FirstWorldProblems

There was an incident on Wednesday at Bournemouth. 10 people pulled from the water with injuries. 2 deaths, both children. 12 & 17. Details are unknown at this time. Lots of speculation but the father of a survivor has said she was caught in a rip tide.

@Quoll is correct. GCSE’s run two years. Starting September when the child is aged 14/15 and concluding with final exams dropping in late June/early July when the child is 15/16. The school year is based on the child’s age as of 31 August. A-levels are the common next step. Also 2 years. The Australian system does not align to this at all, so moving with minimal disruption for education should take place before GCSE starts or after A-levels conclude. We are in that situation ourselves (though moving the other direction). I’ll share our personal experience (but of course this might just be us, not you)….. Son is now 18 and in the middle of his A-Level exams. Youngest daughter is in 1st year of GCSE’s. Plan is to move when she finishes A-level in 2026 2015-2021 Son (independent to any influence from us), always insisted he was going to uni in Australia and living with his nan. 2022 Son says he wants to consider UK and Aus Uni’s. But then only actually applies to U.K. ones. 2023 Son says “I think I’ll stay in the U.K. after uni. Just for a couple years to get some work experience.” 1 week later Daughter says “I’m going to Uni in the U.K. “ You might have been able to hear my wife yelling “no you will not” all the way from the other side of the world No idea how it will play out for us, but if I was you I’d make the move before your kids get into that phase of education, because as young adults they might have strong independent will and might refuse.

21st will be fine - the 28 days I was given started from receipt of the chaser letter, and you haven't had one of those yet so you've time.

Yes, back in February this year when I submitted by 309 application I received an automated and instant instruction to get my medical done. Because there are so few accredited centres and being a tight-arse, I wanted to wait until I was in London for work to get it done so I didn't have to pay the train fare out of my own pocket 24 days later they sent me a chaser message saying I had 28 days to provide the information requested. It stated that if I didn’t they could decide the application based on the info they had, so I cracked on with it bloody quickly.

No I don’t

Which is what generally happens- except in this case where it was rightly resisted and outed. But to highlight another element for a moment, it’s not always about the individual for a given role. Diverse teams are better teams. Society comprises great diversity (age, gender, socio-economic, education, health/ability) and customers reflect that. To develop, market, sell and deliver a product that works for a market, I need a team around me that is a reflection of my target customer base. If they are all like me, our experiences is going to shape similar thinking and it might not hit the mark as a result. So sometimes when hiring, the best individual might not make the best team. One newer factor I am seeing in business now is that companies coming out for tender for large procurements are increasingly scoring based on how many people from the supplier company are based in the customers local community. They want some of the money they spend to stay in the community and help it be sustainable instead of it all going off to other regions (or countries). It’s admirable but quite a challenge.

I'm sure a psychologist could tell us why we humans like to categorise people as good or bad. Although I observe we can handle nuance when it comes to people we know well. It's logically clear that people can be a mix. That not only can bad people do good things, but that people can be both good and bad. But it doesn't seem to sit comfortably with us. The trolley problem is a load of bollox

That's what happened. The chief recruiter said "nope" and it blew up. Most organisations (certainly the good ones), when trying to improve diversity so that it better aligns to the population (and thus their customers - very important!) don't set out to positively discriminate in order to redress balance. They: remove potential points of discrimination from the recruitment process. Training awareness for unconscious bias, removal of name, gender and age from CV's before sending to hiring managers etc. put their energies into widening the diversity of applicants. Changing how job specs are written so they don't put off women (who tend not to apply if that can't hit all the criteria, whereas men are likely to give it a punt), advertising via mediums that are used by different age groups, collaborating with schools/uni's in disadvantaged areas etc.

The word "useless" was used in the context of adding more white male targets won't help them to hit diversity targets. Not that white male pilots are useless. That's a clickbait headline. The real story seems to be that having fallen behind against targets, there was then a push to prioritise women and ethnic minorities on upcoming intakes - this being contrary to their established practice of doing so in order of people qualifying. That's not fair. The effort needs to go into attracting a more representative cross-section of society to apply, not selecting people from the pool that do apply in an unrepresentative proportion to hit the targets. Clearly a lot of work to be done. Women make up just 12% and ethnic minorities just 10%. Nothing like our population

Looks like on this occasion, someone forgot to do their own research....

My completely unresearched and uneducated opinion is that the Pride movement was about bringing equity after decades and decades of inequality. I might have shared previously that my friends father took his own life in 1985 after being arrested when he was 'caught' with another man. My sister and her wife never had children because they were worried about them getting a hard time. Such a shame as they would have been tremendous parents. Everyone here could contribute to a book of stories about people they know who were treated somehow 'lesser' than a straight person. Equality wasn't enough. Saying that we will henceforth treat a disadvantaged group equally tends to offer protection in law, but attitudes are very slow to shift. Pride over-compensated to address that and has been very successful. I've wondered if it's no longer needed. After all we live in much more enlightened times than in 1985. But we've seen recently how easy it is for situations to regress - just look at women rights in the so-called Land of The Free! It's interesting your comment about these initiatives dividing us. I don't personally observe that. It's more a spotlight being shone onto a group for a while to increase awareness.

Yes mine (309 visa so could be different) was instant and clearly automated. I sat in it for a while as I wasn’t in a hurry. 24 days later they sent me a chaser message saying I had 28 days to provide the information requested. It stated that if I didn’t they could decide the application based on the info they had, so I cracked on with it.

that was for a 309. I had everything done, submitted and uploaded. Medical was the last thing I did. I'd assumed there would be a few months of processing, but looks like I was an easy case for them. What I think you can reasonably assume is that the medical assessment will be back with the immigration case officer inside of a week. This was in March so fairly recent.

for me it was 6 days between my medical appointment and by visa being approved

Nor would he if he had followed the rules that he imposed on the other 60million of us living here. I didn’t realise there were any Boris defenders left.