
Yes. Bottas started the season well but has really dropped off. But my point is, if this young replacement gets into Lewis' car and performs as well as or better than him, this would not help the HAM = GOAT case.
One race doesn't make for 7 championships. Hamilton has won multiple titles in multiple teams in multiple formula. I don't think you can every accurately compare drivers from different eras and formulas because the cars are so different. Yes I think Hamilton easily demolishes Michael Schumacher. But the number of titles isn't the big thing its how you win. Which is why however epic Ayrton Senna was he wasn't even the best driver of his era never mind in the all time list.
It runs and runs and cannot be agreed. That's the beauty of the GOAT debate in any sport and especially one like F1 where the car is such a large part of the equation. For me, the strongest piece of evidence for HAM = GOAT is that as a rookie he matched the generally accepted as exceptional Alonso and "drove" him out of McLaren. However almost every Ham title has come in a dominant Merc and if Russell were to blitz the field in it on Sunday, that would surely be a piece of evidence the other way.
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
How many on here went to public schools then? I would guess only a minority, in fact I would guess more here went to Oxbridge and certainly the Russell Group than went to public school
Apropos nothing else my son has his 3 interviews for PPE at St Annes on Monday. Going to be a slightly nervous weekend.
Fingers crossed for him. Presumably these are virtual interviews? Difficult both for your son and for the dons, I would think.
Yes, all virtual. Which is a great shame. He is in a very strong year at his school and 7 of them have Oxbridge interviews, 5 at Oxford. Normally they would all be going down on the train together and getting a proper feel of the college etc. as well as sharing their anxieties.
I agree it will be tough for the Dons too. Much harder to get a proper feel on someone on a screen in my experience.
Given the limited evidence for the predictive power of interviews, I'd have dropped them completely. Mind you, I never went to Oxford. Good luck to the @DavidL 7.
Many thanks.
To state the bleeding obvious, there might be a case for checking his connection beforehand, making sure dad is not using all the wifi bandwidth next door, camera works, microphone works, there is sufficient contrast between him and the background, no embarrassing books behind him, enough soft furnishings to soften the audio. If you've got more than one laptop, compare them all.
And the same goes for anyone making Zoom calls or similar.
A selection of the interviewer's books in the backdrop probably wouldn't hurt!
Agree about checking and suggest installing a neutral background; a shot of some anonymous countryside or similar. That blocks out the books, embarrassing pictures etc. Easy to upload them. Don't use the ones Zoom provide especially that wretched one of the Northern Lights, nor the one which gives you a halo.
And a trial run to make sure everything works, from another laptop, phone or whatever. Make sure the cameras in the best place, chair's high enough
Best of and all that. As you say, a jittery weekend, but Monday will come.
He's really off the pace recently. I am wondering whether, even if this late stage, his seat is safe for next year.
It would need for Mercedes to buy Bottas out and also pay Williams compensation to get Russell. It's probably not worth it, but it does make him a dead cert for 2022.
Maybe, but if Russell wins on Sunday they might want to think about it. They will be very conscious that Hamilton is not going to go on for ever and right now Verstappen is looking the next big thing.
I think if he wins on Sunday and then again the Sunday after they will give him the 2022 deal and announce it after the break.
Bulgaria was loudly trumpeting its success at beating the first wave. They were coming up with many and varied reasons why their society was less likely to contract the disease.
Covid 19. Making fools of everybody since, well, 2019....
Those pictures of czechs holding farewell parties for covid look rather misplaced now.
Thousands of guests sat at a 500 metre-long (1640ft) table on the Charles Bridge in Prague on Tuesday sharing food and drinks they had brought from home.
Guests were encouraged to share with their neighbours and there was no social distancing, something people in countries under lockdown will find hard to relate to.
Apropos nothing else my son has his 3 interviews for PPE at St Annes on Monday. Going to be a slightly nervous weekend.
Fingers crossed for him. Presumably these are virtual interviews? Difficult both for your son and for the dons, I would think.
Yes, all virtual. Which is a great shame. He is in a very strong year at his school and 7 of them have Oxbridge interviews, 5 at Oxford. Normally they would all be going down on the train together and getting a proper feel of the college etc. as well as sharing their anxieties.
I agree it will be tough for the Dons too. Much harder to get a proper feel on someone on a screen in my experience.
Given the limited evidence for the predictive power of interviews, I'd have dropped them completely. Mind you, I never went to Oxford. Good luck to the @DavidL 7.
Many thanks.
To state the bleeding obvious, there might be a case for checking his connection beforehand, making sure dad is not using all the wifi bandwidth next door, camera works, microphone works, there is sufficient contrast between him and the background, no embarrassing books behind him, enough soft furnishings to soften the audio. If you've got more than one laptop, compare them all.
And the same goes for anyone making Zoom calls or similar.
A selection of the interviewer's books in the backdrop probably wouldn't hurt!
Word of warning [edit] - it has to be a genuine interest. Dons spot bullshit like Scatophaga flies do, only they don't like it nearly so much.
And always, always be able to back it up convincingly when they ask, as they might.
I turned up for my interview with a bag from the UNiversity Bookshop and a parasitology book in it - but I was able to speak convincingly about why it was interesting and why I was so pleased to have it ...
When I was in the Sixth Form I put in the narrative section on my UCCA/PCAS form (they had merged the forms in readiness for the merger to become UCAS the following year) that I enjoyed reading Chekhov's plays - simply because I was in a production of Three Sisters when I filled it out. I thought it made me sound intellectual. Only on my way to interview at Liverpool did I realise that Three Sisters was about the only Chekhov play I could name, let alone talk about. Cue panicked search in WH Smiths on Euston for a copy of anything whatsoever by Chekhov I could get my hands on. Amazingly I found a paperback copy of the 4 major plays and spent most of my lunch money on it. On the train I practically memorised the introduction, skim read The Seagull, and when it came up extemorised some complete crap based on that. Amazingly, I got a BCC offer, and would have gone there if I hadn't passed the Oxford entrance.
29 years later I still keep that very same copy near my desk to remind me that bullshitters always, always, get found out.
Reminds me of a very good friend who got his start in sound engineering in the west end by bullshitting that he could do it to get a gig covering for someone’s night off. He blagged the interview but spent the handover taking very careful notes and that night poring over the technical manuals and the sound script. The moral he always told me was “Always be able to back up your bullshit, by any means”. That’s something a few UK politicians could do with internalising.
Coronavirus cases increased in 20 of Wales’s 22 local authority areas on Thursday, with a “rising tide” of infections seen in both urban and rural areas, health minister Vaughan Gething said.
On the back of what, 17 last week?
The different national lockdown regimes to allow petty nationalistic point-scoring have been pathetic.
I am surprised at your calm non-partisan analysis. Has someone hijacked your account?
Mr Urquhart does seem rather enthusiastic as to our dropping like flies here in Wales.
Whereas, I agree Drakeford is an idiot, I don't want to be a statistic used to prove it. For what it's worth I think the responses to Covid across the four home nations have been universally pretty piss-poor, as they have across Europe and North America.
Why are people saying the 2 week firebreak was a bad idea?
Surely without it the situation now would be worse than it is, no?
Because its useless at worst and counterproductive at best as was called out at the time.
A fortnight just isn't that long to drive down numbers. Then combine that with the fact that people party and have "last nights of freedom" before the fortnight and then have "hooray free from Covid lockdown" parties afterwards and you've achieved diddly squat apart from deeply damaging the businesses that had to shut down and throw away all their stock etc.
But oh well, at least there was tape stopping people from buying a new kettle from a supermarket if theirs broke during the fortnight.
Contrast with England - did it for twice as long giving time for case numbers to actually drop, then put stricter tiers in place afterwards.
Ok. Schooling me there, I confess. Quite the role reversal. My pandemic following dial has been slipping for some time now. Still I'd have thought the aggregate net impact on infections of a 14 day Lockdown would be a reduction compared to the counterfactual of No Lockdown. Is Drakeford admitting this is not the case?
Just extrapolating the timeline from before the firebreak; cases in Wales would probably be 3-4x higher than they currently are if there were no firebreak.
Right. So if that is the case, where is all this "the Welsh firebreak was a dreadful error that made things worse" commentary coming from? Could it be anti-Drakeford sentiment in the driving seat? Is Drakeford getting on people's tits for some reason, either because he's Labour or because he's Welsh, or simply because he's Drakeford?
Coronavirus cases increased in 20 of Wales’s 22 local authority areas on Thursday, with a “rising tide” of infections seen in both urban and rural areas, health minister Vaughan Gething said.
On the back of what, 17 last week?
The different national lockdown regimes to allow petty nationalistic point-scoring have been pathetic.
I am surprised at your calm non-partisan analysis. Has someone hijacked your account?
Mr Urquhart does seem rather enthusiastic as to our dropping like flies here in Wales.
Whereas, I agree Drakeford is an idiot, I don't want to be a statistic used to prove it. For what it's worth I think the responses to Covid across the four home nations have been universally pretty piss-poor, as they have across Europe and North America.
Why are people saying the 2 week firebreak was a bad idea?
Surely without it the situation now would be worse than it is, no?
Because its useless at worst and counterproductive at best as was called out at the time.
A fortnight just isn't that long to drive down numbers. Then combine that with the fact that people party and have "last nights of freedom" before the fortnight and then have "hooray free from Covid lockdown" parties afterwards and you've achieved diddly squat apart from deeply damaging the businesses that had to shut down and throw away all their stock etc.
But oh well, at least there was tape stopping people from buying a new kettle from a supermarket if theirs broke during the fortnight.
Contrast with England - did it for twice as long giving time for case numbers to actually drop, then put stricter tiers in place afterwards.
Ok. Schooling me there, I confess. Quite the role reversal. My pandemic following dial has been slipping for some time now. Still I'd have thought the aggregate net impact on infections of a 14 day Lockdown would be a reduction compared to the counterfactual of No Lockdown. Is Drakeford admitting this is not the case?
Just extrapolating the timeline from before the firebreak; cases in Wales would probably be 3-4x higher than they currently are if there were no firebreak.
Right. So if that is the case, where is all this "the Welsh firebreak was a dreadful error that made things worse" commentary coming from? Could it be anti-Drakeford sentiment in the driving seat? Is Drakeford getting on people's tits for some reason, either because he's Labour or because he's Welsh, or simply because he's Drakeford?
Because it could have been more effective? The fact it was instantly relaxed into groups of 10+ people allowed to mix was a bit insane.
Coronavirus cases increased in 20 of Wales’s 22 local authority areas on Thursday, with a “rising tide” of infections seen in both urban and rural areas, health minister Vaughan Gething said.
On the back of what, 17 last week?
The different national lockdown regimes to allow petty nationalistic point-scoring have been pathetic.
I am surprised at your calm non-partisan analysis. Has someone hijacked your account?
Mr Urquhart does seem rather enthusiastic as to our dropping like flies here in Wales.
Whereas, I agree Drakeford is an idiot, I don't want to be a statistic used to prove it. For what it's worth I think the responses to Covid across the four home nations have been universally pretty piss-poor, as they have across Europe and North America.
Why are people saying the 2 week firebreak was a bad idea?
Surely without it the situation now would be worse than it is, no?
Because its useless at worst and counterproductive at best as was called out at the time.
A fortnight just isn't that long to drive down numbers. Then combine that with the fact that people party and have "last nights of freedom" before the fortnight and then have "hooray free from Covid lockdown" parties afterwards and you've achieved diddly squat apart from deeply damaging the businesses that had to shut down and throw away all their stock etc.
But oh well, at least there was tape stopping people from buying a new kettle from a supermarket if theirs broke during the fortnight.
Contrast with England - did it for twice as long giving time for case numbers to actually drop, then put stricter tiers in place afterwards.
Ok. Schooling me there, I confess. Quite the role reversal. My pandemic following dial has been slipping for some time now. Still I'd have thought the aggregate net impact on infections of a 14 day Lockdown would be a reduction compared to the counterfactual of No Lockdown. Is Drakeford admitting this is not the case?
Just extrapolating the timeline from before the firebreak; cases in Wales would probably be 3-4x higher than they currently are if there were no firebreak.
Right. So if that is the case, where is all this "the Welsh firebreak was a dreadful error that made things worse" coming from? Could it be anti-Drakeford sentiment in the driving seat? Is Drakeford getting on people's tits for some reason, either because he's Labour or because he's Welsh, or simply because he's Drakeford?
Because this board has a tedious bias towards middle England conservatism, although in this case I think there’s a lockdown-hawk case to be answered by the FM as to why he only did two weeks and not four.
So we are all going to reduced to the tiers we should be on then for Christmas? Not. A. Chance.
Mammy knows best.
So in Angus we currently have 51 cases per 100k in the last week which means we are about to fall out the bottom of tier 1. We are currently in tier 3. It is nuts.
I see that fall in in numbers is only in the last few days. It was still in the 90s only a week ago. East Lothian did go down to level 2 after that sort of decrease, so you might get lucky in the review next week if the numbers hold.
Also, it's not primarily the current number of daily cases that needs to determine the tier/level, but the growth rate. Dropping straight to level 1 or 0 would just invite the virus right back, Wales style.
The bands are 500+ level 4, 300+ level 3, 100+ level 2, 50+ level 1 cases per 100,000. So at 90 we were still level 1 albeit more clearly in the band. Almost all of Scotland is 2 bands higher than they should be.
Edit and on your chart we peaked at 89 in early November.
Again, the current case number cannot be the primary determinant for restriction level changes. It has to be the growth rate. If you drop to level 0 because you've got 49 cases/week/100,000, you'll be back up to 100 or 200 or whatever within a few weeks, necessitating severe restrictions again. Which gains little apart from more illness and death (and more complaints about the up and down in restriction levels).
No, even at those lowish case numbers, you still need to at least hold them constant, which probably requires level 2. If numbers still go down under level 2, then dropping further should be considered.
Coronavirus cases increased in 20 of Wales’s 22 local authority areas on Thursday, with a “rising tide” of infections seen in both urban and rural areas, health minister Vaughan Gething said.
On the back of what, 17 last week?
The different national lockdown regimes to allow petty nationalistic point-scoring have been pathetic.
I am surprised at your calm non-partisan analysis. Has someone hijacked your account?
Mr Urquhart does seem rather enthusiastic as to our dropping like flies here in Wales.
Whereas, I agree Drakeford is an idiot, I don't want to be a statistic used to prove it. For what it's worth I think the responses to Covid across the four home nations have been universally pretty piss-poor, as they have across Europe and North America.
Why are people saying the 2 week firebreak was a bad idea?
Surely without it the situation now would be worse than it is, no?
Because its useless at worst and counterproductive at best as was called out at the time.
A fortnight just isn't that long to drive down numbers. Then combine that with the fact that people party and have "last nights of freedom" before the fortnight and then have "hooray free from Covid lockdown" parties afterwards and you've achieved diddly squat apart from deeply damaging the businesses that had to shut down and throw away all their stock etc.
But oh well, at least there was tape stopping people from buying a new kettle from a supermarket if theirs broke during the fortnight.
Contrast with England - did it for twice as long giving time for case numbers to actually drop, then put stricter tiers in place afterwards.
Ok. Schooling me there, I confess. Quite the role reversal. My pandemic following dial has been slipping for some time now. Still I'd have thought the aggregate net impact on infections of a 14 day Lockdown would be a reduction compared to the counterfactual of No Lockdown. Is Drakeford admitting this is not the case?
Just extrapolating the timeline from before the firebreak; cases in Wales would probably be 3-4x higher than they currently are if there were no firebreak.
Right. So if that is the case, where is all this "the Welsh firebreak was a dreadful error that made things worse" coming from? Could it be anti-Drakeford sentiment in the driving seat? Is Drakeford getting on people's tits for some reason, either because he's Labour or because he's Welsh, or simply because he's Drakeford?
Because this board has a tedious bias towards middle England conservatism, although in this case I think there’s a lockdown-hawk case to be answered by the FM as to why he only did two weeks and not four.
I think the more interesting question is why he expected anything other than a resumption of the growth in cases after the firebreak when returning to essentially the same conditions as before.
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
How many on here went to public schools then? I would guess only a minority, in fact I would guess more here went to Oxbridge and certainly the Russell Group than went to public school
I wouldn't class institutions whose primary barrier to entry is academic ability in quite the same category as those who screen predominantly on parental income. Although of course that distinction can become blurred in practice, especially given that private schools' function is precisely to blur that distinction.
Opening up Europe for foreign holidays looked utter stupidity at the time. As many of us said - at the time.
We'll probably still let everyone go off on skiing hlidays again this winter. Which will again be a predictably twattish thing to do.
God yes. Shapps really should be indicted for manslaughter.
What is mind blowing to me is how every European country went with it. The Germans were pretty quick to say screw freedom of movement stuff, the border is SHUT. Then decided well what harm can letting millions of our citizens travel off across Europe and mix with millions of others from all over the world. It was absolutely collective incompetence.
I can't help thinking that its a class thing and you wouldn't normally class me as a class warrior. Its one thing to ask the proles to do without their pubs but you really don't want to interfere with your mates' skiing trips. After all they are the right sort of people and will be "sensible".
Because playing beer-pong was always going to be "sensible" and risk free.....
Hang on: nobody knew the virus was in Europe when the game of Beer Pong was being played.
Every recent predicted pandemic (MERS / SARS / H1N1) hadn't really affected us in Europe, so you expected people to cancel their holidays?
Coronavirus cases increased in 20 of Wales’s 22 local authority areas on Thursday, with a “rising tide” of infections seen in both urban and rural areas, health minister Vaughan Gething said.
On the back of what, 17 last week?
The different national lockdown regimes to allow petty nationalistic point-scoring have been pathetic.
I am surprised at your calm non-partisan analysis. Has someone hijacked your account?
Mr Urquhart does seem rather enthusiastic as to our dropping like flies here in Wales.
Whereas, I agree Drakeford is an idiot, I don't want to be a statistic used to prove it. For what it's worth I think the responses to Covid across the four home nations have been universally pretty piss-poor, as they have across Europe and North America.
Why are people saying the 2 week firebreak was a bad idea?
Surely without it the situation now would be worse than it is, no?
Because its useless at worst and counterproductive at best as was called out at the time.
A fortnight just isn't that long to drive down numbers. Then combine that with the fact that people party and have "last nights of freedom" before the fortnight and then have "hooray free from Covid lockdown" parties afterwards and you've achieved diddly squat apart from deeply damaging the businesses that had to shut down and throw away all their stock etc.
But oh well, at least there was tape stopping people from buying a new kettle from a supermarket if theirs broke during the fortnight.
Contrast with England - did it for twice as long giving time for case numbers to actually drop, then put stricter tiers in place afterwards.
Ok. Schooling me there, I confess. Quite the role reversal. My pandemic following dial has been slipping for some time now. Still I'd have thought the aggregate net impact on infections of a 14 day Lockdown would be a reduction compared to the counterfactual of No Lockdown. Is Drakeford admitting this is not the case?
Just extrapolating the timeline from before the firebreak; cases in Wales would probably be 3-4x higher than they currently are if there were no firebreak.
Right. So if that is the case, where is all this "the Welsh firebreak was a dreadful error that made things worse" commentary coming from? Could it be anti-Drakeford sentiment in the driving seat? Is Drakeford getting on people's tits for some reason, either because he's Labour or because he's Welsh, or simply because he's Drakeford?
Or anti-devolution sentiment, as a logical possibility at least. I sometimes wonder if Ms Sturgeon can win on PB. Eityher she';s not being severe enough or she's too severe.
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
How many on here went to public schools then? I would guess only a minority, in fact I would guess more here went to Oxbridge and certainly the Russell Group than went to public school
I wouldn't class institutions whose primary barrier to entry is academic ability in quite the same category as those who screen predominantly on parental income. Although of course that distinction can become blurred in practice, especially given that private schools' function is precisely to blur that distinction.
Most public schools have scholarships now and you also need to pass the Common Entrance exam to get in, certainly to the major ones.
Indeed many of the old academically selective grammar schools are now independent schools, including the school attended by the Leader of the Opposition
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
How many on here went to public schools then? I would guess only a minority, in fact I would guess more here went to Oxbridge and certainly the Russell Group than went to public school
I wouldn't class institutions whose primary barrier to entry is academic ability in quite the same category as those who screen predominantly on parental income. Although of course that distinction can become blurred in practice, especially given that private schools' function is precisely to blur that distinction.
Most public schools have scholarships now and you also need to pass the Common Entrance exam to get in, certainly to the major ones.
Indeed many of the old academically selective grammar schools are now independent schools, including the school attended by the Leader of the Opposition
CE is in itself presumablyt a major social barrier. How many primaries prepare childre for it? I don't know - but maybe one of the teachers on the site can say.
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
How many on here went to public schools then? I would guess only a minority, in fact I would guess more here went to Oxbridge and certainly the Russell Group than went to public school
I wouldn't class institutions whose primary barrier to entry is academic ability in quite the same category as those who screen predominantly on parental income. Although of course that distinction can become blurred in practice, especially given that private schools' function is precisely to blur that distinction.
Most public schools have scholarships now and you also need to pass the Common Entrance exam to get in, certainly to the major ones.
Indeed many of the old academically selective grammar schools are now independent schools, including the school attended by the Leader of the Opposition
CE is in itself presumablyt a major social barrier. How many primaries prepare childre for it? I don't know - but maybe one of the teachers on the site can say.
Most public schools have entry at 13, primary schools finish at 11, prep schools are and always have been the main public schools feeder, though of course in Kent and Bucks and Trafford which are fully selective still primary school pupils do go on to grammars in large numbers
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
How many on here went to public schools then? I would guess only a minority, in fact I would guess more here went to Oxbridge and certainly the Russell Group than went to public school
I wouldn't class institutions whose primary barrier to entry is academic ability in quite the same category as those who screen predominantly on parental income. Although of course that distinction can become blurred in practice, especially given that private schools' function is precisely to blur that distinction.
Most public schools have scholarships now and you also need to pass the Common Entrance exam to get in, certainly to the major ones.
Indeed many of the old academically selective grammar schools are now independent schools, including the school attended by the Leader of the Opposition
What % receive a full scholarship? If it is <50% then my claim that they screen "predominantly" on parental income remains correct, doesn't it?
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
You don't, really. I am happy to compromise on Orwell: "five years in a bath of lukewarm snobbery." But I am not happy with prejudiced generalisations about any group of people, I think Patel and Williamson blow a huge hole in your argument, and I think private education is just a symptom of wealth and status inequality rather than a cause.
Symptom and cause, I'd say. And I agree about avoiding generalizations about people. I'm naturally suspicious of them. But not all are founded on prejudice and I don't think this one necessarily is (although it can be, it depends on the thought process of the person making it). The way I'm taking it (from OLB) and making it myself is that it's about the impact on children and young adults of an exclusive and elitist educational experience. So, no, I don't think Patel and Williamson blow a hole in this. Not at all. Something being broadly true doesn't mean it's wholly true or that it's the only thing that's true.
OLB Scholarships just reduce the fees, to get into Eton, Westminster, Winchester etc you also need to pass Common Entrance even if your parents pay full fees
Gove went to a private school too, albeit a not very highly rated one in Aberdeen. Rees-Mogg is in the Cabinet too. We also had Cameron and Osborne in the previous regime. You really don't think these people exude an arrogant vibe? Really? People like Patel and Williamson have their own problems of course but they don't come across as arrogant or entitled to be honest, at least not to me. Of course people are all individuals - I offered up some counterexamples of my own. But we are all products of our upbringing.
Ah yes, Rees-Mogg, I forgot him. Sui generis, I would say!
It's interesting now that you've switched to talking about an 'arrogant vibe', because of course no-one in remotely anything like a right mind could accuse David Cameron of (to use your original phrase) "lacking in basic compassion, self-awareness or decency". (If anything I would accuse him of being over-sentimental, but be that as it may). So I think it is you reacting to a manner, nothing to do with the compassion or decency of the individuals concerned. In that sense, no different to someone from the more well-off parts of the South East having a prejudiced reaction to someone with a Geordie accent.
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
But for the pandemic I could have met JRM. He's four or five years older than me but we were both down to attend our mutual history tutor's retirement dinner on March 21. Oh, does the tragedy of this pandemic never end!
Trinity?
Yes. Bryan Ward-Perkins' retirement dinner. Maybe they'll reschedule it one day - who knows.
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
How many on here went to public schools then? I would guess only a minority, in fact I would guess more here went to Oxbridge and certainly the Russell Group than went to public school
I wouldn't class institutions whose primary barrier to entry is academic ability in quite the same category as those who screen predominantly on parental income. Although of course that distinction can become blurred in practice, especially given that private schools' function is precisely to blur that distinction.
Most public schools have scholarships now and you also need to pass the Common Entrance exam to get in, certainly to the major ones.
Indeed many of the old academically selective grammar schools are now independent schools, including the school attended by the Leader of the Opposition
CE is in itself presumablyt a major social barrier. How many primaries prepare childre for it? I don't know - but maybe one of the teachers on the site can say.
Most public schools have entry at 13, primary schools finish at 11, prep schools are and always have been the main public schools feeder, though of course in Kent and Bucks and Trafford which are fully selective still primary school pupils do go on to grammars in large numbers
In other words, effectively you have to be able to afford private education to get into Headmastder's Conference "Public Schools". That adds to the social and class barrier.,
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
How many on here went to public schools then? I would guess only a minority, in fact I would guess more here went to Oxbridge and certainly the Russell Group than went to public school
I wouldn't class institutions whose primary barrier to entry is academic ability in quite the same category as those who screen predominantly on parental income. Although of course that distinction can become blurred in practice, especially given that private schools' function is precisely to blur that distinction.
Most public schools have scholarships now and you also need to pass the Common Entrance exam to get in, certainly to the major ones.
Indeed many of the old academically selective grammar schools are now independent schools, including the school attended by the Leader of the Opposition
Which is terrible tbh. I'd much rather have gone to an old style selective grammar like my Dad than the private school I ended up going to. It was the most unpleasant six years of my life. The main thing I took from the experience was that private schools care more about their reputation and their donors than their charges.
For the love god get on with it and agree a frigging deal. We're in the middle of a pandemic.
JFDI.
Either get on with the deal or walking away, enough is enough now.
But yes its theatre. Nothing will be agreed until the PM and European President and Macron etc are in a room together (though they'll likely get in a room together once its agreed).
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
You don't, really. I am happy to compromise on Orwell: "five years in a bath of lukewarm snobbery." But I am not happy with prejudiced generalisations about any group of people, I think Patel and Williamson blow a huge hole in your argument, and I think private education is just a symptom of wealth and status inequality rather than a cause.
I have to confess that my late father, (grammar school and teacher training college) could be incredibly rude to people he felt were his inferiors if they were not giving him the respect to which he thought was entitled. He went into business, and I, (grammar school & tech) more laid back, succeeded him. Several times I had relief expressed to me that people were now dealing with me, not him.
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
How many on here went to public schools then? I would guess only a minority, in fact I would guess more here went to Oxbridge and certainly the Russell Group than went to public school
I don't know. My sense is more Oxbridge on here than public schools. But lots of private schools, I think? Still, again, not sure. But that wasn't what I was driving at. My point is more that any attack on educational privilege is - not just on here but in this country - guaranteed to get the backs up of many many people who themselves have not benefited from it or in fact been anywhere near it. It is thought of as Class War. We are attached to our privilege in England. The status quo is ok by us in this regard. We don't want it smashed up.
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
How many on here went to public schools then? I would guess only a minority, in fact I would guess more here went to Oxbridge and certainly the Russell Group than went to public school
I wouldn't class institutions whose primary barrier to entry is academic ability in quite the same category as those who screen predominantly on parental income. Although of course that distinction can become blurred in practice, especially given that private schools' function is precisely to blur that distinction.
Most public schools have scholarships now and you also need to pass the Common Entrance exam to get in, certainly to the major ones.
Indeed many of the old academically selective grammar schools are now independent schools, including the school attended by the Leader of the Opposition
CE is in itself presumablyt a major social barrier. How many primaries prepare childre for it? I don't know - but maybe one of the teachers on the site can say.
Most public schools have entry at 13, primary schools finish at 11, prep schools are and always have been the main public schools feeder, though of course in Kent and Bucks and Trafford which are fully selective still primary school pupils do go on to grammars in large numbers
In other words, effectively you have to be able to afford private education to get into Headmastder's Conference "Public Schools". That adds to the social and class barrier.,
No, not if you get a scholarship.
Of course before Harold Wilson's government began the process of comprehensivisation English and Welsh state education was fully selective (it still is in Northern Ireland), so if you passed the 11 plus or 13 pass you went to an academically selective grammar school no matter what your parents earnt many of which were as good as if not better than independent schools.
Labour of course then abolished most of the grammar schools in favour of comprehensives, the Tories fought the 1964 election with a manifesto commitment to retain grammars
F1: incidentally, if you were lucky and online when news of Hamilton's absence broke, and backed Verstappen and Bottas at about 5.5 and 6 to win, I'd advocate setting up 1.1 style hedges.
Perez's engine failed him. And that was a Mercedes. Plus Bottas got unlucky with debris last time. These things can happen. And the short lap means backmarkers will be more of a problem at this race than last week's.
Apropos nothing else my son has his 3 interviews for PPE at St Annes on Monday. Going to be a slightly nervous weekend.
Fingers crossed for him. Presumably these are virtual interviews? Difficult both for your son and for the dons, I would think.
Yes, all virtual. Which is a great shame. He is in a very strong year at his school and 7 of them have Oxbridge interviews, 5 at Oxford. Normally they would all be going down on the train together and getting a proper feel of the college etc. as well as sharing their anxieties.
I agree it will be tough for the Dons too. Much harder to get a proper feel on someone on a screen in my experience.
Given the limited evidence for the predictive power of interviews, I'd have dropped them completely. Mind you, I never went to Oxford. Good luck to the @DavidL 7.
Many thanks.
To state the bleeding obvious, there might be a case for checking his connection beforehand, making sure dad is not using all the wifi bandwidth next door, camera works, microphone works, there is sufficient contrast between him and the background, no embarrassing books behind him, enough soft furnishings to soften the audio. If you've got more than one laptop, compare them all.
And the same goes for anyone making Zoom calls or similar.
A selection of the interviewer's books in the backdrop probably wouldn't hurt!
Word of warning [edit] - it has to be a genuine interest. Dons spot bullshit like Scatophaga flies do, only they don't like it nearly so much.
And always, always be able to back it up convincingly when they ask, as they might.
I turned up for my interview with a bag from the UNiversity Bookshop and a parasitology book in it - but I was able to speak convincingly about why it was interesting and why I was so pleased to have it ...
When I was in the Sixth Form I put in the narrative section on my UCCA/PCAS form (they had merged the forms in readiness for the merger to become UCAS the following year) that I enjoyed reading Chekhov's plays - simply because I was in a production of Three Sisters when I filled it out. I thought it made me sound intellectual. Only on my way to interview at Liverpool did I realise that Three Sisters was about the only Chekhov play I could name, let alone talk about. Cue panicked search in WH Smiths on Euston for a copy of anything whatsoever by Chekhov I could get my hands on. Amazingly I found a paperback copy of the 4 major plays and spent most of my lunch money on it. On the train I practically memorised the introduction, skim read The Seagull, and when it came up extemorised some complete crap based on that. Amazingly, I got a BCC offer, and would have gone there if I hadn't passed the Oxford entrance.
29 years later I still keep that very same copy near my desk to remind me that bullshitters always, always, get found out.
Apropos nothing else my son has his 3 interviews for PPE at St Annes on Monday. Going to be a slightly nervous weekend.
Fingers crossed for him. Presumably these are virtual interviews? Difficult both for your son and for the dons, I would think.
Yes, all virtual. Which is a great shame. He is in a very strong year at his school and 7 of them have Oxbridge interviews, 5 at Oxford. Normally they would all be going down on the train together and getting a proper feel of the college etc. as well as sharing their anxieties.
I agree it will be tough for the Dons too. Much harder to get a proper feel on someone on a screen in my experience.
Given the limited evidence for the predictive power of interviews, I'd have dropped them completely. Mind you, I never went to Oxford. Good luck to the @DavidL 7.
Many thanks.
To state the bleeding obvious, there might be a case for checking his connection beforehand, making sure dad is not using all the wifi bandwidth next door, camera works, microphone works, there is sufficient contrast between him and the background, no embarrassing books behind him, enough soft furnishings to soften the audio. If you've got more than one laptop, compare them all.
And the same goes for anyone making Zoom calls or similar.
One of my friends suggested having an extract of Einstein's workings on relativity handwritten on the whiteboard behind his head!
Only if you are applying for Physics (or possibly maths) AND you are happy to talk about it in the interview. It's like the books you mention in your personal statement: God help you if you haven't actually read them...
Bit concerning that the decline in cases in England seems to be levelling off well before the end of the lockdown is due to start filtering through into the numbers.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
How many on here went to public schools then? I would guess only a minority, in fact I would guess more here went to Oxbridge and certainly the Russell Group than went to public school
I don't know. My sense is more Oxbridge on here than public schools. But lots of private schools, I think? Still, again, not sure. But that wasn't what I was driving at. My point is more that any attack on educational privilege is - not just on here but in this country - guaranteed to get the backs up of many many people who themselves have not benefited from it or in fact been anywhere near it. It is thought of as Class War. We are attached to our privilege in England. The status quo is ok by us in this regard. We don't want it smashed up.
I didn't like a lot of my time at Oxford because I went to a grammar school which were, even in the early 90s, rare beasts. We didn't quite fit into the class system anywhere comfortable. People who went to comprehensives, especially Northern comprehensives, effortlessly adopted a working-class hero, f*** the system type attitude, while the public and private school bunch swanned around like they owned the place. We grammar school types were considered a little declasse by both groups.
Coronavirus cases increased in 20 of Wales’s 22 local authority areas on Thursday, with a “rising tide” of infections seen in both urban and rural areas, health minister Vaughan Gething said.
On the back of what, 17 last week?
The different national lockdown regimes to allow petty nationalistic point-scoring have been pathetic.
I am surprised at your calm non-partisan analysis. Has someone hijacked your account?
Mr Urquhart does seem rather enthusiastic as to our dropping like flies here in Wales.
Whereas, I agree Drakeford is an idiot, I don't want to be a statistic used to prove it. For what it's worth I think the responses to Covid across the four home nations have been universally pretty piss-poor, as they have across Europe and North America.
Why are people saying the 2 week firebreak was a bad idea?
Surely without it the situation now would be worse than it is, no?
Because its useless at worst and counterproductive at best as was called out at the time.
A fortnight just isn't that long to drive down numbers. Then combine that with the fact that people party and have "last nights of freedom" before the fortnight and then have "hooray free from Covid lockdown" parties afterwards and you've achieved diddly squat apart from deeply damaging the businesses that had to shut down and throw away all their stock etc.
But oh well, at least there was tape stopping people from buying a new kettle from a supermarket if theirs broke during the fortnight.
Contrast with England - did it for twice as long giving time for case numbers to actually drop, then put stricter tiers in place afterwards.
Ok. Schooling me there, I confess. Quite the role reversal. My pandemic following dial has been slipping for some time now. Still I'd have thought the aggregate net impact on infections of a 14 day Lockdown would be a reduction compared to the counterfactual of No Lockdown. Is Drakeford admitting this is not the case?
Just extrapolating the timeline from before the firebreak; cases in Wales would probably be 3-4x higher than they currently are if there were no firebreak.
Right. So if that is the case, where is all this "the Welsh firebreak was a dreadful error that made things worse" commentary coming from? Could it be anti-Drakeford sentiment in the driving seat? Is Drakeford getting on people's tits for some reason, either because he's Labour or because he's Welsh, or simply because he's Drakeford?
Or anti-devolution sentiment, as a logical possibility at least. I sometimes wonder if Ms Sturgeon can win on PB. Eityher she';s not being severe enough or she's too severe.
She has got lots of plaudits on here from English posters who dont care one way or another about Scottish independence this year and last. I dont agree with all her politics but certainly see her as far more competent than what we have been offered in the rest of the UK the last few years.
Obviously those with strong views on scottish independence, either way, are going to be extremely partial in their judgments.
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
How many on here went to public schools then? I would guess only a minority, in fact I would guess more here went to Oxbridge and certainly the Russell Group than went to public school
I wouldn't class institutions whose primary barrier to entry is academic ability in quite the same category as those who screen predominantly on parental income. Although of course that distinction can become blurred in practice, especially given that private schools' function is precisely to blur that distinction.
Most public schools have scholarships now and you also need to pass the Common Entrance exam to get in, certainly to the major ones.
Indeed many of the old academically selective grammar schools are now independent schools, including the school attended by the Leader of the Opposition
CE is in itself presumablyt a major social barrier. How many primaries prepare childre for it? I don't know - but maybe one of the teachers on the site can say.
Most public schools have entry at 13, primary schools finish at 11, prep schools are and always have been the main public schools feeder, though of course in Kent and Bucks and Trafford which are fully selective still primary school pupils do go on to grammars in large numbers
In other words, effectively you have to be able to afford private education to get into Headmastder's Conference "Public Schools". That adds to the social and class barrier.,
No, not if you get a scholarship.
Of course before Harold Wilson's government began the process of comprehensivation English and Welsh state education was fully selective (it still is in Northern Ireland), so if you passed the 11 plus or 13 pass you went to an academically selective grammar school no matter what your parents earnt many of which were as good as if not better than independent schools.
Labour of course then abolished most of the grammar schools in favour of comprehensives, the Tories fought the 1964 election with a manifesto commitment to retain grammars
But you've just said the scholarships are nowhere near enough to pay for the fees. PLus tdhere are the added costs - uniforms, school skiing trips to Lombardy, etc.
Opening up Europe for foreign holidays looked utter stupidity at the time. As many of us said - at the time.
We'll probably still let everyone go off on skiing hlidays again this winter. Which will again be a predictably twattish thing to do.
God yes. Shapps really should be indicted for manslaughter.
What is mind blowing to me is how every European country went with it. The Germans were pretty quick to say screw freedom of movement stuff, the border is SHUT. Then decided well what harm can letting millions of our citizens travel off across Europe and mix with millions of others from all over the world. It was absolutely collective incompetence.
As I posted yesterday the psychotic adherence to "travel must be open" mindset comes from the international best practices at containing bubonic plague outbreaks. For some reason they have morphed to best practices for controlling all pandemics despite the very obvious massive differences between he bubonic plague and a respiratory disease.
Coronavirus cases increased in 20 of Wales’s 22 local authority areas on Thursday, with a “rising tide” of infections seen in both urban and rural areas, health minister Vaughan Gething said.
On the back of what, 17 last week?
The different national lockdown regimes to allow petty nationalistic point-scoring have been pathetic.
I am surprised at your calm non-partisan analysis. Has someone hijacked your account?
Mr Urquhart does seem rather enthusiastic as to our dropping like flies here in Wales.
Whereas, I agree Drakeford is an idiot, I don't want to be a statistic used to prove it. For what it's worth I think the responses to Covid across the four home nations have been universally pretty piss-poor, as they have across Europe and North America.
Why are people saying the 2 week firebreak was a bad idea?
Surely without it the situation now would be worse than it is, no?
Because its useless at worst and counterproductive at best as was called out at the time.
A fortnight just isn't that long to drive down numbers. Then combine that with the fact that people party and have "last nights of freedom" before the fortnight and then have "hooray free from Covid lockdown" parties afterwards and you've achieved diddly squat apart from deeply damaging the businesses that had to shut down and throw away all their stock etc.
But oh well, at least there was tape stopping people from buying a new kettle from a supermarket if theirs broke during the fortnight.
Contrast with England - did it for twice as long giving time for case numbers to actually drop, then put stricter tiers in place afterwards.
Ok. Schooling me there, I confess. Quite the role reversal. My pandemic following dial has been slipping for some time now. Still I'd have thought the aggregate net impact on infections of a 14 day Lockdown would be a reduction compared to the counterfactual of No Lockdown. Is Drakeford admitting this is not the case?
Just extrapolating the timeline from before the firebreak; cases in Wales would probably be 3-4x higher than they currently are if there were no firebreak.
Right. So if that is the case, where is all this "the Welsh firebreak was a dreadful error that made things worse" commentary coming from? Could it be anti-Drakeford sentiment in the driving seat? Is Drakeford getting on people's tits for some reason, either because he's Labour or because he's Welsh, or simply because he's Drakeford?
In a normal group of 60 people, Mark Drakeford would stand out as completely incompetent, lacking ideas, charisma or even basic functioning intelligence and motor skills.
In the group of 60 Welsh AMs in the Senedd, Drakeford is (unbelievably) in the top 5 per cent. He is smarter than all the ex-UKIPers, as well as almost all the Tories, Labour & PC AMs, and Dim Kirsty.
It is measure of how abysmally low the standards are in the Senedd, which is the UK's most corrupt Parliament.
Nonetheless, Drakeford has had a poor pandemic -- and he may be drifting into serious trouble if Wales diverges strongly from England & Scotland.
It is also true that "World Beating" Boris and "Zero Covid Scotland" Sturgeon have not had great pandemics either.
That is because you can't kid the COVID-19 virus -- and we have some of the greatest kidders in our political class in the World.
The elected Mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, has been arrested.
The city leader was arrested earlier today by Merseyside Police along with four other men in connection with offences of bribery and witness intimidation as part of an investigation into building and development contracts in Liverpool.
OLB Scholarships just reduce the fees, to get into Eton, Westminster, Winchester etc you also need to pass Common Entrance even if your parents pay full fees
My understanding is that CE isn't especially hard but your kid really needs to be at an 8-13 prep school that teaches its curriculum in order to pass. In other words, it's not far off a test of parental income in itself. I only have this knowledge second-hand though as my kids go to state schools, as did I.
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
How many on here went to public schools then? I would guess only a minority, in fact I would guess more here went to Oxbridge and certainly the Russell Group than went to public school
I wouldn't class institutions whose primary barrier to entry is academic ability in quite the same category as those who screen predominantly on parental income. Although of course that distinction can become blurred in practice, especially given that private schools' function is precisely to blur that distinction.
Most public schools have scholarships now and you also need to pass the Common Entrance exam to get in, certainly to the major ones.
Indeed many of the old academically selective grammar schools are now independent schools, including the school attended by the Leader of the Opposition
CE is in itself presumablyt a major social barrier. How many primaries prepare childre for it? I don't know - but maybe one of the teachers on the site can say.
Most public schools have entry at 13, primary schools finish at 11, prep schools are and always have been the main public schools feeder, though of course in Kent and Bucks and Trafford which are fully selective still primary school pupils do go on to grammars in large numbers
In other words, effectively you have to be able to afford private education to get into Headmastder's Conference "Public Schools". That adds to the social and class barrier.,
No, not if you get a scholarship.
Of course before Harold Wilson's government began the process of comprehensivation English and Welsh state education was fully selective (it still is in Northern Ireland), so if you passed the 11 plus or 13 pass you went to an academically selective grammar school no matter what your parents earnt many of which were as good as if not better than independent schools.
Labour of course then abolished most of the grammar schools in favour of comprehensives, the Tories fought the 1964 election with a manifesto commitment to retain grammars
But you've just said the scholarships are nowhere near enough to pay for the fees. PLus tdhere are the added costs - uniforms, school skiing trips to Lombardy, etc.
Oh the uniform cost. I remember that one. I was a scholarship pupil and my grandparents funded my remaining fees. My parents were, understandably, uncomfortable buying me £300+ worth of uniform every year, so I had the entertainment of being made fun of for wearing a blazer that was too large for me. Then I got to be made fun of for having a tatty blazer when it actually did fit me.
Cameron never came across as particularly compassionate to me. The whole "calm down, dear" thing certainly didn't come over as very self-aware either. Obviously I don't know him personally. And of course he suffered personal tragedy in his life, for which I have great sympathy. There is a lot more to disliking someone's manner and the way they treat those around them than their accent. I honestly couldn't give two shits about how people speak, although as a matter of personal preference obviously the Geordie accent is a lot easier on the ear than the dulcet tones of Rees Mogg. But you can learn a lot about people's character in those moments when they think they aren't doing anything worth watching, such as how they interact with the waiting staff at a meal.
Your generalisations are getting wilder and wilder! So you've now switched to accusing Etonians of not treating waiters properly. No doubt that is true of some. You should ask yourself what evidence you have that, as a group, it is more true of them than of SNP politicians, or Welsh rugby players, or Essex girls, or any other group.
I know you need me to be some spittle-flecked class warrior making wild accusations and displaying the ugly chip on my shoulder. You really need to "calm down, dear" and read what I have actually written. I'm not generalising, just offering some observations based on my experiences observing the posh boy in his natural habitat (Oxbridge, politics, finance) over the years. So for instance, I have observed that John Major interacted with waiting staff like they were his fellow human beings while David Cameron acted like they didn't exist. Whether I can generalise from that experience or not I don't know, but it certainly wasn't out of line with my own experiences working in a restaurant, where the rudeness of the "yahs" was well known (eg actually clicking their fingers at you). Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
You do have to grind hard on here if you hazard a word against the public schools.
How many on here went to public schools then? I would guess only a minority, in fact I would guess more here went to Oxbridge and certainly the Russell Group than went to public school
I wouldn't class institutions whose primary barrier to entry is academic ability in quite the same category as those who screen predominantly on parental income. Although of course that distinction can become blurred in practice, especially given that private schools' function is precisely to blur that distinction.
Most public schools have scholarships now and you also need to pass the Common Entrance exam to get in, certainly to the major ones.
Indeed many of the old academically selective grammar schools are now independent schools, including the school attended by the Leader of the Opposition
CE is in itself presumablyt a major social barrier. How many primaries prepare childre for it? I don't know - but maybe one of the teachers on the site can say.
Most public schools have entry at 13, primary schools finish at 11, prep schools are and always have been the main public schools feeder, though of course in Kent and Bucks and Trafford which are fully selective still primary school pupils do go on to grammars in large numbers
In other words, effectively you have to be able to afford private education to get into Headmastder's Conference "Public Schools". That adds to the social and class barrier.,
No, not if you get a scholarship.
Of course before Harold Wilson's government began the process of comprehensivation English and Welsh state education was fully selective (it still is in Northern Ireland), so if you passed the 11 plus or 13 pass you went to an academically selective grammar school no matter what your parents earnt many of which were as good as if not better than independent schools.
Labour of course then abolished most of the grammar schools in favour of comprehensives, the Tories fought the 1964 election with a manifesto commitment to retain grammars
But you've just said the scholarships are nowhere near enough to pay for the fees. PLus tdhere are the added costs - uniforms, school skiing trips to Lombardy, etc.
Some scholarships are enough to pay the fees but otherwise as a Tory I believe the answer is more grammar schools, if I was PM I would certainly allow ballots to open new grammars and not just to close them as now
Apropos nothing else my son has his 3 interviews for PPE at St Annes on Monday. Going to be a slightly nervous weekend.
Fingers crossed for him. Presumably these are virtual interviews? Difficult both for your son and for the dons, I would think.
Yes, all virtual. Which is a great shame. He is in a very strong year at his school and 7 of them have Oxbridge interviews, 5 at Oxford. Normally they would all be going down on the train together and getting a proper feel of the college etc. as well as sharing their anxieties.
I agree it will be tough for the Dons too. Much harder to get a proper feel on someone on a screen in my experience.
Given the limited evidence for the predictive power of interviews, I'd have dropped them completely. Mind you, I never went to Oxford. Good luck to the @DavidL 7.
Many thanks.
To state the bleeding obvious, there might be a case for checking his connection beforehand, making sure dad is not using all the wifi bandwidth next door, camera works, microphone works, there is sufficient contrast between him and the background, no embarrassing books behind him, enough soft furnishings to soften the audio. If you've got more than one laptop, compare them all.
And the same goes for anyone making Zoom calls or similar.
A selection of the interviewer's books in the backdrop probably wouldn't hurt!
Word of warning [edit] - it has to be a genuine interest. Dons spot bullshit like Scatophaga flies do, only they don't like it nearly so much.
And always, always be able to back it up convincingly when they ask, as they might.
I turned up for my interview with a bag from the UNiversity Bookshop and a parasitology book in it - but I was able to speak convincingly about why it was interesting and why I was so pleased to have it ...
Hats off! Eye OTOH was very immature at 17 and rocked up for an interview at Cambridge wearing a Bazooka Joe tee shirt (free with 250 Bazooka Joe comics) and prep free. Fine if you have the innate precocious brilliance to pull it off. If you don't ... well we're talking a complete and utter embarrassment to everyone concerned.
Apropos nothing else my son has his 3 interviews for PPE at St Annes on Monday. Going to be a slightly nervous weekend.
Fingers crossed for him. Presumably these are virtual interviews? Difficult both for your son and for the dons, I would think.
Yes, all virtual. Which is a great shame. He is in a very strong year at his school and 7 of them have Oxbridge interviews, 5 at Oxford. Normally they would all be going down on the train together and getting a proper feel of the college etc. as well as sharing their anxieties.
I agree it will be tough for the Dons too. Much harder to get a proper feel on someone on a screen in my experience.
Given the limited evidence for the predictive power of interviews, I'd have dropped them completely. Mind you, I never went to Oxford. Good luck to the @DavidL 7.
Many thanks.
To state the bleeding obvious, there might be a case for checking his connection beforehand, making sure dad is not using all the wifi bandwidth next door, camera works, microphone works, there is sufficient contrast between him and the background, no embarrassing books behind him, enough soft furnishings to soften the audio. If you've got more than one laptop, compare them all.
And the same goes for anyone making Zoom calls or similar.
A selection of the interviewer's books in the backdrop probably wouldn't hurt!
Word of warning [edit] - it has to be a genuine interest. Dons spot bullshit like Scatophaga flies do, only they don't like it nearly so much.
And always, always be able to back it up convincingly when they ask, as they might.
I turned up for my interview with a bag from the UNiversity Bookshop and a parasitology book in it - but I was able to speak convincingly about why it was interesting and why I was so pleased to have it ...
When I was in the Sixth Form I put in the narrative section on my UCCA/PCAS form (they had merged the forms in readiness for the merger to become UCAS the following year) that I enjoyed reading Chekhov's plays - simply because I was in a production of Three Sisters when I filled it out. I thought it made me sound intellectual. Only on my way to interview at Liverpool did I realise that Three Sisters was about the only Chekhov play I could name, let alone talk about. Cue panicked search in WH Smiths on Euston for a copy of anything whatsoever by Chekhov I could get my hands on. Amazingly I found a paperback copy of the 4 major plays and spent most of my lunch money on it. On the train I practically memorised the introduction, skim read The Seagull, and when it came up extemorised some complete crap based on that. Amazingly, I got a BCC offer, and would have gone there if I hadn't passed the Oxford entrance.
29 years later I still keep that very same copy near my desk to remind me that bullshitters always, always, get found out.
But you didn't.
TBF by the time that train pulled into Lime Street I knew more than your average Joe Public about The Cherry Orchard's themes of social change in Russia brought about by the emancipation of the serfs.
Comments
Current odds for the Dems taking both GA senate seats are quite long but I will bet with you at EVENS that they do.
Keep the stake modest - say TWELVE POUNDS + 50 PENCE.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1334806966460407808?s=20
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1334806971573268481?s=20
Of course if you'd like to finance my making an in-depth study of the behaviour of different groups in a casual dining setting so I can arrive at a statistically significant sample size that would be lovely. If it's OK with you I'll kick off with the Essex girls.
The activity in our area was crazy and I said it before that we even experienced traffic queues going into town (very rare) and most everyone acted as if covid was over
There is only one person responsible for that and it is Drakeford
https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1334868397721591808
And always, always be able to back it up convincingly when they ask, as they might.
I turned up for my interview with a bag from the UNiversity Bookshop and a parasitology book in it - but I was able to speak convincingly about why it was interesting and why I was so pleased to have it ...
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1334883193934114816?s=20
"How much???"
We just have to be careful you don't lose too many of these in a row, otherwise the "doubling" effect (like with Covid) will have you in the deep doo doo.
When I had my interview, there was a written exam (maths) that formed part of the process in addition to two interviews. I wonder how those are being handled, if done at all? Hard to enforce no cheating on an online version. The feedback my school got strongly implied that I got the offer on the back of the exam performance, rather than my interviews, which I recall being quite poor (particularly the first, where I was intimidated and didn't give a very good account of myself at all, I suspect). Relying only on interview may give different results and favour those with more paid/school provided preparation and more of a sense that they really are good enough to be there.
Good luck to your son.
Cmon betfair. We’re a month on!
This is getting ridiculous.
29 years later I still keep that very same copy near my desk to remind me that bullshitters always, always, get found out.
Covid 19. Making fools of everybody since, well, 2019....
"He needs the leg up in life only Oxford can give him..."
And a trial run to make sure everything works, from another laptop, phone or whatever. Make sure the cameras in the best place, chair's high enough
Best of and all that. As you say, a jittery weekend, but Monday will come.
Thousands of guests sat at a 500 metre-long (1640ft) table on the Charles Bridge in Prague on Tuesday sharing food and drinks they had brought from home.
Guests were encouraged to share with their neighbours and there was no social distancing, something people in countries under lockdown will find hard to relate to.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53244688
No, even at those lowish case numbers, you still need to at least hold them constant, which probably requires level 2. If numbers still go down under level 2, then dropping further should be considered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xZmlUV8muY
Every recent predicted pandemic (MERS / SARS / H1N1) hadn't really affected us in Europe, so you expected people to cancel their holidays?
Indeed many of the old academically selective grammar schools are now independent schools, including the school attended by the Leader of the Opposition
Verstappen 3.9, Albon 28.
Both Red Bulls were ahead of Bottas in first practice, and both had a better time of it, and better starts, than Bottas in the previous race.
For the love god get on with it and agree a frigging deal. We're in the middle of a pandemic.
Either get on with the deal or walking away, enough is enough now.
But yes its theatre. Nothing will be agreed until the PM and European President and Macron etc are in a room together (though they'll likely get in a room together once its agreed).
He went into business, and I, (grammar school & tech) more laid back, succeeded him. Several times I had relief expressed to me that people were now dealing with me, not him.
Of course before Harold Wilson's government began the process of comprehensivisation English and Welsh state education was fully selective (it still is in Northern Ireland), so if you passed the 11 plus or 13 pass you went to an academically selective grammar school no matter what your parents earnt many of which were as good as if not better than independent schools.
Labour of course then abolished most of the grammar schools in favour of comprehensives, the Tories fought the 1964 election with a manifesto commitment to retain grammars
Perez's engine failed him. And that was a Mercedes. Plus Bottas got unlucky with debris last time. These things can happen. And the short lap means backmarkers will be more of a problem at this race than last week's.
Bit concerning that the decline in cases in England seems to be levelling off well before the end of the lockdown is due to start filtering through into the numbers.
Wales starting its new rules today.
Obviously those with strong views on scottish independence, either way, are going to be extremely partial in their judgments.
In the group of 60 Welsh AMs in the Senedd, Drakeford is (unbelievably) in the top 5 per cent. He is smarter than all the ex-UKIPers, as well as almost all the Tories, Labour & PC AMs, and Dim Kirsty.
It is measure of how abysmally low the standards are in the Senedd, which is the UK's most corrupt Parliament.
Nonetheless, Drakeford has had a poor pandemic -- and he may be drifting into serious trouble if Wales diverges strongly from England & Scotland.
It is also true that "World Beating" Boris and "Zero Covid Scotland" Sturgeon have not had great pandemics either.
That is because you can't kid the COVID-19 virus -- and we have some of the greatest kidders in our political class in the World.
The elected Mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, has been arrested.
The city leader was arrested earlier today by Merseyside Police along with four other men in connection with offences of bribery and witness intimidation as part of an investigation into building and development contracts in Liverpool.
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/mayor-liverpool-joe-anderson-arrested-19399231#source=breaking-news
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/mayor-liverpool-joe-anderson-arrested-19399231