ADS and the winds of change

I was quite grateful to him. We'd surely have continued the way we were with the initial utterly miserable lockdown restrictions if it wasn't for that... Or do you think the whole thing was nudge?

@Buzzinwithbez An excellent question IF it was nudge what better way to get the public to police each other more strongly. With comments saying not to be like him etc

I think it was after that point there was a sudden declaration that we could now travel to exercise. I always linked this with Cummings trip and wondered if it was either to assuage the public's feelings or had been nudge all along. Very much like when we were told to start to use pret etc as takeaways ( might have been in combination of get back to the office as it was these locations that were suffering) and there were photos of bojo walking in the park with his takeaway Costa coffee. That one was absolutely blatant.

This is what I mean... And there was the ludicrousness of being told to behave ourselves over the weekend but that lockdown would be listened on the Monday.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8303051/Parkgoer-gives-Boris-Johnson-piece-mind-plans-Britain-work.html

People going to the parks dubbed 'flouters' in that article.. Nice!

Yep - if you think it through - the Covid pandemic handily moved social interaction online, where they can wade through it all at their leisure to gather more material to use to "nudge" and feed into their manipulation machine. And as some of the behaviour on here shows - nudge people a little bit, and they'll do the more extreme nudging for you themselves.

If you haven't - it's worth reading the Big Brother Watch report on it all and how Twitter trends etc were scrutinised for information to inform further nudging.

What scared me most of all was watching my mother, a journalist by trade who had brought me up knowing about things like lulls in the news cycle needing to be filled and the way the media could be manipulated, being turned into a terrified reclusive old granny convinced Covid was going to kill her - she aged about 2 decades in 6 months because she refused to leave the house and she still believes we didn't lock down fast enough or hard enough - despite seeing the massive damage it caused to DD2. Thankfully in DD2's case, we've managed to fight tooth and nail to undo the worst of the damage caused by it all and then her hysterical visor toting teacher who spent the following year in a black and yellow hazard taped box at the front of the class half-assing her job before finally retiring (I'm not joking - they had a perspex bank screen they would take around the classroom if they had to dare go near a small child) - she's back just about working at expected level academically, in a different school but I don't think she'll ever fully get to where she could have been if she had that year 2 where everything was well set up for her SEND, in a supportive school with a superb class teacher - followed by the lost year 3 because that teacher blatantly and openly didn't think schools should ever have reopened and took it out on the kids - and the covid rules that nutjob implemented in her classroom were so extreme she lived in such a state of high anxiety that she couldn't learn much anyway. She went from a kid with challenges and SEN who was holding her own OK academically - to one who just fell by the wayside and if you think about the potential for that over a lifetime in terms of loss of opportunities and income - it's awful.

One of DD1's best friends just completely disengaged from learning - refused to do home learning and would just openly defy her parents, who were not really literate enough to support much to start with and have another child who was mid-ASD diagnosis they were dealing with (who fell off all the waiting lists and now has been put back a year at school and is failing spectacularly)... no IT access (we ended up finding an old laptop and formatting it for her), no support from school for them not having any IT access - and this child who was a very bright, able reader has never ever re-engaged with school... attendance now rock bottom as she'll refuse to go (she's 10!), never ever does homework because of all that time when the school set it but refused to touch it in case it brought in home "germs" or other spurious shit, and she's heading for a route where if she remains in school and not pregnant till age 16+ it'll be a fucking miracle. We tried our damndest to support from the distance allowed - even trying to get the kids to sit on a call and work through their homework together with me supporting - but she's heading toward being lost completely.

And still no one cares. The loathesome teaching unions are just gleefully blaming parents for not singing fucking nursery rhymes while doing their own jobs all day and if you dare have one fucking thread on a parenting website calling out the damage caused by this all to kids - you get accused of fucking harassment and threatened with the law. I did a dissertation full of interviews from parents and the big thing that came out of it all was that kids had lost the confidence and certainty in "normal" - they no longer believed that they'd get up on a Monday morning and get to go to school and then play football or go to Brownies or whatever - they didn't trust their families and society that this would be allowed to happen. We're a developed country in the year 2023 - it should not be an issue of question for children on a large scale that their education is going to happen on a daily basis - yes, we get freak snow days, water leaks and boiler failures - but these were rare events, and generally snow days were a cause for getting the sledge out and enjoying - but now it's "switch to remote learning" at the slightest inconvenience - no wonder kids are fucking confused as fuck and don't trust or value things - they've had them yanked away from them before so cruelly (I'll never forgive Boris for re-closing the schools and announcing it AFTER the kids had gone to bed that night - just to leave a nice early morning bombshell for parents to break the following day).

I mentioned before - we got bollocked by school at one point for DD1 asking why they were hysterically anti-bacterial wiping everything against a virus. I'm actually quite proud of a then-8/9 year old realising that viruses were not bacteria and being able to ask the question and wondering about bacterial resistance... but school went fucking ballistic about it. They could have had a small moment to discuss that it was the alcohol content in the wipes (allegedly - although I suspect at that point it was more fancy smell and optimism than alcohol content in them) and there was possibly a good science teaching point about what a virus and and a bacteria was, and why handwashing helped... but they decided to basically lay into DD1 and us as heretics instead. Don't implement rules you're not prepared or able to defend fuckers.

We also have a pandemic at work still - fucking millions of "NHS superheroes" mugs we were landed with - the bastard things are absolutely everywhere. I have so far managed over 6 months working in the Trust and managed to avoid having to drink out of a single one of the bastard things on a matter of principle. They're not some kind of prized relic either - the ones we fight over are back to being sweary ones, especially slightly sweary ones we can get away with on Teams calls, these are the ones that fall below the chipped random agency and drug sales mugs in the desirability stakes.

Here is a virtual standing ovation! Very well said indeed!

I think it is safe to say here that I think the teacher strikes are a bit rich after the unions moved to close schools. Did they really think that wouldn't affect things? Or did they actually believe life was a video game you could put on pause?

I am also irritated by being grumbled at about attendance. I think they showed just how much it was really valued. The hypocrisy irks me.

Our school attendance has gone right down - combination of kids getting every bug going because surprisingly separating them from social interaction for nigh on 2 years meant that every routine childhood bug had a party time when they all got together again, and parents like me who now take the line that the state showed just how much they really believe every school day matters, and so fuck it I'm going to take my kids away for an affordable few days break once a year now. I never ever ever would have done before they let that particular genie out of the bottle.

I think I've worked out what's annoying me about this phone thing. As well as being intrusive, it feels performative, a bit like everyone waiting for Thursdays to come around for the country wide bashing of the pans.

@Buzzinwithbez And the cries of selfish have started already.

@CoffeeWithCheese I was saying the same to DH last night. That kids have been taught that school isnt important so arent bothering to go. This was after reading an article about non attendance.

DS managed one day of school last week. Ill Mon/ Tues, Wed/Thurs were a strike. Actually educated on Friday.
We annoyingly have an unfortunately placed INSET day coming up in the next week...

The teaching strikes would have had far more impact pre-2020. Now most parents are rolling their eyes and muttering quietly. We're used to playing in-school roulette now due to lockdowns, isolations and illness.

If it was purely epidemiology at play, schools would have not reopened at all after Christmas 2020. The fact that they went back for one day proves that it was political play to save face against the NEU threatening localised walk outs. I can not forgive the NEU for those two extra months of misery, sobbing and meltdowns and undoing the tentative gains made Sept-Dec.

Striking is once again only hurting children and their families. It's not touching the government- their nannies are dealing with any fall out. I agree that schools are in a poor state of funding, workload and a tonne of unnecessary politicking, but once again it's children that are bearing the brunt of the action. Some of those pressures have reached tipping point because of the toll of Covid restrictions on children and things like avaliability of supply staff and training/ recruitment.

No post on teaching on here ever sells a return to the classroom to me!

I have to go to a meeting about DD1's attendance this week. I do not want to be unpleasant about it but I am annoyed. Could you all help calm me down?

Is it lots of "random" absences (my two have had these issues, one from a barrage of illnesses, the other has been more a bad run with existing health conditions- his has been more obvious as he's been sent home in pain several times) or is there an underlying issue like school anxiety.

They tend to be tick box exercises; DS1 triggered a standard letter- he was sent home ill that time and wasn't fit to return until after the weekend. It tends to be a standard policy, but it can be a way to discuss relevant issues with school if needed.

It does feel hypocritical when one moment you're being chased on attendance and "every day is important" and then the next there's another reason why they're not in school. I know it's not an individual teacher/ school issue, but it's annoying nonetheless.

Just bad luck in illness really.

She's got siblings bringing everything home. I think once she catches up on her immunity she'll be fine.

I just have to stop myself snarking and asking if they'd prefer I sent her in vomiting or some such. I did actually ask if I should send them in streaming with snot once last year in primary school and they said yes. So...

@Buzzinwithbez i think people might be more willing to go along with the phone thing if there wasnt the lack of trust in the Government that there is.

This about sums it up for me

twitter.com/NorthBritish/status/1637816510314889216?s=20

Just posting about Paris protests and remembered, in 2020 I mentioned the anti lockdown protest in London on here and got told "why are you protesting, lockdown is over". 🤦🏽‍♀️

Hope it went all right. Ridiculous.