The Rule of Six as delivered by one

While last week I looked at this whole call to the return to the office to work this week it is less of a reversal but a restating in a less muddy more black and white* terms what despite the greater freedoms granted had not really changed in a way that has legal standing and thus can be actually enforced although whither or not the police want to is different matter.

 
Some people it seems to me can get to grips with understanding a situation, that because of its seriousness that people are to adhere to rules and apply them to their day to day lives and yet others just do not get it or worst still think it's some right wing political conspiracy to deny them their rights and that Covid ain't a thing. It is and it kills.

 
 There can be little denying that there has been a discernible rise in case of Covid notably amount 18 to 30 year olds which while not resulting in hospitalization nonetheless meant they had transmitted to others who could be more at risk examples might be multi generational households are shared student accommodation.

 
That is the logic behind the reduction to only allowing gatherings of up to six people regardless of age indoors or out maintaining social distancing from thirty although exemptions will exist for weddings, funerals, organized team sport, worship and work.

In Scotland under 12's are exempted from the "six" and there is pressure for England to do the same where seemingly most of the Cabinet wanted that  but the Health secretary Matt Hancock backed by the Chief Medical Officer got his way.

 
A fuller breakdown can be found on the BBC website and this will be enforced not just by police but official health enforcement teams in city areas.

 
My gut feeling is one of "about time too" as while the measures made sense, police were not even prepared in some instances to even open conversations about behaviour and request people altered it which doesn't need a specific legal power and we've all seen to many instances of breaking the spirit and often the letter of the rules putting public health -yours and mine - at risk.

Composed on the new Blogger Interface which I might just say is web intense slow cack-handed interface and doesn't have proper photo sizing settings. 

 
A dog's dinner is the polite version of how I'd rate it.

* This term for the benefit of snowflakes has nothing to do with race and so isn't racist even if some external race trainers say it is. It plays on the clear black type on white paper of a paper document so it stands out clearly not a racial put down. In 2020 you have to say this.

Return to our offices? No chance!

As I'm writing this faced with a big deluge of rain that meant going out after lunch just wasn't going to be happening a couple of days before publication one recurring story is around people who it has to be said were working in offices before all the Covid restrictions came in March.

Back then as you might well recall we were told to Stay Home and only to work if we can from home and a lot of people and organizations adapted to do just that from banks to people doing engineering drawings using phone and computer to work and keep in touch.

 As you can see in this picture of Canary Wharf in London taken during the rush hour, there's not many people actually in the offices coming of the transport networks to the business districts although the numbers vary from occupation to occupation.

In some respects the UK has been a bit behind the curve when it comes to working from home compared with other countries  such as Canada and the States but it appears Covid give it a mighty big jolt in little over five months.

It isn't that people aren't working although some are not such as those in hospitality and entertainment where health measures needed to control the virus effectively prevent them from working at all it's that actually business and workers have found this is working for them with potentially lower office costs and far less time commuting on overcrowded trains and buses.

You might think "What's the problem"?

This homeworking is effecting the viability of businesses within those business districts such as the sandwich bars, coffee houses and dry cleaners with their daily takings well down on normal and that has lead to some such as the C.B.I. to push for a return to working from offices.

Personally having been there and done it frankly if I could work from home just calling in to meet with my supervisor and a few colleagues and any face to face training a couple of days per month to be frank I just would because it's a waste of my time having spent two hours twenty on a good day travelling and sometimes longer otherwise.

Another set of issues is about social distance and its impact starting the shocking fact that at least a third of staff can't be socially distanced in offices even masked so some would have to be accommodated elsewhere.

Then there's public transportation where capacity is down to less than 40% of normal due to social distancing so capacity is impacted during the rush hour making it hard to get people in and having more people come in using private cars to get around that only adds to road congestion and pollution.

In Charles Dicken's day you had to work in an office as a clerk with oil light, quill and ink surrounded by people as there was no other way of sharing information and generally getting things done.

Those businesses in the business district came into being where they did to serve those needs but today it is just so unnecessary so we might as well accept it as indeed a number of big companies have and just move with the times.

That's why despite the rally cry of "go back to your offices" from the CBI and the Business Minister I rather suspect we're not. Time has moved on. 

Yes this blogger has Learning Disabilities

It's right to leave some space when looking at online self diagnosis tools as conditions do overlap not least ADHD, Autism and Dyslexia but to be honest so much of that rings true with me so apart from not having diagnosed Autism because it presents in less stereotypical ways and I'm damn good at masking there's an over 90% chance I'm ADHD.

Just taking the last frame I often have that working or blogging to the point in I effect I throw a dice with options and just do something now rather than remain stuck weighing things up to the point actually I've achieved...nothing.

There's something deeply ironically in learning more about your disabilities and managing them from younger people when you're an adult little but in my day there was official denial, mislabelling and prejudice and if they did accept something it was mask, mask, mask.

Just coming out and saying "My name Is Jo and I have learning disabilities" is darn relief.

Grade F edition

This time is one some of us remember well, the anxiety, sleepness nights followed by that visit to school or phoning in the preinternet era as you wait to see how the exam grades you took in the late Spring and Summer  actually turned out.

They matter beyond just personal satisfaction as they factor into getting into work, going into the Sixth or a Sixth Form College and for for some University.

If 2020 has been a year like no other, children in the Fifth and Sixth were unable to take those exams as school shut on March 20th so you might of thought schools, examination bodies and the Dept For Education would of used that time to sort out how you might make "compensatory" awards based on the quality of work, any "mock exams" and practicals taken before.

Evidently not and not just here in England in SNP run Scotland, Labour led Wales and the DUP/SF Northern Ireland we've had essentially the same problems around trying in some way to moderate something that did not and could not be moderated resulting in many upto 40% of grades being reduced by eye watering amounts followed on different timescales by each government.

The palpable anger in England resulted in extraordinary scenes such as these children from Codsall Community College in South Staffordshire protesting outside the Education Minister's constituency headquarters in Codsall, just across the road and with good reason.

As a socially liberal conservative I felt it wasn't just a non starter but wholly unfair to attempt to judge a child's work by past results in exams that were not taken that featured others.

It would one thing to look at samples of graded work to see schools were grading roughly the same way for statistical consistency but to use a system that even when trailed by the exam regulator last year was known to produce gross errors is morally wrong.

In England that was reversed by Mid Monday afternoon but that still leaves the question about universities who've closed admittance who had children with provisional offers rejected on the basis of the flawed modified results left to sort out the mess to gain the place their efforts and abilities deserve.

Stormy Staffs Edition

Phew, it's just like being in an oven as I type this, so much so I'll be on umpteenth glass of water just trying to stay hydrated.

Here in the UK, specifically England, we've had abnormally high temperatures brought in from across the Sahara in North Africa via France that even here in the usually temperate West Midlands region have gone to around 34 degrees Celsius  and only a little below 20 degrees overnight.

Those of course are the outdoor temperatures, what happens indoors matters just as much and being in a mainly brick built building that heat is effectively trapped in it which is good for winters but not very helpful with this.

 Pix Credit: BBC Weather Watcher Greg.

The other aspect to all this is we've had lots of thunder and lightning such as that shown in that picture of Stoke on Trent, a part of this, the North Staffordshire conurbation which was very dramatic on Tuesday night lasting from around 10pm through 3 am.

Apparently we were the epicentre of the it and with it came severe rain that caused issues on the Crewe-Derby line at Uttoxeter together with cross country services around Stafford and Rugeley in the south.

After all that typing, I'll take  a rest!

Now That's What I Call Music CD Part 3

I wasn't expecting to make this post until a few months at least but release schedules are a bit all over the place these days but anyway this came out on July 24th so in our series we'll do a review.

 This as originally released in November 1985 was the biggest selling Now! album to date going straight to number 1 on the UK albums chart - one factor in reviewing eligibility in 1989 that took affect from 1990 to screen out various artists compilations.

It was a stronger album than Now Five for having a number of major singles releases  such as Queen's One Vision and Simple Minds Alive and Kicking  as well as Arcadia's much talked about Election Day, that group being one of the two spin-offs from Duran Duran.

As this cd goes for unexplained reasons - probably licensing - the Bryan Adams Tina Tuner collaboration It's Only Love is missed off CD 1although it was on record one of the lp version buying that on release.

It's a not a big loss, it wasn't a chart topper but more a radio play pop hit song in honestly but its absence underscores a recurring issue in the cd reissues in this series where the albums don't fully resemble the lp and tape versions we the audience expect.

Perhaps the biggest mistake in the series to date sadly is on this one because Marillion's Lavender was specially remixed for single as the album version on Misplaced Childhood, a great album in my opinion is a more meandering pedestrian rendition.

That album version just doesn't really fit in the rest of the the songs on Now 6.

I can overlook a slightly longer album version for a singles edit done to make it snappier but that could only of been done by a person who did not compare and listen to both as if they just found a file marked Lavender and by Marillion and said ah that's it, next"!

For me the only "essential" up coming ones are Now 7 of which just over a handful made the No '86 cd in 1986 and Now 9 where a half and some of better half were left off a single cd in1987.

Travel reversals

In what has been an adventurous week perhaps the song that's been sticking in my head all week being hummed has been this 1977 offering by the Steve Miller Band which the single has minor lyric change to comply with then radio station policies on cuss words.

The songs kind of apt because that big issue of the week is foreign travel and specifically travel to Spain which hasn't been banned but people are being told they have to stay at home for fourteen days because of Covid outbreaks in  Madrid, Barcelona and around the "Costas" which are on the coast of the Catalonia area of Spain.

You may recall the outrage when fourteen day quarantines were suggest on travel due to this jolly norty Covid being World-Wide and easy to spread from country to country and how we made a bit of list of countries that we may be able to travel to.

Thing was, there always was this caveat that infection rates in those countries went up it would be reviewed which is just what has happened and the travel industry is howling with protests saying how people would lose jobs and businesses being lost.

No one can say it may not happen and nobody wants people to go through that but public health - our public health as Britons comes first - and if we start to have massive infections again then even more jobs and businesses will be lost never mind the impact on the health service and loss of lives which has not been inconsiderable so far.

While I have understanding for individuals own circumstances, we just have to accept such things will happen unless and until we have a vaccine ready to protect all of us.
 
All our lives matter.