love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

Oh yeah, shiny Geoff who’s persecuted for being s Tory except he earns more off the BBC than Laura K

the truth is Geoff is more like the mainstream of BBC comedy than he seems to appreciate, the only difference is that he's come out as a conservative reactionary and in quite tedious style and made that his shtick. Other than on the brexit issue the melt "PC snowflake" comedians he has set himself up as the antidote to have much more in common with him than any lefty comedians, of which you could probably count on one hand in bbc comedyland.

makes me realise even though I'm not a fan of bbc comedy, it became much worse when jeremy hardy died.

Julie Burchill’s next book is called Welcome To The Woke Trials

another unfunny conservative reactionary comedian who will no doubt get lots of opportunities to plug her book on the bbc

I thought time had cancelled Julie B

the only memorable bit of writing of Burchill writing for me was when she was quite angrily ridiculing her old pal Toby Young for being an ugly hypocrite, and a shallow and vacuous creep who worshipped celebs and went kerb crawling on a regular basis. I can't remember where I read it but it was p good and stuck in my memory.

xp what is already cancelled can never be cancelled

I have a guilty soft spot for her tbh

I mean she makes me laugh sometimes, not a crush

She has always been bad afaict but as with hignfy it’s not like I’ve bothered investigating the stuff from when I was like two years old

full disclosure: I used to regularly read her Culture section of the Times movie reviews in the 90's !

Burchill literally advocated shooting "prostitutes" for their "terrible betrayal of all women" back in the 80s. she was never good

I don't think anyone is making any arguments for her rehabilitation as an acceptable member of the commentariat, it's more like nervously approaching the confession booth because telling the truth can be cleansing!

There’s been a rash of new You Can’t Say That sites eg. Uncancelled where mediocre journalists TERF out for free. Spiked doesn’t pay its contributors either.

Nick Cave: 'cancel culture is bad religion run amuck' https://t.co/Y0X6PavdMg

— The Guardian (@guardian) August 12, 2020

I can't believe a public school doctor's son who has had a way too fucking long + overrated career as a turgid goth balladeer would turn out to be such an enemy of the people!

does he unbutton his shirt and ruffle it up in the same manner boris makes his hair look dishevelled whenever doing a photo/tv op? What a fucking jerkoff.

I have never liked Nick Cave, and if my impeccable source is correct, he isn’t worthy of anyone’s appreciation for ‘if someone tells you who they are, believe them’ reasons.

he's a pretentious, laughably overrated ageing goth arsehole, would love to give him a good shoeing - but no blades!

My partner who is 5 foot tall and spare change at best, went up to him and called him a fucking prick at a Palace Brothers show in London in the 90's. He was being an arrogant prick in a queue or something. I thought we were going to get thrown out but instead there were people coming up to congratulate her!

Still staring at this. https://t.co/nfUkkkrEKt

— Sarah Phelps (@PhelpsieSarah) August 13, 2020

In fairness one of the prerequisites for being Gavin Williamson is not knowing that you're Gavin Williamson.

It's such an unbelievably bone-headed way to defend what's ultimately a defensible system. The problem is not fairness to the class of 2019 or 2021, it's fairness within the class of 2020. If grade inflation were to stand, the more accurate a teacher is in their judgement, the bigger the disadvantage to the learner. Just say that ffs!

You've now got a system where kids have been told they can use their mock exam grades instead of the calculated ones - but OFQUAL and exam boards haven't been told how this should work or what evidence will be required and where it's been heavily implied, probably incorrectly, via the "triple-lock" messaging that if they get a lower grade in their real A-Level, should they choose to take one in October, they can stick with their mock or calculated one. He's been pressured into making a bad situation substantially worse.

The shit that is actually genuinely documented about Kick Knave is enough to cancel him forever, Suzy's impeccable source only reveals that he is still on bullshit that he has been on for 40+ years. I do not understand why this guy gets such a free pass when he has been telling people who he is for his _entire career_.

Of course he sees a wave sweeping through his industry getting ever nearer to his arse and starts bemoaning ~cancel culture~ as a pre-emptive move. Of *course* he does.

I don't know what is worse : a repeat offender trying to dress up getting your defence in before the shit hits the fan as some kind of high minded principled stance or all the idiots commenting oooh he's nailed it there.

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/12/uk-gdp-tradeoff-lives-growth-dire-covid-strategy

This is really good on yesterday's GDP figures.

Gavin Williamson on inflating A-level grades: “The danger is that pupils will be over-promoted into jobs that are beyond their competence"

...

everybody's enjoying the irony of that one and it's very lol, but putting that to one side it's an amazingly thick-headed and wrong thing to say, it's like Williamson has no idea how the world works

All those people who move from doing A-Levels straight into surgery or bomb disposal?

not even sure what an A-level entry job would look like in 2020 but i am pretty sure that no interview panel comes to a decision primarily based on some exam results, even when there isn't a massive surplus of applicants for every job going

Also if you turn up to do a job at the age of 18-22 and turn out not to be able to do it then you get fired or moved into something else, unless you're benefiting from nepotism or entrenched social biases, both of which the Tories appear quite fond of.

I've seen highly educated people absolutely fuck up entry level work and I've seen people with significantly fewer qualifications do much better at the same job. But no one is making that call on the basis of A-Level results.

Williamson not understanding how life beyond nepotism works was my main thought

Also assuming most of these kids bother to go to university they'll be graduating into either a post-covid boom or a post-Brexit depression, and in either case whether you've had an A-Level nudged up one level is going to be neither here nor there. (Also it's irrelevant because once you've got a degree no one gives a toss what A-Levels you got).

i'm sure that whichever journalist he gave the comment to pointed out all this stuff at the time

Is that Williamson quote made up? It’s not in the Telegraph article or in the one linked to here, as far as I can see:

"The danger is that pupils will be over-promoted
into jobs that are beyond their competence"
(Gavin Williamson)

... one of many @Conservatives ministers
promoted way beyond their competence

... one of many #Tory ministers
promoted rather than sacked for multiple failures https://t.co/S3jE5UGd1r

— Source at No.10 (@10_source) August 13, 2020

Plus claims that it’s made up:

No fan of Williamson but it still irritates seeing people who get on their high horse about fake news sharing a made up quote. https://t.co/V81JfglxNj

— Sam Freedman (@Samfr) August 13, 2020

I cannot source it either so humbly accept Williamson's reputation should return to its previous level.

There is a Williamson op-ed further into the Telegraph that is also paywalled so it might be in there. I perhaps naively assumed that a member of the Economist editorial team might have checked that before posting it (although, significantly, he didn't put it in quotation marks).

afaict, it's not a quote, it's an interpretation of his statement on potential unfairness across year groups.

I first saw it tweeted by an Oxford politics lecturer so what was not to trust eh

There is a Williamson op-ed further into the Telegraph that is also paywalled so it might be in there. I perhaps naively assumed that a member of the Economist editorial team might have checked that before posting it (although, significantly, he didn't put it in quotation marks).

I saw he'd done an interview with Times Radio (lol) and thought that might be the source but made up seems the most likely explanation

it seems so plausible because it fits with the way they're acting, like society is this inflexible thing that determines your entire life based on your exact grade and that none of it will adapt to the pandemic, so the only thing that matters is getting the grading precisely correct. Or just using mocks, because fuck it why not

I'm losing my marbs here:

The Government needs to urgently rethink.

We need to guarantee the right to individual appeals, the fee for appeals waived and nothing to be ruled out, including the u-turn that was forced on the Scottish Government last week.

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) August 13, 2020

The right to individual appeals comes in with the use of mocks, which he was correctly identifying as a disaster yesterday. The phrasing "nothing ruled out" is classic Starmer, in that it doesn't actually call for something to happen but doesn't call for it not to happen either. Lost in this is the point that Scotland has a completely separate system, a separate regulator making separate rules and is using a different algorithm less weighted towards individual achievement.

Is this what life is like for the rest of ye who work in fields people pay attention to on the other 364 days of the year?

I promise i'll stop and go and listen to the new Taylor Swift album in a darkened room but this is journalistic malfeasance:

This is so fucked pic.twitter.com/bQmuwUH3xY

— Wow someone actually (@TribuneoDaPlebs) August 13, 2020

What OFQUAL actually said:

When consulting on this summer’s arrangements, we considered carefully opportunities for a student to challenge their centre assessment grades and position in their centre’s rank order. On balance, we decided it would not be in the interests of students or the fairness of the arrangements overall. Any appeal would have to be undertaken by someone better placed than the student’s teachers to judge their likely grade if exams had taken place – in the unique circumstances of this summer, we do not believe there is any such person. In addition, because of the role of the rank order in grading this year, such an appeal would have implications for other students in the cohort: if one student successfully appealed against their position in the rank order, it would have negative implications for other students who would, in turn, need to be given an opportunity to appeal.

ffs

Hunch: these stories will be dripped out across the papers all weekend. Then, in the middle of next week, Williamson will change the system again. https://t.co/7eRhMNnAuI

— Aditya Chakrabortty (@chakrabortty) August 13, 2020

Aruba.

Data shows we need to remove France, the Netherlands, Monaco, Malta, Turks & Caicos & Aruba from our list of #coronavirus Travel Corridors to keep infection rates DOWN. If you arrive in the UK after 0400 Saturday from these destinations, you will need to self-isolate for 14 days.

— Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP (@grantshapps) August 13, 2020

Turks and Caicos has had fewer cases since the pandemic started than the 300 who tested positive at the M&S sandwich factory in Northampton this week but I’m sure there’s a logic to it somewhere.

Turks and Caicos unlucky to get drawn from the tombola, oh no sorry I mean data.

pic.twitter.com/xkUMMOQapc

— Rosewood Shoehorn (@apiarism) August 13, 2020