scottsdad

Oooh. Unlucky @oaksoft - looks like you're out of step with mainstream English public opinion. Hang your maskless head in shame!

The fall in cases south of the border is down to fewer tests being done than a week ago, rather than some collapse. The test positivity is the same roughly. 18th October, 779,000 tests. 25th October, 658,000 tests. The real drop will come in a couple of weeks, as the English half term effect kicks in.

Very, very interesting one yesterday. Focusing not only on the main criminal but his parents who, in a panic, helped him "escape". I felt very sorry for the boy's dad. He seemed utterly broken when he found out his son had killed somebody. The mum, a bit less so, determined to defend her good son. She only broke when she found out he'd been caught.

Tremendous. Leon as always on form also.

Donaldson's college in Edinburgh

What's your poison? Brutalist? Scottish baronial? Art Nouveau? Gothic Revival? Art Deco? Something else? All with pics of course. Why not kick off with the home of Sir Walter Scott, Abbotsford House...

Let me guess - the media's follow-up questions were "What do case numbers need to reach to reintroduce lockdown?"

About 20 years ago there was a craze to try to standardise baby feeding. You should only feed them every 4 hours, a set amount of milk. You should wean them at 6 months and not before. My brother was told to only feed his youngest cold milk. It was all bollocks. Simple method - if the baby is hungry, give it a bottle. Still hungry? Give it more. Bottles just not cutting the mustard? Time to move on to soup/baby food/black pudding suppers.

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It is extremely fucked up. The interview process is two-stage. Stage 1 - the academic gives a presentation to staff on why they are suitable for the role. The staff then put together their thoughts, collated by a member of staff. Stage 2 - an interview with senior university people. At the end of this stage the member of staff who collated the feedback gives it to the interview panel. What I found out this time is stage 1 is irrelevant. The feedback was universally negative regarding the Prof, and he was appointed anyway. To be honest the feedback for almost all applicants was negative! There are two types of contract - teaching and research, and teaching and scholarship. T&R appointments focus on funding won, publications, patents, etc. T&S focus on what they can do to enhance and ramp up the teaching offering.

I don't think anyone's getting sacked. However if the school management buckle and agree to his demands, then we'll be doing what we have done for the past few years (bringing in casual staff, on low pay, to cover the holes in our teaching). It would create huge ill-feeling towards the Prof and the school management. I'm getting emails from other senior colleagues asking what is going on. Word is clearly getting out that there is an issue here.

It is a very specialised area, and it seems he has been brought in to develop lucrative postgraduate programmes for us. The target is to bring in £800k in fees within 3 years. He is in his early 60s and stopped doing research about 10 years ago and focused on developing educational offerings. He is very well known in this sector (and not always for the right reasons) but at his previous uni he did indeed develop these programmes that the university management has lapped up. Very corporate stuff. For the rest of us in the team we're a bit sceptical as other unis nearby have similar programmes with low student numbers. Not Russell group.

8 for Tuesday