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Malcolm XML posted:Tell it to customs when they open a package that's marked "gift" but has a commercial invoice in it. I suspect that if he's really importing prescription drugs from Singapore then failing to pay the import duty will be the least of his worries.
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May 3, 2014 23:54
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DesperateDan posted:Medicines act '68, unless its a controlled drug there is no legal barrier to importing any prescription only or general sales list medicine provided it is done so for personal use, and is ordered from outside of the UK. I thought everyone in the UK with access to the internet was aware of this amazing loophole? Sorry I was just having trouble thinking of something worth risking receiving Chinese counterfeit medicine over, when an NHS prescription is ~£8 (or free if you have an exemption) and the only thing I can think of are the controlled drugs. Happy to be wrong thoug.
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May 4, 2014 11:32
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JoylessJester posted:I hate Chuka Umunna. He'd be a Tory if he hadn't grown up mixed race in the 80's. He's such a career Mp as well, but he lacks the charisma (but not the pro-bussiness attitude) for all of those shallow Obama comparisons the media likes to make. Isn't he an ex-public schoolboy and the son of a judge or something?
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May 4, 2014 11:37
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Deptfordx posted:Tough luck for the 2.3 million Brits living in the EU, 400,000 of whom are pensioners. Guess you're all have to come home too. I bet that those pensioners are actually quite likely to vote UKIP. Ex-pat pensioners are some of the worst people I've ever encountered.
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May 4, 2014 12:14
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DesperateDan posted:You must lead a happy lifestyle! for good reasons, not the wrong ones Had no idea about all that. I'll keep that in mind should any family members need to use that sort of service. Thanks for 'splaining. I guess I'm personally lucky in that because I have a condition that qualifies I have a medical exemption from prescription charges, otherwise it would probably cost a lot. My main prescription is a controlled substance though, so no online pharmacy for me if I didn't have the exemption. The other stuff, dressings and catheters are actually insanely expensive privately. I'm not entirely sure how the manufacturers justify the silly price of catheters.
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May 4, 2014 20:36
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Cerv posted:Do you really want to stick a bargain store special down your pee hole? Well, when you put it like that  But it still feels very wasteful using 2x £1.50 (NHS tariff) catheters per day for the rest of my life. The great thing about catheters on the NHS is that they let you pick the brand and type you want, there's hundreds to choose from (self-lubing, male, female, low friction, curved tip, rubber tip, the options are endless, and they come in a range of gauges too), but you get used to "your type" and using one that isn't yours is weird and feels wrong. When I had my urostomy done (1998), the hospital sent me home with a bag of samples containing over a hundred types of catheter to try out, and then I got the GP to prescribe the ones I wanted. Anyway, enough about pee pipes.
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May 5, 2014 00:59
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I can't remember but did the Major government have a going out of government sale, everything must go! bout of privatisations when the writing was on the wall? I know that they had just presided over a devaluation of the pound, the popping of a property bubble, a monumental amount of sleaze and had privatised BR, but did they try and rush through anything else before the election in May '97?
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May 5, 2014 23:44
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Coohoolin posted:
My supply agency keeps sending me teaching opportunities at primary schools in Moscow and St Petersburg (English speaking international schools), but they're fixed term contracts to begin immediately and I'm too much of a coward to take them. I'd be really interested to hear how you get on over there.
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May 6, 2014 16:26
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Seaside Loafer posted:Ok thank you i'll store that info in the memory banks The trouble is that it takes kids 7 years full immersion to become fluent in a language, that's 7 years of largely nothing but that language. Where are the expert language teachers going to come from to teach in primary schools at anything other than one hour per week? The current provision that I've seen is really patchy, excellent French teachers, and then godawful Mandarin teachers (native speakers via the Confucius Institute), but it's still only one hour per week, with no guarantee of it continuing year to year. Teachers do their best, but there will never be enough specialist primary teachers for languages to be anything other than a waste of time at primary school. Then we have to select the other language to learn, non-English speaking countries have it easier, they just learn English and there's lots of good and easily accessible (not to mention kid friendly) media to draw on and actually enjoy if you're a child learning English. Chances are your home TV networks show lots of subtitled US programmes or films, failing that the Internet will provide. What language should we be trying to teach our children? If we say, let's let schools decide (as we do now) then there's no continuity between primary and secondary (and primary suffers from lack of provision/time/specialists), if we say everyone is going to learn X, then we'll have people moaning that we don't teach Y. Every time some politician says we should teach our children to be bilingual, someone should ask where the money is coming from and what subjects we're going to eliminate from the curriculum (I suggest Design and Technology personally, utterly useless poo poo subject at primary school, but that only gives us one additional hour per week). HortonNash fucked around with this message at 17:40 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 17:36
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Spangly A posted:Sweden was lefty mecca but the downturn has been pulling all the scando countries to the right quite hard. They have a pretty murky history of sterilising people though don't they.
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May 6, 2014 18:07
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CancerCakes posted:People can learn languages very quickly, but it requires full immersion. It takes a non-English speaking child 7 years to attain fluency under full immersion in an English primary school, longer if they cannot read/write their "home" language, they will still struggle with idioms and colloquialisms and you have to be wary of cultural differences too (I thought every kid knew the game battleships and planned a Y5 maths lesson around it, turns out Polish kids don't and the two in my class at the time were extremely confused).
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May 6, 2014 18:15
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Thrasophius posted:Exactly. It's a shame the NHS is being told to save money and cut back etc. Sure the NHS isn't perfect, it has flaws and needs a little tweeking but saying do exactly what you're doing now and more but with less money is idiotic. The cracks are showing and there's only going to be more strain as the population ages. It didn't help that they imported a poo poo ton of managers from the private sector in the early 2000s with no experience of public service sector work who then proceeded to treat it like a private sector organisation (and import management speak en masse). I joined the NHS (a large London specialist hospital) in 1998 and by the time I was made redundant in 2010 the organisation was unrecognisable. The huge input of cash during the Labour years made a massive difference in service provision but the new management made the place nightmarish to work in, with low morale and an overriding corporate ethos (the hospital I worked at spent 10s of thousands on a branding exercise to select a corporate colour scheme and font!). They even set up a specialist Arab private patient unit to attract money from the gulf, but the effort spent to attract private patients in general was sickening. The end for my job was the decision to limit novel in house research and expend all effort on attracting and servicing corporate sponsored research. The NHS is amazing, I'd be dead and my family bankrupt without it, but in trying to save it the last government let the management classes in, and they don't care about public sector work ethics.
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May 6, 2014 18:48
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JFairfax posted:Uninsured in New York it cost me about 360 bucks to see a doc and get a prescription for antibiotics to treat my strep throat. My brother had a similar experience when he was living in New York. The doctor wrote a prescription for a brand name antibiotic, it was only when he mentioned it to the pharmacist that he was offered the equivalent generic for about a third of the price. A ridiculous system, if he didn't know that there was a perfectly good generic he would have been out a ridiculous amount of money.
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May 6, 2014 23:37
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KKKlean Energy posted:If there's a big problem with missed appointments, then the best solution is a guilt-tripping program (my dentist uses this). It goes like this: the day before, ring up the patient and ask them if they are still intending to make the appointment, and ask them to let the care centre know if they're unable to make it. If they miss an appointment, ring them up and ask them why they missed it and why they didn't inform the care centre, whether they'd like a new appointment (chances are it's a yes) followed up with a polite request to not miss it this time or at least inform them if they can't. Guilt: tripped. They could do what UCLH Radiology does, computer generated text messages to remind you of your appointment time and date. UCLH sends texts a week in advance and includes a phone number to call if you need to cancel or rebook. UCLH also has a unified outpatients' appointment call centre with a single number where you can call to rebook/cancel outpatients appointments for any department. You can still call your consultant's secretary if you need to, but the call centre relaxed the work load on the secretaries. I appreciate the texts, and being able to easily reschedule my outpatient appointments, it's a much better system than they used to have. No reason a GP surgery couldn't do something similar with the computer generated texts to remind people about their appointments, and they could set up online or automated booking/cancelling for appointments. Chasing up the serial DNAs would help too, I agree. The way my GP surgery has reduced missed appointments is to almost entirely eliminate anything other than same day appointments. You want to see the doctor, you ring up at 8:30am and book an appointment for later that day. If you want to see the doctor at another time, you're going to wait a fortnight unless you're booking a follow up appointment in person. You need tests/injections etc, you see the nurse. It seems to work, I've never found myself in a situation where I've had to wait for an urgent appointment. The thing that they do need to sort out is getting repeat prescriptions, it's a mess and incredibly inefficient (takes two days for the prescription to be written, and if you're like me and have items that pharmacists don't stock it can be another day or two for them to get them). They need to computerise and automate that pronto.
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May 7, 2014 14:42
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ThomasPaine posted:It was actually vaguely well done but I'm not sure I thought it was very reminiscent of "The Now Show".
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May 7, 2014 16:26
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SybilVimes posted:It's "free as in libre" - they're "free" from the shackles of regulation, requirements for credentials, and the rules on religious indoctrination. Imagine the good that could have been done with all that money if Gove hadn't been allowed to waste it setting up a shadow education system (Govian academies and free schools). Round my way, if you're not Catholic, chances are you're going to a Harris academy for secondary school, there's a couple of selective state schools, but Harris has taken over so many comps. They've got their claws into a couple of primaries too, which annoys me, as I'm looking for a primary post but there's no way I'm working in a Harris academy, I've heard too many awful stories about how they treat staff and pupils. I'd rather keep doing supply, which I also hate, rather than work in an academy chain school.
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May 11, 2014 01:39
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KKKlean Energy posted:What happens is a Classic Labour Backstab Safest option. Promise to close the schools and you piss off a lot of pushy parents and disadvantage a lot of children (switching schools screws children up something fierce). Do nothing and you'll annoy teachers and everyone who dislikes free schools (everyone except Tories and some pushy parents who couldn't get their children into their first choice primary/secondary or afford an independent school). There is also the legal issue of the free schools and academies having signed seven year contracts (certainly academies, I think it's the case with free schools). So safest option, allow existing free schools and academies to continue to run as is for the duration of their contracts and then depending on how well they're doing bring them back under LEA oversight or allow them to continue. For some areas it may be beneficial to have academies, note not Govian Free Schools, set up to meet demand...especially as the work to set them up will be done by unpaid sponsors (which from what I understand will be parent groups). But.... Labour will lift the restriction on councils/LEAs building new Community schools ("LEA Schools"), the restriction which is currently causing all the problems with school place shortages. When councils can build their own schools, there is no local need for a parent-led academy, hence, Labour ends Gove's shadow education system, without fanfare but also without causing a fuss. That's my reading of Hunt's pronouncements, and I think it's a fairly sensible plan. It doesn't give us the cathartic destruction by flame of screaming Toby Young upon a bonfire of school caps and Latin textbooks, but it does mean that the privatisation of schooling is halted. My dream Labour policy would be to reform the ILEA, with centralised control of schools policy, educationalists in charge of setting curriculum and school building done in house by specialist educational architects (which is what my dad was, until Thatcher!). Build a tonne of new special schools because inclusive education is failing (particularly for children with autism) and build a crapton of community primary and secondary schools with small pupil numbers. Setting up a royal college of teachers to take over professional standards would also be on the list. HortonNash fucked around with this message at 19:17 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 19:11
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frontlineKHAAAN! posted:Remember a few pages back when we had a laugh at the UKIP Small & Medium Business Spokesman and his website? You may remember that he claims that the EU has "Employment policies which make it impossible to employ", but then went no further as to what particular policies he had in mind. So basically everything that makes it tolerable to be an employee. Did they just print out a copy of the Koch Brothers' wish list for American employment law, and say "done!"?
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May 11, 2014 19:21
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Goldskull posted:Hah drat son. £1.39 an hour for everyone and gently caress you if you want children or holidays. Who could predict problems when UKIP policies collide? Ending workplace protections and minimum wage. And Handguns for everyone! Wait, wait, are UKIP secretly trying to arm and motivate La Revolución?
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May 11, 2014 19:43
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tdrules posted:I like that the police don't know how to handle social media. It's a much better situation than having legislation that would no doubt put it on par with libel/defamation laws which is the worst thing that could possibly happen. Not saying this isn't a terrible incident of course. But it already is covered by the law regarding libel etc. In addition to the laws regarding telecommunications.
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May 12, 2014 11:24
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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad posted:Yeah but Andi Peters! Is that a proof of life photo? How much is he demanding for the safe return of Ed the Duck? I always knew he was a monster!
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May 14, 2014 18:13
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Trickjaw posted:The 'Proper British' people round here would be hosed anyway. Most of the drivers are foreign. I find the worst problem on buses isn't down to a nationality, its those old bastards with passes who use the bus to go from one stop to another 20m away, and are more noisy and irritating than the kids most of the time. I have enjoyed the couple of occasions where I've taken primary school children on London buses. Taking over the bus with children who always seem to be allowed to ride for free (I'm fairly certain we're supposed to pay unless we have booked in advance, which we never do). Seeing the despair in the eyes of the other passengers as they realise their journey just became the bus trip from hell as 30-60 over-excited school children pile on and scramble about for seats and then loudly discuss the most inappropriate things you can think of. The only annoying thing is the nagging feeling I've left a child at the stop as we pull away, which I've never done but a colleague did lose children on the Tube one time which was hilarious for everyone but her.
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May 15, 2014 14:58
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Answers Me posted:So how far along the Road to Fascism is the rise of private militias? Actual blackshirts in support of UKIP, how's Nige going to spin this one? Blackshirts, in 2014. I do hope Nigel's planning some election campaigning on Cable Street.
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May 15, 2014 16:00
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ShaneMacGowansTeeth posted:So the election campaigns are in full swing and I'm fully stuck in coalition hell in Portsmouth and yet this drops through my door... But, I'm guessing they want freedom of speech simply so they can get away with calling people paki and such, like the good old days before PC went mad and you started being arrested for being White.
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May 15, 2014 21:17
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Spangly A posted:UKMT, font of all Correctness, could you remind me the qualifications needed to teach in the UK? I know we have teachers in the thread. A Italian friend of mine is looking to start and has asked me for the right track to point to. A good bet is to check out the DfE teacher training site. It covers both entry to Initial Teacher Training or if qualified overseas what steps to take to get certified here. If your friend is going to apply for ITT, then they will need the equivalent of English and Maths GCSEs at C or above (to teach primary you also need GCSE Science at grade C), a degree (for secondary teaching it'll have to be relevant to the subject they wish to teach) at at least a pass, but you will struggle to get onto a training course with less than a 2:2 and for some courses there's a huge amount of competition. The options for actual ITT courses ranges from the traditional PGCE (university based training) to School-based training (SCITT and Teach First). SCITT tends to be run by private companies, but you approach the school first and get the school to sponsor your application. I don't know the procedures for overseas qualified teachers, except that their training/certification is very similar to SCITT except it may be very short or even just an assessment. If you go through ITT, you gain QTS after one year and then you have to do a one year probation (NQT) which is done as an employed teacher. Failing this results in being barred from teaching, so it's best to find a good school where you'll get plenty of support and a decent mentor. As far as I know, overseas qualified teachers who gain QTS don't need to go through NQT. I did ITT in 2011/12 through a company called E-qualitas, and was based in a primary school (I did the now defunct GTP) and got paid a salary to train. I would only recommend this to someone who is absolutely certain they can study on their own, I found it very difficult and wish I had gone the university route (I think the PGCE is superior for theory/support, but gives less in class experience). I've found that for instance my behaviour management is much better than most recent PGCEs but my teaching experience was limited by only training in one school (with a six week placement in a second school), whereas PGCE students get more varied classroom experience at different schools. E-Qualitas is a fairly decent trainer and they also do trainign/assessments for overseas qualified teachers, it might be worth contacting them for advice. If you have specific questions I'd be happy to try to answer them but I know there are more experienced teachers and teachers with secondary experience here too.
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May 16, 2014 02:19
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Hungry posted:Who the gently caress even works for ATOS? I don't mean at the high-level, I mean who are those supposed 'medical professionals' performing the assessments - perhaps biologically related to the scab of yesteryear? If Jack London had lived today... After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which he made an ATOS assessor. An ATOS assessor is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles. When an ATOS assessor comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out. No man (or woman) has a right to assess for ATOS so long as there is a pool of water to drown his carcass in, or a rope long enough to hang his body with. Judas was a gentleman compared with an ATOS assessor. For betraying his master, he had character enough to hang himself. An ATOS assessor has not. Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver. Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of a commision in the british army. The ATOS assessor sells his birthright, country, his wife, his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled promise from his employer. Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country. An ATOS assessor is a traitor to his God, his country, his family and his class.
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May 16, 2014 18:11
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Kegluneq posted:Can't believe he's still dragging that line out. For a massive 'gently caress you' response to that argument, see this awesome BBC news report on one of those schools. The kids themselves are adorable Who are the "Campaign for Real Education" and should I hate them as much as I do right now after seeing their spokesman in that report?
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May 16, 2014 18:51
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Holy poo poo! Gove announces plan to privatise Child Protection Services. And he does it quietly. The Guardian posted:The power to take children away from their families could be privatised along with other child protection services under controversial plans the government has quietly announced.
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May 16, 2014 20:18
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baka kaba posted:How the gently caress does that argument even fly? Whenever there's a privatisation proposal it's always backed by some report that suggests that - get this! - the private sector could increase competition and innovation and improve outcomes! Even ignoring that this doesn't happen, the proposals are the exact same poo poo every time, but they're always presented and reported as some novel idea that's the result of fresh thinking and serious analysis. The thing is the private companies employed to provide child protection services will just hire all the newly redundant council staff on shittier contracts, and claim "See, SAVINGS!" whilst trousering huge sums for themselves. It's exactly what happened with the PCTs. There simply isn't some huge pool of private child protection professionals waiting to jump in. Notice also that the councils retain all liability for the service provision, even when handed over to G4S.
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May 16, 2014 20:49
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IceAgeComing posted:From the comments: The first thing I intend doing in their anarchocapitalist utopia is buying the land surrounding their house, building an encircling toll road and waiting for them to go inside before jacking the use fee up to £1m for them, but free for everyone else.
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May 16, 2014 20:54
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Anarcho-Capitalists are literally the dumbest people in existence, aren't they?
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twoot posted:The right-wing press has been banging on about how the UK social services are literally Nazis for at least a decade now. The most recent exposure would probably be that story about how Social workers supposedly ordered surgeons to perform a c-section on a woman. It was utter loving nonsense but the services are obviously constrained by confidentiality and so cannot respond in a way sufficient to silence the bullshit. Christopher Booker in the Telegraph is probably the worst, he ignores context and presents complicated cases as if the family court and social work systems exist solely to poo poo on old Christian family values. Their answer to these things is that Social Work must be privatised. Things that never get reported in the right wing press #1147563856562846 The Guardian posted:Separately, a letter published in the Guardian today and signed by 37 senior social services academics led by professor Ray Jones, of Kingston University, warns that child protection is too important to be left to the "fickleness and failings" of the market.
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May 16, 2014 21:35
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El Scotch posted:I've finally found an avatar. Bless that thread. Dear God, why?!
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May 16, 2014 22:53
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El Scotch posted:You just answered your own question. Muahaha. It's like a smiling cadaver...gently caress you're evil.
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May 16, 2014 23:10
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Spangly A posted:I honestly never noticed how white where I came from was until I went to University and suddenly I have met more than two non-English-whites in my life. My drummer was from a rural town outside Tuscon and asked me where the hell we hid the minorities, in the most multicultural city in the entire county. Canterbury? When I went there, '94-'97, it was the whitest place I'd ever been. The university was no different. I suffered a severe case of monocultural shock, the food and music and spoken language was so bland! 
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May 17, 2014 15:04
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Spangly A posted:It's better than it was then. The Uni itself aims to bring in Americans, Africans and Chinese to rip off. I swear I've never seen the Chinese lads leave campus but the Africans are all cool, almost all my friends at Uni were from a single huge group of people that came over from Zimbabwe. Food is better too, some excellent Jamaican streetcarts. It's still whiter than a modern bathroom redesign. Is there still the Japanese college on campus just down from Keynes or has that gone? Jesus, it'll be twenty years in October since I went there. I'm old.
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May 17, 2014 16:25
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SuperHunBastard1690 posted:Who do you think are the best race? Elves, for the +2 Str and +2 Dex and nightvision gently caress yeah!
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May 17, 2014 16:28
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Mr Cuddles posted:I went to UKC too. 16 years ago. Feel old. K, E, R or D?
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May 17, 2014 18:33
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Spangly A posted:dear god was that all you had? There was Park Wood when I was there, Woody's was brand new the year I started. I told you, I'm old! HortonNash fucked around with this message at 18:52 on May 17, 2014 |
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May 17, 2014 18:50
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Spangly A posted:They've really ramped up construction recently, campus is starting to look quite ugly with all the work and new developments. A lot of older buildings designed with a view in mind have had it obscured. Please tell me the view from Rutherford's dining room is still an amazing vista of Canterbury and the Cathedral. That was the reason I chose UKC over King's College London. I'll be so sad if it's been destroyed by "progress". I really should have a day trip to Canterbury and wander round campus and see what's changed.
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May 17, 2014 19:52
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Spangly A posted:You can see the Cathedral, the left hand side of the view is blocked by the Tyler buildings. That's a real shame, that view was spectacular. I didn't eat there very often, but it was always amazing to sit and eat with that view. Spangly A posted:If you head down to canterbury have a shout, I'll come out for a pint and imagine Trickjaw can make the trip from Essex too. Will do.
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May 17, 2014 20:33
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