BS: UK thread, Politics and political

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 17 May 20 - 05:16 AM

Well, whad’ya know - the Tory Smear Machine has gone into action against Sir Keir Starmer already...over a field he bought near his disabled mother’s home for a donkey sanctuary to use for rescued donkeys!

You couldn’t make it up could you? Oh, the Tories already have...!!

https://www.indy100.com/article/keir-starmer-field-land-donkeys-worth-criticism-popularity-9518751?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 May 20 - 06:36 AM

Well, John, in that case mebbe at least the last-two-in first-two-out creme eggs might've still been OK as they weren't up there for as long...

Just been having a Zoom natter to my bro in NZ about the way they are gradually relaxing the lockdown. Seems that most NZers highly approve of the way their government is handling things but even so there's criticism of unclear messages causing some people to stretch the rules. We could learn a lot from how other countries are doing, but Johnson would rather talk up British exceptionalism and resort to Great British Common Sense.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 17 May 20 - 06:52 AM

I suppose we will have to change Look! Labour antisemitism! To Look! Keir Starmer's donkeys!

:D tG

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 17 May 20 - 06:54 AM

LOL!

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: peteglasgow
Date: 17 May 20 - 07:08 AM

just a reminder, steve. johnson isn't talking about 'british exceptionalism' - he means english exceptionalism......and is referring to rumpUK. somehow this makes me feel a wee bit hopeful...that and the fact that my daughter just got a hospital job in glasgow.and i finished my jigsaw ....i never realised that klimt's the kiss had such big sections of indistinguishable gently sparkling brown. jags are still relegated though

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 May 20 - 07:46 AM

Happy to be corrected!

I note that Eton is shut until September. Here's a tweet from a couple of days ago that I've just seen:

State schools should reopen when
1. Private schools, like Eton, reopen
2. MPs are back crowded together on the benches at Westminster
3. Lords and Ladies are back crowded together in the House of Lords

WHAT IS COUNTER-ARGUMENT?

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: DMcG
Date: 17 May 20 - 08:02 AM

Here is a somewhat dense technical paper on excess deaths in England. (Not the UK, notice!)

It is not light reading, so I will just pull out a few sentences. If people want to discuss these in the context of the entire paper, I can do so.


While UK deaths attributed to Covid are the highest in Europe, the excess death data are likely to be more robust for the reasons given. England’s outcomes are the worst of the 24 countries or states for which EuroMOMO reports Z-scores. It is followed by Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy and France. The total measure for all age groups up to the week ending 26 April 2020 (called week 17 by EuroMOMO), reveals that at the peak in week 15, England’s Z-score was 39.7 and in week 16 it was 36.9. These Z-scores correspond approximately to ONS data on the week ending April 17, of 21,182 deaths in England, compared to the ‘normal’ number of 9787 (based on the average of the previous 5
years). Excess deaths thus, were 11,395, or more than twice the expected number
...
The peak rate of excess deaths in England for the most vulnerable age group, the over-65s is also the
highest for the 24 countries or regions compared


...

More disturbing is the comparative story for the 15-64 age group, where England’s relative record in excess mortality in the Covid-19 era is particularly poor. At its peak (i.e. in the week with the highest excess mortality) , it is 2.7 times worse than the weekly peak in next worst country, Spain, almost 4 times worse than France and Belgium, and almost 5 times worse than Italy’s peak weekly excess deaths in the age group

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 May 20 - 08:40 AM

So far today we've had a big academies trust bloke and now Gove swinging it against the teachers. This is determinedly political, and determinedly has nothing to do with the educational wellbeing of children. Be strong, teachers! ...Though it's too late to organise legal industrial action...

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 17 May 20 - 09:55 AM

Q: WHAT IS COUNTER-ARGUMENT?

A: When somebody explains reasons for holding the opposing view.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 May 20 - 10:09 AM

That was part of the tweet. The author was challenging for the counter-argument to his three points, or, quite likely, he was being rhetorical..

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 May 20 - 10:10 AM

And yes,Nigel, a "the" would have helped, but let's not dwell.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 17 May 20 - 10:23 AM

Then, in the particular argument above, posted 17th May, 07.46, what might a Counter Argument be?
That is, what reasons might someone advance for disagreeing with what seems to me an eminently reasonable position. It's even proposing that all those "disadvantaged children" the compassionate Conservatives are so concerned about should altruistically share the enforced vacation of the rather more privileged young gentlemen of Eton. We are, after all, all in this together.
With regard to what reasons someone might have for insisting that the masses obediently send their mini-plebeians, that's a different thing again. I only asked what reasons might someone plausibly advance in opposition to the particular argument.
Over.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 17 May 20 - 10:25 AM

(Obviously the last was being composed whilst other messages were also being sent in response). ABCD.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 17 May 20 - 10:36 AM

One possible reason for the different treatment is that Eton starts at age 13, and the Government guidance on return to school is currently advising that nurseries, early years, and primary (reception & years 1 & 6) should be returning to school.
So any comparison between this guidance & Eton is misguided.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Raggytash
Date: 17 May 20 - 10:46 AM

But Nigel surely an altruistic gesture from Eton college to allow their premises, which I presume are more than adequate, to be used would allow the number of pupils going back to school to be spread out a bit more and consequently lessen the chances of contamination.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 May 20 - 10:46 AM

Nigel, the government guidance wants exam-age children in years 10 and 12 to have FACE-TO-FACE contact with their teachers.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 May 20 - 10:52 AM

Eton et al. don't do altruistic. They do "good" for the public sector in order to bolster their image, to try to make us forget their exclusivity and to stave off occasional expressed threats to their charitable status (a status which in my view is a perennial outrage). If there's little or nothing in it for them they won't do it, unless coerced.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 17 May 20 - 10:54 AM

. . . But without a return to full-time education at this stage.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 17 May 20 - 11:13 AM

I appreciate the information about Eton and the age of its intake (10.36 am).
Would I be alone in wondering whether any of the fee-paying schools (yes, I know they prefer the term "independent")* which take children of the relevant ages has any proposals to open at the same time as State Schools? I believe the term for these places is "Prep School".
Would I be alone in appreciating another example of how an answer can be absolutely accurate, and yet fail - carelessly or calculatedly - to address the obvious issue?



* No-one wants to argue against something like "independence", do they? Unless they can continue with a formula like, "Scotland has benefited from 300 years of Union...")

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 May 20 - 11:48 AM

They are not independent as they rely on the state letting them off paying an awful lot of tax. It's called "charitable status." In order to maintain this, they have to be seen doing some "good" for the state sector. I found at least one prep school that is planning to open on June 1. It's a bit hard to find out unless you go on each school's website, and even then you won't necessarily find the info you want. The HMC website doesn't seem to be giving schools guidance.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 17 May 20 - 01:00 PM

And it gets worse...despite The Johnson Gang’s oft-repeated promise that any trade agreement with the US would include the proviso that our own food standards must be upheld...

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/brexit-us-trade-deal-food_uk_5ebc1544c5b6270384a98e17?guccounter=1

You really cannot believe a single word those treacherous, lying arseholes utter, can you?

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 17 May 20 - 01:05 PM

tory agenda is to wipe out unions and submit worker's pay and conditions
to the independent discretion / mercy of individual employers..

The specific longer term target for Education,
is to replace the current generation of teachers
with right wing recruits to the teaching profession...

This pandemic is an excellent opportunist gift for the tories
to exploit,
in achieving these aims..

By any unfair or foul means they will sink to...


This is not bonkers conspiracy theory..

The Govt are openly shamelessly flaunting this provocation in our faces...


This has been all so obvious all along...

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 17 May 20 - 01:54 PM

The Mail

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 17 May 20 - 02:01 PM

Much as it pains me to defend the Daily Fail, I strongly suspect that’s a fake, pfr.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 17 May 20 - 02:05 PM

.. what.. me spreading fake news...!!!???

..outrageous...


|It's in the mail on the internet, so it must be true...

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 17 May 20 - 02:29 PM

The French politician Jean-Marie Herault de Sechelles (French Rev.) stated that in times of peril the State can take measures which would not be tolerated in peacetime.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 17 May 20 - 02:33 PM

...someone needs to remind Winston.. ermmm.. sorry.. boris, that this is peacetime...

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 17 May 20 - 02:46 PM

”what.. me spreading fake news...!!!???
..outrageous...
|It's in the mail on the internet, so it must be true...“

I tried to find it on the Mail’s internet site, and it didn’t show up. I’m not by any means suggesting you’re spreading fake news - just trying to verify it (as I always try to) and struggling...

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 17 May 20 - 03:07 PM

Well, there's always a "class war" going on, but what a pity that he of "formidable intelligence"* didn't have the chance to strut on the stage in a role more suited to his abilities. Something like defending the Great British Fish Supper from having foreign food standards imposed on it.
I sent a contribution to the Mail as suggested, and once I receive a white feather I'll stick it somewhere appropriate and whistle "Yankee Doodle". ABCD.

* That was the formula usually recited by Tory spokespeople some years back.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 May 20 - 06:16 PM

What teachers are for: to enthuse children to learn, to nurture and develop that enthusiasm and to provide the wherewithal so to do.

What teachers are not for: to keep children off the street, to keep them away from abusive households, to keep them away from parents who go to work, to babysit.*

Cheers

Steve (ex-teacher, husband of teacher, sister of headteacher and ex-president of NAHT, brother of deputy head teacher, brother-in-law of teacher, friend of many teachers).

*If I'm wrong about this, there wouldn't be any school holidays, would there?

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 May 20 - 06:20 PM

I'm her brother, not her sister. I know we live in flexible times but I have yet to go down that avenue!

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 18 May 20 - 01:38 AM

”Steve (ex-teacher, husband of teacher, sister of headteacher and ex-president of NAHT, brother of deputy head teacher, brother-in-law of teacher, friend of many teachers). “

Jeez, Steve, what on Earth do you guys talk about? I’ll bet there are some riveting conversations when you all get together - “School, school, school, school, school, school....” ad nauseam! ;-) :-)

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 May 20 - 02:48 AM

It's a bit like that at teacher training college and for your first two or three years, but after that we tend to avoid all non-essential school talk like the plague!

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 18 May 20 - 03:27 AM

Me and the wife used to have a really varied social life,
pubs and live music most evenings..

Until about 15 years ago when the school issued teachers with laptops,
expecting them to do increasingly more work at home..
for [in tory austerity real terms..] less and less pay.

Soon after the laptop, she got her first mobile phone,
then work-related texts and phone calls became the norm every evening,
often up until 10 or 11;
depending on how many of her co-teachers and staff were suffering work issues & stress,
and needing to offload out of school on my over-sympathetic mrs..

Healthy work life balance...???
anyone remember.. did that used to be a thing way back in the 20th century...????????

So from my point of view, I am married to an entire bloody school, not just my wife..

It's a full time lifestyle for me..

..and I get the bonus of her taking out all of that accumulating stress on on me,
and every illness she brings back from school...

So any tories wanting to pick an ideological fight with teachers,
will have to deal with me as well..
.. and I'm not such a sympathetic listener...!!!

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 18 May 20 - 03:34 AM

You’re very unusual then! I have a number of friends who are teachers and ex-teachers, and their sole topic of conversation is school. The non-teacher husband of one of them (and a teacher with a non-teacher husband is a rarity in itself!) refuses to go to any social function where other teachers will be in attendance, because they talk about nothing but school all night and he’s left twiddling his thumbs!

I remember sitting in the garden of the National Trust Café at Corfe Castle a few years ago, drinking coffee and eating scones (very nice indeed!) and we knew the occupations of everyone else in the garden - they were all talking, very loudly, about their dreadful schools and idiot head-teachers! ;-)

It would be a very cold day in hell before I’d marry another accountant! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 18 May 20 - 03:38 AM

pfr, my wife has had a company phone and laptop for years. She uses them for work only! and when she gets home around 6:30pm, they are switched off.

Saves a lot of hassle.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 18 May 20 - 03:51 AM

BTW, my post of 03:34 AM was for Steve!

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 May 20 - 06:40 AM

We're both well out of the profession now but we still both know enough teachers to see what pfr is saying. A healthy work-life balance has disappeared. You get to school extremely early, you leave late and your evening has gone as you still have hours of work to do. You spend most of the school "holidays" working your socks off, marking work, preparing schemes and drawing up detailed lesson plans, including the preparation of materials. Marking children's work now has to be done in ridiculous detail. All this drains away much of the energy that teachers should be reserving for putting in a lively and enthusiastic classroom "performance." It started to go seriously downhill in the mid-80s when Thatcher took revenge on teachers for taking (very limited) industrial action. There commenced a pointless and arbitrary tick-box method of "assessing" pupils' progress which was and, to an extent still is, even in its modern manifestation, open to cheating and corruption in order to get your school up the league table. There was the imposition of a content-stuffed anti-educational "national curriculum" (fit for the proles but not for the privileged in taxpayer-subsidised private schools and which left no room for imagination or interesting diversions, the sort of thing we remember our best teachers for), a five-day theft of holidays ostensibly for in-service training that I never saw utilised effectively, the removal of professional choices, replaced by the notorious 1265 hours' "directed time", and an Ofsted regime (judgemental only, never supportive) that was initially populated by significant numbers of failed teachers who had had two to three days' training (the first Ofsted inspector I had to endure, a portly, elderly man, fell asleep at the back of my lab after he'd had a night on the beer in a Bude Hotel that I know well...)

Of course, this is is a general phenomenon, not by a long chalk unique to teaching. Thatcher prepared the way for this exploitation in the workplace by emasculating trade unions (later connived in by New Labour, which proved that they weren't actually "Labour" at all). The teaching unions, never especially strong, as getting teachers to all act together is about as easy as herding cats, were too weak to put up any sort of effective opposition to these mostly deleterious changes. The upshot is that teaching is an impossibly difficult and often unrewarding job that probably (subjective view only, the only one possible) has not yielded higher "standards." If teachers are sitting around in what little spare time they have talking about teaching, it's hardly surprising, though you wonder why they aren't asleep instead.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 18 May 20 - 07:28 AM

Bloody hell Steve, I was only having a bit of fun! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: peteglasgow
Date: 18 May 20 - 09:40 AM

have i missed some news about a regular poster on threads like this? or have regular government supporters been finally shamed and embarrassed into silence?

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 May 20 - 10:19 AM

The news is bush telegraph only, Pete. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. But most of all, read no evil. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 May 20 - 10:55 AM

"been finally shamed and embarrassed into silence?"
Yup - but not by the Government - and like Arnie he'll "be back"
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 18 May 20 - 12:39 PM

"pfr, my wife has had a company phone and laptop for years. She uses them for work only! and when she gets home around 6:30pm, they are switched off."

That's the problem.. she can only switch the laptop off after finishing obligatory extra after school hours work at home...

We usually can't have our evening meal until at least 8.30..

Her colleagues are in the same desperate situation,
so that's why the late evening stressed-out work related phone calls begin
after they all actually finish work for the night...

But then the laptop usually needs to be switched back on again
just before bedtime,
as a result of problems inflicted from the phone calls...

It's since Blair that teacher's workload has increased beyond reasonable demands,
whilst the austerity value of their salary has decreased to unlivable levels..

That's why I've enough of my own real justified resentments about the state of the education system,
to tolerate any glib provocative tory attacks on 'workshy' teacher's and their 'militant unpatriotic' unions...


BWM - Btw.. it'd take a mightier man than me or you,
to demand my mrs ever turns her phone off...!!!

The only concession I won, was last year she agreed to stop taking it to bed at night...

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 May 20 - 04:04 PM

"It's since Blair that teacher's workload has increased beyond reasonable demands"

You are absolutely not wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: DMcG
Date: 19 May 20 - 03:38 AM

"he DIT said the new regime would get rid of some of the complexities of the EU system, would involve rounding down tariffs and would get rid of all tariffs under 2%.

It provided a list of goods that consumers would see come down in price as a result of zero tariffs: These included:

dishwashers (down from 2.7%);
freezers (down from 2.5%);
sanitary products and tampons (down from 6.3%);
paints (down from 6.5%) and screwdrivers (down from 2.7%);
mirrors (down from 4%);
scissors and garden shears (down from 4.7%);
padlocks (down from 2.7%);
cooking products such as baking powder (down from 6.1%), yeast (down from 12%), bay leaves (down from 7%), ground thyme (down from 8.5%) and cocoa powder (down from 8%); and
Christmas trees (down from 2.5%)."


Who said this government doesn't do detail? Presumably the civil service has been worrying for months about padlocks. And we all know our biggest expense at Christmas is the tree.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 19 May 20 - 03:54 AM

And that assumes, of course, that the effect of these tariff reductions is passed on by the middle-men to the retailers, and by the retailers to the consumers - an assumption which may well fall into the ‘rash’ category.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: DMcG
Date: 19 May 20 - 04:15 AM

I don't think I have ever paid more that £15 for a Christmas tree. So that is 37.5p saved per annum.

I expect every tax change of 37.5p per annum to be highlighted from now on.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 19 May 20 - 04:24 AM

I have a B&Q artificial tree which cost me about £15 - including the decorations and lights - about seventeen years ago. It lives in my loft, lights and baubles still on it, and with a big plastic bag over it to keep it clean. Every year, one week before Christmas, we carry it down from the loft to the living room,take the bag off, plug it in and switch on, and there ya go! On 1st JanUary, we unplug it, put the bag over it and carry it back up to the loft until next 18th December.

The reduction in the tariff on Christmas trees won’t benefit me one single penny.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: DMcG
Date: 19 May 20 - 04:30 AM

I half expect someone to point out that the 2.5% on Christmas trees is almost certainly 2.5% on all timber, and for lots of industries that will be a significant amount.

Which is quite true, but misses the point that this is *political* announcement. It is decidely not about how these tariff changes are good for business, because they don't mention business. It is entirely, wholeheartedly, and specifically about how you, our Brexiteer supporter, are going to be better off. We promised leaving the EU would cut your taxes, and here we are: we have kept to our promise.

As it happens, our dishwasher gave up the ghost recently and we bought a fairly expensive one because it came with a longer guarantee than the cheaper models. That had £14 tax approximately, it seems. We would hope to make it last at least 5 years - the guarantee period - so that is £3 per year. That is noise at a household budget level.

In the scheme of things, almost all of these are trivial. How much yeast does a typical household buy per year? Not many will buy enough to build up £1 of tax over the year, I would guess.

Subject: RE: BS: UK thread, Politics and political
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 May 20 - 04:31 AM

I'm going to deliberately buy a tree I don't need just to save money. Thinking of splashing out on a padlock too.