News

News. 29^th March
The giant ship got stuck in the Suez canal.  One week later there are diggers and tugboats trying to pull it free.  It is blocking the canal and there are over 300 other ships in a queue – they cannot get through.  One suggestion is that they unload the all the containers from the tanker to make it light.  But they need a crane on a second boat which would need to be 60 metres tall .. and then it will take weeks to remove all the containers.  On Sunday, they managed to pull it free.  They hope that traffic can start to move.
This is where the money goes.  Thornbury Nursing Services charged the hospitals £170 per hour to send nurses to intensive care units.  We know there is a shortage and a terrible situation, but guess what the nurses only get paid £86 per hour (that is a lot anyway – but they say this is for bank holidays …. but NHS nurses only get £25 per hour for bank holidays) – the rest of the money goes to the company.  The owner of the company is a Canadian billionaire.
Chaos in schools over exams.  Government cancelled GCSE and A-levels.  They said teachers will decide the grades.  Some schools follow that and will use classwork and projects to help them decide.  Other schools are just using exam papers question by question and that means the pupils have to do the tests stretched out over several weeks.  It looks like two separate systems.  Teachers expect there will be lots of appeals after the grades come out in August. 
Government has a good idea to covid-test all lorry drivers who come into the UK.  But test is not at the port, it is somewhere else in the country after the drivers have gone hundreds of miles to deliver their load.  It is not clear how this keeps the virus out of the UK.