Seen in the News

[plaques]

The debate over when to open schools rumbles on. Parents are naturally concerned about the risk to their children but there is another side to these school closures. Once a child gets left behind in their education it is very difficult for the average child from a poor background to catch up.

Nearly 10 years of progress in narrowing the attainment gap in England between disadvantaged pupils and their classmates has probably been wiped out in a few months due to the pandemic, a study by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has found.

From my own experience of secondary school education it was painfully obvious that in the science classes one lad in particular was really struggling in understanding what was going on then miraculously the following week he was up with the rest of us. Fortunately his parents were quite wealthy and could afford private tuition which brought him up to scratch. The lad reasonably clever but could have easily been left behind. I have always supported a bit of extra tuition for this very reason. But what if you can't afford this extra assistance?

[plaques]

Rolls Barlick to lose 200 job in the latest round of redundancies. Rolls. That appears to be 200 out of 740. (27%).

[Stanley]

Ken, I have always contended that instead of following the elitist course of giving the major funding to universities we should invest it lower down particularly in Primary and Secondary. I agree with you again.

[Tizer]

All this oil spilt and in a region so cold that it will be very slow to degrade...
`Russia's Putin declares state of emergency after Arctic Circle oil spill' LINK
`Russia's President Vladimir Putin has declared a state of emergency after 20,000 tonnes of oil leaked into a river within the Arctic Circle. The spill happened when a fuel tank at a power plant near the Siberian city of Norilsk collapsed last Friday. President Putin expressed anger after discovering officials only learnt about the incident two days later. The plant is owned by a subsidiary of Norilsk Nickel, which is the world's leading nickel and palladium producer. And in a televised video conference on Wednesday, Mr Putin lambasted the head of the company over the timeliness of its response....The accident happened when the pillars supporting a fuel tank at a power plant began to sink. The area is built on permafrost which has been melting as the climate warms. The leaked oil drifted some 12km (7.5 miles) from the accident site, turning long stretches of the Ambarnaya river crimson red....The accident is believed to be the second largest in modern Russian history in terms of volume, an expert from the World Wildlife Fund told the AFP news agency. It has contaminated a 350 sq km (135 sq mile) area, state media report..'.

[Stanley]

I saw that report and as it's light oil, diesel fuel in the report I saw, impossible to clean up.

[Tizer]

Remarkable film of a coastal landslide taking houses out into the sea, then being carried back as the sea returns...
`Norway landslide: Buildings swept away in Alta disaster' LINK

[Stanley]

So flood plains aren't the only hazard. Nature wins again!

[Tizer]

Imagine being in a care home, getting covid-19 and then being faced with a hike to your care bill of £5000 a year. The sooner we have a public National Care Service equivalent to the NHS the better...
`Coronavirus: Care home residents face steep hike in fees' LINK

[Stanley]

Couldn't agree more Tiz. An NCS (I like that!) is just what we need because if decent wages were paid to carers the bill would go up even further. Care Home fees are actually a very regressive tax.
I noted Priti Patel banging on against protesters on the grounds of Covid transmission and failing to say a word about injustice. I suspect she actually doesn't care a hoot about that, not part of her mind set. In fact I wonder about the rest of her mind set. I can't remember ever hearing her making a principled statement about anything apart from an unguarded moment when she seemed to endorse hanging and flogging.

[Tripps]

Plaques - I believe your moment has come. . . .

"Earlier, the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, said the capital’s landmarks – including street names, the names of public buildings and plaques – would be reviewed by a commission to ensure they reflect the capital’s diversity, with a view to removing those with links to slavery after Black Lives Matter protesters tore down a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol."

[Stanley]

I see the current obsession with statues and names as a hopeful sign that more attention is being paid to racial injustice. The artefacts aren't as important as the principle but they are serving a purpose.

[Tizer]

These are the electric scooters I posted about a couple of weeks ago. You can buy one in the UK legally but cannot yet use it legally except on private land. There's going to be a lot of interest if and when they do get allowed on the roads - and, I suspect, a lot of trouble! (During lockdown we've seen a big increase here in the number of cyclists out and about - but often on pavements and not giving way to pedestrians.)
`When can I ride an e-scooter legally?' LINK

[Tripps]

They are going after Robert Peel now. He of 'Bobbies and Peelers' . Whatever next? How about (D' ye ken) John Peel who was very nasty to foxes - we should not be 'heroising' him, and singing songs in his memory. Is that a word? - It is now; if Bob Bliss can memorialise - I can heroise.

Just heard that 'Gone with the Wind has been withdrawn from distribution, since (filmed in 1939) it depicts slaves as being happy and slave owners as benevolent. Quite inappropriate. Don't they trust us to be aware that it was unlikely? I've never watched, it but all my lifetime it has been portrayed as a giant amongst films.

Talking Pictures TV on Ch 306 give a written warning before many films that attitudes portrayed may not be the same as they are today. I think some of us may have spotted that already. On now is Carlton Browne of the F.O. with Terry Thomas - which demonstrates the matter quite well, and as for 'Carry on up the Khyber' well . . . . .

frankley my dear, I don't give a damn

The performance of Nadim Zahawi (Business Secretary and MP for Kurdistan West) this morning on the radio was cringeworthy. He, as usual with all of them, ignored all questions and just kept repeating the 'line to take' . I heard him twice. This is good as the pattern of his 'same replies to different questions' became clear. I must say the BBC gave him a harder time than LBC. Commendable.

PS _I'm listening to More or Less' on BBC Radio 4 as I'm typing this. Tizer is correct - as background listening, it's hard work, but it should be compulsory listening for politicians. The ring of truth is certainly there.

[Tizer]

I'm glad you're listening to More or Less, Tripps, it's worth the effort - and some of it is even humorous!
I have concerns about the toppling of statues and just wrote something on the Attention thread. LINK

[Whyperion]

There were some situations where those that had been acquired to work as slaves indeed were well or even benevolently treated them ( from the South of the USA or back to Roman times if you want to go that far ). Like many unintended consequence the granting of freedom from an ownership model to a wage renumeration model in the USA at least never quite went well, with ingrained attitudes and the constant wage packet to food a week at a time there was / is little ability for the masses to earn themselves comfortable respectibility and a get rich culture via drugs or violent robbery (or both) becomes difficult to police - that the get rich easy culture is also in any level of bankers downwards is often ignored, at the end of the day it is the moral ethics you wish to persue that will bring change, religion may, or may not, help.

[Stanley]

"The performance of Nadim Zahawi (Business Secretary and MP for Kurdistan West) this morning on the radio was cringeworthy."
Wasn't it just David. One of the many things I loved about Gordon Prentice was the fact that he was officially part of the awkward squad, when asked a question he gave his opinion.

[Tizer]

Delivery companies are planning to employ thousands more drivers (e.g. DPD aims for 3500 more) because they expand the present shift to online shopping to become permanent. This will mean many thousands more vans and lorries on the roads. I hope the government is taking note of this and making plans for a faster shift to electric vehicles. At least it will provide jobs for some of those people permanently knocked out of their present employment by the virus - unless the retailers start using drones or driverless vans.

[Whyperion]

more likely gig economy last mile delivery sub-contracts paid at a rate that delivers below living wage net amount

[PanBiker]

I recently had a parcel delivered by Hermes, The tracking reference I was sent for delivery day had me as no 147 from 180 deliveries that the driver had that day. Saw a bloke yesterday in high vis and a private saloon type car, stuffed to the gunnels with parcels. He came along our back street jumped out and delivered to one of our neighbours on Pleasant View then was away. Car was so packed he had no chance of using the rear view mirror.

[Whyperion]

probably has to load and route in the order given, particulary if they dont know the area, will probably be annoyed they had to come back. Mind you if you have to unload on a yellow line the time taken doing multi-drops can exceed the normal 20mins allowance if doing a load in a small area.

[Stanley]

I've seen them using private cars as well Ian. Small matter of insurance?

[Tizer]

All the vans darting about in built up areas provides more cover for criminal activities. I posted recently about our local landscape gardener who had his van broken into at night. The police said the same thieves had done a lot of other vans in the town during that night. They were very efficient, dodged the van alarms, cut into the back doors and took out the locking mechanisms. All in silence in residential streets and no-one heard anything. The police said they recognise the style from attacks in other towns.

How about this for two-months income?...
`Have we become too reliant on Big Tech firms?' LINK
`...Between 18 March and 19 May, Amazon's Jeff Bezos saw his wealth swell by $34.6bn (£27.6bn) and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg's wealth rose by $25bn (£19.9bn)...Big Tech firms have been getting even bigger during the pandemic and their success means they have plenty of funds to snap up other businesses.

[PanBiker]

One major thing to think about with the rise of online shopping and the need for hundreds of thousands of deliveries. Taking the example I gave above of a guy with 180 deliveries a day to do in a stretched Transit or Luton van. All the starting and stopping, the worst possible way to run an internal combustion engine be it petrol or diesel! This is one driver from thousands on a daily basis. Mr packed to the gunnels guy in a private car is another example. There is no hope for the planet continuing to run a consumer supply and delivery regime such as this.

[Whyperion]

Bicycle and Milk Float?

[Tripps]

There is no hope for the planet continuing to run a consumer supply and delivery regime such as this.

Maybe - but we all continue to use these home delivery services don't we ? There was a time when you'd have gone to Maplins for your heat absorbing resistor. Not now.