RandoEFC

I'm watching ABC News live on YouTube which is pretty decent so far, if it's available where you are.

2021 has been very "hold my beer" so far hasn't it.

The sad thing is that a number of people on this forum alone called this about 2 years ago.

Imagine what the same people would say if this was a Black Lives Matter protest. Trump should be jailed for life the day he leaves office. What higher order of treason is there above inciting a riot against the actual Capitol building?

I'm not going to pretend that this generation of British kids are the first ones ever to be hard done by but at least the ones who were sent off to war or sent up chimneys did so for some actual reason and/or due to a lack of information about how it would affect them. The current generation of British kids have had Brexit inflicted upon them when all the evidence was there that it would only damage their lives, not enhance them in anyway. They're saddled with the responsibility on a worldwide level of sorting out the climate because the generation that came before them, again with all of the relevant science and information available to them, chose to act irresponsibly and pass on the ever-increasing consequences instead to the younger generation having taken completely inadequate action themselves. Then you've got Coronavirus which has impacted all generations horribly, but the damage it has done to their education has been made a lot worse by the decimation of education funding by the Conservative government over the past 10 years which has left schools with no wriggle room to deal with a shock to the system like this one, and even worse still by the catastrophic monstrosity of governance we've seen over the past year from Boris Johnson and Gavin Williamson, who are only in a position to have any influence over the situation because of, and here we come full circle, Brexit. Of course they aren't the first generation to be affected by it but I'm not exaggerating. I'm just fed up of the kids I've dedicated my career to educating being disadvantaged and burdened by the factors I describe above with one common denominator - a cocktail of selfishness, rich twats who have never known anything else but comfort abusing their position and irresponsible, science-denying, fact-denying right-wing ideology. It's just all so pointless. It should be a basic human instinct to want your children's and grandchildren's lives to be better than your own, and yet in this country, we can't cobble together a government of a handful of people from a pool of 60 million who have even heard of such a concept and actively encourage the labelling of those who have as communists and Marxists. I'm ranting and rambling, I know I am, but I'm bothered on behalf of the current generation of British youth because it's my job to try and give them something to work with when they leave school and others here are concerned for them for the right reasons, they're the ones we can actually help now so they're the ones we're going to harp on about.

I think to be fair he was talking in the context of Britain and that should have been clear by the mention of Brexit. None of us on here think the world revolves around us and in fact are totally embarrassed by the state of the country, our governance and the "Rule Britannia" image that the loudest, stupidest, but not majority section of our population has cultivated for the rest of us on the global stage.

I don't think you can argue that there was a better path that would have kept schools open because of the new strain of the virus. What you can criticise is the government's pig headed refusal to ever conceive of another situation where schools would have to close to most again, which has resulted in them now having to rush out millions of devices haphazardly to homes where they're needed to enable students to access remote learning. "Schools will not close again, because we're big strong patriotic Tories and we say so" doesn't stop the virus I'm afraid. Williamson had the cheek to stand up today in the Commons and ask parents to report schools to Ofsted if their children don't receive 3-5 hours of teaching a day. That's his solution to bridging the gap between disadvantaged kids and the rest. Not planning ahead to make sure they can all access work from home where possible, not supporting families with several children and not enough space for them all to do school work separately, nothing practical, just asking parents to tell tales to Ofsted who can then put schools under more negative pressure while he borrows the Downing Street photographer off Donald Johnson and poses next to his whip again. Who do schools go to to complain about Gavin Williamson when he doesn't provide us with 3-5 hours of competent leadership in education a day? 3-5 hours in a fucking year would be a step in the right direction.

Biden and the Democrats better not fuck this up now. It shouldn't be a big deal but it is a big deal for the UK to see how much better life can be when you elect an "uninspiring" "establishment" but intelligent and vaguely competent leader and government to replace a "celebrity" who pretends to be a man of the people but is actually an elitist billionaire with no interest in making life better for the majority of the electorate, no leadership skills and no brain cells to rub together.

Back in the lockdown gang from midnight tonight for the first time in 6 months. Hooray!

It's funny. I've heard a lot over the last 2 months or so about how Donald Trump was actually successful and how his vote share in the presidential election was evidence that populism actually works. I'm also reading a lot about how the Republican strategy going forward could very well be a continuity Trump strategy, that he might try to be selected again for 2024, etc. I'm sorry, but just no. Corbynites in the UK were slated for grasping at straws with the "Jeremy won the argument" line and trying to make out Trump as any sort of success story as a President is just as bad. First off, he never even won the popular vote when he was elected. Then the Republicans lost control of Congress while he was in office. Then he became one of a small minority of sitting Presidents not to win a second term when standing for re-election. And now, even as a lame duck President, he has been a significant, probably decisive factor in allowing the Democrats to flip the Senate too. Yes, it was a huge shock when he threaded the needle to become President in the first place. That was his one win, putting together an improbable cohort without the popular vote on his side but with the help of an outdated electoral college and the fact that too many Americans couldn't face electing a first woman President straight after the first black one. And yes, it's pretty depressing how many people still turned out to vote for him in 2020, but here are the facts. Donald Trump LOST the House of Representatives. Donald Trump LOST the Presidency. Donald Trump LOST the Senate. Donald Trump is a serial loser who got one unlikely win. If it was anyone else, and if people weren't so scarred by that one improbable victory that would call him what he is. A loser.

Good shit.

Interesting developments on my rock. They had a panic over New Year as one person had completed their two weeks isolation having arrived on the island from the UK, gone out and then developed symptoms, and tested positive for Covid-19. The government then released a statement at 11:40pm on New Year's Eve listing a selection of places and times where this person and their family member from within the household who also tested positive, had visited in the few days following their isolation. Over 300 people came forward to be tested in response for this and not a single one tested positive, so this morning I came into work thinking that we were still all good and that every active case of Covid-19 over here was self-isolating already having caught it across. Fast forward to lunchtime and the government has announced that six positive tests were returned overnight, citing a 'variety of circumstances', none of which were linked to the aforementioned two cases and at least one of which was another person who completed their two week isolation period and then tested positive after returning to the community. Now we have a government briefing at 4pm with rumours of a three week lockdown on the way. I think the concern is about whether it's the new strain. A colleague of mine reckons that as well as being more contagious it has a longer incubation period (can anyone verify?) which makes these two cases that have been found after a two-week isolation period might be the new strain. Happy days. The last thing I want to do is return to remote learning because it's absolutely shite compared to being in a classroom but on the bright side, we have a local government who actually respond to stuff before it's too late and their track and trace system has already seen various shops closed for deep cleans and full floors of offices sent to work from home in response to the overnight cases. Didn't cost £12,000,000,000 either.

The fact that Johnson, Jenrick, Patel, Williamson and arguably Hancock's positions are still tenable is all the evidence you need of how far into the toilet the UK's standards have fallen. It started because the pursuit of Brexit became more important than any ministerial standards and now the whole country is paying the price. It's Johnson who needs to go. A Prime Minister who declares schools safe literally the day before he orders their closure for 6 weeks has no authority to kick anyone else off the front bench for their incompetence. Utterly embarrassing.

So seems that the Democrats have a chance of sneaking these two Senate seats. Surely the Republicans still bumming Trump the loser will have to realise that allowing him to throw his tantrums may have ended up costing them control of the Senate as well as the White House? Or are we not yet at a point where logic applies to anything in American politics again yet?

I just watched episodes 2 and 3 tonight, very decent.

Not before time.

I can see why you're saying that but I don't need worrying about. If you met me in person you'd see I'm actually incredibly chilled out and while I get passionate about stuff on here be it Everton, politics or teaching stuff I'll say what I think but I'm lucky enough that when I put it down it doesn't stay on my mind. I'd be more stressed if I didn't get on here and get it all off my chest to a bunch of people I never meet in real life to be honest.

The Department for Education now keeping all London primary schools closed except for key workers' children instead of one rule for some boroughs and another for the rest. Another u-turn where they've ended up doing the right thing which people who actually know stuff told them to do weeks ago. Headteachers now left redrawing their plans between New Years Day and the weekend before schools are supposed to go back. It'll be interesting to see what policy looks like on Monday morning because you can bet that it will have changed again by then. It's almost fun trying to guess what else Gavin Williamson could get completely wrong without losing his job. Like making Chuck Norris jokes.

Over 50,000 new cases in the UK today, including Tier 4 areas still on the rise. Once again, the UK government's addiction to treating these decisions as black and white, right or wrong choices and taking hard-line stances such as "schools must and will stay open as normal after the Christmas holidays" is about to collide with the reality of how quickly things change during this pandemic. We will now see yet another u-turn on schools. And because they've taken such a hard man stance on keeping schools open, they'll spend a few days managing the PR to make the u-turn look like less of a screeching one, it'll start as "as we've always said, we're keeping this situation constantly under review and are responding in accordance with the changing situation blah blah blah" and they'll move there in phases until Johnson or Williamson announces at a hastily arranged Downing Street press conference that starts 45 minutes after the planned time that the schools that are due to reopen in 36 hours' time will actual return to lockdown policy of remaining open for children of key workers with full social distancing back in place while the rest of the country goes back to online learning. All the while, school leaders, teachers, parents and students up and down the country will wait in uncertainty as the cabinet plans how best to deliver the news at the last possible moment to maximise how much face they can save. They already know tonight that they're going to have to take action. Putting the whole country into tier 4 or full lockdown will play out in almost identical circumstances with the urgency of policy change to respond to the changing situation taking a back seat as these cretins take days to plan out how they can make it look like less of a u-turn and as if they've actually got things under control.

Been inevitable for weeks and only about to get worse as the impact of loosening restrictions again filters through.

Fingers crossed!

Better than leaving without a deal. I give Boris Johnson zero credit for it by the way, but I'm personally choosing to take the next few days to take the small victory, and it is one whichever way you voted in 2016. The next few days are going to be hilarious. There will be Brexiters pointing at things that we already had while in the EU and using it as evidence that it was a good deal, and there will be Remainers pointing out things that they wanted to keep and Brexiters didn't and gloating that they didn't get what they voted for. For the sake of my mental health, I'm just going to focus on the memes, wait for the detail to come out and try to patiently let this whole thing play out over the next few years. In other words, I'll be ranting and raving before the end of January about a number of things we don't even know about right now.

Between the government's propaganda and the right wing press calling for Boris Johnson statues to line the coast from Cornwall to Hadrian's Wall it's probably going to take a fair amount of time to find out the actual detail of the detail and how it's going to affect our lives. No amount of specticism can stop us from acknowledging though that whether it's a bare minimum deal or actually a decent deal, it can't be worse than the no deal scenario. Today is a day to be relieved, or at least try to.