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Post by tickingmask on Sept 11, 2023 7:35:25 GMT
Sorry about raising another RAAC thread, but this needs saying.
According to the UK Government list, there are 147 schools whose buildings are known for certain to contain RAAC. That's less than 0.5%. Over 99.5% of schools are ok. So what the fuck was all the fuss about? Reading through the panic-inducing media reports, one would get the impression that the UK was in the midst of another education crisis, with almost every school-age child having to stay at home for a year or two while trillions were being spent getting all their schools fixed. The reality has turned out to be entirely different. It likely that only a small percentage of those 147 schools even needs urgent attention. This has turned out to be a complete storm in a teacup. Now, it is not the first time this has happened. Remember, for example, the UK petrol shortage 'crisis', where we had cars queueing at petrol stations for, oooooh, nearly a week due to a combination of unfortunate events, before the situation corrected itself and everything went completely back to normal? Remember how the media went into a total irresponsible feeding frenzy during that time, blaming everything on Brexit and carrying on like the country was about to fall apart? Perhaps we should stop this sadistic and manipulative habit of turning every minor incident into a full-blown drama with the sole aim of getting people riled up and make us angry and/or depressed. Otherwise if a real crisis ever came along, how would we even know how to distinguish this any differently from all the crap that gets flung at us that seems to pass for crisis these days, let alone know how to deal with it? |
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Post by Carl LaFong on Sept 11, 2023 7:44:53 GMT
200,000 pupils go to those schools.
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Post by Admin on Sept 11, 2023 7:52:32 GMT
I've got one word for you:
Guardian.
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Post by tickingmask on Sept 11, 2023 8:29:58 GMT
200,000 pupils go to those schools. No, let's not go making up numbers off the top of our heads. Acording to the same article in The Guardian which I linked before, 'over 100,000' pupils attend these 147 schools. I haven't added up every number that they gave in their list, but I'm sure if the total had been anywhere even remotely close to 200,000, The Guardian would have said so.
Complete double-standard going on here. Did I say 'sadistic and manipulative'? I should have used stronger words.
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Post by Stammerhead on Sept 11, 2023 8:38:09 GMT
I think this does deserve a lot of fuss (and it’s not just schools) but that doesn’t mean people are not over fussing. Looks like we’ve found yet another way to increase our national deficit.
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Post by tickingmask on Sept 11, 2023 9:30:51 GMT
I think this does deserve a lot of fuss (and it’s not just schools) but that doesn’t mean people are not over fussing. Looks like we’ve found yet another way to increase our national deficit. I think this problem is more than a case of simply over-fussing, though. Every unfortunate minor setback that occurs, from faulty concrete in a relatively tiny number of schools, to a couple of petrol stations closing, to a bad economic forecast by the IMF which turns out to be completely over pessimistic, to an extremely rare instance of a prisoner escape, is pounced upon with gusto by a hostile media and put up in large headlines as a further instance of government incompetence, or 'austerity'/underfunding, or Brexit, or inexperience, or 'money for rich Tory supporters', or whatever the nonsensical pet theory happens to be. It's like we have all completely lost any perspective on this: the impression of chaos and helplessness becomes the entire story and which gets reinforced by every random occurrence.
How did this happen? How does it help the British people to promote this agenda at every opportunity? I do think Rishi Sunak has made a bit of a rod for his own back by promoting his administration as the 'steady hand on the wheel' while abandoning any ambition to improve our situation - I can't imagine how he thinks this will win him the next election - but this bizarre phenonemon has been going on for long before he became PM.
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Post by Carl LaFong on Sept 11, 2023 10:03:53 GMT
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Post by yggdrasil on Sept 11, 2023 12:41:33 GMT
The biggest chaos has been of course the Government waiting until a day or two before schools were to return to announce it. Why? was a story about to break? Were they prepared to ignore risk otherwise?
The LGA has been warning the DfE about the risk of this concrete since 2018 when a school roof first collapsed. The risk from the concrete has been known since the 1990s.
Anyone pretending it's no big deal and that it's only some schools totally miss the point that it's been a time bomb ticking away that the Government were fully aware of and chose to ignore.
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Post by tickingmask on Sept 11, 2023 13:42:43 GMT
Anyone pretending it's no big deal and that it's only some schools totally miss the point that it's been a time bomb ticking away that the Government were fully aware of and chose to ignore. But it turns out it's not a big deal in the least bit. 147 schools out of 32,226 needing maintenance comes under general wear and tear. How does this figure even compare with schools elsewhere? Don't school buildings sometimes need urgent maintenance in other places? When did it become the government's job to keep abreast of and co-ordinate every maintenance job that needs doing?
I think if any point is being missed here, it is that a very very big mountain is being made out of a very very small molehill. Let me repeat my question from the last post: How does it help the British people for the media to promote an agenda of helplessness and chaos at every opportunity? Do they want us all to feel helpless and vulnerable, and if so why? Who benefits from this (apart from all the nobbis sad obsessives who get off on Britain's misfortunes?)
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Post by yggdrasil on Sept 12, 2023 8:58:41 GMT
Anyone pretending it's no big deal and that it's only some schools totally miss the point that it's been a time bomb ticking away that the Government were fully aware of and chose to ignore. But it turns out it's not a big deal in the least bit. 147 schools out of 32,226 needing maintenance comes under general wear and tear. How does this figure even compare with schools elsewhere? Don't school buildings sometimes need urgent maintenance in other places? When did it become the government's job to keep abreast of and co-ordinate every maintenance job that needs doing?
I think if any point is being missed here, it is that a very very big mountain is being made out of a very very small molehill. Let me repeat my question from the last post: How does it help the British people for the media to promote an agenda of helplessness and chaos at every opportunity? Do they want us all to feel helpless and vulnerable, and if so why? Who benefits from this (apart from all the nobbis sad obsessives who get off on Britain's misfortunes?)
Media will always jump on Government incompetence, it's what sells papers, it's only the fact that since Cameron left the Conservative has lurched from fuck up to fuck up that makes it all seem such a chaotic mess. The fact that it's also most Conservative papers that are also reporting these things now that shows how bad things have got. "maintenance job"? This is not repairing a leaky roof FFS, it's a major problem that has been known about and ignored for years, of course it's a big news story. Obsessives like Nobbi woudn't have the fuel if the Conservatives weren't such a fucking shower of useless shite which is why the whole country is sick to death of them. |
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Post by tickingmask on Sept 14, 2023 12:02:20 GMT
"maintenance job"? This is not repairing a leaky roof FFS... Um, yes, it pretty much is. These schools were built around the 1970s and typically have a lifespan of about 50 years, after which they have to get knocked down and replaced. Happens all the time - indeed, at the primary school where my kids went, the periodic survey they did every couple of years or so reported that the reception block was in dangerous condition and shouldn't be used, so the reception kids (including one of mine) all got moved to a different classroom while the reception block got knocked down and rebuilt. In fact, the whole school ended up getting rebuilt about 15 years later, to replace something that had been built around the 1960s and probably had had aerated concrete in it, for all we know. As far as I know, the government were not involved in these decisions. Why would they be? They had more important things to concern themselves with.
(Edit) And yes, media will always jump on Government incompetence, but manufacturing stories of Government incompetence by exaggerating some crisis or other as much as possible and then using the flimsiest of excuses to try and implicate it all the way up to ministerial level is an entirely different thing altogether. Perhaps they are trying to play on people's perceived sense of outrage in order to sell even more papers, or perhaps they have an even more hidden agenda. Again, who knows?
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Post by notoriousnobbi on Sept 14, 2023 15:09:52 GMT
It may surprise You but I'm with You on that. Prisoner escapes are rare (luckily) but they do happen - and in Germany, too. It seems to me that this time media was ready for some man hunt. But regarding incompetence: When I started the "Incompetence" thread on v2 I wanted to put the finger on the completely unusual agglomeration of scandals that were in itself a meta scandal. We in Germany have our scandals and incompetencies, too - but following the "Week in Tory" and alike one could only come to the conclusion that there is something SYSTEMATIC going on. And patterns that arise are better seen from the outside where You can - untouched by culture wars - see those patterns better. Nevertheless I did not continue the "Incompetence" thread on v1. But why? Not because the scandals became more rare, no, because now it's getting into the common British knowledge that there is something deeply rotten with this govt. by default! Even on conhome there suddenly is a video called “Politicians don’t really know what’s going on.”
Stewart discusses the burden of being an MP.conservativehome.com/2023/09/10/politicians-dont-really-know-whats-going-on-stewart-discusses-the-burden-of-being-an-mp/Prove me wrong and name any minister or secretary in the last 6-8 years who was respected, competent and did something good instead of being occupied with claiming being committed to his job or being laser-focused on his job. So my comments regarding that are not needed any more. Books on Brexit and Government disfunctionality are now reviewed all over the media, Andrew Marr reads Peter Foster's book on Brexit, Chris Grey's gets an interview on Times Radio for the 2nd edition of his Brexit book, Ian Dunt tries to dig deeper for the general patterns of disfunctionality, ... And this is the answer to They want You to not vote for these clowns again who are responsible for this chaos. And these clowns are helpless - they are still fighting with each other at the cost of the nation! And yes, at the very moment You Britons are very vulnerable. But I do continue the Brexit thread, more rare now as I have other drugs as well :) , but there is still enough that is not common knowledge yet (as mowlick with his comment on that "reul" bloke proved) . And especially regarding Brexit there are now some persons who try some history rewriting (yes, I mean You, Theresa May!) that just has to be counter-balanced. By the way, I do respect Rishi Sunak for reducing some of the B damage with a less ideology driven attitude - but he often wrecks things with his left arm while building things with his right one. |
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Post by Carl LaFong on Sept 19, 2023 10:17:49 GMT
www.theguardian.com/education/2023/sep/19/schools-england-raac-reinforced-autoclaved-aerated-concreteCrumbling and potentially dangerous concrete has been found in 174 English schools, the Department for Education (DfE) has said, 27 more than the initial list, and still expected to be a some way below the final total. In a revised list of schools affected by reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac), the first official government update on the crisis in a fortnight, the DfE said 23 schools were having to use a mix of virtual and in-person learning, three more than before. However, only one school is being forced to use entirely remote learning, down from four in the initial list, and none are completely closed. The update, which gives a snapshot of the situation as of last Thursday, shows Raac has affected 91 primary schools and 67 secondary schools, with the others a mix of 16-plus colleges and all-age schools.
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