Tag: coronavirus

  • The Covid Catch Up Premium – Woefully Inadequate…?

    The UK government’s main policy to help students catch up on missed schooling during the Pandemic has been to provide extra funding to schools on a per pupil basis. The extra funding amounts to around £600 million, which sounds like a lot, but this is only equivalent to £80 per pupil, but with more being…

  • The Covid-19 Pandemic Exaggerated Health Inequalities in England

    The Pandemic has increased health inequalities in England, according to a recent report by the Institute of Health Inequalities – Build Back Fairer – The Covid-19 Marmot Review: The Pandemic, Social and Health Inequalities in England. Prior to the Pandemic, from 2010 to 2020, health inequalities between the least and most deprived were increasing in…

  • Covid Catch-Up Policies: Are they Sufficient?

    Most students in England and Wales missed around 20 weeks of regular in-school contact time due to lock down measures in 2020 and 2021. The government has introduced a number of policies to try and help students catch up with lost learning, funded with £1.4 billion. The main official government document outlines several different initiatives…

  • Policing During the Pandemic… Right or Left Realist?

    The UK Police Force have played a front-line role in enforcing government lockdown rules during the Coronavirus pandemic. Newspapers have tended to focus on the more dramatic incidents of police handing out strict penalty notices to those breaching lockdown rules. For example, this news item in the Sun from January 2021. However, sociology students need…

  • How has Covid Impacted the UK Illegal Drug Market?

    There have been some minor changes in the supply and taking of drugs in the United Kingdom since the onset of the covid pandemic, but the changes maybe aren’t as signficant as you’d think. At least not according to a recent survey of UK drug users carried out in late 2020 by release.org.uk Drug Use…

  • The Covid Vaccines are not Safe

    At least not according to Dr Mike Yeadon, who is the former Chief Science Officer at Pfizer and has 30 years experience working in developing vaccines to combat viruses such as covid-19. You can watch an interview with him here on the Hive blockchain (video on Lbry), this has been censored from YouTube, but is…

  • Sociological Observations on the UK’s Vaccine Role-Out

    The UK has vaccinated more people (proportionate to population) than any other country: This is probably due to a combination of the following: A successful ‘social policy’ initiative by the UK government – a sustained focus on getting as many people as possible vaccinated in as short a time as possible and the funding to…

  • How is Coronavirus Affecting Developing Countries?

    It is worth distinguishing first of all between the negative health effects of the virus itself and the negative effects of government lockdowns. The severity of lockdowns and the capacity to enforce them vary from country to country, and so the consequences of this politically imposed response to the pandemic will vary greatly across countries.…

  • How has Coronavirus Affected the UK?

    What are the short and long term affects of Coronavirus for the UK’s social and economic development? in this post I focus on how Coronavirus has affected health (obviously) education, work and employment, as well economic growth prospects. There are many more consequences I could focus on, but all of the above are specifically on…

  • The coronavirus class-divide

    Those in working class jobs are about two to three times more likely to die of covid-19 related deaths compared to those in middle class jobs. The Office for National statistics allows you to look at the latest figures for covid-19 infections and covid-19 related deaths, and one of the aspects of the death rate…