I see Gavin Williamson's (and the DfE) have been working exceptionally hard over the last few months to justify him being left in post after the fiasco of last year's exams...
aka. done nothing and just thrown their hands up in despair and made it a free for all.
It is absolutely staggering that they haven’t put in place a proper system of external moderation. It was bad enough last year and it is madness this year.
OFQUAL and the DfE both need to be axed.
If it was up to you how would you externally moderate teacher based assessments?
Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says in a new book.
She also claims some Brexiters are consumed with hatred for Germany and gripped by a myth that they liberated Europe on their own, describing Brexit as a triumph of emotion over reason, won by a campaign full of lies in which negative attitudes to migration were exploited by figures such as Johnson and Michael Gove.
Bermann, who served as the French ambassador to the UK from 2014 to 2017 and has been one of the most senior diplomats in the French diplomatic service, including as ambassador to China and to Russia, assesses the British handling of the Covid pandemic as among the worst in the world alongside that of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. She predicts Johnson will seek to use Covid to mask the true economic cost of Brexit on the UK economy.
Johnson, she says, comes from an Eton and Oxford University class that believes they are entitled to use language to provoke. Describing him as intelligent and charming, she says he uses “lies to embellish reality, as a game and as instrument of power. The ends justify the means. He has no rules.”
I had a long chat with her predecessor (a Sarkozy appointment, she was Hollande's pick) after a swanky do at his official residence in around 2013. He was good fun, but I was struck by how superficial his understanding of British attitudes to the EU was. This lady's views sound similarly superficial.
I wonder how many British people she has met outside of central London.
I suspect equivalent things can be said of many ambassadors from many countries.
Indeed - she needs to visit Hartkepool, Stoke and Hull - all places she , and dear thick Roger totally despise.
Her comments mostly concern Johnson’s character and in particular his dishonesty. A trip to Hartlepool seems an unnecessary pre-condition for diagnosing that.
If she wanted character witnesses, there are fishermen closer to London than that.
Your stick to your mantra UK bad EU good. It keeps you happy.
Is the Ambassador wrong about Boris's rather shaky devotion to truth? Undiplomatic, perhaps, but not wrong.
The ex-Ambassador has discovered that politicians tell fibs - truly she must have been a real high flyer at the Sorbonne.
I find the comparison with Trump/Bolsanaro on Covid pretty terrible as well. It is perfectly reasonable to believe that the response to Covid in this country (sans vaccine) has been not exactly in the top rank of nations. And yes, on a purely numbers game we haven't done much better (or arguably worse) than the US and Brazil.
But that doesn't justify comparisons on an individual level with Trump and Bolsanaro, who have gone out of their way to frustrate and actively make worse the outbreaks in their countries, willfully undermine scientists and mislead their populations. Whereas in general Johnson can more be accused of struggling against his personal political instincts and the instincts of many of his party, and succumbing on occasion to misplaced optimism, but i think that he cannot be accused overall of trying to do the right thing in a very difficult situation. The country's failings are in many cases his failings but it is far easier to cut him some slack than Trump.
Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says in a new book.
She also claims some Brexiters are consumed with hatred for Germany and gripped by a myth that they liberated Europe on their own, describing Brexit as a triumph of emotion over reason, won by a campaign full of lies in which negative attitudes to migration were exploited by figures such as Johnson and Michael Gove.
Bermann, who served as the French ambassador to the UK from 2014 to 2017 and has been one of the most senior diplomats in the French diplomatic service, including as ambassador to China and to Russia, assesses the British handling of the Covid pandemic as among the worst in the world alongside that of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. She predicts Johnson will seek to use Covid to mask the true economic cost of Brexit on the UK economy.
Johnson, she says, comes from an Eton and Oxford University class that believes they are entitled to use language to provoke. Describing him as intelligent and charming, she says he uses “lies to embellish reality, as a game and as instrument of power. The ends justify the means. He has no rules.”
I had a long chat with her predecessor (a Sarkozy appointment, she was Hollande's pick) after a swanky do at his official residence in around 2013. He was good fun, but I was struck by how superficial his understanding of British attitudes to the EU was. This lady's views sound similarly superficial.
I wonder how many British people she has met outside of central London.
I suspect equivalent things can be said of many ambassadors from many countries.
Indeed - she needs to visit Hartkepool, Stoke and Hull - all places she , and dear thick Roger totally despise.
No need. She could get the full Leaverstan experience by eating Turkey Twizzlers while watching this video.
Positive for the plague in my household. Wife's tested positive despite taking all the precautions and having the Pfizer first jab in December. She's asymptomatic, just been picked up as she does 3 tests a week.
I guess I'll get the plague now and may not be as lucky to be asymptomatic. Kind of regretting piling the pounds back on over winter that I lost last spring now. 😟
Sorry to hear that Phil.
I suppose the good news is that your wife is likely to have no problems given she's already been jabbed.
Be careful to isolate yourself for the next couple of weeks though.
Positive for the plague in my household. Wife's tested positive despite taking all the precautions and having the Pfizer first jab in December. She's asymptomatic, just been picked up as she does 3 tests a week.
I guess I'll get the plague now and may not be as lucky to be asymptomatic. Kind of regretting piling the pounds back on over winter that I lost last spring now. 😟
Oh dear, sorry to hear that and good luck with everything.
Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says in a new book.
She also claims some Brexiters are consumed with hatred for Germany and gripped by a myth that they liberated Europe on their own, describing Brexit as a triumph of emotion over reason, won by a campaign full of lies in which negative attitudes to migration were exploited by figures such as Johnson and Michael Gove.
Bermann, who served as the French ambassador to the UK from 2014 to 2017 and has been one of the most senior diplomats in the French diplomatic service, including as ambassador to China and to Russia, assesses the British handling of the Covid pandemic as among the worst in the world alongside that of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. She predicts Johnson will seek to use Covid to mask the true economic cost of Brexit on the UK economy.
Johnson, she says, comes from an Eton and Oxford University class that believes they are entitled to use language to provoke. Describing him as intelligent and charming, she says he uses “lies to embellish reality, as a game and as instrument of power. The ends justify the means. He has no rules.”
I had a long chat with her predecessor (a Sarkozy appointment, she was Hollande's pick) after a swanky do at his official residence in around 2013. He was good fun, but I was struck by how superficial his understanding of British attitudes to the EU was. This lady's views sound similarly superficial.
I wonder how many British people she has met outside of central London.
I suspect equivalent things can be said of many ambassadors from many countries.
Indeed - she needs to visit Hartkepool, Stoke and Hull - all places she , and dear thick Roger totally despise.
Her comments mostly concern Johnson’s character and in particular his dishonesty. A trip to Hartlepool seems an unnecessary pre-condition for diagnosing that.
If she wanted character witnesses, there are fishermen closer to London than that.
Your stick to your mantra UK bad EU good. It keeps you happy.
Is the Ambassador wrong about Boris's rather shaky devotion to truth? Undiplomatic, perhaps, but not wrong.
The ex-Ambassador has discovered that politicians tell fibs - truly she must have been a real high flyer at the Sorbonne.
I find the comparison with Trump/Bolsanaro on Covid pretty terrible as well. It is perfectly reasonable to believe that the response to Covid in this country (sans vaccine) has been not exactly in the top rank of nations. And yes, on a purely numbers game we haven't done much better (or arguably worse) than the US and Brazil.
But that doesn't justify comparisons on an individual level with Trump and Bolsanaro, who have gone out of their way to frustrate and actively make worse the outbreaks in their country's, willfully undermine scientists and mislead their populations. Whereas in general Johnson can more be accused of struggling against his personal political instincts and the instincts of many of his party, and succumbing on occasion to misplaced optimism, but i think that he cannot be accused overall of trying to do the right thing in a very difficult situation. The country's failings are in many cases his failings but it is far easier to cut him some slack than Trump.
If you look across Western nations and American States the worst hit by death tolls are primarily those with high population densities, not those with "worse responses".
"Blue States" that have high population densities have been harder hit in deaths than "Red States" that haven't taken the virus that seriously.
England of course has one of the highest (if not the highest) population densities of all major Western countries.
"For his party Biden was an undisputed asset last November doing better in state after state than other Democratic candidates in lower ticket races"
Or is it more true that Trump was an undisputed liability, firing up his base, but sending moderate/sane republicans off to Biden or non-voting? And that those same moderate republicans stuck with the GOP in the lower ticket races?
Positive for the plague in my household. Wife's tested positive despite taking all the precautions and having the Pfizer first jab in December. She's asymptomatic, just been picked up as she does 3 tests a week.
I guess I'll get the plague now and may not be as lucky to be asymptomatic. Kind of regretting piling the pounds back on over winter that I lost last spring now. 😟
Sorry to hear that and best wishes.
Is it a confirmed positive? (multiple tests and/or PCR). I'm assuming the multiple tests per week she's had are lateral flow - they have a part to play, but if you do enough of them the chances of a false positive become non-trivial.
I see Gavin Williamson's (and the DfE) have been working exceptionally hard over the last few months to justify him being left in post after the fiasco of last year's exams...
aka. done nothing and just thrown their hands up in despair and made it a free for all.
I am not a fan but on this matter what would be you alternative prescription?
Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says in a new book.
She also claims some Brexiters are consumed with hatred for Germany and gripped by a myth that they liberated Europe on their own, describing Brexit as a triumph of emotion over reason, won by a campaign full of lies in which negative attitudes to migration were exploited by figures such as Johnson and Michael Gove.
Bermann, who served as the French ambassador to the UK from 2014 to 2017 and has been one of the most senior diplomats in the French diplomatic service, including as ambassador to China and to Russia, assesses the British handling of the Covid pandemic as among the worst in the world alongside that of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. She predicts Johnson will seek to use Covid to mask the true economic cost of Brexit on the UK economy.
Johnson, she says, comes from an Eton and Oxford University class that believes they are entitled to use language to provoke. Describing him as intelligent and charming, she says he uses “lies to embellish reality, as a game and as instrument of power. The ends justify the means. He has no rules.”
I had a long chat with her predecessor (a Sarkozy appointment, she was Hollande's pick) after a swanky do at his official residence in around 2013. He was good fun, but I was struck by how superficial his understanding of British attitudes to the EU was. This lady's views sound similarly superficial.
I wonder how many British people she has met outside of central London.
I suspect equivalent things can be said of many ambassadors from many countries.
Indeed - she needs to visit Hartkepool, Stoke and Hull - all places she , and dear thick Roger totally despise.
Her comments mostly concern Johnson’s character and in particular his dishonesty. A trip to Hartlepool seems an unnecessary pre-condition for diagnosing that.
If she wanted character witnesses, there are fishermen closer to London than that.
Your stick to your mantra UK bad EU good. It keeps you happy.
Is the Ambassador wrong about Boris's rather shaky devotion to truth? Undiplomatic, perhaps, but not wrong.
Her head is going to explode when she works out that Macron has lied. About vaccines. And so cost many, many lives. To score a political point.
A really, really stupid political point at that. Because the UK has just given a Gallic shrug of the shoulders - and carried on jabbing.
Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says in a new book.
She also claims some Brexiters are consumed with hatred for Germany and gripped by a myth that they liberated Europe on their own, describing Brexit as a triumph of emotion over reason, won by a campaign full of lies in which negative attitudes to migration were exploited by figures such as Johnson and Michael Gove.
Bermann, who served as the French ambassador to the UK from 2014 to 2017 and has been one of the most senior diplomats in the French diplomatic service, including as ambassador to China and to Russia, assesses the British handling of the Covid pandemic as among the worst in the world alongside that of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. She predicts Johnson will seek to use Covid to mask the true economic cost of Brexit on the UK economy.
Johnson, she says, comes from an Eton and Oxford University class that believes they are entitled to use language to provoke. Describing him as intelligent and charming, she says he uses “lies to embellish reality, as a game and as instrument of power. The ends justify the means. He has no rules.”
I had a long chat with her predecessor (a Sarkozy appointment, she was Hollande's pick) after a swanky do at his official residence in around 2013. He was good fun, but I was struck by how superficial his understanding of British attitudes to the EU was. This lady's views sound similarly superficial.
I wonder how many British people she has met outside of central London.
I suspect equivalent things can be said of many ambassadors from many countries.
Indeed - she needs to visit Hartkepool, Stoke and Hull - all places she , and dear thick Roger totally despise.
No need. She could get the full Leaverstan experience by eating Turkey Twizzlers while watching this video.
Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says in a new book.
She also claims some Brexiters are consumed with hatred for Germany and gripped by a myth that they liberated Europe on their own, describing Brexit as a triumph of emotion over reason, won by a campaign full of lies in which negative attitudes to migration were exploited by figures such as Johnson and Michael Gove.
Bermann, who served as the French ambassador to the UK from 2014 to 2017 and has been one of the most senior diplomats in the French diplomatic service, including as ambassador to China and to Russia, assesses the British handling of the Covid pandemic as among the worst in the world alongside that of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. She predicts Johnson will seek to use Covid to mask the true economic cost of Brexit on the UK economy.
Johnson, she says, comes from an Eton and Oxford University class that believes they are entitled to use language to provoke. Describing him as intelligent and charming, she says he uses “lies to embellish reality, as a game and as instrument of power. The ends justify the means. He has no rules.”
I had a long chat with her predecessor (a Sarkozy appointment, she was Hollande's pick) after a swanky do at his official residence in around 2013. He was good fun, but I was struck by how superficial his understanding of British attitudes to the EU was. This lady's views sound similarly superficial.
I wonder how many British people she has met outside of central London.
I suspect equivalent things can be said of many ambassadors from many countries.
Indeed - she needs to visit Hartkepool, Stoke and Hull - all places she , and dear thick Roger totally despise.
No need. She could get the full Leaverstan experience by eating Turkey Twizzlers while watching this video.
I see Gavin Williamson's (and the DfE) have been working exceptionally hard over the last few months to justify him being left in post after the fiasco of last year's exams...
aka. done nothing and just thrown their hands up in despair and made it a free for all.
It is absolutely staggering that they haven’t put in place a proper system of external moderation. It was bad enough last year and it is madness this year.
OFQUAL and the DfE both need to be axed.
If it was up to you how would you externally moderate teacher based assessments?
There are two ways of doing it. In an ideal world you would do both, but the world isn’t ideal so it might be you only do one.
1] pre moderation. You send in the materials you are using to assess grades beforehand, and somebody checks them to make sure they are reasonable. So, for example, if a GCSE student is required to write a 20,000 word essay on the impact of Marxist theory in British economic policy in the 1940s, you advise an adjustment. Similarly, if a candidate will get a grade 9 in Maths for knowing 2+2=4, you instruct them to make changes. Now the original idea was that this would happen because the exam boards (for what they’re worth) would set the papers, but that has been mostly abandoned because of course it was impossible to know who had been taught what and it become hopelessly unwieldy to set papers to cover every contingency. But the option of having schools submit materials to exam boards for approval - which after all, we did for years for coursework for the old GCSE - seems to ave been ignored as well.
2] You post moderate. You say that every school sends in one in six of their candidates’ assessed work, with the exam boards choosing the candidates - any piece that went into making up the assessment - with a code to say whether it was done under exam conditions or not. They then check the standard of marking. If everybody got grade 9s for answering multiple choice questions correctly in end of lesson quizzes, you say ‘er - no.’ Again, we did this for three decades with GCSE coursework.
But AIUI what we have now are optional pre set questions, followed by spot tests on random schools, rather than random pupils in every school.
I hope I’m wrong because if not I think the phrase ‘clusterfuck’ springs to mind. It’s barely different from what we had last year.
Positive for the plague in my household. Wife's tested positive despite taking all the precautions and having the Pfizer first jab in December. She's asymptomatic, just been picked up as she does 3 tests a week.
I guess I'll get the plague now and may not be as lucky to be asymptomatic. Kind of regretting piling the pounds back on over winter that I lost last spring now. 😟
Best of, but nil desperandum. Granddaughter-in-law, a teacher, had it; tested positive on the last day of the Autumn term and was very unwell over Christmas, recovered just in time for the restart. However Eldest Grandson, also a teacher and therefore regularly tested, has been negative throughout. Sometimes it just doesn't make sense.
Lucid Motors, a Silicon Valley company whose luxury electric cars are due to cost as much as $169,000, has not yet sold a single vehicle. Next year, it expects to sell just 20,000 cars, and it does not expect to make a profit until 2024.
But this week, the company announced plans to go public at a $24bn valuation - roughly that of Peugeot.
telegraph
To be fair, I reckon my cat is worth more than Peugeot.
Lucid Motors, a Silicon Valley company whose luxury electric cars are due to cost as much as $169,000, has not yet sold a single vehicle. Next year, it expects to sell just 20,000 cars, and it does not expect to make a profit until 2024.
But this week, the company announced plans to go public at a $24bn valuation - roughly that of Peugeot.
telegraph
To be fair, I reckon my cat is worth more than Peugeot.
I see Gavin Williamson's (and the DfE) have been working exceptionally hard over the last few months to justify him being left in post after the fiasco of last year's exams...
aka. done nothing and just thrown their hands up in despair and made it a free for all.
I am not a fan but on this matter what would be you alternative prescription?
I wouldn't presume to offer the answer to this question. I have no level of expertise to do so (I'm sure ydoether on the other hand will have useful contributions to make). However i think it is legitimate to recognise (and criticise as a result) that what is happening is no solution at all and it isn't unfair to argue that they should have been able to come up with something at least a bit better with some defensible system of external moderation. They've had long enough to plan for it (albeit i wouldn't be surprised that they limited this by the confident insistence that they still held until Christmas, that there were no circumstances in which schools would close and exams would be cancelled. I wonder what's happening in Scotland/Wales?
I see Gavin Williamson's (and the DfE) have been working exceptionally hard over the last few months to justify him being left in post after the fiasco of last year's exams...
aka. done nothing and just thrown their hands up in despair and made it a free for all.
It is absolutely staggering that they haven’t put in place a proper system of external moderation. It was bad enough last year and it is madness this year.
OFQUAL and the DfE both need to be axed.
If it was up to you how would you externally moderate teacher based assessments?
There are two ways of doing it. In an ideal world you would do both, but the world isn’t ideal so it might be you only do one.
1] pre moderation. You send in the materials you are using to assess grades beforehand, and somebody checks them to make sure they are reasonable. So, for example, if a GCSE student is required to write a 20,000 word essay on the impact of Marxist theory in British economic policy in the 1940s, you advise an adjustment. Similarly, if a candidate will get a grade 9 in Maths for knowing 2+2=4, you instruct them to make changes. Now the original idea was that this would happen because the exam boards (for what they’re worth) would set the papers, but that has been mostly abandoned because of course it was impossible to know who had been taught what and it become hopelessly unwieldy to set papers to cover every contingency. But the option of having schools submit materials to exam boards for approval - which after all, we did for years for coursework for the old GCSE - seems to ave been ignored as well.
2] You post moderate. You say that every school sends in one in six of their candidates’ assessed work, with the exam boards choosing the candidates - any piece that went into making up the assessment - with a code to say whether it was done under exam conditions or not. They then check the standard of marking. If everybody got grade 9s for answering multiple choice questions correctly in end of lesson quizzes, you say ‘er - no.’ Again, we did this for three decades with GCSE coursework.
But AIUI what we have now are optional pre set questions, followed by spot tests on random schools, rather than random pupils in every school.
I hope I’m wrong because if not I think the phrase ‘clusterfuck’ springs to mind. It’s barely different from what we had last year.
I see Gavin Williamson's (and the DfE) have been working exceptionally hard over the last few months to justify him being left in post after the fiasco of last year's exams...
aka. done nothing and just thrown their hands up in despair and made it a free for all.
It is absolutely staggering that they haven’t put in place a proper system of external moderation. It was bad enough last year and it is madness this year.
OFQUAL and the DfE both need to be axed.
If it was up to you how would you externally moderate teacher based assessments?
There are two ways of doing it. In an ideal world you would do both, but the world isn’t ideal so it might be you only do one.
1] pre moderation. You send in the materials you are using to assess grades beforehand, and somebody checks them to make sure they are reasonable. So, for example, if a GCSE student is required to write a 20,000 word essay on the impact of Marxist theory in British economic policy in the 1940s, you advise an adjustment. Similarly, if a candidate will get a grade 9 in Maths for knowing 2+2=4, you instruct them to make changes. Now the original idea was that this would happen because the exam boards (for what they’re worth) would set the papers, but that has been mostly abandoned because of course it was impossible to know who had been taught what and it become hopelessly unwieldy to set papers to cover every contingency. But the option of having schools submit materials to exam boards for approval - which after all, we did for years for coursework for the old GCSE - seems to ave been ignored as well.
2] You post moderate. You say that every school sends in one in six of their candidates’ assessed work, with the exam boards choosing the candidates - any piece that went into making up the assessment - with a code to say whether it was done under exam conditions or not. They then check the standard of marking. If everybody got grade 9s for answering multiple choice questions correctly in end of lesson quizzes, you say ‘er - no.’ Again, we did this for three decades with GCSE coursework.
But AIUI what we have now are optional pre set questions, followed by spot tests on random schools, rather than random pupils in every school.
I hope I’m wrong because if not I think the phrase ‘clusterfuck’ springs to mind. It’s barely different from what we had last year.
2. Seems to be fairest.
Well, if I went with one, that’s the one I’d do. But it has to be done for every subject for every school. You cannot just get away with random checks of random subjects in random schools. But that seems to be what’s proposed.
It’s not as though they’ve had no time to plan either. It was obvious from mid-October that this was coming.
Positive for the plague in my household. Wife's tested positive despite taking all the precautions and having the Pfizer first jab in December. She's asymptomatic, just been picked up as she does 3 tests a week.
I guess I'll get the plague now and may not be as lucky to be asymptomatic. Kind of regretting piling the pounds back on over winter that I lost last spring now. 😟
Sorry to hear that and best wishes.
Is it a confirmed positive? (multiple tests and/or PCR). I'm assuming the multiple tests per week she's had are lateral flow - they have a part to play, but if you do enough of them the chances of a false positive become non-trivial.
Thanks for the best wishes everyone.
PCR test. Lateral flow earlier in the week came negative.
On topic... can anybody construct a compelling argument why Trump won't run 2024? His various legal entanglements can be prolonged until and probably help him with with persecution narrative.
He will easily beat Harris or whatever is left of Biden.
Positive for the plague in my household. Wife's tested positive despite taking all the precautions and having the Pfizer first jab in December. She's asymptomatic, just been picked up as she does 3 tests a week.
I guess I'll get the plague now and may not be as lucky to be asymptomatic. Kind of regretting piling the pounds back on over winter that I lost last spring now. 😟
Sorry to hear that and best wishes.
Is it a confirmed positive? (multiple tests and/or PCR). I'm assuming the multiple tests per week she's had are lateral flow - they have a part to play, but if you do enough of them the chances of a false positive become non-trivial.
Thanks for the best wishes everyone.
PCR test. Lateral flow earlier in the week came negative.
Fingers crossed for you all. Hopefully the vaccine will mean none of the rest of you get it.
Foxy commented on the previous thread about false negatives in the LFTs.
Just watched The Cannonball Run on @Jonathan's recommendation. I can only assume he was taking the piss as it's one of the silliest films I've ever seen! And it's definitely unwoke!
It was supposed to be one of the silliest films.
Try the programmes about the real life version.
There was one in Europe too. I seem to recall Denmark to Gibraltar (?) at an average 112 mph.
I see Gavin Williamson's (and the DfE) have been working exceptionally hard over the last few months to justify him being left in post after the fiasco of last year's exams...
aka. done nothing and just thrown their hands up in despair and made it a free for all.
It is absolutely staggering that they haven’t put in place a proper system of external moderation. It was bad enough last year and it is madness this year.
OFQUAL and the DfE both need to be axed.
If it was up to you how would you externally moderate teacher based assessments?
There are two ways of doing it. In an ideal world you would do both, but the world isn’t ideal so it might be you only do one.
1] pre moderation. You send in the materials you are using to assess grades beforehand, and somebody checks them to make sure they are reasonable. So, for example, if a GCSE student is required to write a 20,000 word essay on the impact of Marxist theory in British economic policy in the 1940s, you advise an adjustment. Similarly, if a candidate will get a grade 9 in Maths for knowing 2+2=4, you instruct them to make changes. Now the original idea was that this would happen because the exam boards (for what they’re worth) would set the papers, but that has been mostly abandoned because of course it was impossible to know who had been taught what and it become hopelessly unwieldy to set papers to cover every contingency. But the option of having schools submit materials to exam boards for approval - which after all, we did for years for coursework for the old GCSE - seems to ave been ignored as well.
2] You post moderate. You say that every school sends in one in six of their candidates’ assessed work, with the exam boards choosing the candidates - any piece that went into making up the assessment - with a code to say whether it was done under exam conditions or not. They then check the standard of marking. If everybody got grade 9s for answering multiple choice questions correctly in end of lesson quizzes, you say ‘er - no.’ Again, we did this for three decades with GCSE coursework.
But AIUI what we have now are optional pre set questions, followed by spot tests on random schools, rather than random pupils in every school.
I hope I’m wrong because if not I think the phrase ‘clusterfuck’ springs to mind. It’s barely different from what we had last year.
And the problem i guess (as last year) is that some schools (or indeed some teachers within schools) will approach the exercise totally objectively and try very hard to give pupils realistic grades (even when under pressure from parents/school management) and/or under pressure of legal challenge. And other's won't.
And i guess there's also the issue, frankly, that some teachers may just be very bad at accurately assessing ability/performance against a somewhat abstract national standard. And need peer and/or external review and/or assistance to help them along the way. As well as the danger of conscious or unconscious bias creeping into their assessments.
I see Gavin Williamson's (and the DfE) have been working exceptionally hard over the last few months to justify him being left in post after the fiasco of last year's exams...
aka. done nothing and just thrown their hands up in despair and made it a free for all.
It is absolutely staggering that they haven’t put in place a proper system of external moderation. It was bad enough last year and it is madness this year.
OFQUAL and the DfE both need to be axed.
If it was up to you how would you externally moderate teacher based assessments?
There are two ways of doing it. In an ideal world you would do both, but the world isn’t ideal so it might be you only do one.
1] pre moderation. You send in the materials you are using to assess grades beforehand, and somebody checks them to make sure they are reasonable. So, for example, if a GCSE student is required to write a 20,000 word essay on the impact of Marxist theory in British economic policy in the 1940s, you advise an adjustment. Similarly, if a candidate will get a grade 9 in Maths for knowing 2+2=4, you instruct them to make changes. Now the original idea was that this would happen because the exam boards (for what they’re worth) would set the papers, but that has been mostly abandoned because of course it was impossible to know who had been taught what and it become hopelessly unwieldy to set papers to cover every contingency. But the option of having schools submit materials to exam boards for approval - which after all, we did for years for coursework for the old GCSE - seems to ave been ignored as well.
2] You post moderate. You say that every school sends in one in six of their candidates’ assessed work, with the exam boards choosing the candidates - any piece that went into making up the assessment - with a code to say whether it was done under exam conditions or not. They then check the standard of marking. If everybody got grade 9s for answering multiple choice questions correctly in end of lesson quizzes, you say ‘er - no.’ Again, we did this for three decades with GCSE coursework.
But AIUI what we have now are optional pre set questions, followed by spot tests on random schools, rather than random pupils in every school.
I hope I’m wrong because if not I think the phrase ‘clusterfuck’ springs to mind. It’s barely different from what we had last year.
2. Seems to be fairest.
Well, if I went with one, that’s the one I’d do. But it has to be done for every subject for every school. You cannot just get away with random checks of random subjects in random schools. But that seems to be what’s proposed.
It’s not as though they’ve had no time to plan either. It was obvious from mid-October that this was coming.
To be quite honest, I'd assumed that was what was being suggested, although I suppose one could 'get away with' related subjects. Maths at school A, Physics at B, but since I'm not a teacher I can't really contribute much more than instinct. Rather like a politician.
I see Gavin Williamson's (and the DfE) have been working exceptionally hard over the last few months to justify him being left in post after the fiasco of last year's exams...
aka. done nothing and just thrown their hands up in despair and made it a free for all.
It is absolutely staggering that they haven’t put in place a proper system of external moderation. It was bad enough last year and it is madness this year.
OFQUAL and the DfE both need to be axed.
If it was up to you how would you externally moderate teacher based assessments?
There are two ways of doing it. In an ideal world you would do both, but the world isn’t ideal so it might be you only do one.
1] pre moderation. You send in the materials you are using to assess grades beforehand, and somebody checks them to make sure they are reasonable. So, for example, if a GCSE student is required to write a 20,000 word essay on the impact of Marxist theory in British economic policy in the 1940s, you advise an adjustment. Similarly, if a candidate will get a grade 9 in Maths for knowing 2+2=4, you instruct them to make changes. Now the original idea was that this would happen because the exam boards (for what they’re worth) would set the papers, but that has been mostly abandoned because of course it was impossible to know who had been taught what and it become hopelessly unwieldy to set papers to cover every contingency. But the option of having schools submit materials to exam boards for approval - which after all, we did for years for coursework for the old GCSE - seems to ave been ignored as well.
2] You post moderate. You say that every school sends in one in six of their candidates’ assessed work, with the exam boards choosing the candidates - any piece that went into making up the assessment - with a code to say whether it was done under exam conditions or not. They then check the standard of marking. If everybody got grade 9s for answering multiple choice questions correctly in end of lesson quizzes, you say ‘er - no.’ Again, we did this for three decades with GCSE coursework.
But AIUI what we have now are optional pre set questions, followed by spot tests on random schools, rather than random pupils in every school.
I hope I’m wrong because if not I think the phrase ‘clusterfuck’ springs to mind. It’s barely different from what we had last year.
I think the government have got it right. It doesn't matter what they do to mitigate grade inflation, there will be howls of "it's not fair!" and then we'd have a week of "will the government u-turn and revert to what the teachers said?" at the end of which they will give in.
This way, they've saved us all from those arguments.
Positive for the plague in my household. Wife's tested positive despite taking all the precautions and having the Pfizer first jab in December. She's asymptomatic, just been picked up as she does 3 tests a week.
I guess I'll get the plague now and may not be as lucky to be asymptomatic. Kind of regretting piling the pounds back on over winter that I lost last spring now. 😟
Sorry to hear that and best wishes.
Is it a confirmed positive? (multiple tests and/or PCR). I'm assuming the multiple tests per week she's had are lateral flow - they have a part to play, but if you do enough of them the chances of a false positive become non-trivial.
Thanks for the best wishes everyone.
PCR test. Lateral flow earlier in the week came negative.
Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says in a new book.
She also claims some Brexiters are consumed with hatred for Germany and gripped by a myth that they liberated Europe on their own, describing Brexit as a triumph of emotion over reason, won by a campaign full of lies in which negative attitudes to migration were exploited by figures such as Johnson and Michael Gove.
Bermann, who served as the French ambassador to the UK from 2014 to 2017 and has been one of the most senior diplomats in the French diplomatic service, including as ambassador to China and to Russia, assesses the British handling of the Covid pandemic as among the worst in the world alongside that of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. She predicts Johnson will seek to use Covid to mask the true economic cost of Brexit on the UK economy.
Johnson, she says, comes from an Eton and Oxford University class that believes they are entitled to use language to provoke. Describing him as intelligent and charming, she says he uses “lies to embellish reality, as a game and as instrument of power. The ends justify the means. He has no rules.”
I had a long chat with her predecessor (a Sarkozy appointment, she was Hollande's pick) after a swanky do at his official residence in around 2013. He was good fun, but I was struck by how superficial his understanding of British attitudes to the EU was. This lady's views sound similarly superficial.
I wonder how many British people she has met outside of central London.
I suspect equivalent things can be said of many ambassadors from many countries.
Indeed - she needs to visit Hartkepool, Stoke and Hull - all places she , and dear thick Roger totally despise.
Her comments mostly concern Johnson’s character and in particular his dishonesty. A trip to Hartlepool seems an unnecessary pre-condition for diagnosing that.
If she wanted character witnesses, there are fishermen closer to London than that.
Your stick to your mantra UK bad EU good. It keeps you happy.
Is the Ambassador wrong about Boris's rather shaky devotion to truth? Undiplomatic, perhaps, but not wrong.
I think much of what she said is right, though not all, but its also utterly superficial analysis. An idiot googling Boris for 5 minutes could have written the same thing. There's nothing fresh, no insight, nothing of particular interest. It adds nothing and reveals nothing.
Positive for the plague in my household. Wife's tested positive despite taking all the precautions and having the Pfizer first jab in December. She's asymptomatic, just been picked up as she does 3 tests a week.
I guess I'll get the plague now and may not be as lucky to be asymptomatic. Kind of regretting piling the pounds back on over winter that I lost last spring now. 😟
Sorry to hear that and best wishes.
Is it a confirmed positive? (multiple tests and/or PCR). I'm assuming the multiple tests per week she's had are lateral flow - they have a part to play, but if you do enough of them the chances of a false positive become non-trivial.
Thanks for the best wishes everyone.
PCR test. Lateral flow earlier in the week came negative.
Sorry to hear your news. IIRC you recently mentioned your wife's colleague succumbing?
My sister went down with covid within 12 hours of a negative lateral flow test, so I have little faith in them.
On topic... can anybody construct a compelling argument why Trump won't run 2024? His various legal entanglements can be prolonged until and probably help him with with persecution narrative.
He will easily beat Harris or whatever is left of Biden.
You think he'll run from prison? I think Trump in an orange jump suit is >50%.
Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says in a new book.
She also claims some Brexiters are consumed with hatred for Germany and gripped by a myth that they liberated Europe on their own, describing Brexit as a triumph of emotion over reason, won by a campaign full of lies in which negative attitudes to migration were exploited by figures such as Johnson and Michael Gove.
Bermann, who served as the French ambassador to the UK from 2014 to 2017 and has been one of the most senior diplomats in the French diplomatic service, including as ambassador to China and to Russia, assesses the British handling of the Covid pandemic as among the worst in the world alongside that of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. She predicts Johnson will seek to use Covid to mask the true economic cost of Brexit on the UK economy.
Johnson, she says, comes from an Eton and Oxford University class that believes they are entitled to use language to provoke. Describing him as intelligent and charming, she says he uses “lies to embellish reality, as a game and as instrument of power. The ends justify the means. He has no rules.”
I had a long chat with her predecessor (a Sarkozy appointment, she was Hollande's pick) after a swanky do at his official residence in around 2013. He was good fun, but I was struck by how superficial his understanding of British attitudes to the EU was. This lady's views sound similarly superficial.
I wonder how many British people she has met outside of central London.
I suspect equivalent things can be said of many ambassadors from many countries.
Indeed - she needs to visit Hartkepool, Stoke and Hull - all places she , and dear thick Roger totally despise.
Her comments mostly concern Johnson’s character and in particular his dishonesty. A trip to Hartlepool seems an unnecessary pre-condition for diagnosing that.
If she wanted character witnesses, there are fishermen closer to London than that.
Your stick to your mantra UK bad EU good. It keeps you happy.
Is the Ambassador wrong about Boris's rather shaky devotion to truth? Undiplomatic, perhaps, but not wrong.
I think much of what she said is right, though not all, but its also utterly superficial analysis. An idiot googling Boris for 5 minutes could have written the same thing. There's nothing fresh, no insight, nothing of particular interest. It adds nothing and reveals nothing.
It shows she is blind to the French domestic situation, personified by Emmanuel Macron.
Positive for the plague in my household. Wife's tested positive despite taking all the precautions and having the Pfizer first jab in December. She's asymptomatic, just been picked up as she does 3 tests a week.
I guess I'll get the plague now and may not be as lucky to be asymptomatic. Kind of regretting piling the pounds back on over winter that I lost last spring now. 😟
Sorry to hear that and best wishes.
Is it a confirmed positive? (multiple tests and/or PCR). I'm assuming the multiple tests per week she's had are lateral flow - they have a part to play, but if you do enough of them the chances of a false positive become non-trivial.
Thanks for the best wishes everyone.
PCR test. Lateral flow earlier in the week came negative.
Fingers crossed for you all. Hopefully the vaccine will mean none of the rest of you get it.
Foxy commented on the previous thread about false negatives in the LFTs.
Yes, anecdotally she made the same remark about LTFs saying a number of staff have tested negative on LTF and positive on PCR. I suppose that's why they routinely do both, the LTF has been added to their PCR test schedule not replaced it.
On topic... can anybody construct a compelling argument why Trump won't run 2024? His various legal entanglements can be prolonged until and probably help him with with persecution narrative.
He will easily beat Harris or whatever is left of Biden.
The only way he doesn't run is severe (i.e. not disguiseable) ill health or an actual prosecution that somehow bars him.
GOP people who think he has had his moment or blown it with insurrection or whatever are dreaming. The only way to have stopped him was to impeach and bar from office.
Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says in a new book.
She also claims some Brexiters are consumed with hatred for Germany and gripped by a myth that they liberated Europe on their own, describing Brexit as a triumph of emotion over reason, won by a campaign full of lies in which negative attitudes to migration were exploited by figures such as Johnson and Michael Gove.
Bermann, who served as the French ambassador to the UK from 2014 to 2017 and has been one of the most senior diplomats in the French diplomatic service, including as ambassador to China and to Russia, assesses the British handling of the Covid pandemic as among the worst in the world alongside that of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. She predicts Johnson will seek to use Covid to mask the true economic cost of Brexit on the UK economy.
Johnson, she says, comes from an Eton and Oxford University class that believes they are entitled to use language to provoke. Describing him as intelligent and charming, she says he uses “lies to embellish reality, as a game and as instrument of power. The ends justify the means. He has no rules.”
I had a long chat with her predecessor (a Sarkozy appointment, she was Hollande's pick) after a swanky do at his official residence in around 2013. He was good fun, but I was struck by how superficial his understanding of British attitudes to the EU was. This lady's views sound similarly superficial.
I wonder how many British people she has met outside of central London.
I suspect equivalent things can be said of many ambassadors from many countries.
Indeed - she needs to visit Hartkepool, Stoke and Hull - all places she , and dear thick Roger totally despise.
Her comments mostly concern Johnson’s character and in particular his dishonesty. A trip to Hartlepool seems an unnecessary pre-condition for diagnosing that.
If she wanted character witnesses, there are fishermen closer to London than that.
Your stick to your mantra UK bad EU good. It keeps you happy.
Is the Ambassador wrong about Boris's rather shaky devotion to truth? Undiplomatic, perhaps, but not wrong.
Her head is going to explode when she works out that Macron has lied. About vaccines. And so cost many, many lives. To score a political point.
A really, really stupid political point at that. Because the UK has just given a Gallic shrug of the shoulders - and carried on jabbing.
As I noted before the reference to Trump and Bolsonaro is the giveaway that's it's just a lazy bit of cliche. On current stats France has done worse than Brazil, so it undermines the attack, but it's just a regurgitation of regular attacks, and tying him to others we dislike.
Boris is many of th things she says in my view. But tell me something new.
I see Gavin Williamson's (and the DfE) have been working exceptionally hard over the last few months to justify him being left in post after the fiasco of last year's exams...
aka. done nothing and just thrown their hands up in despair and made it a free for all.
It is absolutely staggering that they haven’t put in place a proper system of external moderation. It was bad enough last year and it is madness this year.
OFQUAL and the DfE both need to be axed.
If it was up to you how would you externally moderate teacher based assessments?
There are two ways of doing it. In an ideal world you would do both, but the world isn’t ideal so it might be you only do one.
1] pre moderation. You send in the materials you are using to assess grades beforehand, and somebody checks them to make sure they are reasonable. So, for example, if a GCSE student is required to write a 20,000 word essay on the impact of Marxist theory in British economic policy in the 1940s, you advise an adjustment. Similarly, if a candidate will get a grade 9 in Maths for knowing 2+2=4, you instruct them to make changes. Now the original idea was that this would happen because the exam boards (for what they’re worth) would set the papers, but that has been mostly abandoned because of course it was impossible to know who had been taught what and it become hopelessly unwieldy to set papers to cover every contingency. But the option of having schools submit materials to exam boards for approval - which after all, we did for years for coursework for the old GCSE - seems to ave been ignored as well.
2] You post moderate. You say that every school sends in one in six of their candidates’ assessed work, with the exam boards choosing the candidates - any piece that went into making up the assessment - with a code to say whether it was done under exam conditions or not. They then check the standard of marking. If everybody got grade 9s for answering multiple choice questions correctly in end of lesson quizzes, you say ‘er - no.’ Again, we did this for three decades with GCSE coursework.
But AIUI what we have now are optional pre set questions, followed by spot tests on random schools, rather than random pupils in every school.
I hope I’m wrong because if not I think the phrase ‘clusterfuck’ springs to mind. It’s barely different from what we had last year.
And the problem i guess (as last year) is that some schools (or indeed some teachers within schools) will approach the exercise totally objectively and try very hard to give pupils realistic grades (even when under pressure from parents/school management) and/or under pressure of legal challenge. And other's won't.
And i guess there's also the issue, frankly, that some teachers may just be very bad at accurately assessing ability/performance against a somewhat abstract national standard. And need peer and/or external review and/or assistance to help them along the way. As well as the danger of conscious or unconscious bias creeping into their assessments.
Well, truthfully you get that with the exam boards as well. A few years ago I was marking for an exam board when I realised the principal examiner on the unit (worth 40% of a grade) didn’t understand basic chronology. Which led me to abandon that exam board rather hurriedly and move to a different one.
But I grant you it’s much more likely with internal assessments.
I see Gavin Williamson's (and the DfE) have been working exceptionally hard over the last few months to justify him being left in post after the fiasco of last year's exams...
aka. done nothing and just thrown their hands up in despair and made it a free for all.
It is absolutely staggering that they haven’t put in place a proper system of external moderation. It was bad enough last year and it is madness this year.
OFQUAL and the DfE both need to be axed.
If it was up to you how would you externally moderate teacher based assessments?
There are two ways of doing it. In an ideal world you would do both, but the world isn’t ideal so it might be you only do one.
1] pre moderation. You send in the materials you are using to assess grades beforehand, and somebody checks them to make sure they are reasonable. So, for example, if a GCSE student is required to write a 20,000 word essay on the impact of Marxist theory in British economic policy in the 1940s, you advise an adjustment. Similarly, if a candidate will get a grade 9 in Maths for knowing 2+2=4, you instruct them to make changes. Now the original idea was that this would happen because the exam boards (for what they’re worth) would set the papers, but that has been mostly abandoned because of course it was impossible to know who had been taught what and it become hopelessly unwieldy to set papers to cover every contingency. But the option of having schools submit materials to exam boards for approval - which after all, we did for years for coursework for the old GCSE - seems to ave been ignored as well.
2] You post moderate. You say that every school sends in one in six of their candidates’ assessed work, with the exam boards choosing the candidates - any piece that went into making up the assessment - with a code to say whether it was done under exam conditions or not. They then check the standard of marking. If everybody got grade 9s for answering multiple choice questions correctly in end of lesson quizzes, you say ‘er - no.’ Again, we did this for three decades with GCSE coursework.
But AIUI what we have now are optional pre set questions, followed by spot tests on random schools, rather than random pupils in every school.
I hope I’m wrong because if not I think the phrase ‘clusterfuck’ springs to mind. It’s barely different from what we had last year.
I think the government have got it right. It doesn't matter what they do to mitigate grade inflation, there will be howls of "it's not fair!" and then we'd have a week of "will the government u-turn and revert to what the teachers said?" at the end of which they will give in.
This way, they've saved us all from those arguments.
They really haven’t. There will still be howls, because there always are. What they’ve done is make sure that everybody gets blamed for this fiasco, instead of one rather dodgy mathematical formula that nobody understood.
Arguably makes renewables more appealing. Can manage demand with smart metering/pricing and in car software - e.g. I want to have at least 100 miles of range tomorrow morning, can have a full charge if the price is right. Also could be a reservoir of storage - I'll permit discharge tomorrow day down to 100 miles of range if I get x price.
Even if extra electric care demand was met with natural gas, for example, you're using a few large generators with maximised efficiency and you're not dumping the emissions into city streets.
I see Gavin Williamson's (and the DfE) have been working exceptionally hard over the last few months to justify him being left in post after the fiasco of last year's exams...
aka. done nothing and just thrown their hands up in despair and made it a free for all.
It is absolutely staggering that they haven’t put in place a proper system of external moderation. It was bad enough last year and it is madness this year.
OFQUAL and the DfE both need to be axed.
If it was up to you how would you externally moderate teacher based assessments?
There are two ways of doing it. In an ideal world you would do both, but the world isn’t ideal so it might be you only do one.
1] pre moderation. You send in the materials you are using to assess grades beforehand, and somebody checks them to make sure they are reasonable. So, for example, if a GCSE student is required to write a 20,000 word essay on the impact of Marxist theory in British economic policy in the 1940s, you advise an adjustment. Similarly, if a candidate will get a grade 9 in Maths for knowing 2+2=4, you instruct them to make changes. Now the original idea was that this would happen because the exam boards (for what they’re worth) would set the papers, but that has been mostly abandoned because of course it was impossible to know who had been taught what and it become hopelessly unwieldy to set papers to cover every contingency. But the option of having schools submit materials to exam boards for approval - which after all, we did for years for coursework for the old GCSE - seems to ave been ignored as well.
2] You post moderate. You say that every school sends in one in six of their candidates’ assessed work, with the exam boards choosing the candidates - any piece that went into making up the assessment - with a code to say whether it was done under exam conditions or not. They then check the standard of marking. If everybody got grade 9s for answering multiple choice questions correctly in end of lesson quizzes, you say ‘er - no.’ Again, we did this for three decades with GCSE coursework.
But AIUI what we have now are optional pre set questions, followed by spot tests on random schools, rather than random pupils in every school.
I hope I’m wrong because if not I think the phrase ‘clusterfuck’ springs to mind. It’s barely different from what we had last year.
I think the government have got it right. It doesn't matter what they do to mitigate grade inflation, there will be howls of "it's not fair!" and then we'd have a week of "will the government u-turn and revert to what the teachers said?" at the end of which they will give in.
This way, they've saved us all from those arguments.
But ydoether isn't suggesting "not accepting what the teachers said". He's saying there have to be checks and balances to retain a level of fairness within the system. Which seems pretty basic to me.
One doesn't have to envy those tasked with the difficulty of the situation, but nobody (the exam grade years of today, or those of the future) will benefit from at least a vaguely defensible thought through approach. And i disagree that a well planned and well trailed approach (with input and buyin from schools themselves) would lead to inevitable criticism and U-turns.
On topic... can anybody construct a compelling argument why Trump won't run 2024? His various legal entanglements can be prolonged until and probably help him with with persecution narrative.
He will easily beat Harris or whatever is left of Biden.
You think he'll run from prison? I think Trump in an orange jump suit is >50%.
There isn't enough time is there? 2 years, 10 months until the Iowa caucus. Surely he can drag an legal proceedings out long enough.
On topic... can anybody construct a compelling argument why Trump won't run 2024? His various legal entanglements can be prolonged until and probably help him with with persecution narrative.
He will easily beat Harris or whatever is left of Biden.
First, he needs a media outlet, where he bangs on continually about the Biden-Harris failings in government. Which there will no doubt be. Some nationwide show or even a channel, where he can pontificate on about how badly the country is now being run - and how the Democrats are going to steal the next election too.
On topic... can anybody construct a compelling argument why Trump won't run 2024? His various legal entanglements can be prolonged until and probably help him with with persecution narrative.
He will easily beat Harris or whatever is left of Biden.
You think he'll run from prison? I think Trump in an orange jump suit is >50%.
There isn't enough time is there? 2 years, 10 months until the Iowa caucus. Surely he can drag an legal proceedings out long enough.
It's not in that piece, but they're reporting on the TV this morning that there are concerns that his will lead to grade inflation.
No shit!
There are no good options with this. But given the screeching last year, there is no other option. I don't know how (decent) universities have approached giving places this year, but if they've done the usual thing of making more offers than places, they are going to have a problem again.
If universities were capable of thinking outside the box, they’d realise that they could expand their numbers somewhat by offering mostly-online courses in many subjects, for a reduced tuition fee. This could attract both students who can’t move away from home, students worried about debt and mature students, all groups they’re trying to encourage into universities.
Almost all the big US universities do that right now, and if I wasn't so busy, I'd consider it.
The problem is that - while it works very well for forty-somethings - it's a harder sell to most 18 year olds. University, after all, is about more than your course. (I "studied" philosophy. But my real education was hanging out with a bunch of really smart people. And becoming a fantastic poker player.)
Open University? 175k students. Fees about half of the others.
On topic... can anybody construct a compelling argument why Trump won't run 2024? His various legal entanglements can be prolonged until and probably help him with with persecution narrative.
He will easily beat Harris or whatever is left of Biden.
You think he'll run from prison? I think Trump in an orange jump suit is >50%.
There isn't enough time is there? 2 years, 10 months until the Iowa caucus. Surely he can drag an legal proceedings out long enough.
The bigger threat to running again is Trump's bankruptcy.
Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says in a new book.
She also claims some Brexiters are consumed with hatred for Germany and gripped by a myth that they liberated Europe on their own, describing Brexit as a triumph of emotion over reason, won by a campaign full of lies in which negative attitudes to migration were exploited by figures such as Johnson and Michael Gove.
Bermann, who served as the French ambassador to the UK from 2014 to 2017 and has been one of the most senior diplomats in the French diplomatic service, including as ambassador to China and to Russia, assesses the British handling of the Covid pandemic as among the worst in the world alongside that of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. She predicts Johnson will seek to use Covid to mask the true economic cost of Brexit on the UK economy.
Johnson, she says, comes from an Eton and Oxford University class that believes they are entitled to use language to provoke. Describing him as intelligent and charming, she says he uses “lies to embellish reality, as a game and as instrument of power. The ends justify the means. He has no rules.”
I had a long chat with her predecessor (a Sarkozy appointment, she was Hollande's pick) after a swanky do at his official residence in around 2013. He was good fun, but I was struck by how superficial his understanding of British attitudes to the EU was. This lady's views sound similarly superficial.
I wonder how many British people she has met outside of central London.
I suspect equivalent things can be said of many ambassadors from many countries.
Indeed - she needs to visit Hartkepool, Stoke and Hull - all places she , and dear thick Roger totally despise.
Her comments mostly concern Johnson’s character and in particular his dishonesty. A trip to Hartlepool seems an unnecessary pre-condition for diagnosing that.
If she wanted character witnesses, there are fishermen closer to London than that.
Your stick to your mantra UK bad EU good. It keeps you happy.
Is the Ambassador wrong about Boris's rather shaky devotion to truth? Undiplomatic, perhaps, but not wrong.
The ex-Ambassador has discovered that politicians tell fibs - truly she must have been a real high flyer at the Sorbonne.
I find the comparison with Trump/Bolsanaro on Covid pretty terrible as well. It is perfectly reasonable to believe that the response to Covid in this country (sans vaccine) has been not exactly in the top rank of nations. And yes, on a purely numbers game we haven't done much better (or arguably worse) than the US and Brazil.
But that doesn't justify comparisons on an individual level with Trump and Bolsanaro, who have gone out of their way to frustrate and actively make worse the outbreaks in their country's, willfully undermine scientists and mislead their populations. Whereas in general Johnson can more be accused of struggling against his personal political instincts and the instincts of many of his party, and succumbing on occasion to misplaced optimism, but i think that he cannot be accused overall of trying to do the right thing in a very difficult situation. The country's failings are in many cases his failings but it is far easier to cut him some slack than Trump.
If you look across Western nations and American States the worst hit by death tolls are primarily those with high population densities, not those with "worse responses".
"Blue States" that have high population densities have been harder hit in deaths than "Red States" that haven't taken the virus that seriously.
England of course has one of the highest (if not the highest) population densities of all major Western countries.
Belgium, which has also struggled notably, is even denser, supporting your thesis.
I also think Trump and Bolsanaro are in a different, malign league, and Alex's assessment is a reasonable summary. I'd put it slightly differently, though - the over-eagerness to please in the early days led directly to numerous deaths that could have been avoided, as was sadly predicted by many of us at the time before the effects became clear. That has now been corrected and current policy is pretty reasonable, but a Goverrnment inadvertently causing many of its people to die should not be triumphant about its record.
Ambassadors (even retiring ones) are expected to be discreet, and it's a pity that this one sounded off, But it's also a warning sign that so many feel "Yeah, yeah, we knew that, so what" - one can get used to being manipulated and eventually it seems normal, and whether in public life or private relationships that's an unhealthy state of mind.
Sympathies and good luck for your health in the coming period - as others have said, not every positive result is accurate, and it's also true that cohabitation mysteriously doesn't always lead to infection - I know a couple where the husband had it severely, though eventually recovering, and his wife was completely unscathed.
Trump will only run if polling suggests he could win and the administration is very unpopular in 2024.
Biden's age will be an issue and having his achieved his ambition to reach the Oval Office he may well not run again, especially if it looks like Harris would win if he stepped down.
A younger Democrat like Joe Kennedy III or Beto O'Rourke might also run if they win the Massachusetts or Texas governors races in 2022
On topic... can anybody construct a compelling argument why Trump won't run 2024? His various legal entanglements can be prolonged until and probably help him with with persecution narrative.
He will easily beat Harris or whatever is left of Biden.
A possibility: by then the Republicans will have recovered from their mass hallucination and if Trump runs will either ensure it is not under their ticket or that they run a Republican Mark 2 to split the vote. Trump won't stand if he knows the GOP vote is split enough to ensure the Democrats get in?
Or does this require so many Americans to be solidly anti fascist that it can't be done?
On topic... can anybody construct a compelling argument why Trump won't run 2024? His various legal entanglements can be prolonged until and probably help him with with persecution narrative.
He will easily beat Harris or whatever is left of Biden.
You think he'll run from prison? I think Trump in an orange jump suit is >50%.
There isn't enough time is there? 2 years, 10 months until the Iowa caucus. Surely he can drag an legal proceedings out long enough.
I think New York State is on a mission...
The first DA to get a Trump conviction that results in prison time will go straight to Congress. That's what they are playing for.
Just watched The Cannonball Run on @Jonathan's recommendation. I can only assume he was taking the piss as it's one of the silliest films I've ever seen! And it's definitely unwoke!
It was supposed to be one of the silliest films.
Try the programmes about the real life version.
There was one in Europe too. I seem to recall Denmark to Gibraltar (?) at an average 112 mph.
Here’s the current ‘record holders’ talking about their run, from the middle of the US Covid restrictions last year.
On topic... can anybody construct a compelling argument why Trump won't run 2024? His various legal entanglements can be prolonged until and probably help him with with persecution narrative.
He will easily beat Harris or whatever is left of Biden.
You think he'll run from prison? I think Trump in an orange jump suit is >50%.
There isn't enough time is there? 2 years, 10 months until the Iowa caucus. Surely he can drag an legal proceedings out long enough.
I think New York State is on a mission...
Also combatting legal proceedings is extremely time consuming, even if they take a long time to reach completion. I think this is something that is ignored.
And the financial problems could engulf the Trump empire quicker than you might think.
He may be potentially be in a position to win the Republican nomination. But it would be interesting to see what would happen if he was opposed (would all potential pro-Trump candidates be forced to stand aside? And how much steam could build up behind an anti-Trump candidate?). GOP could be in a complete mess come early 2024.
Beyond the Republican nomination its difficult to see them winning without widespread cheating or massive voter suppression. It really is possible that a huge chunk has gone for good. And as people have pointed out - many of the laws they are trying to push through could potentially prove counter productive. It's the difference between Democrats who used mail in ballots in November because of convenience and the pandemic, and Republicans who traditionally use them due to necessity.
Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says in a new book.
She also claims some Brexiters are consumed with hatred for Germany and gripped by a myth that they liberated Europe on their own, describing Brexit as a triumph of emotion over reason, won by a campaign full of lies in which negative attitudes to migration were exploited by figures such as Johnson and Michael Gove.
Bermann, who served as the French ambassador to the UK from 2014 to 2017 and has been one of the most senior diplomats in the French diplomatic service, including as ambassador to China and to Russia, assesses the British handling of the Covid pandemic as among the worst in the world alongside that of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. She predicts Johnson will seek to use Covid to mask the true economic cost of Brexit on the UK economy.
Johnson, she says, comes from an Eton and Oxford University class that believes they are entitled to use language to provoke. Describing him as intelligent and charming, she says he uses “lies to embellish reality, as a game and as instrument of power. The ends justify the means. He has no rules.”
I had a long chat with her predecessor (a Sarkozy appointment, she was Hollande's pick) after a swanky do at his official residence in around 2013. He was good fun, but I was struck by how superficial his understanding of British attitudes to the EU was. This lady's views sound similarly superficial.
I wonder how many British people she has met outside of central London.
I suspect equivalent things can be said of many ambassadors from many countries.
Indeed - she needs to visit Hartkepool, Stoke and Hull - all places she , and dear thick Roger totally despise.
Her comments mostly concern Johnson’s character and in particular his dishonesty. A trip to Hartlepool seems an unnecessary pre-condition for diagnosing that.
If she wanted character witnesses, there are fishermen closer to London than that.
Your stick to your mantra UK bad EU good. It keeps you happy.
Is the Ambassador wrong about Boris's rather shaky devotion to truth? Undiplomatic, perhaps, but not wrong.
The ex-Ambassador has discovered that politicians tell fibs - truly she must have been a real high flyer at the Sorbonne.
I find the comparison with Trump/Bolsanaro on Covid pretty terrible as well. It is perfectly reasonable to believe that the response to Covid in this country (sans vaccine) has been not exactly in the top rank of nations. And yes, on a purely numbers game we haven't done much better (or arguably worse) than the US and Brazil.
But that doesn't justify comparisons on an individual level with Trump and Bolsanaro, who have gone out of their way to frustrate and actively make worse the outbreaks in their country's, willfully undermine scientists and mislead their populations. Whereas in general Johnson can more be accused of struggling against his personal political instincts and the instincts of many of his party, and succumbing on occasion to misplaced optimism, but i think that he cannot be accused overall of trying to do the right thing in a very difficult situation. The country's failings are in many cases his failings but it is far easier to cut him some slack than Trump.
If you look across Western nations and American States the worst hit by death tolls are primarily those with high population densities, not those with "worse responses".
"Blue States" that have high population densities have been harder hit in deaths than "Red States" that haven't taken the virus that seriously.
England of course has one of the highest (if not the highest) population densities of all major Western countries.
Belgium, which has also struggled notably, is even denser, supporting your thesis.
I also think Trump and Bolsanaro are in a different, malign league, and Alex's assessment is a reasonable summary. I'd put it slightly differently, though - the over-eagerness to please in the early days led directly to numerous deaths that could have been avoided, as was sadly predicted by many of us at the time before the effects became clear. That has now been corrected and current policy is pretty reasonable, but a Goverrnment inadvertently causing many of its people to die should not be triumphant about its record.
Ambassadors (even retiring ones) are expected to be discreet, and it's a pity that this one sounded off, But it's also a warning sign that so many feel "Yeah, yeah, we knew that, so what" - one can get used to being manipulated and eventually it seems normal, and whether in public life or private relationships that's an unhealthy state of mind.
"over-eagerness to please"
While the delay will have caused deaths (halt society, halt transmission is surely an immutable fact), there didn't seem to be any type of public appetite for it. Then. We were all learning.
Here's an interesting snippet from the Graun in the early days of the virus. Just about everyone now says what an egregious error it was not to have closed the bordres. Here's their take on Trump. What would it have been on Boris, had he closed the borders:
Trump twists coronavirus fears to push his own agenda.... President uses public health concerns to fuel his argument for travel bans
...... Trump, who has long fought to restrict travel from a number of countries, many with large Muslim populations, has also leaned into the idea of travel bans as a response to the coronavirus threat.
The administration has expanded its travel restrictions on Iran and issued “do not travel” warnings to areas in Italy and South Korea, in addition to temporarily denying entry to foreign nationals who have visited China in the 14 days prior to their arrival to the US.
But public health officials and experts have warned there are downsides to that approach. Limiting movement between the US and areas where many people have been infected can slow the spread of disease. But severe restrictions “can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit”, said the World Health Organization (WHO) director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, during a briefing to the United Nations executive board this week. “We reiterate our call to all countries not to impose restrictions that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade.”
On topic... can anybody construct a compelling argument why Trump won't run 2024? His various legal entanglements can be prolonged until and probably help him with with persecution narrative.
He will easily beat Harris or whatever is left of Biden.
You think he'll run from prison? I think Trump in an orange jump suit is >50%.
If he gets a jury trial there is a very high chance that there will be someone on the jury who will refuse to convict. Which means there is no chance he will take a plea.
Arguably makes renewables more appealing. Can manage demand with smart metering/pricing and in car software - e.g. I want to have at least 100 miles of range tomorrow morning, can have a full charge if the price is right. Also could be a reservoir of storage - I'll permit discharge tomorrow day down to 100 miles of range if I get x price.
Even if extra electric care demand was met with natural gas, for example, you're using a few large generators with maximised efficiency and you're not dumping the emissions into city streets.
I remember suggesting to RCS that since electric cars have a serious air-cooling requirement and filters to remove the gunk in the air, in addition to the noise thing..... that electric cars will change the value of property near roads.
Major noise reductions. and huge air quality improvements.
My only question about this is the 'other renewable' category. I assume this includes the likes of Drax, not too far from me, who now co-fire coal and biomass (maybe some biomass-only generation now, not sure). Better than coal alone, but the life cycle analysis for biomass is not always that great - most of Drax's is shipped in too, I believe, rather than domestic. Not necessarily a whole lot better than a very efficient combined cycle natural gas plant, for example.
One of the key paragraphs removed from Mr Salmond's statement is as follows:
"The evidence from Mr Aberdein that he personally discussed the existence of the complaints, and summarised the substance of the complaints, with the First Minister in a pre arranged meeting in Parliament on 29th March 2018 arranged for that specific purpose cannot be reconciled with the position of the First Minister to Parliament. The fact that Mr Aberdein learned of these complaints in early March 2018 from the Chief of Staff to the First Minister who thereafter arranged for the meeting between Mr Aberdein and the First Minister on 29th March to discuss them, is supported by his sharing that information contemporaneously with myself, Kevin Pringle and Duncan Hamilton, Advocate."
I have used this one because the same one is highlighted in a national newspaper today and I am therefore not producing anything not very clearly in the public domain, a point I will come back to. Some obvious points: *This paragraph does not mention, let alone identify the complainants. *It does not identify the nature of the complaints or give any detail that might give a clue as to who they are. *It does indicate that these complaints had been made to the Scottish government who might reasonably be inferred to be their employers. *It contains detailed and apparently corroborated evidence that the First Minister lied to Parliament about when she was told of the nature of the allegations. She has essentially admitted this claiming she "forgot" about this meeting.
The contempt of court order was explained by the Lord Justice Clerk, the trial judge and our second most senior judge last week. What she said was:
"All matters relating to the decisions of the committee, its way of working, the rejection or acceptance of submissions, the question whether, when and to what extent redaction of material was necessary to enable it to consider material which could not be published for one reason or another, whether to accept material on a confidential basis, the way in which it ensured adherence both to the order and generally to the principle that complainers in sexual cases should not be identified, are in my view wholly irrelevant to any matters which it is within the jurisdiction of the court to address. These are all matters entirely in the hands of the committee and it is not for this court to interfere with that or to seek to direct the committee in any way."
So on what basis did Crown Office claim that the above paragraph breached a contempt of court order? I regret to say that that question was not answered by the Lord Advocate yesterday when addressing Parliament.
Put aside the absurdity that the entire redacted statement is already available to anyone who wants to read it and the only reasonable conclusion is that the purpose of this redaction is to stop the committee from hearing evidence that the First Minister lied by excluding that evidence so that there is no evidence.
My only question about this is the 'other renewable' category. I assume this includes the likes of Drax, not too far from me, who now co-fire coal and biomass (maybe some biomass-only generation now, not sure). Better than coal alone, but the life cycle analysis for biomass is not always that great - most of Drax's is shipped in too, I believe, rather than domestic. Not necessarily a whole lot better than a very efficient combined cycle natural gas plant, for example.
Four of the units at Drax are biomass only. You have to pretend that the CO2 coming out of the stack doesn't exist. According to the rules, it was emitted in the USA where the wood came from.
Lucid Motors, a Silicon Valley company whose luxury electric cars are due to cost as much as $169,000, has not yet sold a single vehicle. Next year, it expects to sell just 20,000 cars, and it does not expect to make a profit until 2024.
But this week, the company announced plans to go public at a $24bn valuation - roughly that of Peugeot.
telegraph
To be fair, I reckon my cat is worth more than Peugeot.
My 12 year old Peugeot presents me with zero worries about having to sell it, depreciation or any sort of part exchange deal.
Arguably makes renewables more appealing. Can manage demand with smart metering/pricing and in car software - e.g. I want to have at least 100 miles of range tomorrow morning, can have a full charge if the price is right. Also could be a reservoir of storage - I'll permit discharge tomorrow day down to 100 miles of range if I get x price.
Even if extra electric care demand was met with natural gas, for example, you're using a few large generators with maximised efficiency and you're not dumping the emissions into city streets.
I remember suggesting to RCS that since electric cars have a serious air-cooling requirement and filters to remove the gunk in the air, in addition to the noise thing..... that electric cars will change the value of property near roads.
Major noise reductions. and huge air quality improvements.
Really? The noise from the M1 is from the tyres not the engines.
Lucid Motors, a Silicon Valley company whose luxury electric cars are due to cost as much as $169,000, has not yet sold a single vehicle. Next year, it expects to sell just 20,000 cars, and it does not expect to make a profit until 2024.
But this week, the company announced plans to go public at a $24bn valuation - roughly that of Peugeot.
telegraph
To be fair, I reckon my cat is worth more than Peugeot.
My 12 year old Peugeot presents me with zero worries about having to sell it, depreciation or any sort of part exchange deal.
And yet MaxPB was complaining yesterday about Babylon listing in the States rather than the UK.
Given the insane / more appropriate valuations (pick your preferred definition) offered in the States it's hardly surprising Babylon are seeking to list there.
It's not in that piece, but they're reporting on the TV this morning that there are concerns that his will lead to grade inflation.
No shit!
There are no good options with this. But given the screeching last year, there is no other option. I don't know how (decent) universities have approached giving places this year, but if they've done the usual thing of making more offers than places, they are going to have a problem again.
If universities were capable of thinking outside the box, they’d realise that they could expand their numbers somewhat by offering mostly-online courses in many subjects, for a reduced tuition fee. This could attract both students who can’t move away from home, students worried about debt and mature students, all groups they’re trying to encourage into universities.
Almost all the big US universities do that right now, and if I wasn't so busy, I'd consider it.
The problem is that - while it works very well for forty-somethings - it's a harder sell to most 18 year olds. University, after all, is about more than your course. (I "studied" philosophy. But my real education was hanging out with a bunch of really smart people. And becoming a fantastic poker player.)
Open University? 175k students. Fees about half of the others.
Not really - fees are the same in the end as the courses take 5-6 years rather than 3.
And the important thing to remember here is that on the online courses you pay for the certification at the end not the knowledge..
Arguably makes renewables more appealing. Can manage demand with smart metering/pricing and in car software - e.g. I want to have at least 100 miles of range tomorrow morning, can have a full charge if the price is right. Also could be a reservoir of storage - I'll permit discharge tomorrow day down to 100 miles of range if I get x price.
Even if extra electric care demand was met with natural gas, for example, you're using a few large generators with maximised efficiency and you're not dumping the emissions into city streets.
I remember suggesting to RCS that since electric cars have a serious air-cooling requirement and filters to remove the gunk in the air, in addition to the noise thing..... that electric cars will change the value of property near roads.
Major noise reductions. and huge air quality improvements.
Really? The noise from the M1 is from the tyres not the engines.
I meant somewhat smaller roads - at higher speeds, as you say, tire and aerodynamic noise predominates.
On topic... can anybody construct a compelling argument why Trump won't run 2024? His various legal entanglements can be prolonged until and probably help him with with persecution narrative.
He will easily beat Harris or whatever is left of Biden.
You think he'll run from prison? I think Trump in an orange jump suit is >50%.
There isn't enough time is there? 2 years, 10 months until the Iowa caucus. Surely he can drag an legal proceedings out long enough.
Okay - admittedly I have no idea how long a fraud trial would take. But 2+ years seems long for what would presumably be a fairly high priority case?
Arguably makes renewables more appealing. Can manage demand with smart metering/pricing and in car software - e.g. I want to have at least 100 miles of range tomorrow morning, can have a full charge if the price is right. Also could be a reservoir of storage - I'll permit discharge tomorrow day down to 100 miles of range if I get x price.
Even if extra electric care demand was met with natural gas, for example, you're using a few large generators with maximised efficiency and you're not dumping the emissions into city streets.
I remember suggesting to RCS that since electric cars have a serious air-cooling requirement and filters to remove the gunk in the air, in addition to the noise thing..... that electric cars will change the value of property near roads.
Major noise reductions. and huge air quality improvements.
Really? The noise from the M1 is from the tyres not the engines.
I assumed the reference was to city roads where speed (and tyre noise) is quite low and engine noise more significant. Used to live adjacent to a busy 30mph road and it was the engines that were more noticeable there.
Motorways etc, you're right, it's tyre noise mostly.
On topic... can anybody construct a compelling argument why Trump won't run 2024? His various legal entanglements can be prolonged until and probably help him with with persecution narrative.
He will easily beat Harris or whatever is left of Biden.
You think he'll run from prison? I think Trump in an orange jump suit is >50%.
If he gets a jury trial there is a very high chance that there will be someone on the jury who will refuse to convict. Which means there is no chance he will take a plea.
NY could easily bankrupt him, though, if he is found to owe a significant amount in back taxes. Civil trials don’t require a unanimous verdict. If they timed a criminal prosecution right it right they could keep him banged up pending trial as a flight risk given how many overseas properties he has.
It really doesn't take much to tip Holyrood into a hung parliament. After all, Labour designed it that way. With so much uncertainty over Salmondgate,...... 80%?
Back in 2016 (thanks to Mr Meeks) I backed the SNP to lose their majority at 10/1 and 8/1 on election day, which was pooh poohed by the Cybernats.
I don't get that same feeling again this year. The Nats can take a major step towards independence if they win a majority in May, so they'll wear a nosepeg and back the SNP.
I think a First Ministerial resignation before election day might do it.
Er, you think Sturgeon will resign before the election, and this will be GOOD for the Nats?!
Hats off to you, for your earlier winning bet, however
I reckon, right now, it is impossible to say what will happen. It is so volatile. I can see soft YES voters being repelled by Salmond V Sturgeon and going Green, or abstaining, fracturing the SNP vote so they fall short
And that's another, alternative danger for the Nats: a big drop in turnout. Even if/when they do get an overall maj it might be on a significantly decreased vote, giving Boris all the more reason to say Nah
It's a hugely entertaining scandal, anyway, and a welcome diversion from Covid
No, I think if Sturgeon went before election day it might make the 50/1 value/a good trading bet as the market overreacted ridiculously.
To be honest I'm still reeling from Sturgeon's contribution today which sounded like, and I paraphrase,
'Yeah Salmond was found not guilty but no smoke without fire eh?'
Either she's very confident in her position or she's panicking.
Ah, I misconstrued.
Sturgeon is definitely panicking. Her remark was an entirely unforced error. There was no reason to say it and it gains her nothing, for those minded to doubt her it looks dodgy, if not defamatory. It will repel or anger neutrals.
Why is she panicking? Because she is lying, and now she has to defend that lie
Remember the first few minutes of this notorious interview on Sky. The normally super-assured Sturgeon is pinned down on this lie. Her contorted body language, especially the rapid blinking, says it all.
What is remarkable is the extent to which others have put their careers on the line to help protect Sturgeon. Life-long dull, dull, dull public servants going to the extremes where people can rightly point and laugh at their creative contortions - all to prevent the First Minister not having to answer the question: did you lie?
Because they must know she did. And know that she must resign unless they can extricate her.
Which only becomes explicable if those at the centre of this web have absolute certainty in their hearts that Salmond cannot be allowed to prevail.
Yes, that's essentially my reading.
Which, of course, implies that Salmond DOES have evidence which could being down Sturgeon. Otherwise why these desperate attempts to muffle him? They are scared of him.
If she goes then the entire house of Nat cards could tumble, very quickly. Because her SNP bigwig husband is in it deeper than her. And so on....
It really doesn't take much to tip Holyrood into a hung parliament. After all, Labour designed it that way. With so much uncertainty over Salmondgate,...... 80%?
Back in 2016 (thanks to Mr Meeks) I backed the SNP to lose their majority at 10/1 and 8/1 on election day, which was pooh poohed by the Cybernats.
I don't get that same feeling again this year. The Nats can take a major step towards independence if they win a majority in May, so they'll wear a nosepeg and back the SNP.
I think a First Ministerial resignation before election day might do it.
Er, you think Sturgeon will resign before the election, and this will be GOOD for the Nats?!
Hats off to you, for your earlier winning bet, however
I reckon, right now, it is impossible to say what will happen. It is so volatile. I can see soft YES voters being repelled by Salmond V Sturgeon and going Green, or abstaining, fracturing the SNP vote so they fall short
And that's another, alternative danger for the Nats: a big drop in turnout. Even if/when they do get an overall maj it might be on a significantly decreased vote, giving Boris all the more reason to say Nah
It's a hugely entertaining scandal, anyway, and a welcome diversion from Covid
No, I think if Sturgeon went before election day it might make the 50/1 value/a good trading bet as the market overreacted ridiculously.
To be honest I'm still reeling from Sturgeon's contribution today which sounded like, and I paraphrase,
'Yeah Salmond was found not guilty but no smoke without fire eh?'
Either she's very confident in her position or she's panicking.
Ah, I misconstrued.
Sturgeon is definitely panicking. Her remark was an entirely unforced error. There was no reason to say it and it gains her nothing, for those minded to doubt her it looks dodgy, if not defamatory. It will repel or anger neutrals.
Why is she panicking? Because she is lying, and now she has to defend that lie
Remember the first few minutes of this notorious interview on Sky. The normally super-assured Sturgeon is pinned down on this lie. Her contorted body language, especially the rapid blinking, says it all.
What is remarkable is the extent to which others have put their careers on the line to help protect Sturgeon. Life-long dull, dull, dull public servants going to the extremes where people can rightly point and laugh at their creative contortions - all to prevent the First Minister not having to answer the question: did you lie?
Because they must know she did. And know that she must resign unless they can extricate her.
Which only becomes explicable if those at the centre of this web have absolute certainty in their hearts that Salmond cannot be allowed to prevail.
Yes, that's essentially my reading.
Which, of course, implies that Salmond DOES have evidence which could being down Sturgeon. Otherwise why these desperate attempts to muffle him? They are scared of him.
If she goes then the entire house of Nat cards could tumble, very quickly. Because her SNP bigwig husband is in it deeper than her. And so on....
There will be some pretty substantial pension funds in jeopardy if the house of cards falls.
With Salmond back in Holyrood there will be some big changes.
On topic... can anybody construct a compelling argument why Trump won't run 2024? His various legal entanglements can be prolonged until and probably help him with with persecution narrative.
He will easily beat Harris or whatever is left of Biden.
You think he'll run from prison? I think Trump in an orange jump suit is >50%.
If he gets a jury trial there is a very high chance that there will be someone on the jury who will refuse to convict. Which means there is no chance he will take a plea.
He’ll want the showiest of show trials, and be prepared to take his case all the way to the Supreme Court that he can’t get a fair trial - because he’s Donald Trump and no jury can be sufficiently impartial to judge his case.
My only question about this is the 'other renewable' category. I assume this includes the likes of Drax, not too far from me, who now co-fire coal and biomass (maybe some biomass-only generation now, not sure). Better than coal alone, but the life cycle analysis for biomass is not always that great - most of Drax's is shipped in too, I believe, rather than domestic. Not necessarily a whole lot better than a very efficient combined cycle natural gas plant, for example.
Four of the units at Drax are biomass only. You have to pretend that the CO2 coming out of the stack doesn't exist. According to the rules, it was emitted in the USA where the wood came from.
Thanks, interesting. My info is out of date - I helped out on a systematic review on life cycle analysis of biofuels about 8 years ago. It certainly wasn't pretty then.
If that's the accounting, its truly bizarre as the CO2 is sequestered in the US (from the air into the biomass) and then emitted here.
Anyone else noticed the Nats have gone awful quiet? malcy has absented himself from the field of battle, others are not sticking their heads above the parapet.
Maybe there is an element of doubt creeping in to their cocksureness? Could they be carrying the scintilla of doubt that they might actually have micro-todgers after all?
I'm quite happy to stick my head above the parapet. The whole thing is a colossal cluster-fuck. It hasn't cut through to the general public yet, but it surely will at some point.
At this stage I have absolutely no idea how I will vote in May.
But the SNP's ineptitude over this doesn't dissuade me from the general principle of Scottish independence any more than the general ineptitude of the May government would have dissuaded Brexit voters from that.
No matter if before or after election , noses will be held and people will vote SNP. The big interest will be list seats especially if some big beasts join one of the Independence parties.
It should be the aim of all Governments to ensure that line does not plateau at 10%. And certainly not to see it starting to inch up again.
"Find - and persuade" needs to be the challenge from mid-year onwards.
Won't it plateau relatively close to that as the vaccines aren't 100% effective and some people will be ineligible for whatever reason let alone those who refuse it?
But even at 10% society should be safe to unlock completely. It isn't possible to eradicate death and at ~10% the virus isn't going to find enough superspreaders to spark exponential growth of hospitalisations to overwhelm healthcare.
On topic... can anybody construct a compelling argument why Trump won't run 2024? His various legal entanglements can be prolonged until and probably help him with with persecution narrative.
He will easily beat Harris or whatever is left of Biden.
You think he'll run from prison? I think Trump in an orange jump suit is >50%.
If he gets a jury trial there is a very high chance that there will be someone on the jury who will refuse to convict. Which means there is no chance he will take a plea.
He’ll want the showiest of show trials, and be prepared to take his case all the way to the Supreme Court that he can’t get a fair trial - because he’s Donald Trump and no jury can be sufficiently impartial to judge his case.
He'll probably lose 6-3 in the Supreme Court, Gorsuch and Alito with a more sensible constitutional based dissent and Thomas with a bonkers one so he doesn't upset his mad wife.
In Scotland's case, it's the only way to ensure it gets spent.
LOL, I see their union team is scrapped after two leaders in two weeks, in disarray and having Union Jack and a cabinet committee will make little difference. The game is over we are now squabbling about who will run the country, cheats and robbers or people interested in Scotland. The union is dead. Union Jack spending money exclusively in Tory seats will go down well and for sure be money well spent.
My only question about this is the 'other renewable' category. I assume this includes the likes of Drax, not too far from me, who now co-fire coal and biomass (maybe some biomass-only generation now, not sure). Better than coal alone, but the life cycle analysis for biomass is not always that great - most of Drax's is shipped in too, I believe, rather than domestic. Not necessarily a whole lot better than a very efficient combined cycle natural gas plant, for example.
Four of the units at Drax are biomass only. You have to pretend that the CO2 coming out of the stack doesn't exist. According to the rules, it was emitted in the USA where the wood came from.
Positive for the plague in my household. Wife's tested positive despite taking all the precautions and having the Pfizer first jab in December. She's asymptomatic, just been picked up as she does 3 tests a week.
I guess I'll get the plague now and may not be as lucky to be asymptomatic. Kind of regretting piling the pounds back on over winter that I lost last spring now. 😟
Sorry to hear that and best wishes.
Is it a confirmed positive? (multiple tests and/or PCR). I'm assuming the multiple tests per week she's had are lateral flow - they have a part to play, but if you do enough of them the chances of a false positive become non-trivial.
Thanks for the best wishes everyone.
PCR test. Lateral flow earlier in the week came negative.
Fingers crossed for you all. Hopefully the vaccine will mean none of the rest of you get it.
Foxy commented on the previous thread about false negatives in the LFTs.
Yes, anecdotally she made the same remark about LTFs saying a number of staff have tested negative on LTF and positive on PCR. I suppose that's why they routinely do both, the LTF has been added to their PCR test schedule not replaced it.
An easy way of thinking about it is PCR tests measure whether you are infected currently/recently, lateral flow tests whether you are currently infectious. Hopefully her negative LFT result is a good sign for you & your family.
In Scotland's case, it's the only way to ensure it gets spent.
LOL, I see their union team is scrapped after two leaders in two weeks, in disarray and having Union Jack and a cabinet committee will make little difference. The game is over we are now squabbling about who will run the country, cheats and robbers or people interested in Scotland. The union is dead. Union Jack spending money exclusively in Tory seats will go down well and for sure be money well spent.
Nice to see Mal's back.
Holyrood has screwed the local authorities in Scotland so good to see UKG circumventing the nest of vipers.
Hints of a very good poll for the SNP/indy tomorrow!
Eeesh. They really are teflon.
I can't see how she could have behaved in any other way. The idea that AS did nothing wrong is ridiculous. His lawyer admitted he was a woman botherer. Maybe not enough for prison but enough to wreck his reputation which it did.
When the complaints came in what was she supposed to do? 'Nothing to do with me gov.. I've worked with him for 30 years and he's as pure as the driven snow' would would not have worked. It would have been and looked like a cover up
The alternative was to tell the complainants how to register their complaints. That was the option she chose and if you think about it there was no other option available.
'A woman more sinned against than sinning' and becoming more impressive by the day.
These are the asinine comments of a man who has read a one-paragraph summary of the entire affair and decided he likes Nicola anyway.
Roger, dear, it's all a bit more complex and murky than this.
A one paragraph summary would be mighty useful, mind.
It would. Here are 10 paragraphs which do a decent job, tho they miss the most recent shenanigans, when it has appeared that the Scottish legal system is acting politically: in aid of the SNP.
Actually the Andrew Neil piece, linked below, is more entertaining and much more incisive. It gives a flavour of the outright corruption now rotting away in Edinburgh
Indeed so. I tend to avoid Scottish politics as I have no Scots family. And, despite living 35 miles from the border have only been there once. It is a foreign polity to me. What strikes me is, whilst Labour has floundered around for a credible leader for over a decade, the SNP has produced 2. Both on a similar fish theme. Big fish, tiny pond. Fight. I am none the wiser as to who is in the right or wrong here.
They are BOTH in the wrong. He has admitted being a bully and a lecherous old git, she is clearly lying about the whole scandal.
But this bust-up is now much bigger than either of them: it has revealed an incestuous and corrupt culture at the top of the Scottish Establishment. The SNP is so dominant, and so lacking in opposition, it can lean on other institutions (like the law) and the media are supine (because the SNP pulls all the strings). The police don't want to annoy a party that looks like it will be in power for EVAH.
And on and on it goes. Academics become party mouthpieces. Education is co-opted to the indy cause. Charities need SNP approval. Ghastly.
More bollox from you of all people, Salmond never admitted to being a bully and a lecherous old git. You are nearly right on the other point though, apart from it being the Murrel's and their clique rather than SNP in general. How you can pontificate on "lecherous old git " escapes me.
It really doesn't take much to tip Holyrood into a hung parliament. After all, Labour designed it that way. With so much uncertainty over Salmondgate,...... 80%?
Back in 2016 (thanks to Mr Meeks) I backed the SNP to lose their majority at 10/1 and 8/1 on election day, which was pooh poohed by the Cybernats.
I don't get that same feeling again this year. The Nats can take a major step towards independence if they win a majority in May, so they'll wear a nosepeg and back the SNP.
I think a First Ministerial resignation before election day might do it.
Er, you think Sturgeon will resign before the election, and this will be GOOD for the Nats?!
Hats off to you, for your earlier winning bet, however
I reckon, right now, it is impossible to say what will happen. It is so volatile. I can see soft YES voters being repelled by Salmond V Sturgeon and going Green, or abstaining, fracturing the SNP vote so they fall short
And that's another, alternative danger for the Nats: a big drop in turnout. Even if/when they do get an overall maj it might be on a significantly decreased vote, giving Boris all the more reason to say Nah
It's a hugely entertaining scandal, anyway, and a welcome diversion from Covid
No, I think if Sturgeon went before election day it might make the 50/1 value/a good trading bet as the market overreacted ridiculously.
To be honest I'm still reeling from Sturgeon's contribution today which sounded like, and I paraphrase,
'Yeah Salmond was found not guilty but no smoke without fire eh?'
Either she's very confident in her position or she's panicking.
Ah, I misconstrued.
Sturgeon is definitely panicking. Her remark was an entirely unforced error. There was no reason to say it and it gains her nothing, for those minded to doubt her it looks dodgy, if not defamatory. It will repel or anger neutrals.
Why is she panicking? Because she is lying, and now she has to defend that lie
Remember the first few minutes of this notorious interview on Sky. The normally super-assured Sturgeon is pinned down on this lie. Her contorted body language, especially the rapid blinking, says it all.
What is remarkable is the extent to which others have put their careers on the line to help protect Sturgeon. Life-long dull, dull, dull public servants going to the extremes where people can rightly point and laugh at their creative contortions - all to prevent the First Minister not having to answer the question: did you lie?
Because they must know she did. And know that she must resign unless they can extricate her.
Which only becomes explicable if those at the centre of this web have absolute certainty in their hearts that Salmond cannot be allowed to prevail.
Yes, that's essentially my reading.
Which, of course, implies that Salmond DOES have evidence which could being down Sturgeon. Otherwise why these desperate attempts to muffle him? They are scared of him.
If she goes then the entire house of Nat cards could tumble, very quickly. Because her SNP bigwig husband is in it deeper than her. And so on....
It really doesn't take much to tip Holyrood into a hung parliament. After all, Labour designed it that way. With so much uncertainty over Salmondgate,...... 80%?
Back in 2016 (thanks to Mr Meeks) I backed the SNP to lose their majority at 10/1 and 8/1 on election day, which was pooh poohed by the Cybernats.
I don't get that same feeling again this year. The Nats can take a major step towards independence if they win a majority in May, so they'll wear a nosepeg and back the SNP.
I think a First Ministerial resignation before election day might do it.
Er, you think Sturgeon will resign before the election, and this will be GOOD for the Nats?!
Hats off to you, for your earlier winning bet, however
I reckon, right now, it is impossible to say what will happen. It is so volatile. I can see soft YES voters being repelled by Salmond V Sturgeon and going Green, or abstaining, fracturing the SNP vote so they fall short
And that's another, alternative danger for the Nats: a big drop in turnout. Even if/when they do get an overall maj it might be on a significantly decreased vote, giving Boris all the more reason to say Nah
It's a hugely entertaining scandal, anyway, and a welcome diversion from Covid
No, I think if Sturgeon went before election day it might make the 50/1 value/a good trading bet as the market overreacted ridiculously.
To be honest I'm still reeling from Sturgeon's contribution today which sounded like, and I paraphrase,
'Yeah Salmond was found not guilty but no smoke without fire eh?'
Either she's very confident in her position or she's panicking.
Ah, I misconstrued.
Sturgeon is definitely panicking. Her remark was an entirely unforced error. There was no reason to say it and it gains her nothing, for those minded to doubt her it looks dodgy, if not defamatory. It will repel or anger neutrals.
Why is she panicking? Because she is lying, and now she has to defend that lie
Remember the first few minutes of this notorious interview on Sky. The normally super-assured Sturgeon is pinned down on this lie. Her contorted body language, especially the rapid blinking, says it all.
What is remarkable is the extent to which others have put their careers on the line to help protect Sturgeon. Life-long dull, dull, dull public servants going to the extremes where people can rightly point and laugh at their creative contortions - all to prevent the First Minister not having to answer the question: did you lie?
Because they must know she did. And know that she must resign unless they can extricate her.
Which only becomes explicable if those at the centre of this web have absolute certainty in their hearts that Salmond cannot be allowed to prevail.
Yes, that's essentially my reading.
Which, of course, implies that Salmond DOES have evidence which could being down Sturgeon. Otherwise why these desperate attempts to muffle him? They are scared of him.
If she goes then the entire house of Nat cards could tumble, very quickly. Because her SNP bigwig husband is in it deeper than her. And so on....
There will be some pretty substantial pension funds in jeopardy if the house of cards falls.
With Salmond back in Holyrood there will be some big changes.
I was wondering about that. Mal - you seriously think he'll go for it? (Big day tomorrow - unless we have another Crown Office intervention, of course)
While the delay will have caused deaths (halt society, halt transmission is surely an immutable fact), there didn't seem to be any type of public appetite for it. Then. We were all learning.
My recollection is that there has been consistent public appetite for more severe lockdown since the very early days, and in particular the "freedom for Christmas" initiative was not popular. Now that the approach is much more careful, public opinion is on the whole supportive, though the proportion who think the policy is too relaxed still outweighs those who want faster opening. As you say, lockdown has all kinds of downsides for health and everything else, and people do know that, but most feel that controlling the pandemic needs to come first, because if it bursts out of control - as it did - then you simply have to lock down or experience complete social breakdown.
In any case, Government shouldn't be purely about short-term popularity. Even if Johnson believed in the early days that people would like him to "free" them, avoiding mass deaths should have been a higher priority. This really isn't hindsight - lots of us said so at the time.
In Scotland's case, it's the only way to ensure it gets spent.
LOL, I see their union team is scrapped after two leaders in two weeks, in disarray and having Union Jack and a cabinet committee will make little difference. The game is over we are now squabbling about who will run the country, cheats and robbers or people interested in Scotland. The union is dead. Union Jack spending money exclusively in Tory seats will go down well and for sure be money well spent.
My only question about this is the 'other renewable' category. I assume this includes the likes of Drax, not too far from me, who now co-fire coal and biomass (maybe some biomass-only generation now, not sure). Better than coal alone, but the life cycle analysis for biomass is not always that great - most of Drax's is shipped in too, I believe, rather than domestic. Not necessarily a whole lot better than a very efficient combined cycle natural gas plant, for example.
Four of the units at Drax are biomass only. You have to pretend that the CO2 coming out of the stack doesn't exist. According to the rules, it was emitted in the USA where the wood came from.
The primary forests cut down to provide it?
The word 'sustainable' has a lot to answer for when it comes to CO2.
Yes, technically the trees were cut down and replacements were planted. No, the habitat lost will never return.
In Scotland's case, it's the only way to ensure it gets spent.
LOL, I see their union team is scrapped after two leaders in two weeks, in disarray and having Union Jack and a cabinet committee will make little difference. The game is over we are now squabbling about who will run the country, cheats and robbers or people interested in Scotland. The union is dead. Union Jack spending money exclusively in Tory seats will go down well and for sure be money well spent.
Comments
But that doesn't justify comparisons on an individual level with Trump and Bolsanaro, who have gone out of their way to frustrate and actively make worse the outbreaks in their countries, willfully undermine scientists and mislead their populations. Whereas in general Johnson can more be accused of struggling against his personal political instincts and the instincts of many of his party, and succumbing on occasion to misplaced optimism, but i think that he cannot be accused overall of trying to do the right thing in a very difficult situation. The country's failings are in many cases his failings but it is far easier to cut him some slack than Trump.
I suppose the good news is that your wife is likely to have no problems given she's already been jabbed.
Be careful to isolate yourself for the next couple of weeks though.
"Blue States" that have high population densities have been harder hit in deaths than "Red States" that haven't taken the virus that seriously.
England of course has one of the highest (if not the highest) population densities of all major Western countries.
Or is it more true that Trump was an undisputed liability, firing up his base, but sending moderate/sane republicans off to Biden or non-voting? And that those same moderate republicans stuck with the GOP in the lower ticket races?
Is it a confirmed positive? (multiple tests and/or PCR). I'm assuming the multiple tests per week she's had are lateral flow - they have a part to play, but if you do enough of them the chances of a false positive become non-trivial.
A really, really stupid political point at that. Because the UK has just given a Gallic shrug of the shoulders - and carried on jabbing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEFlahbrMjk
1] pre moderation. You send in the materials you are using to assess grades beforehand, and somebody checks them to make sure they are reasonable. So, for example, if a GCSE student is required to write a 20,000 word essay on the impact of Marxist theory in British economic policy in the 1940s, you advise an adjustment. Similarly, if a candidate will get a grade 9 in Maths for knowing 2+2=4, you instruct them to make changes. Now the original idea was that this would happen because the exam boards (for what they’re worth) would set the papers, but that has been mostly abandoned because of course it was impossible to know who had been taught what and it become hopelessly unwieldy to set papers to cover every contingency. But the option of having schools submit materials to exam boards for approval - which after all, we did for years for coursework for the old GCSE - seems to ave been ignored as well.
2] You post moderate. You say that every school sends in one in six of their candidates’ assessed work, with the exam boards choosing the candidates - any piece that went into making up the assessment - with a code to say whether it was done under exam conditions or not. They then check the standard of marking. If everybody got grade 9s for answering multiple choice questions correctly in end of lesson quizzes, you say ‘er - no.’ Again, we did this for three decades with GCSE coursework.
But AIUI what we have now are optional pre set questions, followed by spot tests on random schools, rather than random pupils in every school.
I hope I’m wrong because if not I think the phrase ‘clusterfuck’ springs to mind. It’s barely different from what we had last year.
Sometimes it just doesn't make sense.
It’s not as though they’ve had no time to plan either. It was obvious from mid-October that this was coming.
PCR test. Lateral flow earlier in the week came negative.
He will easily beat Harris or whatever is left of Biden.
Foxy commented on the previous thread about false negatives in the LFTs.
Try the programmes about the real life version.
There was one in Europe too. I seem to recall Denmark to Gibraltar (?) at an average 112 mph.
In either sense, they have been reengineering the grid for a couple of decades now.
And i guess there's also the issue, frankly, that some teachers may just be very bad at accurately assessing ability/performance against a somewhat abstract national standard. And need peer and/or external review and/or assistance to help them along the way. As well as the danger of conscious or unconscious bias creeping into their assessments.
This way, they've saved us all from those arguments.
My sister went down with covid within 12 hours of a negative lateral flow test, so I have little faith in them.
https://twitter.com/youyanggu/status/1364627872233750543
GOP people who think he has had his moment or blown it with insurrection or whatever are dreaming. The only way to have stopped him was to impeach and bar from office.
Just about nothing will stop him running now.
The Charles Kennedy BBC Alba programme is good.
Boris is many of th things she says in my view. But tell me something new.
But I grant you it’s much more likely with internal assessments.
Anyway, I have to go. Have a good morning.
Even if extra electric care demand was met with natural gas, for example, you're using a few large generators with maximised efficiency and you're not dumping the emissions into city streets.
One doesn't have to envy those tasked with the difficulty of the situation, but nobody (the exam grade years of today, or those of the future) will benefit from at least a vaguely defensible thought through approach. And i disagree that a well planned and well trailed approach (with input and buyin from schools themselves) would lead to inevitable criticism and U-turns.
Was a time it would have been Twitter....
Belgium, which has also struggled notably, is even denser, supporting your thesis.
I also think Trump and Bolsanaro are in a different, malign league, and Alex's assessment is a reasonable summary. I'd put it slightly differently, though - the over-eagerness to please in the early days led directly to numerous deaths that could have been avoided, as was sadly predicted by many of us at the time before the effects became clear. That has now been corrected and current policy is pretty reasonable, but a Goverrnment inadvertently causing many of its people to die should not be triumphant about its record.
Ambassadors (even retiring ones) are expected to be discreet, and it's a pity that this one sounded off, But it's also a warning sign that so many feel "Yeah, yeah, we knew that, so what" - one can get used to being manipulated and eventually it seems normal, and whether in public life or private relationships that's an unhealthy state of mind.
Sympathies and good luck for your health in the coming period - as others have said, not every positive result is accurate, and it's also true that cohabitation mysteriously doesn't always lead to infection - I know a couple where the husband had it severely, though eventually recovering, and his wife was completely unscathed.
Mr. Thompson, hope your lady wife and yourself are ok.
Biden's age will be an issue and having his achieved his ambition to reach the Oval Office he may well not run again, especially if it looks like Harris would win if he stepped down.
A younger Democrat like Joe Kennedy III or Beto O'Rourke might also run if they win the Massachusetts or Texas governors races in 2022
Or does this require so many Americans to be solidly anti fascist that it can't be done?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=GOWn1WSYhVQ
And the financial problems could engulf the Trump empire quicker than you might think.
He may be potentially be in a position to win the Republican nomination. But it would be interesting to see what would happen if he was opposed (would all potential pro-Trump candidates be forced to stand aside? And how much steam could build up behind an anti-Trump candidate?). GOP could be in a complete mess come early 2024.
Beyond the Republican nomination its difficult to see them winning without widespread cheating or massive voter suppression. It really is possible that a huge chunk has gone for good. And as people have pointed out - many of the laws they are trying to push through could potentially prove counter productive. It's the difference between Democrats who used mail in ballots in November because of convenience and the pandemic, and Republicans who traditionally use them due to necessity.
The mid-terms could be very interesting.
While the delay will have caused deaths (halt society, halt transmission is surely an immutable fact), there didn't seem to be any type of public appetite for it. Then. We were all learning.
Here's an interesting snippet from the Graun in the early days of the virus. Just about everyone now says what an egregious error it was not to have closed the bordres. Here's their take on Trump. What would it have been on Boris, had he closed the borders:
Trump twists coronavirus fears to push his own agenda....
President uses public health concerns to fuel his argument for travel bans
...... Trump, who has long fought to restrict travel from a number of countries, many with large Muslim populations, has also leaned into the idea of travel bans as a response to the coronavirus threat.
The administration has expanded its travel restrictions on Iran and issued “do not travel” warnings to areas in Italy and South Korea, in addition to temporarily denying entry to foreign nationals who have visited China in the 14 days prior to their arrival to the US.
But public health officials and experts have warned there are downsides to that approach. Limiting movement between the US and areas where many people have been infected can slow the spread of disease. But severe restrictions “can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit”, said the World Health Organization (WHO) director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, during a briefing to the United Nations executive board this week. “We reiterate our call to all countries not to impose restrictions that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade.”
"Find - and persuade" needs to be the challenge from mid-year onwards.
Major noise reductions. and huge air quality improvements.
My only question about this is the 'other renewable' category. I assume this includes the likes of Drax, not too far from me, who now co-fire coal and biomass (maybe some biomass-only generation now, not sure). Better than coal alone, but the life cycle analysis for biomass is not always that great - most of Drax's is shipped in too, I believe, rather than domestic. Not necessarily a whole lot better than a very efficient combined cycle natural gas plant, for example.
"The evidence from Mr Aberdein that he personally discussed the existence of the
complaints, and summarised the substance of the complaints, with the First
Minister in a pre arranged meeting in Parliament on 29th March 2018 arranged
for that specific purpose cannot be reconciled with the position of the First
Minister to Parliament. The fact that Mr Aberdein learned of these complaints in
early March 2018 from the Chief of Staff to the First Minister who thereafter
arranged for the meeting between Mr Aberdein and the First Minister on 29th
March to discuss them, is supported by his sharing that information
contemporaneously with myself, Kevin Pringle and Duncan Hamilton, Advocate."
I have used this one because the same one is highlighted in a national newspaper today and I am therefore not producing anything not very clearly in the public domain, a point I will come back to.
Some obvious points:
*This paragraph does not mention, let alone identify the complainants.
*It does not identify the nature of the complaints or give any detail that might give a clue as to who they are.
*It does indicate that these complaints had been made to the Scottish government who might reasonably be inferred to be their employers.
*It contains detailed and apparently corroborated evidence that the First Minister lied to Parliament about when she was told of the nature of the allegations. She has essentially admitted this claiming she "forgot" about this meeting.
The contempt of court order was explained by the Lord Justice Clerk, the trial judge and our second most senior judge last week. What she said was:
"All matters relating to the decisions of the committee, its way of working, the
rejection or acceptance of submissions, the question whether, when and to what extent
redaction of material was necessary to enable it to consider material which could not be
published for one reason or another, whether to accept material on a confidential basis, the
way in which it ensured adherence both to the order and generally to the principle that
complainers in sexual cases should not be identified, are in my view wholly irrelevant to any
matters which it is within the jurisdiction of the court to address. These are all matters
entirely in the hands of the committee and it is not for this court to interfere with that or to
seek to direct the committee in any way."
So on what basis did Crown Office claim that the above paragraph breached a contempt of court order? I regret to say that that question was not answered by the Lord Advocate yesterday when addressing Parliament.
Put aside the absurdity that the entire redacted statement is already available to anyone who wants to read it and the only reasonable conclusion is that the purpose of this redaction is to stop the committee from hearing evidence that the First Minister lied by excluding that evidence so that there is no evidence.
Given the insane / more appropriate valuations (pick your preferred definition) offered in the States it's hardly surprising Babylon are seeking to list there.
And the important thing to remember here is that on the online courses you pay for the certification at the end not the knowledge..
Motorways etc, you're right, it's tyre noise mostly.
If that's the accounting, its truly bizarre as the CO2 is sequestered in the US (from the air into the biomass) and then emitted here.
But even at 10% society should be safe to unlock completely. It isn't possible to eradicate death and at ~10% the virus isn't going to find enough superspreaders to spark exponential growth of hospitalisations to overwhelm healthcare.
Union Jack spending money exclusively in Tory seats will go down well and for sure be money well spent.
Holyrood has screwed the local authorities in Scotland so good to see UKG circumventing the nest of vipers.
(Big day tomorrow - unless we have another Crown Office intervention, of course)
In any case, Government shouldn't be purely about short-term popularity. Even if Johnson believed in the early days that people would like him to "free" them, avoiding mass deaths should have been a higher priority. This really isn't hindsight - lots of us said so at the time.
The word 'sustainable' has a lot to answer for when it comes to CO2.
Yes, technically the trees were cut down and replacements were planted. No, the habitat lost will never return.