Westminstenders: Compromise is a difficult word

[RedToothBrush]

Today the HoC had a water leak. It closed the house for the day. This isn't without consequence; any hope for the opportunity of Indicative Votes on Monday had cold water poured on it.

Meanwhile talks between talks between May and Corbyn were about as productive as you'd imagine. But apparently they had nice tea and biscuits.

The Cooper Bill, the last minute lock on May getting a extension to prevent no deal, has been in the Lords today. I say it's been in the Lords but Tories have filibuster Ed on procedure for over 6 hours to prevent the chance of it passing the house. Tory whips are timetabled until 6am but the opposition benches have vowed to go to 7.30am. So far the votes to ruin the procedure have failed comfortably so the opposition have the number. Its just a question of time.

The trouble is with the Lords not sitting tomorrow that means the bill won't get passed until Monday and there are fears it won't get royal assent until Tuesday.

The bill doesn't prevent accidental no deal but it would be a barrier to May.

It therefore looks like May's gambit with the EU to get an extension is to say her plan is ongoing talks with Labour for a cross party solution. It won't wash.

No deal looks more and more likely.

Is the country more fearful of an ERG Tory Party or of a Corbyn Labour government

ERG every time. Not sure my husband agrees with me, but when I had my "how dare these Etonian buffons treat us like pawns in their political games" he said I needed to vote Labour then. I've actually never voted Labour. Usually Libdem and occasionally for very specific reasons Tory in local elections (to keep a community group out who wanted a new village built on greenfield land).

One of the interesting side comments from Chris Mason on Brexitcast this week was that he actually asked the secretary for state for education about education this week for the first time in a long time

Einstein was dyslexic, but I don't think he mathematical problems. He was notoriously slow at speaking. He also said:

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will spend its entire life believing that it is stupid.

Meanwhile (again) ...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47826195

UK workers' productivity fell again in the final three months of last year, down by 0.1% compared with the same quarter a year ago.

It was the second year-on-year quarterly fall in a row, after a 0.2% drop in the July-to-September period.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the "productivity puzzle" had been a problem for years.

It said labour productivity was lower over the past decade than at any time in the 20th Century.

(contd) ..

one of the dangers of enforcing every more intrusive "metrics", is the ability of workers as a mass to be able to straddle the "just profitable" border permanently ...

It's only a puzzle if you're not human. Seems to me the UK worker is signalling to all that can read where they're willing to sit in terms of "productivity". After all a 9-5 insisting boss coupled with a 3 hour daily commute will see people find their own level very quickly.

Einstein was also ASD, I think, he's enthusiastically talked about by all senco's to SEN kids

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will spend its entire life believing that it is stupid.

I love this quote - I think the DfE should have it in big letters in all their offices

I'm so glad my schooling was before all these constant tests
Must be so stressful and take up so much time too

I just had 11+, O levels, A levels
That left plenty of time for teachers to diverge from the curriculum into interesting topics they thought useful

LeClerc

" but a policy that has European driving included normally only 'fails' when the UK actually leaves."

That's the point of this stupid exercise - we're supposed to be leaving on 12th April, so we'll still be away. We're going out as EU citizens, but may come back under a completely different regime

My 'equal opportunities' approach to maths beyond basic 'sums' has only been a relatively minor hindrance. Learning basic physics has been far more useful and has got me where I am now. Being 'brilliant' at some things can lead to missing the 'bleeding obvious' on occasions.
Shouldn't the 14 and 16 times tables be learned now to go back to pounds and ounces?

DG German productivity averages about 20% higher than UK

In all my jobs since the late 1980s in Germany, there was no culture of presenteeism / unpaid overtime
Anyone who kept staying late would be asked if they had too much work, or if they needed more training

I'm sure overwork, being too tired, play a big role

Also, feeling cheated by having to work without pay

DG German productivity averages about 20% higher than UK

It's almost as if Germany is a different country, culture and society !

My dad was an Aspie before this was a thing, he went from working class Glasgow to Uni to study maths. He was astounded to have a dd who couldn't learn a times table. My primary school gave up on me. He decided to teach me maths that had no numbers to confuse me, there is a huge amount of maths with no arithmetic. I got some confidence and passed my maths exams in secondary school.

Hasenstein
Sorry, I obviously don't know your exact movements or what your current insurance covers. You said travel tomorrow, so if you were back by 12th and your insurance covered EU travel now you would be OK.

Just received an email from school

The Council have just informed us that the school will be needed as a Polling Station for the European Elections on Thursday 23rd May. Therefore, school will be closed on that day.

They did say that if a Brexit deal is in place by then, the elections will be cancelled but we obviously won't know that until nearer the time.

Things are moving in the right direction!

dreichuplands, what maths have no numbers?

DG German productivity averages about 20% higher than UK

but seriously ...

England is still plagued with a feudal attitude from above which when reflected below results in much more disdain for management and oversight generally (I think). I'd wager that a poll of Germans would reveal that most employees sense of worth to their employers is far higher than the UKs. I'd be curious if there's a variation in productivity across the UK too ...

Thought experiment.

if the UK were to not leave the EU, what would it look like from (say) 29th March 2019 ?

"Show your working"
www.storyofmathematics.com/19th_galois.html
Galois had the ideas but wasn't good at writing them down. His friend Chevalier did much of the heavy lifting after Galois' tragic death.

My DD didn't really know her times tables until her last year of high school (and she was top of her further maths group in her baccalauréat year). At that point she learnt all her tables up to 16 because it made her quicker.

Being good at mathematical reasoning and being good at mental arithmetic are very different skills - mental arithmetic is more about repetition and working memory than abstract reasoning.

I'm feeling much more optimistic about European elections now. I hope everyone posting and lurking on this thread will vote!

It'll be DD's first time to vote (in France) as she turns 18 a few days before the election.

Being good at mathematical reasoning and being good at mental arithmetic are very different skills - mental arithmetic is more about repetition and working memory than abstract reasoning.

There's something weird in the human brain about maths (did anyone catch the overblown-but-interesting "Magic Numbers" with Hannah Fry a while back ?

I'm feeling much more optimistic about European elections now. I hope everyone posting and lurking on this thread will vote!

Assuming they are held in the UK, it'll be an interesting draw ... who to put first ?

DG The Works Councils mendatory at every German firm are important to build trust and protect workers
Management and union reps sit together

Promotions have to be agreed and Important decisions like redundancies & terms, shift changes, investment etc must be negotiated

Much of maths has no numbers I should show you dds university notes BelfastBloke. It's all squiggles and in some topics nary a number in sight.

A powerful bit of writing by Eoin McNamee on the 'British border in Ireland'. I have just cut and pasted a little. Link is at the bottom.

Let us take the Border as genre. On television you see fields, cows, a man in a cap looks over a gate, talks about smuggling butter, the thing is cast as pastoral, the wrong genre, deliberately the wrong genre. The real genre was dystopia, society in dissolution, everything broken down. It is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Death’s corps are in charge, they patrol the night. Militias emerge from the darkness and return to it. Everybody is watching everybody else and you can’t get a grip on any of it. Things happen, people get killed, human viscera hanging from telegraph wires and the real story doesn’t get out. You’re hemmed in by checkpoints, by control towers. The roadside corpses are booby-trapped. .....

That’s what got shut down when the Border was opened up. One of the lost, godless zones of the late 20th century. They’d know what it was in Berlin, Santiago, El Salvador, Guatemala; anywhere you’d find a corpse lying by the side of a remote road. ......

....... such a place is a maw that swallows everything, even the inhuman cries of men in terror.

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/we-cannot-go-back-to-a-hard-border-any-more-than-berlin-could-return-to-the-wall-1.3843094#.XKIGuvJXhN0.twitter