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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| You are so negative, Mick, there are plenty of enticing brown field and greyfield sites (disued car parks) ready to be developed. There will be fantastic enticing new homes for all these thousands of immigrant wannabe millionaire entrepreneurs. In fact, there is a derelict chippie I know of which was turned into a vape place. What a waste. With a couple of mock Corinthian columns and a few sympathetically placed Italian cypresses, it would have been more than adequate. |
This raises some interesting points. You can of course create a faux silicon valley by using grants and planning regs to set up bolt-on computer factories and chip reprocessing plants strung along the M4 but this is just an 'industrial policy' which the Tories (probably wisely) are opposed to. It's the spontaneous attraction of innovatory entrepreneurial types that is the hard (impossible?) part. Though we made a good start by dishing out visas to Hong Kong Chinese by the pantechninon load.
When they do mushroom it is in all the wrong places. The current one is round a roundabout near Old Street station in London.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Most worrying thing about the pandemic is that we've only had the ability for middle class people to work from home for about five years. Prior to that few had fast internet speeds, or any internet. |
I think you mean 'the best thing'.
| So as soon as this became almost universal it took less than ten years for the technocrats to panic about an over-rated bug and nearly destroy our economies. |
Your conspiracy-theorist cast of mind has led you down a strange path of cause-and-effect finishing on classic wise-after-the-event braggadocio.
| Will this happen again? Certainly, unless we learn our lesson. The WHO needs to be shut down, together with the CDC and all the other acronyms which are paid to spread panic |
Now you're talking. We'll have to set up another acronym to co-ordinate them, there are so many.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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At the start of the pandemic, it was the mighty Public Health England, (PHE), unfortunately, for them, by the end it was UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHIDO). Turns out PHE had underperformed on one part of their job. Whilst the public were regularly advised and aware about the obesity epidemic, mental health epidemic, health inequalities such as poverty, or being LGBTQ or BAME, the need to quit smoking, or open a window when it was hot, or stick on thermals when it was cold etc, the PHE had not realised we Englanders were a tad unaware about basic hygiene. There was so much to lecture and complain about they had actually forgotten about a concrete plan for infectious diseases and personal hygiene, it simply wasn't sexy to advise that overcrowding people in cramped offices or cramming migrants in houses of multiple occupation, or allowing the public to sneeze on old people and ill folks in care homes, hospitals, surgeries, was not good. It was, pre Covid, far easier and more popular to demand more beds to deal with "the Christmas flu spike."
So it was all PHE "puffed out chests" at the start, we are the experts, you must do as we say. When the politicos eventually discovered that in the main these were just another group of nice professionals obsessed with ethics, unable to jointly own tough choices based on finite resources, they were rapidly reorganised by government.
Public Health haven't forgiven this. They now have a chance to whinge. They will. Turns out (with hindsight) if PHE had been doing its job properly we might have had a plan, a lot more public awareneess and a Korean-style Track and Trace.
Would it have made a difference? Who knows. We should find out.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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UK public spending for the last 50 years or so always comes in around 40%-50% GDP. It only really goes above or below that when you have a crisis. Opec in the '70s led Labour begging the IMF for help, Thatcher then stabilised, Financial Crash 2008 sank Labour again, Osborne restabilised. This time the Covid crisis has happened, but with the Tories in situ, so they are likely to lose the next election.
Labour, when it gets in, should be able to return public spending to where it back was, arould 40-50% of GDP, by the next but one election, this will be roughly in line with every other larger advanced country.
Small tax havens like Malta and Ireland don't count.
The mandarins will be very happy with Keir. "Well done old boy"
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Wiley wrote: | | So it was all PHE "puffed out chests" at the start, we are the experts, you must do as we say. When the politicos eventually discovered that in the main these were just another group of nice professionals obsessed with ethics, unable to jointly own tough choices based on finite resources, they were rapidly reorganised by government. |
A key stage. It happens every time the nation goes to war.
| Public Health haven't forgiven this. They now have a chance to whinge. They will. Turns out (with hindsight) if PHE had been doing its job properly we might have had a plan, a lot more public awareneess and a Korean-style Track and Trace. Would it have made a difference? Who knows. We should find out. |
Fat chance. The Report will be written by nice professionals obsessed with ethics.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Wiley wrote: | | UK public spending for the last 50 years or so always comes in around 40%-50% GDP. It only really goes above or below that when you have a crisis. Opec in the '70s led Labour begging the IMF for help, Thatcher then stabilised, Financial Crash 2008 sank Labour again, Osborne restabilised. This time the Covid crisis has happened, but with the Tories in situ, so they are likely to lose the next election. |
As far as I can make out, this is the pattern of all normal societies ever since there have been normal societies though what is defined as 'public' may vary. Your 40-50% is a bogus list since whether it is closer to forty or fifty might be critical.
| Labour, when it gets in, should be able to return public spending to where it back was, around 40-50% of GDP, by the next but one election, this will be roughly in line with every other larger advanced country. |
Although this is the expectation, this lot will need careful watching. Post-Jeremy they might go on a tear. (Homophone intended.)
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Mick Harper wrote: |
As far as I can make out, this is the pattern of all normal societies ever since there have been normal societies though what is defined as 'public' may vary. Your 40-50% is a bogus list since whether it is closer to forty or fifty might be critical. |
It really don't matter at all, providing the market perception is that you are acting in the national interest, are controlling inflation, serious about looking after the national finances etc. Folks will be more than happy to lend to you, so you can keep your public sector at roughly the same level.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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So, Channel 4 News tells us, there is rioting in Dublin. Unusual. Interesting. What's it all about? Somebody has stabbed a kiddie and somebody else. So why the riots? It's not terrorist-related, we are assured, but no-one will tell us to what it is related. Ah-ha, we think, if they're not telling us, it must be sensitive. Who's sensitive in Dublin? Corkmen? Travellers? Democratic Unionists?
So we wait for Newsnight. It's a 'foreign national'. And who are the rioters? It's the far right. Did they have armbands saying 'Far Right'? How did these fascist scum know, when nobody knew, they must be powerfully organised over there. Oh, it was all over the internet 'like wildfire' immediately it happened. We seemed to be the only ones that didn't know. We still don't know, Newsnight won't tell us. I expect we're not grown up enough.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Everyone is agog to hear what Boris will say during his two days with the Torquemadas of the Covid hearings. It is difficult to understand why he is getting such mockery for his lack of scientific grasp when the entire governance of Britain is built on the principle of everybody lacking any knowledge of anything beyond familiarity with the Classics, with nineteenth century English novels or whatever it was that got crammed down their young throats.
When it comes to general intelligence, I am confident Johnson will be head'n'shoulders above his inquisitors, though because of his public school and Oxbridge training he will go to some pains to hide this.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This very nice lady-headmaster who committed suicide because of an adverse Ofsted Report on her school is getting the usual handwringing, why-oh-why, those Ofsted bastards should be horse-whipped, treatment on every channel and beamed ad nauseam to all parts of the local galaxy. So I'd better beam the truth to the denizens of the AEL who live on a different planet.
1. Anybody who commits suicide because of an adverse Ofsted Report has no business being in charge of a school
2. The reason Ofsted put in an adverse report is because the school had taken a turn for the worse under the ministration of a woman with such severe psychological problems she was soon to take her own life.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Mick Harper wrote: | 1. Anybody who commits suicide because of an adverse Ofsted Report has no business being in charge of a school
2. The reason Ofsted put in an adverse report is because the school had taken a turn for the worse under the ministration of a woman with such severe psychological problems she was soon to take her own life. |
I doubt that the school had got worse at all, the problem was that they were an outstanding school, with few safeguarding issues, so had not fullly implemented the latest safeguarding guidance issued by government. As it's safeguarding the Ofsted rated the school inadequate. As it's safeguarding they automatically then rate the leadership inadequate. Whole lot of private schools have the same problem, they are outstanding in all areas except safeguarding as it's not seen as a problem, so they don't do the check box exercises. Many schools in deprived areas are the opposite: they have fantastic safeguarding, every concern noted and reported, all teachers fully checked, but they are seen as holding their pupils back academically. Academic results are worse than in less deprived areas.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Wiley wrote: | | I doubt that the school had got worse at all, the problem was that they were an outstanding school, with few safeguarding issues, so had not fullly implemented the latest safeguarding guidance issued by government. |
It may be silly but it's still the head's duty to tick the boxes. Not to do so is itself a red flag.
| As it's safeguarding the Ofsted rated the school inadequate. As it's safeguarding they automatically then rate the leadership inadequate. |
This sounds right. I have no doubt that Ofsted is inadequate.
| Whole lot of private schools have the same problem, they are outstanding in all areas except safeguarding as it's not seen as a problem, so they don't do the check box exercises. |
I find this surprising. They are usually punctilious about this sort of thing.
| Many schools in deprived areas are the opposite: they have fantastic safeguarding, every concern noted and reported, all teachers fully checked, but they are seen as holding their pupils back academically. |
Which reminds me, I must look up what this 'safeguarding' mullarkey is all about.
| Academic results are worse than in less deprived areas. |
This has always been the case and will always be the case.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Mick Harper wrote: |
Which reminds me, I must look up what this 'safeguarding' mullarkey is all about. |
I don't know what they didn't do. The normal organisational fail is that they don't have an up to date system in place for renewing DBS checks (disclosure and barring checks) or some such, i.e. they were checking their teachers and all other staff before appointment (because everyone does that) but had fallen behind renewing so there were some members now out of date who, it will be argued, could have committed an offence in the intervening period so would pose a safeguarding risk. The fault might have been, say, a change in HR personal, so nobody was checking that the checking was in or out of date......that sort of thing.
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Grant
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And where did this idea come from that coroners will investigate not just the cause of death, but come up a series of recommendations to reduce the chance of death in future? It never used to work like that, did it?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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It's always been part of their remit. The problem is that self-important coroners like to see their names in the papers but have no powers to see whether their remarks are followed up. Or, for that matter, checked out as to whether they are true or not.
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