We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
I'm with Bart of this one. Happy with churches, etc for those that want them, but I don't want religion rammed down my throat in unrelated places.
Another person to join my "end public Christmas displays" club. I'm sure that the strength of your convictions will also apply to this religious holiday as well!
I have no problem with public Christmas displays. Just wondering what that has to do with religion?
Similarly Easter. I enjoy an Easter egg and hot cross bun like the next person as long as religion is not brought into it.
Christmas is inherently religious - just because people claim it is secular doesn't mean that is true or how people receive it.
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
Really? Cool - as someone who is both an atheist and a Grinch, we must hold Christmas to this standard as well as a clear non secular holiday. I don't care if you want to argue "it is practically secular", it isn't, and under your logic shoving it down our throats would be wrong. Same with Easter, btw, I want to see absolutely zero Easter messages from anything this March.
There is a distinction between a 'Happy Easter' sign and a passage from the Bible/Koran.
Wondering when this thread turns into an argument about having pagan Norse beliefs stuffed down our throats, what with Eostre, Woden's Day, Thor's Day, and so on ...
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
I'm with Bart of this one. Happy with churches, etc for those that want them, but I don't want religion rammed down my throat in unrelated places.
Another person to join my "end public Christmas displays" club. I'm sure that the strength of your convictions will also apply to this religious holiday as well!
I have no problem with public Christmas displays. Just wondering what that has to do with religion?
Similarly Easter. I enjoy an Easter egg and hot cross bun like the next person as long as religion is not brought into it.
Christmas is inherently religious - just because people claim it is secular doesn't mean that is true or how people receive it.
No it's inherently secular.
You're just ignorant of the subject matter.
Our oldest Christmas traditions predate the birth of Christ. Our newest ones are from this century.
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
Really? Cool - as someone who is both an atheist and a Grinch, we must hold Christmas to this standard as well as a clear non secular holiday. I don't care if you want to argue "it is practically secular", it isn't, and under your logic shoving it down our throats would be wrong. Same with Easter, btw, I want to see absolutely zero Easter messages from anything this March.
There is a distinction between a 'Happy Easter' sign and a passage from the Bible/Koran.
Wondering when this thread turns into an argument about having pagan Norse beliefs stuffed down our throats, what with Eostre, Woden's Day, Thor's Day, and so on ...
Proper Christians, of course, refer to their sabbath as The Lord's Day (Domingo, Dimanche...) to emphasise that sun-worship is oldthink. You never hear a vicar (or an organist) say 'Thank God it's Sunday'.
The degree where you can get in with Cs and earn as much as an Oxford graduate Graduating from a selective institution doesn’t guarantee the highest possible earnings
The Telegraph lists:-
Economics at the University of Birkbeck ... Architecture at Anglia Ruskin University ... Engineering at The Open University ... Pharmacy at the University of Brighton With the expectation of making £42,300 five years after graduation, the pharmacology, toxicology and pharmacy alumni from the University of Brighton beat all other competitors in the earnings race.
The A-level requirement is a BBB. King’s College London and UCL are both more stringent, yet lead to salaries averaging £42,000 and £40,500 respectively.
Students can get onto Pharmacy courses with CDD (that won't be the offer, but the Uni will accept).
BUT.
Many such students fail to complete their studies. One course I know has around 50% fail to graduate.
Then the student must pass the Pre-Registration exam - set nationally, not in the control of the Universities. You only get three (3) chances to pass. Many from the lower ranked Unis that admit students with CDD fail to ever pass the pre-reg.
But yes, if you make it, pharmacy is a high payer at the start of your career (although to progress you need to move up, away from being the direct pharmacist on the Boots counter, or in the hospital).
EDIT - also this year you will not get into the top schools of Pharmacy with less than ABB (Nottingham, Manchester, Bath etc)
I was amazed how long it has taken since I left Bath uni back in 2002 for the gov't (Any of them) to end the mahoosive underemployment of pharmacists and give them some prescribing powers for minor illnesses. The most obvious stone in obvious land to relieve some pressure from GPs for anyone who knows anything of quite how well educated pharmacists are.
Its been coming for a while. We have long had a post grad prescribing course but from next year all pharmacy graduates will be prescribers (i.e. anyone graduating 2025 on - its not retrospective). This has led to some tricky changes in course material as the 2025 cohort were not heading in that direction when they started.
Pharmacy has hugely changed. Back in the day students did a lot of science and manufacturing of ointments creams etc, but very little of the soft clinical skills. My colleague at Bath, who graduated in the mid 80's, did not do any clinical at all, as it was on Wednesday afternoons when he was playing rugby. In those days you learned science at Uni and clinical on the job.
I'm not most pharmacists would claim to be underemployed - many of the public have a very dim idea of what the pharmacist actually does at work. Very few actually dispense (at least not in the bigger companies) - thats a job for less well paid dispensers.
I do think it will help to have minor conditions being able to pharmacists prescribe treatment, but I think there are also other issues with GP's. A better approach might be to create more drop in GP centres in towns - turn up and wait. My son had an ear infection at the weekend. Full time wife took him to the minor injury unit in the next town (which functions as a walk in GP) and got treatment in less than an hour. If we had tried with the surgery we would still be waiting. GPs won't necessarily like them - being part of a GP practice can be very lucrative, but I think something needs to give.
One thing that may have shifted thing on this was the COVID vaccination campaign
Anyone else laugh like a drain when Independent SAGE said that the vaccinations should only be done by doctors?
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
Really? Cool - as someone who is both an atheist and a Grinch, we must hold Christmas to this standard as well as a clear non secular holiday. I don't care if you want to argue "it is practically secular", it isn't, and under your logic shoving it down our throats would be wrong. Same with Easter, btw, I want to see absolutely zero Easter messages from anything this March.
There is a distinction between a 'Happy Easter' sign and a passage from the Bible/Koran.
Wondering when this thread turns into an argument about having pagan Norse beliefs stuffed down our throats, what with Eostre, Woden's Day, Thor's Day, and so on ...
While we're on that subject , where's the outrage at September, October, November, and December NOT being the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months of the year ?
They are if you revert to the traditional English New Year, beginning with Lady Day in March
Jus\t thinking the Quakers sorted it all out centuries ago with First Day, Second Month etc. (no pagans etc) but then I suddenly started worrying what they called e.g. September. Turns out that they had it under control too.
On universities I looked in to this with a view to thinking about my what my son will do at age 18. I worked out it would cost £120,000 for fees and 3 years living expenses (necessary to avoid a student loan debt trap). Even if he went to oxbridge and then on to something like the civil service fast stream or in to teaching etc, his earnings would top out at about 50-60k per year... the same amount that can be achieved if you start out in these careers in an apprenticeship.
For most people university is an unwise decision and the idea that it is a step towards social mobility is absurd, it instead creates a debt burden that has the opposite effect, prevents you from buying property and amassing wealth. The entire system is not fit for purpose and relies on nostalgic notions of 'the university experience' to sell itself that have little basis in reality. The purpose seems to be to fund a large privately funded administrative bureaucracy that gives out credentials, something close to rent seeking.
I will have to leave it to my son to decide what he is going to do. If he really wants to go then he can but there will be no pressure from us. I just find it sad that the experience that I benefitted from with a manageable level of debt does not exist for my son in the same way.
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
Really? Cool - as someone who is both an atheist and a Grinch, we must hold Christmas to this standard as well as a clear non secular holiday. I don't care if you want to argue "it is practically secular", it isn't, and under your logic shoving it down our throats would be wrong. Same with Easter, btw, I want to see absolutely zero Easter messages from anything this March.
There is a distinction between a 'Happy Easter' sign and a passage from the Bible/Koran.
Wondering when this thread turns into an argument about having pagan Norse beliefs stuffed down our throats, what with Eostre, Woden's Day, Thor's Day, and so on ...
I'm up for it if you are?
Alas Mrs C has just made some potato and leek soup so I will retire from PB for a while.
I thought I'd have a play around with chatGPT since @Leon won't stop banging on about it, and he said it had learnt how to draw by itself. So I started with something simple and not especially impressed with the very first prompt I put in.
Hmm, fair enough on ASCII representation though it rather dismisses Leon's claim chatGPT taught itself how to draw, but what an interesting ASCII way of representing 4 blue and 3 green tokens.
I wonder if it can generate algorithms in the Game of Life to find previously undiscovered emergent structures?
Maybe one of the blue tokens is exactly hidden behind another of the blue tokens.
This is about par for the course for the "general purpose" ChatGPT. You need one of the models trained on a specialist corpus to get it to do operations involving "numbers of things" more accurately.
The degree where you can get in with Cs and earn as much as an Oxford graduate Graduating from a selective institution doesn’t guarantee the highest possible earnings
The Telegraph lists:-
Economics at the University of Birkbeck ... Architecture at Anglia Ruskin University ... Engineering at The Open University ... Pharmacy at the University of Brighton With the expectation of making £42,300 five years after graduation, the pharmacology, toxicology and pharmacy alumni from the University of Brighton beat all other competitors in the earnings race.
The A-level requirement is a BBB. King’s College London and UCL are both more stringent, yet lead to salaries averaging £42,000 and £40,500 respectively.
Students can get onto Pharmacy courses with CDD (that won't be the offer, but the Uni will accept).
BUT.
Many such students fail to complete their studies. One course I know has around 50% fail to graduate.
Then the student must pass the Pre-Registration exam - set nationally, not in the control of the Universities. You only get three (3) chances to pass. Many from the lower ranked Unis that admit students with CDD fail to ever pass the pre-reg.
But yes, if you make it, pharmacy is a high payer at the start of your career (although to progress you need to move up, away from being the direct pharmacist on the Boots counter, or in the hospital).
EDIT - also this year you will not get into the top schools of Pharmacy with less than ABB (Nottingham, Manchester, Bath etc)
I was amazed how long it has taken since I left Bath uni back in 2002 for the gov't (Any of them) to end the mahoosive underemployment of pharmacists and give them some prescribing powers for minor illnesses. The most obvious stone in obvious land to relieve some pressure from GPs for anyone who knows anything of quite how well educated pharmacists are.
Its been coming for a while. We have long had a post grad prescribing course but from next year all pharmacy graduates will be prescribers (i.e. anyone graduating 2025 on - its not retrospective). This has led to some tricky changes in course material as the 2025 cohort were not heading in that direction when they started.
Pharmacy has hugely changed. Back in the day students did a lot of science and manufacturing of ointments creams etc, but very little of the soft clinical skills. My colleague at Bath, who graduated in the mid 80's, did not do any clinical at all, as it was on Wednesday afternoons when he was playing rugby. In those days you learned science at Uni and clinical on the job.
I'm not most pharmacists would claim to be underemployed - many of the public have a very dim idea of what the pharmacist actually does at work. Very few actually dispense (at least not in the bigger companies) - thats a job for less well paid dispensers.
I do think it will help to have minor conditions being able to pharmacists prescribe treatment, but I think there are also other issues with GP's. A better approach might be to create more drop in GP centres in towns - turn up and wait. My son had an ear infection at the weekend. Full time wife took him to the minor injury unit in the next town (which functions as a walk in GP) and got treatment in less than an hour. If we had tried with the surgery we would still be waiting. GPs won't necessarily like them - being part of a GP practice can be very lucrative, but I think something needs to give.
There's no minor injuries unit in our area, it's a bit of a missed trick I think - in practice the A&E unit functions as an out of hour GP service (Bassetlaw).
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
Really? Cool - as someone who is both an atheist and a Grinch, we must hold Christmas to this standard as well as a clear non secular holiday. I don't care if you want to argue "it is practically secular", it isn't, and under your logic shoving it down our throats would be wrong. Same with Easter, btw, I want to see absolutely zero Easter messages from anything this March.
There is a distinction between a 'Happy Easter' sign and a passage from the Bible/Koran.
Wondering when this thread turns into an argument about having pagan Norse beliefs stuffed down our throats, what with Eostre, Woden's Day, Thor's Day, and so on ...
While we're on that subject , where's the outrage at September, October, November, and December NOT being the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months of the year ?
I would agree with a move of New Year's Day to March 1st, especially if we could have a double Bank Holiday every Leap Year. It simplifies "day of year" analyses if the Leap Day is the final day of the year.
Perhaps then we could prevent the present New Year celebrations from curtailing Christmastide, by having a Bank Holiday for Epiphany on January 6th.
He spoke out after the BBC apologised for using the phrase to describe the party in an article at the weekend primarily about the Liberal Democrats’ conference.
The BBC said:
In an article about the Liberal Democrats’ spring conference we wrongly described the political party Reform UK as far-right when referring to polling.
This sentence was subsequently removed from the article as it fell short of our usual editorial standards.
While the original wording was based on news agency copy, we take full responsibility and apologise for the error.
And in response Tice said:
The BBC has apologised for the news website referring to Reform UK as ‘far-right’ following an intervention from my lawyers.
My lawyers are also in touch with other news organisations who repeated the BBC line.
To be clear, I view this as defamatory and libellous.
The fact that the BBC has chosen not to use the term to describe Reform UK may deter other media organisations from using it too, but it does not prove that it is libellous. Ultimately that is something that would have to be decided by a court.
Journalists and commentators sometimes use the term “far-right” quite loosely, and it is almost always pejorative. But political scientists do use the term with care and precision. Last year we reported on Dutch academics who have studied European political parties to consider how many of them might be called “far-right”. They considered whether the Conservative party could be described in these terms, but ultimately decided against it. “In the end we didn’t because nativism was not their core focus. But we may in future,” Matthijs Rooduijn, the political scientist in charge of the project said.
One of the academics who has studied this issue most closely is Cas Mudde and in his book The Far Right Today he argues that the far right divides into two categories: the extreme right which “rejects the essence of democracy, that is, popular sovereignty and majority rule”; and the radical right, which “accepts the essence of democracy, but opposes fundamental elements of liberal democracy, most notably minority rights, rule of law and separation of powers”.
Reform UK is a democratic party and clearly does not fit the extreme version of Mudde’s definition. But the label might apply to some aspects of its politics. For example, the call by Lee Anderson, the party’s new MP, last year for the government to ignore the supreme court after it ruled against the Rwanda policy would count as far-right within Mudde’s radical right category.
It's not defamatory; it's a matter of opinion. But in the BBC's case, the use of the description is presumably a breach of impartiality, given that it's effectively expressing a political opinion.
Tice is either being mischievous or just plain stupid in confusing the two things.
I agree... but, additionally, political parties can't sue in defamation even if it was (Goldsmith v Bhoyrul [1998] QB 459).
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
Really? Cool - as someone who is both an atheist and a Grinch, we must hold Christmas to this standard as well as a clear non secular holiday. I don't care if you want to argue "it is practically secular", it isn't, and under your logic shoving it down our throats would be wrong. Same with Easter, btw, I want to see absolutely zero Easter messages from anything this March.
There is a distinction between a 'Happy Easter' sign and a passage from the Bible/Koran.
Wondering when this thread turns into an argument about having pagan Norse beliefs stuffed down our throats, what with Eostre, Woden's Day, Thor's Day, and so on ...
While we're on that subject , where's the outrage at September, October, November, and December NOT being the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months of the year ?
I would agree with a move of New Year's Day to March 1st, especially if we could have a double Bank Holiday every Leap Year. It simplified "day of year" analyses if the Leap Day is the final day of the year.
Perhaps then we could prevent the present New Year celebrations from curtailing Christmastide, by having a Bank Holiday for Epiphany on January 6th.
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
The initial post was about a railway station. So, this comes down to how you feel about rail nationalisation presumably. If you think railways should be privatised, then the station is owned by a company and they should get to say what they want. If you think railways should be nationalised, then it’s a secular space. Bart: privatised or nationalised rail?
Personally I think they should be privatised, but aren't currently in London, so it's not about what I want but about what the situation is currently.
The status of whether it's public or private doesn't change based on what I want, it's a matter of objective fact not subjective opinion.
So, if station ownership was privatised, as you wish, you would withdraw any objection to the message?
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
Really? Cool - as someone who is both an atheist and a Grinch, we must hold Christmas to this standard as well as a clear non secular holiday. I don't care if you want to argue "it is practically secular", it isn't, and under your logic shoving it down our throats would be wrong. Same with Easter, btw, I want to see absolutely zero Easter messages from anything this March.
There is a distinction between a 'Happy Easter' sign and a passage from the Bible/Koran.
Wondering when this thread turns into an argument about having pagan Norse beliefs stuffed down our throats, what with Eostre, Woden's Day, Thor's Day, and so on ...
While we're on that subject , where's the outrage at September, October, November, and December NOT being the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months of the year ?
I would agree with a move of New Year's Day to March 1st, especially if we could have a double Bank Holiday every Leap Year. It simplified "day of year" analyses if the Leap Day is the final day of the year.
Perhaps then we could prevent the present New Year celebrations from curtailing Christmastide, by having a Bank Holiday for Epiphany on January 6th.
Whose manifesto pledge is this ?
Perhaps I should submit it to the Monster Raving Loony Party for consideration.
Also, with respect to the discussion around GPS earlier, I'd suggest mandating that all smartphones automatically adjust their clocks to the mean solar time for the longitude they're currently at.
On universities I looked in to this with a view to thinking about my what my son will do at age 18. I worked out it would cost £120,000 for fees and 3 years living expenses (necessary to avoid a student loan debt trap). Even if he went to oxbridge and then on to something like the civil service fast stream or in to teaching etc, his earnings would top out at about 50-60k per year... the same amount that can be achieved if you start out in these careers in an apprenticeship.
For most people university is an unwise decision and the idea that it is a step towards social mobility is absurd, it instead creates a debt burden that has the opposite effect, prevents you from buying property and amassing wealth. The entire system is not fit for purpose and relies on nostalgic notions of 'the university experience' to sell itself that have little basis in reality. The purpose seems to be to fund a large privately funded administrative bureaucracy that gives out credentials, something close to rent seeking.
I will have to leave it to my son to decide what he is going to do. If he really wants to go then he can but there will be no pressure from us. I just find it sad that the experience that I benefitted from with a manageable level of debt does not exist for my son in the same way.
You aim for a degree apprenticeship - the civil service ones are like winning the lottery - £28,000 a year, 27% pension contribution, no university fees and 1 day off for course work
It’s also harder to get a degree apprenticeship than getting into Oxford / Cambridge
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
I'm with Bart of this one. Happy with churches, etc for those that want them, but I don't want religion rammed down my throat in unrelated places.
Another person to join my "end public Christmas displays" club. I'm sure that the strength of your convictions will also apply to this religious holiday as well!
I have no problem with public Christmas displays. Just wondering what that has to do with religion?
Similarly Easter. I enjoy an Easter egg and hot cross bun like the next person as long as religion is not brought into it.
Christmas is inherently religious - just because people claim it is secular doesn't mean that is true or how people receive it.
No it's inherently secular.
You're just ignorant of the subject matter.
Our oldest Christmas traditions predate the birth of Christ. Our newest ones are from this century.
There are many Xmas traditions, from different sources. But I’m not convinced by the argument that Xmas is “inherently secular”. There is a tradition of exaggerating its supposed pagan origins: e.g. see this video, https://youtu.be/mWgzjwy51kU
On topic (I think): This is, no doubt, a delicate subject, so I will try to be gentle: Is it possible that Prime Minister Sunak's Hinduism leads him to take a largely Brahmin's view of the world of politics? I am not familiar with the details of such a view, but it would seem to me that a Brahmin would not be adept at the kinds of democratic politics one finds in the UK.
I think Susan Hall will lose but might do a little better than her odds suggest. Am not a London-dweller these days, but ULEZ (which was a Conservative policy?) does seem to still motivate a great deal of anti-Khan feeling in the blue ‘burbs.
It’s not a dynamic or appealing contest though. Hopefully both parties are giving proper thought to their next candidate.
To be anti-ULEZ now it’s been implemented, you have to:
- Not believe the stats on the impact on air quality, or not care - Drive, and enjoy cars and driving - Not enjoy cars and driving enough to have a petrol car less than 20 years old or a diesel less than 8 years old - if you were affected, still not changed car since ULEZ extension came in
That’s a pretty small voter demographic
One of the fears of the ULEZ was that the criteria would be tightened over time. So people with a compliant car now might worry that it could suddenly be non-compliant tomorrow.
well isnt that inevitable ? Once a threshold has been crossed the costs only go one way.
Yes. I was trying to be gentle about the point.
The end state for the ULEZ would be zero tailpipe emissions vehicles only.
I think Euro 6 as 'acceptable' for anti-pollution schemes is safe for an extended period of time. I bought my Euro 6 car with back in 2018 with such schemes in mind, with the intention of keeping it until electric cars become practical for my need. That could be 2030+.
The Euro 7 standard is not coming in even on new vehicles for several years.
The big cause on the pareto chart for pollution will be the remaining minority of pre-2016 vehicles, and blanket exemptions such as taxis which are allowed to continue to pollute. Plus the current level for petrol vehicles is several jumps away - is it currently Euro 4 ie 2006 registration.
That and targeting the need for a shift away from space inefficient forms of private transport to alternatives more suitable for cities.
London is continuing to invest, and imo will be OK, and Susan Hall will be marooned back in the 1980s somewhere.
IIRC the majority of pollution - especially particulates - comes from a minority of vehicles.
We should move to a more balanced scheme which encourages small vehicles. Too much of the taxation and "road calming" systems encourage large electric SUVs at the moment - very little taxation and they laugh at road humps.
Completely agreed, 100%. We have humps down my road which are a PITA even below let alone at the speed limit for my new, small, hybrid low-polluting vehicle but a large diesel SUV would would take with more ease. They should be completely abolished as a concept.
When it comes to particulates, the pareto principle comes into play. Taxis etc that are driving repeatedly around and around for hours a day emit far more emissions than private vehicles driving down a road twice a day. Yet too many schemes target the latter and not the former.
Exempting taxis etc from standards is utterly insane, they should have the highest standards, not the lowest.
Banning speed bumps, or banning SUVs?
The only surprise is that mandatory GPS speed limiters on new cars haven't become a thing yet. Would make Wales' 20mph policy much more effective, could use it to taper down motorway speeds as you approach congestion etc etc
Probably due to opposition from the motor industry. Which at the moment seems to be on a mission to make life difficult for its customers and bring regulators down on its head - SUVs get bigger and bigger so that eventually they will have to be banned or severely restricted in cities as there simply won't be the roadspace for them. And pointless technological gimmicks such a keyless entry have led to a wave of thefts which make some vehicles almost uninsurable and puts up the premiums for everyone else.
SUVs in the UK are mostly replacements for estate cars. And have a smaller footprint (mostly).
GPS speed limiters would be a bad idea - GPS is quite jammable. Not sure tying large amounts of infrastructure to it would be a good idea.
I agree that actual speed limiting by GPS would be bad, but I've often thought that if exceeding the limit caused a repeated ping, like the seatbelt reminder sound, there would be far less speeding. I would have it become louder and more frequent the faster you went, or the longer you exceeded the limit for.
Dubai taxis have that kind of set up and have done for over a decade.
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
The initial post was about a railway station. So, this comes down to how you feel about rail nationalisation presumably. If you think railways should be privatised, then the station is owned by a company and they should get to say what they want. If you think railways should be nationalised, then it’s a secular space. Bart: privatised or nationalised rail?
Personally I think they should be privatised, but aren't currently in London, so it's not about what I want but about what the situation is currently.
The status of whether it's public or private doesn't change based on what I want, it's a matter of objective fact not subjective opinion.
So, if station ownership was privatised, as you wish, you would withdraw any objection to the message?
Then it's a private matter. I would dislike it, but it wouldn't be a public issue like it is now.
If Costa Coffee want to push a religion that's their private business, but if Starbucks don't then ceteris paribus that'd be a competitive incentive for me to go to Starbucks where that's not an issue.
The Black Swan for the Tories is Nigel Farage. Not tax cuts, not Rwanda, not Starmer who doesn't have a plan or know what a woman is and who defends Terrorists.
Despite the polls, the notion of the Tories coming 3rd - or 4th - feels fanciful. Until you consider the impact of ReFUK. Farage now strongly rumoured to be stepping back in - and with his GBeebies presence he isn't exactly invisible as it is.
How do we go 1979 > 1997 > Canada 93? Nigel Farage leads ReFUK with his usual simplicity of thought and panache and the remaining Tory vote collapses. And they can't even buy him off. Why be bought off with baubles now when he can have the whole thing in a few months?
The 1979 comparison is interesting more for what will happen next rather than the result of the vote. It is assumed by many, including on this board, that Starmer will crash and burn and the natural Conservative order will swiftly be resumed. I am not convinced. Starmer will likely have the opportunity to be transformative like Thatcher was. Will he take take the opportunity? I suspect he will try. The warning for him though is that Thatcher wasn't at all popular and was only rescued by random Argentinian generals invading an island full of sheep.
I'm not convinced Starmer will crash and burn as much as he will just continue the status quo and that, in and of itself, will lead to ruin. I think one of the things that the Tories (correctly) learnt from Brexit was that, for a lot of the British public, big change is wanted. They just drank their own Kool Aid that the EU was the big thing stopping popular big change when, in fact, it's the neoliberal consensus (that the EU is part of) that is hindering it.
Again, I put Johnson's large electoral win as much down to his promise (true or otherwise) to turn the spigot on for spending as much as down to "sorting out" Brexit. Corbyn's popularity (his election against May was surprisingly close) was also, in part, down to his adamant opposition to the continuation of austerity. I know many here like to argue that austerity never happened, but if you interact with the NHS or with schools or with local councils - the impact is unmistakeable.
With his "fiscal rules" Starmer and Reeves have essentially signed up to Tory economic policy. Unless that's a lie from SKS (which I personally doubt) that is why I see his government being unpopular. Not because it doesn't look more professional or isn't passing legislation - but because his entire ethos will still be underpinned by a view of economics that will not allow government intervention on behalf of the vast majority of people in this country.
There is definitely a risk of Starmer continuing down the status quo into the dead end. But he will probably have a big enough majority he doesn't need to go there. He is also probably aware of the risk and will want to avoid it.
The degree where you can get in with Cs and earn as much as an Oxford graduate Graduating from a selective institution doesn’t guarantee the highest possible earnings
The Telegraph lists:-
Economics at the University of Birkbeck ... Architecture at Anglia Ruskin University ... Engineering at The Open University ... Pharmacy at the University of Brighton With the expectation of making £42,300 five years after graduation, the pharmacology, toxicology and pharmacy alumni from the University of Brighton beat all other competitors in the earnings race.
The A-level requirement is a BBB. King’s College London and UCL are both more stringent, yet lead to salaries averaging £42,000 and £40,500 respectively.
Students can get onto Pharmacy courses with CDD (that won't be the offer, but the Uni will accept).
BUT.
Many such students fail to complete their studies. One course I know has around 50% fail to graduate.
Then the student must pass the Pre-Registration exam - set nationally, not in the control of the Universities. You only get three (3) chances to pass. Many from the lower ranked Unis that admit students with CDD fail to ever pass the pre-reg.
But yes, if you make it, pharmacy is a high payer at the start of your career (although to progress you need to move up, away from being the direct pharmacist on the Boots counter, or in the hospital).
EDIT - also this year you will not get into the top schools of Pharmacy with less than ABB (Nottingham, Manchester, Bath etc)
I was amazed how long it has taken since I left Bath uni back in 2002 for the gov't (Any of them) to end the mahoosive underemployment of pharmacists and give them some prescribing powers for minor illnesses. The most obvious stone in obvious land to relieve some pressure from GPs for anyone who knows anything of quite how well educated pharmacists are.
Its been coming for a while. We have long had a post grad prescribing course but from next year all pharmacy graduates will be prescribers (i.e. anyone graduating 2025 on - its not retrospective). This has led to some tricky changes in course material as the 2025 cohort were not heading in that direction when they started.
Pharmacy has hugely changed. Back in the day students did a lot of science and manufacturing of ointments creams etc, but very little of the soft clinical skills. My colleague at Bath, who graduated in the mid 80's, did not do any clinical at all, as it was on Wednesday afternoons when he was playing rugby. In those days you learned science at Uni and clinical on the job.
I'm not most pharmacists would claim to be underemployed - many of the public have a very dim idea of what the pharmacist actually does at work. Very few actually dispense (at least not in the bigger companies) - thats a job for less well paid dispensers.
I do think it will help to have minor conditions being able to pharmacists prescribe treatment, but I think there are also other issues with GP's. A better approach might be to create more drop in GP centres in towns - turn up and wait. My son had an ear infection at the weekend. Full time wife took him to the minor injury unit in the next town (which functions as a walk in GP) and got treatment in less than an hour. If we had tried with the surgery we would still be waiting. GPs won't necessarily like them - being part of a GP practice can be very lucrative, but I think something needs to give.
One thing that may have shifted thing on this was the COVID vaccination campaign
Anyone else laugh like a drain when Independent SAGE said that the vaccinations should only be done by doctors?
I don't have a lot of hope of the COVID enquiry but I would love it, just love it, if 'Independent' SAGE came in for serious criticism, as they undoubtedly should. I am all for free speech, but they crossed a line with their behaviour, not least the stupid name they used.
Its funny. The world is pretty much back to normal, a few hundred covid cases in hospitals each week, yet there are still some out there that would force us all into masks again, and frankly Starmer, as much as I will vote for his party next time, was one of the worst for this.
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
The initial post was about a railway station. So, this comes down to how you feel about rail nationalisation presumably. If you think railways should be privatised, then the station is owned by a company and they should get to say what they want. If you think railways should be nationalised, then it’s a secular space. Bart: privatised or nationalised rail?
Personally I think they should be privatised, but aren't currently in London, so it's not about what I want but about what the situation is currently.
The status of whether it's public or private doesn't change based on what I want, it's a matter of objective fact not subjective opinion.
So, if station ownership was privatised, as you wish, you would withdraw any objection to the message?
Then it's a private matter. I would dislike it, but it wouldn't be a public issue like it is now.
If Costa Coffee want to push a religion that's their private business, but if Starbucks don't then ceteris paribus that'd be a competitive incentive for me to go to Starbucks where that's not an issue.
Public spaces though should be secular IMHO.
Fair enough. Presumably you favour the disestablishment of the Anglican Church too? (Where are the forces of antidisestablishmentarianism to oppose you?)
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
The initial post was about a railway station. So, this comes down to how you feel about rail nationalisation presumably. If you think railways should be privatised, then the station is owned by a company and they should get to say what they want. If you think railways should be nationalised, then it’s a secular space. Bart: privatised or nationalised rail?
Personally I think they should be privatised, but aren't currently in London, so it's not about what I want but about what the situation is currently.
The status of whether it's public or private doesn't change based on what I want, it's a matter of objective fact not subjective opinion.
So, if station ownership was privatised, as you wish, you would withdraw any objection to the message?
Then it's a private matter. I would dislike it, but it wouldn't be a public issue like it is now.
If Costa Coffee want to push a religion that's their private business, but if Starbucks don't then ceteris paribus that'd be a competitive incentive for me to go to Starbucks where that's not an issue.
Public spaces though should be secular IMHO.
Fair enough. Presumably you favour the disestablishment of the Anglican Church too? (Where are the forces of antidisestablishmentarianism to oppose you?)
Of course I do!
As for the forces of antidisestablishmentarianism you probably need @HYUFD to be online
On universities I looked in to this with a view to thinking about my what my son will do at age 18. I worked out it would cost £120,000 for fees and 3 years living expenses (necessary to avoid a student loan debt trap). Even if he went to oxbridge and then on to something like the civil service fast stream or in to teaching etc, his earnings would top out at about 50-60k per year... the same amount that can be achieved if you start out in these careers in an apprenticeship.
For most people university is an unwise decision and the idea that it is a step towards social mobility is absurd, it instead creates a debt burden that has the opposite effect, prevents you from buying property and amassing wealth. The entire system is not fit for purpose and relies on nostalgic notions of 'the university experience' to sell itself that have little basis in reality. The purpose seems to be to fund a large privately funded administrative bureaucracy that gives out credentials, something close to rent seeking.
I will have to leave it to my son to decide what he is going to do. If he really wants to go then he can but there will be no pressure from us. I just find it sad that the experience that I benefitted from with a manageable level of debt does not exist for my son in the same way.
You aim for a degree apprenticeship - the civil service ones are like winning the lottery - £28,000 a year, 27% pension contribution, no university fees and 1 day off for course work
It’s also harder to get a degree apprenticeship than getting into Oxford / Cambridge
The degree where you can get in with Cs and earn as much as an Oxford graduate Graduating from a selective institution doesn’t guarantee the highest possible earnings
The Telegraph lists:-
Economics at the University of Birkbeck ... Architecture at Anglia Ruskin University ... Engineering at The Open University ... Pharmacy at the University of Brighton With the expectation of making £42,300 five years after graduation, the pharmacology, toxicology and pharmacy alumni from the University of Brighton beat all other competitors in the earnings race.
The A-level requirement is a BBB. King’s College London and UCL are both more stringent, yet lead to salaries averaging £42,000 and £40,500 respectively.
Students can get onto Pharmacy courses with CDD (that won't be the offer, but the Uni will accept).
BUT.
Many such students fail to complete their studies. One course I know has around 50% fail to graduate.
Then the student must pass the Pre-Registration exam - set nationally, not in the control of the Universities. You only get three (3) chances to pass. Many from the lower ranked Unis that admit students with CDD fail to ever pass the pre-reg.
But yes, if you make it, pharmacy is a high payer at the start of your career (although to progress you need to move up, away from being the direct pharmacist on the Boots counter, or in the hospital).
EDIT - also this year you will not get into the top schools of Pharmacy with less than ABB (Nottingham, Manchester, Bath etc)
I was amazed how long it has taken since I left Bath uni back in 2002 for the gov't (Any of them) to end the mahoosive underemployment of pharmacists and give them some prescribing powers for minor illnesses. The most obvious stone in obvious land to relieve some pressure from GPs for anyone who knows anything of quite how well educated pharmacists are.
Its been coming for a while. We have long had a post grad prescribing course but from next year all pharmacy graduates will be prescribers (i.e. anyone graduating 2025 on - its not retrospective). This has led to some tricky changes in course material as the 2025 cohort were not heading in that direction when they started.
Pharmacy has hugely changed. Back in the day students did a lot of science and manufacturing of ointments creams etc, but very little of the soft clinical skills. My colleague at Bath, who graduated in the mid 80's, did not do any clinical at all, as it was on Wednesday afternoons when he was playing rugby. In those days you learned science at Uni and clinical on the job.
I'm not most pharmacists would claim to be underemployed - many of the public have a very dim idea of what the pharmacist actually does at work. Very few actually dispense (at least not in the bigger companies) - thats a job for less well paid dispensers.
I do think it will help to have minor conditions being able to pharmacists prescribe treatment, but I think there are also other issues with GP's. A better approach might be to create more drop in GP centres in towns - turn up and wait. My son had an ear infection at the weekend. Full time wife took him to the minor injury unit in the next town (which functions as a walk in GP) and got treatment in less than an hour. If we had tried with the surgery we would still be waiting. GPs won't necessarily like them - being part of a GP practice can be very lucrative, but I think something needs to give.
One thing that may have shifted thing on this was the COVID vaccination campaign
Anyone else laugh like a drain when Independent SAGE said that the vaccinations should only be done by doctors?
I don't have a lot of hope of the COVID enquiry but I would love it, just love it, if 'Independent' SAGE came in for serious criticism, as they undoubtedly should. I am all for free speech, but they crossed a line with their behaviour, not least the stupid name they used.
Its funny. The world is pretty much back to normal, a few hundred covid cases in hospitals each week, yet there are still some out there that would force us all into masks again, and frankly Starmer, as much as I will vote for his party next time, was one of the worst for this.
When the Independent Air Force (IAF) was founded in WWI, Trenchard commented - "Independent of whom? God?"
There are advantages in each system, but it has long struck me that America has an advantage from our governors getting tested in executive positions, before they run for the presidency.
(I have long preferred governors over, for example, senators, for that reason. Everything else being equal, of course.)
The closest equivalent in the UK appears to be mayoralties in large cities, but they don't appear to have the independence and responsibility that American governors
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
The initial post was about a railway station. So, this comes down to how you feel about rail nationalisation presumably. If you think railways should be privatised, then the station is owned by a company and they should get to say what they want. If you think railways should be nationalised, then it’s a secular space. Bart: privatised or nationalised rail?
Personally I think they should be privatised, but aren't currently in London, so it's not about what I want but about what the situation is currently.
The status of whether it's public or private doesn't change based on what I want, it's a matter of objective fact not subjective opinion.
So, if station ownership was privatised, as you wish, you would withdraw any objection to the message?
Then it's a private matter. I would dislike it, but it wouldn't be a public issue like it is now.
If Costa Coffee want to push a religion that's their private business, but if Starbucks don't then ceteris paribus that'd be a competitive incentive for me to go to Starbucks where that's not an issue.
Public spaces though should be secular IMHO.
Fair enough. Presumably you favour the disestablishment of the Anglican Church too? (Where are the forces of antidisestablishmentarianism to oppose you?)
I am entirely devoted to the antidisestablishmentarianism cause. Just for the word.
The degree where you can get in with Cs and earn as much as an Oxford graduate Graduating from a selective institution doesn’t guarantee the highest possible earnings
The Telegraph lists:-
Economics at the University of Birkbeck ... Architecture at Anglia Ruskin University ... Engineering at The Open University ... Pharmacy at the University of Brighton With the expectation of making £42,300 five years after graduation, the pharmacology, toxicology and pharmacy alumni from the University of Brighton beat all other competitors in the earnings race.
The A-level requirement is a BBB. King’s College London and UCL are both more stringent, yet lead to salaries averaging £42,000 and £40,500 respectively.
Students can get onto Pharmacy courses with CDD (that won't be the offer, but the Uni will accept).
BUT.
Many such students fail to complete their studies. One course I know has around 50% fail to graduate.
Then the student must pass the Pre-Registration exam - set nationally, not in the control of the Universities. You only get three (3) chances to pass. Many from the lower ranked Unis that admit students with CDD fail to ever pass the pre-reg.
But yes, if you make it, pharmacy is a high payer at the start of your career (although to progress you need to move up, away from being the direct pharmacist on the Boots counter, or in the hospital).
EDIT - also this year you will not get into the top schools of Pharmacy with less than ABB (Nottingham, Manchester, Bath etc)
I was amazed how long it has taken since I left Bath uni back in 2002 for the gov't (Any of them) to end the mahoosive underemployment of pharmacists and give them some prescribing powers for minor illnesses. The most obvious stone in obvious land to relieve some pressure from GPs for anyone who knows anything of quite how well educated pharmacists are.
Its been coming for a while. We have long had a post grad prescribing course but from next year all pharmacy graduates will be prescribers (i.e. anyone graduating 2025 on - its not retrospective). This has led to some tricky changes in course material as the 2025 cohort were not heading in that direction when they started.
Pharmacy has hugely changed. Back in the day students did a lot of science and manufacturing of ointments creams etc, but very little of the soft clinical skills. My colleague at Bath, who graduated in the mid 80's, did not do any clinical at all, as it was on Wednesday afternoons when he was playing rugby. In those days you learned science at Uni and clinical on the job.
I'm not most pharmacists would claim to be underemployed - many of the public have a very dim idea of what the pharmacist actually does at work. Very few actually dispense (at least not in the bigger companies) - thats a job for less well paid dispensers.
I do think it will help to have minor conditions being able to pharmacists prescribe treatment, but I think there are also other issues with GP's. A better approach might be to create more drop in GP centres in towns - turn up and wait. My son had an ear infection at the weekend. Full time wife took him to the minor injury unit in the next town (which functions as a walk in GP) and got treatment in less than an hour. If we had tried with the surgery we would still be waiting. GPs won't necessarily like them - being part of a GP practice can be very lucrative, but I think something needs to give.
One thing that may have shifted thing on this was the COVID vaccination campaign
Anyone else laugh like a drain when Independent SAGE said that the vaccinations should only be done by doctors?
I don't have a lot of hope of the COVID enquiry but I would love it, just love it, if 'Independent' SAGE came in for serious criticism, as they undoubtedly should. I am all for free speech, but they crossed a line with their behaviour, not least the stupid name they used.
Its funny. The world is pretty much back to normal, a few hundred covid cases in hospitals each week, yet there are still some out there that would force us all into masks again, and frankly Starmer, as much as I will vote for his party next time, was one of the worst for this.
And I would love the inquiry to dish out a slagging to the media who sent their political correspondents to the COVID briefings instead of their science correspondents.
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
I'm with Bart of this one. Happy with churches, etc for those that want them, but I don't want religion rammed down my throat in unrelated places.
Another person to join my "end public Christmas displays" club. I'm sure that the strength of your convictions will also apply to this religious holiday as well!
I have no problem with public Christmas displays. Just wondering what that has to do with religion?
Similarly Easter. I enjoy an Easter egg and hot cross bun like the next person as long as religion is not brought into it.
Christmas is inherently religious - just because people claim it is secular doesn't mean that is true or how people receive it.
No it's inherently secular.
You're just ignorant of the subject matter.
Our oldest Christmas traditions predate the birth of Christ. Our newest ones are from this century.
There are many Xmas traditions, from different sources. But I’m not convinced by the argument that Xmas is “inherently secular”. There is a tradition of exaggerating its supposed pagan origins: e.g. see this video, https://youtu.be/mWgzjwy51kU
I'm pretty sure that Christmas in the UK is 99% a secular event (as defined by how many attend Christmas services at Church).
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
Really? Cool - as someone who is both an atheist and a Grinch, we must hold Christmas to this standard as well as a clear non secular holiday. I don't care if you want to argue "it is practically secular", it isn't, and under your logic shoving it down our throats would be wrong. Same with Easter, btw, I want to see absolutely zero Easter messages from anything this March.
There is a distinction between a 'Happy Easter' sign and a passage from the Bible/Koran.
Wondering when this thread turns into an argument about having pagan Norse beliefs stuffed down our throats, what with Eostre, Woden's Day, Thor's Day, and so on ...
While we're on that subject , where's the outrage at September, October, November, and December NOT being the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months of the year ?
We need to move New Years back to March.
But it is all the despair of the extremist secularists. January 1st is of pagan origin (the god Janus) , and the old new year of March 25th is the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The Black Swan for the Tories is Nigel Farage. Not tax cuts, not Rwanda, not Starmer who doesn't have a plan or know what a woman is and who defends Terrorists.
Despite the polls, the notion of the Tories coming 3rd - or 4th - feels fanciful. Until you consider the impact of ReFUK. Farage now strongly rumoured to be stepping back in - and with his GBeebies presence he isn't exactly invisible as it is.
How do we go 1979 > 1997 > Canada 93? Nigel Farage leads ReFUK with his usual simplicity of thought and panache and the remaining Tory vote collapses. And they can't even buy him off. Why be bought off with baubles now when he can have the whole thing in a few months?
The 1979 comparison is interesting more for what will happen next rather than the result of the vote. It is assumed by many, including on this board, that Starmer will crash and burn and the natural Conservative order will swiftly be resumed. I am not convinced. Starmer will likely have the opportunity to be transformative like Thatcher was. Will he take take the opportunity? I suspect he will try. The warning for him though is that Thatcher wasn't at all popular and was only rescued by random Argentinian generals invading an island full of sheep.
I'm not convinced Starmer will crash and burn as much as he will just continue the status quo and that, in and of itself, will lead to ruin. I think one of the things that the Tories (correctly) learnt from Brexit was that, for a lot of the British public, big change is wanted. They just drank their own Kool Aid that the EU was the big thing stopping popular big change when, in fact, it's the neoliberal consensus (that the EU is part of) that is hindering it.
Again, I put Johnson's large electoral win as much down to his promise (true or otherwise) to turn the spigot on for spending as much as down to "sorting out" Brexit. Corbyn's popularity (his election against May was surprisingly close) was also, in part, down to his adamant opposition to the continuation of austerity. I know many here like to argue that austerity never happened, but if you interact with the NHS or with schools or with local councils - the impact is unmistakeable.
With his "fiscal rules" Starmer and Reeves have essentially signed up to Tory economic policy. Unless that's a lie from SKS (which I personally doubt) that is why I see his government being unpopular. Not because it doesn't look more professional or isn't passing legislation - but because his entire ethos will still be underpinned by a view of economics that will not allow government intervention on behalf of the vast majority of people in this country.
There is definitely a risk of Starmer continuing down the status quo into the dead end. But he will probably have a big enough majority he doesn't need to go there. He is also probably aware of the risk and will want to avoid it.
Localism is one way to shorten the absurd structures we have now. But the pressure from politics and the System is to have big departments running the paperclip allowances for every teacher/social worker/firefighter.
Starmer could sell that as mutualism - local workforce empowered to take control.
Equally, another reform would be to change wage, rank and organisation structures so that we could move from permanently employing contractors/temps to permanently employing.... employees.
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
Really? Cool - as someone who is both an atheist and a Grinch, we must hold Christmas to this standard as well as a clear non secular holiday. I don't care if you want to argue "it is practically secular", it isn't, and under your logic shoving it down our throats would be wrong. Same with Easter, btw, I want to see absolutely zero Easter messages from anything this March.
There is a distinction between a 'Happy Easter' sign and a passage from the Bible/Koran.
Wondering when this thread turns into an argument about having pagan Norse beliefs stuffed down our throats, what with Eostre, Woden's Day, Thor's Day, and so on ...
While we're on that subject , where's the outrage at September, October, November, and December NOT being the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months of the year ?
We need to move New Years back to March.
But it is all the despair of the extremist secularists. January 1st is of pagan origin (the god Janus) , and the old new year of March 25th is the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Actually Ancient Rome celebrated New Year in March originally.
Days of the week are Norse, but months of the year (including September (7) to December (10)) are Roman.
On universities I looked in to this with a view to thinking about my what my son will do at age 18. I worked out it would cost £120,000 for fees and 3 years living expenses (necessary to avoid a student loan debt trap). Even if he went to oxbridge and then on to something like the civil service fast stream or in to teaching etc, his earnings would top out at about 50-60k per year... the same amount that can be achieved if you start out in these careers in an apprenticeship.
For most people university is an unwise decision and the idea that it is a step towards social mobility is absurd, it instead creates a debt burden that has the opposite effect, prevents you from buying property and amassing wealth. The entire system is not fit for purpose and relies on nostalgic notions of 'the university experience' to sell itself that have little basis in reality. The purpose seems to be to fund a large privately funded administrative bureaucracy that gives out credentials, something close to rent seeking.
I will have to leave it to my son to decide what he is going to do. If he really wants to go then he can but there will be no pressure from us. I just find it sad that the experience that I benefitted from with a manageable level of debt does not exist for my son in the same way.
While I agree with what you say for some courses and some universities, there is little doubt that a degree (and often a post grad qualification) lead to higher overall career earning in a lot of careers.
The tuition fees are only repaid when you earn above a threshold, so are not treated like a normal debt - its a graduate tax in all but name, but crucially one that is capped. A true graduate tax would keep on being levied as long as your earned above the threshold.
Also the friends that you make are often with you for life and can include your partner.
Going to Uni for the sake of going is not sensible, but chose a career path you want with uni as the start is fine.
The degree where you can get in with Cs and earn as much as an Oxford graduate Graduating from a selective institution doesn’t guarantee the highest possible earnings
The Telegraph lists:-
Economics at the University of Birkbeck ... Architecture at Anglia Ruskin University ... Engineering at The Open University ... Pharmacy at the University of Brighton With the expectation of making £42,300 five years after graduation, the pharmacology, toxicology and pharmacy alumni from the University of Brighton beat all other competitors in the earnings race.
The A-level requirement is a BBB. King’s College London and UCL are both more stringent, yet lead to salaries averaging £42,000 and £40,500 respectively.
Students can get onto Pharmacy courses with CDD (that won't be the offer, but the Uni will accept).
BUT.
Many such students fail to complete their studies. One course I know has around 50% fail to graduate.
Then the student must pass the Pre-Registration exam - set nationally, not in the control of the Universities. You only get three (3) chances to pass. Many from the lower ranked Unis that admit students with CDD fail to ever pass the pre-reg.
But yes, if you make it, pharmacy is a high payer at the start of your career (although to progress you need to move up, away from being the direct pharmacist on the Boots counter, or in the hospital).
EDIT - also this year you will not get into the top schools of Pharmacy with less than ABB (Nottingham, Manchester, Bath etc)
I was amazed how long it has taken since I left Bath uni back in 2002 for the gov't (Any of them) to end the mahoosive underemployment of pharmacists and give them some prescribing powers for minor illnesses. The most obvious stone in obvious land to relieve some pressure from GPs for anyone who knows anything of quite how well educated pharmacists are.
Its been coming for a while. We have long had a post grad prescribing course but from next year all pharmacy graduates will be prescribers (i.e. anyone graduating 2025 on - its not retrospective). This has led to some tricky changes in course material as the 2025 cohort were not heading in that direction when they started.
Pharmacy has hugely changed. Back in the day students did a lot of science and manufacturing of ointments creams etc, but very little of the soft clinical skills. My colleague at Bath, who graduated in the mid 80's, did not do any clinical at all, as it was on Wednesday afternoons when he was playing rugby. In those days you learned science at Uni and clinical on the job.
I'm not most pharmacists would claim to be underemployed - many of the public have a very dim idea of what the pharmacist actually does at work. Very few actually dispense (at least not in the bigger companies) - thats a job for less well paid dispensers.
I do think it will help to have minor conditions being able to pharmacists prescribe treatment, but I think there are also other issues with GP's. A better approach might be to create more drop in GP centres in towns - turn up and wait. My son had an ear infection at the weekend. Full time wife took him to the minor injury unit in the next town (which functions as a walk in GP) and got treatment in less than an hour. If we had tried with the surgery we would still be waiting. GPs won't necessarily like them - being part of a GP practice can be very lucrative, but I think something needs to give.
One thing that may have shifted thing on this was the COVID vaccination campaign
Anyone else laugh like a drain when Independent SAGE said that the vaccinations should only be done by doctors?
I don't have a lot of hope of the COVID enquiry but I would love it, just love it, if 'Independent' SAGE came in for serious criticism, as they undoubtedly should. I am all for free speech, but they crossed a line with their behaviour, not least the stupid name they used.
Its funny. The world is pretty much back to normal, a few hundred covid cases in hospitals each week, yet there are still some out there that would force us all into masks again, and frankly Starmer, as much as I will vote for his party next time, was one of the worst for this.
Starmer isn’t currently, and hasn’t for a fair while, proposed anyone mask up.
The COVID-19 Inquiry is into the actions of government, not the actions of anyone else. That’s how it was set up by the Government. You might get a passing mention of Indie SAGE (they came up in questioning*), but the Inquiry seems unlikely to step outside its remit and make significant criticism of them.
Our local monopoly newspaper, the Seattle Times, has a variant on the "keep religion out of the public sphere" position: They try hard to keep Christianity out of the public sphere. (Other religions are mostly OK.)
For example, last Easter, the only mention of the holiday in the entire newspaper was a weather forecast for the day, buried deep inside the main section of the newspaper.
My own, practical view is that when something like one million people in this area do something on the same day, a serious newspaper ought to cover it. Or even just one interested in improving their circulation.
(This represents a change from their previous policy of some years ago, where they regularly gave space to a number of religious leaders.)
On universities I looked in to this with a view to thinking about my what my son will do at age 18. I worked out it would cost £120,000 for fees and 3 years living expenses (necessary to avoid a student loan debt trap). Even if he went to oxbridge and then on to something like the civil service fast stream or in to teaching etc, his earnings would top out at about 50-60k per year... the same amount that can be achieved if you start out in these careers in an apprenticeship.
For most people university is an unwise decision and the idea that it is a step towards social mobility is absurd, it instead creates a debt burden that has the opposite effect, prevents you from buying property and amassing wealth. The entire system is not fit for purpose and relies on nostalgic notions of 'the university experience' to sell itself that have little basis in reality. The purpose seems to be to fund a large privately funded administrative bureaucracy that gives out credentials, something close to rent seeking.
I will have to leave it to my son to decide what he is going to do. If he really wants to go then he can but there will be no pressure from us. I just find it sad that the experience that I benefitted from with a manageable level of debt does not exist for my son in the same way.
While I agree with what you say for some courses and some universities, there is little doubt that a degree (and often a post grad qualification) lead to higher overall career earning in a lot of careers.
The tuition fees are only repaid when you earn above a threshold, so are not treated like a normal debt - its a graduate tax in all but name, but crucially one that is capped. A true graduate tax would keep on being levied as long as your earned above the threshold.
Also the friends that you make are often with you for life and can include your partner.
Going to Uni for the sake of going is not sensible, but chose a career path you want with uni as the start is fine.
The "over a threshold" being a threshold that's barely above minimum wage and well below median let alone mean income.
On universities I looked in to this with a view to thinking about my what my son will do at age 18. I worked out it would cost £120,000 for fees and 3 years living expenses (necessary to avoid a student loan debt trap). Even if he went to oxbridge and then on to something like the civil service fast stream or in to teaching etc, his earnings would top out at about 50-60k per year... the same amount that can be achieved if you start out in these careers in an apprenticeship.
For most people university is an unwise decision and the idea that it is a step towards social mobility is absurd, it instead creates a debt burden that has the opposite effect, prevents you from buying property and amassing wealth. The entire system is not fit for purpose and relies on nostalgic notions of 'the university experience' to sell itself that have little basis in reality. The purpose seems to be to fund a large privately funded administrative bureaucracy that gives out credentials, something close to rent seeking.
I will have to leave it to my son to decide what he is going to do. If he really wants to go then he can but there will be no pressure from us. I just find it sad that the experience that I benefitted from with a manageable level of debt does not exist for my son in the same way.
While I agree with what you say for some courses and some universities, there is little doubt that a degree (and often a post grad qualification) lead to higher overall career earning in a lot of careers.
The tuition fees are only repaid when you earn above a threshold, so are not treated like a normal debt - its a graduate tax in all but name, but crucially one that is capped. A true graduate tax would keep on being levied as long as your earned above the threshold.
Also the friends that you make are often with you for life and can include your partner.
Going to Uni for the sake of going is not sensible, but chose a career path you want with uni as the start is fine.
From memory - don’t you work at a university?
Also the interest rates are currently so high that unless you are earning £70,000 it’s little different from an actual tax because the debt amounts are often increasing faster than they can be paid off
There are advantages in each system, but it has long struck me that America has an advantage from our governors getting tested in executive positions, before they run for the presidency.
(I have long preferred governors over, for example, senators, for that reason. Everything else being equal, of course.)
The closest equivalent in the UK appears to be mayoralties in large cities, but they don't appear to have the independence and responsibility that American governors
The obvious route should be from, e.g., Scottish First Minister to PM.
The degree where you can get in with Cs and earn as much as an Oxford graduate Graduating from a selective institution doesn’t guarantee the highest possible earnings
The Telegraph lists:-
Economics at the University of Birkbeck ... Architecture at Anglia Ruskin University ... Engineering at The Open University ... Pharmacy at the University of Brighton With the expectation of making £42,300 five years after graduation, the pharmacology, toxicology and pharmacy alumni from the University of Brighton beat all other competitors in the earnings race.
The A-level requirement is a BBB. King’s College London and UCL are both more stringent, yet lead to salaries averaging £42,000 and £40,500 respectively.
Students can get onto Pharmacy courses with CDD (that won't be the offer, but the Uni will accept).
BUT.
Many such students fail to complete their studies. One course I know has around 50% fail to graduate.
Then the student must pass the Pre-Registration exam - set nationally, not in the control of the Universities. You only get three (3) chances to pass. Many from the lower ranked Unis that admit students with CDD fail to ever pass the pre-reg.
But yes, if you make it, pharmacy is a high payer at the start of your career (although to progress you need to move up, away from being the direct pharmacist on the Boots counter, or in the hospital).
EDIT - also this year you will not get into the top schools of Pharmacy with less than ABB (Nottingham, Manchester, Bath etc)
I was amazed how long it has taken since I left Bath uni back in 2002 for the gov't (Any of them) to end the mahoosive underemployment of pharmacists and give them some prescribing powers for minor illnesses. The most obvious stone in obvious land to relieve some pressure from GPs for anyone who knows anything of quite how well educated pharmacists are.
Its been coming for a while. We have long had a post grad prescribing course but from next year all pharmacy graduates will be prescribers (i.e. anyone graduating 2025 on - its not retrospective). This has led to some tricky changes in course material as the 2025 cohort were not heading in that direction when they started.
Pharmacy has hugely changed. Back in the day students did a lot of science and manufacturing of ointments creams etc, but very little of the soft clinical skills. My colleague at Bath, who graduated in the mid 80's, did not do any clinical at all, as it was on Wednesday afternoons when he was playing rugby. In those days you learned science at Uni and clinical on the job.
I'm not most pharmacists would claim to be underemployed - many of the public have a very dim idea of what the pharmacist actually does at work. Very few actually dispense (at least not in the bigger companies) - thats a job for less well paid dispensers.
I do think it will help to have minor conditions being able to pharmacists prescribe treatment, but I think there are also other issues with GP's. A better approach might be to create more drop in GP centres in towns - turn up and wait. My son had an ear infection at the weekend. Full time wife took him to the minor injury unit in the next town (which functions as a walk in GP) and got treatment in less than an hour. If we had tried with the surgery we would still be waiting. GPs won't necessarily like them - being part of a GP practice can be very lucrative, but I think something needs to give.
One thing that may have shifted thing on this was the COVID vaccination campaign
Anyone else laugh like a drain when Independent SAGE said that the vaccinations should only be done by doctors?
I don't have a lot of hope of the COVID enquiry but I would love it, just love it, if 'Independent' SAGE came in for serious criticism, as they undoubtedly should. I am all for free speech, but they crossed a line with their behaviour, not least the stupid name they used.
Its funny. The world is pretty much back to normal, a few hundred covid cases in hospitals each week, yet there are still some out there that would force us all into masks again, and frankly Starmer, as much as I will vote for his party next time, was one of the worst for this.
And I would love the inquiry to dish out a slagging to the media who sent their political correspondents to the COVID briefings instead of their science correspondents.
+1. And the way that the media couldn't help itself but look for gotcha moments. At a time of national crisis maybe suspend the pointless bollox just a bit?
The degree where you can get in with Cs and earn as much as an Oxford graduate Graduating from a selective institution doesn’t guarantee the highest possible earnings
The Telegraph lists:-
Economics at the University of Birkbeck ... Architecture at Anglia Ruskin University ... Engineering at The Open University ... Pharmacy at the University of Brighton With the expectation of making £42,300 five years after graduation, the pharmacology, toxicology and pharmacy alumni from the University of Brighton beat all other competitors in the earnings race.
The A-level requirement is a BBB. King’s College London and UCL are both more stringent, yet lead to salaries averaging £42,000 and £40,500 respectively.
Students can get onto Pharmacy courses with CDD (that won't be the offer, but the Uni will accept).
BUT.
Many such students fail to complete their studies. One course I know has around 50% fail to graduate.
Then the student must pass the Pre-Registration exam - set nationally, not in the control of the Universities. You only get three (3) chances to pass. Many from the lower ranked Unis that admit students with CDD fail to ever pass the pre-reg.
But yes, if you make it, pharmacy is a high payer at the start of your career (although to progress you need to move up, away from being the direct pharmacist on the Boots counter, or in the hospital).
EDIT - also this year you will not get into the top schools of Pharmacy with less than ABB (Nottingham, Manchester, Bath etc)
I was amazed how long it has taken since I left Bath uni back in 2002 for the gov't (Any of them) to end the mahoosive underemployment of pharmacists and give them some prescribing powers for minor illnesses. The most obvious stone in obvious land to relieve some pressure from GPs for anyone who knows anything of quite how well educated pharmacists are.
Its been coming for a while. We have long had a post grad prescribing course but from next year all pharmacy graduates will be prescribers (i.e. anyone graduating 2025 on - its not retrospective). This has led to some tricky changes in course material as the 2025 cohort were not heading in that direction when they started.
Pharmacy has hugely changed. Back in the day students did a lot of science and manufacturing of ointments creams etc, but very little of the soft clinical skills. My colleague at Bath, who graduated in the mid 80's, did not do any clinical at all, as it was on Wednesday afternoons when he was playing rugby. In those days you learned science at Uni and clinical on the job.
I'm not most pharmacists would claim to be underemployed - many of the public have a very dim idea of what the pharmacist actually does at work. Very few actually dispense (at least not in the bigger companies) - thats a job for less well paid dispensers.
I do think it will help to have minor conditions being able to pharmacists prescribe treatment, but I think there are also other issues with GP's. A better approach might be to create more drop in GP centres in towns - turn up and wait. My son had an ear infection at the weekend. Full time wife took him to the minor injury unit in the next town (which functions as a walk in GP) and got treatment in less than an hour. If we had tried with the surgery we would still be waiting. GPs won't necessarily like them - being part of a GP practice can be very lucrative, but I think something needs to give.
One thing that may have shifted thing on this was the COVID vaccination campaign
Anyone else laugh like a drain when Independent SAGE said that the vaccinations should only be done by doctors?
I don't have a lot of hope of the COVID enquiry but I would love it, just love it, if 'Independent' SAGE came in for serious criticism, as they undoubtedly should. I am all for free speech, but they crossed a line with their behaviour, not least the stupid name they used.
Its funny. The world is pretty much back to normal, a few hundred covid cases in hospitals each week, yet there are still some out there that would force us all into masks again, and frankly Starmer, as much as I will vote for his party next time, was one of the worst for this.
In hindsight I think western governments managed the COVID epidemic reasonably well. They didn't get it 100% right but they achieved a balance of minimised death and keeping the lights on, which no government has ever done in previous pandemics. We were saved ultimately by the development of vaccines but that took time and coordination and in the meantime non-medical interventions were necessary.
A photograph of Queen Elizabeth II surrounded by her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, taken by the Princess of Wales, was “digitally enhanced at source”, a global picture agency has said.
The photo, taken at Balmoral in August 2022, was reviewed by Getty Images after the Princess admitted that she had edited a Mother’s Day picture of herself and her three children.
Buckingham Palace released it on April 21 last year to mark what would have been the late Queen’s 97th birthday.
A spokesman for Getty said: “Getty Images has reviewed the image in question and placed an editor’s note on it, stating that the image has been digitally enhanced at source.”
Close inspection of the picture appears to show several inconsistencies, including a vertical line where the tartan of the late Queen’s skirt does not match.
A dark shadow is visible behind Prince Louis’s ear, and a similar small black patch can be seen behind Prince George’s shirt collar. There are also signs of digital repetition of Mia Tindall’s hair.
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
I'm with Bart of this one. Happy with churches, etc for those that want them, but I don't want religion rammed down my throat in unrelated places.
Another person to join my "end public Christmas displays" club. I'm sure that the strength of your convictions will also apply to this religious holiday as well!
I have no problem with public Christmas displays. Just wondering what that has to do with religion?
Similarly Easter. I enjoy an Easter egg and hot cross bun like the next person as long as religion is not brought into it.
Christmas is inherently religious - just because people claim it is secular doesn't mean that is true or how people receive it.
No it's inherently secular.
You're just ignorant of the subject matter.
Our oldest Christmas traditions predate the birth of Christ. Our newest ones are from this century.
There are many Xmas traditions, from different sources. But I’m not convinced by the argument that Xmas is “inherently secular”. There is a tradition of exaggerating its supposed pagan origins: e.g. see this video, https://youtu.be/mWgzjwy51kU
I'm pretty sure that Christmas in the UK is 99% a secular event (as defined by how many attend Christmas services at Church).
Which planet is this? In many villages and towns literally thousands pass through churches (and school halls and so on too) for nativity services, school Christmas services, carol services, all running from the end of November to Christmas. In my patch the local cattle mart is packed to the rafters for one such service. In one small city cathedral I know they have to run the same service four times in a row to fit all the people in. I agree with all the people who point out this isn't the same as Christian commitment, but neither is it secular.
The degree where you can get in with Cs and earn as much as an Oxford graduate Graduating from a selective institution doesn’t guarantee the highest possible earnings
The Telegraph lists:-
Economics at the University of Birkbeck ... Architecture at Anglia Ruskin University ... Engineering at The Open University ... Pharmacy at the University of Brighton With the expectation of making £42,300 five years after graduation, the pharmacology, toxicology and pharmacy alumni from the University of Brighton beat all other competitors in the earnings race.
The A-level requirement is a BBB. King’s College London and UCL are both more stringent, yet lead to salaries averaging £42,000 and £40,500 respectively.
Students can get onto Pharmacy courses with CDD (that won't be the offer, but the Uni will accept).
BUT.
Many such students fail to complete their studies. One course I know has around 50% fail to graduate.
Then the student must pass the Pre-Registration exam - set nationally, not in the control of the Universities. You only get three (3) chances to pass. Many from the lower ranked Unis that admit students with CDD fail to ever pass the pre-reg.
But yes, if you make it, pharmacy is a high payer at the start of your career (although to progress you need to move up, away from being the direct pharmacist on the Boots counter, or in the hospital).
EDIT - also this year you will not get into the top schools of Pharmacy with less than ABB (Nottingham, Manchester, Bath etc)
I was amazed how long it has taken since I left Bath uni back in 2002 for the gov't (Any of them) to end the mahoosive underemployment of pharmacists and give them some prescribing powers for minor illnesses. The most obvious stone in obvious land to relieve some pressure from GPs for anyone who knows anything of quite how well educated pharmacists are.
Its been coming for a while. We have long had a post grad prescribing course but from next year all pharmacy graduates will be prescribers (i.e. anyone graduating 2025 on - its not retrospective). This has led to some tricky changes in course material as the 2025 cohort were not heading in that direction when they started.
Pharmacy has hugely changed. Back in the day students did a lot of science and manufacturing of ointments creams etc, but very little of the soft clinical skills. My colleague at Bath, who graduated in the mid 80's, did not do any clinical at all, as it was on Wednesday afternoons when he was playing rugby. In those days you learned science at Uni and clinical on the job.
I'm not most pharmacists would claim to be underemployed - many of the public have a very dim idea of what the pharmacist actually does at work. Very few actually dispense (at least not in the bigger companies) - thats a job for less well paid dispensers.
I do think it will help to have minor conditions being able to pharmacists prescribe treatment, but I think there are also other issues with GP's. A better approach might be to create more drop in GP centres in towns - turn up and wait. My son had an ear infection at the weekend. Full time wife took him to the minor injury unit in the next town (which functions as a walk in GP) and got treatment in less than an hour. If we had tried with the surgery we would still be waiting. GPs won't necessarily like them - being part of a GP practice can be very lucrative, but I think something needs to give.
One thing that may have shifted thing on this was the COVID vaccination campaign
Anyone else laugh like a drain when Independent SAGE said that the vaccinations should only be done by doctors?
I don't have a lot of hope of the COVID enquiry but I would love it, just love it, if 'Independent' SAGE came in for serious criticism, as they undoubtedly should. I am all for free speech, but they crossed a line with their behaviour, not least the stupid name they used.
Its funny. The world is pretty much back to normal, a few hundred covid cases in hospitals each week, yet there are still some out there that would force us all into masks again, and frankly Starmer, as much as I will vote for his party next time, was one of the worst for this.
Starmer isn’t currently, and hasn’t for a fair while, proposed anyone mask up.
The COVID-19 Inquiry is into the actions of government, not the actions of anyone else. That’s how it was set up by the Government. You might get a passing mention of Indie SAGE (they came up in questioning*), but the Inquiry seems unlikely to step outside its remit and make significant criticism of them.
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
I'm with Bart of this one. Happy with churches, etc for those that want them, but I don't want religion rammed down my throat in unrelated places.
Another person to join my "end public Christmas displays" club. I'm sure that the strength of your convictions will also apply to this religious holiday as well!
I have no problem with public Christmas displays. Just wondering what that has to do with religion?
Similarly Easter. I enjoy an Easter egg and hot cross bun like the next person as long as religion is not brought into it.
Christmas is inherently religious - just because people claim it is secular doesn't mean that is true or how people receive it.
No it's inherently secular.
You're just ignorant of the subject matter.
Our oldest Christmas traditions predate the birth of Christ. Our newest ones are from this century.
There are many Xmas traditions, from different sources. But I’m not convinced by the argument that Xmas is “inherently secular”. There is a tradition of exaggerating its supposed pagan origins: e.g. see this video, https://youtu.be/mWgzjwy51kU
I'm pretty sure that Christmas in the UK is 99% a secular event (as defined by how many attend Christmas services at Church).
I contend that definition is poor. If someone thinks religious thoughts, has religious intent, as they celebrate Xmas, then I think that makes it a religious experience for them.
Also, Bart wasn’t arguing Xmas is just secular. He’s saying it’s *inherently* so.
This "don't Libel RefUK" nonsense. As I'm sure we all know, the Reform UK Party is - uniquely - a limited company. A business whose stated activity is : "94920 - Activities of political organisations"
Can a company sue for defamation under the law? Sure! But section 1 of the act states that for something to be defamatory it must meet the requirement of serious harm. And for a company? "harm to the reputation of a body that trades for profit is not “serious harm” unless it has caused or is likely to cause the body serious financial loss."
So, calling ReFUK "far right" is - as it is a company first and a party second - only defamatory if it "has caused or is likely to cause the body serious financial loss."
Which it can't possibly do. Even if Tice as an individual decided that a statement about ReFUK was actually a statement about him as leader and wanted to sue, the usual defences apply including honest opinion.
Methinks Reform UK Party Ltd doth protest too much. Mind you, I have now perused their accounts and the reason for their serious financial loss. Interesting...
On universities I looked in to this with a view to thinking about my what my son will do at age 18. I worked out it would cost £120,000 for fees and 3 years living expenses (necessary to avoid a student loan debt trap). Even if he went to oxbridge and then on to something like the civil service fast stream or in to teaching etc, his earnings would top out at about 50-60k per year... the same amount that can be achieved if you start out in these careers in an apprenticeship.
For most people university is an unwise decision and the idea that it is a step towards social mobility is absurd, it instead creates a debt burden that has the opposite effect, prevents you from buying property and amassing wealth. The entire system is not fit for purpose and relies on nostalgic notions of 'the university experience' to sell itself that have little basis in reality. The purpose seems to be to fund a large privately funded administrative bureaucracy that gives out credentials, something close to rent seeking.
I will have to leave it to my son to decide what he is going to do. If he really wants to go then he can but there will be no pressure from us. I just find it sad that the experience that I benefitted from with a manageable level of debt does not exist for my son in the same way.
While I agree with what you say for some courses and some universities, there is little doubt that a degree (and often a post grad qualification) lead to higher overall career earning in a lot of careers.
The tuition fees are only repaid when you earn above a threshold, so are not treated like a normal debt - its a graduate tax in all but name, but crucially one that is capped. A true graduate tax would keep on being levied as long as your earned above the threshold.
Also the friends that you make are often with you for life and can include your partner.
Going to Uni for the sake of going is not sensible, but chose a career path you want with uni as the start is fine.
From memory - don’t you work at a university?
Also the interest rates are currently so high that unless you are earning £70,000 it’s little different from an actual tax because the debt amounts are often increasing faster than they can be paid off
Absolutely - but I teach pharmacy and pharmacology - both pretty decent careers, worth the investment.
Although at some point someone will start a pharmacy degree apprenticeship. No question. And it will be a superb route into the profession.
On universities I looked in to this with a view to thinking about my what my son will do at age 18. I worked out it would cost £120,000 for fees and 3 years living expenses (necessary to avoid a student loan debt trap). Even if he went to oxbridge and then on to something like the civil service fast stream or in to teaching etc, his earnings would top out at about 50-60k per year... the same amount that can be achieved if you start out in these careers in an apprenticeship.
For most people university is an unwise decision and the idea that it is a step towards social mobility is absurd, it instead creates a debt burden that has the opposite effect, prevents you from buying property and amassing wealth. The entire system is not fit for purpose and relies on nostalgic notions of 'the university experience' to sell itself that have little basis in reality. The purpose seems to be to fund a large privately funded administrative bureaucracy that gives out credentials, something close to rent seeking.
I will have to leave it to my son to decide what he is going to do. If he really wants to go then he can but there will be no pressure from us. I just find it sad that the experience that I benefitted from with a manageable level of debt does not exist for my son in the same way.
While I agree with what you say for some courses and some universities, there is little doubt that a degree (and often a post grad qualification) lead to higher overall career earning in a lot of careers.
The tuition fees are only repaid when you earn above a threshold, so are not treated like a normal debt - its a graduate tax in all but name, but crucially one that is capped. A true graduate tax would keep on being levied as long as your earned above the threshold.
Also the friends that you make are often with you for life and can include your partner.
Going to Uni for the sake of going is not sensible, but chose a career path you want with uni as the start is fine.
From memory - don’t you work at a university?
Also the interest rates are currently so high that unless you are earning £70,000 it’s little different from an actual tax because the debt amounts are often increasing faster than they can be paid off
Currently doing the heavy lifting. It hasn't been that way for the last 15 years thought I accept it is not so good right now.
This "don't Libel RefUK" nonsense. As I'm sure we all know, the Reform UK Party is - uniquely - a limited company. A business whose stated activity is : "94920 - Activities of political organisations"
Can a company sue for defamation under the law? Sure! But section 1 of the act states that for something to be defamatory it must meet the requirement of serious harm. And for a company? "harm to the reputation of a body that trades for profit is not “serious harm” unless it has caused or is likely to cause the body serious financial loss."
So, calling ReFUK "far right" is - as it is a company first and a party second - only defamatory if it "has caused or is likely to cause the body serious financial loss."
Which it can't possibly do. Even if Tice as an individual decided that a statement about ReFUK was actually a statement about him as leader and wanted to sue, the usual defences apply including honest opinion.
Methinks Reform UK Party Ltd doth protest too much. Mind you, I have now perused their accounts. Interesting...
Just call Reform "Not right" they should be happy with that.
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
Really? Cool - as someone who is both an atheist and a Grinch, we must hold Christmas to this standard as well as a clear non secular holiday. I don't care if you want to argue "it is practically secular", it isn't, and under your logic shoving it down our throats would be wrong. Same with Easter, btw, I want to see absolutely zero Easter messages from anything this March.
There is a distinction between a 'Happy Easter' sign and a passage from the Bible/Koran.
Wondering when this thread turns into an argument about having pagan Norse beliefs stuffed down our throats, what with Eostre, Woden's Day, Thor's Day, and so on ...
While we're on that subject , where's the outrage at September, October, November, and December NOT being the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months of the year ?
We need to move New Years back to March.
But it is all the despair of the extremist secularists. January 1st is of pagan origin (the god Janus) , and the old new year of March 25th is the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Actually Ancient Rome celebrated New Year in March originally.
Days of the week are Norse, but months of the year (including September (7) to December (10)) are Roman.
It's clearly time to adopt the French Revolutionary calendar. Though we should change the month names to appropriate pizza toppings, to assuage the objections from TSE.
The degree where you can get in with Cs and earn as much as an Oxford graduate Graduating from a selective institution doesn’t guarantee the highest possible earnings
The Telegraph lists:-
Economics at the University of Birkbeck ... Architecture at Anglia Ruskin University ... Engineering at The Open University ... Pharmacy at the University of Brighton With the expectation of making £42,300 five years after graduation, the pharmacology, toxicology and pharmacy alumni from the University of Brighton beat all other competitors in the earnings race.
The A-level requirement is a BBB. King’s College London and UCL are both more stringent, yet lead to salaries averaging £42,000 and £40,500 respectively.
Students can get onto Pharmacy courses with CDD (that won't be the offer, but the Uni will accept).
BUT.
Many such students fail to complete their studies. One course I know has around 50% fail to graduate.
Then the student must pass the Pre-Registration exam - set nationally, not in the control of the Universities. You only get three (3) chances to pass. Many from the lower ranked Unis that admit students with CDD fail to ever pass the pre-reg.
But yes, if you make it, pharmacy is a high payer at the start of your career (although to progress you need to move up, away from being the direct pharmacist on the Boots counter, or in the hospital).
EDIT - also this year you will not get into the top schools of Pharmacy with less than ABB (Nottingham, Manchester, Bath etc)
I was amazed how long it has taken since I left Bath uni back in 2002 for the gov't (Any of them) to end the mahoosive underemployment of pharmacists and give them some prescribing powers for minor illnesses. The most obvious stone in obvious land to relieve some pressure from GPs for anyone who knows anything of quite how well educated pharmacists are.
Its been coming for a while. We have long had a post grad prescribing course but from next year all pharmacy graduates will be prescribers (i.e. anyone graduating 2025 on - its not retrospective). This has led to some tricky changes in course material as the 2025 cohort were not heading in that direction when they started.
Pharmacy has hugely changed. Back in the day students did a lot of science and manufacturing of ointments creams etc, but very little of the soft clinical skills. My colleague at Bath, who graduated in the mid 80's, did not do any clinical at all, as it was on Wednesday afternoons when he was playing rugby. In those days you learned science at Uni and clinical on the job.
I'm not most pharmacists would claim to be underemployed - many of the public have a very dim idea of what the pharmacist actually does at work. Very few actually dispense (at least not in the bigger companies) - thats a job for less well paid dispensers.
I do think it will help to have minor conditions being able to pharmacists prescribe treatment, but I think there are also other issues with GP's. A better approach might be to create more drop in GP centres in towns - turn up and wait. My son had an ear infection at the weekend. Full time wife took him to the minor injury unit in the next town (which functions as a walk in GP) and got treatment in less than an hour. If we had tried with the surgery we would still be waiting. GPs won't necessarily like them - being part of a GP practice can be very lucrative, but I think something needs to give.
One thing that may have shifted thing on this was the COVID vaccination campaign
Anyone else laugh like a drain when Independent SAGE said that the vaccinations should only be done by doctors?
I don't have a lot of hope of the COVID enquiry but I would love it, just love it, if 'Independent' SAGE came in for serious criticism, as they undoubtedly should. I am all for free speech, but they crossed a line with their behaviour, not least the stupid name they used.
Its funny. The world is pretty much back to normal, a few hundred covid cases in hospitals each week, yet there are still some out there that would force us all into masks again, and frankly Starmer, as much as I will vote for his party next time, was one of the worst for this.
In hindsight I think western governments managed the COVID epidemic reasonably well. They didn't get it 100% right but they achieved a balance of minimised death and keeping the lights on, which no government has ever done in previous pandemics. We were saved ultimately by the development of vaccines but that took time and coordination and in the meantime non-medical interventions were necessary.
And the governments that were in power will all be punished at the ballot box, because now its all over, the bill for having people paid 80% salary for doing nothing is coming in.
This "don't Libel RefUK" nonsense. As I'm sure we all know, the Reform UK Party is - uniquely - a limited company. A business whose stated activity is : "94920 - Activities of political organisations"
Can a company sue for defamation under the law? Sure! But section 1 of the act states that for something to be defamatory it must meet the requirement of serious harm. And for a company? "harm to the reputation of a body that trades for profit is not “serious harm” unless it has caused or is likely to cause the body serious financial loss."
So, calling ReFUK "far right" is - as it is a company first and a party second - only defamatory if it "has caused or is likely to cause the body serious financial loss."
Which it can't possibly do. Even if Tice as an individual decided that a statement about ReFUK was actually a statement about him as leader and wanted to sue, the usual defences apply including honest opinion.
Methinks Reform UK Party Ltd doth protest too much. Mind you, I have now perused their accounts and the reason for their serious financial loss. Interesting...
I thought I'd have a play around with chatGPT since @Leon won't stop banging on about it, and he said it had learnt how to draw by itself. So I started with something simple and not especially impressed with the very first prompt I put in.
Hmm, fair enough on ASCII representation though it rather dismisses Leon's claim chatGPT taught itself how to draw, but what an interesting ASCII way of representing 4 blue and 3 green tokens.
The AI thinks on a higher plain and exposes our lack of understanding of the interchangeability of '3' and '4'
The degree where you can get in with Cs and earn as much as an Oxford graduate Graduating from a selective institution doesn’t guarantee the highest possible earnings
The Telegraph lists:-
Economics at the University of Birkbeck ... Architecture at Anglia Ruskin University ... Engineering at The Open University ... Pharmacy at the University of Brighton With the expectation of making £42,300 five years after graduation, the pharmacology, toxicology and pharmacy alumni from the University of Brighton beat all other competitors in the earnings race.
The A-level requirement is a BBB. King’s College London and UCL are both more stringent, yet lead to salaries averaging £42,000 and £40,500 respectively.
Students can get onto Pharmacy courses with CDD (that won't be the offer, but the Uni will accept).
BUT.
Many such students fail to complete their studies. One course I know has around 50% fail to graduate.
Then the student must pass the Pre-Registration exam - set nationally, not in the control of the Universities. You only get three (3) chances to pass. Many from the lower ranked Unis that admit students with CDD fail to ever pass the pre-reg.
But yes, if you make it, pharmacy is a high payer at the start of your career (although to progress you need to move up, away from being the direct pharmacist on the Boots counter, or in the hospital).
EDIT - also this year you will not get into the top schools of Pharmacy with less than ABB (Nottingham, Manchester, Bath etc)
I was amazed how long it has taken since I left Bath uni back in 2002 for the gov't (Any of them) to end the mahoosive underemployment of pharmacists and give them some prescribing powers for minor illnesses. The most obvious stone in obvious land to relieve some pressure from GPs for anyone who knows anything of quite how well educated pharmacists are.
Its been coming for a while. We have long had a post grad prescribing course but from next year all pharmacy graduates will be prescribers (i.e. anyone graduating 2025 on - its not retrospective). This has led to some tricky changes in course material as the 2025 cohort were not heading in that direction when they started.
Pharmacy has hugely changed. Back in the day students did a lot of science and manufacturing of ointments creams etc, but very little of the soft clinical skills. My colleague at Bath, who graduated in the mid 80's, did not do any clinical at all, as it was on Wednesday afternoons when he was playing rugby. In those days you learned science at Uni and clinical on the job.
I'm not most pharmacists would claim to be underemployed - many of the public have a very dim idea of what the pharmacist actually does at work. Very few actually dispense (at least not in the bigger companies) - thats a job for less well paid dispensers.
I do think it will help to have minor conditions being able to pharmacists prescribe treatment, but I think there are also other issues with GP's. A better approach might be to create more drop in GP centres in towns - turn up and wait. My son had an ear infection at the weekend. Full time wife took him to the minor injury unit in the next town (which functions as a walk in GP) and got treatment in less than an hour. If we had tried with the surgery we would still be waiting. GPs won't necessarily like them - being part of a GP practice can be very lucrative, but I think something needs to give.
One thing that may have shifted thing on this was the COVID vaccination campaign
Anyone else laugh like a drain when Independent SAGE said that the vaccinations should only be done by doctors?
I don't have a lot of hope of the COVID enquiry but I would love it, just love it, if 'Independent' SAGE came in for serious criticism, as they undoubtedly should. I am all for free speech, but they crossed a line with their behaviour, not least the stupid name they used.
Its funny. The world is pretty much back to normal, a few hundred covid cases in hospitals each week, yet there are still some out there that would force us all into masks again, and frankly Starmer, as much as I will vote for his party next time, was one of the worst for this.
I'm probably the only one who thinks so, but I think they performed a valuable service.
Some of their recommendations were wrong, but they a) led to more govt transparency b) generally speaking and with hindsight I think they did better than the govt - certainly at the beginning of the pandemic
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
I'm with Bart of this one. Happy with churches, etc for those that want them, but I don't want religion rammed down my throat in unrelated places.
Another person to join my "end public Christmas displays" club. I'm sure that the strength of your convictions will also apply to this religious holiday as well!
I have no problem with public Christmas displays. Just wondering what that has to do with religion?
Similarly Easter. I enjoy an Easter egg and hot cross bun like the next person as long as religion is not brought into it.
Christmas is inherently religious - just because people claim it is secular doesn't mean that is true or how people receive it.
No it's inherently secular.
You're just ignorant of the subject matter.
Our oldest Christmas traditions predate the birth of Christ. Our newest ones are from this century.
There are many Xmas traditions, from different sources. But I’m not convinced by the argument that Xmas is “inherently secular”. There is a tradition of exaggerating its supposed pagan origins: e.g. see this video, https://youtu.be/mWgzjwy51kU
I'm pretty sure that Christmas in the UK is 99% a secular event (as defined by how many attend Christmas services at Church).
Which planet is this? In many villages and towns literally thousands pass through churches (and school halls and so on too) for nativity services, school Christmas services, carol services, all running from the end of November to Christmas. In my patch the local cattle mart is packed to the rafters for one such service. In one small city cathedral I know they have to run the same service four times in a row to fit all the people in. I agree with all the people who point out this isn't the same as Christian commitment, but neither is it secular.
So the school things don't count - they are school events - your kid is there, off you go. I'm talking about a proper Christmas morning church attendance. They were queueing up round my way.
Its not unlike weddings in churches for non-religious people.
The Black Swan for the Tories is Nigel Farage. Not tax cuts, not Rwanda, not Starmer who doesn't have a plan or know what a woman is and who defends Terrorists.
Despite the polls, the notion of the Tories coming 3rd - or 4th - feels fanciful. Until you consider the impact of ReFUK. Farage now strongly rumoured to be stepping back in - and with his GBeebies presence he isn't exactly invisible as it is.
How do we go 1979 > 1997 > Canada 93? Nigel Farage leads ReFUK with his usual simplicity of thought and panache and the remaining Tory vote collapses. And they can't even buy him off. Why be bought off with baubles now when he can have the whole thing in a few months?
The 1979 comparison is interesting more for what will happen next rather than the result of the vote. It is assumed by many, including on this board, that Starmer will crash and burn and the natural Conservative order will swiftly be resumed. I am not convinced. Starmer will likely have the opportunity to be transformative like Thatcher was. Will he take take the opportunity? I suspect he will try. The warning for him though is that Thatcher wasn't at all popular and was only rescued by random Argentinian generals invading an island full of sheep.
I'm not convinced Starmer will crash and burn as much as he will just continue the status quo and that, in and of itself, will lead to ruin. I think one of the things that the Tories (correctly) learnt from Brexit was that, for a lot of the British public, big change is wanted. They just drank their own Kool Aid that the EU was the big thing stopping popular big change when, in fact, it's the neoliberal consensus (that the EU is part of) that is hindering it.
Again, I put Johnson's large electoral win as much down to his promise (true or otherwise) to turn the spigot on for spending as much as down to "sorting out" Brexit. Corbyn's popularity (his election against May was surprisingly close) was also, in part, down to his adamant opposition to the continuation of austerity. I know many here like to argue that austerity never happened, but if you interact with the NHS or with schools or with local councils - the impact is unmistakeable.
With his "fiscal rules" Starmer and Reeves have essentially signed up to Tory economic policy. Unless that's a lie from SKS (which I personally doubt) that is why I see his government being unpopular. Not because it doesn't look more professional or isn't passing legislation - but because his entire ethos will still be underpinned by a view of economics that will not allow government intervention on behalf of the vast majority of people in this country.
There is definitely a risk of Starmer continuing down the status quo into the dead end. But he will probably have a big enough majority he doesn't need to go there. He is also probably aware of the risk and will want to avoid it.
And I don't think we should define anything short of socialism as 'maintaining the status quo'. That's setting SKS up to fail.
The degree where you can get in with Cs and earn as much as an Oxford graduate Graduating from a selective institution doesn’t guarantee the highest possible earnings
The Telegraph lists:-
Economics at the University of Birkbeck ... Architecture at Anglia Ruskin University ... Engineering at The Open University ... Pharmacy at the University of Brighton With the expectation of making £42,300 five years after graduation, the pharmacology, toxicology and pharmacy alumni from the University of Brighton beat all other competitors in the earnings race.
The A-level requirement is a BBB. King’s College London and UCL are both more stringent, yet lead to salaries averaging £42,000 and £40,500 respectively.
Students can get onto Pharmacy courses with CDD (that won't be the offer, but the Uni will accept).
BUT.
Many such students fail to complete their studies. One course I know has around 50% fail to graduate.
Then the student must pass the Pre-Registration exam - set nationally, not in the control of the Universities. You only get three (3) chances to pass. Many from the lower ranked Unis that admit students with CDD fail to ever pass the pre-reg.
But yes, if you make it, pharmacy is a high payer at the start of your career (although to progress you need to move up, away from being the direct pharmacist on the Boots counter, or in the hospital).
EDIT - also this year you will not get into the top schools of Pharmacy with less than ABB (Nottingham, Manchester, Bath etc)
I was amazed how long it has taken since I left Bath uni back in 2002 for the gov't (Any of them) to end the mahoosive underemployment of pharmacists and give them some prescribing powers for minor illnesses. The most obvious stone in obvious land to relieve some pressure from GPs for anyone who knows anything of quite how well educated pharmacists are.
Its been coming for a while. We have long had a post grad prescribing course but from next year all pharmacy graduates will be prescribers (i.e. anyone graduating 2025 on - its not retrospective). This has led to some tricky changes in course material as the 2025 cohort were not heading in that direction when they started.
Pharmacy has hugely changed. Back in the day students did a lot of science and manufacturing of ointments creams etc, but very little of the soft clinical skills. My colleague at Bath, who graduated in the mid 80's, did not do any clinical at all, as it was on Wednesday afternoons when he was playing rugby. In those days you learned science at Uni and clinical on the job.
I'm not most pharmacists would claim to be underemployed - many of the public have a very dim idea of what the pharmacist actually does at work. Very few actually dispense (at least not in the bigger companies) - thats a job for less well paid dispensers.
I do think it will help to have minor conditions being able to pharmacists prescribe treatment, but I think there are also other issues with GP's. A better approach might be to create more drop in GP centres in towns - turn up and wait. My son had an ear infection at the weekend. Full time wife took him to the minor injury unit in the next town (which functions as a walk in GP) and got treatment in less than an hour. If we had tried with the surgery we would still be waiting. GPs won't necessarily like them - being part of a GP practice can be very lucrative, but I think something needs to give.
One thing that may have shifted thing on this was the COVID vaccination campaign
Anyone else laugh like a drain when Independent SAGE said that the vaccinations should only be done by doctors?
I don't have a lot of hope of the COVID enquiry but I would love it, just love it, if 'Independent' SAGE came in for serious criticism, as they undoubtedly should. I am all for free speech, but they crossed a line with their behaviour, not least the stupid name they used.
Its funny. The world is pretty much back to normal, a few hundred covid cases in hospitals each week, yet there are still some out there that would force us all into masks again, and frankly Starmer, as much as I will vote for his party next time, was one of the worst for this.
I'm probably the only one who thinks so, but I think they performed a valuable service.
Some of their recommendations were wrong, but they a) led to more govt transparency b) generally speaking and with hindsight I think they did better than the govt - certainly at the beginning of the pandemic
Well they only started in May 2020, so not that early in the Pandemic. One of my issues with them was people being given false credence as experts because they were on independent SAGE. Often their true expertise was far away from virus science or immunology or even public health, but that didn't stop the media lapping up every word. It also seemed to be populated by quite a few with genuine health concerns for themselves or close family and I couldn't shake the feeling that they want to the world to change to suit them.
There is always a place for honest open debate. PB was pretty good on this. Lots of view points, lots of debate. But iSAGE was an abomination if for nothing else than the confusing name. And yes, people did confuse the two.
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
I'm with Bart of this one. Happy with churches, etc for those that want them, but I don't want religion rammed down my throat in unrelated places.
Another person to join my "end public Christmas displays" club. I'm sure that the strength of your convictions will also apply to this religious holiday as well!
I have no problem with public Christmas displays. Just wondering what that has to do with religion?
Similarly Easter. I enjoy an Easter egg and hot cross bun like the next person as long as religion is not brought into it.
Christmas is inherently religious - just because people claim it is secular doesn't mean that is true or how people receive it.
It is whatever you want it to be. I am happy for people to celebrate it as a religious time, but equally as far as I am concerned I celebrate it is a secular holiday. It is nuts for you to insist it is inherently religious for me when religion plays no part whatsoever in our celebrations. None at all. Religious for some, not religious for others. Live and let live.
On universities I looked in to this with a view to thinking about my what my son will do at age 18. I worked out it would cost £120,000 for fees and 3 years living expenses (necessary to avoid a student loan debt trap). Even if he went to oxbridge and then on to something like the civil service fast stream or in to teaching etc, his earnings would top out at about 50-60k per year... the same amount that can be achieved if you start out in these careers in an apprenticeship.
For most people university is an unwise decision and the idea that it is a step towards social mobility is absurd, it instead creates a debt burden that has the opposite effect, prevents you from buying property and amassing wealth. The entire system is not fit for purpose and relies on nostalgic notions of 'the university experience' to sell itself that have little basis in reality. The purpose seems to be to fund a large privately funded administrative bureaucracy that gives out credentials, something close to rent seeking.
I will have to leave it to my son to decide what he is going to do. If he really wants to go then he can but there will be no pressure from us. I just find it sad that the experience that I benefitted from with a manageable level of debt does not exist for my son in the same way.
While I agree with what you say for some courses and some universities, there is little doubt that a degree (and often a post grad qualification) lead to higher overall career earning in a lot of careers.
The tuition fees are only repaid when you earn above a threshold, so are not treated like a normal debt - its a graduate tax in all but name, but crucially one that is capped. A true graduate tax would keep on being levied as long as your earned above the threshold.
Also the friends that you make are often with you for life and can include your partner.
Going to Uni for the sake of going is not sensible, but chose a career path you want with uni as the start is fine.
From memory - don’t you work at a university?
Also the interest rates are currently so high that unless you are earning £70,000 it’s little different from an actual tax because the debt amounts are often increasing faster than they can be paid off
Currently doing the heavy lifting. It hasn't been that way for the last 15 years thought I accept it is not so good right now.
The last 15 years do not reflect the interest rates of the previous 100 years and not the likely future rates.
Basically it’s a graduate tax unless you are in the top 5% of earners and your argument is at best disingenuous
I also note that even though I explicitly asked for you to confirm that you work at a university instead of saying yes you tried to ignore the question. I would also call that disingenuous
On universities I looked in to this with a view to thinking about my what my son will do at age 18. I worked out it would cost £120,000 for fees and 3 years living expenses (necessary to avoid a student loan debt trap). Even if he went to oxbridge and then on to something like the civil service fast stream or in to teaching etc, his earnings would top out at about 50-60k per year... the same amount that can be achieved if you start out in these careers in an apprenticeship.
For most people university is an unwise decision and the idea that it is a step towards social mobility is absurd, it instead creates a debt burden that has the opposite effect, prevents you from buying property and amassing wealth. The entire system is not fit for purpose and relies on nostalgic notions of 'the university experience' to sell itself that have little basis in reality. The purpose seems to be to fund a large privately funded administrative bureaucracy that gives out credentials, something close to rent seeking.
I will have to leave it to my son to decide what he is going to do. If he really wants to go then he can but there will be no pressure from us. I just find it sad that the experience that I benefitted from with a manageable level of debt does not exist for my son in the same way.
While I agree with what you say for some courses and some universities, there is little doubt that a degree (and often a post grad qualification) lead to higher overall career earning in a lot of careers.
The tuition fees are only repaid when you earn above a threshold, so are not treated like a normal debt - its a graduate tax in all but name, but crucially one that is capped. A true graduate tax would keep on being levied as long as your earned above the threshold.
Also the friends that you make are often with you for life and can include your partner.
Going to Uni for the sake of going is not sensible, but chose a career path you want with uni as the start is fine.
From memory - don’t you work at a university?
Also the interest rates are currently so high that unless you are earning £70,000 it’s little different from an actual tax because the debt amounts are often increasing faster than they can be paid off
Currently doing the heavy lifting. It hasn't been that way for the last 15 years thought I accept it is not so good right now.
The last 15 years do not reflect the interest rates of the previous 100 years and not the likely future rates.
Basically it’s a graduate tax unless you are in the top 5% of earners and your argument is at best disingenuous
I don't think I am being disingenuous on this. If you regard it as a graduate tax because it won't get paid off then fine. I was lucky to not have to pay fees, and emerged with no debt. My full time wife is 7 years younger and did have loans etc.
On universities I looked in to this with a view to thinking about my what my son will do at age 18. I worked out it would cost £120,000 for fees and 3 years living expenses (necessary to avoid a student loan debt trap). Even if he went to oxbridge and then on to something like the civil service fast stream or in to teaching etc, his earnings would top out at about 50-60k per year... the same amount that can be achieved if you start out in these careers in an apprenticeship.
For most people university is an unwise decision and the idea that it is a step towards social mobility is absurd, it instead creates a debt burden that has the opposite effect, prevents you from buying property and amassing wealth. The entire system is not fit for purpose and relies on nostalgic notions of 'the university experience' to sell itself that have little basis in reality. The purpose seems to be to fund a large privately funded administrative bureaucracy that gives out credentials, something close to rent seeking.
I will have to leave it to my son to decide what he is going to do. If he really wants to go then he can but there will be no pressure from us. I just find it sad that the experience that I benefitted from with a manageable level of debt does not exist for my son in the same way.
While I agree with what you say for some courses and some universities, there is little doubt that a degree (and often a post grad qualification) lead to higher overall career earning in a lot of careers.
The tuition fees are only repaid when you earn above a threshold, so are not treated like a normal debt - its a graduate tax in all but name, but crucially one that is capped. A true graduate tax would keep on being levied as long as your earned above the threshold.
Also the friends that you make are often with you for life and can include your partner.
Going to Uni for the sake of going is not sensible, but chose a career path you want with uni as the start is fine.
From memory - don’t you work at a university?
Also the interest rates are currently so high that unless you are earning £70,000 it’s little different from an actual tax because the debt amounts are often increasing faster than they can be paid off
Currently doing the heavy lifting. It hasn't been that way for the last 15 years thought I accept it is not so good right now.
The last 15 years do not reflect the interest rates of the previous 100 years and not the likely future rates.
Basically it’s a graduate tax unless you are in the top 5% of earners and your argument is at best disingenuous
I don't think I am being disingenuous on this. If you regard it as a graduate tax because it won't get paid off then fine. I was lucky to not have to pay fees, and emerged with no debt. My full time wife is 7 years younger and did have loans etc.
On universities I looked in to this with a view to thinking about my what my son will do at age 18. I worked out it would cost £120,000 for fees and 3 years living expenses (necessary to avoid a student loan debt trap). Even if he went to oxbridge and then on to something like the civil service fast stream or in to teaching etc, his earnings would top out at about 50-60k per year... the same amount that can be achieved if you start out in these careers in an apprenticeship.
For most people university is an unwise decision and the idea that it is a step towards social mobility is absurd, it instead creates a debt burden that has the opposite effect, prevents you from buying property and amassing wealth. The entire system is not fit for purpose and relies on nostalgic notions of 'the university experience' to sell itself that have little basis in reality. The purpose seems to be to fund a large privately funded administrative bureaucracy that gives out credentials, something close to rent seeking.
I will have to leave it to my son to decide what he is going to do. If he really wants to go then he can but there will be no pressure from us. I just find it sad that the experience that I benefitted from with a manageable level of debt does not exist for my son in the same way.
While I agree with what you say for some courses and some universities, there is little doubt that a degree (and often a post grad qualification) lead to higher overall career earning in a lot of careers.
The tuition fees are only repaid when you earn above a threshold, so are not treated like a normal debt - its a graduate tax in all but name, but crucially one that is capped. A true graduate tax would keep on being levied as long as your earned above the threshold.
Also the friends that you make are often with you for life and can include your partner.
Going to Uni for the sake of going is not sensible, but chose a career path you want with uni as the start is fine.
From memory - don’t you work at a university?
Also the interest rates are currently so high that unless you are earning £70,000 it’s little different from an actual tax because the debt amounts are often increasing faster than they can be paid off
Currently doing the heavy lifting. It hasn't been that way for the last 15 years thought I accept it is not so good right now.
The last 15 years do not reflect the interest rates of the previous 100 years and not the likely future rates.
Basically it’s a graduate tax unless you are in the top 5% of earners and your argument is at best disingenuous
I don't think I am being disingenuous on this. If you regard it as a graduate tax because it won't get paid off then fine. I was lucky to not have to pay fees, and emerged with no debt. My full time wife is 7 years younger and did have loans etc.
Uni is not the right option for every one.
"My full time wife"... There are part time ones ?
Its an Elis James and John Robins thing... Just seeing if there were any other fans out there...
On universities I looked in to this with a view to thinking about my what my son will do at age 18. I worked out it would cost £120,000 for fees and 3 years living expenses (necessary to avoid a student loan debt trap). Even if he went to oxbridge and then on to something like the civil service fast stream or in to teaching etc, his earnings would top out at about 50-60k per year... the same amount that can be achieved if you start out in these careers in an apprenticeship.
For most people university is an unwise decision and the idea that it is a step towards social mobility is absurd, it instead creates a debt burden that has the opposite effect, prevents you from buying property and amassing wealth. The entire system is not fit for purpose and relies on nostalgic notions of 'the university experience' to sell itself that have little basis in reality. The purpose seems to be to fund a large privately funded administrative bureaucracy that gives out credentials, something close to rent seeking.
I will have to leave it to my son to decide what he is going to do. If he really wants to go then he can but there will be no pressure from us. I just find it sad that the experience that I benefitted from with a manageable level of debt does not exist for my son in the same way.
While I agree with what you say for some courses and some universities, there is little doubt that a degree (and often a post grad qualification) lead to higher overall career earning in a lot of careers.
The tuition fees are only repaid when you earn above a threshold, so are not treated like a normal debt - its a graduate tax in all but name, but crucially one that is capped. A true graduate tax would keep on being levied as long as your earned above the threshold.
Also the friends that you make are often with you for life and can include your partner.
Going to Uni for the sake of going is not sensible, but chose a career path you want with uni as the start is fine.
From memory - don’t you work at a university?
Also the interest rates are currently so high that unless you are earning £70,000 it’s little different from an actual tax because the debt amounts are often increasing faster than they can be paid off
Currently doing the heavy lifting. It hasn't been that way for the last 15 years thought I accept it is not so good right now.
The last 15 years do not reflect the interest rates of the previous 100 years and not the likely future rates.
Basically it’s a graduate tax unless you are in the top 5% of earners and your argument is at best disingenuous
I don't think I am being disingenuous on this. If you regard it as a graduate tax because it won't get paid off then fine. I was lucky to not have to pay fees, and emerged with no debt. My full time wife is 7 years younger and did have loans etc.
On universities I looked in to this with a view to thinking about my what my son will do at age 18. I worked out it would cost £120,000 for fees and 3 years living expenses (necessary to avoid a student loan debt trap). Even if he went to oxbridge and then on to something like the civil service fast stream or in to teaching etc, his earnings would top out at about 50-60k per year... the same amount that can be achieved if you start out in these careers in an apprenticeship.
For most people university is an unwise decision and the idea that it is a step towards social mobility is absurd, it instead creates a debt burden that has the opposite effect, prevents you from buying property and amassing wealth. The entire system is not fit for purpose and relies on nostalgic notions of 'the university experience' to sell itself that have little basis in reality. The purpose seems to be to fund a large privately funded administrative bureaucracy that gives out credentials, something close to rent seeking.
I will have to leave it to my son to decide what he is going to do. If he really wants to go then he can but there will be no pressure from us. I just find it sad that the experience that I benefitted from with a manageable level of debt does not exist for my son in the same way.
While I agree with what you say for some courses and some universities, there is little doubt that a degree (and often a post grad qualification) lead to higher overall career earning in a lot of careers.
The tuition fees are only repaid when you earn above a threshold, so are not treated like a normal debt - its a graduate tax in all but name, but crucially one that is capped. A true graduate tax would keep on being levied as long as your earned above the threshold.
Also the friends that you make are often with you for life and can include your partner.
Going to Uni for the sake of going is not sensible, but chose a career path you want with uni as the start is fine.
From memory - don’t you work at a university?
Also the interest rates are currently so high that unless you are earning £70,000 it’s little different from an actual tax because the debt amounts are often increasing faster than they can be paid off
Currently doing the heavy lifting. It hasn't been that way for the last 15 years thought I accept it is not so good right now.
The last 15 years do not reflect the interest rates of the previous 100 years and not the likely future rates.
Basically it’s a graduate tax unless you are in the top 5% of earners and your argument is at best disingenuous
I don't think I am being disingenuous on this. If you regard it as a graduate tax because it won't get paid off then fine. I was lucky to not have to pay fees, and emerged with no debt. My full time wife is 7 years younger and did have loans etc.
Uni is not the right option for every one.
"My full time wife"... There are part time ones ?
I get an agency wife in when she goes to her Mother's.
The degree where you can get in with Cs and earn as much as an Oxford graduate Graduating from a selective institution doesn’t guarantee the highest possible earnings
The Telegraph lists:-
Economics at the University of Birkbeck ... Architecture at Anglia Ruskin University ... Engineering at The Open University ... Pharmacy at the University of Brighton With the expectation of making £42,300 five years after graduation, the pharmacology, toxicology and pharmacy alumni from the University of Brighton beat all other competitors in the earnings race.
The A-level requirement is a BBB. King’s College London and UCL are both more stringent, yet lead to salaries averaging £42,000 and £40,500 respectively.
Students can get onto Pharmacy courses with CDD (that won't be the offer, but the Uni will accept).
BUT.
Many such students fail to complete their studies. One course I know has around 50% fail to graduate.
Then the student must pass the Pre-Registration exam - set nationally, not in the control of the Universities. You only get three (3) chances to pass. Many from the lower ranked Unis that admit students with CDD fail to ever pass the pre-reg.
But yes, if you make it, pharmacy is a high payer at the start of your career (although to progress you need to move up, away from being the direct pharmacist on the Boots counter, or in the hospital).
EDIT - also this year you will not get into the top schools of Pharmacy with less than ABB (Nottingham, Manchester, Bath etc)
I was amazed how long it has taken since I left Bath uni back in 2002 for the gov't (Any of them) to end the mahoosive underemployment of pharmacists and give them some prescribing powers for minor illnesses. The most obvious stone in obvious land to relieve some pressure from GPs for anyone who knows anything of quite how well educated pharmacists are.
Its been coming for a while. We have long had a post grad prescribing course but from next year all pharmacy graduates will be prescribers (i.e. anyone graduating 2025 on - its not retrospective). This has led to some tricky changes in course material as the 2025 cohort were not heading in that direction when they started.
Pharmacy has hugely changed. Back in the day students did a lot of science and manufacturing of ointments creams etc, but very little of the soft clinical skills. My colleague at Bath, who graduated in the mid 80's, did not do any clinical at all, as it was on Wednesday afternoons when he was playing rugby. In those days you learned science at Uni and clinical on the job.
I'm not most pharmacists would claim to be underemployed - many of the public have a very dim idea of what the pharmacist actually does at work. Very few actually dispense (at least not in the bigger companies) - thats a job for less well paid dispensers.
I do think it will help to have minor conditions being able to pharmacists prescribe treatment, but I think there are also other issues with GP's. A better approach might be to create more drop in GP centres in towns - turn up and wait. My son had an ear infection at the weekend. Full time wife took him to the minor injury unit in the next town (which functions as a walk in GP) and got treatment in less than an hour. If we had tried with the surgery we would still be waiting. GPs won't necessarily like them - being part of a GP practice can be very lucrative, but I think something needs to give.
One thing that may have shifted thing on this was the COVID vaccination campaign
Anyone else laugh like a drain when Independent SAGE said that the vaccinations should only be done by doctors?
I don't have a lot of hope of the COVID enquiry but I would love it, just love it, if 'Independent' SAGE came in for serious criticism, as they undoubtedly should. I am all for free speech, but they crossed a line with their behaviour, not least the stupid name they used.
Its funny. The world is pretty much back to normal, a few hundred covid cases in hospitals each week, yet there are still some out there that would force us all into masks again, and frankly Starmer, as much as I will vote for his party next time, was one of the worst for this.
In hindsight I think western governments managed the COVID epidemic reasonably well. They didn't get it 100% right but they achieved a balance of minimised death and keeping the lights on, which no government has ever done in previous pandemics. We were saved ultimately by the development of vaccines but that took time and coordination and in the meantime non-medical interventions were necessary.
And the governments that were in power will all be punished at the ballot box, because now its all over, the bill for having people paid 80% salary for doing nothing is coming in.
Indeed. As I said no-one got it 100% right, maybe not even 80%. But here's a thing. Governments who paid people for doing nothing mostly did better on COVID overall than those that didn't.
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
The initial post was about a railway station. So, this comes down to how you feel about rail nationalisation presumably. If you think railways should be privatised, then the station is owned by a company and they should get to say what they want. If you think railways should be nationalised, then it’s a secular space. Bart: privatised or nationalised rail?
Personally I think they should be privatised, but aren't currently in London, so it's not about what I want but about what the situation is currently.
The status of whether it's public or private doesn't change based on what I want, it's a matter of objective fact not subjective opinion.
So, if station ownership was privatised, as you wish, you would withdraw any objection to the message?
Then it's a private matter. I would dislike it, but it wouldn't be a public issue like it is now.
If Costa Coffee want to push a religion that's their private business, but if Starbucks don't then ceteris paribus that'd be a competitive incentive for me to go to Starbucks where that's not an issue.
Public spaces though should be secular IMHO.
Fair enough. Presumably you favour the disestablishment of the Anglican Church too? (Where are the forces of antidisestablishmentarianism to oppose you?)
I am entirely devoted to the antidisestablishmentarianism cause. Just for the word.
Sounds as though the US isn't going bust next week.
BIDEN: "We have come to an agreement with Congressional leaders on a path forward for the remaining full-year funding bills. The House and Senate are now working to finalize a package that can quickly be brought to the floor, and I will sign it immediately." https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1770081321877954790
"I have reluctantly taken the decision that Rishi Sunak has to go as Prime Minister," says Conservative Home founder @montie, "before the general election. He just can't do politics... At the moment the party is in freefall and I think that can't go on." ~AA #PoliticsLive
That video in The Sun of Wills and "Kate". Erm, they do know that's his new gf don't they? Unless she has shot up in height and had significant plastic surgery...
It'd be a unique trick to pull off a landslide with such a low (Sub 39) approval rating.
I fully expect Biden's numbers to tick up - he will get some benefit from much better upcoming economic data that even Trump will be hard pressed to explain away. The feel-good factor is rising dramatically - and that is only going to benefit one candidate.
But I also expect Trump's numbers to take a hit. Partly because his shit-talking the US economy will play badly. Partly because his claims to be some business genius are falling apart before our eyes, after the fall-out from the New York civil fraud case. No-one in the world will put up a half-billion bond for the supposed multi-billionaire. It might yet happen, but the source will be very opaque - and feed into the narrative that he had been bought by a foreign power.
But mostly because every public appearance and utterance he makes shows just how demented he has become. He is clearly not coping well with his various woes. As he lashes out, he looks ever more petty and juvenile. Whilst Biden seems to be a reasonably-together mind trapped in a very frail body, Trump is losing cognitive ability by the month. His rally speeches are littered with errors, dead-end sentences, fluffed words... And when he does string a few words together, he goes into the mode that turns off independent voters. His Dayton, Ohio speech about a "bloodbath" if he doesn't win is but the latest.
This "don't Libel RefUK" nonsense. As I'm sure we all know, the Reform UK Party is - uniquely - a limited company. A business whose stated activity is : "94920 - Activities of political organisations"
From memory the Brexit Party (UK) and Renaissance (France) - En Marche in old money - are/were also set up like that. It's rare but increasingly common.
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
The initial post was about a railway station. So, this comes down to how you feel about rail nationalisation presumably. If you think railways should be privatised, then the station is owned by a company and they should get to say what they want. If you think railways should be nationalised, then it’s a secular space. Bart: privatised or nationalised rail?
Personally I think they should be privatised, but aren't currently in London, so it's not about what I want but about what the situation is currently.
The status of whether it's public or private doesn't change based on what I want, it's a matter of objective fact not subjective opinion.
So, if station ownership was privatised, as you wish, you would withdraw any objection to the message?
Then it's a private matter. I would dislike it, but it wouldn't be a public issue like it is now.
If Costa Coffee want to push a religion that's their private business, but if Starbucks don't then ceteris paribus that'd be a competitive incentive for me to go to Starbucks where that's not an issue.
Public spaces though should be secular IMHO.
Fair enough. Presumably you favour the disestablishment of the Anglican Church too? (Where are the forces of antidisestablishmentarianism to oppose you?)
I am entirely devoted to the antidisestablishmentarianism cause. Just for the word.
It’s a very long word, how do you spell it?
Look up Antidisestablishmentarismus in a German to English dictionary and it will tell you.
On universities I looked in to this with a view to thinking about my what my son will do at age 18. I worked out it would cost £120,000 for fees and 3 years living expenses (necessary to avoid a student loan debt trap). Even if he went to oxbridge and then on to something like the civil service fast stream or in to teaching etc, his earnings would top out at about 50-60k per year... the same amount that can be achieved if you start out in these careers in an apprenticeship.
For most people university is an unwise decision and the idea that it is a step towards social mobility is absurd, it instead creates a debt burden that has the opposite effect, prevents you from buying property and amassing wealth. The entire system is not fit for purpose and relies on nostalgic notions of 'the university experience' to sell itself that have little basis in reality. The purpose seems to be to fund a large privately funded administrative bureaucracy that gives out credentials, something close to rent seeking.
I will have to leave it to my son to decide what he is going to do. If he really wants to go then he can but there will be no pressure from us. I just find it sad that the experience that I benefitted from with a manageable level of debt does not exist for my son in the same way.
While I agree with what you say for some courses and some universities, there is little doubt that a degree (and often a post grad qualification) lead to higher overall career earning in a lot of careers.
The tuition fees are only repaid when you earn above a threshold, so are not treated like a normal debt - its a graduate tax in all but name, but crucially one that is capped. A true graduate tax would keep on being levied as long as your earned above the threshold.
Also the friends that you make are often with you for life and can include your partner.
Going to Uni for the sake of going is not sensible, but chose a career path you want with uni as the start is fine.
A graduate tax would be tolerable if it was 1% in perpetuity and it came along with similar measures on other parts of society (eg older people). But 9% breaks your chances of getting on in life. So many things are put off - buying property, having children etc.
The marketisation of the higher education sector in the UK is a social disaster which needs reversing - I feel sorry for the people caught up in it.
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
The initial post was about a railway station. So, this comes down to how you feel about rail nationalisation presumably. If you think railways should be privatised, then the station is owned by a company and they should get to say what they want. If you think railways should be nationalised, then it’s a secular space. Bart: privatised or nationalised rail?
Personally I think they should be privatised, but aren't currently in London, so it's not about what I want but about what the situation is currently.
The status of whether it's public or private doesn't change based on what I want, it's a matter of objective fact not subjective opinion.
So, if station ownership was privatised, as you wish, you would withdraw any objection to the message?
Then it's a private matter. I would dislike it, but it wouldn't be a public issue like it is now.
If Costa Coffee want to push a religion that's their private business, but if Starbucks don't then ceteris paribus that'd be a competitive incentive for me to go to Starbucks where that's not an issue.
Public spaces though should be secular IMHO.
Fair enough. Presumably you favour the disestablishment of the Anglican Church too? (Where are the forces of antidisestablishmentarianism to oppose you?)
I am entirely devoted to the antidisestablishmentarianism cause. Just for the word.
This "don't Libel RefUK" nonsense. As I'm sure we all know, the Reform UK Party is - uniquely - a limited company. A business whose stated activity is : "94920 - Activities of political organisations"
From memory the Brexit Party (UK) and Renaissance (France) - En Marche in old money - are/were also set up like that. It's rare but increasingly common.
Reform UK is the Brexit Party. They changed the name.
This "don't Libel RefUK" nonsense. As I'm sure we all know, the Reform UK Party is - uniquely - a limited company. A business whose stated activity is : "94920 - Activities of political organisations"
From memory the Brexit Party (UK) and Renaissance (France) - En Marche in old money - are/were also set up like that. It's rare but increasingly common.
Reform UK is the Brexit Party. They changed the name.
I think Susan Hall will lose but might do a little better than her odds suggest. Am not a London-dweller these days, but ULEZ (which was a Conservative policy?) does seem to still motivate a great deal of anti-Khan feeling in the blue ‘burbs.
It’s not a dynamic or appealing contest though. Hopefully both parties are giving proper thought to their next candidate.
To be anti-ULEZ now it’s been implemented, you have to:
- Not believe the stats on the impact on air quality, or not care - Drive, and enjoy cars and driving - Not enjoy cars and driving enough to have a petrol car less than 20 years old or a diesel less than 8 years old - if you were affected, still not changed car since ULEZ extension came in
That’s a pretty small voter demographic
One of the fears of the ULEZ was that the criteria would be tightened over time. So people with a compliant car now might worry that it could suddenly be non-compliant tomorrow.
well isnt that inevitable ? Once a threshold has been crossed the costs only go one way.
Yes. I was trying to be gentle about the point.
The end state for the ULEZ would be zero tailpipe emissions vehicles only.
I think Euro 6 as 'acceptable' for anti-pollution schemes is safe for an extended period of time. I bought my Euro 6 car with back in 2018 with such schemes in mind, with the intention of keeping it until electric cars become practical for my need. That could be 2030+.
The Euro 7 standard is not coming in even on new vehicles for several years.
The big cause on the pareto chart for pollution will be the remaining minority of pre-2016 vehicles, and blanket exemptions such as taxis which are allowed to continue to pollute. Plus the current level for petrol vehicles is several jumps away - is it currently Euro 4 ie 2006 registration.
That and targeting the need for a shift away from space inefficient forms of private transport to alternatives more suitable for cities.
London is continuing to invest, and imo will be OK, and Susan Hall will be marooned back in the 1980s somewhere.
IIRC the majority of pollution - especially particulates - comes from a minority of vehicles.
We should move to a more balanced scheme which encourages small vehicles. Too much of the taxation and "road calming" systems encourage large electric SUVs at the moment - very little taxation and they laugh at road humps.
Completely agreed, 100%. We have humps down my road which are a PITA even below let alone at the speed limit for my new, small, hybrid low-polluting vehicle but a large diesel SUV would would take with more ease. They should be completely abolished as a concept.
When it comes to particulates, the pareto principle comes into play. Taxis etc that are driving repeatedly around and around for hours a day emit far more emissions than private vehicles driving down a road twice a day. Yet too many schemes target the latter and not the former.
Exempting taxis etc from standards is utterly insane, they should have the highest standards, not the lowest.
Banning speed bumps, or banning SUVs?
The only surprise is that mandatory GPS speed limiters on new cars haven't become a thing yet. Would make Wales' 20mph policy much more effective, could use it to taper down motorway speeds as you approach congestion etc etc
Probably due to opposition from the motor industry. Which at the moment seems to be on a mission to make life difficult for its customers and bring regulators down on its head - SUVs get bigger and bigger so that eventually they will have to be banned or severely restricted in cities as there simply won't be the roadspace for them. And pointless technological gimmicks such a keyless entry have led to a wave of thefts which make some vehicles almost uninsurable and puts up the premiums for everyone else.
It is a very pleasant feeling when I take my little C1 into a carpark and can nab a space that the SUVs still circling round won't fit in. Seems to happen frequently at the rugby club. Plus the fuel economy, having just set a new PB of 502 miles off a tank.
My best is 665 for my Jag. I suspect it has a larger tank though.
That video in The Sun of Wills and "Kate". Erm, they do know that's his new gf don't they? Unless she has shot up in height and had significant plastic surgery...
The degree where you can get in with Cs and earn as much as an Oxford graduate Graduating from a selective institution doesn’t guarantee the highest possible earnings
The Telegraph lists:-
Economics at the University of Birkbeck ... Architecture at Anglia Ruskin University ... Engineering at The Open University ... Pharmacy at the University of Brighton With the expectation of making £42,300 five years after graduation, the pharmacology, toxicology and pharmacy alumni from the University of Brighton beat all other competitors in the earnings race.
The A-level requirement is a BBB. King’s College London and UCL are both more stringent, yet lead to salaries averaging £42,000 and £40,500 respectively.
Students can get onto Pharmacy courses with CDD (that won't be the offer, but the Uni will accept).
BUT.
Many such students fail to complete their studies. One course I know has around 50% fail to graduate.
Then the student must pass the Pre-Registration exam - set nationally, not in the control of the Universities. You only get three (3) chances to pass. Many from the lower ranked Unis that admit students with CDD fail to ever pass the pre-reg.
But yes, if you make it, pharmacy is a high payer at the start of your career (although to progress you need to move up, away from being the direct pharmacist on the Boots counter, or in the hospital).
EDIT - also this year you will not get into the top schools of Pharmacy with less than ABB (Nottingham, Manchester, Bath etc)
I was amazed how long it has taken since I left Bath uni back in 2002 for the gov't (Any of them) to end the mahoosive underemployment of pharmacists and give them some prescribing powers for minor illnesses. The most obvious stone in obvious land to relieve some pressure from GPs for anyone who knows anything of quite how well educated pharmacists are.
Its been coming for a while. We have long had a post grad prescribing course but from next year all pharmacy graduates will be prescribers (i.e. anyone graduating 2025 on - its not retrospective). This has led to some tricky changes in course material as the 2025 cohort were not heading in that direction when they started.
Pharmacy has hugely changed. Back in the day students did a lot of science and manufacturing of ointments creams etc, but very little of the soft clinical skills. My colleague at Bath, who graduated in the mid 80's, did not do any clinical at all, as it was on Wednesday afternoons when he was playing rugby. In those days you learned science at Uni and clinical on the job.
I'm not most pharmacists would claim to be underemployed - many of the public have a very dim idea of what the pharmacist actually does at work. Very few actually dispense (at least not in the bigger companies) - thats a job for less well paid dispensers.
I do think it will help to have minor conditions being able to pharmacists prescribe treatment, but I think there are also other issues with GP's. A better approach might be to create more drop in GP centres in towns - turn up and wait. My son had an ear infection at the weekend. Full time wife took him to the minor injury unit in the next town (which functions as a walk in GP) and got treatment in less than an hour. If we had tried with the surgery we would still be waiting. GPs won't necessarily like them - being part of a GP practice can be very lucrative, but I think something needs to give.
One thing that may have shifted thing on this was the COVID vaccination campaign
Anyone else laugh like a drain when Independent SAGE said that the vaccinations should only be done by doctors?
I don't have a lot of hope of the COVID enquiry but I would love it, just love it, if 'Independent' SAGE came in for serious criticism, as they undoubtedly should. I am all for free speech, but they crossed a line with their behaviour, not least the stupid name they used.
Its funny. The world is pretty much back to normal, a few hundred covid cases in hospitals each week, yet there are still some out there that would force us all into masks again, and frankly Starmer, as much as I will vote for his party next time, was one of the worst for this.
The media who promoted “Independent SAGE” interviewees with no explanation also deserve the wrath of the inquiry.
There was deliberate confusion between the scientists advising the government, and a bunch of other ‘scientists’ with a different agenda.
The government also failed to distinguish between the two groups, IMHO the PM should have used one of his daily addresses to make this point hard at the media.
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
I'm with Bart of this one. Happy with churches, etc for those that want them, but I don't want religion rammed down my throat in unrelated places.
Another person to join my "end public Christmas displays" club. I'm sure that the strength of your convictions will also apply to this religious holiday as well!
I have no problem with public Christmas displays. Just wondering what that has to do with religion?
Similarly Easter. I enjoy an Easter egg and hot cross bun like the next person as long as religion is not brought into it.
Christmas is inherently religious - just because people claim it is secular doesn't mean that is true or how people receive it.
It is whatever you want it to be. I am happy for people to celebrate it as a religious time, but equally as far as I am concerned I celebrate it is a secular holiday. It is nuts for you to insist it is inherently religious for me when religion plays no part whatsoever in our celebrations. None at all. Religious for some, not religious for others. Live and let live.
Okay, so the prophet Muhammed can just be someone who some people value for secular philosophical reasons and it is as reasonable to have quotes from the Hadith as it is to have a Christmas display.
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
The initial post was about a railway station. So, this comes down to how you feel about rail nationalisation presumably. If you think railways should be privatised, then the station is owned by a company and they should get to say what they want. If you think railways should be nationalised, then it’s a secular space. Bart: privatised or nationalised rail?
Personally I think they should be privatised, but aren't currently in London, so it's not about what I want but about what the situation is currently.
The status of whether it's public or private doesn't change based on what I want, it's a matter of objective fact not subjective opinion.
So, if station ownership was privatised, as you wish, you would withdraw any objection to the message?
Then it's a private matter. I would dislike it, but it wouldn't be a public issue like it is now.
If Costa Coffee want to push a religion that's their private business, but if Starbucks don't then ceteris paribus that'd be a competitive incentive for me to go to Starbucks where that's not an issue.
Public spaces though should be secular IMHO.
Fair enough. Presumably you favour the disestablishment of the Anglican Church too? (Where are the forces of antidisestablishmentarianism to oppose you?)
Of course I do!
As for the forces of antidisestablishmentarianism you probably need @HYUFD to be online
The Church of England isn't part of the state ie it is not taxpayer funded nor are its churches public spaces but owned by the Church.
So that really has little to do with it being the established church, the main consequence of ending which for most people would be the ending of their automatic right to be married or baptised or have a funeral in their local Parish church
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
The initial post was about a railway station. So, this comes down to how you feel about rail nationalisation presumably. If you think railways should be privatised, then the station is owned by a company and they should get to say what they want. If you think railways should be nationalised, then it’s a secular space. Bart: privatised or nationalised rail?
Personally I think they should be privatised, but aren't currently in London, so it's not about what I want but about what the situation is currently.
The status of whether it's public or private doesn't change based on what I want, it's a matter of objective fact not subjective opinion.
So, if station ownership was privatised, as you wish, you would withdraw any objection to the message?
Then it's a private matter. I would dislike it, but it wouldn't be a public issue like it is now.
If Costa Coffee want to push a religion that's their private business, but if Starbucks don't then ceteris paribus that'd be a competitive incentive for me to go to Starbucks where that's not an issue.
Public spaces though should be secular IMHO.
Fair enough. Presumably you favour the disestablishment of the Anglican Church too? (Where are the forces of antidisestablishmentarianism to oppose you?)
I am entirely devoted to the antidisestablishmentarianism cause. Just for the word.
It’s a very long word, how do you spell it?
What happens if you oppose antidisestablishmentarianism? Are you and antiantidisestablishmentarianist
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
I'm with Bart of this one. Happy with churches, etc for those that want them, but I don't want religion rammed down my throat in unrelated places.
Another person to join my "end public Christmas displays" club. I'm sure that the strength of your convictions will also apply to this religious holiday as well!
I have no problem with public Christmas displays. Just wondering what that has to do with religion?
Similarly Easter. I enjoy an Easter egg and hot cross bun like the next person as long as religion is not brought into it.
Christmas is inherently religious - just because people claim it is secular doesn't mean that is true or how people receive it.
No it's inherently secular.
You're just ignorant of the subject matter.
Our oldest Christmas traditions predate the birth of Christ. Our newest ones are from this century.
Our oldest winter festival traditions you mean, Christmas by its very name involves Christ
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
The initial post was about a railway station. So, this comes down to how you feel about rail nationalisation presumably. If you think railways should be privatised, then the station is owned by a company and they should get to say what they want. If you think railways should be nationalised, then it’s a secular space. Bart: privatised or nationalised rail?
Personally I think they should be privatised, but aren't currently in London, so it's not about what I want but about what the situation is currently.
The status of whether it's public or private doesn't change based on what I want, it's a matter of objective fact not subjective opinion.
So, if station ownership was privatised, as you wish, you would withdraw any objection to the message?
Then it's a private matter. I would dislike it, but it wouldn't be a public issue like it is now.
If Costa Coffee want to push a religion that's their private business, but if Starbucks don't then ceteris paribus that'd be a competitive incentive for me to go to Starbucks where that's not an issue.
Public spaces though should be secular IMHO.
Fair enough. Presumably you favour the disestablishment of the Anglican Church too? (Where are the forces of antidisestablishmentarianism to oppose you?)
Of course I do!
As for the forces of antidisestablishmentarianism you probably need @HYUFD to be online
The Church of England isn't part of the state ie it is not taxpayer funded nor are its churches public spaces but owned by the Church.
So that really has little to do with it being the established church, the main consequence of ending which for most people would be the ending of their automatic right to be married or baptised or have a funeral in their local Parish church
But it most certainly is part of the English State. Crown, legislature, and government all include its hierarchy or take part in it.
Next you'll be telling us that the Duke of Rothesay isn't part of the state.
The Black Swan for the Tories is Nigel Farage. Not tax cuts, not Rwanda, not Starmer who doesn't have a plan or know what a woman is and who defends Terrorists.
Despite the polls, the notion of the Tories coming 3rd - or 4th - feels fanciful. Until you consider the impact of ReFUK. Farage now strongly rumoured to be stepping back in - and with his GBeebies presence he isn't exactly invisible as it is.
How do we go 1979 > 1997 > Canada 93? Nigel Farage leads ReFUK with his usual simplicity of thought and panache and the remaining Tory vote collapses. And they can't even buy him off. Why be bought off with baubles now when he can have the whole thing in a few months?
The 1979 comparison is interesting more for what will happen next rather than the result of the vote. It is assumed by many, including on this board, that Starmer will crash and burn and the natural Conservative order will swiftly be resumed. I am not convinced. Starmer will likely have the opportunity to be transformative like Thatcher was. Will he take take the opportunity? I suspect he will try. The warning for him though is that Thatcher wasn't at all popular and was only rescued by random Argentinian generals invading an island full of sheep.
I'm not convinced Starmer will crash and burn as much as he will just continue the status quo and that, in and of itself, will lead to ruin. I think one of the things that the Tories (correctly) learnt from Brexit was that, for a lot of the British public, big change is wanted. They just drank their own Kool Aid that the EU was the big thing stopping popular big change when, in fact, it's the neoliberal consensus (that the EU is part of) that is hindering it.
Again, I put Johnson's large electoral win as much down to his promise (true or otherwise) to turn the spigot on for spending as much as down to "sorting out" Brexit. Corbyn's popularity (his election against May was surprisingly close) was also, in part, down to his adamant opposition to the continuation of austerity. I know many here like to argue that austerity never happened, but if you interact with the NHS or with schools or with local councils - the impact is unmistakeable.
With his "fiscal rules" Starmer and Reeves have essentially signed up to Tory economic policy. Unless that's a lie from SKS (which I personally doubt) that is why I see his government being unpopular. Not because it doesn't look more professional or isn't passing legislation - but because his entire ethos will still be underpinned by a view of economics that will not allow government intervention on behalf of the vast majority of people in this country.
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Starmer could keep to the fiscal rules and increase public spending by raising taxes on those above average incomes or wealth.
I am not saying he will, I fear he won’t, but neoliberalism is not the only way to stick to the fiscal rules.
Quite. Hunt's fiscal "rule" is that public sector debt should be falling as a % of GDP in the fifth year of the OBR forecast. But as anyone who has ever done a financial forecast knows, by the fifth year it's all pretty much finger in the air stuff, it's very hard to come up with solid numbers that far ahead. Hunt has stuck in a few numbers which hardly anyone believes are realistic (including unfreezing fuel duty and cuts in unprotected departments which will not be delivered). And he has reduced the "margin" in the numbers (an allowance for things to go wrong if you like) to £9bn - which is 0.75% of the total - a ridiculously small number and, having done all that, he just about manages to get debt coming down in year 5. It's obvious that Labour is going to have to unpick all this and come up with a more realistic way forward, which is going to involve tax increases.
The other flaw in such a useless and unrealistic measure is that at each budget year 5 is another year away so if you don't actually make it in what had been year 5 before you still haven't breached the target. I'd like to say that as a target it is as useful as a chocolate tea pot but that is plainly not true because you can eat the latter.
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
The initial post was about a railway station. So, this comes down to how you feel about rail nationalisation presumably. If you think railways should be privatised, then the station is owned by a company and they should get to say what they want. If you think railways should be nationalised, then it’s a secular space. Bart: privatised or nationalised rail?
Personally I think they should be privatised, but aren't currently in London, so it's not about what I want but about what the situation is currently.
The status of whether it's public or private doesn't change based on what I want, it's a matter of objective fact not subjective opinion.
So, if station ownership was privatised, as you wish, you would withdraw any objection to the message?
Then it's a private matter. I would dislike it, but it wouldn't be a public issue like it is now.
If Costa Coffee want to push a religion that's their private business, but if Starbucks don't then ceteris paribus that'd be a competitive incentive for me to go to Starbucks where that's not an issue.
Public spaces though should be secular IMHO.
Fair enough. Presumably you favour the disestablishment of the Anglican Church too? (Where are the forces of antidisestablishmentarianism to oppose you?)
I am entirely devoted to the antidisestablishmentarianism cause. Just for the word.
It’s a very long word, how do you spell it?
What happens if you oppose antidisestablishmentarianism? Are you and antiantidisestablishmentarianist
Sadly, I think you’re just a disestablishmentarian.
O/T but some of us might want to look at this pdq. I was mulling over the need to do the annual tax return, and then I see this on the Graun feed:
'HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is closing down much of its telephone help services for months, as part of a push to make peope use its website instead.
The tax authority has announced that:
between April and September, the Self Assessment helpline will be closed and customers will be directed to self-serve through HMRC’s highly-rated online services between October and March the Self Assessment helpline will be open to deal with priority queries – customers with queries that can be quickly and easily resolved online will be directed to HMRC’s online services the VAT helpline will be open for 5 days every month ahead of the deadline for filing VAT returns – outside of this time, customers will be directed to use HMRC’s online services the PAYE helpline will no longer take calls from customers relating to refunds – customers will be directed to use HMRC’s online services HMRC advisers will continue to always be available during normal office opening hours to support customers who cannot use online services or who have health or personal circumstances that mean they need extra support all other helplines will continue to operate as they do currently'
That video in The Sun of Wills and "Kate". Erm, they do know that's his new gf don't they? Unless she has shot up in height and had significant plastic surgery...
Bullshit. Kate is 5 foot 9. How tall do you think the person in the video is? Bang on 5'9" I'd say.
That video in The Sun of Wills and "Kate". Erm, they do know that's his new gf don't they? Unless she has shot up in height and had significant plastic surgery...
Bullshit. Kate is 5 foot 9. How tall do you think the person in the video is? Bang on 5'9" I'd say.
Leon said Kate was dead, so I think that must be a robot.
Just catching up on the SUV threadette. There is a lot of nonsense written on this topic because (I think??) people confuse the US idea of an SUV with our concept of it.
Someone earlier sought to compare our SUVs with estates (i.e. the modern incarnation of them). This is a great point, I think.
In many cases, the estates are larger.
BMW 5 series estate has a larger footprint than an Audi Q5, for example.
And the 7-seater (!) Audi Q7 is barely 10cm longer and wider.
Full disclosure, I'm an SUV driver. But there's a whiff of moral panic about them I think.
O/T but some of us might want to look at this pdq. I was mulling over the need to do the annual tax return, and then I see this on the Graun feed:
'HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is closing down much of its telephone help services for months, as part of a push to make peope use its website instead.
The tax authority has announced that:
between April and September, the Self Assessment helpline will be closed and customers will be directed to self-serve through HMRC’s highly-rated online services between October and March the Self Assessment helpline will be open to deal with priority queries – customers with queries that can be quickly and easily resolved online will be directed to HMRC’s online services the VAT helpline will be open for 5 days every month ahead of the deadline for filing VAT returns – outside of this time, customers will be directed to use HMRC’s online services the PAYE helpline will no longer take calls from customers relating to refunds – customers will be directed to use HMRC’s online services HMRC advisers will continue to always be available during normal office opening hours to support customers who cannot use online services or who have health or personal circumstances that mean they need extra support all other helplines will continue to operate as they do currently'
Because making it more difficult to pay tax is a good thing?
We get this sort of religious shit from tube station operatives quite frequently on their marker pen whiteboards. Usually Christian texts, occasionally something Buddhist, but frankly it’s the same stuff. When they’re not writing live-laugh-love type self help messages
I suspect Isam is fine with Christian texts.
I would not be.
Religion shouldn't be in public spaces.
Good luck with all that cathedral demolishing then...
Cathedrals are private spaces are they not? They belong to the Church, who can use it as they please.
They can put whatever messages they want in their buildings and on signage on their land. Free speech.
But it shouldn't be shoved down people's throats in secular spaces.
The initial post was about a railway station. So, this comes down to how you feel about rail nationalisation presumably. If you think railways should be privatised, then the station is owned by a company and they should get to say what they want. If you think railways should be nationalised, then it’s a secular space. Bart: privatised or nationalised rail?
Personally I think they should be privatised, but aren't currently in London, so it's not about what I want but about what the situation is currently.
The status of whether it's public or private doesn't change based on what I want, it's a matter of objective fact not subjective opinion.
So, if station ownership was privatised, as you wish, you would withdraw any objection to the message?
Then it's a private matter. I would dislike it, but it wouldn't be a public issue like it is now.
If Costa Coffee want to push a religion that's their private business, but if Starbucks don't then ceteris paribus that'd be a competitive incentive for me to go to Starbucks where that's not an issue.
Public spaces though should be secular IMHO.
Fair enough. Presumably you favour the disestablishment of the Anglican Church too? (Where are the forces of antidisestablishmentarianism to oppose you?)
I am entirely devoted to the antidisestablishmentarianism cause. Just for the word.
It’s a very long word, how do you spell it?
Cantrell: Sergeant Cantrell. Shemp: How do you spell that? Cantrell: Correctly.
It'd be a unique trick to pull off a landslide with such a low (Sub 39) approval rating.
I fully expect Biden's numbers to tick up - he will get some benefit from much better upcoming economic data that even Trump will be hard pressed to explain away. The feel-good factor is rising dramatically - and that is only going to benefit one candidate.
But I also expect Trump's numbers to take a hit. Partly because his shit-talking the US economy will play badly. Partly because his claims to be some business genius are falling apart before our eyes, after the fall-out from the New York civil fraud case. No-one in the world will put up a half-billion bond for the supposed multi-billionaire. It might yet happen, but the source will be very opaque - and feed into the narrative that he had been bought by a foreign power.
But mostly because every public appearance and utterance he makes shows just how demented he has become. He is clearly not coping well with his various woes. As he lashes out, he looks ever more petty and juvenile. Whilst Biden seems to be a reasonably-together mind trapped in a very frail body, Trump is losing cognitive ability by the month. His rally speeches are littered with errors, dead-end sentences, fluffed words... And when he does string a few words together, he goes into the mode that turns off independent voters. His Dayton, Ohio speech about a "bloodbath" if he doesn't win is but the latest.
Another interesting post, Mark. Thanks.
There's a big poll out that now shows it tied, Trump having lost his advantage.
Trump and Biden are tied in the general election matchup, with 43% support each, compared with a 1-percentage-point advantage for the presumptive Republican nominee last week. While Trump consistently led Biden during most of the first two months of 2024, the race has narrowed in recent weeks.
Comments
You're just ignorant of the subject matter.
Our oldest Christmas traditions predate the birth of Christ. Our newest ones are from this century.
to emphasise that sun-worship is oldthink. You never hear a vicar (or an organist) say 'Thank God it's Sunday'.
Anyone else laugh like a drain when Independent SAGE said that the vaccinations should only be done by doctors?
https://www.swarthmore.edu/friends-historical-library/quaker-calendar
For most people university is an unwise decision and the idea that it is a step towards social mobility is absurd, it instead creates a debt burden that has the opposite effect, prevents you from buying property and amassing wealth. The entire system is not fit for purpose and relies on nostalgic notions of 'the university experience' to sell itself that have little basis in reality. The purpose seems to be to fund a large privately funded administrative bureaucracy that gives out credentials, something close to rent seeking.
I will have to leave it to my son to decide what he is going to do. If he really wants to go then he can but there will be no pressure from us. I just find it sad that the experience that I benefitted from with a manageable level of debt does not exist for my son in the same way.
This is about par for the course for the "general purpose" ChatGPT. You need one of the models trained on a specialist corpus to get it to do operations involving "numbers of things" more accurately.
Perhaps then we could prevent the present New Year celebrations from curtailing Christmastide, by having a Bank Holiday for Epiphany on January 6th.
Also, with respect to the discussion around GPS earlier, I'd suggest mandating that all smartphones automatically adjust their clocks to the mean solar time for the longitude they're currently at.
End The Tyranny Of Railway Time!
It’s also harder to get a degree apprenticeship than getting into Oxford / Cambridge
Or am I mostly wrong about that?
If Costa Coffee want to push a religion that's their private business, but if Starbucks don't then ceteris paribus that'd be a competitive incentive for me to go to Starbucks where that's not an issue.
Public spaces though should be secular IMHO.
Its funny. The world is pretty much back to normal, a few hundred covid cases in hospitals each week, yet there are still some out there that would force us all into masks again, and frankly Starmer, as much as I will vote for his party next time, was one of the worst for this.
As for the forces of antidisestablishmentarianism you probably need @HYUFD to be online
(I have long preferred governors over, for example, senators, for that reason. Everything else being equal, of course.)
The closest equivalent in the UK appears to be mayoralties in large cities, but they don't appear to have the independence and responsibility that American governors
Europe’s benchmark contract has powered higher by 20pc over the last five days in its longest rally since September.
Telegraph business blog
Starmer could sell that as mutualism - local workforce empowered to take control.
Equally, another reform would be to change wage, rank and organisation structures so that we could move from permanently employing contractors/temps to permanently employing.... employees.
Days of the week are Norse, but months of the year (including September (7) to December (10)) are Roman.
The tuition fees are only repaid when you earn above a threshold, so are not treated like a normal debt - its a graduate tax in all but name, but crucially one that is capped. A true graduate tax would keep on being levied as long as your earned above the threshold.
Also the friends that you make are often with you for life and can include your partner.
Going to Uni for the sake of going is not sensible, but chose a career path you want with uni as the start is fine.
The COVID-19 Inquiry is into the actions of government, not the actions of anyone else. That’s how it was set up by the Government. You might get a passing mention of Indie SAGE (they came up in questioning*), but the Inquiry seems unlikely to step outside its remit and make significant criticism of them.
* See https://covid19.public-inquiry.uk/documents/inq000197131_0001-0002-emails-between-james-rubin-sage-and-various-recipients-including-stuart-wainwright-regarding-potential-conflicts-of-interest-with-i-spi-membership-dated-between-08-06-2020/ and I think you want the 3 October a.m. hearing.
For example, last Easter, the only mention of the holiday in the entire newspaper was a weather forecast for the day, buried deep inside the main section of the newspaper.
My own, practical view is that when something like one million people in this area do something on the same day, a serious newspaper ought to cover it. Or even just one interested in improving their circulation.
(This represents a change from their previous policy of some years ago, where they regularly gave space to a number of religious leaders.)
Also the interest rates are currently so high that unless you are earning £70,000 it’s little different from an actual tax because the debt amounts are often increasing faster than they can be paid off
Also, Bart wasn’t arguing Xmas is just secular. He’s saying it’s *inherently* so.
Can a company sue for defamation under the law? Sure! But section 1 of the act states that for something to be defamatory it must meet the requirement of serious harm. And for a company? "harm to the reputation of a body that trades for profit is not “serious harm” unless it has caused or is likely to cause the body serious financial loss."
So, calling ReFUK "far right" is - as it is a company first and a party second - only defamatory if it "has caused or is likely to cause the body serious financial loss."
Which it can't possibly do. Even if Tice as an individual decided that a statement about ReFUK was actually a statement about him as leader and wanted to sue, the usual defences apply including honest opinion.
Methinks Reform UK Party Ltd doth protest too much. Mind you, I have now perused their accounts and the reason for their serious financial loss. Interesting...
Although at some point someone will start a pharmacy degree apprenticeship. No question. And it will be a superb route into the profession.
Though we should change the month names to appropriate pizza toppings, to assuage the objections from TSE.
Some of their recommendations were wrong, but they a) led to more govt transparency b) generally speaking and with hindsight I think they did better than the govt - certainly at the beginning of the pandemic
Its not unlike weddings in churches for non-religious people.
Leave Christmas street lights up through the grim bits of winter at the start of they year;
https://www.createstreets.com/lets-light-our-way-through-winter/
(Proper Christmas does that a bit anyway, running all the way to Candlemas at the begining of February.)
There is always a place for honest open debate. PB was pretty good on this. Lots of view points, lots of debate. But iSAGE was an abomination if for nothing else than the confusing name. And yes, people did confuse the two.
Basically it’s a graduate tax unless you are in the top 5% of earners and your argument is at best disingenuous
I also note that even though I explicitly asked for you to confirm that you work at a university instead of saying yes you tried to ignore the question. I would also call that disingenuous
Uni is not the right option for every one.
There are part time ones ?
BIDEN: "We have come to an agreement with Congressional leaders on a path forward for the remaining full-year funding bills. The House and Senate are now working to finalize a package that can quickly be brought to the floor, and I will sign it immediately."
https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1770081321877954790
"I have reluctantly taken the decision that Rishi Sunak has to go as Prime Minister," says Conservative Home founder @montie, "before the general election. He just can't do politics... At the moment the party is in freefall and I think that can't go on." ~AA #PoliticsLive
But I also expect Trump's numbers to take a hit. Partly because his shit-talking the US economy will play badly. Partly because his claims to be some business genius are falling apart before our eyes, after the fall-out from the New York civil fraud case. No-one in the world will put up a half-billion bond for the supposed multi-billionaire. It might yet happen, but the source will be very opaque - and feed into the narrative that he had been bought by a foreign power.
But mostly because every public appearance and utterance he makes shows just how demented he has become. He is clearly not coping well with his various woes. As he lashes out, he looks ever more petty and juvenile. Whilst Biden seems to be a reasonably-together mind trapped in a very frail body, Trump is losing cognitive ability by the month. His rally speeches are littered with errors, dead-end sentences, fluffed words... And when he does string a few words together, he goes into the mode that turns off independent voters. His Dayton, Ohio speech about a "bloodbath" if he doesn't win is but the latest.
The marketisation of the higher education sector in the UK is a social disaster which needs reversing - I feel sorry for the people caught up in it.
There was deliberate confusion between the scientists advising the government, and a bunch of other ‘scientists’ with a different agenda.
The government also failed to distinguish between the two groups, IMHO the PM should have used one of his daily addresses to make this point hard at the media.
So that really has little to do with it being the established church, the main consequence of ending which for most people would be the ending of their automatic right to be married or baptised or have a funeral in their local Parish church
Next you'll be telling us that the Duke of Rothesay isn't part of the state.
'HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is closing down much of its telephone help services for months, as part of a push to make peope use its website instead.
The tax authority has announced that:
between April and September, the Self Assessment helpline will be closed and customers will be directed to self-serve through HMRC’s highly-rated online services
between October and March the Self Assessment helpline will be open to deal with priority queries – customers with queries that can be quickly and easily resolved online will be directed to HMRC’s online services
the VAT helpline will be open for 5 days every month ahead of the deadline for filing VAT returns – outside of this time, customers will be directed to use HMRC’s online services
the PAYE helpline will no longer take calls from customers relating to refunds – customers will be directed to use HMRC’s online services
HMRC advisers will continue to always be available during normal office opening hours to support customers who cannot use online services or who have health or personal circumstances that mean they need extra support
all other helplines will continue to operate as they do currently'
Someone earlier sought to compare our SUVs with estates (i.e. the modern incarnation of them). This is a great point, I think.
In many cases, the estates are larger.
BMW 5 series estate has a larger footprint than an Audi Q5, for example.
And the 7-seater (!) Audi Q7 is barely 10cm longer and wider.
Full disclosure, I'm an SUV driver. But there's a whiff of moral panic about them I think.
(grumblegrumblesillypoliticsgrumblegrumble)
Cantrell: Sergeant Cantrell.
Shemp: How do you spell that?
Cantrell: Correctly.
There's a big poll out that now shows it tied, Trump having lost his advantage.
https://pro.morningconsult.com/trackers/2024-presidential-election-polling
Trump and Biden are tied in the general election matchup, with 43% support each, compared with a 1-percentage-point advantage for the presumptive Republican nominee last week. While Trump consistently led Biden during most of the first two months of 2024, the race has narrowed in recent weeks.