FlyTheNest

Morning all.

Morning

Now strong rumours that a government u-turn on evictions is in the offing. Something, again, that has "only" been obvious for months.

Blowing an onshore gale ! Which may leave interesting shellfish on the sand while the tide goes out ....

Morning all.

Covid-19 drives UK national debt to £2tn for first time

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... first-time" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Samuel Tombs, the chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said: “Borrowing currently is on track to total about 17% of GDP in this fiscal year, a trajectory that likely will prompt the chancellor to be relatively cautious when he draws up further measures to support the economy in the budget later this year.

Over the last four months, the UK has almost borrowed as much it did in the 12 months after the financial crisis.

The deficit surged to almost £160bn in the 2009-2010 financial year because of the cost of bailing out the banks and handling a deep recession.

But...but...I thought that Labour bankrupted us back then!

We were "the next Greece", remember?

Good afternoon, everyone.

NOAA Satellites
@NOAASatellites
·
5m
As the sun set yesterday, #GOESWest saw fires ignite and burn across the state of #California. The #CaliforniaWildfires recently intensified with the #LNUcomplexfire, which burned over 335 sq. miles in three days; currently, it is at 0% containment.
" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

check out the gif in that tweet
yikes

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ssion=true" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

MPs threaten to sue Boris Johnson unless he acts over Russian meddling in UK polls
Cross-party group to take legal action if PM fails to order independent investigation

Not holding my breath on that, tbh.

citizenJA wrote:

NOAA Satellites
@NOAASatellites
·
5m
As the sun set yesterday, #GOESWest saw fires ignite and burn across the state of #California. The #CaliforniaWildfires recently intensified with the #LNUcomplexfire, which burned over 335 sq. miles in three days; currently, it is at 0% containment.
" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

check out the gif in that tweet
yikes

The reason the fires are so bad, is because they can't use 'slave' labour from the local prisons - because they are locked down due to covid.

It turns out the "freeze" on evictions is going to be extended for.......one whole month. How incredibly generous

Good morfternoon. Been away to bonny Scotland for a few days.


If the govt scrapped the benefit cap and increased local housing allowance rates so that people could get proper help with their rent, my guess is that between half and 3/4 of the rent arrears problem would be solved instantly.
Eviction freeze is just digging us into a deeper and deeper hole.

As they're both in the news, I assume I should have known this?

Fionna O'Leary,
@fascinatorfun

Ah! Apparently Nick Gibb, who was warned about how the algorithm would discriminate, but went ahead anyway, is Robbie Gibb’s brother.

No wonder he is so partisan in the face of such extraordinary ineptitude.

refitman wrote:

citizenJA wrote:

NOAA Satellites
@NOAASatellites
·
5m
As the sun set yesterday, #GOESWest saw fires ignite and burn across the state of #California. The #CaliforniaWildfires recently intensified with the #LNUcomplexfire, which burned over 335 sq. miles in three days; currently, it is at 0% containment.
" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

check out the gif in that tweet
yikes

The reason the fires are so bad, is because they can't use 'slave' labour from the local prisons - because they are locked down due to covid.

Yep.

Good grief...

Schools that followed advice to deflate grades must now be given appeal route

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/schools-that- ... eal-route/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There were two incompatible objectives set from the beginning.

On March 20th, the Department for Education said the objective was to ensure students are “awarded a grade which fairly reflects the work that they have put in”. Prime minister Boris Johnson also said the government “would ensure that pupils due to sit exams this summer would get the qualifications they need”.

But at the same time in the same briefing, the DfE also specified a second objective– to “aim to ensure that the distribution of grades follows a similar pattern to that in other years”, AKA comparable outcomes.

Two things come out of this:

1. More people will realise that GCSE results are manipulated to ensure that they broadly follow previous years and the cohort results from KS2 and hence you don't get large swings just because a different cohort is sitting them

2. Hopefully people will now realise that the Progress 8 measure is a nonsense as it goes from criteria-referenced KS2 SATs to norm-referenced GCSEs. How can that possibly be right?

Early night for me, everyone.
Goodnight.
love,
cJA

DELIGHTFUL !

EXCLUSIVE: Get off my land! Furious farmer reveals Boris Johnson 'climbed over his fence to set up 8ft tent WITHOUT permission and lit a dangerous campfire before fleeing Highlands holiday cottage'... leaving his MINDERS to clean up

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... nsula.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Leaving a trail of destruction behind him . Now there's a surprise !

I never knew that certain kinds of tent could be "trendy"...

Fun and games today. The storm brought down a branch from our ancient chestnut tree onto the neighbours garage. This branch was as big as a good sized tree and must have weighed over a ton. A tree surgeon with a big chainsaw was required, there were arguments over liability and insurance and it took 3 hours to safely chop it up without doing any more damage. Now the whole tree, which is probably over a century old, will have to come down as it's dangerous and the landlord will be liable if it does any more damage. Not that I wouldn't mind seeing him further out of pocket, he made a total arse of himself because the neighbours are Muslims and he's a racist twat, it was really embarrassing.

gilsey wrote:Good morfternoon. Been away to bonny Scotland for a few days.

Whereabouts? And did you avoid the bastard midges?

AnatolyKasparov wrote:It turns out the "freeze" on evictions is going to be extended for.......one whole month. How incredibly generous

Well that's strange because Tory MP Heather Wheeler on Newsnight last night was quite blasé about the whole thing and said nothing needed to be done as the courts were backed up. In fact she claimed anyone making a fuss about it was scaremongering and began blathering on about the increased 'generosity' of housing benefit (yay an extra £1.60 a week, thank you Tories).

I'd previously been unaware of this hideous Wheeler creature yet a nagging familiarity plagued me throughout the interview, then I remembered the cover of an H.P Lovecraft book I've got on the shelf.

I've just read her Wikipedia entry. A real charmer (although with, as she would have it, a sense of humour).

Sky'sGoneOut wrote:

gilsey wrote:Good morfternoon. Been away to bonny Scotland for a few days.

Whereabouts? And did you avoid the bastard midges?

Isle of Seil: yes
Glenfinnan: no
Cullen: yes
The coast is always best.

Mr gilsey's chosen photo locations.
We were mostly lucky with the weather, Cullen beach and Bow Fiddle Rock absolutely stunning on a sunny day.

gilsey wrote:

Sky'sGoneOut wrote:

gilsey wrote:Good morfternoon. Been away to bonny Scotland for a few days.

Whereabouts? And did you avoid the bastard midges?

Isle of Seil: yes
Glenfinnan: no
Cullen: yes
The coast is always best.

Mr gilsey's chosen photo locations.

We were mostly lucky with the weather, Cullen beach and Bow Fiddle Rock absolutely stunning on a sunny day.

You went from Argyle to Moray? That's quite a journey. I'm insanely jealous.

Of the three I've only been to Glenfinnan and can understand why it would be a splendid photo location as it's picturesque with a big bold capital 'P'.

I really love to see any of the resultant photos.

Were you camping, B&B, hotels or just naked under the stars?

RogerOThornhill wrote:I never knew that certain kinds of tent could be "trendy"...

Thing is, before Covid made camping trendy again there was always trendy hiking and camping gear. I think it was mainly driven by Countryfile. You'd see John Craven wearing a certain Berghaus jacket and a week later while you were walking over the moors everyone would be wearing the same jacket. But Springwatch also had its adherents, I knew someone who would pause it just to see what boots Michaela Strachan was wearing. Of course Chris Packham became aware of those slavishly following his own outdoor fashion choices and began buying ridiculous shirts from Ebay to take the piss out of them.

This is partially true.

Sky'sGoneOut wrote:This is partially true.

I'm choosing to believe all of it.

Sky'sGoneOut wrote:
You went from Argyle to Moray? That's quite a journey. I'm insanely jealous.

Of the three I've only been to Glenfinnan and can understand why it would be a splendid photo location as it's picturesque with a big bold capital 'P'.

I really love to see any of the resultant photos.

Were you camping, B&B, hotels or just naked under the stars?

Hotels, my days of roughing it are long gone. CV-wise, quite comfortable with the first 2, not so much the one at Cullen so didn’t stay the second night we’d planned.

If you want a bizarre/disturbing read I would highly recommend 'Fingers in the sparkle jar' Chris Packhams 'autobiography'.

Half of it is him imagining being in other people's shoes meeting this weird kid who, for example, tries to buy an ice cream with a matchbox full of ladybirds. The rest is a lot more disturbing than that, but as someone of a similar age I wonder about his spelling of certain terms of abuse (that were aimed at him). For example he says 'spacker' whereas at my school it was 'Spacka'.

gilsey wrote:

Sky'sGoneOut wrote:Hotels, my days of roughing it are long gone. CV-wise, quite comfortable with the first 2, not so much the one at Cullen so didn’t stay the second night we’d planned.

I hate roughing it, I'm a man of luxury, I have an inflatable air bed you can hold in your hand (when deflated obviously), there's nothing better than being in your tent listening to the wind rippling the flysheet after sitting up having a beer looking at the the stars, you become one with the world until it starts raining and you have to get up in the morning and put your tent away in the wet without having any breakfast and think why the fuck am I doing this?

[youtube]rGnKw6SvYIo[/youtube]

[youtube]j_CRANDTCAY[/youtube]

[youtube]r3Dr9koWfHs[/youtube]

Night night.

Hmmm...I'll have to think about this.

Shit.