A key SAGE adviser said that schools may end up having to close if infection rates continue rising.
Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, said schools would stay open during the extreme lockdown, but added that because they have delayed the onset of the lockdown, it makes keeping schools open harder.
And that if the transmission in secondary schools continues to grow that may have to be reconsidered in the next four weeks.
Obviously, this isn’t the student’s fault, but there is now a concern about their futures and it’s extremely sad indeed.
There is no fault here, we have a pandemic and we all have to follow the rules and it’s impacting everyone, no matter their age, but the rate of infections in secondary schools is growing rapidly as is in the general population.
And lockdown might seem extremely selfish to the young and it might seem unjust, but we need to do what needs to be done.
Students will now effectively be locked in for four weeks with no pubs open et cetera and there will be numerous older students having house parties where this virus will spread further.
There doesn’t seem to be an answer, but perhaps opening up universities was now in hindsight the wrong decision. However, sending two million students, many of which will be carrying COVID 19 back across the country to families, parents, grandparents and siblings will cause a spike and we need to get the transmission rates lower before we start pushing for the mass migration of millions of students.
And they seem to be discouraging mask-wearing in school because they assert that hundreds of these children that are in cramped spaces are in a bubble, but then supporting those in need isn’t the style of the Government – killing thousands meaninglessly does seem to be.
The scientists on SAGE advise the Government, but it’s become increasingly evident that our politicians don’t have to take that advice, and have at times rejected it and had the crisis been addressed earlier and more effectively by the Government, we might not be in this alarming situation now.
In the meantime, we the ordinary people are paying the price of our Government’s lack of judgement and skewed priorities.
Unfortunately, we’re now seeing a lot of suicide rates, mental illness, domestic abuse, people forgoing medical treatment, which killed a lot of people last time, wanton destruction of livelihoods and the inescapable fiscal tradeoffs to finance all of the handouts et cetera.
And now we’re in lockdown for four weeks, but if we’re honest with ourselves, it will be much longer and the Government seems to be singing from the same hymn sheet.
Not everyone seems to be agreeing with one another, some want to lockdown, some don’t and believe that we should just take our chances and carry on regardless.
Sheild if you feel you need to, but those that don’t want to shield, be thoughtful and caring by wearing masks and washing your hands to protect yourself and others.
A Greek Orthodox archpriest is battling for his life after being shot in the chest with a sawn-off shotgun outside his church in Lyon in central France and even though the shooting is not being treated as a terrorist incident, it’s fuelled an already frenzied atmosphere around churches in France following the slaying of three people in the basilica in Nice by a Tunisian Islamist on Thursday.
The archpriest, named as Father Nikolaos Kakavelakis, 52, was shot as he closed the church in Lyon’s seventh district on Saturday. Prosecutors say he’s in critical condition.
The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that in Lyon, around 4 pm on Saturday, residents and a police patrol heard two gunshots near a Greek Orthodox church on the 7th arrondissement of the city.
Police officers saw a man escaping the location and discovered a priest with gunshot wounds near the church’s back door. French media reported that the assailant used a sawn-off shotgun.
The prosecutor’s office said that the police captured a person matching eyewitness descriptions of the assailant later on Saturday and a report from the prosecutor’s office said that the individual was not carrying a weapon and didn’t say that the person was a suspect in the shooting.
Grégory Doucet, the mayor of Lyon, said that the priest had been hospitalized with serious injuries and the prosecutor’s office said that at this stage, no hypothesis had been ruled out nor favoured, adding that it had opened an investigation for attempted murder and that it was in communication with the national antiterrorism prosecutor’s office.
However, the fact that the national antiterrorism prosecutor was not directly handling the case was a sign that authorities didn’t have proof of a terrorist motive.
The Lyon prosecutor’s office didn’t deliver more details about the attacker.
The police cordoned off the site, a residential area in Lyon, and local police asked residents to avoid it and French authorities have put the country on its highest terrorism alert status after the attack in Nice and had increased security patrols around key locations, including places of worship.
Jean Castex, the Prime Minister, told reporters on Saturday that grave events had transpired in Lyon but he didn’t have any information on the circumstances.
Jean Castex happened to be speaking from St-Étienne-du-Rouvray, a small town in Normandy where an 85-year-old priest was killed in 2016 in a terrorist attack that the Islamic State said it had carried out.
Mr Castex, who was visiting the town to review heightened security at the church, said the French Government was determined to ensure that all worshipers could practice their religion in complete safety and with total freedom.
Terrorist attack or not, this was still a heinous crime that should not have occurred and seems to be getting very little coverage via media outlets.
Then there were the two Muslim women who were stabbed repeatedly under the Eiffel Tower amid growing tension in Paris after the beheading of a teacher.
French police arrested two female suspects after an argument about dogs that allegedly descended into violence and racist slurs including the words ‘Dirty Arabs’.
One of the Muslim women said the assailants had pulled out a knife after refusing to put their dogs on a leash and slashed her in the skull, arm and ribs.
Evidently, according to French authorities, a fellow Greek Orthodox adherent and aggrieved community member has been detained and is the leading suspect in the attempted slaying of Father Nikolaos Kakavelakis outside the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Lyon.
According to the Lyon Police, Jean-Michel Dhimoïla, a French national, Greek Orthodox Christian and member of the same Lyon parish where Father Nikolaos Kakavelakis was shot, was arrested and brought into police headquarters for questioning.
Jean-Michel Dhimoïla, a former legislative contender for the far-right French political party Debout la France, was also once a Greek Orthodox Monk and had a long-standing personal conflict with the priest.
According to the French newspaper Le Monde, the former monk and the priest were involved in long-standing disputes that ended up in court.
This was a hate crime and so far this incident doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Muslim hate crimes.
Tory ministers today revealed a major new exemption for young parents in England’s national lockdown.
Babies and toddlers will no longer count towards a two-person limit on meetups in an open area, like a park.
This means, for instance, that new mums will still be able to see a friend or family member while holding their baby.
The regulations are part of a month-long national lockdown which starts in England from 12.01 am on Thursday.
Social mixing, indoors and outdoors, will be prohibited between people not from the same home or bubble.
A major exemption is that two people from two homes can still meet in a public open area, like a park, as long as they socially distance.
The regulation is designed to throw a lifeline to friendships and family members and to prevent people from being isolated, but only two people in total can take part in such assemblages.
That is despite the fact new parents need to be holding their baby, who is already a second person, at the time, but that had raised fears new parents would be excluded and isolated at the time they needed social contact the most.
A Health Minister said, that due to the concerns, children under school age will now be exempted from the rule and they will no longer count towards the limit of two people assembling outdoors.
Neither will older children or adults who are dependent on round the clock care, such as those with severe disabilities.
Health Minister Nadine Dorries confirmed the move on Twitter and she said that children under school age who are with their parents will not count towards the limit on two people assembling outdoors.
And she said that this would mean that a parent can see a friend or family member with their baby or young children and she added that children and adults who are dependent on round the clock care, such as those with severe disabilities, would also be included and that the guidance will be revised to reflect this.
The change is a major departure from the rule of six which controlled crowds up until the lockdown and under the rule of six, children counted towards the six-person limit on assemblages no matter how young or old.
Labour MP Stella Creasy had raised concerns, tweeting: “Hard to see how a baby is distinct from a parent in transmission stakes at such a young age and given growing crisis of postnatal maternal health vital mums not stuck at home this next month!”
TV star Kirstie Allsopp was among those who had raised concerns and she tweeted: “If you are allowed to meet one other person while walking outside that must exclude a baby in a pram, and if doesn’t it is frankly barbaric.
“Have we learned nothing about the acute, long term danger to all family members of PND?!!!”
Is anyone baffled by the new rules?
Well, some will be extremely confused by them and some might say that it’s ridiculous.
For months grandparents were not permitted to see their families, children and grandchildren together, but now we’re in another lockdown you can see them all providing their under school age, extremely confusing if you ask me.
And I’m sure anyone under the age of about 11 years old needs around the clock care, not just babies and toddlers. It’s not like you could leave your 7-year-old in the house alone while you went shopping.
And are the Government for real – meet up in a park in the middle of winter, they know anyone in their right mind wouldn’t subject their children to that kind of torment and you couldn’t make this babble up if you tried, but the Government have and Boris Johnson appears to be making this up as he goes along.
So, what about people that don’t have children, what are they supposed to do? Next Boris Johnson will be telling us to take a brisk hike around the park in the middle of the winter, and don’t forget soon the snow will be here.
Not only that, what about those poor people out there that have no home to go to and that are out on the streets, some being told that they can sofa surf even though we’re not supposed to be in other people’s homes.
But it’s a good ploy by our trusted Government. Go out to the park to see your friends and family as long as you socially distance, come rain, or snow – don’t worry about getting sick or ending up with pneumonia – the Government don’t care because it’s one less person to worry about.
A second lockdown in England may last longer than the four weeks outlined by Boris Johnson, admitted Michael Gove.
The Prime Minister has decided to prohibit household mixing and shutter pubs, restaurants and non-essential shops, but that came six weeks after scientific advisers first urged him to do so.
Following months of insistence to the contrary and on the day it was due to end, Boris Johnson also announced the furlough scheme would be extended throughout the shutdown period, while scientists warned the Government to use this time well and fix the ailing £12 billion test and trace system.
Meanwhile, data shared with a news outlet disclosed that tens of thousands of NHS staff are presently off sick or self-isolating because of COVID 19, but this is going to keep occurring.
Boris Johnson talked of nature yesterday, this is nature we have to let take its course, and I hope that nobody else out there loses someone but there’s a slim possibility that they could, but we might have to take some risks so that we can get on with our lives.
What we need is a vaccine and then there are no guarantees that it will work effectively for everyone.
When it’s a natural existing virus we can rely on the body to create antibodies, but this virus isn’t creating antibodies, which mean that it possibly wasn’t a naturally occurring virus and it’s been designed to evolve.
We now have to use common sense and take precautions by wearing a mask, social distance, wash your hands, use hand sanitiser, eat nutritious foods, get plenty of sleep, exercise, get plenty of sunshine and fresh air.
But we must also protect those who are most vulnerable to this virus – it doesn’t have to be 100 per cent one way or the other, but common sense is a wonderful thing.
There is always some evidence out there, but at the moment no evidence can be trusted as conclusive.
Perhaps soon there will be clearer ideas about it all, but doctors, scientists and Government all need to agree, but at the moment they’re all saying different things and delivering different facts.
And the return of the virus in its second wave demonstrates that this pandemic is definitely not over and increased cases are already emerging here in the United Kingdom.
Publishing half-truths and ignoring reality will not prevent the virus from killing thousands more people and at the moment we are just learning to live with this virus, but we still have to get on with our lives, which means that everything we do will be a risk.
Boris Johnson has from Thursday now locked us down until December 2nd, so he’s thrown us a bone and then he will tell us that we’ve done great as a nation, that we’ve united and come together, but that we would be stupid and foolish to unlock now and to unlace all the hard work we’ve done together as a nation and he will add another four-week lockdown, and as a reward, we’ll get Brexit, with no time whatsoever to prepare – lucky us!
And then when the vaccine is ready, if it ever is, everyone can join societies line up to take it. And those that have read about it and refuse to take it will be yelled at by the snarling sheep that they’re being selfish.
However, until halfwit Boris Johnson gets the track and trace programme sorted it will be a case of lockdown after lockdown, and of course, lockdown takes slight pressure off the NHS momentarily, but once lockdown is lifted it’s back to square one again and again.
The Keep Calm and Carry On catchphrase on your coffee cup seems quaintly entertaining in better times, but as the second wave of coronavirus sweeps Europe, perhaps we should be clinging to its wartime message.
We’re now nine months into this fight against the pandemic, but we need to quit treating COVID 19 as a crisis and we need to stop panicking over every new statistic and start preparing for the long haul.
In the early days, we were faced with a new and deadly disease and harsh measures made sense.
The first lockdowns sought to buy us time, to quell the virus and protect hospitals until a vaccine arrived, but despite gallant progress, it’s evident that no vaccine will be widely available until spring at the earliest, and possibly never.
There’s still no vaccine for SARS and there are reports that the coronavirus is mutating.
Even if there was a vaccine, the UK’s chief scientific officer Patrick Vallance said recently that it was unlikely to eradicate COVID 19 entirely, which means we must learn to live with this thing.
And in the United Kingdom, the hysteria mindset of the emergency phase had some terrible consequences.
Patients have been forced to decide which of their children to see before they die and they’re frightened lonely people who have been forced to stay at home, have put on weight, while obesity is a considerable risk factor for the virus.
Curfews have replaced unruly drinkers from pubs to car parks, with devastating takings at the till.
In Wales, which has been a one-party state since devolution, the first minister has imposed a Soviet-style prohibition on supermarkets, selling anything but essential goods, in case customers might contaminate someone while skimming for a T-shirt.
The challenge ahead is to look coolly at what works and to examine all possibilities.
Closing down swaths of the economy indefinitely will have enormous consequences for jobs, livelihood and mental health.
The UK Treasury has already expended billions to keep the economy in suspended animation and now we’re at a cliff edge with the furlough scheme for jobs about to expire and the Government must extend a more generous alternate safety net than it’s fashioned so far or they must reduce the lockdowns.
The Prime Minister can only feel his way through the difficult trade-offs between lives, livelihoods and hospital capacity and he’s repeatedly shown every jump in the R numbers of infections.
But there are no R numbers for jobs, no equivalent stream showing when a business owner will lose their life’s savings and life’s work and there’s no Downing Street unit scrutinising worst-case health scenarios and modelling families queueing at food banks, corporations planning mass redundancies and people contemplating suicide.
There, of course, have been numerous pandemics throughout history, which usually last about 1-3 years but took many lives and then ended and I don’t see any reason why this relatively mild one should be any worse, especially given that we at least learned to wash our hands and wear masks.
But what we do need to learn is to adapt to this virus and to condition our lifestyles and hygienic behaviours accordingly and you can thank the media, public health officials and most politicians for acting as though everyone is 80+ years old with comorbidities and at increased risk of dying, which has led to the panic.
Although I don’t know anyone who is panicking per se, but I do know many people who are simply fed up with the crisis and believe that it’s time to move on and get back to normal because really, there’s nothing we can do about it.
Never before have a handful of tech designers had such power over the way billions of us think, act, and live their lives.
These are the voices of technologists, researchers and activists working to align technology with the interests of humankind.
But do you know what’s hiding on the other side of your screen?
We tweet, we like, and we share, but what are the consequences of our growing dependence on social media?
Well, it demonstrates how social media is reprogramming society with tech professionals sounding the alarm on their own creations and a 5,000 person investigation found that higher social media use correlated with self-reported declines in mental and physical health and life fulfilment.
With compelling design methods like push notifications and the infinite scroll of your newsfeed have created a feedback loop that keeps us glued to our devices and countries with political disinformation campaigns on social media has doubled in past years.
Social media advertisement allows anyone to reach enormous numbers of people with remarkable ease, giving bad actors the instruments to instil unrest and fuel political divisions.
And sixty-four per cent of the people who joined extremist groups on Facebook did so because the algorithms steered them there because the algorithms facilitate content that sparks fury, hate and intensifies biases within the information that they provide.
And we’re now hearing from tech insiders about how their creations are generating unintended harm to people and society and now we’re inviting others into the dialogue, amplifying those helping us better understand the impact of the dilemma and those working on solutions to correct it.
And 2020 has highlighted just how much we depend on technology to connect, learn, organise, and live our lives, but the business model of big tech poses an unparalleled threat to our human rights, harvesting and monetising the data of a third of the world’s population, ensnaring us in a system where we’re compelled to either submit to pervasive tracking or forego this vital lifeline.
If you’ve logged onto social media recently, you might have noticed the odd clue that all is not right in the world. What with credulous corona conspiracists spoiling for punch ups with 5G masts and honking clowns of Governments who rule by fomenting voter conflict, and the persistent feeling that you’re being boiled alive in a cauldron of hatred, extremism, fake news and the mental health crisis.
But of course, the central issue is the fact that you logged into social media in the first place.
Where the brilliance lies is in laying bare a vast range of complicated issues with compelling transparency and its masterstroke is in recruiting the very Silicon Valley insiders that created these platforms and to get them to explain their horrifying pitfalls, which they’ve realised perhaps far too late.
And you don’t get a much clearer statement of social media’s dangers than an ex-Facebook executive’s claims that “In the shortest time horizon I’m worried about civil war”.
The generally held idea that social media companies peddle user’s data was quickly tossed aside – the information is actually utilised to create a sophisticated psychological profile of you and what they’re peddling is their ability to control you, or as one interviewee put it, it’s the gradual, subtle, invisible change in your own behaviour and perception and it’s the only thing for them to make money from changing what you do, how you think and who you are.
Tech can be used to reprogramme the way your brain works until addiction results and it’s even more harmful to teens because social media starts to dig deep and deeper down into the brain stem and takes over your child’s sense of self-worth and individuality, explains ex-Google employee Tristan Harris as one of the outstanding dramatic sequences, as you see a pouting preteen pose for selfies overlaid with filters that warp her features until she looks like a cartoon character.
And then there are the graphs illustrating spiralling teen suicide rates, with students that constantly desire ‘likes’ on Facebook he’s created and that leaves you more vacant and empty.
AI and the algorithms behind social media are also flagged as a terrifying potential destroyer of social cohesion and their unpredictability sees a former operations manager of Facebook lament that they’re controlling us more than we’re controlling them, meaning that it’s extremely difficult for social media companies to stop them circulating fake news and thus eroding the concept of truth.
Then there’s the rise of the Flat Earth movement, that’s all thanks to a Youtube algorithm that recommended the conspiracy videos to viewers hundreds of millions of times.
Pizzagate went underground when Facebook’s algorithm promoted their groups to users it had identified as being susceptible to conspiracy theories, leading a man to turn up at a restaurant with a machine gun to free non-existent child hostages from an imaginary basement.
And it’s easy to think that it was just a few foolish people who got convinced, warns the engineer who created the rogue Youtube algorithm, but the algorithm is getting smarter and smarter every day.
Today they’re convincing people that the Earth is flat, but tomorrow they will be convincing you of something else.
We might live in a post-Cambridge Analytica world, but despite it being public knowledge that Vote Leave and Trump’s 2016 election campaign harvested voter’s Facebook data on a massive scale, The Social Dilemma still manages to uncover new and vital whispers of how these platforms destabilise modern politics.
A Harvard Business School professor dismissed the idea that we can sidestep their political influence by revealing Facebook’s massive scale contagion experiments which made users vote in the US midterm elections, without them even realising they’d been motivated to do so.
Then there was the Russian Facebook hack to influence the 2016 US election. The Russians didn’t hack Facebook, they just used the instruments that Facebook made for legitimate advertisers, gripes one of the company’s ex investors.
And Harris demonstrates that there’s now a market where state actors pay to destabilise democracies across the globe, which now represents an existential threat to the survival of nations.
And now, it’s so utterly necessary that regulation is a must, and now there’s a website, thesocialdilemma.com, offering help for parents, actions to help fight disinformation and ways to sign up to Harris’s Centre for Humane Technology which strives to transform the culture in the tech industry as well as encouraging politicians to legislate.
Harris said that we can demand that these products be designed humanely – we built these things and we have a responsibility to change them, and the first step is to watch this outstanding documentary, and encourage others to do so.
The waxwork museum Madame Tussauds in Berlin loaded its effigy of TV star turned Republican President Donald Trump into a dumpster on Friday, a move intended to reflect its expectations of next Tuesday’s presidential election.
In what appeared a further calculated insult, the statue of his predecessor and nemesis Barack Obama, who counted Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel among his closest allies, stayed in place, beaming and besuited.
The museum’s marketing manager Orkide Yalcindag said that today’s activity is somewhat symbolic ahead of the elections in the United States and that there at Madame Tussauds Berlin they removed Donald Trump’s waxwork as a preliminary measure.
Donald Trump has trailed his Democratic challenger Joe Biden in national opinion polls for months, partly because of overall dislike of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic sweeping Europe and the United States, though current polls have shown him gaining ground in a handful of key states.
Madame Tussaud’s display also includes ex-US presidents, regardless of the outcome, Donald Trump and his dumpster are likely to be wheeled back before long. However, this is precisely where he belongs and hopefully, this is a prediction of what the American people are going to do.
But get your Kleenex ready because Donald Trump is probably going to crush Joe Biden on Tuesday and the only thing missing from this dumpster to define 2020 is for it to be on fire, although I wouldn’t expect it to burn like a candle unless they handily put a wick in it.
And the National Weather Service should have an alert to take shelter because a Tsunami is heading your way.
It’s particularly amusing that in Germany they chose to rest his effigy in the garbage and now even the maggots and roaches that usually inhabit the trash can have a nibble on his godly flesh, but then wouldn’t that be animal cruelty?
In his mind, nobody is more respected than he is. However, he’s still the President, but just because he’s the President, that doesn’t mean the remainder of the world has to respect him and the majority of Americans don’t respect him and smart Americans want him gone, the swamp needs to be cleansed.
He’s only President in name and he’s made his contempt for the people extremely clear in thought, word and deed.
He couldn’t even acknowledge the heartbreak of millions who have suffered and are still suffering through this pandemic and when has he ever offered condolences to the families who have lost loved ones?
He’s never respected his title, so why should the people? And he’s bad for the whole world and hopefully, Joe Biden will be broadcasting a clip saying ‘you’re fired’ aka The Apprentice.
And he runs the country like he runs his businesses, haphazard, free-spending, debt-heavy and bankrupt and also when Donald Trump is dumped into the trash, we should also take his phone away so that the world can also be finally free of his daily dumb tweets and if his phone was taken away from him and he was barred from Twitter he would likely fade away into dust – sounds like an extremely attractive proposition!
Sean Connery, the highly decorated actor who rocketed to stardom for his iconic role as James Bond, has reportedly passed away, he was 90 years old.
The BBC reported that the Scottish actor’s demise was confirmed by his family.
The report states he died overnight in his sleep while in the Bahamas, where he was known to be living in his final years.
Sean Connery was an international superstar, having earned an Academy Award, multiple Golden Globes, including the Cecil B DeMille and Henrietta Awards, as well as two British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA).
One of his most memorable roles was as the first actor to tackle the character of James Bond, beginning with 1962’s ‘Dr No’. His other memorable movies include ‘The Untouchables’, ‘The Rock’ and ‘Murder on the Orient Express’.
In total, Sean Connery appeared in seven Bond films, ‘Dr No’, ‘From Russia with Love’, ‘Goldfinger’, ‘Thunderball’, ‘You Only Live Twice’, ‘Diamonds are Forever’ and ‘Never Say Never Again’.
James Bond producers Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli have released a statement via the James Bond official Twitter account, saying that they were devastated by the news of the passing of Sir Sean Connery.
They said that he was and shall always be remembered as the original James Bond whose memorable entrance into cinema history began when he announced those unforgettable words – “The name’s Bond… James Bond”.
He revolutionised the world with his gritty and witty portrayal of the seductive and charismatic secret agent and he was indeed largely responsible for the success of the film series and they said that they shall be eternally grateful to him.
Sean Connery’s other movies included ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’, ‘The Hunt for Red October’, ‘The Wind and the Lion’ and ‘The Man Who Would Be King’, and while he was considered by many as one of the best to have ever portrayed the British secret spy, Sean Connery’s other roles added to his list of awards, and his part in Brian de Palma’s ‘The Untouchables’ in 1987 earned him a supporting actor Oscar.
In 1999, Sean Connery was picked as People magazine’s Sexiest Man of the Century, and one year later, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
Born Thomas Sean Connery in Edinburgh, Scotland on August 15, 1930, he was the son of a factory worker and a domestic cleaner and according to the BBC, he was born in humble upbringings, in a one-room residence with a shared toilet and no hot water.
But this amazing actor will always be James Bond and he was loved by millions around the world and in my book, he will be the only James Bond regardless of who else plays the role.
And if there’s anything that Sean Connery has taught us, it’s that our honourable, loving and peaceful actions will save and heal the world, not our bitterness, weapons or worth and this is a devastating loss to all of us.
Entertainment will just not be the same without him and he will be missed very much and it’s a sad day for the arts because he was a true performer and it’s very sad to let him go, but he had an amazing and wonderful journey.
They took off in haste, but these New Yorkers are on the express line back to the metropolis.
When the pandemic hit in March, Zachary Thacher packed his bags and joined the record-breaking exodus of city dwellers leaving town.
Zachary Thacher said that he was feeling cooped up and felt that he wanted to have a more rustic life that was more in tune with nature, but it turns out that not all New Yorkers are cut out for country life.
Zachary Thacher said that he wasn’t in farm shape when he got there when he volunteered at a friend’s organic farmstead for four and a half months. And so after testing out life in Massachusettes, Vermont and Beacon, New York, Zachary Thacher settle on, well, Brooklyn.
Zachary Thacher, who runs a digital marketing company said he missed the diversity of his Jewish flock, and he said that it’s so easy to stroll to places without having to plan things out – that you can stumble upon bars and cafes and not be on a script there in New York.
And it’s not only the boonies that are turning off city slickers. New Yorkers have been snatching up real estate in the suburbs, as well as smaller provincial municipalities, where they can get newly coveted luxuries like outdoor space.
Maureen Cross, an accountant who gave up her rent-controlled one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side said that she’s now got a driveway, a yard, a washing machine and an eat-in kitchen.
On June 1, she signed a lease on a much larger three-bedroom flat in Burlington, Vermont, where she moved with her two Siberian huskies, and she said that after two weeks, she was like, “Is this all there is? Where’s everybody?”
Maureen Cross was soon skimming StreetEasy to move back to the West 80s from her new digs in the sticks and eventually scored a duplex with a backyard, and she was delighted to return to the churn of fast-paced city life and soon found herself back in her old routine of visiting museums, strolling through Riverside Park and volunteering with the Wild Bird Fund.
Maureen Cross said that she moved back right in time for the Met reopening and when she strode into the room with the Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko paintings, her cells fell back into place.
The burbs are brilliant if you’re cut out for it but when you’re having withdrawal symptoms because you have to go three days without seeing a homeless guy sitting on the sidewalk on your way to the deli, that’s when you know you’re not cut out for the burbs.
Some people are bored in suburbia, let alone rural. If you want a tranquil life, then the burbs are ideal, but if you’re like me and like doing something different every day, then it’s super convenient on transit and there’s something to do every day – never a moment to get bored.
But of course, we’re all different with different needs to keep our minds sane, but it’s all about choices and whatever brings a person peace of mind in this crazy world that we live in, and it’s about whatever floats your boat.
And New York has gone through so many formidable years, but it always bounces back, but you also have to remember that in most big cities people would step over you if you collapsed in the street – they have no time for anyone or anything but themselves, but such is the pace of life.
Shelter and the National Housing Federation found one in 10 agents in England refused to let to those on benefit.
The covert investigation discovered the policy was implemented even if tenants could afford the rent.
Stephen Tyler told the BBC that housing benefit discrimination had forced him to sleep in his car.
The wheelchair user told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme that they’d endeavoured to find accommodation since they were ousted from their last property when they asked for adaptions to be made for wheelchair access.
He said that he called anything up to 20 landlords, estate agents, a day and none of them would accept DSS, tenants on Department of Social Security housing benefits.
The Birmingham resident said he’d approached his council as well as housing associations, but no one wanted to help at all.
A spokesman for Mr Tyler’s local council, Birmingham City, stated it had offered him suitable alternative accommodation, and it added that while this was far from an ideal situation, and that it was no doubt distressing for Mr Tyler and his family, unfortunately, they were faced with a national housing crisis which was affecting an unprecedented number of families across the region.
Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said that this ugly undercurrent of discrimination was wreaking devastation on hundreds of thousands of people’s lives and that DSS was an obsolete and outrageous illustration of heinous discrimination.
The investigation into 149 regional letting agent branches discovered five of England’s leading letting agents were discriminating against tenants on housing benefit and Haart was the worst culprit.
Mystery shoppers, deployed by the charities, had encountered a prohibition on housing benefit tenants in eight out of 25 Haart branches and a spokesman for Haart said that it wasn’t their policy to prohibit housing benefit tenants and that anyone who passes referencing checks can rent properties listed with their branches.
They continued that they regularly arrange tenancies for those claiming housing benefits and presently have 112 tenancies where this is the case, but this research had brought to light that some of their branches had been misinformed and were working to ensure that this policy was being followed across their network and that they were sorry for any occasion where this had not been the case.
Others named as having individual branch guidelines not to accept people on housing benefit were Bridgfords (two out of 25 branches visited), Dexters (two out of 25), Fox & Sons (two out of 24) and Your Move (one out of 25).
The report said that nearly half of all branches contacted during the investigation said they had no suitable homes or landlords would not let to someone on housing benefit.
The report claims that a shortfall in social housing meant that an estimated 1.64 million adults depend on housing benefit to help cover private rents and it was said the preponderance were women, especially single mothers with childcare responsibilities, while people who received disability benefits were three times more likely to need a housing benefit top-up.
David Cox, chief executive of letting agents body Arla Propertymark said that rents are paid in advance, whereas housing benefit is paid in arrears, and thus with such a shortage of rental accommodation, landlords and agents will naturally pick a tenant who can pay the rent when it’s due, rather than a tenant who is always a month in arrears.
He said that they’ve called on the Government time and time again to fix this issue, but that their calls have fallen on deaf ears.
A Ministry of Housing spokesman said those on housing benefit who felt discriminated against could complain to redress schemes, which all letting and managing agents must be part of by law.
He added that they were determined to tackle stigma in social housing and the private rented sector and that they had published their Social Housing Green Paper setting out their strategies to rebalance the relationship between tenants and landlords.
Unfortunately, for the time being, disabled people and single mothers are still being discriminated against because of housing benefit discrimination and the Government and wider society do not care.
And the entire idea of letting agents is evil because they’re completely driven by money and can push rents up as much as possible because they get a percentage and this is making people homeless as the cost of renting gets higher and higher, and this is a more short-sighted governance – rents should be lowered then capped and capitalism sucks.
Margaret Thatcher came up with the concept of ‘Right To Buy’ and then Tony Blair became her poodle. And Right To Buy was fantastic for those who could afford it, but for others, it wasn’t such a good idea and it also the scheme meant they ceased building enough social housing.
The point is that council houses have not been built under any Government for many years – Conservative, Labour, whichever party you support, neither have bothered to think logically and now we have more people needing affordable rental properties and there’s not enough to go round, or they simply can’t afford them.
And what is going on is shameful and yet we call ourselves civilised, yet our Government are allowing this to happen and our Government are treating people like they’re not even human beings.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 