Hail Gavin Williamson, who will save us from the evils of the dreaded ‘Algorithm’. And yea he shall make the teachers do a load of work, deliver us unto school result inconsistency and shall inflate the grades. Eh why? Last year was an inexcusable exam car crash, and it’s nice to see this year we’ll …
Monthly archives: February 2021
Vaccination MoT
It ought to be self-evident that everyone has the right to choose what is put into their own bodies. It’s similarly obvious that we should not discriminate based on this. So what about Covid vaccines and Covid passports? The parallel I see is cars. To be licenced for the public roads a car needs to …
Unlockdowning II
Saint Nic is due to present Scottish lockdown unwinding plans this afternoon. What do you bet they’ll be as different as possible to the filthy Saxons’? [Later] Yup.
National Friends and Foes
Alex the Groper is causing trouble for Saint Nicola. If he succeeds his allegations would cost her job. Without her halo the Scottish National Party would be a less invincible body. People might notice they’d been making a mess of running a country; the one-party rule would be less attractive; getting a secession referendum (and …
Unlockdowning I
Honest Boris announced “Data not Dates”, then gave a list of dates. Actually the approach sounds sensible enough. Good to see there’s a monitoring period between each unwind (let’s see if he can stick to it). After a year of the rash optimism of someone with no scientific or mathematical education and a life of …
Nice to hear you Keir
After a very very very long period of abject silence and letting the UK’s most incompetent ever government get away with it Sir Keir piped up today. Hello! What he said wasn’t that impressive (from the news snippets I gathered), but better than nothing. Actually he does need to be sounding the statesman and proposing …
Two Million out of work
The Resolution Foundation reckons over 4 million were on some kind of furlough at the start of the year, and that 1.9 million have been like that or unemployed for over six months. After that long you lose the skills and habits to just walk into a new job. It’s not getting better any time …
Missing in action
It’s unusual for me to complain about the silence of others, but I find myself with two such gripes these days. The Johnson cabal is possibly the most incompetent government the UK has ever had, and corrupt to boot. But if nobody says so then nobody hears so. There was once a man called Starmer …
Fresh air travel
Commercial air travel causes 2-3% of greenhouse gas emissions, so COVID is an environmental boon. But don’t open the Champagne yet, travel’s expected to be back where it was in three years. And it’s been growing rapidly and inexorably over the last fifty years, don’t expect it to change without some help. It’s getting relatively …
Vaccine Passports
It’s looking like Covid will be with us for a long time. As the virus mutates faster than we can ever conceivably vaccinate the planet the likelihood increases that we’ll be living with some form of restrictions for a while. How should we deal with it? I won’t answer that more specifically than “test lots …