Thanks for complimenting my try. I'm not sure what's under discussion. Your quoted statement said nothing to further what anyone said.
If they are here illegally and can't claim benefits or work doesn't that just drive them into the black economy? Undermining the legal workers by accepting lower cash in hand pay, less safe working conditions and reducing the tax revenue. This needing more workers to pay our pensions? If we keep on increasing the population it will never end, there will always be more and more pensioners to pay.
What jobs and how many people constitute the black economy? Everything is heavily regulated these days, where are all these people and what are they doing? Is it significant enough to have any real impact? And yes, you're right, the population can't keep increasing. But it won't because birth rates are falling below replacement rate. And the Water Wars of 2089 take care of nearly half of the population anyway.
On average, fitter and better educated than your average national. I'm sure you've nothing to be concerned about.
No **** Sherlock The Covid pandemic disrupted the “very fabric of childhood”, the UK inquiry has heard, on the first day of a four-week session devoted to its impact on children and young people. Clair Dobbin KC, counsel to the inquiry, said in her opening submission on Monday that some of the evidence drawn from the 18,000 stories and 400 targeted interviews would be “hard to listen to”. Some children lost parents, grandparents and other loved ones to Covid. Some children died from Covid, while others continue to live with the “severe, and, for many, long-lasting” consequences of the pandemic. Dobbin described the curtailment of play and the loss of all the normal rites of passage – birthdays, proms, exams – as well as the damage done to young people’s mental health and their ability to make and sustain friendships. She also spoke about children who suffered “grievous” harm at the hands of the people who were meant to care for them, when they were told to stay at home and lost the protection that schools usually offer. Some young people were exposed to violent pornography and other harms as their lives rapidly moved online, while many struggled to access online lessons and ended up spending most of the day gaming instead of learning. One described “sitting there with no school, playing [the video game] Animal Crossing for, like, six months”. Another said they played Roblox online for up to 19 hours a day. Dobbin quoted one child as saying: “People would answer the remote lesson call in bed, people would be in science third lesson, and would literally have the camera off and would be posting on their Instagram stories or their Snapchat stories, literally them watching The Only Way is Essex.” please log in to view this image View image in fullscreen Gavin Williamson, the then education secretary, said there had been a ‘24-hour sea change’ in the attitude to school closures. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images She said said: “[Covid] deprived children of much of the fun that makes a childhood: birthday parties, playing sport, proms, school trips, holidays; all everyday aspects of what it means to be a child but which comprisethe very fabric of childhood.” The inquiry heard the decision to close schools “had ramifications which are difficult to overstate”. The Department for Education (DfE) had undertaken zero contingency planning for school closures before lockdown was declared in March 2020. “In England, evidence that the [DfE] did not start planning for the closure of schools until after 16 March 2020 is a cause for alarm,” Dobbin told the inquiry. She said Jonathan Slater, then permanent secretary to the DfE, had provided evidence that between January and 16 March 2020, the department’s contingency plans were “premised on the assumption that schools and other educational settings would remain open. And according to him that was in keeping with the government’s overall approach to pandemic preparedness at the time.” Evidence from Gavin Williamson, the education secretary at the time, agreed, but on 17 March there seems to have been a sudden change of direction. Dobbin said: “[Williamson] explains in his words that there’s a discombobulating 24-hour sea change from keeping schools open on 16 March, to discussions about closing schools on 17 March.” On 18 March, schools were ordered to close. Dobbin added: “[Williamson] did not ask DfE officials to prepare an assessment of the impact of school closures because school closures had not been recommended and No 10 officials had not commissioned this advice from the DfE The inquiry was told that the then prime minister Boris Johnson took issue with Williamson’s version of events in his statement to the inquiry, and said the DfE was aware of the possibility of closing schools. “[Johnson’s] evidence suggests – but it’s a matter to be explored with him – that he thought that planning for school closures had been ongoing,” Dobbin said. She added: “It’s my respectful submission that it’s significant that there should be a dispute about whether planning for so seismic an event existed … and perhaps alarming is the suggestion that it was not for the DfE to instigate its own planning for school closures but to wait for it to be commissioned.” In her opening comments to the reconvened inquiry the chair, Heather Hallett, said the pandemic’s impact on children and young people was “severe and, for many, long-lasting”, as they missed educational opportunities, social interaction and for the most at-risk they lost protection from abuse. An impact film shown at the start of proceedings detailed some of the children’s stories, voiced by adults to protect their identities. One contributor said her friend had died, another lost 12 kilos while suffering from Covid, while a third had to be put on a ventilator. A single parent described the challenge of trying to home educate and care for three children all at different stages of their education. “In the end I just said we’re not doing it,” she said, adding: “Being confined, just us in that house, was hell.” Another mother said her son had been out of school since February 2022. “Our family life completely stopped. It’s a huge worry to us how his life will go. How he will manage to look after himself. We should not sacrifice children. Children are the future.” The inquiry continues on Tuesday.
We have to learn the right lessons. The glaring thing reading that is the same thing that was obvious at the time; that the country was woefully and arrogantly unprepared for a serious pandemic. It is a responsibility of governments to ensure the country is as ready as possible for these things and ours just didn't see it as a priority. It'll probably never happen, they thought.
Or it also suggests that there was planning in place, which included keeping schools open (I imagine partly due to the impact on children and also partly due to the effect that keeping kids off school has on the ability for their parents to keep doing their own essential jobs) but for some reason the Govt chose not to use the plans and made it up on the hoof instead?
It's all a bit hazy now but I thought school closures happened because teachers unions wanted it to protect the teachers?
Nope They happened because that’s what the Govt decided. Not saying the Unions might have agreed, for different reasons, and they certainly argued for better ventilation and air purifiers (which tbf seems a good idea anyway the amount of bloody sniffles I pick up from Grandkids!) but they came in the evening Boris announcements.
A plan that relies on kids being able to just stay in school no matter what isn't much of a plan. It was always possible that a serious pandemic would happen meaning that we had to stop large groups of people meeting for a while. We should've been prepared for that possibility, and we still should be for the next one.
Nice to see the DM pumping out more sensationalist nonsense there to ragebait their audience...... I had Covid 3 weeks ago, and i'm still struggling now with a lack of energy, it's been worse than either of the 2 times i caught it during the pandemic
The biggest lesson should be how easy it was to get the public to turn on each other and to start policing each other, using the media, 'science' and fear. "Schools should close, not that it will really affect children anyway, other than a generation's mental health, to protect the teachers, but all other jobs that are deemed essential... Delivery drivers, factory workers, nurses, food shops, warehouses, construction should keep working... But office workers can work at home for two years...but only six can go to a funeral or wedding. Oh, and wear a sock over your mouth if you go to the supermarket.. until you get the first, second, no third, or maybe the fourth vaccine.. no, wear them indefinitely.. oh, **** it, don't bother. Ban one-use plastic products" You what, mate?
I'll never forget that I wasn't able to attend my cousin's funeral (died of malignant melanoma at 36.. perhaps ban everyone from going in the sun) in the UK, 6 members of direct family only, but during the same time period, flights were flying daily from COVID hotspots in China into Europe, because stopping flights would be 'racist'... Ha ha.. also had a woman screaming hysterically at my then 3 year old niece because she went on the same climbing frame at a playground as her child.. All major political parties in Europe supported this and not one of them should ever be taken seriously ever again.
Really don’t think it would be wise to reopen the teachers had it easy during Covid and were essentially paid to do **** all trope but as I said at the time those who teach or have relatives that teach knew exactly what was happening. Seeing my daughter striving to teach, support and in some cases feed, her 7 year old kids, many of whom were refugees who were also the only English speakers in their families and were having to interpret instructions from Boris that they could barely understand for the adults in their households, was awe inspiring. No computers in many households, so she was delivering, collecting and marking work packs, setting next step learning on an individual basis, checking on family health - both physical and mental, coming home exhausted and being told on social media by ill-informed knaa nowts that she was shirking could have been soul destroying if not for the fact that she’d inherited her Dad’s sense of the absurd and just dismissed them all as ****s. Happy days.
