Westminstenders: Following the EU lead

[RedToothBrush]

Coronavirus poses a particularly Irish shaped question. How the UK responds to Irish plans for ending lockdown and whether Arlene continues to back an all Ireland plan will be fascinating to watch and see justified regardless of which way we go.

The UK for all its new found independence is looking very closely to the success / failure of EU strategies before making our own plan public. Mainly because we've yet to write one.

Johnson hasn't led much. He's delegated. Yet he gets all the praise for doing the sum total of fuck all and never being the bad guy. There always another fall guy to blame.

Economically we are stuffed and promises of a very quick bounce back don't look likely based on public confidence and willingness to return to places like pubs restaurants and shops.

Our ability to adapt to new conditions at short notice has been tested and businesses can not afford to do this again soon.

This is the background to which we go into talks. Both sides need an extension to serve their best interests. Johnson is determined to cut our nose of to spite our face for the sake of his legacy and to keep those paying the back handers and dodging tax happy.

Indeed - I went to a grammar school myself - loved it!

I went to girls grammar and it was pretty dire. It's now been replaced by a very good comprehensive and it's not even in a particularly leafy area.

Clav - please they don't speak "Chinese", they speak mandarin

Splitting hairs - Chinese Language School in Taiwan:

"So to sum it up quickly. Chinese refers to a large group of dialects, Mandarin being one of (the most popular by a comfortable distance) those dialects."

Got it? Let’s move on…
Do Taiwanese speak Mandarin differently from Chinese?
What language do Taiwan speak?
Apart from the fact that people in Taiwan use Traditional Chinese instead of Simplified Chinese as the writing system, there are still several differences between Taiwanese Mandarin and Chinese Mandarin.

You stay safe too, louise

Raab:
"Whatever's been reported in the newspapers is not a reliable guide...
any changes in the short term will be modest, small and incremental"

you should have warned President Macron.

What?

You are full of shite.

I went to girls grammar and it was pretty dire. It's now been replaced by a very good comprehensive and it's not even in a particularly leafy area.

My old school is what they call a super selective grammar school now.

Thanks Bigchoc Yes heard that from Raab, seems sensible to me. They haven’t actually said lockdown is being extended, surprised no further follow up on that so far.

Clavinova - give up with the cutting and pasting about the Chinese language - you obviously don't know what you are talking about and are just making yourself look stupid.

What was the bloody point of that Downing St Presser?

They didnt say anything!

SKY News

All sounds reassuringly sensible:

Dominic Raab says

....... even the "smallest" of changes will be the point of "maximum risk".

..... the restrictions will be tightened again if the infection rate goes up.

..... the UK is now in a position to begin to think about the next phase of its COVID-19 response.

..... the PM will set out next steps in his address to the nation on Sunday.

.... R0 is between 0.5 and 0.9

But he adds:
"The virus is not beaten yet. It remains infectious and deadly."

I live in a grammar area. About a third of grammar students have a non county postcode. If you can afford the tutor and he commute, you're in.

Funnily enough, not great for local kids.

"What was the bloody point of that Downing St Presser?"

Raab reassuring us that they haven't gone over to the Social Darwinists
So the govt will relax lockdown cautiously, slamming on the brakes any time things get out of hand

BJ will piffle us on Sunday
then somone else - Raab / Gov / Hancock will tell us what he really meant (what the Cabinet agreed)

Scotland got rid of grammar schools over 40 years ago

When I went to an ordinary state village primary school, 1960s, we were all coached for the 11+ in school

Mind you, even then, I was the only poor kid in the entire year

The only poor kid at grammar, that is

I don't know much about Chinese. But I do know a lot about "Italian", and anyone speaking Calabrian dialect would be unintelligible to someone speaking Piedmontese dialect.

And I believe there are similar French dialects that wouldn't really mix ?

My DF ended up having to travel around Italy a lot for his National Service. The only thing he admits was worth it was an ear for the variety of dialects. (Which was very useful in business).

There's a Bavarian dialect I find difficult, especially with my hearing disability

just making yourself look stupid

I don't believe I am.

Cambridge University Press
Teaching Chinese as an International Language

Mandarin Chinese as Spoken in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

www.cambridge.org/core/books/teaching-chinese-as-an-international-language/mandarin-chinese-as-spoken-in-mainland-china-taiwan-hong-kong-and-singapore-a-comparison/D65AAB4E3381AFFBE76E4339A34D91D6

Think that’s quite an astute observation BigChoc. Boris is good at “bright and breezy” and “big picture” but much less so at clarity and detail. Raab appears notably better at the latter IMO.

I sat and passed the 11+ in 1978. My parents had at that point not decided whether or not they were going to settle in the UK permanently. They decided to return to the Netherlands so it was all moot, but if it had gone the other way, I would have been a grammar school girl. I am glad that didn't happen, single sex education- ew.

Mind you, even then, I was the only poor kid in the entire year

Probably 4 or 5 'poor kids' per class of 30 at mine, 1980s.
I can't remember if we had 4 or 5 classes per year.

DM had a pathological aversion to single sex schools - which were the only grammar choices in Harrow. So the local comp for us. Harrow had outstanding comprehensive education (hence my 11 O levels, including Latin) which just had to go obviously. I doubt you could even see it from the air these days

Peregrina 😂

Actually even Cantonese speakers can make themselves understood to Mandarin speakers and vice versa. And indeed my Chinese Mandarin speaking friend would be spat at for speaking Mandarin in Hong Kong markets whilst my Mandarin speaking Taiwanese friend was embraced as indeed were Mandarin speaking ABCs and BBCs (lets see if a Clav can work that one out). I suppose politics and culture are an incentive to understanding other languages, accents and dialects (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong) as well as not to (UK).

Re academic peer review and valid critique of published code requiring anonymity:

No problem with academic peer review - but there is no evidence that happened. No idea what view academia would take of other academics, not explicitly invited, reviewing code and publishing results - ferguson's copyright in the code is the standard 'you need my permission to do anything with this'

However as a non-academic, very experienced IT bod I could not formally review that code and publish my findings without the consent of my employer - that probably applies to anyone with the experience to review - but its important to say that this code is dangerous.

I built and ran the simulator, as code bases go its relatively small - about 10k lines of c++, taking about 30mins execution to give the early prediction results. However its basically a chunk of monolithic code fragmented into a couple of large functions, with a ridiculous number of global variables and huge range of input parameters.

This is not code that should be supporting national decision making

I haven't heard someone speaking a dilaect for a very long time in France.

Now this is how you do it: github.com/ebmdatalab/opensafely-risk-factors-research/

Everything from today's paper on risk factors for dying of COVID19.