26-Nov 2022 : LAB: 50% / CON: 27% / LDEM: 9% / GRN: 4%

[steve]

BBC question time standard Tory majority audience hands up who thinks Spaffer was telling the truth😂
To be fair the answer would be the same whichever yesterday was being referred to.

[alec]

For those interested, I have just posted a couple of new links on the covid thread. One is a paper published yesterday in Nature, showing how covid disrupts chromatin, the building block of chromosomes and vital for DNA replication and repair. References to interferon disruption as well, critical in cancer responses, and this potentially explains the growing empirical observations of poor cancer outcomes following covid infection. In the next decade, I suspect we'll understand the true implications of this, but we have enough evidence already to opt for caution, and the prevention/delay of as many infections as possible until better vaccines and therapeutics can be developed.

The second is a link to a thoughtful analysis of US rates of long covid, which extrapolates from the simple observation that only 55% of Americans believe they have had covid while serological data suggests it's 98%, and from that suggests that rates of self reported long covid (5% of all US citizens) are likely heavily under reported, as you can't self report long covid if you falsely believe you have never had covid in the first place.

Danny - do please show a little respect to others. Don't distort and misrepresent what I say - that's just childish - and don't persist in posting personal responses to me on the main thread. Take it over to the covid thread, or direct message me. Others posters and Mark don't like this, and your continued inability to do as asked is extremely rude.

@everyone else - I am attempting to keep covid discussion on the dedicated thread, but I refuse to stop posting signposts as above. This stuff is far more important than most currently understand, but by all means ignore if not interested. I won't respond to Danny on the main thread, unless he repeats falsehoods about what I've said. Lying about and attacking another poster goes beyond the topic itself, and becomes an issue of personal integrity, and everyone has a right to defend themselves. That may mean some discussion of covid related details here, but I'll do my best to keep it to a bare minimum and when Danny stops misbehaving, that will cease.

[alec]

I find this quite a funny comment on the 'efficiencies' of modern tech -

/photo/1

[steve]

I did see one man in the BBC question time selected audience begin to raise his hand , realising he was a lone island of gullibility in an ocean of reality was a quick move to an ear scratch!

[jimjam]

Alec, yes but all the preparation and dissemination - handouts and the like will be way quicker for lecturers these days.

No acetates or sheets for example.

[steve]

@jimjam

I remember back in my university days at Bristol one lecturer solving the preparation problem by being so unremittingly tedious that no one turned up.

Another took the approach that if he turned up five minutes after the students they would start without him.

[jimjam]

The key question surely is not how few people think Johnson is honest but how many think he is especially dishonest for a politician.

They all lie is, sadly and inaccurately imo, a refrain I often hear.

[steamdrivenandy]

Mar 24, 2023 8:56:56 GMT jimjam said:

The key question surely is not how few people think Johnson is honest but how many think he is especially dishonest for a politician.

They all lie is, sadly and inaccurately imo, a refrain I often hear.

I think people conflate not answering a question with lying and they've got so used to politicians avoiding awkward questions, that in their minds that amounts to lying.

Of course Johnson manages to do both, whilst blustering in order to give himself time to think up the next lie. 

[bardin1]

I attended a medieval history lecture at Uni in my second year and was the only person there (I had missed the first few on the course). After about 15 minutes the lecturer trailed off and stared at me for a bit. He then asked me if I realised that the lecture could be terminated after 15 minutes if there was no one in attendance. Another pause and I slunk off. I believe he gave all his lectures that term to an empty room , for 15 minutes.

[steve]

I think lying on oath is a step up from political bullshit.
The fact is Spaffer using the moron defence is a difficult thing to deal with.

For his fans you either have to accept he's an idiot , blind and selectively deaf or he's spouting bollocks.

The way right wing media and his supporters get round this is by creating their own alternative reality with its own alternative history where the evidence of their own eyes is replaced by what they would like to be true .

The same applies to Mar el Lardo in the US and the brexitanian cultists here.

[domjg]

Mar 24, 2023 9:18:56 GMT bardin1 said:

I attended a medieval history lecture at Uni in my second year and was the only person there (I had missed the first few on the course). After about 15 minutes the lecturer trailed off and stared at me for a bit. He then asked me if I realised that the lecture could be terminated after 15 minutes if there was no one in attendance. Another pause and I slunk off. I believe he gave all his lectures that term to an empty room , for 15 minutes.

That must have been really depressing for him. Imagine spending time preparing on a topic you're passionate about and then no-one shows.  My undergrad lectures were mostly 'compulsory' (languages). Still missed loads of them though.. 

[steve]

domjg

Of course the other way of ensuring that no preparation was necessary was to schedule a lecture at 9am.
If anyone turned up they would be sleep walking

[alec]

mandolinist - I've finally managed to catch up with the Women's Hour segment on school absence you referenced recently. It is interesting, but my take is that it is a deeply flawed report and presentation, all too readily lapped up by a gullible media.

First off, it's a report by a right wing think tank, the CSJ. Fair play to the WH host that she did flag up the fact that it was a 'centre right' think tank at the outset. For me, there is a central flaw in the CSJ argument from the outset. They, and most commentators, believe that school closures during the pandemic (side note - we're still in the pandemic) "shattered the social contract with schools". Two points here. Firstly, we had one 10 week school closure in March 2020, and a second six week closure in Jan 2021. That's it.

I don't understand why two pretty short periods of shutdown shatter the social contract, where the annual seven week summer holidays don't. In my brain, that doesn't compute. It seems a bizarre bit of reasoning, with the obvious conclusion that we need to abolish to long summer holiday because it will cause persistent absence.

Second, the report finds that severely absent numbered 60,000 pre pandemic, rose to 100,000 after lockdowns, and in 2022 rose again to 140,000. If this was due to school closures during the early waves of the pandemic, then numbers wouldn't have risen sharply after all restrictions were removed, and schools were functioning normally.

The head teacher in the broadcast did mentioned fear of disease, strep A, and home education as part of the reason. What I simply cannot fathom is why the report itself from the right wing CSJ, in all it's 36 pages, fails totally to mention 'coronavirus', 'long covid', or even 'covid'. They accept that anxiety is the largest single reason, the head teacher references fear of disease, but the CSJ fail to address this rather obvious factor. They've written a report looking at child absence from school in a year when we have seen record levels of infectious disease among English children, from a novel pathogen known to cause persistent long term symptoms, especially in the young, and the entire issue has simply been totally airbrushed from the report. That is truly extraordinary.

Unfortunately the BBC has played it's role by uncritically regurgitating a severely sub standard report from a right wing think tank, and so the result is a highly biased and partial examination of the issue.

To be clear, I think there is some good stuff in the report, and the program was interesting in the way it covered these secondary issues and particularly the efforts the head from Barrow went to to overcome their attendance issues. I'm not doubting that there are longer term issues, nor that lockdowns and pandemic restrictions did cause some harm (although noting, as ever, that surveys indicate that overall, mental health marginally improved during lockdowns, including for young people, child suicides declined in lockdowns etc). Clearly, there are broad issues affecting attendance and these can be problematical.

But to fail to reference a disease that has sent hundreds of children to hospital at some points and that has infected children multiple times, in the biggest episode of infectious disease in children for a century, is an inexcusable omission.

For reference, here is the CSJ report - www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/CSJ-Lost_and_Not_Found.pdf

[Danny]

Mar 24, 2023 8:56:56 GMT jimjam said:

The key question surely is not how few people think Johnson is honest but how many think he is especially dishonest for a politician.

They all lie is, sadly and inaccurately imo, a refrain I often hear.

But they do all lie.

Political parties agree to be bound by collective decision making. That means each member goes along with the official line. You see this most strongly in the difference between what a particular person says one week when they are a minister, and then the next after they have been fired. But every single serious politician is briefed upon what to say and what not to say. They are told how to lie effectively without being caught out. (though there have been some recent examples where people so studiously refuse to answer questions they just become ridiculous instead).

We just saw Jeremy corbyn hounded out for disagreeing with certain factions in his party. Obviously, disagreed with certain factions amongst voters too and arguably thats why the party chucked him out. All the time he was a low profile back bencher, it didnt matter, he was just a local eccentric. Which kinda tells us, the more important a politician is, then the more they must lie to keep that job.

I strongly think one of the reasons Johnson did so well is he was always a liar and known to be. Voters liked, and still do like his honesty that politicians lie. His problem at the moment is he is trapped between lying about not realising there was a party, and admitting a very much bigger lie, that the reason they held the parties was because they saw no benefit from the legal restrictions they had imposed, which is why they broke them. Thats pretty obvious...there is no way these people could have misunderstood they were breaking the rules, and if they believed those rules were benefitting the UK and themselves, they would not have done so. Its a lie so big even Johnson cannot admit to it. And therein he falls in the end because he cannot use his get out of jail card of admitting the lie.

[Danny]

Mar 24, 2023 9:16:28 GMT steamdrivenandy said:

I think people conflate not answering a question with lying and they've got so used to politicians avoiding awkward questions, that in their minds that amounts to lying.

It does amount to lying. The test of the lie is in the mind of the person answering, not the words spoken. If for example someone was legally being accused of fraud, and when their victim had asked a pertinent question which might have given away the fraud, they had deliberately changed the subject, that would all be part of their fraud. If you say something by accident, it isnt lying. If you say anything, or even nothing, so as to deliberately give the wrong impression, then its lying.

[Danny]

Mar 24, 2023 9:24:23 GMT steve said:

I think lying on oath is a step up from political bullshit.

yes. But should that higher standard automatically apply to anyone making statements as part of a campaign to obtain an elected governmental post?

[Danny]

Mar 24, 2023 9:25:11 GMT domjg said:

Mar 24, 2023 9:18:56 GMT bardin1 said:

I attended a medieval history lecture at Uni in my second year and was the only person there (I had missed the first few on the course). After about 15 minutes the lecturer trailed off and stared at me for a bit. He then asked me if I realised that the lecture could be terminated after 15 minutes if there was no one in attendance. Another pause and I slunk off. I believe he gave all his lectures that term to an empty room , for 15 minutes.

That must have been really depressing for him. Imagine spending time preparing on a topic you're passionate about and then no-one shows.  My undergrad lectures were mostly 'compulsory' (languages). Still missed loads of them though.. 

Most of my lectures were classes of about 200, and the rest 100. All were well attended, though no one was checking.

I dont get the point of going to university unless you are going to attend the lectures. Especially now  you have to pay. Are the lectures  now so awful they are pointless attending? Has this just become  a transaction where you give them £30,000 or whatever and they give you a degree?

Mar 24, 2023 9:27:52 GMT steve said:

Of course the other way of ensuring that no preparation was necessary was to schedule a lecture at 9am. If anyone turned up they would be sleep walking

I guess you are making a joke. We had a timetable, started every day at 9. If attendance did drop off at all it was last thing Friday afternoon. Presumably because that allowed you to beat the rush hour traffic.

[pjw1961]

Mar 24, 2023 9:24:23 GMT steve said:

I think lying on oath is a step up from political bullshit.
The fact is Spaffer using the moron defence is a difficult thing to deal with.

For his fans you either have to accept he's an idiot , blind and selectively deaf or he's spouting bollocks.

The way right wing media and his supporters get round this is by creating their own alternative reality with its own alternative history where the evidence of their own eyes is replaced by what they would like to be true .

The same applies to Mar el Lardo in the US and the brexitanian cultists here.

They have an even more insidious and dangerous method - if you can't win on facts, attack the process and/or your opponents character.

'Its a kangaroo court' and "Harman is biased' are first cousins to 'the election was stolen' and 'we've had enough of experts'. 

This line of thinking ends with the demagogues killing democracy, unless it is called out at every turn. 

[pjw1961]

Mar 24, 2023 9:25:11 GMT domjg said:

Mar 24, 2023 9:18:56 GMT bardin1 said:

I attended a medieval history lecture at Uni in my second year and was the only person there (I had missed the first few on the course). After about 15 minutes the lecturer trailed off and stared at me for a bit. He then asked me if I realised that the lecture could be terminated after 15 minutes if there was no one in attendance. Another pause and I slunk off. I believe he gave all his lectures that term to an empty room , for 15 minutes.

That must have been really depressing for him. Imagine spending time preparing on a topic you're passionate about and then no-one shows.  My undergrad lectures were mostly 'compulsory' (languages). Still missed loads of them though.. 

Never missed a lecture or seminar in three years and had every essay written several days in advance of the deadline. Probably tells you more about me than the course.  

That lecturer above would have been very disappointed in me, as I would have loved to have done medieval history and would have forced him to perform! Got stuck with 19th century social and political, which was fashionable at the time; it was ok but not as interesting. 

[steamdrivenandy]

Mar 24, 2023 10:19:03 GMT pjw1961 said:

Mar 24, 2023 9:25:11 GMT domjg said:

That must have been really depressing for him. Imagine spending time preparing on a topic you're passionate about and then no-one shows.  My undergrad lectures were mostly 'compulsory' (languages). Still missed loads of them though.. 

Never missed a lecture or seminar in three years and had every essay written several days in advance of the deadline. Probably tells you more about me than the course.  

That lecturer above would have been very disappointed in me, as I would have loved to have done medieval history and would have forced him to perform! Got stuck with 19th century social and political, which was fashionable at the time; it was ok but not as interesting. 

Reminds me of my 'O' Level European History 1848 to 1914 passed in the summer of 1964. That's history itself now.

Taught by the headmistress, who put us through the Religious Knowledge 'O' Level syllabus in the Autumn of '63 (another one passed) and didn't start teaching us the history syllabus until after the RK exam was over. So two 'O' Levels from one set of lessons in a year. Mind, I did get five other 'O' Levels too.

So much for 'sink' '60's secondary moderns.  

[c-a-r-f-r-e-w]

Mar 24, 2023 10:12:57 GMT Danny said:

Mar 24, 2023 9:25:11 GMT domjg said:

That must have been really depressing for him. Imagine spending time preparing on a topic you're passionate about and then no-one shows.  My undergrad lectures were mostly 'compulsory' (languages). Still missed loads of them though.. 

Most of my lectures were classes of about 200, and the rest 100. All were well attended, though no one was checking.

I dont get the point of going to university unless you are going to attend the lectures. Especially now  you have to pay. Are the lectures  now so awful they are pointless attending? Has this just become  a transaction where you give them £30,000 or whatever and they give you a degree?

Mar 24, 2023 9:27:52 GMT steve said:

Of course the other way of ensuring that no preparation was necessary was to schedule a lecture at 9am. If anyone turned up they would be sleep walking

I guess you are making a joke. We had a timetable, started every day at 9. If attendance did drop off at all it was last thing Friday afternoon. Presumably because that allowed you to beat the rush hour traffic.

These days since lockdown etc., many lectures may have been recorded on video allowing students to catch up later. It can be preferable in some ways as students can work at their own pace, take a break, rewind and check something again etc.

We used to do this back in the mid-nineties in the media department at a college I worked at, but we had our own video technicians and editing suites etc.

Regarding 9am lectures, they can be a bit affected if there’s a student night the night before and everyone’s wrecked etc.

[Danny]

Mar 24, 2023 9:49:35 GMT alec said:

mandolinist - I've finally managed to catch up with the Women's Hour segment on school absence you referenced recently. It is interesting, but my take is that it is a deeply flawed report and presentation, all too readily lapped up by a gullible media.

Thats fine. You are expressing here your own bias so we can all see and use that to judge your posts. Excellent, and I can only wish politicians in general would do the same.

I don't understand why two pretty short periods of shutdown shatter the social contract, where the annual seven week summer holidays don't.

I dont understand how the two are comparable. The way holidays are organised is simply a convention and might be good or bad. A number of people have said we ought to spread holidays out more evenly, but thats just a matter of convenience and nothing to do with the fundamental idea whether its good or bad to go to school. Lockdown and government statements during covid, and indeed your own claims that people are at significant risk going to school and catching covid even now, all are saying it is undesireable to attend school, or pointles, or dangerous.

In my brain, that doesn't compute. It seems a bizarre bit of reasoning, with the obvious conclusion that we need to abolish to long summer holiday because it will cause persistent absence.

Would not surprise me if it does, though I also dont know that from any evidence, but that has nothing to do with covid and isnt something which recently changed. You could be right that a different working pattern could improve education, but again nothing to do with covid or indeed lockdown. Straw man diversion.

Second, the report finds that severely absent numbered 60,000 pre pandemic, rose to 100,000 after lockdowns, and in 2022 rose again to 140,000. If this was due to school closures during the early waves of the pandemic, then numbers wouldn't have risen sharply after all restrictions were removed, and schools were functioning normally.

That rather depends why people are absent. It might be for example, that parents are now able to go on holiday again, and taking their kids with them. I'd think 2022 would be just the year for this to show up. Obviously they will not tell the shcool this is what they are doing, because that would be illegal and they would be fined.

The point about having broken the social contract, is that more people now believe it is right to do this. Its the same as Johnson's garden parties. Staff there obviously believed the rules were stupid so they disobeyed them. Parents now think the attendance rules are stupid so they disobey them. Laws arent obeyed simply because of the punishment, but because people in general agree to them. Once you have shown parents it doesnt matter if their kids do not attend, then they will not enforce those rules themselves.

They accept that anxiety is the largest single reason, the head teacher references fear of disease, but the CSJ fail to address this rather obvious factor.

You continue to try to persuade people that covid is very dangerous. The real world out there says that covid is not at all dangerous to kids. Or their parents who are also in the younger half of the pupulation. They all know by now they have had the vaccinations which government promised will keep them safe, they have seen hardly anyone died in their age group. I would think it much more likely kids are afraid to go to school because of bullying than covid. And see no point in going because the quality of teaching is really awful. Kids will tell you eg that they never skip thursday or monday because on those days they have Mrs X teaching them, who is actually worth going to.

record levels of infectious disease among English children, from a novel pathogen known to cause persistent long term symptoms, especially in the young,

i begin to think you live in a different reality to many of us. Cases of corona viruses amongst kids are probably much as they were in 2018. Covid is no longer novel, its three years old and one of the most massively studied diseases in human history. Actual recorded cases of significant long term symptoms amongst kids, or 'the young' are negligible.

I am tempted to suggest you need to move on from your obsession that covid is so dangerous. It was never as dangerous as claimed, and dangers such as there are have declined steadily with time. The real disaster was in exaggerating the risk and then over reacting, causing a world recession.

You continue doing this. Why do you feel this need to keep exaggerating covid risk and striking fear? Is it because you are politically committed to labour (judging from your posts) and they need to persuade the public covid interventions were necessary, nearly as much as con do?

I think there is some good stuff in the report, and the program was interesting in the way it covered these secondary issues and particularly the efforts the head from Barrow went to to overcome their attendance issues.

I dont kown if it was there or somehwere else, but one head reported they wholly resolved all their attendance issues. Which would of course be impossible if the reason behind absence was genuine illness.

[c-a-r-f-r-e-w]

Danny

Furthermore...

The worth of going to lectures can vary. It was commonplace among PPE students not to bother. But I did some of the PPE economics essays and went to some lectures, and while the lectures were quite entertaining you could get what you needed from the text books.

On the science course I was on though, lectures were well attended. It was a relatively young science though, it was harder to find all you needed in books*, and you often needed to be in the department to do lab work anyway which was rather demanding and a practical could last days, or a week or more. Might as well go to the lectures anyways while you are there. (And if it’s a small department lecturers will notice if you are missing)

In the sort of thing I used to teach, music tech., it’s not ideally suited to getting stuff from books as what you are doing a lot of the time is making changes to sound (often quite subtle changes) which can be quite hard to convey in print.


* I recall that for Biochemistry there was a particular text book people used to get and you basically had to work through that. I forget its name now, but I also recall that for Physical Chemistry the standard text tended to be Atkins, IIRC.

[Danny]

Mar 24, 2023 10:44:05 GMT c-a-r-f-r-e-w said:

These days since lockdown etc., many lectures may have been recorded on video allowing students to catch up later. It can be preferable in some ways as students can work at their own pace, take a break, rewind and check something again etc.

We used to do this back in the mid-nineties in the media department at a college I worked at, but we had our own video technicians and editing suites etc.

But this is simply the OU model. lectures by video at your home or wherever is convenient. No need for huge university buuildings at all. No need for lecturers once you have done all the recordings. It implies the industry is mostly a huge waste of money.

[domjg]

Found this very interesting on Xi's recent trip to Moscow. China and the West are far more embedded with and dependent on each other economically than either is with Russia. Xi appears to be trying a delicate balancing act.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/22/vladimir-putin-xi-jinping-russia-china

[Danny]

State visit to France postponed. Despite item this morning saying it was going ahead and the discussion between charles and the French head of state would be very useful. Mentioned how he could discuss global warming.

Perhaps someone in government heard the report, fearing Charles would once again bang on about global warming as suggested. Which got him banned from the last international junket. Which this government doe NOT regard as politically safe.

[steve]

As I'm fully retired I was finding it a little tedious and was looking around for a part time job.

I came across an offer for a part time security post.

I called to ask what it entailed.

They said I would have to watch the office.

I'm up to season four now will call back when I've finished.

[pjw1961]

Mar 24, 2023 10:42:15 GMT steamdrivenandy said:

Mar 24, 2023 10:19:03 GMT pjw1961 said:

Reminds me of my 'O' Level European History 1848 to 1914 passed in the summer of 1964. That's history itself now.

It certainly is! When my son did history A level, subjects included the civil rights movement in the US, Apartheid South Africa and the Cold War. It got depressing when he was studying evens in the 1970s and 80s as history and I was saying "I remember that!".  

[bardin1]

Mar 24, 2023 10:19:03 GMT pjw1961 said:

Mar 24, 2023 9:25:11 GMT domjg said:

That must have been really depressing for him. Imagine spending time preparing on a topic you're passionate about and then no-one shows.  My undergrad lectures were mostly 'compulsory' (languages). Still missed loads of them though.. 

Never missed a lecture or seminar in three years and had every essay written several days in advance of the deadline. Probably tells you more about me than the course.  

That lecturer above would have been very disappointed in me, as I would have loved to have done medieval history and would have forced him to perform! Got stuck with 19th century social and political, which was fashionable at the time; it was ok but not as interesting. 

The lecturer was about 80, had an incomprehensible speaking voice - he was eastern European. I couldn't understand what he was saying, never mind learn from it. He had written a book in the 50s or 40s (it was now the 70s) and that had made his reputation. His lectureship was now a sinecure and there was no way (then) of sacking him as long as he did his lecture course (and he had to do 15 minutes minimum). He was probably deliberately making them dull and boring (he just read them from hand written notes IIRC) to secure his salary/ pension.  Medieval history was great - just not his lectures!

I thought it was so great that 50 years later I am selling second hand medieval history books in my online business (Hadwebutknown books)

My daughter's experience studying through lockdown was interesting. Lectures switched entirely to online of course during the pandemic. What is interesting is that a high proportion are still being delivered online and it is clear the lecturers prefer that. I think its sad, as part of the university experience is the live interaction with tutors, lecturers and other students.

[pjw1961]

Mar 24, 2023 11:21:35 GMT bardin1 said:

Mar 24, 2023 10:19:03 GMT pjw1961 said:

I thought it was so great that 50 years later I am selling second hand medieval history books in my online business (Hadwebutknown books)

My daughter's experience studying through lockdown was interesting. Lectures switched entirely to online of course during the pandemic. What is interesting is that a high proportion are still being delivered online and it is clear the lecturers prefer that. I think its sad, as part of the university experience is the live interaction with tutors, lecturers and other students.

Well advertised sir! I immediately had to have a look!

My son's degree was disrupted by Covid as were my daughter's A levels. I think my son missed out on part of the Uni experience, although he still enjoyed it, and remote learning was not good for my daughter.