WTF is happening in the UK?

[Pontius Navigator]

Actually containers can make good homes. After the hurricanes in the Caribbean devastated the shacks that many live in it occurred that a container as the central refuge of a house would make a safe place.

I think they now use containers.

[CremeEgg]

Just seen this on the news - I wonder what warm, dry home I would be given if I turned up in their native land?

Containers aren't huge but they look well equipped and seem fit for purpose and are increasingly used as a basis for a home amongst aficionado's of the TV "Grand Designs" ilk.

They are certainly far superior to the barely converted Nissan Huts that were the accommodation offered to the ten-pound Poms that went down under in the early 60's.

[Woody]

If OM15 could get off his high horse for a couple of minutes perhaps he could read this article

https://www.dwell.com/amp/article/shipp ... s-4fb04079

[Pontius Navigator]

Those are of course professionally designed container homes for higher end prefabricated dwellings.

At the bottom end a time expired shipping container provides an immediate robust space. As material becomes available it can be fitted out, insulated and extended. It is, above all else, secure.

[4mastacker]

As a lot of the occupants probably came into this country in less well-equipped containers or artic lorries, what's their beef? The BBC featured these homes on the 6 o'clock news - I felt the lady featured was being somewhat ungrateful, with an over-powering sense of entitlement, that this country had taken her in and tried to give her some semblance of safety. I suspect it is not her who is paying the rent. I also wonder what special skills she brought with her when she came to this country - apart from the obvious one of being able to breed.

Put the containers on a barge, tow it some where cold and inhospitable, call it a coastel and it would be prime accommodation fit for our troops.

[ian16th]

They all appear to be superior to the wooded huts that I lived in, for years, at various RAF Stations in the 1950's and 60's.

[Capetonian]

We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us

[CremeEgg]

4mastacker - eloquently put.

[Sisemen]

If containers were good enough for us in the Falklands - for decades - then they ought to be good enough for all.

Asks .... are containers still in use on the outposts like Mount Alice? Anybody know?

[om15]

Perhaps as they wade ashore someone could explain that we only offer substandard accommodation in shipping containers, they might swim on elsewhere.
Like everything Labour does it lacks thought, follow the dogma and ignore practicalities, thank goodness that Gyppo Corbyn and his marry Marxists are so far down in the polls we might never see another labour government, now wouldn't that be nice.

[John Hill]

... we might never see another labour government, now wouldn't that be nice.

How jolly! As we slowly slip back to the days of lords and serfdom.

[Capetonian]

That would be wonderful, a return to things as they should be.

[John Hill]

You might loose you enthusiasm when you are eating cold turnip soup.

[Capetonian]

I wouldn't be. I would be drinking the finest mead served by comely wenches.

[John Hill]

Highly unlikely.

[Capetonian]

How would you know?

[om15]

You might loose you enthusiasm when you are eating cold turnip soup

At least we will be able to afford soup.

Having lived through several Labour Governments I have no enthusiasm for more, the last lot made us go bust and they were trying to do the right thing, the present malevolent marxist puppet and his inarticulate dim witted front bench have at least told us that their aim is to destroy our society.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

GCSE exam results out today. Since the latest set of reforms, grades awarded are going up again, and over 40% of students doing science get grades 7-9 (B, A, A* as was).

And the reason? Grade boundaries.Grade boundaries were set up with the notional pass marks in units of 10, so that A* represented 90%, A grade 80%, etc. C, a bare pass, should be 60%. Under the new system, the bare pass is a mark of 4 on the 1-9 scale, and is supposed to be the equivalent of a low C grade, which in turn supposedly meant 60-65%. However, in order to achieve the laudable aim of making grades equivalent across different years, the UMS grade boundaries can be 'tweaked' to allow for papers being slightly more difficult one year (so a UMS A* might be given for 87%, not 90%), and slightly easier in another (91% might be needed for an A*). These tweaks were limited to a maximum of 2% inflation/deflation year-on-year. However, the first year was not made 90% for A*, it was made to match the overall grades awarded from the last year of the previous system, and in fact was around 81% for Physics GCSE. Furthermore, no limit, or even official monitoring, was put on long term mark boundary changes.
In fact, a private study I saw in 2008 (my last year of UK teaching), showed that grade boundaries had dropped every year at an average rate of 1.94% (ooh, a fraction under the Government limit; what a co-incidence!) This was likely due to both the politicians wanting ever higher student grades to crow about, and competition for customers among different exam boards. From first hand experience, exam board salespeople were being quite blatant about it from 2005 onwards (and this was definitely still the case in 2013) and verbally telling teachers at meetings that doing their board's exams would make it easier for students to get higher grades.

Back to this year.
The majority of students in the UK do Dual Award Science - all three subjects with separate papers in each, but an award being the equivalent of 2 GCSEs.
This year's UMS boundaries for the AQA board (the biggest), awards a mark of 4 for getting an actual mark on the papers of 21%. The student only got 1 in 5 of the marks awarded for the papers. 64% of the marks gets a mark of 9, the top grade.

So the Government pretends that a bare pass of 4 means 64%, whereas in fact 64% of the marks on the actual papers gets a mark of 9.
A levels are as bad.

The exam system in the UK is literally worthless.

[ian16th]

The exam system in the UK is literally worthless.

Makes me pleased that I left school at 15 and never bothered with anything like that.

[om15]

Just before I left Halton in 1970 there was the 50 year celebration of the founding of the No 1 S of TT, one of the exhibits was the examination paper for potential apprentices carried out on application to join in 1920, basic Latin grammar and calculus was examined.
In recent years I have been involved in training of junior licenced engineers, many of these did not have a level of English to complete their technical reports and worksheets properly, some could print but not write.