Westminstenders: What the winds bring

[RedToothBrush]

The next few weeks are crucial. Eu talks, covid handling, the US election and any other unexpected events (its nearly November, lets face it will probably be the weather).

It feels a little like the car crash in slow motion is about to hit the wall of reality. I guess that just means all there is left to do is to brace for impact.

Meunière - totally this. My area has the fourth worst incidence in the whole of France among 0-9 year old children, despite being roughly average in other age groups (well, except the 30-something parents of those kids: they have covid too).

Schools in deprived rural and small town communities are totally unequipped to deal with this. They don't have space, they don't have money, and yet their students are the ones who most need to be in school.

@borntobequiet - Snippy remarks about Irish teachers are entirely irrelevant to this thread.

As are many of the other comments on this thread. Doesn't stop most posters.

I think it depends A LOT on the school.

And where you are and the system you are in.

There certainly may well be a physical/logistics/space issue in the "larger smaller" towns in France, many of which often have multiple Lycees.

Due to lack of space it sometimes appear to be the case that the students aren't really required or wanted on site unless they are actually in lectures.That can be particularly tough on kids in rural areas who have little choice but to roam the streets, either in search of a sandwich/kebab/coffee at lunchtime or break time, or simply to kill time until the evening bus picks up.

That's always been the way it has worked, for better or worse, certainly locally to us, but given student numbers it is potentially a big problem in the current circumstances.

FWIW Peter Symonds 6th form in Winchester has 2000 kids per year group
and the canteen seats 500
even with 50% of the kids at home on any day
there are 4 times as many kids as seats - assuming they sit right next to each other

What we are seeing in the UK is the result of MASSIVE and long term under funding of the public sector.

France is different, as is Ireland
and neither of them has been dumb enough to consider leaving the EU as well

Anyone looking for a job ?

www.europeanmovement.co.uk/vacancy_communications_manager

T European Movement UK is looking for an experienced and passionate Communications Manager to join our team and to build the profile of the organisation.

About the European Movement UK

The European Movement UK is the UK's largest, and oldest, pro-European network with over 100 local groups and thousands of individual activists in all corners of the UK.

It was founded over 70 years ago, with Winston Churchill as its first Honorary President, to advocate close relationships between the UK and Europe. It is politically independent, working with people from all parties and none. It is part of European Movement International and was a founding member of the People's Vote Campaign.

Since the 2019 election, our organisation has reached an exciting turning point. Our role is now more important than ever as we hold the government to account during the Brexit process. We will be campaigning to maintain European rights, standards, and values post-Brexit and campaign against a No Deal at the end of the transition period.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-uk-eu-no-deal-boris-johnson-poll-yougov-b1400893.html

A majority of the British public would blame Boris Johnson if Brexit talks fail to reach a deal, a new poll has found.

The survey piles pressure on the government to negotiate an agreement, as last-ditch talks are set to move to Brussels after an intense week in London.

Sixty-five per cent of the public now believe the government has "generally failed" in its negotiating objectives, the new YouGov poll says – while 57 per cent say UK side would be to blame for a no-deal.

(contd)

Maths - with Dante:

65 > 52

It's absolutely terrible timing on the part of Irish secondary school teachers to raise a payrise as an issue. Safety concerns yes, pay no. Regardless of whether it's justified or not, now is not the time. They'll get no sympathy whatsoever.

and I dunno about the job with the European movement, but it seems the Indy is struggling for skillz.

from the previous post ..

Members states are keeping a close eye on talks, responsibly for which they have deleted to the European Commission and its chief negotiator Michel Barnier.

I mean if their own journalists CBA to read the stuff they write, why on earth would anyone else ? #pisspoormedia #nosurprise

From the Guardian:

'A cross-party group of MPs and peers including a former national security adviser are taking legal action against Boris Johnson over his government’s refusal to order an inquiry into Russian interference in UK elections.

The group filed a claim in the high court in an attempt to force the prime minister to carry out an independent investigation or public inquiry. It is the first legal action of its kind over alleged national security failures.

The move follows the publication in July of the Russia report by parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC). It found that the government and its intelligence services had failed to investigate Kremlin meddling in the 2016 EU referendum vote – a “hot potato”, as the ISC put it.

The ISC urged Downing Street to carry out a full inquiry and to put in place a legislative framework to prevent future interference by foreign states. No 10 turned down the request. It argues there is no evidence of successful disruption by Moscow.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/29/legal-action-taken-against-pm-over-refusal-to-investigate-kremlin-meddling

Listening, our local French high school (where my kids went) has 2000 students and I doubt the school restaurant capacity is even 500 students.

It's bad for schools but the new French lockdown here absolutely shits on students - they are talking about having them do most classes online but bringing them in for practical lessons - but no one has a clue what is going on. I have no idea if my son should plan to return to campus or not. My daughter has already left her tiny studio in Paris (she did the last lockdown alone with very serious consequences for her health) and won't be attending classes even if they are obligatory.

Mistigri
Its so tricky because if politicians utterly screw over the young on this, the resentment will last a lifetime
(as it did with those Thatcher threw on the scrapheap in the 80's)

@ListeningQuietly

Mistigri Its so tricky because if politicians utterly screw over the young on this, the resentment will last a lifetime (as it did with those Thatcher threw on the scrapheap in the 80's)

"if" ?

It is very concerning to see the FR government chuck away public trust like this, by badly timed panicked interventions that could and should have been decided at least two weeks ago at the start of the school holidays.

Apparently students can be asked to go in for practical work and exams. So now we are in lockdown from tomorrow, but I have no idea if my son should return to campus for an exam on Monday.

Yes, it's difficult. No, I'm not against another lockdown. But surely if the U.K. has taught us anything, it's the importance of clear public messaging.

I was talking to a friend who lives in deepest west Wales.
The beaches are empty and the air is healthy.
but everybody is cooped up in the cities breathing on each other in overcrowded homes.
Lockdowns are not making things better.
They are just exacerbating other medical issues, causing resentment and widening disparities between rich and poor.

As somebody said on a BTL newspaper comment
"I can by babycham but not baby milk"
the priorities have gone VERY wrong somewhere along the line

Lots of the over 70's at my gym feel patronised that they need "protecting"
they want to be able to go to concerts and the theatre and U3A and have a pub lunch after going out with the Ramblers

NOBODY is happy
and its going to get worse
as there is no path back out of these ever increasing infringements on civil liberties

If you are against lockdowns you need a strategy for what you do when covid+ patients pitch up at hospitals.

Hospitals in countries which have avoided, or abandoned, severe lockdowns - the USA, South Africa - have coped partly because only a fraction of the population has full, free access to healthcare. Hospitals don't get overwhelmed if the people most likely to fall seriously ill (old people, black and poor people) don't get admitted to hospital.

We don't run our health systems this way in Europe, which is one reason why governments have in some respects found the pandemic harder to manage: because people don't want to be locked down, but they do expect unlimited access to lifesaving healthcare if they or their loved ones can't breathe.

Lockdown sceptics are invariably dishonest about this. I would actually respect a lockdown sceptic prepared to say, "Yes, my policy will cause deaths. Yes, hospitals will have to refuse treatment for some or all covid+ patients. But civil liberties [or other supposed benefits of herd immunity] make this an acceptable trade off for me".

Personally I find this abhorrent, but it's actually remarkable how quickly people become inured to mass deaths when the people dying aren't them (see: left liberal South African elites).

Mistigri
Re Lockdowns : I've said it since the spring

A properly functioning "track, trace, isolate, support" system
that ensured those infected could and would stay at home
and those who were genuinely vulnerable could and would stay isolated
a LOT of COVID deaths have not happened in hospitals
and the death rate of those in hospital is falling
proper support for those mildly ill to keep them out of hospitals

but mainly TTT
as was done by Taiwan and South Korea without need for lockdown or causing major deaths

Can I just thank whoever posted the Department of Trades fake news on Japanese Soy Sauce, or Soya sauce as they call it. The main reason people buy Japanese Soy sauce is that it is naturally brewed and most brands are not, they bulk them out with wheat, caramel and other additives It made me go and look on the back of my large jug of Kikkoman, the most widely available Japanese brand that is naturally brewed, and realise it is brewed in the Netherlands presumably to save on export costs. A trip is planned up the North Circular for bulk stockpiling.

It is reassuring that our Department of trade are on top of International patterns of consumption and trade

On Didos ramshackle testing “business” I knew already that Scientists don’t want to work there because of the way they were managed and fears about safety that have been validated by the Health and Safety Executive www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-testing-lighthouse-labs-safety-whistleblowers-b1041495.html%3famp

However I have now learned of a former colleague who, having been made redundant as a senior manager in a large well known chemical business, took a job running a testing lab. He left some time ago because he was not allowed to implement even the normal business processes he was used to to ensure safety.

Surely in normal times this would be a scandal, it seems as if we reached peak scandal a long time ago and now it has become the norm....

French schools are not great in terms of overcrowding, but universities are horrendous.
We currently have, in my English Studies dept., 1100 students in 1st Year Applied MFL, 900 in 1st Year English Studies and 500 in 1st Year on our Triple MFL degree course. And we are understaffed by about 40% (that's teaching staff; admin is horrendous, too). About 100 students in Applied MFL and 100 in English Studies still have no class group, as there is no room for them and no one to teach them. We're halfway through the semester. Registration took forever, as the system was overloaded by us trying to teach and Zoom simultaneously.
And jobs are being slashed for next year more drastically than I've ever seen.

We should not have tried to teach everyone using blended methods at the start: we should have split those 1st Years into smaller groups and tried to get them used to university work for a few weeks, while the 2nd and 3rd Years and postgrads worked remotely.
Every single Erasmus student from the UK/Ireland I teach has a laptop, while only about 30-40%% of local students do. They are using their phones for remote study and many have no (reliable) wifi. They're in real difficulty.

The announcement today that campuses will be open for practical lab work is going to cause lots of confusion, as for Mistigri's DS. This hasn't been thought through: the gvmt were too busy calling universities hotbeds of islamo-leftists last week...

Jeremy Corbyn has list the whip and been suspended from the Labour Party because he refused to apologise for a remark he made this morning saying other political parties exaggerated the anti semetic problem within the labour party for political reasons.

Corbin suspended from the Labour Party. Blimey, he may have been as much use as a chocolate teapot as leader but I always admired him as a man of principle ......

The last wheezings of a spent force.

@Jason118

The last wheezings of a spent force.

The Labour party?

Farage back as Trump's warm-up man . Let's hope he has to eat his words

https://news.sky.com/video/share-12117456