9 July 2020 Shares on the cheap(ish) Buying stocks that you didn’t know you needed. By Frank O’Nomics We’ve all done it. The offer of 70% off a pair of brick-coloured corduroy trousers is just too good to pass up – until you suffer ridicule on wearing them, and remember why you never owned any
09 July 2020 You Couldn’t Make It Up But some do. By Neil Tidmarsh Songshan airport in Taipei has offered a novel holiday experience in these frustrating days of grounded flights and restricted travel. Sixty lucky competition winners in Taiwan enjoyed a unique mini-vacation last week: they arrived at the airport, passed through check-in, security,
09 July 2020 Learning Languages Qualifications, confidence, conversation & quality. By Lynda Goetz As some will be aware, there is an ongoing Ofqual (Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation) Consultation on proposed changes to the assessment of some GCSEs, AS and A level qualifications next summer. This, like all consultations, is open to any member
9 July 2020 Lies, Damned Lies and Coronavirus Death Statistics by David Chilvers There have been many areas where the UK government’s handling of the Coronavirus pandemic could have been better. One of these is the data made available to try and understand how the crisis developed and to help in devising mitigating strategies. This
9 July 2020 Diary of a Corbynista Chickens coming home by Don Urquhart 2 July From the start the furlough scheme was designed to protect the owners of businesses rather than the staff. It gave them the chance to plan for the post-lockdown world while minimising staff costs. Most board meetings in March would have
9 July 2020 View from the Cotswolds Lockdown unlocked: As seen from behind the sofa By Paul Branch As a young squeamishly diffident child in the late 1950s, I was allowed to stay up late to watch the BBC’s scary black-and-white sci-fi series “Quatermass and the Pit”. After a couple of weeks of nightmares, that
9 July 2020 Social Distancing in Cumbria Week 16 by Vic Leader This is going to be the last week of my log. The virus has not gone, the pandemic is not over but I think I’ve said all I have to say about the issues it raised in relation to us humans. Although not
02 July 2020 Long-Bailey A knife in the dark? By John Watson Accident or assassination? That is the division which keeps crime fans on the edge of their seats in the long winter months. A full glass, the curtains drawn, a good fire and a novel by Christie or Sayers or Conan Doyle. Unbeatable! What
02 July 2020 Let’s Have Competence Not Competencies. By Richard Pooley “But the opposite of incompetent is competent, no?” my German business client, Helmut, insisted. “No,” I replied. “Just ‘competent’ is not enough. You need to say ‘very competent’ or ‘really competent’.” This exchange came about because Helmut had described a British subordinate as “competent”
2 July 2020 Murder at the Town Hall by J.R.Thomas A few weeks ago the Shaw Sheet ran an article on the New Normal, in which some of us – and you – expressed views as to what brave new world would emerge, blinking, after Covid-19 finally left us. Your resident cynic felt that the
