Free as a Dodo: UK Politics Welcomes 2021

are they gonna close schools after presumably at least some opened today?
(inset days pretty common on first day of Jan after holidays and some voluntarily closed I believe?)

Yep, Pesto says schools are shutting.

Yup, some have opened but I get the impression that union activity over the weekend got quite a few to close. That just forces the government's hand too

PM will be directly addressing the nation. It won’t be a press conference. Tier 4 restrictions will be imposed everywhere. Schools closed. No more team games in parks. But outdoor exercise will still be allowed. https://t.co/dhKbH2lkgC

— Robert Peston (@Peston) January 4, 2021

Shambolic how some schools have opened today so you will get who knows how many cases.

all this stuff about teachers and teachers unions as hotbeds of loony leftists and do-gooders is so funny to me having worked in schools. the last school i worked in, senior management just changed their titles (and pay) every year. i never got an increment while i was there, bar once when i had to have several meetings with the deputy head who threw me out of her office lol. the headteacher and deputy head are currently called 'executive headteacher' and 'associate headteacher.'

Luckily my kids' school has scheduled INSETT days today and tomorrow, sure loads have opened across Cambridgeshire though.

yah i know lots of schools have moved insett days scheduled later in the year today on the assumption that there will be a change

Have to say that announcing a nationwide closing down of schools on the day they re-opened anyway because you were adamant they had to is a special kind of 'lol nothing matters', and we've had quite some special ones already

imagine if they'd just invested in making schools safe.

the whole christmas period to get this right and yet it's a balls up on day one

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy (schoolchildren)

Have to say that announcing a nationwide closing down of schools _on the day_ they re-opened anyway because you were adamant they had to is a special kind of 'lol nothing matters', and we've had quite some special ones already

lmao I see

I take no pleasure in Rafael Behr being right, but

So he made the schools and teachers do all that prep for effectively one or two days - even yesterday saying perfectly safe etc.

An absolute charlatan. I saw this a day or two ago - it’s absolutely spot on. pic.twitter.com/nI353yCxze

— Steve B is staying in... (@sargeantbennett) January 4, 2021

It’s been said earlier and better by better people than Rafael Behr

I actually didn't believe even they would do this - open for one day

surely there's something to be said for accepting agreement from even the wrong people

Schools already had to use an INSET day from later in the year (they get a set amount) the Friday before Christmas to avoid a Christmas day track & trace cock-up, i.e. they are the ones contacted to put lists together of who sits near the positive case child etc.

surely there's something to be said for accepting agreement from even the wrong people

at least unions can still pressurize the UK govt into u-turns without any backing from a purposeless Labour party that has nothing but contempt for them

Starmer on Sky News: "It is inevitable that schools will have to close and therefore they need to be part of the national restrictions package that needs to come into place as soon as possible."

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) January 4, 2021

lol Starmer otm

Today I learned that water is, in fact, dry.

As long as we can praise centrists for saying stuff the left has been saying longer, and after the opportunity to change the situation has long since passed, then who cares what they might have done to personally bring about the situation in which we find ourselves?

all this stuff about teachers and teachers unions as hotbeds of loony leftists and do-gooders is so funny to me having worked in schools. the last school i worked in, senior management just changed their titles (and pay) every year. i never got an increment while i was there, bar once when i had to have several meetings with the deputy head who threw me out of her office lol. the headteacher and deputy head are currently called 'executive headteacher' and 'associate headteacher.'

― plax (ico), Monday, 4 January 2021 15:32 (fifty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

When I was at secondary school, my headmaster used to give assembly speeches about how only idiots vote Labour and invite local Tory politicians/MPs/councillors etc. but never the actually elected Lib Dem MP for the area. He was old school Northern Irish, the sort who would think the past ten years of politics has gone nowhere far enough in punishing people. As much of a headbanger as he was, I think he would still have acted in the way most of these union conversations are going and be seen as the loony left for acting that way.

It’s been said earlier and better by better people than Rafael Behr

Fuckit then - give me three? And while you're at it, what the malign power that Rafael Behr's been wielding to push the country into this state?

Lenin was otm when he said something like when chop down a forest there might be some splinters flying about, but kieth never says anything otm, every time he opens his mouth to talk every single word is wrong.

It's a gift!

earlier I asked Kieth if eating dogshit off the pavement was good or bad? He's still prevaricating and spinning around in circles and speaking in tongues, god knows what's happened to him - he's barely a functional human being!

If it was zoo animal shit he'd have a position tbfttk

well at least he's quite clear-headed and principled on the big Zoos in January question, got to be thankful for this gift to us!

58 000+ new cases today. gulp .. I'm sure I heard Spiegelhalter say you divide the new cases number by 50 to get an approximate number of the deaths within 3 weeks

That conversion will depend on a few things though, I imagine you can raise the numbers a bit if the hospitals are full.

It’s been said earlier and better by better people than Rafael Behr

Fuckit then - give me three? And while you're at it, what the malign power that Rafael Behr's been wielding to push the country into this state?

― Andrew Farrell, Monday, 4 January 2021 bookmarkflaglink

If Rebecca Long-Bailey had been allowed in her job as Shadow Ed Secretary, for one?

NEW: @Keir_Starmer tells me all schools in England SHOULD close as part of a new national lockdown.

"National restrictions need to come into place as soon as possible and tragically, school closures have to be a part of that." @ITVNewsPolitics

— Daniel Hewitt (@DanielHewittITV) January 4, 2021

lol he's such a ridiculous cunt I don't know how he doesn't die of embarrassment

When I think of tragic I think of, for example, the death figures.

get fucked keir starmer

Corbyn would've been calling this for weeks. Starmer is doing this an hour after Sturgeon and Johnson pretty much announce it.

its just like an episode of the thick of it!

Only this morning Shadow Education Secretary Kate Green said the Labour-proposed lockdown would “try to get this virus under control and to keep children in class”.

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) January 4, 2021

"Only 100 people opposed the 2nd lockdown, but all of them had columns in the Barclay Brothers press" https://t.co/FR7mHWBAPp

— Will Davies (@davies_will) January 4, 2021

Corbyn would've been calling this for weeks. Starmer is doing this an hour after Sturgeon and Johnson pretty much announce it.

Behr just thinks Corbyn is a senile old fool with shit dress sense and would've written the precise opposite of the column pulled out today.

He’s so BAD at this

"It is inevitable that schools will have to close."@SamCoatesSky asks Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer his position on shutting schools. He says school closures need to be part of "a national plan".

Read more: https://t.co/EsS5xy4W0v pic.twitter.com/qUhm6Rg5DK

— Sky News (@SkyNews) January 4, 2021

its so depressing that guardian types (without style) have such a depressingly shallow sense of politics that conflates aesthetics and content in such puerile ways. the gall of a publication with a fashion section as dire as the theguardian.com criticising anyone for their appearance is beyond daft. scruffy jeremy corbyn didn't read our ten best mens cardigans feature.

in the counterfactual "what if corbyn as still leader of the opposition" ( a very meaningless and beyond unlikely counterfactual of course) all the awful libs who do care about COVID and want more done about it would've somehow managed to pillory him for being to pro-lockdown

Yeah, cunt chicken as you’ve never seen it. “Jeremt Cromtb doesn’t want YOUR children to get an education!!!!”

Crobyn or somebody else, it's hard to imagine anybody fucking this as badly as Kieth.

he makes the Maybot look like a dynamo