GP visits – HS2 – long process to check student’s work

GP visits for respiratory infections are down across the board. The report this week has redefined many previous figures, so this is a plot of the latest

What we aren’t seeing is a data consistency regarding direction of infection increase/decrease. We lack the mass data that we had earlier in the pandemic. We can only go week on week from what is now a single report.

HS2

The government still buying properties along HS2 route – despite scrapping the scheme. Following Rishi Sunak’s decision to cancel the leg, taxpayer has spent £1.4m on properties for a line that is no longer being built. The Guardian reports this.

• Three purchases completed – the taxpayer has spent £1.4m buying properties for a line that is no longer being built.
• The state was legally obliged to follow through on purchases that were already being processed.
• The Observer understands that significant pressure is now being placed on officials to ensure at least some parcels of land along the line are sold off before the general election, in an apparent attempt to create a “political trap” for Labour and kill off the project.
• Labour has not yet revealed any solid plans for HS2 or an alternative.
• The decision to kill off HS2’s northern leg may have been ordered as a way of forcing Labour to choose between revamping the project or sticking with the Network North scheme announced by Sunak in its place.
• Selling land already bought by the state will be a much harder task.
• The government has been warned by its own infrastructure adviser, Sir John Armitt, not to rush through land sales, because the land may be required to cut the congestion which will result because the line is not being built.

You just can’t make it up.

Domestically not much – marking is taking much longer than expected as is determining the action for those who used AI. A characteristic is that sometimes AI falsifies references, and this is a much more serious academic offence, so I have to check each one, both for internal consistency and to see if they exist.

Why bother? I do not want to let stuff go through that is cheating, and I know I’m retiring in a few months, but it’s the reputation of the University that’s at stake. If we allow people to cheat then the people who don’t cheat see their work devalued.

Music

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), Sinfonia Concertante K297b Movement 2 – Adagio, Berlin Philharmonic wind soloists, Havana Lyceum Orchestra, José Antonio Méndez Padrón