Tiers until the end of time

[runningpink]

Quickly putting this up as last thread is full

I can't help thinking Swinney is one of the ones being lined up as a sacrificial lamb, when that OECD report comes out, that might be the finale. Just conjecture - no idea obviously.

So he has a 10 year old who is homeschooling and a disabled wife, and he still doesn't meet the criteria of being a normal human with normal human lived experience?

Tying yourself into a pretzel there with your attempt at logic.

As someone who struggled with infertility for many years I get that not everyone is childless by choice. But I do think many of the experts / decision-makers have chosen not to consider the impacts on large swathes of the population because they have either forgotten what it was like because their children are grown up, or have never experienced life with younger children. In normal times the voices and experiences of people are usually sought as part of policy making but that seems not to be the case here. Seems a long time since there was open consultation

Everyone's circumstances are different and I don't think anyone should judge anyone else until they have walked a mile in their shoes. As an example my situation is a lot worse than a friend who can bubble with single grandparent and shares informal childcare with sister who has a child of similar age (all liven local area). We meanwhile have no family close by and no family support and are both exhausted with working and home school with no activities (swimming, drama, singing) actually resuming since last march. Football has been back one week but the children cannot play matches because of 'restrictions' which was news to me.

@anon444877

was that universally applied? I'm not sure we know that, as mentioned, a lot depended on region and HT. I work for a company based in England and they certainly offered to write letters to schools if necessary a long way after any u-turn supposedly happened.

My point wasn't that though, my point was that pick and mix comparisons of what was better are hardly going to attract universal agreement as it depends on individual circumstances and preferences.

We've had parents send letters in. Some got places, some not. In England, they originally said KWs would get places then , a few days later , said critical workers WFH would get a place if unable to carry out their critical care function.

I have friends who sent letters into school from the BBC (journalists) and were given a place. They wfh nearly all the time but the letter said they were working outwith the home.

The point is, it's really at HT's discretion but the rules are the same either side of the border. Apart from, all P1 to 3s are currently in school in Scotland only.

kurt he got divorced around the time he became a WM MP. I very much doubt he was a "hands-on" divorced Dad to 2 DC in Scotland while working as an MP in London.

If I were being really judgey it looks like a classic case of kicking over the traces on the way up. His DW is a political journalist.

Anyhow enough of the distasteful muckraking as long as we can agree having a ministerial team does at least give scope for the odd additional pair of hands etc etc etc.

• Incase it wasn't clear, my journalist friends who got a place are Glasgow based.

I don't think we've crunched enough data to know what actually happened starry on school places for key workers across the UK and I doubt we ever will given the discretionary element.

That'll be P1-P3 unless your dc are in special schools - have we heard whether all of those are back? They certainly weren't last time I checked and there was a petition going.

I don't think we need to crunch data re which country had the most children in school but ok.

It's good to see at least a couple of journalists questioning the interpretation of data, especially as its being used for political reasons. You'd have thought the SG getting their knuckles wrapped twice for misleading statistics would have made them more alert to this, but too many still just accept what they're told (and whatever spin is put on it) without question. It's also interesting to hear Prof Woolhouse explain that actually we weren't ever that close to elimination last summer, and back that up with not just modelling but lineage tracing too (despite what Devi tried to imply afterwards). It's very disappointing to see how politicised our 'advisors' are though, seemingly determined to twist the data to fit the elimination narrative. IMO it sits in stark contrast to eg Chris Whitty et al. who present the facts within their remit and don't try to overstep it.

@Y0uCann0tBeSer10us spot on!

Its why I have said previously on these threads to look at raw data tables not statistics presented because I know from doing data analysis how if you change an input or variable it can change the output.

It's not necessarily wrong it's just the variables changed and that's what's presented without the usual *of based on x, y and z with w data discounted (which is what you see on scientific papers)

In the past 24 hours 386 new lab positive tests have emerged, which is 4.5% of all tests

There are 824 people in hospital with recently confirmed Covid-19 - a decrease of 13 - with 71 in intensive care, which is down seven from yesterday.

I just came on to tag you @dancemom for figures I've come to rely on your posts. Thank you. Those are good numbers 🤞🤞

Anyone else hear JF say this is why (ie variants) we can't have people in crowds at the moment...wonder if that's a nod to not getting the bulk of pupils back in secondary schools?

Chris Whitty in one of the earlier news reports, used modelling data that had already been shown to be overstated in terms of possible deaths, and he had the updated version available to use but continued to use the overstated version. I don't trust him either.

Aw I'm glad @IsurviveonCoffeeandWinein2021 I don't want to be annoying but I like to keep a daily check on them myself

No not annoying at all @dancemom. Handy if I can't watch the briefing. Was attempting a home work out today so missed the start.

Thanks @dancemom I appreciate your updates as well!

@Dinnafashyersel yeah I'm not going to be drawn into an entirely hypothetical discussion about what sort of father and husband JS was.

It's irrelevant.

It's a dangerous road to go down to start saying we can only do certain jobs well if we have certain life experiences.

Thanks @dancemom.

@WaxOnFeckOff yes, now you mention it I do remember the 'not a projection' modelling that wildly overestimated the pandemic trajectory. I remember that being pretty much accepted to. Perhaps a lesson that we should be more questioning all round. It would help if journalists in general had a better understanding of data science.

@anon444877

I don't think we've crunched enough data to know what actually happened starry on school places for key workers across the UK and I doubt we ever will given the discretionary element.

That'll be P1-P3 unless your dc are in special schools - have we heard whether all of those are back? They certainly weren't last time I checked and there was a petition going.

Nope, don't think any are back yet. I know ds' ASN high school is having s4 and s5 back in for some practical classes at the moment but it's just a few hours. The last email we had said s1-s3 won't be back until at least after Easter and even then they're not sure if that will happen.

I hope there is an enquiry into special school provision lady - sounds like the same lack of clarity carrying on. It's a shame there's no-one high profile to take up this baton on twitter it has been long overdue for better attention.

I like to tune in for the daily numbers too Dancemom. I swear the anticipation gives me a wee dopamine shot

Yesterday I was struck by the similarity between the Scottish and UK numbers per head of population. I suppose that's mostly the effect of the very similar lockdowns, but given that the SG chose to develop its own track and trace system and have slightly different rules for travellers I keep thinking Haha, Nicola and Jason turns out you're not doing any better than rUK. Obviously this is childish

Last night I was absolutely dismayed by the reporting of cases of the Brazilian variant here. I feel more sanguine today though. Brazil, which had a huge second wave despite a large first wave, but even so called large waves of infection within countries have never been big enough to give anything like herd immunity and I think Brazil isn't as far on with its vaccine programme as we are.

Fergus thingy on BBC is now saying he thinks that the current vaccines, while possibly/probably not providing as much protection from mild/moderate infections of the Brazilian variant do protect from serious illness and deaths from COVID.

So I'm hoping this is a case of media hype.

@anon444877 totally agree, they have been completely forgotten about but then it's like that in 'normal' life so I shouldn't be surprised.
Guess I've just accepted that ds won't be back anytime soon as no matter how vocal I've been about it, it's like shovelling falling snow, get nowhere fast.
I'm too exhausted now - working, picking up extra shifts in the vaccine clinics and stressing about the kids and dh who is shielding and health wise is not great at the moment.