Best Of

Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.

In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view
https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089

He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.

https://youtu.be/tl4VD8uvgec?si=-zeqAGOvHiABpLhw

Incidentally I wonder whether he has checked to remove private international schools from that list?

https://www.bell-foundation.org.uk/app/uploads/2017/05/EALachievementStrand-1.pdf appears to be the primary source of this.

The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"

Included, or only included?

From page 25

"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the
variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained,
mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools
(10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."

Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.

From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.

Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.

Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"

Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.

I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.

Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.

So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.

Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.

The report is interesting, and worth reading.

And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.

13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.

Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.

So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.

(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)

My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there.
I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.

However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically:
- from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active
- living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house
- from families where education is in no way value
- from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other.
They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.

In these conditions education is challenging.

Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.

So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.

These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations

It's hard to escape that conclusion.

It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.

People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.

https://x.com/business/status/2038302741706031459

US government officials and Wall Street analysis are starting to consdier the prospect that oil prices might surge to an unprecedeted $200 a barrel.

Yes.
It hasn't quite filtered through yet.
And investing in an AI startup isn't going provide power to basic industries.

More grim predictions in this thread:

https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/2038187681935401098

The world is facing a 'ticking time bomb' from its supply of oil, according to a briefing note from JP Morgan. Physical scarcity of oil is about to unfold across the globe, spreading sequentially through April from east to west, causing major economic disruption worldwide.

Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.

In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view
https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089

He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.

https://youtu.be/tl4VD8uvgec?si=-zeqAGOvHiABpLhw

Incidentally I wonder whether he has checked to remove private international schools from that list?

https://www.bell-foundation.org.uk/app/uploads/2017/05/EALachievementStrand-1.pdf appears to be the primary source of this.

The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"

Included, or only included?

From page 25

"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the
variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained,
mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools
(10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."

Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.

From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.

Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.

Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"

Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.

I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.

Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.

So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.

Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.

The report is interesting, and worth reading.

And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.

13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.

Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.

So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.

(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)

My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there.
I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.

However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically:
- from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active
- living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house
- from families where education is in no way value
- from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other.
They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.

In these conditions education is challenging.

Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.

So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.

These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations

It's hard to escape that conclusion.

I listened to a Daily T podcast with Zia Yusuf, and the Telegraph team, today. Yusuf is a very impressive speaker, lucid, clever, forthright. Vastly better than almost anyone on the Tory and Labour front benches. He's a genuine talent, and Farage was wise to make peace with him

He was candid about this problem. There are people now in the country that we cannot afford to keep here, as they will cost hundreds of billions to maintain in their state of unemployment and welfare dependency, Unless technology saves us, we will have to choose between national bankruptcy or a much more hard nosed approach to citizenship and residency. There is no alternative

Yes, but not a single one will leave.

There's a gordian knot of law and treaties preventing it, and a whole establishment dedicated to maintaining it.

He addressed that very eloquently. He named the Treaties we will have to scrap, and the laws we must repeal

It's the first time I've really listened to him, and he's excellent. Far better than, say, his Labour or Tory equivalents as Home Sec. And not just because I agree with him, but on the more basic level that he's clearly intelligent, and he's thought things through. He doesn'w waffle and deflect

Goebbels was very eloquent

He named the treaties and laws they would repeal

He was no different to Yusuf

A cretinous Fascist

Op-ed in the Jerusalem Post.

The only way Israel can govern the Gaza Strip without becoming an external oppressor of “another people” is to remove “the other people” from the confines of the Gaza Strip itself.
https://x.com/Jerusalem_Post/status/2037794771058495738

Once all other solutions have been eliminated, then whatever is left ...

The good news is there are plenty of Muslim countries in the region people could go to. The bad news, is none of them want them.

So you’re saying this is the final solution to the Palestine question ?

No, I would not accept your implied gas chambers or executing of innocents.

But the movement of people has successfully ended many a conflict. Including the movement of Germans post WWII, and recently the exodus of Nagorno-Karabakh.

If it could be done peacefully, it might be the least worst option, considering the lack of stomach to eliminate Hamas.

I agree with the Op Ed in the Jerusalem Post. There's no future in Gaza for the Palestinians, and Israel cannot really have a deeply resentful armed enclave like that.

BUT the corollary to that must be that Gaza residents are moved to the West Bank, and Israeli settlers moved out, never to return. That way, the Israelis no longer have a Gaza problem, and the Palestinians no longer have a settler problem. Everyone gets something good, nobody gets everything they want.

Yes.

Unfortunately, the current Israeli government is dependent on the votes of the Settler parties. That means that Israeli government policy is to continue the creeping annexation/invasion of the West Bank, with the Palestinians being squeezed into ever smaller spaces.

Yes. And that should be opposed by the UK (not that we can do anything about it). But if I were PM I would gear UK policy in that direction. Recognise Palestine but only in the West Bank, not Gaza. Ostracise the settlers and their networks of support, but defend Israel's sovereignty within its legal borders. I think that would be a wise, distinctive and principled policy.

Your West Bank solution is noble, but would not work. After October 7, Israel will not tolerate a large anti-Semitic population within a few yards of Israel itself. Everything Israel has done since indicates that it is working towards a more drastic and final solution (sorry) to the Palestinian "problem"

There is no future for the Palestinians in Palestine. This is a dismal fact, but it is a fact. Ironically the crazy Trump had the best idea. Stuff their hungry mouths with gold and give them lovely land somewhere else, a distance from Jerusalem. Buy them condos and limos. Let the whole world pay as the whole world will benefit. Then develop Gaza into a new Dubai on the Med

That isn't a fact. A change in the US, distancing themselves from Israel, using their leverage aggressively in favour of viable Palestinian statehood, could be transformative. And big changes are possible in the US. We know this.

Israel is a nuclear state with a ferocious intention to preserve itself as a Jewish homeland. Unless America - or any other country - is willing to go to the brink of nuclear war with them, or actually start a nuclear war, then in the end Israel will prevail

This is the lesson of the last seven decades

It's not like we don't accept morally intolerable shit elsewhere. China's occupation of Tibet is a disgrace, tantanount to a cultural genocide (cf the Uighurs). Do we do anything about it? No. Because it's China and it is immensely powerful and nothing can be done

Some truth there but I think you're overstating it. That's not a viable long term future for Israel and it's perfectly possible (probable even) that in time, and with a suitably strong steer from the US, a more far-sighted pragmatic less ideological less bellicose Israeli leadership would emerge that would realise this.

Later evening all

Hoping someone on here can help out - I thought only about 20% of the world's oil still went through Hormuz and Britain could get enough fuel for petrol from other sources.

I appreciate there may well be supply issues with diesel and that could cause a lot of other problems but are we likely to run out of petrol or simplyhave to function on 75-80% of current supply which will cause some issues especially if people (as they will once this seeps into the public domain) start panic buying?

Happy to once again wallow in the depths of my ignorance on these matters.

OK.

When you say 'only' 20%, that's an astonishing number. That means the world needs to reduce oil consumption by 20%. And gas consumption by -say- 10-15%.

Now... it is fortunate indeed that the US has chose now to attack. We're going into a seasonally weaker period for energy demand, and a seasonally stronger period for renewable production. But that doesn't stop the fact that reducing oil demand by 20% is a massive ask, that leads to all goods becoming much more expensive, and to a horrendous worldwide recession.

My customers in Arizona and Nevada are already being crushed. If the oil price were to double from here, it would be an absolute disaster for them.

Yes, I realise surviving on 80% of our pre-existing oil supplies is going to cause extreme problems and as others have said lead to global recession if not worse.

There are the medium and long term impacts and then there are the short term ones. For many, it won't be economic growth or inflation in 2027 that will be the concern but whether there's going to be enough petrol to fill the car next week.

We will doubtless panic ourselves into a crisis as we did in 2022 and the map shown earlier "suggests" the cut off in oil supplies may be just after Easter but the question then is whether we have reserves or whether oil is obtainable (albeit at $150 per barrel or whatever) from elsewhere or whether the "crunch" in petrol and diesel (as well as gas, heating oil etc) will be then or later in April and into May and what happens beyond that as we face a new and challenging world.