This is actually a very minimal change to the already existing curriculum - the (compulsory) English Language GCSE is 50% “Critical reading and comprehension”
Gov UK states all specifications must include:
“identifying bias and misuse of evidence, including distinguishing between statements that are supported by evidence and those that are not; reflecting critically and evaluatively on text”
Most people presumably… “forgot”? but this has been in the curriculum for decades
For me at least, most of that was just identifying rhetorical devices used by the writer and summarising what they wrote, not looking at the legitimacy of what’s being said (it’d be hard to do that in an exam context anyway).
Yeah, there’s definitely a difference between curricula, what’s focussed on in classrooms, and exam assessment criteria, but they’re supposed to be cohesive.
I remember one of my big pieces of coursework was “writing from the perspective of an advertiser,” and we had loads of lessons on identifying bias. I was taught in school that “red top magazines” are “less honest and more emotive” than “broadsheet newspapers.”
Presumably not everyone had the same experience though: I mentioned this offhand and my friend told me “surely that’s illegal to teach in a classroom?!”
I think a lot of what people are missing is around spoken techniques.
Recognising ad hominem attacks.
Recognising straw-man arguments.
Recognising circular reasoning.
Spotting embedded assumptions or premises in points.
Being numerically literate enough so that big numbers have context.
Yes, these things apply to texts also, but they can fly past you when somebody is speaking. You can’t take 30 seconds to notice that somebody is arguing against something which wasn’t said by the opposition. It has to be a reflexive “hang on a minute! That’s BS”.
Though I’m not British, I have an interest in your education system because I went to a school that taught, up until year 11, the British education system. Years 10 and 11 were IGCSE, which is an international variant of the GCSE.
But in years 12 and 13 I took the International Baccalaureate. Which I have a lot of praise for in general, but particularly in regards to this aspect. One of the core components of IB that everyone has to take is Theory of Knowledge. It’s essentially an introduction to epistemology, including learning about logical arguments…and logical fallacies. It’s one of the most broadly useful things you can learn, and I think it should be in every high school curriculum.
Not unexpected it would seem, but also probably a reason why the election was rushed through. Inflation down to 2% is a better slogan than down to 2.3%, or 2.75%
The major reason for this is that inflation is measured based on the growth in prices over the past year, so a large part of the figure is based on what prices were 12 months ago.
In April, the energy price cap – the maximum most households pay for each unit of gas or electricity used – was cut by the regulator Ofgem. In April 2023, the amount people were paying for their energy was at the highest level on record, but the cap fell in July 2023.
So while energy prices deflated dramatically in the 12 months leading up to April to June 2024, dragging the headline inflation figure down, the deflation is less dramatic in July.
And also
It predicted at the beginning of August that inflation will rise to 2.75 per cent by the end of 2024 and stay high for the foreseeable future before dropping to below 2 per cent again in the summer of 2026
Yeah it’s higher than energy, correct. But not stupidly high.
Forecasters expect core CPI, which excludes energy and food prices, to stay at around 3.5 per cent and services CPI, which measures items such as rail tickets and hospitality costs, to drop a little, with Deutsche Bank and Pantheon Macroeconomics saying it could go from 5.7 to 5.5 per cent.
“Positive base effects, mainly from energy prices, will likely push headline inflation higher through the second half of 2024. But there is good news. Services inflation, we expect, should continue its descent – albeit gradually,” said Sanjay Raja of Deutsche Bank Research.
Unless there are some factors that I am not aware of affecting the UK, I don’t think that inflation will reach particularly high levels – like, of the COVID-19 sort – in the near future. And inflation normally does bounce around a bit.
I’ve heard a few stories like this now. It’s a really healthy way for a community to respond, and really shows the feeling of the larger segment of society.
It therefore seems plausible to suggest that the anomaly of the English – a powerful majority which often perceives itself as overlooked and ignored among the British nations – might play a role in explaining the current wave of protests and riots.
Interesting
Marco Antonsich, Reader in Political Geography, Loughborough University, Michael Skey Lecturer in Media and Communications, Loughborough University
Northern Irish Protestant loyalists are essentially Englishman cosplayers. Just look at their Orangeman parades, with their bowler hats and Masonic aprons.
As in, Northern Irish cosplaying English or English cosplaying Northern Irish? If it’s the latter, Northern Ireland is not made up of English planters contrary to popular belief, nor is it in the UK because it was “stolen” by the English
Nah, they’re nutters with very weird ideas about Britishness, Irishness & everything else, but they no more look to the English for ideas about their own identity & how to manifest it than the English look to NI loyalists as a guide.
If anything they tend to rather despise Englishness, seeing their own culture as the one true, loyal holdout to the Union.
The aprons do seek to emulate Masonic regalia, but the ideals of the Orange Order are entirely contrary to those of Freemasonry, which in any case is not specifically English or even British.
My theory is that a lot of it in Northern Ireland is actually just paramilitaries trying to get what they want. This happened during brexit as well over the sea border. The areas where the rioting happened in Belfast also had big signs saying “THIS AREA NEEDS MORE SOCIAL HOUSING” and suddenly the solution for the riots that the Deputy First Minister comes up with is an agreement for more social housing. Also that random white-owned estate agents being attacked smells fishy to me.
Aye. Although I think they mainly operate in areas where the policing is less effective. Although it’s probably a chicken and egg scenario - Is the bad policing because the paramilitaries are there? Or are the paramilitaries there because of the bad policing
They accuse ministers of washing their hands of the consequences after they insisted that it was the responsibility of traders and owners to decide whether to proceed with the work, and that the availability of mortgages is a matter for lenders.
“At the root of the problem are cowboy traders (unlicensed tradesman/contractor) who apply the foam without a full survey or appropriate expertise – but because of lenders’ caution, this is affecting other homeowners who had similar work.” also “because surveyors are unable to inspect the roof timbers behind the layers [for moisture], mortgage lenders tend to issue blanket refusals on properties where any foam is present.” Maybe in the U.S. we just use wood moisture meters to check for moisture?
Sounds like the foam is the issue, which may be down to the shade tree handy man they hired being unlicensed or uninsured to perform insulating. If a person isn’t a dedicated HVAC worker who has day-to-day experience with insulation types and how to properly apply them, then the work may be causing more harm than good.
If the insurance and mortgage companies have a list of guidelines needed for insulation installation, it makes sense that folks need to follow them to continue using their services. Spraying any old foam into nooks and crannies is a fine way of hiding problems.
The problem with this style of foam application, is that you cannot get to the wood to check the moisture content, without ripping down the foam (or probing through it, exacerbating any problem).
So there isn’t a way to test. And as there have been problems, the lenders won’t take the risk on any more.
My impression is that homes in the US tend to have more wood involved in their construction generally, so it seems plausible to me that US construction methods may be more experienced with ways of managing wood moisture
Just to clarify further: Condensation management as part of insulation is half the battle, but frequently overlooked.
The problem comes where cold surfaces meet warm air, and what happens to the moisture in the air at that point.
The spray foam seals the timber in a way that it cannot be accessed from the inside, but generally a membrane in not installed on top of the wood. So warm air can still get through.
If my room is full of lovely 21 degree air, and the outside is zero, then if that air is able to get to a nice cold roof truss, it will be dropping a lot of evaporated water on the truss.
And if that wood can’t get sufficient airflow to dry out, it’ll get damp. And eventually rot.
Meanwhile, you can’t even get to the truss to look at it, because it’s covered in foam.
So the mortgaging companies are (very understandably) staying away from that potential hot potato.
You could have a house that looks absolutely fine, until the trusses start collapsing.
The ways we work around it are either ventilation (having the roof itself still vented to the outside), vapour sealing (stopping warm air from getting to the insulation), or using ventilation that breathes (water/vapour can move through it, allowing it to dry out naturally).
‘Yea they happen in Northern Ireland but it was like, the Northern Ireland’s who are British loyalists so it totally doesn’t matter for the purposes of speculative anti English bit for a Welsh National paper. “
You don’t belong here, reactionary. Would you tell First Nations Americans that the white Europeans occupying their lands are real Americans, representative of them? Do you tell Palestinians that their occupiers are Palestinians?
Like I don’t understand why you’d bring such an obviously ignorant take to the table - do you genuinely know nothing of why it’s Ireland and Northern Ireland? Do you know nothing of the Troubles? Do you think the violence and ethnoreligious lines just disappeared when the good Friday agreement was signed? Do you not know about them because your education was inexpensive?
I think you’ve forgotten what the article is about and perhaps in anger, entered into a bit of performative leftism.
If you want to argue against my position that the article is claptrap, hand picked for a welsh audience, let’s go.
If you want to get into a fight, as you seem determined so to do, over broader and unrelated topics like colonialism and imperialism, there are plenty of people who will indulge you, but I will not.
Your position is based on your assumption that unionists in northern Ireland are representative of Irish people rather than English people, despite an ongoing race war over their englishness. Catholic and protestant communities are still walled off from each other to maintain the relative peace. The idea that imperialism and colonialism are some unimportant detail of the past is preposterous, they’re ongoing issues that make up the core of northern Irish politics.
I looked into spray foam insulation but not only were there lots of risks, but it was more expensive than traditional warm roof insulation with PIR boards or similar. I do think people should research what they put in their own homes as it wasn’t hard to find information that ruled out spray foam insulation fairly quickly.
Having said that, there is clearly some sort of regulatory gap here as not being able to mortgage your home is a very serious consequence of a relatively small and seemingly innocuous home improvement decision.
When I first moved into my house I needed to improve the insulation as the existing stuff wasn’t sufficient. I reached out to a spray foam company who sent a salesman around. The guy was incredibly pushy and didn’t care about the minor details. When I was saying it was too much he called his manager up on the phone and was talking to her like she was a piece of shit that he’d trodden in. I reached a point and asked him to leave. About 15 minutes after he’d left the manager called me back directly sounding like she’d been crying, asking for feedback on the guy. Even after I said it was a terrible experience she continued to try and sell the service to me! It was probably some terrible double-act to get sales.
It left a bad taste, I got the feeling it was a terrible cowboy operation and they were claiming to be one of the major players in the UK. Seeing this and over time reading people’s experiences really makes me feel like I dodged a bullet by not getting foam spray insulation. It all sounded too good to be true.
I am not a construction expert, so check your sources on this.
My understanding is that, for new construction, spray foam is most often used in areas that aren’t likely going to be damaged by condensation, such as against concrete, or metal. I had looked into spray foam for my home, because my home was built in the early 80s–before building codes existed in my area–and there’s no cladding on the house and just fiberglass bats between the studs. Because there’s no cladding, there’s much more air incursion through the bats, esp. since the interior walls are lapped wood paneling rather than wall board. Spray foam would have been a total air barrier, but it would end up being applied directly to the inside of the exterior siding, which would be a nightmare when siding needs to be replaced, and would probably cause moisture issues.
The best solution appears to be to use 3" EPS foam cut to fit between the studs, and then use spray foam to fill any gap between the studs and the EPS. That still allows an air gap between the foam and the exterior siding so that moisture can evaporate.
In the case that’s being cited here, I’m not sure why they opted for spray foam over EPS or fiberglass bats. If their home is well sealed, then bats should have been perfectly sufficient, although they have a lower R-value per inch than EPS. Oh, and the difference between polyisocyanurate and EPS/XPS is about R1.5/inch, but that difference drops to about R.25/inch after a decade. That meanst that you don’t gain much in the long term when you use faced polyisocyanurate board. I’m not sure what blowing agents are used for polyiso; it might be more environmentally friendly to manufacture.
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