Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts

Education and The Israeli War Against Palestinian Children, CTD.

The Israeli War Against Palestinian Children, CTD

Interview between Owen Jones in London and Unicef representative James Elder live in Gaza.


James Elder: "The world should be terrified of the long-term consequences. Because we know that the longer a war goes on, the more damage it does psychologically to children. UNICEF knows that from a Yemen or Afghanistan. We are in uncharted territory when it comes to the mental health of children here"

Please watch this interview, give 20 minutes of your time to this.

And share it, pass it on. I wonder if it could happen that billions of people watch this, in the next week or so, and we, the ordinary majority of Humanity watch and hear and understand what is being said, what it really means. And what it means for every war zone that is currently in motion. So many childandren, every single precious one of them is 100% innocent.

In the way I see feel life I think that every adult alive owes a responsibility to all the children, I think that this is non negotiable biological and empathic and moral and egalitarian humane evolutionary mandate, and it is not a burden, it is a gift.  The gift is love, integrity and nurture. To be intentionally engaged  in the way is a gift.

The technical catch all word for this Alloparenting, in every day language we would say it is shared parenting. In practice this was, for most of our evolution, the norm across any given  population. Is is our oldest evolved behavioural characteristic that makes us behaviourally distinct from Primates, and every biologically healthy person would be happy to meet that duty, and succeed. It is how we thrived for most of our existence. 

'All is born of woman, no harm shall come to the children.'



"if they are so hungry in the North, well they can just walk 20 minutes to the South and get the food aid." Israeli official comment a few days ago.

Education


Continuous Traumatic Distress - 24/7, minute by minute, second by agonising second.


In Gaza, there are no schools functioning, none left standing, there are no universities left standing. All intentionally and systematically targeted, bombed, destroyed. Erased. And all those students who would have been attending these schools and universities had younger brothers and sisters not yet in education.


The adverse changes that that unspeakable lived experience of constant state of warfare, imposed by a State bent on a genocidal campaign, the trauma it will inflict upon the babies, infants, toddlers, children, teens their mothers and fathers (who have no means to protect them) on their bodies and minds, on their endocrinology, lungs, heart, digestive system, lymph systems, sleeping patterns, eating patterns, resting patterns and their very essence is a grievous , grievous wound, invisible to the eye, until the symptoms present.


"some are hoping it will cease, and that somehow they will survive, some wish to be killed by war now, every second they are still alive, to end their suffering."  from conversations with children in Gaza, this week, last week, six months ago, during Operation Cast Lead, every time the 'Gras was mowed'


The world's Psychology and Child Development research clinical practice Community and everyone in Education and Pediatric Health Care must speak up, in public, to Power. 


We and they must form up a political lobby on behalf of all our children, a put a stop to this.


Continuous Traumatic Distress.


This short documentary from Al Jazeera, on the impacts of living with continuous traumatic distress 24/7, minute by minute, all the time... living with constant imminent threat, over decades. What it does to children, parents and families, what it does to their communities.




"proportionality, anyone?'


Education.


The university of witnessing a Genocidal war in real time is not part of the University of Life. It is the university of desolation, the college of death, maiming and survival. Nobody thrives in this place. Survivors are the only ones who graduate. The makers of the bombs, the designers, the testers, the production line managers graduated from American, British and Israeli Universities.


Part of what happening is that we the people, the civilian tax paying, voting populations of the allies of Israel, the citizens of USUK EU and others are being educated by witness testimony and reliable empirical evidence. And we are asking questions, learning more. What is this? Why is this? We are learning every day.


The object of such an unwilled for education must lead to the emergence of a motivation to confront the truth about our Ruling Class and to act on what we find to make it the harm causation is ceased. 


Peace


'Peace is more than the absence of War' as Arundhuti Roy puts it. 


She was and will always be correct in that axiom. We cry out on the face of injustice - "no justice, no peace!' and it is not a threat, it is not a call to riot - it is a statement for fact. Where injustice is done, peace is absent.


"There can be no real peace without justice. And without resistance, there will be no justice," writes Arundhati Roy. We have a duty to respond to the unmet needs of all our children, to meet those needs, to prevent those needs from harm.


'All is born of woman, no harm shall come to the children.' 


This is the oldest 'law' of the human species. Our basic biological mandate. Remember that? I mentioned it earlier.  Alloparenting -  it bears repeating. This Law is not a burden, this law the art of is living designed to set us free.


A blogger writes :

"Peace, in a world bent on war and intent on drawing the rest of us into it, is a precious commodity. 


But not an easy one to achieve.

Do anything you can to avoid war–personal or public. Do everything you can to make peace real. But remember that peace can never come from either fear or threat. Both of those must be dispelled before the trust that is of the essence of peace can possibly break out.

Peace is not the acceptance of evil. On the contrary, real peace requires resistance to evil. But not in evil ways. This kind of peacemaking requires courage, not power, a kind of strength that uses love rather than force to change the world."


source : https://joanchittister.org/articles/peaceful-heart


That will take all of us ordinary people becoming politically active. Not as an ideology based lobby. As a humane evidence based lobby, the biggest, strongest political lobby on Earth. Love in action.


It is what we need.


The revolution is dependent upon an educational liberation, and some counselling along the way, and I think this is absolutely essential and that we must make it happen at pace.


Emotional Blindness.


I think the evidence is there to suggest that following is likely true


If a person as a witness to these two documentaries and their meanings cannot hold all of that evidence in place, and admit it, then there has to be some profound  emotional blindness that is disrupting their capacity for analytical thinking, empathy, kindness - they have to be internalising a belief system that has changed the way their brains function, they way their minds behave, robbing them of the most important aspect of being a healthy human. Belief can do that. Blind ideology can do that. Unresolved trauma can do that. Indoctrination can do that.


Beyond that simple analysis, it is abundantly clear that the major crimes of State and non State militia must cease, and then they must be accounted for, all of them , and in full - no matter where that leads. 


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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Substandard Housing, the NHS and the Health of the people - solving problems by nurturing people's homes.

It is estimated that more than 8 million people live in substandard housing across the UK.


It's not a bad deal to invest £9 billion to improve the lives of 8 million citizens, who will put all of that back into the economy, twice over, and repeat. People in happy secure homes contribute to the economy on many levels.

I think that on a fundamental human level, radical security of home, hearth and table is a key building block of healthy community. Every one is at home.

A little empathy and a budget of £9 billion could go a long way in terms of designing and delivering a policy that could bring about a direct social material improvement in the living situation for a significant population of fellow citizens, those 8 million souls currently living in substandard housing.

Update Edit : As we roll into the Autumn and Winter '22 and energy price speculation drives homes and business energy bills into outrageous levels (the costs of producing have not changed much in the past three years), the adverse health impacts are clear. Sir Micheal Marmot lasy them out.

One irate caller rang in just after the Marmot segment had finished to say "we 'ad it tough and we survived!" Tom Swarbrick has not having it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/01/generation-britain-long-term-illness-cold-poor-winter-cost-of-living-crisis

"All I want is a room somewhere./ Far away from the cold night air …/warm face, warm hands, warm feet. Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly.

To Eliza Doolittle’s lament we can add, not just “loverly”, but healthy, too. George Bernard Shaw, whose play Pygmalion was the source for the film My Fair Lady, was writing about Edwardian London. Yet cold and poor is the reality facing 66% of the population this winter in 21st-century Britain.

Both “cold” and “poor” will contribute to worse health and greater health inequalities. It is a humanitarian crisis. One that will not be solved by tax cuts or removing levies that favour green energy, as seems to be the “solution” proposed by our likely next prime minister. We need to act on the immediate crisis, but we also need to ask how we got here, and what to do to solve the problem of fuel poverty, and its effects on health inequalities, in the longer term.

Fuel poverty has three components: the price of fuel, the quality of housing and ability to pay. The definition used to be having to spend 10% or more of household income to heat your dwelling to an acceptable level. Some variant of that is still used in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In England, the definition changed, which makes comparisons difficult: a household is fuel poor if the property has a low efficiency rating and the household disposable income, after housing and energy needs, is less than 60% of national median income.

For the cold part of cold and poor, the causal chain is simple. Inflation in general, and the cost of heating, will lead to fuel poverty. Fuel poverty will lead to cold homes. Cold homes will damage mental and physical health. The health effects are considerable, as laid out in our report, Fuel Poverty, Cold Homes and Health Inequalities in the UK, published today by the UCL Institute of Health Equity.

The health effects start in childhood with lungs damaged by cold, but also by mould and damp that tend to accompany cold in substandard housing. Children who live in cold, damp homes have more respiratory illnesses than children who do not. This higher burden of illness is likely to continue through into adulthood.

Cold damages mental health. Children growing up in cold homes have more psychological symptoms than children in warm homes. They also perform less well in school. A combination of days missed through illness, inadequate conditions for study and homework, and the effects of cold on mental health and development all contribute."

Grift and Wealth Extraction.

First, take a moment to enjoy this satirical Pythone scene of grandees celebrating their past poverty and current wealth, Who among the Tory Party will celebrate after electing Truss or Sunak, both of whom are more or less ignoring the poverty being imposed on millions of British households by rising energy prices, years of wage stagnation, austrity, privatisation of social care and grift, warming in the glow of their extra-large shareholding dividends and low taxation.

"We 'ad it tough!"?

How callous is that?


How much money was lost or or how much wealth was extracted by the corrupted VIP PPE contracting to cronies? How many millionaires were minted? At what cost, was the failure of Test and Trace in impeding spread of the Virus, beyond the 'lost' money? 200,000 avoidable deaths, often of vulnerable people. 1.4 million cases of long COVID. Economic disaster for 3 million small businesses.

What does it mean when the the loss of what it could have been used for, had it been deployed in practical and proven ways to suppress transmission which would have saved lives, prevented chronic disease is of so little interest to our Rulers?

It bears repeating. Minting millionaires whilst negligence 'allowed' 200,000 horrific deaths, each death a catastrophic trauma event. 1.4 million cases of Long Covid. Poverty increasing. Minting Millionaires and celebrating the fact with Wine Fridays! #torydeathparties  NHS on it's knees.

Johnson advises the poor to buy a new kettle, during his self congradulation tour. 

This Parliment, and this Government, is unfit for purpose if the purpose of Government and democracy is Justice and Healthy Governance.

To be honest, and to be fair, all of that negligence, waste and grift is unforgivable; injustice prevails as long as those new millionaires still have those millions to hand, and as long as the grifters in power remain unindicted.

They - we know who they are - must be sent to trial for Misconduct in Public Office, Corruption, Corporate Manslaughter by Negligence and the newly minted millionaires subjected to class action civil litigation claims to return the misappropriated wealth to the States coffers.

Substandard Government, Substandard Housing, Top Notch Wealth Extraction.

With regards to substandard housing, we do know that such an investment - £9 billion, maybe £12 Billion given recent rises for materials and labour - would pay for itself. 

It would, in terms of tax expenditure and future returns as peoples lives are improved, provide a decent and orderly base from which those 8 million people could operate. And, in terms of the savings arising from preventing the harms of substandard housing going forwards means, it makes for a sound economic public health policy.

Avoiding avoidable harms is a sound axiom of healthy governance. An a priori ethical stance. Avoiding avoidable harm is common sense.

If we become aware of a harm, then we cease causing that harm. We look again, and we find another way to do whatever it is, a way that does not cause harm.

And that is why taking reasonable action to assure that the security and comfort of a comfortable, clean and econimically sustainable home is an actualised and lived Human Right, that it is fully met and upheld, has to be an essential element of a healthy democracy.  

There is no good reason to not devote such a small part of total government expediture to significantly reducing levels of chronic stress, distress and unhappiness substantively, in quantifiable observeable reality, for millions of people by improving the material standards of 2 millioon substandard homes.

In some sense that reflects how bio-logical life on Earth works. Everyone is at home.

And yes, our civilisation is flawed, and our circumstance as citizens, varied. We all know now that England in 2022 is far, far from a healthy democracy. It is a kleptocracy, it's governing system is operating as a bully cult, and it's people are being bullied by billionaire wealth extractors.

Who will stand up to the bullies?

It is estimated that 8 million people live in substandard housing across the UK.

Which brings me to the matter at hand. I live in substandard housing, have done for 19 years. My landlord finally put in central heating four years ago. I wage a constant battle against mould and damp. I am being evicted because the landlord wants to take the capital gains he has made in the past 20 years, by selling the property, and of course he will not share any of that with me, in spite of the rental income he has gained in that time. I serve merely as an object from which he extracts wealth.

My government supports that wealth extraction, by refusing to legislate fair social rents and by encouraging buy-to-let landlordism to maintain property value increases in order to serve the lenders, more wealth extraction.

I am one in 8 million, powerless to affect the situation, voiceless in policy discourse, marginalised and dehumanised by the billionaire press and broadcast media.

https://www.bregroup.com/press-releases/bre-report-finds-poor-housing-is-costing-nhs-1-4bn-a-year/

Substandard housing costs the people who have to endure living in such conditions more than the rent they are forced to pay. People in substandard housing bear a burden of ill health and chronic stress through no fault of their own.

Substandard housing also costs the NHS billions annually in terms of illness, accidents and injuries, and the costs go further, in  terms of chronic stress and psychlogical health, all the while a group of landlords rake in wealth, extracted from poor, low income folk and from Housing Benefits.

This is unjust. It is an atrocity. Good decent people, our fellow citizens are being exposed to avoidable harm. 8 million people, individuals, families, men, owmen and children, entire communities... cities of people living in disrepair, trapped by a refusal to invest as the landlord extracts wealth, a trap, a socially and economically  structured trap. It is not right. It is not fit and proper.

Perhaps the money paid to landlords for Housing Benefits of people living in substandard housing ought to be ring fenced, matched with Government funding, and spent on upgrading these houses to a good standard, to include forward planning adaptations towards lower carbon footprints, and only after that should landlords be allowed to take full profits.

There's a few good arguments for nationalising aspects of housing, as a common resource, maintained by the society as a social resource, a commons that good folk would choose to cherish and nurture. 

Contrast the unhappiness and ill health of those who endure substandard housing to the fact that landlords have the increased value of the property which can be used as collateral for further borrowing to buy more property to let, an 'entrepreneurial dynamic' that builds a wealth extraction web of activity, supported by neoliberal legislators whose primary concern appears to be the interests of Wealth Extraction. Unhappiness of renters and the happiness of wealth extractors, the former feeding the latter. The profit of others tears.

Another way to put this is to say the chronic ill health and distress of people living in sibstandard housing is an externalised cost, part of the economics of profiteering of some landlords. The people pay the price, they bear the burden, millions of us.

Is it true that middle class, medium and high earning working class folk tend not to understand exactly what substandard housing means? How could someone who has never lived in substandard cousing really understand what this aspect of England is really like.

It certainly does not have to be this way Resolving the situation would build a happier, safer more civil society.

The following is taken from the article linked above.

BRE report finds poor housing is costing NHS £1.4bn a year - 9th November 2021

BRE report – ‘The Cost of Poor Housing in England’ – quantifies the cost burden to the NHS caused by hazards arising from poor quality homes in England.

Findings reveal that 2.6 million homes in England – 11% of the country’s housing stock – are categorised as ‘poor quality’ and therefore hazardous to occupants

Most common hazards are those that cause injuries on stairs, while the costliest issue for the NHS (£857million p/a) is poor quality housing leading to excess cold

According to BRE’s analysis, more than half (£857 million) of this annual NHS treatment bill can be attributed to defects in poor homes which expose residents to excess cold, while the second biggest cost to the NHS comes from hazards which cause people to fall and injure themselves, predominantly on staircases. 

Both issues are particularly dangerous for the most vulnerable in society, such as older people and families with young children.

BRE was able to quantify the cost of poor housing to the NHS by combining existing data from the 2018 English Housing Survey (EHS) on health and safety hazards in the home, with NHS treatment cost figures. 

According to the latest EHS, an estimated 2.6million homes in England – 11% of the country’s housing stock – contained at least one ‘Category one hazard’ and were therefore considered ‘poor’. 

Today’s report follows a similar study by BRE published in 2016.

The most common Category 1 hazard is the risk to a fall on stairs, such as disrepair to, or a lack of a handrail or balustrade, with over 1 million such cases recorded in 2018. 

Fixing this issue alone would save the NHS £219million a year in treatment costs. Dampness is also a common and costly issue for the NHS, with 75,000 homes in England suffering from the most serious dampness in 2018, leading to a £38million annual bill for the NHS. In addition, there are many more homes with non-category one dampness (less serious) which have an impact on people’s health.

The cost of addrressing this vs the costs of allowing this situation to continue.


source: article linked above

As part of the study, BRE also calculated the total cost of eliminating each Category one hazard.  

From this, we can see that the cost of mitigating risks associated with dampness, for example, would effectively be paid back in seven years, thanks to costs saved. 

In total, BRE estimates that the total cost to remedy all Category one hazards in homes in England would amount to £9.8billion – which is around seven times the cost the NHS faces annually for first year treatment costs from these hazards.

Within its report, BRE also identifies that, beyond the cost to the NHS, there are ‘societal costs’ brought on by poor housing, such as those relating to long-term care, mental health and poorer educational achievement. BRE’s findings indicate the cost to wider society of poor housing could equate to £18.5 billion per year.

So it is quite clear that for a relatively small direct investment, the Government could transform the lives of millions of people.  Investments that engender best physiological and psychological health, work that will offer a boost to local community level construction industry. Adaptations to existing stock that can add to better carbon foot print for the nation's rented housing stock.

A government enacting a policy to do all of this will walk away with the kudos and warmth and respect of having achieved genuine social improvements that also support the NHS and improve educational outcomes - did I mention that children living in substandard housing do not fare so well at school as do their contemporaries living in good standard housing?

That is a win-win situation for any Government.

That is a win-win situation for tennants and landlords alike.

Failure to take action on this matter is criminally negligent and socially stupid.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

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Make Education Safe Again

Make Education Safe Again - where we really are right now.

 

#SchoolStrike2021
#SafeEdForAll
@SafeEdForAll
~
The best leverage we have is collective solidarity. Acting together, we have each others back. Because the Government do not have our backs. They are exposing us, and our children, to avoidable harm.
~
Proposal : UK and Global School Strike every Friday to confront this insanity of deliberately, recklessly exposing our children to a known pathogen when we know it does have adverse impacts, including fatalities, long term disease and associated psychological trauma for bystanders and afflicted alike.
~
#MakeSchoolsSafeAgain #MESA
~ Update : 26/10/21 ~
~

#SafeEdForAll
#MESA
#MakeEducationSafeAgain

IndependentSAGE have issued detailed guidelines on how to make schools safe for children, teachers and parents and ultimately for the wider community, to reduce to a minimum the spread of the COVID virus within schools, if not to stop transmission entirely.  Prepared by a collective of experts in epidemiology, virology, public health, education, data modelling, social care, human behaviour and other areas pertinent to handing an epidemic/pandemic. It is not rocket science.

IndependentSAGE issued similar guidelines at the end of Summer 2020, guidelines which the English Government dismissed. We saw what happened as a result. Then we did not have vaccines, now we do. Then we did not have Delta, now we do. Everything has changed, and yet the English Government's policy is, if anything, more reckless than before. Schools are still unsafe for everyone involved, and for the wider community.

The effects on some children of SARS-COV2 infection leading to COVID19 disease and long Covid  include toxic shock syndrome and other unpredictable adverse outcomes which are related to 'super-antigens' found within the virus. There is still so much that is unknown, and in American and Israel where they 'opened up' after vaccination programs for adults were rolled out, outcomes for children exposed to Delta appear to be more intense than with previous variants.

More children were presenting with adverse health outcomes than previously.

While the overall or global percentage rates appear to be small, it is when the are applied to populations of millions of children meeting limited available space in health care systems, the numbers become a serious problem, logistically, and threaten the Governments status.

But for the children and parents involved no amount of minimising the population level impact as a small percentage offers any comfort.

Not least when uncontrolled spread of the virus in the community is avoidable.

Independent SAGE

In recent months IndependentSAGE has issued detailed advice on making schools as safe as they can be to prevent uncontrolled spread of the virus, and the harms to children that will entail, all avoidable harms.

September : https://www.independentsage.org/september-2021-an-urgent-plan-for-safer-schools/

Urging caution, requesting mitigations be re-established in schools to prevent surge of infections, and the harms associated with all of that.

October : https://www.independentsage.org/independent-sage-response-to-the-20th-october-press-conference-by-health-secretary-sajid-javid-we-need-a-winter-plan-now/

Urging extreme caution, requesting mitigations be re-established in nationally to prevent surge of infections, and the harms associated with all of that.

SARS-CoV-2 suppression, rather than attempting to live with the virus, creates best outcomes for health, the economy, and civil liberties. By every measure living with the virus causes more harms. Three studies confirm this.

1, Elimination aka suppression of community transmission reduces incidence, prevents uncontrolled spread, avoids the need for lockdowns, protects people's health, civil liberties and economies.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00978-8/fulltext

2 . The Westminster Government has failed to protect the right to health of the English people.

https://www.hhrjournal.org/2020/11/the-right-to-health-in-times-of-pandemic-what-can-we-learn-from-the-uks-response-to-the-covid-19-outbreak/

3. Human Rights study of UK Governance during 2020/21 with regards to Corona Virus, and upholding the populations Right to Health. 

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.646285/full

This is an Italian academic study of the way Government and Science were set within the ongoing epidemic. The Government failed on multiple counts to accept proven epidemiological scientific and public health advice, and this, combined with a News Media that allowed, and continues to allow that neglect free passage, created an environment of zero accountability. 

What kind of culture allows this to happen?

What is going on here? Whose needs are being met, and whose needs being neglected?

What are schools for, and why should they be safe for children, teachers, parents and the wider community?

What is Education for?

We all accept that Education is a necessary institution, We are a learning species. It's something we do really, really well, often independent of formal instruction.

John Taylor Gatto, a teacher who won many, many awards for his work with children, educating in urban and rural areas of deprivation in New York. He won those awards for the results of his advocacy as a teacher, in deprived areas, beyond delivering the curriculum, teaching and advocating for better support, as an activist teacher, by being a superb, kind, empathic friend and advocate for all the children - being real, congruent, honest and creative in terms of helping the children resolving social educational problems in real time. His efforts changed many, many lives for the better, and he influenced the Education system in New York, and beyond, to good effect. 

Mr. Gatto,  upon being awarded Best Teacher in New York for a third time, decided to use the opportunity of the award ceremony to quit, publicly. Here are  the first few lines of his award speech, where he accepted the award and rejected the system that gave it to him. A very brave thing to do.

"I’ve taught public school for 26 years but I just can’t do it anymore. For years I asked the local school board and superintendent to let me teach a curriculum that doesn’t hurt kids, but they had other fish to fry. So I’m going to quit, I think."

The Westminster Government are forcing parents of the nation to send their children into unsafe schools.

Mr. Gatto quit close to the end of a long and distinguished career, because he did not want to harm any children. His quitting was symbolic, piece of public theatre, on behalf of all children, everywhere. An appeal to the power, into their faces, so that there could be no confusing it with a roast. 

I'd not ask working teachers to do  that, go that far.  I know teaching is a complex activity, with many demands and needs to be met, equally well. Being responsible for a class or a year or a school is intense.

I would say instead, "give his words some thought".

How do we stand and advocate for the children, beyond the teaching role itself?

How do we and how do students explore and learn together, to meet this situation?


Another great educator, Paolo Friere had this to say about teaching:

"Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."

What we are witnessing today in England is a massive failure by Government, by the Department of Education and to a lessor degree head teachers, teachers and parents to do the latter - to deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world for the best possible outcomes for all concerned. Collectively England's adults are failing to avoid avoidable harms to their own and each others children.

England's primary and secondary schools are not COVID safe, and neither are it's universities and yet Government has ordered that all students return to full time study without the necessary protections in place, without the non pharmaceutical interventions that ought to be mandated and supported by Government that would make schools safe for all involved. Does it have to be this way?.

This failure is not the fault of the parents or of the teachers of the children those parents have entrusted into their care. 

The English Government's communications, advice and regulation on COVID have been an unmitigated disaster by every available measure. COVID is not over. Blatantly. Gavin Williamson has been more whip than carrot.

Given the political grooming inherent in England's public discourse, where a news media industry that is mostly owned by Oligarchs jealous of their power and wealth is deployed  not to inform, but to protect the interests of Power and Wealth above all others, including in this instance the best interests of all our children, and a Government that lies as it breathes, it is no wonder that many, many people are confused, disoriented, mislead and misinformed. 

To mask or not, to take up the vaccine or not, to isolate or not, to travel or to shelter, HEPA air filters or open windows, class sizes reduced or maintained at pre COVID levels, LFT or PCR testing, is it a flu or a cold or something more serious, does it afflict children, are CEV children safe, are they truants, will their parents be prosecuted, what is 'herd immunity', what do variants imply for future behaviour, what is the precautionary principle - where is the clarity and logistical support that clarifies these and many other questions? £

37 billion budget for two years of an inadequate test, trace system without funded isolation against £68 billion on furlough and even still community transmission is now at higher levels than it was this time last year. This is what lack of clarity, lack of due diligence in Government applying itself to the science delivers.

That much needed clarity is not coming from the English Government, that much is clear. This timeline of scientific advice compared to Government policy choices, which I mentioned above, prepared by IndependentSAGE, a collective of experts in the full range of issues related to COVID, illustrates that with absolute accuracy. The English government's claim to be 'following the science' is untrue. It is a lie.

England's Government is not providing the support England's teaching staff and students need to be able to teach and learn safely. How many times must it be said before the people demand the most basic of tenets of a democratic state be upheld?

Education must never harm the learner, nor enrol the teacher in any harmful practice. 

And here we are. Education is now a place of harm causation. This difficult situation does however present an opportunity. 

Making Education Safe Again!

The current situation of un-safe schools and orders to send children into them is a challenge parents and teaching staff must meet - they must confront this recklessness in order to best serve the children's needs. They do not need to do this on their own. They need all of us to work with them, and to that end they must become educators of the nation, the whole population.

I think there is no other option worthy of our collective duty of care to the children.

As Paolo Friere wrote : "Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."

Solidarity in protecting our children's best interests in this situation is the pathway to work the changes we need to bring about to make education safe again. And when the pandemic is over, can we do something about bullying in our schools where 1 in 5 students report being bullied whilst on school premises? Actually, no - we need to deal with that at the same time. We cannot let bullying slide, in any sphere of our lives. We can chew gum and walk.

I wrote a blog a few weeks back about solidarity, the need for a union of students, parents and teachers working from an evidence base. The best practice covid principles are outlined in the IndependentSAGE report on schools listed above. This blog on solidarity lists the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, a study on Right to Health in terms of the English Government's response to COVID and other pertinent pieces of Law and legislation. 

The Good Law Project are also engaged in helping parents present a legal position on this, and they are experts. 

I'm just a shouty auld git with a guitar and a laptop. This matter needs the majority of citizens on the case. Please get on the case.

Then this on October 1st. Johnson's most important metric. And he's lying, of course.
#MESA
#MakeEducationSafeAgain
#SchoolStrike2021





Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
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Gavin Williamson, Teachers, Parents, Sanctions, Evidence, the WHO and Zero Community Transmission Strategy - Saving Lives Matters.


Education Secretary Gavin Williamson cites 'harms' for which he does present any reliable evidence, in order to argue for reopening schools before Easter, even as community transmission levels are above the levels they were on March 23rd 2020. 

The reason for this is simple enough. He knows exactly what harms his atrocious governance and policy has caused, and he cannot cite those harms without incriminating himself, as outlined in a recent National Audit Report. Once again we see the tactic of citing the harms caused by bad management of the epidemic to argue the case for worse management rather than best management - zerocovid.uk
Bylinetimes described it well :

“This report confirms what parents and teachers have known for a year: that a whole generation of children and young people have been let down by an Education Secretary who lurched from one crisis to the next, wreaking havoc on their lives,” Daisy Cooper, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Education, said.

“From the free school meal U-turns, the ‘A’ Level grading fiasco, the shamefully slow roll-out of laptops, the botched schools re-opening plans, and the failure to take decisive action on this year’s exams, Gavin Williamson is the worst Education Secretary in England in a generation. He’s made such a hash of it, it is quite frankly beyond comprehension that he’s still in post.”

Meanwhile, Meg Hillier, Labour chair of the Commons Public accounts Committee, said that, with no contingency plan, the Department for Education’s reaction was slower and less effective than it could have been.

“DfE’s failure to do its homework has come at the expense of children – and has hit those who were already disadvantaged the hardest,” she said. “DfE must now ensure its support is properly targeted to prevent the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers from widening even further.”

 Mr. Williamson claims that 'children are falling behind due to being out of school' even though we know that remote learning has been operating efficiently and for many, many primary schools and secondary schools it has been effective, given the circumstances.  he cites no numbers, no qualitative or quantitative survey data to prop up his case. 

"Although based on self-reported views, the findings from our YouGov survey show that three-fifths of the teachers responding were quite confident that they were providing a high-quality education through their school’s remote education solution when this was needed.


 In addition, just over half were confident their solution was sustainable for the future. On this basis, it is likely that a large proportion of schools in England providing a remote solution are doing well at mitigating the amount of learning loss that children experience"

source : https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/remote-education-research/remote-education-research

What we do know is that where there are difficulties it is most often due to a lack of resources and funding, localised poverty and deprivation. The Government promise to provide laptops to all families experiencing poverty never materialised,  as did the promise to provide free broadband to the poorest families to assist with remote learning.  The fact that £22 billion can be set aside as a budget for an inadequate contact tracing system and a testing system equally inadequate suggests Government inertia and disdain rather than technical difficulty as the underlying reasons for these failures to provide for remote learning.

The reason families in poverty are having difficulty with remote learning then is beyond mere attendance at school and this speaks to the Conservative Governments historical and generalised approach to the children of poorer families - they can do with minimal support, they can endure using foodbanks, they don't 'deserve' free school meals and as a demographic their parents are to be dehumanised in media as work-shy scroungers, and a burden on the tax payer - thus Williamson cites harms caused by Conservative policy which the Government has refused to address. Gaslighting again, Mr. Williamson!

We know most schools are open for vulnerable and at-risk children and for the children of key workers, all of whom are benefiting from smaller class sizes and the extra attention they gain as a result. Teachers are doing superb work in this regard. 

We also know that teaching staff are working flat out to provide remote tuition, and the vast majority of children and parents at home are succeeding in meeting the curriculum time tables. 
We know that teaching staff in schools are feeding, counselling, clothing and nurturing vulnerable children at every turn and doing a very fine job under very difficult circumstances not of their own making, when all other social services are hampered by the repeated shut down cycles. 

Parents are doing superbly, for the most part. For everyone these are indeed trying times, made more trying be the deliberate inadequacies of this Conservative and Unionist Government, behaving as an elective dictatorship.

It bears repeating - the evidenced harms the Education Minister does not cite in his gaslighting approach to the welfare of students, teachers and parents are many. These unmentioned harms are indeed caused by the proven bad management of the epidemic for which he and his Cabinet colleagues are wholly responsible and thus his current proposition is to argue for worse management rather than argue for better management of the epidemic.

He is not arguing for approaching a zero community transmission status. In fact he and his colleagues have dismissed any discussion of attempting to approach a zero community transmission status, in spite of advice and expertise from the global science, virology, epidemiology and public health community and World Health Organisation and partners. They dismissed zero covid in parliament because to discuss it is to reveal the central weakness in their stance since January 2020. They are not following science or evidence at all. Their position is ideological, seeking political gains, enhancing their powers over duty of care for the lives and well being of the citizens.

1. Gavin Williamson is demanding that all children return to schools, and that schools be run fully open. He is demanding that all remote tuition be ceased in order to coerce this move. He is demanding that Schools fine and penalise parents who refuse to bring their children to schools that we all know are unsafe. That is bullying. 

He is using the institutional power of the Office of Education Secretary to impose these conditions.

He claims the power to enforce attendance lies with Local Authorities and Heads, not with the Government, exploiting the sanction based legislation governing school rolls and attendance which government has imposed - which the government set aside during the shutdowns. Cake and eat it, he likes.

2. He is demanding they do this when community transmission is above the levels recorded in March 23rd 2020 when the first Lock-down was imposed, a lock down that was made necessary by the Governments failure to limit community transmission of the virus. That guarantees future spread. That is profoundly irresponsible and dangerous.

3. He is demanding that children, who are proven spreaders of the virus, (through no fault of their own) be exposed to the virus, which will carry the virus to their families, to teachers and to other students, some of whom will develop symptoms, 20% of whom will be asymptomatic and thus unaware of their status as transmitters of the virus. This is assured to lead to surges within 4 to six weeks, with the attendant illnesses, fatalities and another shut down to prevent uncontrolled transmission surging through the affected communities..

4. He is claiming a majority of children are falling behind, but he cannot cite the evidence to support that claim as it incriminates him and his policies this past year. Thus he is misleading in public to push a bad policy.

5. Mike Ryan in the WHO Live Q&A broadcast on March 3rd was unequivocal that we must look to countries where the levels of community transmission are low, where they are on top of the virus, where deaths and illness are kept very low as exemplars of the correct strategy in managing and suppressing the virus and bringing local epidemics and the global pandemic under control.

6. Boris Johnson  and his entire Cabinet are deliberately ignoring the evidence. They are individually and collectively responsible for the excess fatalities and all other costs that their policy choices have caused.

7. Is it not the case that in order to protect children, adults, elders and the vulnerable, the NHS frontline workers and ancillary staff and shop staff and all others that we therefore need to stop this government from implementing it's current inhumane policy which is causing so much harm?

8. Is it not the case that we need to bring in a government of national unity to implement an efficient, humane zero community transmission policy so that we can end these cycles of shutdown, open up, shutdown, open up and bring our economy and social system back to a more balance state as Vietnam and New Zealand and the Governments of 1.8 billion people across East Asia have ably demonstrated this past 12 months?

9. The coercion being deployed against parents, students is carefully laid out by a barrister, Mark McDonald. This is a hugely important matter. The stress imposed upon hundreds of thousands of parents is one thing. The combination of existing legislated school registration sanction regimes with Government intransigence is really unjust. Using those sanction regimes to coerce parents whose genuine wish is to protect their children and relatives, especially CV and CEV cases is inhumane.

There are examples of clear cut cases of bullying tactics being deployed against genuinely concerned parents.






Kindest regards

Corneilius

 "Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
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We don't need no Education - not when we have 8000+ infections daily, and rising, we don't: Home Learning is Efficacious!.


The Nation Education Union has issued a press release today.
As things stand,  is not safe to open schools up as the UK Government has ordered.
COVID19 Deaths and infection rates are too high.

Stop Wider 1st June School Opening : their press release direct

I will be looking at it below, but first lets take a look at the overarching situation,
the wider context of the NEUs request.


Learning all the time.

Self motivated learning - the desire to know, the urge to explore what truly interests one's mind, to excel in any given subject or skill, expressed as the desire to share and contribute to one's family and community. by way of applied skill originating in some native interest. Unquenchable interest and fascination. Study till you drop, from happy exhaustion. Home learning. Education.

Schools have been and are open on a limited basis, serving a smaller (6%) population of children of NHS staff and other essential key workers, as well as providing for various categories of vulnerable children, as organised by each individual school. This limited service is working well.

Teachers are also engaged with plenty on-line curriculum work with students who are staying at home. That appears to be working reasonably well. Better than the testing, tracing, quarantining and isolation treatment programs are. Teachers are adaptable, and their students are too.

Children's education continues. Everyone is doing their level best, including stay at home parents who are learning what learning is like.

There's a lot of home learning happening in the UK at the moment.

Cummings is, by his own admission, a media strategist, among other things, and he is a Master Baiter. He likes to lecture, and does not seem to show aptitude for learning. A bit like his political boss, Boris Johnson.

He baits the hook, he dangles the hook, he watches them bite, he pulls them in.

"£350 million to go to the NHS."

We will tell you that to think!

"Corbyn is a communist!"

We will hint at what we want you to think!

He baits the hook, he dangles the hook, he sees them bite, he pulls them in. I have written about this in a recent blog post.

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-purpose-of-cummings-road-show.html

His road show was about breaking the citizens will to stay home to quell the spread of the infectious virus, an act of collective human solidarity.

In opinion polls taken around the 10th May, on average about 60% of citizens said they'd rather stay at home until they knew the infection was suppressed, because they had concerns for their elderly relatives and vulnerable people they knew. It was not a question of fear, rather it was a matter of concern for others.

Love. Compassion. Solidarity.

May 10th speech and much that has followed has been indirectly undermining the current, humane  and quite wonderful grass roots solidarity - through sowing confusion, through conflating problems that were already in place exacerbated by the inadequate provision during lock down, with the lock down itself.  It is the inadequate provision that is the problem. Easing the lock down may not resolve those issues unless there is funding and logistical support directed to those areas. Why not direct the resources anyway?

Keep this in mind as you read on.

Who benefits from broken grass roots solidarity?

UK Citizens have for the most part decided to bear the strain of staying at home, missing out on family and wider human contact, missing out on work, losing income, losing trade and business opportunities, in order to stop the community transmission of the infection, in effect an action of immense humane kindness and social cohesion, which the behavioural planners had assumed would not emerge, let alone be sustained. They were proven wrong. And not for the first time. The Behavioural Insights Team are pseudo-scientists, one and all.

From my perspective, the Cummings road show was orchestrated as part of a wider Government move to ease the lock down, which is being pursued even as there are more than eight thousand new infections daily, hundreds of deaths daily with no control of the spread of the virus in sight.

The only logical conclusion is that this is being done in order to increase spread of the infection towards mythical herd immunity at 20% of population infected. There are economic gains to be had, if the NeoLiberal sponsors can re-rig a broken economy, and blame a virus or a population for the broken-ness.

There is no real need to 'get the economy going' yet.

Things are not that bad. Three months of disruption so far. The nation has much more capability and capacity to deal with this. This is not a 5 year proxy war. This is not Vietnam, or Yemen. We are good. We could use better management, for sure. It is nowhere to be seen in Parliament or 10 Downing Street.

There is a real need to stop the spread of the transmission, to eradicate the virus from the population on the Islands of Great Britain and Ireland. That it can be done is clear, from all available evidence, even now. UK population infection rate is not even at 10%! That it would strengthen the UK economy is also clear. Multiple waves will not.

"I thought herd immunity was ditched!" I hear you say.

An article proposing a lower threshold for Herd Immunity appeared in early May, a week before Johnson's Sunday speech to the nation, in The Spectator, where a certain Ms. Wakefield works, where once Boris Johnson worked as the Editor. Throwing rocks in glass houses from a a distance gives him a 'weird sense of power'.

Here is the article, read it. see for yourself.

https://spectator.co.uk/article/herd-immunity-may-only-need-a-10-per-cent-infection-rate

Then on May 10th this article emerge, online, in support, coming from  a Climate Modelling Scientist, of all people!

https://judithcurry.com/2020/05/10/why-herd-immunity-to-covid-19-is-reached-much-earlier-than-thought/

Herd Immunity has always been the background planning.

Stopping the spread, and eradicating the virus from within the population of the British Isles and Ireland has never been the policy objective.

I have written about the efficacy of the New Zealand approach, and how they looked at the experience of China, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, and they chose to learn from that.

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/04/new-zealand-demonstrates-efficacy-of.html

The situation in New Zealand is now a matter of record. They have eliminated the virus from within the New Zealand Island population. Success. We can do the same here, and yes, it would demand resourcing and commitment and it could be done within three months, if done diligently.

Meanwhile in the UK, slow spread has been the effect of Government policy. Some claim this is the result of incompetence. I reject that claim, The Corona Virus Policy  of the UK Government is deliberate and intentional.

This was Professor John Edmunds, SAGE advisor on Epidemiology, on March 14th

"Indeed, the only way to stop this epidemic is to achieve Herd Immunity"


He was talking then about the idea that at 60% infected, the population would  have achieved Herd Immunity. He was supremely confident in his assertion, to the point of arrogance.

In vaccination science, Herd Immunity is typically reached at 93%!

A month ago, he argues 'well there's always a risk.... but it's worth it."

This was in the lead up for moral support of the drive towards Johnson's May 10th speech



At the same time the Social Media world was being peppered with ConTheory, New Age, Alt Right commentariat calling for ending of the lock down, based on a series of lies, gaslightings and false assumptions, and this chatter was feeding into the pressure to 'ease the lock down'.

Today he states the obvious via the BBC, and others broadcasters, along with other SAGE Advisors, that the Ro is too high, that there are too many fresh infections and "it's a political decision, not mine to make."



The science has not changed.

Not since January 6th.

Not since February 3rd.

Not since April 1st.

We know more - we are learning all the time - and the more we know, the more damning the evidence is that SAGE, Edmunds, the Boris Johnson, Cummings and The Cabinet as a whole entity, have lied, manipulated and gaslighted the citizens of the UK.

They have collaborated in behaviour and action that has caused and is causing avoidable, horrible, lonely deaths in their many tens of thousands - between 40,000 and 60,000 excess deaths, whether it's due to COVID19 or due to the way in which the shut dawn has been imposed, either way are entirely down to UK Government policy decisions.

John Edmunds is covering his arse.  A bit too late for my liking.

The shit is all over the shop, and it stinks.

Still, it is good that he is making a public statement, and it's not too late.

We could have a government that initiates a stop the spread, eradicate the virus policy, there is still time, and plenty of leeway, we have not reach even 10% infected across the whole population.

The National Education Union have issued a press release, demanding that the Government step back from the brink.

Four prominent members of the Government’s own scientific advisory body have broken ranks to express worries about the safety of wider primary school opening on Monday.
SAGE members Professor Peter Horby, who is chair of the Government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group  (NERVTAG); Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Institute; John Edmunds, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Calum Semple, professor in Child Health and Outbreak Medicine have all expressed fears about the easing of lockdown.
Professor Edmunds said “There are still 8,000 new infections every day in England without counting those in hospitals and care homes… If you look at it internationally, it’s a very high level of incidence.
“I think many of us would prefer to see the incidence driven down to lower levels because that then means that we have fewer cases occurring before we relax the measures.”
Professor Farrar tweeted: “Covid-19 spreading too fast to lift lockdown in England. TTI [test, trace and isolate] has to be in place, fully working, capable [of dealing with] any surge immediately.” 
Professor Semple said: “Essentially, we’re lifting the lid on a boiling pan and it’s just going to bubble over… We need to get it down to simmer before we take the lid off, and it’s too early.


DO NOT GO BACK TO SCHOOL



"We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control,
no dark sarcasm in the class room!

Williamson! Leave the kids alone!"

23rd March 2020  : 102 covid19 deaths in UK

28th May  2020 :  377 covid19 deaths in UK

In essence, there are three times as many deaths per day today as there were on the day Johnson's Government ORDERED lock down, without adequate preparations in place at that time. We know that that caused.

There are no adequate preparations in place today.

Test and Trace is not ready; there are no Fever Hospitals to treat symptomatic cases away from the community, there are no suitable quarantine support systems in place, many care staff still do not have the correct PPE.

The transmission rate is currently Ro hovering at 1, only because citizens have upheld the stay at home policy, and it can easily move upwards with "return to work!" order...

Here is a detailed reveal of the Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, emotionally blackmailing the public, gaslighting parents, bullying teachers.

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/05/gavin-williamsons-emotional.html

It was not safe then, it is not safe now.

That is why he was and is using such tactics. When the evidence does not support the action being suggested,then deceit and force are all that remain.

Do not go back to school, do not send your children to school, stay home, stop the spread - sue any employer who threatens to dismiss you for protecting the nation.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

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