After
all my mocking denigration of hapless teachers who fail to come to grips with
modern technology, I was hoist by my own arrogant petard.
This afternoon was the on-line meeting of
the ‘delegates’ from our cancelled language classes in Spanish and
Catalan. I don’t really know why I was
dragged into this in the first place as I am not a ‘delegate’ but, ever the
willing drudge I accepted my responsibilities and offered to join in.
The meeting was held in Google Meeting and
was by invitation, a click on the link and you are there, sort of thing. That bit went fine, it was when I tried to
speak that there were problems, well, one problem: it didn’t work. My Firefox thingie was apparently obstructing
its working and, try as I might, and even by going on to the systems part, I
still failed to transmit my voice.
As the others seemed more than happy to
speak in reasonable Spanish I felt that my enforced muteness was something of
an advantage for the preservation of my reputation, even if it did little to
develop my language skills.
The end result of this one sided meeting
was that we are going to be offered a lesson a week on line, with tasks to
complete and if we complete the tasks then we will be able to get our
certificates at the end of the course.
Meanwhile I have to do a little
administration in getting our classmates together, explaining and getting
information to the teacher. It will be
interesting to see how this all works out, and if I am able to get my
microphone working!
The
various scandals of the virus continue to frighten. Now we are told that many hospitals are going
to run out of PPE by the weekend in the UK.
The number of tests being carried out are still in the teens of
thousands and we are expected to believe that 100k will be carried out in the
UK by the end of the month. The daily
press conference in the UK is a time of almost unmitigated depression as
politicians steadfastly fail to answer questions of ultimate importance.
I do not feel that any of the politicians
in power are telling us the truth about the real length of the crisis and the
real consequences of what is happening now.
It is disturbing, no, not disturbing, more frightening that the UK does not
appear to have an exit strategy from the crisis.
The longer this crisis continues the more
disturbed I get about the way that it is being managed. I do not think a day has gone by when I have
felt confident about the people who are making life and death decisions about
our future.
And talking of the future, it can only be
a matter of weeks before the Blond Trumpian Mini-Me bumbles his way back into
national life and the idiocy of Brexit is added to our woes!
Ah,
me!
