Westminstenders: The Final Week

[RedToothBrush]

Our final week in the EU...

www.ft.com/content/fbcd92a4-40fa-11ea-a047-eae9bd51ceba?fbclid=IwAR0IljD52dI5HP91qnllqnHYUIOCgGgxd3u5oF3lRn_fF8-WvE_-brFEYig

Don't know if this has been posted yet.

Britain after Brexit will not be alone, but it will be lonelier

There are some very depressing charts illustrating problems referred to.

the big failings of the UK — its ultra-low investment rate, weak productivity growth, poor infrastructure, high regional inequality, and long educational tail — have nothing to do with EU membership. Brexit may eliminate many excuses. It will not solve any of these problems.

Have lost the thread re dual nationality etc - are we saying China bad because of their position on nationality?
They're a sovereign nation - doesn't that mean they are entitled to take any position they want - or is that not how sovereignty works?

We are saying that the UK Government is behaving like a bunch of shits in not getting the foreign spouses of British citizens out of China because of the virus.

Who knew that Boris Johnson's Government would be so petty minded?

Another death due to govt policies
Sickening & must be so frightening for those disabled who rely on benefits to live

www.disabilitynewsservice.com/the-death-of-errol-graham-man-starved-to-death-after-dwp-wrongly-stopped-his-benefits/?fbclid=IwAR2eRG_-He70F0dQ9tlHzysRvoLijGdROWhM94pn58cmDPclIxTJgVwEwwg

A disabled man starved to death after the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) wrongly stopped his out-of-work benefits, leaving him without any income.

Errol Graham weighed just four-and-a-half stone when his body was found by bailiffs who had knocked down his front door to evict him

Sounds like the Chinese govt wouldn't allow out any spouses of Chinese citizenship anyway,
but
the UK govt is refusing evacuation to UK family members with any other nationality too,
unless they already have a visa or right to live in the UK

Continuityerror - by organising their 8 columns carefully for making the choices at the end of S2, the school always passed its BGE assessment with flying colours, in that each of the 8 columns covered the 8 areas of the BGE.

Personally, I think they sailed close to the wind, as ds effectively dropped Expressive Arts at the end of S2 and ended up doing Nat 5 Computing Science, admittedly because he was doing an unusual combination of Physics, Chemistry and PE (with Expressive Arts in each of those columns). Although I think Tech Drawing might have been in the Computing Science column - which he didn't want to do (iirc).

www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/after-brexit-new-identity-crises-await-the-uk/ar-BBZqJn5?ocid=sf&fbclid=IwAR2g4tSQRDVu0NW11IIXVS2sh66FC80TLsSL3AasshPp9CtPPQTBLK3Yl_I

Interesting article presumably from the USA suggesting that there will be new identity crises for the UK.

That's very interesting Peregrina

Hot on the heels of the Norton news

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51300835

UK car production sank to its lowest in almost a decade in 2019, with output forecast to continue falling this year.

(contd)

It wasn't Remainers that made the UK car industry the Brexit Canary.

.

I heard a British citizen being interviewed this morning. His Chinese wife would not be able to leave China, but he seemed unclear about the status of his one month old son, with whom he said he would travel if possible. If Chinese, I assume the child would not be allowed to be evacuated - but it would have no British documentation, so I suppose even if China permitted it to leave, it would not be allowed into the UK with its father.

My mind still boggles, though, that you can be studying French at university, have been living in France for 3 months and not know the word for a plate

Well quite. Covered in about year 8 (In England) I would imagine, if not in year 7. French was my first MFL, picked up German in the second year of secondary, dropped French for GCSE and I think we covered that stuff in either the first or second year.

In any event have these students never been to somewhere like Cafe Rouge where they have their menus in French?

Anyway now I know the French word for owl.

On the MFL topic:

Re Sunderland and "they used to be a poly": so what? Here in France a MFL is compulsory even on most short (2 year) post-18 courses. Many of the most selective courses, especially engineering and business, impose two foreign languages.

Owls: there are two FRVwords for owl depending on whether they have tufty feathers on their heads or not. Hibou has tufty feathers and chouette doesn't.

Exam technique: can well believe that U.K. exchange students lose out on this. French students are drilled in this from Y7 lol.

Gobsmacked at a uni student not knowing the word for a plate, but I can imagine that students with weak language skills might panic at a literary FR translation and find their minds have gone blank. I moonlight as a (non literary) translator and I also write for a living, and I would have had to think quite hard about the best way to translate Auld's quote.

I have family that live near nortons HQ.

The owner also owns a local hotel that employs lots of locals. That's gone into administration too. I feel for the emplotees and those who have booked events/weddings :(

The conduct of thebBXP meps yesterday was stomach turning. The euparl must be glad to be rid of them

In local news a man starved to death when he benefits were stopped.

A brave new albion indeed.

They know the exam text will be another, unseen, excerpt taken from one of the long extracts.

Ok so that puts it in context lol.

DD is in her first year of a MFL degree and their translation texts are completely unseen, they could come from anywhere. They have lists of hundreds of words to learn beforehand including a bunch of vocabulary that neither of us knew in both languages (we quizzed each other for a laugh).

interesting is also the 'degree' thread.
international corporation requiring a degree to proceed which the op doesn't have/doesn't want to work towards.

Re Sunderland and "they used to be a poly": so what? Here in France a MFL is compulsory even on most short (2 year) post-18 courses. Many of the most selective courses, especially engineering and business, impose two foreign languages

Good point. Some of the universities that don't offer MFL at degree level do have a "languages for all" programme - eg Loughborough I think (sad in itself, I now Paula Radcliffe did her degree there and did French and German). So they do offer languages for those who are interested, but obviously not compulsory.

Not really for this thread but a MFL should be compulsory at GCSE and all schools should allow students to do two! DS would have done Spanish and German if he'd been allowed to and would now possibly be doing both for A level as well. But although the local 6th form college offers Spanish from scratch, they don't offer German, you have to have the A level.

I assume MFL are not compulsory at the equivalent stage in Scotland?

know not now!

international corporation requiring a degree to proceed which the op doesn't have/doesn't want to work towards

I think there's a balance between asking for paper qualifications for the sake of it and taking into account years of relevant experience. I do get where the OP is coming from on that thread.

international corporation requiring a degree to proceed which the op doesn't have/doesn't want to work towards

degrees used to be shorthand for having achieved a certain ability to process information and critically render it to answer specific questions or examine the finer details of a given topic. The actual subject was secondary to the process. (Hence a lot of people I met in IT in the 80s started life as history or English graduates in the 60s).

If you start requiring a degree to be in the subject you are recruiting for, then it starts to look much more like a vocational qualification.

Case in hand is DB whose degree was in Electrical Engineering, Masters in Supercomputing and Doctorate in Genetics. When he did his masters (1994) they weren't really too fussed about what his degree was in. Just that he'd managed to get one.

Cologne - technically a MFL is compulsory until the end of S3 (the equivalent of Y10) in Scotland.

I think they have to do 2 MFLs initially (at least they did at Ds' school). Ds did French and Spanish (which alternates with German) and he continued with French to Nat 5. I think the school had a MFL in one of the "compulsory" columns (3: English, Maths and a MFL) but not everyone would necessarily sit the Nat 5 (they might just get a Nat 4).

The other MFL that the school offered was Urdu (which could be studied all the way to Higher not sure about AH ) - which reflects the demographic of the school's catchment.

Interesting interview with Brit in Wuhan on last night's R4 World Tonight. Was told there would be an evacuation flight, cancelled at last minute. Was never told when it would be, just 'very quickly.' Asked how could he get to airport if roads were blocked, was told to drive through them.

Guy says he now has more confidence in Chinse govt than UK govt and will stay and volunteer to help build the new hospital they are constructing in ten days flat.

Guy says he now has more confidence in Chinse govt than UK govt and will stay and volunteer to help build the new hospital they are constructing in ten days flat.

Us Brits weren't too shabby about putting up flat pack hospitals in the Crimea ... you'd have thought a Brexiteer would have been along to point that out by now.

Too early to say how worried we should be with coronavirus, but if it does become a pandemic we do not have the capacity to deal with it

We never cleared our winter beds from last year. They were full all summer

Hospital bed capacity should be at less than 85% to safely deal with patients (quite aside from pandemics) but 97-99% has become standard

My nearest A&E, a large city centre one, has been running at >150% capacity PERMANENTLY since November. this is not a poorly performing A&E as national standards go and we have not even cancelled all our elective surgery yet as so many hospitals have

No one in the NHS trusts or believes Matt Hancock at all.

I assume MFL are not compulsory at the equivalent stage in Scotland?

No. I remember checking as when I went to uni in the 1980s an MFL to O level or CSE standard was a prerequisite for most courses - it no longer is in the UK.

And in the case of our school, when you only had 4 subjects to choose at Nat 5 many had to drop MFL to be able to choose the subjects they wanted / needed for prospective uni courses.

Came back to bite one student who almost had his Irish uni place withdrawn at the last minute due to his not having the compulsory MFL requirement (although not sure why this wasn’t picked up earlier). Fixed at the 11th hour with the school verifying that he would have been unable to take the course due to timetabling.