Vaccine rollout hampered by red tape and lack of back-up stocks | Financial Times
Mr Hancock told the BBC that the amount of bureaucracy would be reduced, including no longer requiring vaccinators to undergo training on the need to tackle terrorism.
No surprise here. Those familiar with the NHS (and many other organisations) will know there is little limit to the crap that those at the top can pass down, chiefly to protect their own hides. I used to chair a student teaching ethics committee (note: an ethics committee, not an ethical committee). We had to ask all applicants whether they were aware of the Home Office’s Prevent Strategy (terrorism!). As for training, the standard of NHS online modules that I used to have to do, was execrable. They were yet another form of subsidy for the parasitism this is much of UK Private Business. Even with retirement, the rage only ebbs away slowly. Wasted days.
So far away
Between now and Easter universities should stop, collaborate and listen | Wonkhe
Academics got good at distance learning — for students who were studying at the distance of half a mile away.
The long-term issue is simply that if the experience is mainly large lecture delivery, then the value of university has been washed away by successive cuts and internal transfers of money to research and ‘impact’. That is what should worry universities now. At one time you could find high street retail with knowledgeable staff. Then rationalisation took over and quality took a nose dive in order to pay the dividends of investors. Then came Amazon.
All I want for 2021
All I want for 2021 is to see Mark Zuckerberg up in court | Internet | The Guardian
It’s always risky making predictions about the tech industry, but this year looks like being different, at least in the sense that there are two safe bets. One is that the attempts to regulate the tech giants that began last year will intensify; the second that we will be increasingly deluged by sanctimonious cant from Facebook & co as they seek to avoid democratic curbing of their unaccountable power.
John Naughton, my first and still my favourite blogger. It was on my list too, but Amazon have failed to deliver.
Innumerate economists.
Blanchflower aiming to counter ‘disastrous’ austerity economics | Times Higher Education (THE)
“I think I said on Bloomberg [the business TV channel] I thought Brexit was the worst decision made by any advanced country in the last thousand years,” he continued. “And I only said a thousand because I’m not very good on the thousand before that.”
Danny (David) Blanchflower.
Bozo et al.
What makes John le Carré a writer of substance | Financial Times
Again, like Orwell — who revealed himself now and then as a poetic limner of deep England — le Carré had a pitch-perfect ear for the disingenuous hypocrisies sustaining those who mistook “Getting Away with It” for national purpose.