Reading and learning is no longer required

 

Johnson met the EU presidents yesterday – per video conferencing because of CV-19. The broadsheets dedicated an article or two to this event. More on that below. On Sunday, the Nation was told to go and shop. It was no longer about ‘protect lives’ or ‘protecting our NHS’, now it’s our patriotic duty to shop in the High Street to ‘protect jobs’. We’ll look at this ‘event’ first because it provides the latest ‘bash the PM’ weapon. Then there are news on schools and education which are very worrying, especially since Johnson has caved in to the Labour teachers’ union and decreed, via his education Minister, that teachers can enjoy their long, fully-paid holiday until September.

Yesterday people flocked to the stores as if released from prison. Today’s online papers are full of pictures of those ‘shoppers’ queuing outside the stores while opinion piece writers (wimminz, that is) bemoaned the fact that there’s nothing to buy which they can’t get on the internet, and that the ‘shopping experience’ is about touching, trying on, chatting, having a cup of coffee … This ‘new normal’ shopping, behind face masks, visors, observing the 2-metre-rule, isn’t ‘it’. Who’d have thought!

‘Our MSM’ can now promote a new Johnson-bashing item: the 2-metre-rule. They are doing this by using the ‘our scientists are better/bigger than those on SAGE’ ploy. This was unthinkable three or even four months ago. Then, those scientists were denounced as conspirationalists, trying to kill off the population. Now they’re quoted with relish – see this non-paywalled article in the DT. Mind you, it’s only about reducing that ‘safe space’ to 1 metre, everything else has to stay the same and never mind that some of the scientists say this rule is not effective anyway, e.g.:

“Much of the evidence in this current outbreak informing policy is poor quality. Encouragement and handwashing are what we need, not formalised rules.” A University of Dundee study also suggests that 78 per cent of the risk of infection happens below one metre and there is just an 11 per cent chance of any increased distance making a difference.” (link)

Well, it’s too late now: a huge number of people want to adhere to that 2 metre rule even while being ‘protected’ by face masks and plastic visors. The government is going to ‘revise’ this, so expect a change by the end of this month. By that time we’ll know how many small shops and pubs have gone under.

One thing struck me when looking at the photos accompanying those articles: the crowds of shoppers were all in the 18-45 age range. Is this going to be the ‘new normal’: the older population becoming invisible in our towns and High Street shops, staying behind locked doors? Out of sight – out of mind, for ‘their own good’, still ‘protecting the NHS’?

As for Brussels … While Johnson seems to have been a bit more exuberant, telling the EU presidents that a deal could still be reached if more energy were to be put into the negotiations, and while Brussels agrees that those vital talks next month should be ‘revitalised’ (link), I’m not so sure about a deal being reached. Reading between the lines and recalling the four years of Brexit negotiations I suggest that the EU isn’t going to budge unless they do so at the very last minute.

Barnier’s ‘mandate’ to say ‘Non’ won’t be changed, and while Brussels did mention fisheries, this is tied to the usual EU demands. So nothing has really changed, despite conciliatory noises made by ‘Our Michel’:

“Brussels is preparing to back down over a Brexit fishing deal and acknowledge for the first time that European fleets do not have an automatic right to fish in British waters. In a concession to help to unlock negotiations, Michel Barnier is understood to accept that the UK will have to be treated as an independent coastal state and have annual negotiations with the bloc over fishing quotas from next year. The EU’s chief negotiator told European diplomats that the compromise would have to wait until other parts of the deal were closer to being finalised.” (link, paywalled)

A ‘compromise’ is apparently possible – but read that last sentence again. It looks to me that fisheries are being used as a giant carrot, dangled in front of Johnson’s nose, while the ‘other parts’, from level playing fields to banking, are the heavy sticks. Ms vdLeyen’s contribution underlines this:

“Mrs von der Leyen admitted that some of the EU’s demands over the level playing field guarantees were unprecedented. The call for commitments that would prevent the UK from undercutting EU standards on tax, labour rights, environment and state aid are more stringent than similar commitments in the bloc’s trade deals with Canada and Japan. But the commission president warned Mr Johnson that unless the UK agreed to level playing field guarantees, which she said would also protect British businesses, the trade deal would never be ratified by the European Parliament or the EU member states.” (link)

In other words; ‘we’ll let you have some of your fish provided you’ll stay under the boots of Brussels and the ECJ’. We’ll also have to wait and see if Remain will still use the CV-19 pandemic as argument to get that extension they so crave. Given a report that Germany will have to carry the main financial burden of the EU Budget (link), and given that Germany will preside over the EU Council from July 1st lets not yet count our chickens.

And now to ‘Education’. This, remember, was one of Mr Blair’s favourite slogans. So far, he’s been dead quiet in regard to Johnson’s decision to keep schools closed until September, nor has he raised his head above the parapet in regard to his own Party who are perfectly relaxed about keeping our kids dumb. LockdownSceptics reported last evening:

“University College London has just published research showing that two million schoolchildren have done virtually zero schoolwork during lockdown. Around one in five pupils have carried out no schoolwork, or less than an hour a day, since schools closed in March. Meanwhile, only 17% of children put in more than four hours a day. And, in general, the more disadvantaged a child’s background, the less schoolwork they’ve done. Only 11% of children in receipt of free school meals spent more than four hours a day on schoolwork, compared to nearly a fifth (19%) of their peers. Other figures revealed that nearly a third (31%) of private schools provided four or more online lessons daily, compared with just 6% of state schools. Hard to believe Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary “welcomed” the news that schools wouldn’t reopen last week.” (link)

There’s also a non-paywalled report in the DT (link), but equally important is this report on grades, in The Times:

“Exams have been cancelled this summer and grades will instead be calculated by teachers, who must submit a ranked order of pupils for each subject. This will be moderated by exam boards and Ofqual, the exams regulator, which has warned that it could lower grades if schools suddenly do better than expected. […] Although schools may have changed these before submitting them to exam boards, the figures suggest that the grades they gave pupils were higher in every subject than those achieved last year.” (link, paywalled)

So it’s ok not to learn, not to attend school because learning is ‘uncool’ and good grades will be given anyway. This attitude now extends to Oxford where it’s being ‘tinged’ with the now sadly customary bow to BLM. Please put your cup or glass down before you read this:

“Oxford University has revealed plans to “decolonise” its maths and science degrees and will allow students of any subject who have been affected by the Black Lives Matter furore to seek lenient marking. In a letter to the student union, Louise Richardson, vice-chancellor, said that the mathematical, physical and life sciences division had been awarded a grant to develop teaching resources that supported the diversification of its curriculums, describing it as “an area that is frequently overlooked”.” (link, paywalled)

There’s more, and the repercussions across the natural sciences – not just the teaching but research – will be horrendous if applied:

“She added: “Many departments in social sciences have begun work on making their curriculum more inclusive and adding diverse voices to it. This includes steps such as integrating race and gender questions into topics, embedding teaching on colonialism and empire into courses, changing reading lists to ensure substantial representation of a diverse range of voices, and ensuring better coverage of issues concerning the global South in syllabuses.” (link, paywalled)

Ooh – I feel ‘unsafe’ because studying geometry is based on stuff done by the ancient Greeks and they kept slaves! Please don’t mark me down! And while we’re at it, all my grades must be revised upwards because BLM ‘affected me’! Feel free to add to the list of subjects in maths, physics, chemistry and biology which must be taught with references to BLM and ‘the global South’!

And finally – happy news! Happy for us peasants, that is, not for ‘Our MSM’. The Times reports that:

“Trust in the news has plummeted as an increasingly polarised nation loses faith in media institutions including the BBC, a study suggests. Only 28 per cent of those polled said they trusted most of the news most of the time, down from 40 per cent last year and 50 per cent before the 2016 EU vote. Trust in the news media was lower in Britain than in almost any other developed nation, including Ireland (48 per cent) Germany (45 per cent) and the United States (29 per cent).” (link, paywalled)

‘A polarised’ nation seems to be rather unpolarised in having ‘lost faith’ in ‘our MSM. As The Times tries desperately to spin this to their advantage (39% subscribe to their online outlet), a comment poster tersely observes that this doesn’t mean those 39% believe what they read in RemainCentral. I suggest that this observation holds true for all the other online papers.

What could possibly have happened to create this huge drop in ‘faith’, compared to last year’s poll? Hm … Perhaps all is not yet lost?

 

KBO!

 

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