Us for Them

[namechangchange]

I've name changed for this.
Had a wee look over on that page tonight as I have a ( possible ex) friend who's really active there and shares things all the time.
There is a post on tonight where people are actively threatening to take on the police as they have " weapons to match them ". I get we are all scunnered but I'm really worried by it. It has nothing to do with keeping schools open or protecting children!

@Sarcobaleno fair enough I will remove myself from the group.

@BelleSausage but when part time learning was proposed Scottish DPs were being given rotas with their DCs in school 2 days a week. There were no proposals on how working parents- and the impact would mostly fall on mothers - should keep their jobs whilst simultaneously looking after primary school DCs. Should they just shrug their shoulders and resign?

Also at the time numbers were low. I still remember my disbelief watching multiple pensioners queue up excitedly to get into garden centres, whilst children's outdoor play parks remained forbidden.

They would have used the lower numbers in schools to reopen everything else around us, so we'd still be in roughly the same position.

I find myself regularly looking at that page, as it is proper bonkers. Its an open page, so those who claim to have joined the group to watch it are being disingenuous, as long as they can fool themselves into thinking they have supporting members, its getting crazier.

I wish the press would stop giving them a platform.

Well the press give the snp members who protest at the 'border' a 'platform', should snp members all leave the party on that basis?

@DumplingsAndStew ok I have unjoined. Not sure what I do now if SG announces online learning for the rest of the academic year.
Cry quietly into my pillow and pray that DS doesn't become as unmotivated and lardy as he did during last lockdown seem to be the best options.

The SAGE data on blended learning was clear. It should have been followed.

It would have meant that many fewer children had to isolate and would have cause a break in infections- meaning that all those businesses could open and stay open.

We have sacrificed our entire economy to keep schools open at all costs because the virus was less successful in children.

And all the has happened is the virus has adapted to be more successful in it’s main environment- classrooms.

So what we actually did was force the virus to adapt to be some more successful in infecting our children AND ruin the economy.

Well done us.

usforthem.co.uk/about/

Scroll through and you can meet the team at Usforthem. I'm sure many of the team are mumsnet posters so maybe they can post on this thread to explain why they are insistent on no masks in schools etc.

@BelleSausage difficult for businesses to stay open when the people working in them have to simultaneously stay home and look after their DCs. Or then when they lose their jobs for those people to actively participate in the economy with no money.

There is no perfect solution however you play it.

@mrshoho

usforthem.co.uk/about/

Scroll through and you can meet the team at Usforthem. I'm sure many of the team are mumsnet posters so maybe they can post on this thread to explain why they are insistent on no masks in schools etc.

That's pretty much exactly what I would have expected.

[quote rookiemere]@DumplingsAndStew ok I have unjoined. Not sure what I do now if SG announces online learning for the rest of the academic year.
Cry quietly into my pillow and pray that DS doesn't become as unmotivated and lardy as he did during last lockdown seem to be the best options.[/quote]
I do feel your pain. My youngest refused to do home learning. She's been offered a school place from 6th January, but is refusing to go 😫

My eldest pretty much needs one to one support, so I'm pretty much back to back.

Any unmoderated (I assume it is) place like that can go crazy.

People post extreme stuff and it ramps up

I totally do agree. These people are in the utter minority.

Us For Them just wants schools open. That’s it. Like any group it attracts crazy types but in the main it’s measured and sensible and looks critically at data.

No more crazy than a lot of the batshit stuff about tagging people in the UK I read in MN. It’s the internet for you

@DumplingsAndStew this is what's so hard about all of this. I totally understand that teachers don't want to teach in an unsafe environment - why would they?

But I have to do best by my DS. As he's not in an actual exam year - S3 ,no one is going to give him a free pass if he doesn't do as well in his Nat 5s as he should have done because he found it difficult to engage with online learning- and the provision last time was far from perfect. Also he needs exercise and time with his friends, which can't be provided at home.

Winter was always going to be tricky however we played it. I know I'm being selfish but I am beyond grateful that DS at least had a full term in school - I know some didn't- and has been engaged in his subjects through excellent teaching in class and has thinned back to normal through rugby and football.

@rookiemere

So employers bare no responsibility in helping you with flexible working? Why are we all to bare brunt of this pandemic but your employer doesn’t have to be flexible to allow safe schooling? The government could have mandated this.

Do the people in hospitality have children? What about the people in the arts and entertainment? Or the people in greater Manchester and Liverpool where attendance was down to 50% because of infections and isolation.

So, rather than ask employers to be at all flexible. We are going to instead ask all retail, hospitality and entertainment to remain closed at the cost of thousands of jobs.

How will the children get on once their parents have lost their jobs?

@Calledyoulastnightfromglasgow

I totally do agree. These people are in the utter minority.

Us For Them just wants schools open. That’s it. Like any group it attracts crazy types but in the main it’s measured and sensible and looks critically at data.

No more crazy than a lot of the batshit stuff about tagging people in the UK I read in MN. It’s the internet for you

But it was their demands for schools open at all costs with no mitigation that was so damaging. They wanted hand washing and sanitising and nothing else.

[quote BelleSausage]@rookiemere

So employers bare no responsibility in helping you with flexible working? Why are we all to bare brunt of this pandemic but your employer doesn’t have to be flexible to allow safe schooling? The government could have mandated this.

Do the people in hospitality have children? What about the people in the arts and entertainment? Or the people in greater Manchester and Liverpool where attendance was down to 50% because of infections and isolation.

So, rather than ask employers to be at all flexible. We are going to instead ask all retail, hospitality and entertainment to remain closed at the cost of thousands of jobs.

How will the children get on once their parents have lost their jobs?[/quote]
100% agreeing with your posts on this thread. It needs to be said.

@mrshoho

Many of them object to the sanitising too.

@BelleSausage but the SG didn't mandate employers to allow reduced hours to support part time school. Swinney muttered something about it but without regulation or support it didn't happen.

The arts, restaurants etc. all have some sort of support package in place. If the part time schooling had come accompanied with top ups for DPs losing income and business support, perhaps there would have been less of a backlash.

Yes you're right Dumplings, I should have said they were prepared to tolerate the handwashing and sanitising to placate the worryworts.

I am finding this thread really comforting. Scotsnet (for me) has always been a nice place to pop in to. I blether, answer questions if I can and ask some too. I was being told, as recently as Sunday, on the tiers thread that Usforthem are a reasonable group.

It's a relief to know so many posters disagree.

I am sitting in a near empty classroom packing up what I will need for getting ready to create resources for online teaching. I am lucky as all my pupils will now have Chromebooks . I will try my utmost to create engaging work and will follow my timetable to be available for them. My pupils have been great since we returned and coped phenomenally with everything they have faced. Parents too have been really supportive and the emails received in the last few days have been uplifting. The antithesis of the Usforthem narrative.

@rookiemere

So why didn’t you campaign for more support for flexible working instead of sending us all back to an unsafe and unstable system that has cost the country jobs and children their education?

Shame they aren't reasonable and campaigning for safe reopening because it is such a large group. They've taken it too far. I've never joined but I've seen a few posts.

@mrshoho

usforthem.co.uk/about/

Scroll through and you can meet the team at Usforthem. I'm sure many of the team are mumsnet posters so maybe they can post on this thread to explain why they are insistent on no masks in schools etc.

This isn't the founders of the Scottish page though I don't think.. the page doesn't attract loonies, it was set up by loonies! The picture of the grieving families of those murdered by Pinochet is being used by one of the founders as they feel Scotland is under similar conditions just now. Makes sense the page has strong links to The Family Party as that was set up by an ex Tory Councillor and the Scottish UFT founder used to do PR for the Tories. Re the 'dictatorship ' , the Tory MSM up to their usual regarding the FM.... I really feel like the UK is becoming more and more like America with the far right taking over and this is reflected by the msm allowing UFT a voice. The page is purely political. There was a post last week titled "Devolved education is not working in Scotland.. and then listed a lot of lies such as ASN teachers do not access training in Scotland and others gunning for JS due to nonsense re PSHE in upper primary. Anyway, rant over.

I agree with BelleSausage
Blended learning needed time, training and extra resources, but the pay off would have been that schools were safer and more likely to be open now. I did not ever understand the logic of university classes being cancelled entirely and moving to Zoom but pupils just a year younger and teachers were mixing more or less freely.

That said, I know that both my DC (one S6 and the other primary age) benefited enormously from being back in school and their teachers have done an excellent job. I suspect, however, that the teachers have been given no additional training or resources for online learning and I question why, given that blended learning was supposedly the contingency, it is not being put in place now.

I am a single, working parent, and having DC in school 33-40% of the time with a structured programme for the rest of the time would be an awful lot easier than being left with what now appears to be an open-ended school closure with no plan. Our LA has just written out about online learning from 11 January (extra holiday until then), no mention of returning.

I totally understand that it has been and would be better for DC to be in school full-time. But in the absence of blended learning, they are actually not going to be in at all. Or at least I will be surprised if they return on the 18th.

Thanks @Outsidemum1, yes the Scottish group appear fanatical. In what way can they compare the victims of Pinochet to the circumstances here? It is disgusting. The link I shared lists JOHANNAH BISSET, Parent, Businesswoman as USFORTHEMSCOTLAND.

Bissett is one of the mouthpieces that gets wheeled out in the media

I saw a post the other day where the poster said that the plan is for the vaccine to control the population by making them infertile

I love their templates for complaints and questions. Badly written and treated by schools with the contempt they deserve

I do enjoy on Twitter the way they are ripped apart and have no comeback

The FB page is an echo chamber. They all wind each other up. Thoroughly unreasonable, irrational and ignorant