121. CONFIDENCE MAN - What Exactly Do The Conservative Party Have Confidence In?

“According to last week's confidence vote, the majority of Conservative members of Parliament have confidence in the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. 211 out of 359 MPs, or 59%. But what does this actually tell us? And why do we care about their levels of confidence? Should confidence have anything to do with governing in a democracy? And, if it does, ought the question of confidence be put to the demos - the whole population - rather than merely the MPs of the current ruling party, many of whom are frontbenchers dependent on the very Prime Minister whose confidence is in question for their current political and financial success?“

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118. SHOWING OUR TRUE SELVES - What Does It Tell Us When We Tidy Our House?

“If we all are running around like headless chickens to make things look nice whenever someone visits then that must mean that none of us actually live our lives in the way that we present to others that we do.“

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47. A LIFE WITHOUT SANCTIONS - Thinking About Consequences And Their Lack In An Age Without Punishment

Sanctions, punishments, threats…these may bring some short term sense of comfort that justice is being done, but true justice comes when we no longer need such threats to ensure good behaviour. When the logic of the genuine consequences of an action is enough to make people make better choices. When police aren’t racists and politicians aren’t liars because the obvious wrongness of being a racist or a liar, and its logical consequence in the death and suffering of innocent people, is sufficient to not want to be racist or lie. “

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45b. THE COVID-SECURE CLASSROOM IS A CLASSROOM UNFIT FOR PURPOSE - Further analysis in light of the DfE announcement

“To re-open schools before it is safe to do so is to mistake the purpose of schools and ignore how fundamentally transformed a “Covid-secure” school will be from the schools we knew before.  With no obvious benefit for returning to the socially distanced classroom before it is safe to do so, we must, as both teaching professionals and as a wider society, ask the question of what we are trying to achieve with the push to reopen our schools?  “

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