Return to university

[SouthCoastShell]

I've just watched all of Boris's announcement and he doesn't mention when students can return to university. Does anyone know when students are allowed to return?

We chose as a planet the old over the young. It was the wrong decision as I have been saying since May 2020.

@Xenia - I agree. It's considered heartless to say so, but it's true.

DS1 is still due to have a graduation "at some point" but I can't see anything happening. 2 or 3 out of his course of about 70 have jobs relevant to their course.

Hah. DS was promised that school would find a way to create a leavers' ball for them. They did Prize Day on line but didn't even bother to mail them the book tokens. If they couldn't even be bothered to send an Amazon voucher to the hardest working pupils who had everything taken from them, I can't see a belated leavers' ball happening ever.

It's not remotely true.

We sought to minimise deaths, not just from covid, but from collapse of medical systems and chaotic collapse of the economy. Look how bad it became at times, even when only a small percentage age were ill at any one time - hospitals full, distribution chains up the spout etc. Now think what would have happened if unchecked - how long do you really think trucks from Europe would have been arriving? Or ships from China?

The alternative to lockdown is so much worse, and the damage more long lasting. For more businesses would have folded, shortages would have arisen because of interruption to international trade and there would have been even less non-covid medical care.

The only thing humans could do to avert that is to break transmission chains.

"We chose as a planet the old over the young"

A very interesting way of putting it. I suppose this is not the first time in history that that has happened either!

I don't know about avoiding economic collapse - even where there were very few restrictions I don't think there has been economic chaos or societal breakdown in the sense of basic utilities such as energy, water, telecoms, rubbish collection etc, ceasing to operate - thinking of Sweden, for example. (Though having said that I think Swedish students stayed at home so perhaps that is not a very good example!)

Hi. My daughter can’t return to uni until September because of the government guidelines so she is living at home with me. I receive JSA so therefore get full housing and council tax benefit. Will my benefit be affected now she is at home. She gets the maximum maintenance loan but doesn’t have a part time job. Does anyone know? Thanks

I'm really shocked by the thought of Societies falling into disuse because there was no 'handover' to the current 3rd Years who would normally be running them. All that knowledge about how the sound system works in the hall and where the netball posts are kept - lost forever!