United Kingdom VII: Taking Pride in Your Success

[Neon Ignition]

Lucky number seven, though in these COVID times the seven is more likely to be rhyming slang for the people poor practice and a lack of rule following sends to heaven.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/21/cineworld-faces-revolt-by-shareholders-over-pounds-208m-share-scheme

Cineworld is in the midst of a furore having kept all of its theatres closed throughout the pandemic resulting in mass losses, but that isn't the cause of the discontent. No, whilst its staff remain on furlough the senior bosses have revealed plans to award themselves and shareholders £208m in share awards for a good job not done.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/21/johnson-raises-fears-of-covid-lockdown-in-england-continuing-into-summertime

And if Brexit proved one thing, it's that the Tories love a delayed deadline. We woke up to the hints that Lockdown 03 could remain in place till Easter. By lunch time that had shifted to Summer and now Johnson has raised fears that Lockdown 03 could remain in place on a more open ended basis as his vagueness extends ever onward about how long measures might be needed.

[Mayhem]

The word on lockdown I'm getting from people who actually research, vaccinate and advising the Government is end of April at best. Remove the school holidays and have kids schooling right through July and August.

[Golgo]

Remove the school holidays and have kids schooling right through July and August.

What for? Do you think teachers and kids are doing nothing right now?

[Neon Ignition]

This will help explain why Jr2's Nursery remains closed with the staff pretending they still have COVID 5-6 weeks on and being spotted out and about

Embedded Tweet

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/jan/22/uk-covid-live-coronavirus-latest-news-updates-500-payment-boris-johnson-downing-street-borders-travel

Meanwhile a lot of talk about the proposal to pay everyone who tests positive for COVID £500 to try and persuade them to not work and isolate after it was found only 17% of those affected did. That's a mountain of wasted money set to be spent right there.

[Soundwave]

What for? Do you think teachers and kids are doing nothing right now?

Well to be fair from what I gather from speaking to some of the parents at Chloe's school most of them aren't doing much at all & just the bare minimum & one I know of has stopped the online stuff entirely & has started using the CBBC stuff as their learning

Also in other news the blustering windbag is hosting a press conference tonight at 5

Neil

[Golgo]

Well to be fair from what I gather from speaking to some of the parents at Chloe's school most of them aren't doing much at all & just the bare minimum & one I know of has stopped the online stuff entirely & has started using the CBBC stuff as their learning.

Well that's fine, if parents choose to disengage their children and plonk them in front of the TV instead. But dumping those who have been working hard at this back in school over summer to make up for the slackers is not on. In any case, it won't happen. The unions wouldn't wear it, and rightly so. Providing for online and mixed delivery is a lot of extra work.

[cutmymilk]

Yeah, myself and the mrs are working longer days than we would if we were in work. She is actually in the next room teaching a live lesson right now to her year 2 6 year olds. The babies are shipped off to nursery.

Thing is, BBC stepped in as the exam and qualification boards have provided the bare minimum, and nothing for my subjects. To ensure parity, we should all be doing the same as the quality varies so much between schools, and this is especially important for infants.There should be a programme put in place at the top level that we all follow. They only had 8 months to make one.

The problem with it is people calling teachers lazy. Presumably there is still marking and assessment, even if they have the guts to use BBC resources. Also, we didn't ask for any of this. I would prefer to be in my classroom than in front of teams for 8 hours.

[Golgo]

^ Anyone calling teachers lazy and teaching easy - on the basis of sticking their kids in front of CBeebies with a pad and some coloured pencils while they check Facebook and swig gin in the kitchen - can go **** themselves.

[Neon Ignition]

I've found that this time around it's the opposite experience with our kids school in terms of Lockdown. During Lockdown 01 the kdis were provided next to nothing to continue their learning, this time they've been given effectively their normal in school learning under the gross misconception that parents at home are their to teach their kids. Most aren't they're there to do a job they'll get a disciplinary for if their boss finds out their childminding all day for instead. I get it's via pressure on schools to not repeat the issues kids faced the first time around but the whole thing is just continued Government incompetence. If they reopened schools they could probably maintain transmission figures if they shut all the Costa's and Greggs to compensate, it's so backwards this time out.

[wheelaa]

Should shut Costa and Greggs permanently.

R rate believed to be dropping. Edit

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55768033


Edit - I mean, the costs will ultimately come to us anyway through our use of businesses. I'm already seeing the covid price jack everywhere. And by sheer coincidence there are numerous businesses I no longer use.

[saif]

Schools (and the attendant mixing across all year groups and thus the community) are responsible for a lot of spread. Closing schools has had the greatest impact on the rate f spread as far as I can remember. Independent SAGE did a fair bit on this while SAGE were being forced to support the government.

In a strongly correlated, parallel, comment - on brexit negotiations, industry insiders that spoke up were not invited the next time. Draw your own conclusions about the decision making process and what that means those that are trying to help are able to say.

[cutmymilk]

I agree with you neon. The mrs does 30 mins in the morning and 30 mins in the afternoon (plus the planning and marking of that plus child protection plus the hub once a week) so that parents only have to dedicate that time and the kids do work in between those lessons. They love the interaction and some are doing better work at home than they used to at school. It's all about the application. In my school we have 55 teachers but the problem is that the technology use is difficult for a lot of them so lessons are very basic.

[saif]

It is worth saying that many of the issues should have been resolved over the last few months but we have an education minister that thought mass testing would work although he had been told it would not due to the accuracy even before he made the announcement.

November pack from ISAGE: https://www.independentsage.org/wp-c...hools-v4b1.pdf

[teddymeow]

So Boris says that the new variant my we'll be more deadly.

Greeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaat!

[Golgo]

So Boris says that the new variant my we'll be more deadly.

Greeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaat!

It's only a pity the new variant wasn't on the market when Johnson got his dose.