Best Of

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.

TL;DR: a serious American ground invasion of Iran is the total global clusterfuck of clusterfucks

It almost certainly won't succeed, it almost certainly will cause worldwide turmoil

Honestly, who knows. I am of the mind to think it will make Vietnam look like a ridiculously successful and short US intervention but actually who knows?

What we can be sure of is it a bloody mental idea and has no actual strategic end goal.

We can pray that the Israelis in their djinn-like, Hezbollah-pager-exploding genius, have some fantastic plan that will enable the US and Israel to overthrow the mullahs with just 10,000 US Marines and a lot of bombs, without Iran reacting by destroying all energy infra within missile range, but I err on the pessimistic side and think

1. Israel just wants to see Iran fucked up

and

2. The Americans have been suckered by the Israelis into all this, hence J D Vance angrily belling Tel Aviv to say "you promised us Iranian regime change, you lying fucks"

https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-tense-call-vance-knocked-pm-for-overselling-iran-regime-change-likelihood-report/

Ooh, an external "brace"


"To predict what will happen, let’s start by ruling out a few scenarios:

1. We are unlikely to see the use of nuclear weapons. First, Israel is unlikely to use them; the U.S. wouldn’t allow it, and more importantly, nukes wouldn’t completely eliminate Iran. Instead, it would risk a counter-strike from Iranian nuclear weapons (which they likely already possess). As for Iran, they won’t be the first to use them. There’s simply no need. We can likely rule out this worst-case, unpredictable risk.

2. The U.S. will not launch a large-scale war on Iranian mainland. They simply can’t afford it.

3. The U.S. will not retreat just yet. Many are anticipating a TACO, but taco now is meaningless. A true "TACO” would mean handing control of the Strait of Hormuz over to Iran—a "Grand TACO," if you will. It’s too early to give up.

4. Israel will not back down. Stopping now would mean all previous efforts were in vain; they won’t get another chance.

5. As long as there is no regime change, Iran will not back down either. As I’ve discussed before, since they’ve already played their biggest card—Hormuz—they won’t fold easily. Folding means certain death for top IRGC people; staying in the game at least offers a chance at survival.

Once we exclude these five possibilities and establish these constraints, the path forward becomes relatively clear.

First, the U.S. will likely engage in island-seizing operations, hoping to control the situation through small-scale, high-leverage ground combat.

From there, three possibilities emerge:

• Scenario 1: The battle goes smoothly and concludes in days. Iran is forced to the negotiating table, or regime change occurs. The U.S. quickly gains control of the situation.

• Scenario 2: The fighting is grueling and protracted, but the U.S. eventually secures the objective and stabilizes the situation.

• Scenario 3: The fighting is exceptionally difficult. The U.S. either fails to take the objective or takes it but finds it impossible to defend, eventually forcing a withdrawal. This would complete the "Grand TACO." Trump would shrug his shoulders and take the exit, claiming the battle was simply unwinnable.

Aside from Scenario 1, both Scenarios 2 and 3 would inflict massive pain on the global economic order.

I personally think scenario 3 is the most likely.

Brace for impact, folks"

https://x.com/robert_baiguan/status/2038247537992405430?s=20

Scenario 1, “Mission Accomplished”, no regime change, Hormuz is still closed.

It’s going to take a lot more than that to provide the kind of security required.

Seizing Iranian islands is pointless unless they're willing to escort ships through Hormuz.

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.

You live in London, don't you? I don't have too much recent first hand experience of London, but from what I understand I can see how you arrive at your conclusion - the melting pot there is more common than the ghetto. But across much of the north, things are not like that. There isn't a lovely blending of races all eventually taking on British mores and values*, there are entirely separate subcultures which do not integrate. I am pessimistic about integration.
Different levels of pessimism, mind. The majority will be fine. But there are enough who will not be fine that I think a belief in integration to solveour problems is misplaced. The HK, Carribeans and Eastern Europeans will integrate quickly. The West Africans and Indians within a generation or two. Some others may not integrate but might thrive separately. And some, like the Roma, will neither integrate nor thrive.
FWIW, I spent some time last week helping Eritrean immigrants trying to put CVs together. On one level, it was encouraging that they were at least trying. But they were so far from employability - like not actually speaking English (much use was made of Google translate) - that it felt pretty hopeless. Still, we tried.

*Actually, there are melting pots - areas like the one I live in - but more common are the paralell and separate cultures.

Yet everyone - on the right at any rate - lauds Dubai, where people from across Europe, the Middle East and South Asia come together in a state of non-integrated, virtual racial apartheid to run one of the richest economies in the Gulf.

Not to my taste, but it seems to be beloved of the same people who berate non-integration in Britain.

I sometimes think what we need is an alien invasion to make humans appreciate how similar we all are to each other, and that we’re all in this together.

Dubai to my eyes does not look an example to follow - not least because it appears to rely on a massive tier of very-hard-done-by immigrants at the bottom.

One of the big vulnerabilities is that the Iran crisis is happening at the same time as a monster El-Niño is developing, and the Ukraine war continuing, so the risk of the world plunging into an absolute food deficit is the highest for a very long time.

The UK, as a trading nation with a large food deficit, is somewhat exposed.

Strangely unremarked in the news so far. We are looking at the most power Westerly Wind Burst for at least a couple if decades this week. We were already on course for a significant El Niño. This is going to take things beyond.

https://x.com/bennollweather/status/2037537628934078851?s=46

Global temperatures have been rising rapidly despite cold phase La Niña conditions in the past 2-3 years. This will take them a good 0.2-0.3C above trend for a year or so.

Unfortunately this exacerbates all the things the Iran war is already doing to prices: wheat, rice, soy, therefore also meat. 2027 is going to be worse than 2025 or 2026.

Brace.

If the Iranian allegations are right, and America is planning a broad ground offensive on Iran, allying with the Kurds, then fucking hell. God help us all. It has OBVIOUS TOTAL CATASTROPHE tattooed on its forehead

They might just be able to prevail, for a while, but as the Iranian mullahs fall - if they fall - they will take out every single oil refinery they can hit, within 1500 miles, and every tanker and every port and every airport, and the whole of Dubai and God help us

It will quite shortly lead to fairly apocalyptic scenes, worldwide

There will be fuel rationing you would think. The supply of diesel for tractors, trains and HGVs would need to be prioritised.

I did see an Instagram video where a farmer in the US had been told by his oil delivery guy that he was limited to 100 gallons for the next 30 days.

The experience of Covid may have given some governments a false sense of confidence about how manageable this will be. You can't fix real shortages with financial engineering and paying people to stay at home.

I think it's more that the initial assumption was that this would be ~fortnight of bombing like the last time, and so only temporary disruption.

Obviously we're into week five now, but the roof hasn't fallen in yet, so there's simple denial that it will get that much worse.

And then, we all know that Trump chickens out before too much damage is done to share prices, right? Any day now.

And then, politicians seem to generally lack the imagination or courage to take bold steps until it's too late, so they're just rabbits in the headlights now, waiting for the disaster to hit before they react. With the exception of truly useless governments - like the Irish government - who are wasting their money subsidising fuel prices. They're going to look really stupid when there are shortages and they've thrown money away encouraging people to buy more fuel.

What doesn't seem to have been factored in, is that this War now ends at a time of Iran's choosing, not Trump's.
Unless it is invasion and occupation.

As I posted earlier in the thread, the Iranians want to toll the Straight. That looks like where we're heading.

Some discussion about this on the O&G traders threads. They reckon America needs to clear out if you want Hormuz open. As long as the Americans are there, bad stuff happens - some US and Israeli bad stuff; some Iranian bad stuff. Hormuz stays closed.

But if the Americans go, you know where you stand. You need to do a deal with Iran. $2 million bribe to the Iranians, a couple of dollars per barrel - it's a relatively minor business expense. Insurance and crew danger money up a bit, but all within the operating margins. O&G are used to buying off parties that get in their way. It's all normal. The main thing is the oil is now flowing.

It helps the Gulf States in the same way. Their illusions about Pax Americana fall away. They have no choice but deal with the Iranians, which reduces tensions.

And the Hormuz tolls only have to be paid until the pipelines taking oil and gas to terminals elsewhere are built.

AIUI, and on this (unlike comparisons between Ukraine and Gaza) I am happy to be schooled by @rcs1000 and @Richard_Tyndall - it takes more than a few weeks to "build a pipeline linking continents"

Which is why the inception then demolition of Nordstream was such big news

Thinking of EASL in the schools me and my family went to:

My primary schools were pretty much all WWC, one black kid who I think was in care was the entirety of the minority ethnicities.

My secondary school was about 25% South Asian, with a slight bias towards Hindus over Muslims. Many were EASL, most had been in England since birth or young, but Urdu and, I think, Hindi, rather than more regional languages, were languages in the home. It was a mild phenomenon, we had banding (that you were in for all subjects) and setting - a lot of the Asian kids tended to be a set lower for English than for other subjects, but were perfectly competent. Looking back, and considering my time in Italy, I can understand there being a mix of languages in the home - operating entirely in a second language is tiring and being able to relax back into your own language in your own house can be as relaxing as putting on a pair of slippers.

My siblings went to a different secondary, some Bengali kids had come from a heavy majority EASL primary and were less established in their locality. I think the language difficulties were somewhat more apparent in that setting.

Thinking of my kids, there were a small number of South Asians in their primary, some Sikhs, and some third generation immigrants and some quarter Asian kids but I'm not sure any would be classed as EASL. A Malaysian kid joined one year with no English at all and had to be helped from scratch.

One of my son's secondaries and for that matter, my youngest's primary, are very mixed, lots of nationalities and with quite a sizeable amount of EASL. The football selection my son's school yard was generally Nazis vs Terrorists, with most white races in the former including Poles and most black Caribbean kids in the latter. There were a couple of, EASL, Bosnian Muslims who could be used on either side.

My middle daughter's selective school was very heavily formed of academically pushed South Asian kids, again with a variety of other nationalities - my kids friends, are heavily varied in ancestry: plenty of Pakistani friends, Poles, said Bosnians, Serbians, white kids in half Caribbean step families, many consider themselves English, many of the Europeans particularly with a more mixed outlook.

I know Cookie has intimated about non mixing in his school and associates this with immigration - post-COVID, my kids are older and forming their own friends not relying on parental organisation, after school clubs hand over in a more front gate way, I do feel the school gate when I'm there is not quite as social as it used to be, eastern Europeans and Africans will seem to ignore you until they know you. I don't disbelieve Cookie's experience, but wonder if it is more complex than he makes out - kids' age, bigger schools, post-COVID, generational changes and initial reservedness of communities whose parents don't quite know the customs and hold back all combining.

Look, I know he won the Trojan war but surely there is a better name for a defensive system, if only this name wasn't synonomous with weakness despite overall strength.

Greece has approved a €3 billion defense program to build “Achilles Shield,” a multi-layered air defense system designed to counter missiles and drones. The project is expected to include advanced Israeli technology, with Israeli firms likely playing a central role.

https://x.com/israelnewspulse/status/2037986001457406316

He only won the Trojan war in a bad movie.

Arguably, Sean Bean won the Trojan war, since he came up with the winning plan.

It wasn't the real Sean Bean. He didn't die!

He survived The Martian as well.

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.

You live in London, don't you? I don't have too much recent first hand experience of London, but from what I understand I can see how you arrive at your conclusion - the melting pot there is more common than the ghetto. But across much of the north, things are not like that. There isn't a lovely blending of races all eventually taking on British mores and values*, there are entirely separate subcultures which do not integrate. I am pessimistic about integration.
Different levels of pessimism, mind. The majority will be fine. But there are enough who will not be fine that I think a belief in integration to solveour problems is misplaced. The HK, Carribeans and Eastern Europeans will integrate quickly. The West Africans and Indians within a generation or two. Some others may not integrate but might thrive separately. And some, like the Roma, will neither integrate nor thrive.
FWIW, I spent some time last week helping Eritrean immigrants trying to put CVs together. On one level, it was encouraging that they were at least trying. But they were so far from employability - like not actually speaking English (much use was made of Google translate) - that it felt pretty hopeless. Still, we tried.

*Actually, there are melting pots - areas like the one I live in - but more common are the paralell and separate cultures.

Yet everyone - on the right at any rate - lauds Dubai, where people from across Europe, the Middle East and South Asia come together in a state of non-integrated, virtual racial apartheid to run one of the richest economies in the Gulf.

Not to my taste, but it seems to be beloved of the same people who berate non-integration in Britain.

I sometimes think what we need is an alien invasion to make humans appreciate how similar we all are to each other, and his we’re all in this together.

Everyone ???

I suppose its generally accepted that Dubai is better than Saudi or Iran and has done well from its limited resources.

Certainly Tice and Oakeshott are fans. I doubt they make huge efforts to integrate into Emirati culture or learn Arabic.

The ex-pat attitude was what I hated most about Abu Dhabi back in the late 80s. Bars with 'Western Dress Only' on the doors. Even amongst those working in the desert the attitude was; don't mix with the Arabs, don't speak their language, they are dirty, dishonest and lazy.

They weren't of course. Well, not any more than any of the people making the accusations. I absolutely loved the desert but the ex-pat attitudes and lifestyle stank.

They are immigrants. Not “ex-pats”

I think you missed the point there. Thinking of yourself as an ex pat and not an immigrant is part of the ex-pat attitude.

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.

You live in London, don't you? I don't have too much recent first hand experience of London, but from what I understand I can see how you arrive at your conclusion - the melting pot there is more common than the ghetto. But across much of the north, things are not like that. There isn't a lovely blending of races all eventually taking on British mores and values*, there are entirely separate subcultures which do not integrate. I am pessimistic about integration.
Different levels of pessimism, mind. The majority will be fine. But there are enough who will not be fine that I think a belief in integration to solveour problems is misplaced. The HK, Carribeans and Eastern Europeans will integrate quickly. The West Africans and Indians within a generation or two. Some others may not integrate but might thrive separately. And some, like the Roma, will neither integrate nor thrive.
FWIW, I spent some time last week helping Eritrean immigrants trying to put CVs together. On one level, it was encouraging that they were at least trying. But they were so far from employability - like not actually speaking English (much use was made of Google translate) - that it felt pretty hopeless. Still, we tried.

*Actually, there are melting pots - areas like the one I live in - but more common are the paralell and separate cultures.

Integration can happen more quickly or more slowly. The earlier comment damned people for 10 generations. I think the examples you give across much of the north are a lot less than 10 generations ago. I think even in the communities you mention, the children are more integrated than their parents were.

But, OK, what can one do to encourage integration rather than ghettoisation? Helping Eritreans with CVs? That sounds good. Saying they all need to be expelled or they’ll bankrupt us for 10 generations? That seems less likely to help integration.

Yes, I agree - generally, the next generation integrates much more. The Danish social democrat experiment is interesting, though - new immigrants required to settle outside the traditional areas, to prevent the kind of ghetto culture emerging. It wasn't electorally popular last week - people worried about immigrants voted for an anti-immigrant party, people not worried were put off the social democrats and stressed the natural appeal of settling near others with the same background. But there's a case for it.

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.

TL;DR: a serious American ground invasion of Iran is the total global clusterfuck of clusterfucks

It almost certainly won't succeed, it almost certainly will cause worldwide turmoil

Honestly, who knows. I am of the mind to think it will make Vietnam look like a ridiculously successful and short US intervention but actually who knows?

What we can be sure of is it a bloody mental idea and has no actual strategic end goal.

We can pray that the Israelis in their djinn-like, Hezbollah-pager-exploding genius, have some fantastic plan that will enable the US and Israel to overthrow the mullahs with just 10,000 US Marines and a lot of bombs, without Iran reacting by destroying all energy infra within missile range, but I err on the pessimistic side and think

1. Israel just wants to see Iran fucked up

and

2. The Americans have been suckered by the Israelis into all this, hence J D Vance angrily belling Tel Aviv to say "you promised us Iranian regime change, you lying fucks"

https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-tense-call-vance-knocked-pm-for-overselling-iran-regime-change-likelihood-report/

Thoughts and prayers to Vance who must be finding it a tad difficult to sleep at night given the number one thing he raged and campaigned against is now happening and may well make Iraq look like a tea party.

Resign or try the 25th?

Hard choices.

Only resign if he has teed up a nail bar to run. No-one else will want him.

25th it is. He'll get some support for the "thank fuck Trump's gone" aspect of moving us forward. But he'll still be reviled.

He has to persuade the US Cabinet to back him.

Seems hard to imagine that will happen.

Surely a majority of the cabinet quietly hate Trump for humiliating them in those Stalinist praise sessions?

If they hated it that much, they could always resign. They don't need to diss Trump on the way out. Just wanting to spend more time with their family.

One of the challenges of dealing with cults is persuading the victims that they are victims.