"this has been a dire, dire situation for the industry since the pandemic started"

English UK have been lobbying the UK government to 'do something' to help the ELT industry:

Jay Doubleyou: kickstarting elt in the uk

And they have several MPs behind their campaign:

36 CONSERVATIVE MPS URGE PM TO SUPPORT UK ELT SCHOOLS "ON BRINK OF COLLAPSE"

PIE News reports on how the industry is pushing for more help:

The UK English language sector has called on government for additional support as Covid-19 borders restrictions, coupled with challenges associated with Brexit, continue to limit its recovery.

UK ELT sector pleads for government aid as full recovery wanes

And today, in the E L Gazette, Liz Granirer writes about a crucial parliamentary meeting:

Reporting on the All Party Parliamentary Group round table: Securing the Future of English Language Teaching in the UK after Covid

To set the scene, this has been a dire, dire situation for the industry since the pandemic started,” said Baron Karan Bilimoria, CBE, who lead the event.

“Student numbers were down 83% in 2020,” Huan Jakes of English UK, reported. “As a result of that, 91% of staff were furloughed or released, so we’re in danger of losing some of the expertise we’ve acquired over the decades.” He went on to explain that English language schools hadn’t been given any rate relief like other industries and, as they were never ordered to close, English UK members were reliant on discretionary grants from their local councils, so it was very much a ‘postcode lottery’ whether language schools had received any support. Further, he said they didn’t expect any real recovery for the industry until summer 2022.

English UK would like the government to do two things: offer targeted business support in the short term, focusing on business rate relief and, in the medium term, provide tailored support for visas, immigration and travel in order to create the best possible operating environment for the industry.

Painting how grim things were, Farhan Quraish, CEO of the Speak Up London language school, said: “At the start of the pandemic we were faced with countless requests for refunds. We saw a mass exodus of our student base, both current and future. We saw key members of staff returning to their home countries. Our income immediately dropped to zero. We had the threat of eviction looming over us, as at this time there was no protection on commercial rents.

“There was also an incorrect perception that we were able to survive by switching our provision from face-to-face to online, but what wasn’t realised is that in order for this to happen we would have to price match with already- established online providers that usually work with freelance teachers outside of the UK.”

It was generally felt that the restrictions and regulations around entry to Britain post-Brexit combined with the heavy blow the pandemic has struck was taking an unbearable toll on private language schools.

MP Paul Blomfield summed up by saying the focus for government had to be on business support and called on the other MPs present to liaise with their secretariat to make representation as a matter of urgency.

Language schools seek support | E L Gazette

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paradigm shifts

A DEFINITION:

Here's an interesting idea: 

paradigm shift 

: an important change that happens when the usual way of thinking about or doing something is replaced by a new and different way

"This discovery will bring about a paradigm shift in our understanding of evolution."

Paradigm Shift | Definition of Paradigm Shift by Merriam-Webster

paradigm shift

a time when the usual and accepted way of doing or thinking about something changes completely

"The widespread use of social media represents a paradigm shift in the way we communicate."

PARADIGM SHIFT | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary

There's quite a list of these paradigm shifts in the Wikipedia entry:

A paradigm shift, a concept identified by the American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn, is a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline. Even though Kuhn restricted the use of the term to the natural sciences, the concept of a paradigm shift has also been used in numerous non-scientific contexts to describe a profound change in a fundamental model or perception of events.

Kuhn presented his notion of a paradigm shift in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962).

Paradigm shift - Wikipedia

We need this fundamental shifts in thinking - the question is how:

“In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.”

Quote by Buckminster R. Fuller: “In order to change an existing paradigm you do ...”

The Fertile Unknown: Wisdom from a Paradigm-Shifting Creative: Bucky Fuller

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THE COGNITIVE REVOLUTION:

Here's one of interest to language learners:

The movement known as the cognitive revolution moved away from behaviourist approaches to psychological study and the acceptance of cognition as central to studying human behaviour.

Paradigm shift - Wikipedia

It challenged the dominance of behaviourism:

The cognitive revolution was an intellectual movement that began in the 1950s as an interdisciplinary study of the mind and its processes. It later became known collectively as cognitive science.[1] The relevant areas of interchange were between the fields of psychology, linguistics, computer science, anthropology, neuroscience, and philosophy.[2] The approaches used were developed within the then-nascent fields of artificial intelligence, computer science, and neuroscience. In the 1960s, the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies[3] and the Center for Human Information Processing at the University of California San Diego were influential in developing the academic study of cognitive science.[4] By the early 1970s, the cognitive movement had surpassed behaviorism as a psychological paradigm.[5][6][7]

Important publications in triggering the cognitive revolution include psychologist George Miller's 1956 article "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two"[10] (one of the most frequently cited papers in psychology),[11] linguist Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures (1957)[12] and "Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior" (1959),[13] and foundational works in the field of artificial intelligence

Cognitive revolution - Wikipedia

And Chomsky was the leading force:

Chomsky has also been active in a number of philosophical fields, including philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science.[231] In these fields he is credited with ushering in the "cognitive revolution",[231] a significant paradigm shift that rejected logical positivism, the prevailing philosophical methodology of the time, and reframed how philosophers think about language and the mind.[173] Chomsky views the cognitive revolution as rooted in 17th-century rationalist ideals.[232] His position—the idea that the mind contains inherent structures to understand language, perception, and thought—has more in common with rationalism (Enlightenment and Cartesian) than behaviorism.[233]

Noam Chomsky - Wikipedia

With a little more here:

Jay Doubleyou: learning theory: the poverty of the stimulus

Jay Doubleyou: behaviourism >>> and learning objectives >>> and the common european framework

Jay Doubleyou: behaviourism >>> krashen... pinker... skinner... chomsky

Jay Doubleyou: cognitive science and developmental neuroscience

Jay Doubleyou: chomsky and language acquisition

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TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY:

Back in the 1960s, Buckminster Fuller (quoted above) talked about the "accelerating acceleration curve" of the advance of technology:

Accelerating Acceleration: Towards Tomorrow | The Buckminster Fuller Institute

We can certainly feel it:

In futures studies and the history of technology, accelerating change is a perceived increase in the rate of technological change throughout history, which may suggest faster and more profound change in the future and may or may not be accompanied by equally profound social and cultural change... 

In his book "Mindsteps to the Cosmos" (HarperCollins, August 1983), Gerald S. Hawkins elucidated his notion of 'mindsteps', dramatic and irreversible changes to paradigms or world views. He identified five distinct mindsteps in human history, and the technology that accompanied these "new world views": the invention of imagery, writing, mathematics, printing, the telescope, rocket, radio, TV, computer... 

Kurzweil predicts that such paradigm shifts have and will continue to become increasingly common, leading to "technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history". He believes the Law of Accelerating Returns implies that a technological singularity will occur before the end of the 21st century, around 2045.

Accelerating change - Wikipedia

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SLOWING DOWN:

But, actually, technological development and its foundation, paradigm shifts, has slowed down remarkably since the 1960s.

The anthropologist David Graeber points out:

The Internet is surely a remarkable thing. Still, if a fifties sci-fi fan were to appear in the present and ask what the most dramatic technological achievement of the intervening sixty years had been, it’s hard to imagine the reaction would have been anything but bitter disappointment. He would almost certainly have pointed out that all we are really talking about here is a super-fast and globally accessible combination of library, post office, and mail order catalog. “Fifty years and this is the best our scientists managed to come up with? We were expecting computers that could actually think!” 

All this is true, despite the fact that overall levels of research funding have increased dramatically since the 1970s. Of course, the proportion of that funding that comes from the corporate sector has increased even more dramatically, to the point where private enterprise is now funding twice as much research as the government. But the total increase is so large that the overall amount of government research funding, in real dollar terms, is still much higher than it was before. Again, while “basic,” “curiosity-driven,” or “blue skies” research—the kind that is not driven by the prospect of any immediate practical application, and which is therefore most likely to lead to unexpected breakthroughs—is an ever-smaller proportion of the total, so much money is being thrown around nowadays that overall levels of basic research funding has actually gone up. Yet most honest assessments have agreed that the results have been surprisingly paltry. Certainly we no longer see anything like the continual stream of conceptual revolutions—genetic inheritance, relativity, psychoanalysis, quantum mechanics—that humanity had grown used to, and even to expect, a hundred years before...

If someone growing up at the turn of the century reading Jules Verne or H. G. Wells tried to imagine what the world would be like in, say, 1960, they imagined a world of flying machines, rocket ships, submarines, new forms of energy, and wireless communication … and that was pretty much exactly what they got. If it wasn’t unrealistic in 1900 to dream of men traveling to the moon, why was it unrealistic in the sixties to dream of jet-packs and robot laundry-maids? If from 1750 to 1950 new power sources emerged regularly (steam, electric, petroleum, nuclear …) was it that unreasonable to imagine we’d have seen at least one new one since? 

There is reason to believe that even by the fifties and sixties, the real pace of technological innovation was beginning to slow from the heady pace of the first half of the century. There was something of a last spate of inventions in the fifties when microwave ovens (1954), the pill (1957), and lasers (1958) all appeared in rapid succession. But since then, most apparent technological advances have largely taken the form of either clever new ways of combining existing technologies (as in the space race), or new ways to put existing technologies to consumer use (the most famous example here is television, invented in 1926, but only mass-produced in the late forties and early fifties, in a self-conscious effort to create new consumer demand to ensure the American economy didn’t slip back into depression). Yet the space race helped convey the notion that this was an age of remarkable advances, and the predominant popular impression during the sixties was that the pace of technological change was speeding up in terrifying, uncontrollable ways...

The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

In other words, there have been no paradigm shifts for the past fifty years - whether it's the physical manifestations of that:

Despite What You Might Think, Major Technological Changes Are Coming More Slowly Than They Once Did - Scientific American

Or whether it's in actual shifts in theory, for example:

Freud's ideas have persisted not because they have been scientifically confirmed but because a century's worth of research has not produced a paradigm powerful enough to render psychoanalysis obsolete once and for all. Freudians cannot point to unambiguous evidence of their paradigm's superiority, but neither can proponents of more modern paradigms, whether behaviorism, evolutionary psychology, or psychopharmacology.

The Final Frontier: Are We Reaching the Limits of Science? | Discover Magazine

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PARADIGM SHIFTS TODAY:

On the other hand, Graeber has said we really do need a paradigm shift, in an interview a couple of years ago:

Sean Illing: Here’s why I struggle: We’ve got this complex economic system which requires an enormously complex bureaucracy to prop it up. Plus, we’ve created a culture that reinforces this in a thousand different ways, and cultures don’t change easily or quickly. So we can’t move from the world we have to the world you want without a total paradigm shift, and I have no idea how to achieve that.

David Graeber:I’m a revolutionary. I think we need a paradigm shift, and I think a lot of people are slowly realizing this. They’re pissed off and frustrated with the status quo, but they don’t see a path to a different world or a different system.

Sean Illing: So you’re a revolutionary? Does that mean you want to burn it all down and start from scratch?

David Graeber: You can never start from scratch, and most successful revolutionaries have deep traditions to draw on. But I do believe we have to start thinking imaginatively about systems that are fundamentally differently organized. Shifts do happen in history. We’ve been taught for the last 30 to 40 years that imagination has no place in politics or economics, but that, too, is bullshit.

Why the world is full of bullshit jobs - Vox

He he is writing last year:

At some point in the next few months, the crisis will be declared over, and we will be able to return to our “nonessential” jobs. For many, this will be like waking from a dream.

The media and political classes will definitely encourage us to think of it this way. This is what happened after the 2008 financial crash. There was a brief moment of questioning. (What is “finance,” anyway? Isn’t it just other people’s debts? What is money? Is it just debt, too? What’s debt? Isn’t it just a promise? If money and debt are just a collection of promises we make to each other, then couldn’t we just as easily make different ones?) The window was almost instantly shut by those insisting we shut up, stop thinking, and get back to work, or at least start looking for it.

Last time, most of us fell for it. This time, it is critical that we do not.

David Graeber – After the Pandemic, We Can’t Go Back to Sleep – Void Network

Some are saying it's happening now:

Paradigm shifts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 Paradigm Shift—From Values To Careers To Whole Economies

Finally:

Jay Doubleyou: the great divergence

Jay Doubleyou: changing education paradigms

Jay Doubleyou: cognitive science and developmental neuroscience

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freedom and covid

FREEDOM DAY UK:

Yesterday, the British PM announced we will be free on 19th July - and the Sun newspaper loved it:

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The Sun, which has its eye firmly on Wednesday's Euro 2020 semi-final, pictures Boris Johnson and England stars Harry Kane and Raheem Sterling against a backdrop of the St George's flag and the headline Free Lions. It says the PM has torn up social distancing laws and hailed July 19's Freedom Day as an end to "government diktats".

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Newspaper headlines: Now or never, says PM, after lockdown ending 'gamble' - BBC News

But these new-found freedoms might be taken away from us again:

Lockdown freedoms could last just weeks with stronger restrictions needed in autumn and winter, Sage doom-mongers fear

There has been a lot of comment on yesterday's announcement:

Boris Johnson ends Covid as a ‘me problem’ and makes it a ‘you problem’

The prime minister’s overriding imperative – you could tell by the very many times he said it – is to “move from universal government diktat to relying on people’s personal responsibility”. He’s basically had enough of making all the decisions, and wants someone else to have a go. Absent an obvious single candidate, he’s throwing it on to all of us.

Boris Johnson ends Covid as a ‘me problem’ and makes it a ‘you problem’ | Zoe Williams | The Guardian

THE PHILOSOPHY: PART ONE: LOVING FREEDOM:

So, it's a question of personal responsibility - and not the state taking away your freedom to do what ever you want.

The only problem is that in the middle of the second wave, the PM was saying that the Brits 'love freedom too much':

Boris Johnson has blamed coronavirus on the British people, for loving freedom too much

“There is an important difference between our country and many other countries around the world: our country is a freedom-loving country. If we look at the history of this country over the past 300 years, virtually every advance, from free speech to democracy, has come from this country. It is very difficult to ask the British population uniformly to obey guidelines in the way that is necessary.”

Jay Doubleyou: freedom-loving britons

At the same time, it was difficult for Americans too:

The Shift Americans Must Make to Fight the Coronavirus
We are stubbornly hung up on a damaging idea of self-reliance.
As COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, spreads in the United States, it is becoming clear that America’s individualistic framework is deeply unsuited to coping with an infectious pandemic. Right now, one of the most important things Americans can do is deploy measures like social distancing and self-quarantining, even if they do not feel sick and are not at risk of the worst effects of the disease, in order to “flatten the curve” (epidemiologists’ term for slowing down the natural progression of an outbreak). This requires a radical shift in Americans’ thinking from an individual-first to a communitarian ethos—and it is not a shift that is coming easily to most, especially in the absence of clear federal guidelines.
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Jay Doubleyou: the politics of covid

Meanwhile, there was the model from not-so social-democratic Sweden:

Jay Doubleyou: sweden and coronavirus

Here's the view from April this year:

The Swedish COVID-19 strategy revisited - The Lancet

Sweden’s Pandemic Experiment | The New Yorker

And from last month:

Sweden sees 'dark clouds' with outbreaks of COVID delta variant | Reuters

THE PHILOSOPHY: PART TWO: FREEDOM TO INFECT OTHERS:

What do we mean by 'freedom' in this context?

From the US media at the outbreak of the pandemic last April:

These People Aren’t Freedom Fighters—They’re Virus-Spreading Sociopaths
The “liberate America” protesters claim they just want to make their own choices about their health and safety, but they really want to force others to risk their lives.

By Elie MystalTwitter
APRIL 21, 2020

None of this right-wing lunacy can be considered surprising if you consider its source. After all, these are the same so-called freedom-loving individuals who want the government to have so much power it can outlaw a woman’s autonomy over her own body. In The New York Times, Charlie Warzel called the “liberate” protests “the logical conclusion of the modern far-right’s donor-funded, shock jock–led liberty movement.”
The freedom to die is the only form of liberty Republicans want their base thinking about. And Covid-19 is only the latest pathogen. These people also want the freedom to die in mass shootings; the freedom to die from not being able to afford medicine; the freedom to not take the vaccines they can afford; and the freedom to drive 90 mph on a highway with no seat belt, without “the government” telling them to slow their roll.

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These People Aren’t Freedom Fighters—They’re Virus-Spreading Sociopaths | The Nation

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From former polician Paul Krugman writing last October:

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“Liberty Doesn’t Mean Freedom to Infect Other People”
posted by Jason Kottke Oct 26, 2020
Paul Krugman writes about the harmful effects of “libertarianism gone bad, a misunderstanding of what freedom is all about” that have been made plain by the Covid-19 pandemic.
"But you also see a lot of libertarian rhetoric — a lot of talk about “freedom” and “personal responsibility.” Even politicians willing to say that people should cover their faces and avoid indoor gatherings refuse to use their power to impose rules to that effect, insisting that it should be a matter of individual choice.
Which is nonsense.
Many things should be matters of individual choice. The government has no business dictating your cultural tastes, your faith or what you decide to do with other consenting adults.
But refusing to wear a face covering during a pandemic, or insisting on mingling indoors with large groups, isn’t like following the church of your choice. It’s more like dumping raw sewage into a reservoir that supplies other people’s drinking water."

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"Liberty Doesn’t Mean Freedom to Infect Other People"

Opinion | When Libertarianism Goes Bad - The New York Times

With something from the guru of libertarianism:

"The next question in regard to quarantine is somewhat different, because in the state of, sense of a quarantine, if someone has a contagious disease, against which there is no inoculation, then the government will have the right to require quarantine. What is the principle here? It’s to protect those people who are not ill, to protect the people who, to prevent the people who are ill from passing on their illness to others. Here you are dealing with a demonstrable physical damage. Remember that in all issues of protecting someone from physical damage, before a government can properly act, there has to be a scientific, objective demonstration of an actual physical danger. If it is demonstrated, then the government can act to protect those who are not yet ill from contacting the disease, in other words to quarantine the people who are ill is not an interference with their rights, it is merely preventing them from doing physical damage to others.”

Ayn Rand Answers Paul Krugman: Liberty Doesn’t Mean Freedom to Infect Other People - YouTube

From the CEO of the New Hampshire Health Care Association writing this April:
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COUNTERPOINT: ‘Vaccine Freedom’ Is Really ‘Freedom To Infect’
Posted to Politics April 27, 2021 by Brendan Williams

In 1905, weighing in on a Cambridge, Massachusetts ordinance, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ability of governments to require vaccination. Were the ordinance to be defied, “the spectacle would be presented of the welfare and safety of an entire population being subordinated to the notions of a single individual who chooses to remain a part of that population.”
Smallpox vaccination was required of everyone until 1972, when the disease was largely eradicated. There is not a single state that does not require children to be vaccinated against polio before receiving child care or attending elementary school. The same is true of the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine. To attend school, older children in any state need to receive their Tdap vaccine (Tetanus, Diphtheria, Pertussis), generally beginning as early as the 6th grade – or age 11 in New Hampshire.

COUNTERPOINT: 'Vaccine Freedom' Is Really 'Freedom To Infect' - NH Journal

THE PHILOSOPHY: PART THREE: WHAT IS FREEDOM?

Finally, from the primary philosopher of freedom:

The True Face of Freedom Wears a Mask
Rational measures to combat the pandemic don’t restrict our autonomy—they make it possible, just like the rules that let us enjoy the pleasures of the open road

By Kwame Anthony Appiah
Aug. 6, 2020 11:24 am ET

In the Cold War era, the Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously singled out “two concepts of liberty” among the many he found floating around. He wrote warily about the allure of “positive liberty,” which typically involved a political community that defined your “true interests” and encouraged or compelled you to pursue them—and which, he feared, could be used to support Soviet-style tyranny. (As a boy, born in Latvia, he had witnessed the Russian Revolution.) “Negative liberty,” on the other hand, was a simpler and more compact notion—it involved the mere absence of constraints imposed upon you by others. Here again was the basic contrast between “freedom to” and “freedom from.”

The True Face of Freedom Wears a Mask - WSJ

With a nice summary here:

Wearing a Mask Makes us More Free ~ European-American blog

In other words, if I wear a mask, I am much freer than if I don't:

"Just as the blissful freedom of the road requires measures to pave those roads, and well-drafted antifraud statutes only fortify the free market, sensible public-health policies—like mask-wearing rules, which protect both the individual and the commonweal—don’t compromise liberty; they advance it," writes NYU School of Law and philosophy professor Kwame Anthony Appiah. "Bluntly put: There’s precious little freedom in the sick ward and less still in the graveyard."

(6) New York University – Posts | Facebook

In other words, you can't do just what you want, as there are other people about: 

The definition of democratic freedom is instead founded on the assumption that “a citizen’s freedom ends, where another citizen’s freedom begins”. In effect, this definition reflects a political and civic reality in which, given the limitations of negative liberty – we cannot steal, we cannot disrespect – citizens have at least the right of self-determination and self-realization. This is what Isaiah Berlin called “positive liberty” – which is the presence of “control and self-mastery”, the faculty of being in charge of your life.

Covid-19 and the perception of freedom | openDemocracy

And that includes the freedom to spread disease:

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Spitting on Other People | The New Yorker

This is from today's Telegraph:

The terrifying truth is that millions do not want lockdown ever to end
We’re entering the early stages of a new culture war pitting freedom-lovers against proponents of Zero Covid
SHERELLE JACOBS
DAILY TELEGRAPH COLUMNIST5 July 2021 • 9:30pm

In October 1958, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin gave a groundbreaking lecture at Oxford University on the subject of liberty. There were two kinds, he said. “Positive” liberty – in which freedom is usually only achieved through a collective, utopian quest – would always lead to tyranny, as epitomised by communism. The antidote, he contended, was for the West to champion “negative” liberty instead – the individual’s freedom to do what they want without interference.Some years later, however, Berlin wavered. By defining “negative” liberty as a person’s ability to do what they want (rather than what other people deemed by they...

The terrifying truth is that millions do not want lockdown ever to end

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english as a european language

Following Brexit, there were all sorts of questions around the future status of the English language:

Jay Doubleyou: brexit and the english language

Jay Doubleyou: the future of the english language after brexit

Jay Doubleyou: the eu has no plans to downgrade the use of english after brexit

Jay Doubleyou: “slowly but surely english is losing importance in europe”

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But it seems that English is very much part of the European language landscape.

The Norwegians speak it perfectly:

Norwegian Comedy Vikingane Also Filmed In English – NORDIC DRAMA

Norsemen (Vikingane) Season 1 Official Netflix HD Trailer - YouTube

German speakers score higher than 'native speakers' of English in the IELTS test:

International English Language Testing System - Wikipedia

Which countries score the highest IELTS Overall Band Score (Academic Module)? — Scott's English ANSWERS

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So, perhaps we're seeing the emergence of 'European English' - something different to British or Irish or Indian English, as reported in the latest edition of the E L Gazette:

Professor Marko Modiano, of the University of Gävle, Sweden, argues that it’s time Europe’s own version of English becomes an acceptable alternative to British English

The European Union is now at a crossroads when it comes to the language regime promoted in Brussels. The plurilingual initiative has not resulted in greater numbers of EU citizens becoming functionally trilingual, nor has Erasmus produced significant numbers of college students becoming fluent in any of the lesser-used European languages.

Instead, what we are seeing across Europe is an intensification of resources being allocated to English and a reduction in the learning of traditional third languages (such as, for example, the decline of Swedish in Finland and an increase in bilingualism, with Finns speaking only Finnish and English).

Not only are greater numbers of EU citizens acquiring proficiency in English, they are also turning away from the traditional norm – standardised British English – and instead utilising more features, pronunciation, lexical items and grammar which are characteristic of American English. At the same time, aspects of language usage which are culture specific for European English, for example, in lexical use the term member state or the phrase the four freedoms in pronunciation the unique manner in which mainland Europeans pronounce words such as cooperation and, in grammar, the use of the present continuous where non-native- speaking English users use the simple present (saying “I am coming from Spain”, instead of “I come from Spain”), are becoming part and parcel of the unique way in which English is now used as a lingua franca in the European Union.

These processes of nativisation, which always take place when you have widespread use of a lingua franca in a multilingual speech community, are intensifying. Brexit – the withdrawal of the British from European unification – has actually acted to accelerate these processes, because with the British out of Europe there are no longer hordes of language watchdogs in the EU getting upset every time the EU does something which is not acceptable in the British rendition of the tongue. The Irish, the only remaining native-speaker nation state with any considerable numbers (some five million souls, which amounts to a bit more than 1% of the EU population) will not make any great effort to influence how mainland Europeans use their English for the simple reason that they have other fish to fry.

Is European English at the heart of unification? | E L Gazette

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the pavement surgeon

Throughout his home city of Lyon, Ememem is known as “the pavement surgeon.” The artist repairs gouged sidewalks and splintered facades with colorful mosaics that he describes as “a poem that everybody can read.” Intricate geometric motifs laid with pristine tiles hug the cracks and create “a memory notebook of the city. It reveals what happened, the life in these public places,” he tells Colossal. “Here cobblestones have been picked up and thrown. There a truck from the vegetable market tore off a piece of asphalt…”

© Ememem, shared with permission

Ememem’s first mosaic dates back 10 years when he found himself in a damaged alley in Lyon. At that time, he already was working in ceramic and translated that practice to revitalizing the outdoor area. Since 2016, he’s been consistently filling potholes and other divots throughout France. “It’s a succession of a lot of places and reflections, experiments I did before. I had done similar things, with other techniques, other supports, and finally, when this one emerged, I knew I found something that I was going to keep doing for the rest of my life,” he says.

Ceramic Mosaics Mend Cracked Sidewalks, Potholes, and Buildings in Vibrant Interventions by Ememem | Colossal

More photos to be seen:

swag — Artist, Ememem, mends cracked sidewalks, potholes…

And more fabulous stuff here:

Street Artist Transforms Cracks in the Pavement Into Gorgeous Mosaics

Here are his social media:

Born on a damaged sidewalk in 2016, Ememem is one of those sons born out of the asphalt who has disorder running through his blood. His sidewalk’s plasters, now emblems of the cityofLyon, start spreading all over Europe, according to the wandering of his worn out shoes! In arts events or undercover by the light of the street lamps, Ememem patches up the broken asphalt and inserts doors toward wonderland.    His terrestrial works of art, called «flacking»  from the french word «flaque» (puddle) let a glimpse of light through our homogeneous pavements which entombed our cities. 

Ememem street art

Ememem | Facebook

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the wfh-office hybrid is the future

It looks as though people will be working from home for at least part of the working week:

UBS lets two-thirds of staff combine working from home with the office

1/3 of telecommuters expect to continue WFH - BBJ (Hungary)

Future workplace will be WFH-office hybrid - Times of India

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This is called 'hybrid' working - as the Telegraph explains:

Bosses face home working clash with staff as new divide emerges

Employees overwhelmingly back a hybrid approach to working but bosses appear set to burst the WFH dream

ByLucy Burton ; Tom Rees and Hannah Boland15 June 2021 • 12:28am

Bosses are on a collision course with staff over a shift to permanent home working as official figures indicate huge numbers of employees want to stay away from the office.

The Prime Minister's delay to the Covid-19 roadmap on Monday evening means hopes have been dashed for organisations seeking a return to normal from next Monday - with Goldman Sachs among a string of major employers expected to change their plans.

However, figures from the Office for National Statistics released on Monday suggested that many staff are hopeful that they will not have to return permanently at all. A total of 85 per cent of adults who are currently working from home want to adopt a “hybrid” approach after the pandemic by splitting their time between home and the office, data from the ONS revealed.

At the same time, almost two in five firms expect more than three-quarters of staff to be in their normal workplace post-Covid, indicating that businesses and employees could be at loggerheads when the Prime Minister’s work from home advice is lifted...

Joseph Lappin, head of employment at law firm Stewarts, warned workers are unlikely to have reasonable grounds to defy instructions to return to the office once restrictions are lifted. He said: “If employers instruct staff to come back, to go back to the office, in ordinary circumstances that would be a lawful and reasonable instruction.”

Some experts have warned of a resignation boom looming amid the biggest shift in working patterns for decades. Half of Britons are already at their place of work as of mid-May while a quarter remain at home and 11 per cent are hybrid working, the ONS said...

Mr Lappin said employers could face legal action if they fire staff who refuse to return to the office while work from home advice is in place. He said: “If the government guidance is that employees should only be working in the office if they cannot work from home, I think employees will have a legitimate basis for contesting an employer’s instruction to return to the office on health and safety grounds. We will see employees who believe that they have been unfairly dismissed for failing to follow an instruction to return to the office... I do think we will see Covid-19 related unfair dismissal claims over the next six to 12 months.”

US bank Goldman Sachs, whose boss David Solomon has repeatedly argued that working from home will not become a permanent fixture after the Covid crisis, was among the firms to tell staff last month that their time at home was up. The company sent a memo around to staff in which it urged staff to complete a survey on their vaccination status, so it could plan how to map out the return to the office.

Some businesses are adapting to staff demands with remote work job postings soaring. Online job adverts related to home working are three times higher than pre-virus levels and are climbing far faster than other postings, the ONS said. Remote work job ads now account for 8 per cent of overall postings.

Abi Casey, co-head of strategic analysis at the ONS, said the data could show a divide between workers wanting a hybrid approach and businesses wanting more staff in the office. She said: “There are potential impacts in terms of the wider impacts on society and the economy if we have increased home working going forward. For example, commuting [and] city centres may be impacted with a smaller number of people going to work as well as shifts in regional populations and long-term business investment.”

Corporations have been urging for the Government to allow more people to return to offices in recent weeks, including Primera Corporation, which runs office areas including around Victoria, saying there needed to be "clear messages about how people can safely return to their places of work". Primera said: “Businesses have invested millions of pounds to create safe and welcoming offices, the transport system is cleaner than ever and London is ready to welcome people back.”

A Morgan Stanley survey of businesses across the UK and Europe suggests office workers want on average two days per week at home, double the pre-Covid level, with some 31pc of home workers keen to work remotely most of the week.

“My sense is that there will be an interesting generational shift,” says Nick O’Donnell, a partner at law firm Baker McKenzie. “The older generation of deal-doers has grown up knowing how to work in person meetings to their advantage and won’t want to give that up. However, the younger generation is learning new approaches and already spends so much of their life online that it is also their natural forum for business. It will take a few years to play out but I suspect that gritty face to face negotiations will largely go the way of the telex and fax machines and getting together will be reserved more for problem solving and relationship building.”

This tension is already starting to play out as some of the world’s biggest companies face staff campaigns against coming back in. Apple’s employees are pushing back on plans for a return to the office, according to a letter seen by The Verge, after workers were told they must be back at least three days a week from September.

Meanwhile Amazon, which told many of its workers in March that its future was going to be “office-centric”, has now said it will let staff work from home twice a week.

“There will certainly be flashpoints over the next weeks and months ahead as employers ask staff to return to their normal place of work,” says Joseph Lappin, head of employment at law firm Stewarts. “Employees who at the moment are very happy working from home will say, ‘well this has all gone very well over the last 18 months, why do I suddenly need to come back to the office?’”

It is not just bosses who want their teams to return. The economic consequences from a lasting shift to remote working are potentially huge if demand for services, housing, transport and office space shifts out of cities or dwindles. A delay to the lifting of the work from home advice will prolong the pressure facing Britain’s biggest city centres, which are still suffering from suppressed footfall. Spending and shopper traffic has failed to recover most in the likes of London, Manchester and Birmingham while high streets in small towns have bounced back far more rapidly...

“However, the benefits of remote working will be front of mind as we squeeze back into busy commuter trains in September.”

Read more: Your rights if your employer asks you to return to the office

Is there a working clash at your company? Let us know in the comments section below which side of the battle you're on.

Bosses face home working clash with staff as new divide emerges

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It is a generation thing:

... a lot of young people like WFH so much that they would rather quit than go back to the office.

Morning Consult, a data research firm, conducted a poll for Bloomberg News in May that showed that 39% of Americans surveyed would definitely consider looking for a new job if their employer asked them to come back to the office. That percentage is even higher amongst young people. According to the report, a whopping 49% of Gen Z and millennials would quit if their bosses aren't flexible about remote work...

Controlling where people are can also be seen as a way that employers assert dominance over their employees. “They feel like we’re not working if they can’t see us,” Twidt told Bloomberg. Not only do young people like Twidt seem to be resisting that sort of authoritarian impulse, they also want to do what’s good for their mental health. And working from home, it turns out, may be better for many folks’ emotional wellbeing.

WFH is working and young people don't want to go back to an office

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As the World Economic Forum says:

Working from home (WFH) is here to stay. A new study suggests 20% of full work days will be completed from home in the future – compared to just 5% before the pandemic.

But despite initial challenges, the US National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) predicts the WFH trend will stick thanks to benefits for both employees and employers.

Here are five reasons why the shift to home working will be a long-lasting trend, according to the NBER’s survey of more than 30,000 people in the US...

Working from home is here to stay, reports NBER | World Economic Forum

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kickstarting elt in the uk

There's been a collapse in student numbers in UK language schools:

Facts and figures for the UK ELT industry

The lobby group for the industry has been speaking to parliament:

English UK members tell parliamentarians what help they need to survive

And has been pushing for more financial help for schools:

Business rates relief campaign update

This is what they're asking for:

English UK's Covid-19 position paper: calling on the government to help kickstart UK ELT 

English UK's Covid-19 position paper, updated in March 2021, calls on the government to help kickstart the UK ELT sector after Covid-19. 

The document outlines the help we believe crucial for our sector's survival through 2021 and beyond. 

• Read our Covid-19 position paper (published March 2021)

English language teaching was one of the first UK industries to be hit by Covid-19, and may be one of the last to recover.

Hopes for any significant business recovery in summer 2021 seem increasingly unlikely, despite the success of the UK vaccine programme, as new variants extend travel restrictions. The sector relies on an international market. We cannot replace our customers with domestic ones.

 

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English UK is asking the government for:

Targeted support for ELT centres:

• Provide ongoing support for ELT, including extended furlough for staff until spring 2022 if necessary. ELT is dependent on seasonal student tourism. The sector faces a standstill until spring 2022 if there is no meaningful recovery this summer.
• Extend the business rates holiday and associated grants, already offered to the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors, to specifically include the ELT sector. We estimate this would cost no more than £15m. 

Tailored visas, immigration and travel:

• Retain ID-card travel for under-18 EU/ EEA/ Swiss group travel after 1 October 2021.
• Continue to recognise the List of Travellers scheme.
• Enable students already studying in the UK on any visa to apply for a new visa for further study (e.g. in higher education) without leaving the country.
• Require all UK English language providers to be accredited and extend educational oversight to Accreditation UK so that it is valid for all visa routes.
• Create a youth mobility scheme, helping ELT to recruit staff for seasonal peaks.
• Restore work rights of up to 20 hours a week for adult students on ELT courses with accredited providers on the government's register of sponsors, in line with major English language competitor nations.
• Clarify when and how international travel will resume, with reassurance on safety for travellers and the public and due consideration for the needs of sectors relying on short-term inbound tourism.

Marketing on a national scale:

• Drive and measure success by setting a national growth target for ELT students in the UK within the framework of the International Education Strategy
• Support a targeted campaign to communicate the UK ELT offer and rebuild the international market.
• Make GREAT funding available in key source markets for UK ELT
• Increase financial support available for education exporters
• Offer innovation and enterprise grants to UK ELT
• Negotiate bilateral agreements to allow English teachers and students on certain vocational courses to train in the UK, replacing £7m of lost Erasmus+ revenue

• Read the English UK Covid-19 position paper (March 2021 edition)

Covid-19 position paper: kickstarting UK ELT

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