ICTChris Posted December 21, 2020 Author Share Posted December 21, 2020 There is also an economic cost from closing schools - some parents (usually mothers) who have children of an age that require supervision then can't work. You have people who can work from home by splitting childcare with their partner, or who have employers who can be flexible and allow them to work when they can get someone else to look after the child. People can muddle through these things, either working with their kids around their ankles or at different times. There will be a subset of people who just can't work when schools are closed though and I'm sure that is taken into account when factoring school closures. I think during the last lockdown the number of parents who used the hubs for key workers who had childcare requirements were very under utilised (I saw some figures of 1% of kids going to them when around 20% were eligible) so you assume that people worked something out or just stopped working. I'm fortunate in that I have a very good employer, who gave everyone extra leave days they could take for Covid and are extremely flexible, certainly in my area. One thing that has been tested is the model for family home ownership - two working parents with kids to keep up mortgage payments. Again, I am very fortunate in that neither my wife or I lost work or money from the pandemic and we didn't/don't have child care issues. We are also in aposition where my wife's income is a nice to have rather than a necessity but there are plenty who will have been really stretched. Strange I was thinking back to when I was a kid and school closures would have been a lot easier to deal with then as the majority of mothers stayed at home. Trad life is chad life. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supermik Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 2 minutes ago, buchan30 said: My son was the only one in his high school class today. Mrs B considering no bothering sending them tomorrow. But,but, he might miss out on a higher trigonometry test.. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renton Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 39 minutes ago, Michael W said: Sounda like all of England is going to be punted into Tier 4 after Christmas, going by the cut of Vallance's jib. No idea whether the devolved parliaments will follow suit. We're already doing that. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ICTChris Posted December 21, 2020 Author Share Posted December 21, 2020 (edited) I've just realised that I broke Covid laws numerous times today by driving to Seafield via the Bypass, thus entering East and Mid Lothian. I'm a lawbreaker. ETA - How can I block a specific poster from seeing my post, eg philpy? Edited December 21, 2020 by ICTChris 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vikingTON Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 16 minutes ago, MixuFruit said: Because for a non trivial number of parents there's no long term mechanism to help them take time off or work flexibly if the schools close. Fix that and the schools can close/move to blended learning, which is a responsibility of employers and government to support. Closing entire sectors of the economy to keep the schools running full time and still not controlling the pandemic causes long term unemployment for a non trivial number of parent and non parents alike. What makes parents with children of school age somehow unique in not being obliged to adjust to conditions in a global pandemic, when entire sectors of the economy are being sloughed off instead? Once again, the overriding question should be 'How do we best resolve the public health problem of a disease outbreak'? rather than 'How do we ensure our measures are fair for our politically important interest groups?' It is this triangulating nonsense - being carried out by piss-poor political leaders - that explains why the UK has made roaring c**t of it time and time again this year, with no end in sight to its clown running across a minefield display. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Granny Danger Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 1 minute ago, virginton said: Closing entire sectors of the economy to keep the schools running full time and still not controlling the pandemic causes long term unemployment for a non trivial number of parent and non parents alike. What makes parents with children of school age somehow unique in not being obliged to adjust to conditions in a global pandemic, when entire sectors of the economy are being sloughed off instead? Once again, the overriding question should be 'How do we best resolve the public health problem of a disease outbreak'? rather than 'How do we ensure our measures are fair for our politically important interest groups?' It is this triangulating nonsense - being carried out by piss-poor political leaders - that explains why the UK has made roaring c**t of it time and time again this year, with no end in sight to its clown running across a minefield display. Millions of working parents with school age cannot just magic up child minding. The fact that you do not understand this should inform how people treat your posts. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marshmallo Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 (edited) 7 minutes ago, virginton said: Once again, the overriding question should be 'How do we best resolve the public health problem of a disease outbreak'? Not sure I agree with this. That's one question that needs to be considered but there are numerous competing priorities which need to be balanced. All I've been waiting for is a bit honesty from those in charge and this "grown up conversation" we were promised, rather than patronising pish about wrapping paper being shiny and making our own sunshine from The Guys. Edited December 21, 2020 by Marshmallo 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peasy23 Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 There is also an economic cost from closing schools - some parents (usually mothers) who have children of an age that require supervision then can't work. You have people who can work from home by splitting childcare with their partner, or who have employers who can be flexible and allow them to work when they can get someone else to look after the child. People can muddle through these things, either working with their kids around their ankles or at different times. There will be a subset of people who just can't work when schools are closed though and I'm sure that is taken into account when factoring school closures. I think during the last lockdown the number of parents who used the hubs for key workers who had childcare requirements were very under utilised (I saw some figures of 1% of kids going to them when around 20% were eligible) so you assume that people worked something out or just stopped working. I'm fortunate in that I have a very good employer, who gave everyone extra leave days they could take for Covid and are extremely flexible, certainly in my area. One thing that has been tested is the model for family home ownership - two working parents with kids to keep up mortgage payments. Again, I am very fortunate in that neither my wife or I lost work or money from the pandemic and we didn't/don't have child care issues. We are also in aposition where my wife's income is a nice to have rather than a necessity but there are plenty who will have been really stretched. Strange I was thinking back to when I was a kid and school closures would have been a lot easier to deal with then as the majority of mothers stayed at home. Trad life is chad life. I know the problem a lot of parents faced was that their kids were getting punted into a hub that wasn't at their child's own school. For example, one of my workmate's has an 8 year old daughter. Her local hub was in a secondary school, nobody else from her class would have been there, and none of the staff from her school. If they had kept all the kids going to their own schools then I'm sure the uptake would have been higher. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aufc Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 Closing entire sectors of the economy to keep the schools running full time and still not controlling the pandemic causes long term unemployment for a non trivial number of parent and non parents alike. What makes parents with children of school age somehow unique in not being obliged to adjust to conditions in a global pandemic, when entire sectors of the economy are being sloughed off instead? Once again, the overriding question should be 'How do we best resolve the public health problem of a disease outbreak'? rather than 'How do we ensure our measures are fair for our politically important interest groups?' It is this triangulating nonsense - being carried out by piss-poor political leaders - that explains why the UK has made roaring c**t of it time and time again this year, with no end in sight to its clown running across a minefield display. The thing is there is probably no way to ensure everyone is happy. I don’t really get the hate for parents who want to send their kids to school or whatever. Speaking from experience, it is pretty tough having to occupy young children 24 hours a day 7 days a week especially in lockdown or whatever. On the other side, i can imagine it is rather shite being stuck in a house on your own for that time as well (although after the first few weeks of lockdown i would have been delighted with that for a period). The virus has affected almost everyone in some form or other. For the record, i agree with you on the schools. My two are at nursery and there has been no cases in either of their classes. The other class had to close for two weeks but they were all in separate bubbles. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
101 Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 1 minute ago, Marshmallo said: All I've been waiting for is a bit honesty from those in charge and this "grown up conversation" we were promised, rather than patronising pish about wrapping paper being shiny and making our own sunshine from The Guys. Sadly Marshy wrapping paper is about as much as most adults in this country can comprehend a grown up conversation about how to manage the virus was dead as soon as they found out how dense people are. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaz Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 50 minutes ago, ICTChris said: One thing that has been tested is the model for family home ownership - two working parents with kids to keep up mortgage payments. Again, I am very fortunate in that neither my wife or I lost work or money from the pandemic and we didn't/don't have child care issues. We are also in aposition where my wife's income is a nice to have rather than a necessity but there are plenty who will have been really stretched. Strange I was thinking back to when I was a kid and school closures would have been a lot easier to deal with then as the majority of mothers stayed at home. Trad life is chad life. We struggled. My wife lost her job due to Covid. She managed to find something temporary but it wasn't working out around childcare. We had to use the mortgage payment holidays and we are still recovering from that. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vikingTON Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 7 minutes ago, Granny Danger said: Millions of working parents with school age cannot just magic up child minding. The fact that you do not understand this should inform how people treat your posts. They managed to magic up childcare between March and June of this year when the schools were in fact closed altogether with the exception of key worker hubs, as well as all through the summer holidays. Somehow, the world kept turning on its axis in the face of their plight. If the government is serious about controlling a virus - as it was belatedly in the spring - then it knows exactly what to do then. That millions of parents will be inconvenienced by this is just tough. Everyone is being inconvenienced. People are going to lose their jobs and their future career prospects because of this, so it's high time that people got off their fucking cross about having to mind wee Jayden for longer than expected. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vikingTON Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 2 minutes ago, MixuFruit said: There's clearly an end in sight as we have many effective vaccines arriving, and we simply don't know if there will be long term unemployment as a result of COVID. We absolutely do know that there will be long term unemployment as a result of the pandemic, as well as the generation of austerity measures that will be a direct response to the money that government is throwing against a wall right now. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Granny Danger Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 1 minute ago, virginton said: They managed to magic up childcare between March and June of this year when the schools were in fact closed altogether with the exception of key worker hubs, as well as all through the summer holidays. Somehow, the world kept turning on its axis in the face of their plight. If the government is serious about controlling a virus - as it was belatedly in the spring - then it knows exactly what to do then. That millions of parents will be inconvenienced by this is just tough. Everyone is being inconvenienced. People are going to lose their jobs and their future career prospects because of this, so it's high time that people got off their fucking cross about having to mind wee Jayden for longer than expected. Most working parents were off work at that time, those who were key workers could still put their kids to school. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vikingTON Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 (edited) 4 minutes ago, Granny Danger said: Most working parents were off work at that time, those who were key workers could still put their kids to school. The same practical restrictions are in place under tier 4 as they were in the spring. Which means that the number of parents 'off work' will be the same and we can once again use the schools as key worker hubs and be in the exact same circumstances as before, only with a better plan for distance learning in place as well. Thanks for demonstrating the fact that there are no practical obstacles to closing the schools then. Edited December 21, 2020 by vikingTON 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vikingTON Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 12 minutes ago, Marshmallo said: Not sure I agree with this. That's one question that needs to be considered but there are numerous competing priorities which need to be balanced. All I've been waiting for is a bit honesty from those in charge and this "grown up conversation" we were promised, rather than patronising pish about wrapping paper being shiny and making our own sunshine from The Guys. The competing priorities got chucked overboard when the emergency, emergency mutant strain emergency was declared at the weekend and Ullapool was put into lockdown as covid hotspot. Under those conditions, there is only one question that should be considered. As/when the government rows back from this - however long that takes- then school closures should form part of the regional tier system as well. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marshmallo Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 "Most working parents were off at that time" lolwot. Any numbers to back this up? I appreciate this is the same person who said the only people who have functionality to work remotely are a small subset of accountants. -1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rugster Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 (edited) 6 minutes ago, virginton said: The same practical restrictions are in place under tier 4 as they were in the spring. No they aren’t. For a start manufacturing and construction is permitted to continue in tier 4 whereas in the spring it wasn’t. Edited December 21, 2020 by Rugster 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
welshbairn Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 It's all about ra skools and lazy parents spiel has been going on for about 6 months now, got well boring 5 months ago. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vikingTON Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 8 minutes ago, MixuFruit said: Why do we know with such certainty? Some economic modelling? Can you post a link to it? Knock yourself out, pages 4-7 set out the implications before the Bank of England could even factor in this latest set of cascading lockdowns: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/speech/2020/the-potential-long-term-effects-of-covid-speech-by-dave-ramsden.pdf?la=en&hash=FA29F3EE33EF0439FF20F0EBE91E55B4F64DA9B6 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.