"Have your cake and eat it", That was your policy.
So the cake took its revenge, and ambushed you.
Wouldn’t the last two lines work better as:
“But the cake was not a cake It was a custard pie.”
Also good, but the mad Conor Burns quote tonight is as bonkers as the Owen Paterson one about badgers moving the goalposts, and deserves its place in history.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
I am really struggling to see what was so incredibly outrageous about what he said. Its not the whole picture, but it is a significant part. It is demonstrably true that cricket loses out to the likes of football and rugby on purely the logical thing to do for your future, unless money is no object.
In terms of a career, cricket is a crap opportunity, compared to especially football. Unless you make it to IPL / international level, the money is utter garbage, so much so players regularly supplement their income with other jobs or not having an off-season (rather going to the southern hemisphere to play as a pro). Rugby also now pays really well.
And it was only a month or so ago that Panorama did a whole piece on how football agents are signing up young, especially black kids, where they tour all the "cages" and sign them up and the the EPL academy system hoovers up all the talent it can find, as only getting 1-2 good players a year pays for the whole thing.
Also remember if you sign up to an EPL academy they have a huge say on what you can get involved in outside of this (if you even had time). I have a family friend whose kid is currently in one, and before they played every sport going, no it is just football and only academy. No local club, no school, just academy. I also have another family friend who made it, when they signed at 16, they weren't even allowed to continue to play thing like golf (which they were very good at).
The same thing is happening in the West Indies, but it is US sports and athletics that hoovers up the talent.
About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
I am really struggling to see what was so incredibly outrageous about what he said. Its not the whole picture, but it is a significant part. It is demonstrably true that cricket loses out to the likes of football and rugby on purely the logical thing to do for your future, unless money is no object.
In terms of a career, cricket is a crap opportunity, compared to especially football. Unless you make it to IPL / international level, the money is utter garbage, so much so players regularly supplement their income with other jobs or not having an off-season (rather going to the southern hemisphere to play as a pro). Rugby also now pays really well.
And it was only a month or so ago that Panorama did a whole piece on how football agents are signing up young, especially black kids, where they tour all the "cages" and sign them up and the the EPL academy system hoovers up all the talent it can find, as only getting 1-2 good players a year pays for the whole thing.
Also remember if you sign up to an EPL academy they have a huge say on what you can get involved in outside of this (if you even had time). I have a family friend whose kid is currently in one, and before they played every sport going, no it is just football and only academy. No local club, no school, just academy. I also have another family friend who made it, when they signed at 16, they weren't even allowed to continue to play thing like golf (which they were very good at).
The same thing is happening in the West Indies, but it is US sports and athletics that hoovers up the talent.
It seems to me that he didn't mean to cause offence. The problem is that a white man saying anything about race these days is regarded as suspect by a lot of people.
Very different. Back then the people had solid reasons for not wanting the couple to get away. In this case, people would pull the carriage by hand to get them to the border.
"Have your cake and eat it", That was your policy.
So the cake took its revenge, and ambushed you.
Wouldn’t the last two lines work better as:
“But the cake was not a cake It was a custard pie.”
Also good, but the mad Conor Burns quote tonight is as bonkers as the Owen Paterson one about badgers moving the goalposts, and deserves its place in history.
About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
To the off-topicker of this: As you don't see why it is a response to the question, you are too stupid to breathe, never mind contribute usefully to this website.
About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
To the off-topicker of this: As you don't see why it is a response to the question, you are too stupid to breathe, never mind contribute usefully to this website.
Also, pretty fucking obvious who you are. Tee.
To be fair I don't get the joke, I must be too stupid to breathe. Certainly wouldn't get into HY's grammar school
This is the modern psychiatric definition of Demonic Possession
“In the entry article on Dissociative Identity Disorder, the DSM-5 states, "possession-form identities in dissociative identity disorder typically manifest as behaviors that appear as if a 'spirit,' supernatural being, or outside person has taken control such that the individual begins speaking or acting in a distinctly different manner".[97] The symptoms vary across cultures.[90] The DSM-5 indicates that personality states of dissociative identity disorder may be interpreted as possession in some cultures, and instances of spirit possession are often related to traumatic experiences—suggesting that possession experiences may be caused by mental distress.[96] In cases of dissociative identity disorder in which the alter personality is questioned as to its identity, 29 percent are reported to identify themselves as demons.[98] A 19th century term for a mental disorder in which the patient believes that they are possessed by demons or evil spirits is demonomania or cacodemonomanis.[99]”
Germany went through the traumatic state of the First World War, then the Spanish Flu, THEN the great inflation, Great Depression, Weimar chaos. It was multiply traumatised, it was a national personality ripe for Possession
The Demonic Spirit of a half starved, quarter Slavic, obscure but hideously evil Austrian ex-soldier then took possession of the German soul, or persona, causing it to act in extremely unusual ways, including mass murder (cf Linda Blair murdering the Englishman in the Exorcist)
Germany went from speaking like a normal European nation to growling in guttural and atavistic ways, its head twisted 180 degrees away from the nation that gave us Goethe, Bach and Beethoven
I'm supposed to be going to Sri Lanka next year. I think I will stay away from the gin when I'm there.
Your mother sucks cocks in hell.
I was once talking on the phone to a friend who had just lost his mother. I was flailing around, wondering what to say, and for some God-awful reason that resonant line from the Exorcist sprang to mind and I said it, in some weird attempt to make light of the situation. A nanosecond later I thought OMFG what have I just said, he will now hate me forever, justifiably, but what I had said was so outrageous he didn’t notice. Like the famous video of the gorilla on the basketball court, perhaps
There’s an excellent passage in an otherwise middling David Baddiel novel where he talks about this. The strange desire to say the Worst thing possible, in awkward situations. He’s right. It exists
I wonder if it is akin to the stray furtive desire we all have, on occasion: to jump under a Tube Train, as it trundles in to the station
That Baddiel line in itself is an extension of a sketch, I assume, he wrote for the Mary Whitehouse experience About wanting to hump at the most inopportune time. In the case of,the sketch it was a funeral,IIRC.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
One was ambushed by a cake. Another one walked oblivious into a cake trap. 😕
NEW: Rishi Sunak accidentally went to Boris Johnson's No 10 birthday event I'm told he was present when the birthday cake was served but was unaware it was going to happen as he'd gone to the room specifically for COVID strategy committee meeting.
Mother of God. Another one. How long was he there? Did he sing? Did he consume anything?
It sounds lethal. They couldn’t move safely round the building without dangers of coming across a party.
About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
To the off-topicker of this: As you don't see why it is a response to the question, you are too stupid to breathe, never mind contribute usefully to this website.
Also, pretty fucking obvious who you are. Tee.
To be fair I don't get the joke, I must be too stupid to breathe. Certainly wouldn't get into HY's grammar school
No joke. It just says, If you aren't interested in something, you don't find it interesting.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
One was ambushed by a cake. Another one walked oblivious into a cake trap. 😕
NEW: Rishi Sunak accidentally went to Boris Johnson's No 10 birthday event I'm told he was present when the birthday cake was served but was unaware it was going to happen as he'd gone to the room specifically for COVID strategy committee meeting.
Mother of God. Another one. How long was he there? Did he sing? Did he consume anything?
It sounds lethal. They couldn’t move safely round the building without dangers of coming across a party.
So Cummings has now sent friendly fire to his boy Sunak.
Poor Dom, aimed to bring down Boris but has now caught Rishi in the crossfire too
Remember that UUP chap Ladyt Davidson said would save the Union? Having a bit of a sticky time. (Interesting issue of whether he is also showing a failure of leadership. But certainly nobody at the UUP thought to do a bit of searching, it seems.)
'THE Ulster Unionist Party leader has asked colleagues whether he should resign amid a controversy over historical tweets.
Doug Beattie, who Ruth Davidson has said is "quite possibly" the man who'll save the Union, has faced accusations of misogyny and racism over the content of tweets posted before he entered political life.
The Upper Bann MLA conceded that the posts, the majority of which were written around a decade ago, were “horrendous and horrific”.
He told BBC Radio Ulster: “I will speak to my MLA group today and I will speak to my party officers through my chairman, Danny Kennedy, and if either group feels I should step down, then I will.
“Likewise, if they think I should refer myself to the party executive or the wider council on a vote of no confidence then I shall do that as well, and the party will decide whether or not they can follow my leadership.”'
As far as I can see the worst thing Doug Beattie did was insult Edwin Poot's wife.
As his main target voters are middle class soft Unionist Alliance voters he may even end up with a poll bounce from that! (Even if he shouldn't have done it)
"A series of derogatory messages came to light referring to women, Muslims, members of the Travelling community and people with mental health issues."
Care to do a word by word analysis of your comparison with that rather nasty tweet about Mrs Poots? And why should middle class and relatively centrist voters be at all impressed by the Mrs Poots joke? Which was extremely personal - look at it.
As Poots is a hardline DUPer.
Beattie at the end of the day is only targeting a small pool of voters ie relatively wealthy, middle class soft Unionists who might swing between UUP and Alliance.
Nationalists and leftwingers in NI will vote SF or SDLP, hardline Unionists will vote DUP or TUV so he will never win either of those groups whatever he tweets
Their children, as they become voting adults, on the other hand......
And I have a little knowledge of which I speak.
Will still not vote SF or SDLP if Protestants
Most elections in NI use STV and Protestants do sometimes vote for Nationalist parties (and vice versa) with their lower preferences. The sort of person who might vote UUP often put the SDLP perhaps 3rd or 4th in preference to SF or even in preference to the unionist extremists (e.g. TUV). A lot of UUP/SDLP/Alliance transfers have been seen in recent elections.
Remember that UUP chap Ladyt Davidson said would save the Union? Having a bit of a sticky time. (Interesting issue of whether he is also showing a failure of leadership. But certainly nobody at the UUP thought to do a bit of searching, it seems.)
'THE Ulster Unionist Party leader has asked colleagues whether he should resign amid a controversy over historical tweets.
Doug Beattie, who Ruth Davidson has said is "quite possibly" the man who'll save the Union, has faced accusations of misogyny and racism over the content of tweets posted before he entered political life.
The Upper Bann MLA conceded that the posts, the majority of which were written around a decade ago, were “horrendous and horrific”.
He told BBC Radio Ulster: “I will speak to my MLA group today and I will speak to my party officers through my chairman, Danny Kennedy, and if either group feels I should step down, then I will.
“Likewise, if they think I should refer myself to the party executive or the wider council on a vote of no confidence then I shall do that as well, and the party will decide whether or not they can follow my leadership.”'
As far as I can see the worst thing Doug Beattie did was insult Edwin Poot's wife.
As his main target voters are middle class soft Unionist Alliance voters he may even end up with a poll bounce from that! (Even if he shouldn't have done it)
"A series of derogatory messages came to light referring to women, Muslims, members of the Travelling community and people with mental health issues."
Care to do a word by word analysis of your comparison with that rather nasty tweet about Mrs Poots? And why should middle class and relatively centrist voters be at all impressed by the Mrs Poots joke? Which was extremely personal - look at it.
As Poots is a hardline DUPer.
Beattie at the end of the day is only targeting a small pool of voters ie relatively wealthy, middle class soft Unionists who might swing between UUP and Alliance.
Nationalists and leftwingers in NI will vote SF or SDLP, hardline Unionists will vote DUP or TUV so he will never win either of those groups whatever he tweets
Their children, as they become voting adults, on the other hand......
And I have a little knowledge of which I speak.
Will still not vote SF or SDLP if Protestants
Most elections in NI use STV and Protestants do sometimes vote for Nationalist parties (and vice versa) with their lower preferences. The sort of person who might vote UUP often put the SDLP perhaps 3rd or 4th in preference to SF or even in preference to the unionist extremists (e.g. TUV). A lot of UUP/SDLP/Alliance transfers have been seen in recent elections.
Remember that UUP chap Ladyt Davidson said would save the Union? Having a bit of a sticky time. (Interesting issue of whether he is also showing a failure of leadership. But certainly nobody at the UUP thought to do a bit of searching, it seems.)
'THE Ulster Unionist Party leader has asked colleagues whether he should resign amid a controversy over historical tweets.
Doug Beattie, who Ruth Davidson has said is "quite possibly" the man who'll save the Union, has faced accusations of misogyny and racism over the content of tweets posted before he entered political life.
The Upper Bann MLA conceded that the posts, the majority of which were written around a decade ago, were “horrendous and horrific”.
He told BBC Radio Ulster: “I will speak to my MLA group today and I will speak to my party officers through my chairman, Danny Kennedy, and if either group feels I should step down, then I will.
“Likewise, if they think I should refer myself to the party executive or the wider council on a vote of no confidence then I shall do that as well, and the party will decide whether or not they can follow my leadership.”'
As far as I can see the worst thing Doug Beattie did was insult Edwin Poot's wife.
As his main target voters are middle class soft Unionist Alliance voters he may even end up with a poll bounce from that! (Even if he shouldn't have done it)
"A series of derogatory messages came to light referring to women, Muslims, members of the Travelling community and people with mental health issues."
Care to do a word by word analysis of your comparison with that rather nasty tweet about Mrs Poots? And why should middle class and relatively centrist voters be at all impressed by the Mrs Poots joke? Which was extremely personal - look at it.
As Poots is a hardline DUPer.
Beattie at the end of the day is only targeting a small pool of voters ie relatively wealthy, middle class soft Unionists who might swing between UUP and Alliance.
Nationalists and leftwingers in NI will vote SF or SDLP, hardline Unionists will vote DUP or TUV so he will never win either of those groups whatever he tweets
Their children, as they become voting adults, on the other hand......
And I have a little knowledge of which I speak.
Will still not vote SF or SDLP if Protestants
Most elections in NI use STV and Protestants do sometimes vote for Nationalist parties (and vice versa) with their lower preferences. The sort of person who might vote UUP often put the SDLP perhaps 3rd or 4th in preference to SF or even in preference to the unionist extremists (e.g. TUV). A lot of UUP/SDLP/Alliance transfers have been seen in recent elections.
They will still not vote SF or SDLP as their first preference however.
NI STV also ensures lots of Unionist MLAs get elected even if multiple Unionist parties
HYUFD, they do use constituencies in STV elections for the NI Assembly = 18 five-seaters,
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
Remember that UUP chap Ladyt Davidson said would save the Union? Having a bit of a sticky time. (Interesting issue of whether he is also showing a failure of leadership. But certainly nobody at the UUP thought to do a bit of searching, it seems.)
'THE Ulster Unionist Party leader has asked colleagues whether he should resign amid a controversy over historical tweets.
Doug Beattie, who Ruth Davidson has said is "quite possibly" the man who'll save the Union, has faced accusations of misogyny and racism over the content of tweets posted before he entered political life.
The Upper Bann MLA conceded that the posts, the majority of which were written around a decade ago, were “horrendous and horrific”.
He told BBC Radio Ulster: “I will speak to my MLA group today and I will speak to my party officers through my chairman, Danny Kennedy, and if either group feels I should step down, then I will.
“Likewise, if they think I should refer myself to the party executive or the wider council on a vote of no confidence then I shall do that as well, and the party will decide whether or not they can follow my leadership.”'
As far as I can see the worst thing Doug Beattie did was insult Edwin Poot's wife.
As his main target voters are middle class soft Unionist Alliance voters he may even end up with a poll bounce from that! (Even if he shouldn't have done it)
"A series of derogatory messages came to light referring to women, Muslims, members of the Travelling community and people with mental health issues."
Care to do a word by word analysis of your comparison with that rather nasty tweet about Mrs Poots? And why should middle class and relatively centrist voters be at all impressed by the Mrs Poots joke? Which was extremely personal - look at it.
As Poots is a hardline DUPer.
Beattie at the end of the day is only targeting a small pool of voters ie relatively wealthy, middle class soft Unionists who might swing between UUP and Alliance.
Nationalists and leftwingers in NI will vote SF or SDLP, hardline Unionists will vote DUP or TUV so he will never win either of those groups whatever he tweets
Their children, as they become voting adults, on the other hand......
And I have a little knowledge of which I speak.
Will still not vote SF or SDLP if Protestants
Most elections in NI use STV and Protestants do sometimes vote for Nationalist parties (and vice versa) with their lower preferences. The sort of person who might vote UUP often put the SDLP perhaps 3rd or 4th in preference to SF or even in preference to the unionist extremists (e.g. TUV). A lot of UUP/SDLP/Alliance transfers have been seen in recent elections.
Remember that UUP chap Ladyt Davidson said would save the Union? Having a bit of a sticky time. (Interesting issue of whether he is also showing a failure of leadership. But certainly nobody at the UUP thought to do a bit of searching, it seems.)
'THE Ulster Unionist Party leader has asked colleagues whether he should resign amid a controversy over historical tweets.
Doug Beattie, who Ruth Davidson has said is "quite possibly" the man who'll save the Union, has faced accusations of misogyny and racism over the content of tweets posted before he entered political life.
The Upper Bann MLA conceded that the posts, the majority of which were written around a decade ago, were “horrendous and horrific”.
He told BBC Radio Ulster: “I will speak to my MLA group today and I will speak to my party officers through my chairman, Danny Kennedy, and if either group feels I should step down, then I will.
“Likewise, if they think I should refer myself to the party executive or the wider council on a vote of no confidence then I shall do that as well, and the party will decide whether or not they can follow my leadership.”'
As far as I can see the worst thing Doug Beattie did was insult Edwin Poot's wife.
As his main target voters are middle class soft Unionist Alliance voters he may even end up with a poll bounce from that! (Even if he shouldn't have done it)
"A series of derogatory messages came to light referring to women, Muslims, members of the Travelling community and people with mental health issues."
Care to do a word by word analysis of your comparison with that rather nasty tweet about Mrs Poots? And why should middle class and relatively centrist voters be at all impressed by the Mrs Poots joke? Which was extremely personal - look at it.
As Poots is a hardline DUPer.
Beattie at the end of the day is only targeting a small pool of voters ie relatively wealthy, middle class soft Unionists who might swing between UUP and Alliance.
Nationalists and leftwingers in NI will vote SF or SDLP, hardline Unionists will vote DUP or TUV so he will never win either of those groups whatever he tweets
Their children, as they become voting adults, on the other hand......
And I have a little knowledge of which I speak.
Will still not vote SF or SDLP if Protestants
Most elections in NI use STV and Protestants do sometimes vote for Nationalist parties (and vice versa) with their lower preferences. The sort of person who might vote UUP often put the SDLP perhaps 3rd or 4th in preference to SF or even in preference to the unionist extremists (e.g. TUV). A lot of UUP/SDLP/Alliance transfers have been seen in recent elections.
Remember that UUP chap Ladyt Davidson said would save the Union? Having a bit of a sticky time. (Interesting issue of whether he is also showing a failure of leadership. But certainly nobody at the UUP thought to do a bit of searching, it seems.)
'THE Ulster Unionist Party leader has asked colleagues whether he should resign amid a controversy over historical tweets.
Doug Beattie, who Ruth Davidson has said is "quite possibly" the man who'll save the Union, has faced accusations of misogyny and racism over the content of tweets posted before he entered political life.
The Upper Bann MLA conceded that the posts, the majority of which were written around a decade ago, were “horrendous and horrific”.
He told BBC Radio Ulster: “I will speak to my MLA group today and I will speak to my party officers through my chairman, Danny Kennedy, and if either group feels I should step down, then I will.
“Likewise, if they think I should refer myself to the party executive or the wider council on a vote of no confidence then I shall do that as well, and the party will decide whether or not they can follow my leadership.”'
As far as I can see the worst thing Doug Beattie did was insult Edwin Poot's wife.
As his main target voters are middle class soft Unionist Alliance voters he may even end up with a poll bounce from that! (Even if he shouldn't have done it)
"A series of derogatory messages came to light referring to women, Muslims, members of the Travelling community and people with mental health issues."
Care to do a word by word analysis of your comparison with that rather nasty tweet about Mrs Poots? And why should middle class and relatively centrist voters be at all impressed by the Mrs Poots joke? Which was extremely personal - look at it.
As Poots is a hardline DUPer.
Beattie at the end of the day is only targeting a small pool of voters ie relatively wealthy, middle class soft Unionists who might swing between UUP and Alliance.
Nationalists and leftwingers in NI will vote SF or SDLP, hardline Unionists will vote DUP or TUV so he will never win either of those groups whatever he tweets
Their children, as they become voting adults, on the other hand......
And I have a little knowledge of which I speak.
Will still not vote SF or SDLP if Protestants
Most elections in NI use STV and Protestants do sometimes vote for Nationalist parties (and vice versa) with their lower preferences. The sort of person who might vote UUP often put the SDLP perhaps 3rd or 4th in preference to SF or even in preference to the unionist extremists (e.g. TUV). A lot of UUP/SDLP/Alliance transfers have been seen in recent elections.
They will still not vote SF or SDLP as their first preference however.
NI STV also ensures lots of Unionist MLAs get elected even if multiple Unionist parties
HYUFD, they do use constituencies in STV elections for the NI Assembly = 18 five-seaters,
No FPTP constituencies though, unlike Holyrood or Westminster, all elected by STV PR. So a split Unionist vote does not matter
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
I am really struggling to see what was so incredibly outrageous about what he said. Its not the whole picture, but it is a significant part. It is demonstrably true that cricket loses out to the likes of football and rugby on purely the logical thing to do for your future, unless money is no object.
In terms of a career, cricket is a crap opportunity, compared to especially football. Unless you make it to IPL / international level, the money is utter garbage, so much so players regularly supplement their income with other jobs or not having an off-season (rather going to the southern hemisphere to play as a pro). Rugby also now pays really well.
And it was only a month or so ago that Panorama did a whole piece on how football agents are signing up young, especially black kids, where they tour all the "cages" and sign them up and the the EPL academy system hoovers up all the talent it can find, as only getting 1-2 good players a year pays for the whole thing.
Also remember if you sign up to an EPL academy they have a huge say on what you can get involved in outside of this (if you even had time). I have a family friend whose kid is currently in one, and before they played every sport going, no it is just football and only academy. No local club, no school, just academy. I also have another family friend who made it, when they signed at 16, they weren't even allowed to continue to play thing like golf (which they were very good at).
The same thing is happening in the West Indies, but it is US sports and athletics that hoovers up the talent.
It seems to me that he didn't mean to cause offence. The problem is that a white man saying anything about race these days is regarded as suspect by a lot of people.
I imagine if you were to do a deep dive of cricket you would find like a number of sports that don't pay very well it is dominated by upper middle class and upper class people. They went to private school, so learned to play the game there (rather than in state sector its much rarer to play it), and they had the backing of parents who could say go on, give it ago, it doesn't matter if it doesn't work out.
Rugby used to be like that, but now as a fully professional sport that pays well, its becoming much more diverse.
Tennis is another good example. There was a really good video with Liam Broady saying if you aren't top 100, you aren't making any real money out of tennis. He's 128th in the world and still can't afford his own house, and says he relies on making it through the first round of a major each year to just afford his strength and conditioning coach.
How could he afford to even consider this as a career...well a clue might be his middle name is Tarquin and his dad sold the family home to pay for him.
One was ambushed by a cake. Another one walked oblivious into a cake trap. 😕
NEW: Rishi Sunak accidentally went to Boris Johnson's No 10 birthday event I'm told he was present when the birthday cake was served but was unaware it was going to happen as he'd gone to the room specifically for COVID strategy committee meeting.
Mother of God. Another one. How long was he there? Did he sing? Did he consume anything?
It sounds lethal. They couldn’t move safely round the building without dangers of coming across a party.
So Cummings has now sent friendly fire to his boy Sunak.
Poor Dom, aimed to bring down Boris but has now caught Rishi in the crossfire too
I can’t see how this damages Sunak. It’s phrased in such a way to dissociate him from it.
One was ambushed by a cake. Another one walked oblivious into a cake trap. 😕
NEW: Rishi Sunak accidentally went to Boris Johnson's No 10 birthday event I'm told he was present when the birthday cake was served but was unaware it was going to happen as he'd gone to the room specifically for COVID strategy committee meeting.
Mother of God. Another one. How long was he there? Did he sing? Did he consume anything?
It sounds lethal. They couldn’t move safely round the building without dangers of coming across a party.
To be fair, it's ridiculous to criticise Sunak for this, although no doubt factions within the party will. He thought he was coming down to attend a Covid meeting, which of course was entirely proper, It's hardly his fault that the room had been hijacked for cakeism.
One was ambushed by a cake. Another one walked oblivious into a cake trap. 😕
NEW: Rishi Sunak accidentally went to Boris Johnson's No 10 birthday event I'm told he was present when the birthday cake was served but was unaware it was going to happen as he'd gone to the room specifically for COVID strategy committee meeting.
Mother of God. Another one. How long was he there? Did he sing? Did he consume anything?
It sounds lethal. They couldn’t move safely round the building without dangers of coming across a party.
So Cummings has now sent friendly fire to his boy Sunak.
Poor Dom, aimed to bring down Boris but has now caught Rishi in the crossfire too
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
One was ambushed by a cake. Another one walked oblivious into a cake trap. 😕
NEW: Rishi Sunak accidentally went to Boris Johnson's No 10 birthday event I'm told he was present when the birthday cake was served but was unaware it was going to happen as he'd gone to the room specifically for COVID strategy committee meeting.
Mother of God. Another one. How long was he there? Did he sing? Did he consume anything?
It sounds lethal. They couldn’t move safely round the building without dangers of coming across a party.
To be fair, it's ridiculous to criticise Sunak for this, although no doubt factions within the party will. He thought he was coming down to attend a Covid meeting, which of course was entirely proper, It's hardly his fault that the room had been hijacked for cakeism.
Hardly Boris' fault Carrie ambushed him with that cake either.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
Rich (lol) coming from you. You literally admitted that your main political objective was to preserve the wealth of the rich.
In out in out shake it all about, you do the hokey cokey and you turn around...
That song is disablist and not allowed anymore.
I'm not joking, HCPT banned it because its likely some children are missing limbs.
It's actually about the Catholic Mass and, as such, pretty unpleasant. Belongs to a rather nasty period when we hunted down papists and burned them at the stake.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
One was ambushed by a cake. Another one walked oblivious into a cake trap. 😕
NEW: Rishi Sunak accidentally went to Boris Johnson's No 10 birthday event I'm told he was present when the birthday cake was served but was unaware it was going to happen as he'd gone to the room specifically for COVID strategy committee meeting.
Mother of God. Another one. How long was he there? Did he sing? Did he consume anything?
It sounds lethal. They couldn’t move safely round the building without dangers of coming across a party.
To be fair, it's ridiculous to criticise Sunak for this, although no doubt factions within the party will. He thought he was coming down to attend a Covid meeting, which of course was entirely proper, It's hardly his fault that the room had been hijacked for cakeism.
Hardly Boris' fault Carrie ambushed him with that cake either.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
Nope, I believe in comprehensive schools and selection by lottery (within council boundaries) rather than distance.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Oh good, you're talking about IQ again.
This crisis is having the same effect as turds floating to the surface
Remember that UUP chap Ladyt Davidson said would save the Union? Having a bit of a sticky time. (Interesting issue of whether he is also showing a failure of leadership. But certainly nobody at the UUP thought to do a bit of searching, it seems.)
'THE Ulster Unionist Party leader has asked colleagues whether he should resign amid a controversy over historical tweets.
Doug Beattie, who Ruth Davidson has said is "quite possibly" the man who'll save the Union, has faced accusations of misogyny and racism over the content of tweets posted before he entered political life.
The Upper Bann MLA conceded that the posts, the majority of which were written around a decade ago, were “horrendous and horrific”.
He told BBC Radio Ulster: “I will speak to my MLA group today and I will speak to my party officers through my chairman, Danny Kennedy, and if either group feels I should step down, then I will.
“Likewise, if they think I should refer myself to the party executive or the wider council on a vote of no confidence then I shall do that as well, and the party will decide whether or not they can follow my leadership.”'
As far as I can see the worst thing Doug Beattie did was insult Edwin Poot's wife.
As his main target voters are middle class soft Unionist Alliance voters he may even end up with a poll bounce from that! (Even if he shouldn't have done it)
"A series of derogatory messages came to light referring to women, Muslims, members of the Travelling community and people with mental health issues."
Care to do a word by word analysis of your comparison with that rather nasty tweet about Mrs Poots? And why should middle class and relatively centrist voters be at all impressed by the Mrs Poots joke? Which was extremely personal - look at it.
As Poots is a hardline DUPer.
Beattie at the end of the day is only targeting a small pool of voters ie relatively wealthy, middle class soft Unionists who might swing between UUP and Alliance.
Nationalists and leftwingers in NI will vote SF or SDLP, hardline Unionists will vote DUP or TUV so he will never win either of those groups whatever he tweets
Their children, as they become voting adults, on the other hand......
And I have a little knowledge of which I speak.
Will still not vote SF or SDLP if Protestants
Most elections in NI use STV and Protestants do sometimes vote for Nationalist parties (and vice versa) with their lower preferences. The sort of person who might vote UUP often put the SDLP perhaps 3rd or 4th in preference to SF or even in preference to the unionist extremists (e.g. TUV). A lot of UUP/SDLP/Alliance transfers have been seen in recent elections.
Remember that UUP chap Ladyt Davidson said would save the Union? Having a bit of a sticky time. (Interesting issue of whether he is also showing a failure of leadership. But certainly nobody at the UUP thought to do a bit of searching, it seems.)
'THE Ulster Unionist Party leader has asked colleagues whether he should resign amid a controversy over historical tweets.
Doug Beattie, who Ruth Davidson has said is "quite possibly" the man who'll save the Union, has faced accusations of misogyny and racism over the content of tweets posted before he entered political life.
The Upper Bann MLA conceded that the posts, the majority of which were written around a decade ago, were “horrendous and horrific”.
He told BBC Radio Ulster: “I will speak to my MLA group today and I will speak to my party officers through my chairman, Danny Kennedy, and if either group feels I should step down, then I will.
“Likewise, if they think I should refer myself to the party executive or the wider council on a vote of no confidence then I shall do that as well, and the party will decide whether or not they can follow my leadership.”'
As far as I can see the worst thing Doug Beattie did was insult Edwin Poot's wife.
As his main target voters are middle class soft Unionist Alliance voters he may even end up with a poll bounce from that! (Even if he shouldn't have done it)
"A series of derogatory messages came to light referring to women, Muslims, members of the Travelling community and people with mental health issues."
Care to do a word by word analysis of your comparison with that rather nasty tweet about Mrs Poots? And why should middle class and relatively centrist voters be at all impressed by the Mrs Poots joke? Which was extremely personal - look at it.
As Poots is a hardline DUPer.
Beattie at the end of the day is only targeting a small pool of voters ie relatively wealthy, middle class soft Unionists who might swing between UUP and Alliance.
Nationalists and leftwingers in NI will vote SF or SDLP, hardline Unionists will vote DUP or TUV so he will never win either of those groups whatever he tweets
Their children, as they become voting adults, on the other hand......
And I have a little knowledge of which I speak.
Will still not vote SF or SDLP if Protestants
Most elections in NI use STV and Protestants do sometimes vote for Nationalist parties (and vice versa) with their lower preferences. The sort of person who might vote UUP often put the SDLP perhaps 3rd or 4th in preference to SF or even in preference to the unionist extremists (e.g. TUV). A lot of UUP/SDLP/Alliance transfers have been seen in recent elections.
Remember that UUP chap Ladyt Davidson said would save the Union? Having a bit of a sticky time. (Interesting issue of whether he is also showing a failure of leadership. But certainly nobody at the UUP thought to do a bit of searching, it seems.)
'THE Ulster Unionist Party leader has asked colleagues whether he should resign amid a controversy over historical tweets.
Doug Beattie, who Ruth Davidson has said is "quite possibly" the man who'll save the Union, has faced accusations of misogyny and racism over the content of tweets posted before he entered political life.
The Upper Bann MLA conceded that the posts, the majority of which were written around a decade ago, were “horrendous and horrific”.
He told BBC Radio Ulster: “I will speak to my MLA group today and I will speak to my party officers through my chairman, Danny Kennedy, and if either group feels I should step down, then I will.
“Likewise, if they think I should refer myself to the party executive or the wider council on a vote of no confidence then I shall do that as well, and the party will decide whether or not they can follow my leadership.”'
As far as I can see the worst thing Doug Beattie did was insult Edwin Poot's wife.
As his main target voters are middle class soft Unionist Alliance voters he may even end up with a poll bounce from that! (Even if he shouldn't have done it)
"A series of derogatory messages came to light referring to women, Muslims, members of the Travelling community and people with mental health issues."
Care to do a word by word analysis of your comparison with that rather nasty tweet about Mrs Poots? And why should middle class and relatively centrist voters be at all impressed by the Mrs Poots joke? Which was extremely personal - look at it.
As Poots is a hardline DUPer.
Beattie at the end of the day is only targeting a small pool of voters ie relatively wealthy, middle class soft Unionists who might swing between UUP and Alliance.
Nationalists and leftwingers in NI will vote SF or SDLP, hardline Unionists will vote DUP or TUV so he will never win either of those groups whatever he tweets
Their children, as they become voting adults, on the other hand......
And I have a little knowledge of which I speak.
Will still not vote SF or SDLP if Protestants
Most elections in NI use STV and Protestants do sometimes vote for Nationalist parties (and vice versa) with their lower preferences. The sort of person who might vote UUP often put the SDLP perhaps 3rd or 4th in preference to SF or even in preference to the unionist extremists (e.g. TUV). A lot of UUP/SDLP/Alliance transfers have been seen in recent elections.
They will still not vote SF or SDLP as their first preference however.
NI STV also ensures lots of Unionist MLAs get elected even if multiple Unionist parties
HYUFD, they do use constituencies in STV elections for the NI Assembly = 18 five-seaters,
No FPTP constituencies though, unlike Holyrood or Westminster, all elected by STV PR. So a split Unionist vote does not matter
The constituencies are exactly the same boundaries as the Westminster seats, just multi-member. Used to be six seats from 1998 to 2016 (108 total), then five seats from 2017 (90 total seats).
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
I had to do some research once and it showed in an area like Coventry (this was back in 2007) that the ‘school premium’ for house prices was something like 10%. As you said, the wealthier liberals get on their high horse about sending their kids to state schools whilst being able to pay a housing premium plus tutors where appropriate.
If you want to see the scale of the hypocrisy, suggest bussing in of kids from poorer areas into the well performing schools in nice areas to redress equality. The mask quickly slips.
That's the thing - @Anabobazina's favourite word "perception".
It's so often the case in politics and political debate "the truth" doesn't matter very much - it's what people believe to be the truth that matters - we've seen this with the coronavirus and now we see this with the Prime Minister's travails.
It doesn't matter if the letter of the law says Boris Johnson did no wrong - the fact is millions of people were unable to spend time physically with loved ones, family members, work colleagues (almost as important to some it seems) because they were voluntarily obeying "guidelines" and "advice" from the medical experts and re-enforced by the political leadership and Oliver Dowden.
People took this action partly from fear (in truth) and partly because they were and remain respectful law-abiding members of society who do follow the rules (even if at times they find such rules irksome). This caused huge amounts of misery, distress, discomfort and plain ordinary hurt.
Now, it seems while all this was going on those who were encouraging us to live by the rules and follow the guidelines were themselves carrying on as though there was no virus, no problem and life was as normal. I can well imagine the pressure cooker atmosphere of Government from mid-March 2020 onward, the stress, the tension as the truth of rising case numbers, deaths and overcrowded hospitals was being fed through every day.
I get that - except none of it matters. Living "by the rules" isn't just a maxim or an adage - it's something everyone has to do and even if you think you've done nothing wrong, the perception of what you have done - how it appears to those who denied themselves the time and contact with loved ones they wanted because they were following the rules on which you were pronouncing daily - you can see how awkward that might look.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
Rich (lol) coming from you. You literally admitted that your main political objective was to preserve the wealth of the rich.
One was ambushed by a cake. Another one walked oblivious into a cake trap. 😕
NEW: Rishi Sunak accidentally went to Boris Johnson's No 10 birthday event I'm told he was present when the birthday cake was served but was unaware it was going to happen as he'd gone to the room specifically for COVID strategy committee meeting.
Mother of God. Another one. How long was he there? Did he sing? Did he consume anything?
It sounds lethal. They couldn’t move safely round the building without dangers of coming across a party.
So Cummings has now sent friendly fire to his boy Sunak.
Poor Dom, aimed to bring down Boris but has now caught Rishi in the crossfire too
I can’t see how this damages Sunak. It’s phrased in such a way to dissociate him from it.
Makes you wonder when they finally got the secondary business of covid strategy back underway?
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
The problem these days if you want to be an elite sports person in most sports you have to be insanely dedicated from a young age. There is the odd exception who manages to juggle being amazing at school / uni with this, but for most even to think about going pro they need to be training many day / nights a week most of their life.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
I had to do some research once and it showed in an area like Coventry (this was back in 2007) that the ‘school premium’ for house prices was something like 10%. As you said, the wealthier liberals get on their high horse about sending their kids to state schools whilst being able to pay a housing premium plus tutors where appropriate.
If you want to see the scale of the hypocrisy, suggest bussing in of kids from poorer areas into the well performing schools in nice areas to redress equality. The mask quickly slips.
Remember that UUP chap Ladyt Davidson said would save the Union? Having a bit of a sticky time. (Interesting issue of whether he is also showing a failure of leadership. But certainly nobody at the UUP thought to do a bit of searching, it seems.)
'THE Ulster Unionist Party leader has asked colleagues whether he should resign amid a controversy over historical tweets.
Doug Beattie, who Ruth Davidson has said is "quite possibly" the man who'll save the Union, has faced accusations of misogyny and racism over the content of tweets posted before he entered political life.
The Upper Bann MLA conceded that the posts, the majority of which were written around a decade ago, were “horrendous and horrific”.
He told BBC Radio Ulster: “I will speak to my MLA group today and I will speak to my party officers through my chairman, Danny Kennedy, and if either group feels I should step down, then I will.
“Likewise, if they think I should refer myself to the party executive or the wider council on a vote of no confidence then I shall do that as well, and the party will decide whether or not they can follow my leadership.”'
As far as I can see the worst thing Doug Beattie did was insult Edwin Poot's wife.
As his main target voters are middle class soft Unionist Alliance voters he may even end up with a poll bounce from that! (Even if he shouldn't have done it)
"A series of derogatory messages came to light referring to women, Muslims, members of the Travelling community and people with mental health issues."
Care to do a word by word analysis of your comparison with that rather nasty tweet about Mrs Poots? And why should middle class and relatively centrist voters be at all impressed by the Mrs Poots joke? Which was extremely personal - look at it.
As Poots is a hardline DUPer.
Beattie at the end of the day is only targeting a small pool of voters ie relatively wealthy, middle class soft Unionists who might swing between UUP and Alliance.
Nationalists and leftwingers in NI will vote SF or SDLP, hardline Unionists will vote DUP or TUV so he will never win either of those groups whatever he tweets
Their children, as they become voting adults, on the other hand......
And I have a little knowledge of which I speak.
Will still not vote SF or SDLP if Protestants
Most elections in NI use STV and Protestants do sometimes vote for Nationalist parties (and vice versa) with their lower preferences. The sort of person who might vote UUP often put the SDLP perhaps 3rd or 4th in preference to SF or even in preference to the unionist extremists (e.g. TUV). A lot of UUP/SDLP/Alliance transfers have been seen in recent elections.
Remember that UUP chap Ladyt Davidson said would save the Union? Having a bit of a sticky time. (Interesting issue of whether he is also showing a failure of leadership. But certainly nobody at the UUP thought to do a bit of searching, it seems.)
'THE Ulster Unionist Party leader has asked colleagues whether he should resign amid a controversy over historical tweets.
Doug Beattie, who Ruth Davidson has said is "quite possibly" the man who'll save the Union, has faced accusations of misogyny and racism over the content of tweets posted before he entered political life.
The Upper Bann MLA conceded that the posts, the majority of which were written around a decade ago, were “horrendous and horrific”.
He told BBC Radio Ulster: “I will speak to my MLA group today and I will speak to my party officers through my chairman, Danny Kennedy, and if either group feels I should step down, then I will.
“Likewise, if they think I should refer myself to the party executive or the wider council on a vote of no confidence then I shall do that as well, and the party will decide whether or not they can follow my leadership.”'
As far as I can see the worst thing Doug Beattie did was insult Edwin Poot's wife.
As his main target voters are middle class soft Unionist Alliance voters he may even end up with a poll bounce from that! (Even if he shouldn't have done it)
"A series of derogatory messages came to light referring to women, Muslims, members of the Travelling community and people with mental health issues."
Care to do a word by word analysis of your comparison with that rather nasty tweet about Mrs Poots? And why should middle class and relatively centrist voters be at all impressed by the Mrs Poots joke? Which was extremely personal - look at it.
As Poots is a hardline DUPer.
Beattie at the end of the day is only targeting a small pool of voters ie relatively wealthy, middle class soft Unionists who might swing between UUP and Alliance.
Nationalists and leftwingers in NI will vote SF or SDLP, hardline Unionists will vote DUP or TUV so he will never win either of those groups whatever he tweets
Their children, as they become voting adults, on the other hand......
And I have a little knowledge of which I speak.
Will still not vote SF or SDLP if Protestants
Most elections in NI use STV and Protestants do sometimes vote for Nationalist parties (and vice versa) with their lower preferences. The sort of person who might vote UUP often put the SDLP perhaps 3rd or 4th in preference to SF or even in preference to the unionist extremists (e.g. TUV). A lot of UUP/SDLP/Alliance transfers have been seen in recent elections.
Remember that UUP chap Ladyt Davidson said would save the Union? Having a bit of a sticky time. (Interesting issue of whether he is also showing a failure of leadership. But certainly nobody at the UUP thought to do a bit of searching, it seems.)
'THE Ulster Unionist Party leader has asked colleagues whether he should resign amid a controversy over historical tweets.
Doug Beattie, who Ruth Davidson has said is "quite possibly" the man who'll save the Union, has faced accusations of misogyny and racism over the content of tweets posted before he entered political life.
The Upper Bann MLA conceded that the posts, the majority of which were written around a decade ago, were “horrendous and horrific”.
He told BBC Radio Ulster: “I will speak to my MLA group today and I will speak to my party officers through my chairman, Danny Kennedy, and if either group feels I should step down, then I will.
“Likewise, if they think I should refer myself to the party executive or the wider council on a vote of no confidence then I shall do that as well, and the party will decide whether or not they can follow my leadership.”'
As far as I can see the worst thing Doug Beattie did was insult Edwin Poot's wife.
As his main target voters are middle class soft Unionist Alliance voters he may even end up with a poll bounce from that! (Even if he shouldn't have done it)
"A series of derogatory messages came to light referring to women, Muslims, members of the Travelling community and people with mental health issues."
Care to do a word by word analysis of your comparison with that rather nasty tweet about Mrs Poots? And why should middle class and relatively centrist voters be at all impressed by the Mrs Poots joke? Which was extremely personal - look at it.
As Poots is a hardline DUPer.
Beattie at the end of the day is only targeting a small pool of voters ie relatively wealthy, middle class soft Unionists who might swing between UUP and Alliance.
Nationalists and leftwingers in NI will vote SF or SDLP, hardline Unionists will vote DUP or TUV so he will never win either of those groups whatever he tweets
Their children, as they become voting adults, on the other hand......
And I have a little knowledge of which I speak.
Will still not vote SF or SDLP if Protestants
Most elections in NI use STV and Protestants do sometimes vote for Nationalist parties (and vice versa) with their lower preferences. The sort of person who might vote UUP often put the SDLP perhaps 3rd or 4th in preference to SF or even in preference to the unionist extremists (e.g. TUV). A lot of UUP/SDLP/Alliance transfers have been seen in recent elections.
They will still not vote SF or SDLP as their first preference however.
NI STV also ensures lots of Unionist MLAs get elected even if multiple Unionist parties
HYUFD, they do use constituencies in STV elections for the NI Assembly = 18 five-seaters,
No FPTP constituencies though, unlike Holyrood or Westminster, all elected by STV PR. So a split Unionist vote does not matter
Mostly true, but there are edge effects that mean a split Unionist vote could deliver the last seat in a constituency to a non-Unionist party, or you’ll get someone voting TUV but not putting later preferences.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
Rich (lol) coming from you. You literally admitted that your main political objective was to preserve the wealth of the rich.
Preserve the wealth of everyone not just the rich
That's the same thing. Wealth is relative and thus if you preserve the wealth of the rich, the poor stay poor.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
Do you think there should be ballots to open new Secondary Moderns?, because that is the flipside of Grammars.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
Rich (lol) coming from you. You literally admitted that your main political objective was to preserve the wealth of the rich.
Preserve the wealth of everyone not just the rich
That's the same thing. Wealth is relative and thus if you preserve the wealth of the rich, the poor stay poor.
Which is exactly what you don't understand about levelling up.
True levelling up means demand goes down in London (and up in the regions) and that means lower house prices and lower salaries.
One was ambushed by a cake. Another one walked oblivious into a cake trap. 😕
NEW: Rishi Sunak accidentally went to Boris Johnson's No 10 birthday event I'm told he was present when the birthday cake was served but was unaware it was going to happen as he'd gone to the room specifically for COVID strategy committee meeting.
Mother of God. Another one. How long was he there? Did he sing? Did he consume anything?
It sounds lethal. They couldn’t move safely round the building without dangers of coming across a party.
So Cummings has now sent friendly fire to his boy Sunak.
Poor Dom, aimed to bring down Boris but has now caught Rishi in the crossfire too
I can’t see how this damages Sunak. It’s phrased in such a way to dissociate him from it.
HYUFD will do anything possible to spin this as bad for Cummings and good for Johnson. It is not even worth trying to argue with him about it as he is so blinkered he will never accept any other interpretation.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
Do you think there should be ballots to open new Secondary Moderns?, because that is the flipside of Grammars.
There are plenty of high schools in Bucks and Kent that also get good GCSE results in selective areas, I have no problem with that at all if we are to open more grammars which as a diehard Conservative I want to offer the chance to do
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
I had to do some research once and it showed in an area like Coventry (this was back in 2007) that the ‘school premium’ for house prices was something like 10%. As you said, the wealthier liberals get on their high horse about sending their kids to state schools whilst being able to pay a housing premium plus tutors where appropriate.
If you want to see the scale of the hypocrisy, suggest bussing in of kids from poorer areas into the well performing schools in nice areas to redress equality. The mask quickly slips.
What point are you actually making here?
He's saying the posh bits of town are more expensive to live in.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
Rich (lol) coming from you. You literally admitted that your main political objective was to preserve the wealth of the rich.
Preserve the wealth of everyone not just the rich
That's the same thing. Wealth is relative and thus if you preserve the wealth of the rich, the poor stay poor.
No, most in the middle own property too, sale of council houses even gave many of the poor some real assets for the first time
Re the BBC prog The Decade the Rich Won I thought current Clegg was looking a bit rough until I saw Osborne. Jezza looking quite chilled out and comfy in his skin by contrast.
Aside from updates on the visible effects of Faustian pacts, interesting programme.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
I had to do some research once and it showed in an area like Coventry (this was back in 2007) that the ‘school premium’ for house prices was something like 10%. As you said, the wealthier liberals get on their high horse about sending their kids to state schools whilst being able to pay a housing premium plus tutors where appropriate.
If you want to see the scale of the hypocrisy, suggest bussing in of kids from poorer areas into the well performing schools in nice areas to redress equality. The mask quickly slips.
One reason why I like religious secondary schools is that it gives those who know the rules of the game a chance that would otherwise not be available when price comes into play.
Once we knew the key phrases required to get into the local catholic secondary school we've helped plenty of others get in as well.
The racism furore in county cricket has reignited after the chairman of Middlesex expressed "outdated" stereotypes on why cricket is failing to nurture black and Asian talent.
Azeem Rafiq and Ebony Rainford-Brent expressed outrage after Mike O'Farrell told MPs young black players prefer football and south Asian communities prioritise education.
O'Farrell's comments were immediately likened with the career-ending words of former FA chairman Greg Clarke, who told the same committee in 2020 that south Asian people choose careers in IT over sport.
"The other thing in the diversity bit is that the football and rugby world becomes much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community," said the Middlesex chief as he sat alongside other county chairmen at the first parliamentary hearing on cricket since Rafiq's bombshell evidence last November.
"And in terms of the South Asian community, there is a moment where we're finding that they do not want necessarily to commit the same time that is necessary to go to the next step because they sometimes prefer to go into other educational fields, and then cricket becomes secondary. And part of that is because it's a rather more time-consuming sport than some others. So we're finding that's difficult."
Sport should always be secondary to education. I professional sportsperson will have a career of maybe 20 years. A good education lasts for life.
Depends how good you are, if you are an outstanding footballer or cricketer or tennis player or rugby player then you will likely earn more from professional sport than you ever would in any other field.
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
As I noted down thread, "outstanding" tennis. It isn't true. I think most people would say 150th in the world is outstanding, after all your expenses you won't basically take any money at all. Tennis is one of the most top heavy sports going, Nadal, Novax, Federer makes £10 millions a year, Liam Broady (128th in the world) has to have a lodger to pay the rent on his flat.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
And if they are not liars they they are literally saying that the Prime Minister was imposing the most extreme measures every taken outside of war time on the whole population and he had literally no fucking idea what these rules meant or entailed or required of individuals.
Talk about living in an elite, entitled, metropolitan bubble.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
Rich (lol) coming from you. You literally admitted that your main political objective was to preserve the wealth of the rich.
Preserve the wealth of everyone not just the rich
That's the same thing. Wealth is relative and thus if you preserve the wealth of the rich, the poor stay poor.
No, most in the middle own property too, sale of council houses even gave many of the poor some real assets for the first time
This is the modern psychiatric definition of Demonic Possession
“In the entry article on Dissociative Identity Disorder, the DSM-5 states, "possession-form identities in dissociative identity disorder typically manifest as behaviors that appear as if a 'spirit,' supernatural being, or outside person has taken control such that the individual begins speaking or acting in a distinctly different manner".[97] The symptoms vary across cultures.[90] The DSM-5 indicates that personality states of dissociative identity disorder may be interpreted as possession in some cultures, and instances of spirit possession are often related to traumatic experiences—suggesting that possession experiences may be caused by mental distress.[96] In cases of dissociative identity disorder in which the alter personality is questioned as to its identity, 29 percent are reported to identify themselves as demons.[98] A 19th century term for a mental disorder in which the patient believes that they are possessed by demons or evil spirits is demonomania or cacodemonomanis.[99]”
Germany went through the traumatic state of the First World War, then the Spanish Flu, THEN the great inflation, Great Depression, Weimar chaos. It was multiply traumatised, it was a national personality ripe for Possession
The Demonic Spirit of a half starved, quarter Slavic, obscure but hideously evil Austrian ex-soldier then took possession of the German soul, or persona, causing it to act in extremely unusual ways, including mass murder (cf Linda Blair murdering the Englishman in the Exorcist)
Germany went from speaking like a normal European nation to growling in guttural and atavistic ways, its head twisted 180 degrees away from the nation that gave us Goethe, Bach and Beethoven
I'm supposed to be going to Sri Lanka next year. I think I will stay away from the gin when I'm there.
Your mother sucks cocks in hell.
I was once talking on the phone to a friend who had just lost his mother. I was flailing around, wondering what to say, and for some God-awful reason that resonant line from the Exorcist sprang to mind and I said it, in some weird attempt to make light of the situation. A nanosecond later I thought OMFG what have I just said, he will now hate me forever, justifiably, but what I had said was so outrageous he didn’t notice. Like the famous video of the gorilla on the basketball court, perhaps
There’s an excellent passage in an otherwise middling David Baddiel novel where he talks about this. The strange desire to say the Worst thing possible, in awkward situations. He’s right. It exists
I wonder if it is akin to the stray furtive desire we all have, on occasion: to jump under a Tube Train, as it trundles in to the station
That Baddiel line in itself is an extension of a sketch, I assume, he wrote for the Mary Whitehouse experience About wanting to hump at the most inopportune time. In the case of,the sketch it was a funeral,IIRC.
There was no need for that to happen.
There's a reasonable amount of coupling that takes place after wakes.
One was ambushed by a cake. Another one walked oblivious into a cake trap. 😕
NEW: Rishi Sunak accidentally went to Boris Johnson's No 10 birthday event I'm told he was present when the birthday cake was served but was unaware it was going to happen as he'd gone to the room specifically for COVID strategy committee meeting.
Mother of God. Another one. How long was he there? Did he sing? Did he consume anything?
It sounds lethal. They couldn’t move safely round the building without dangers of coming across a party.
To be fair, it's ridiculous to criticise Sunak for this, although no doubt factions within the party will. He thought he was coming down to attend a Covid meeting, which of course was entirely proper, It's hardly his fault that the room had been hijacked for cakeism.
Hardly Boris' fault Carrie ambushed him with that cake either.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
Rich (lol) coming from you. You literally admitted that your main political objective was to preserve the wealth of the rich.
Preserve the wealth of everyone not just the rich
That's the same thing. Wealth is relative and thus if you preserve the wealth of the rich, the poor stay poor.
Exactly. It is preserving the wealth gap that’s the objective. Preserving privilege
Farm workers in Portugal appear to have been working illegally long hours picking berries destined for Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Waitrose for less than the minimum wage, according to a Guardian investigation.
Speaking anonymously, for fear of retribution from their employers, workers claimed the hours listed on their payslips were often fewer than the hours they had actually worked.
The workers, mostly from south Asia, are the backbone of Portugal’s £200m berry industry, which employs upwards of 10,000 migrants.
They have been drawn to the country by immigration laws that allow foreigners of all nationalities to gain legal status (and eventually citizenship) through full-time employment and the payment of taxes.
While they dream of what some jokingly call the “raspberry passport”, many migrant workers fear changing jobs would nullify their residency application, despite what they describe as exploitative conditions.
Guys - I know that politically this is disastrous for the PM. Rightly so. He has taken us for fools and lied.
Legally, the position may not be the same. This does not matter politically because the criticism to be made of him is a political one.
But it is important to note that when it comes to charging people (including the PM) with criminal offences, the law - ie what the Regulations actually said at the relevant times - matters a great deal.
That's my point. So do not be surprised to find that charges may not follow quite as easily as some are supposing. I certainly wouldn't be, especially given what happened to previous prosecutions when the CPS looked at them.
If Tory MPs had any gumption, all this would be irrelevant because they would have got rid of him long before.
Of course not. I am sure the plan was that when the police let him off the hook, down the line, everything else would fall away and with one bound he would be free. Fortunately for those that still care about good governance, events are moving more quickly and there is still a chance it will come to a head before the police eventually decide that it isn’t in the public interest to charge anyone.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
I had to do some research once and it showed in an area like Coventry (this was back in 2007) that the ‘school premium’ for house prices was something like 10%. As you said, the wealthier liberals get on their high horse about sending their kids to state schools whilst being able to pay a housing premium plus tutors where appropriate.
If you want to see the scale of the hypocrisy, suggest bussing in of kids from poorer areas into the well performing schools in nice areas to redress equality. The mask quickly slips.
What point are you actually making here?
A fairly simple one to understand. Middle class parents benefit from the current system by being able to game it, whether it by being able to pay for houses in areas with good schools or afford private tutors.
My parents were unemployed. I went to a private school through the Assisted Places Scheme, then Oxbridge and then onwards. If I hadn’t had gone to that school, I would have gone to what was one of the worst comprehensives in Manchester simply based on where we lived.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
Nope, I believe in comprehensive schools and selection by lottery (within council boundaries) rather than distance.
I am a conservative and believe in choice, I want more free schools, more grammar schools, more academies, not just one size fits all comprehensives and selection by lottery.
And if they are not liars they they are literally saying that the Prime Minister was imposing the most extreme measures every taken outside of war time on the whole population and he had literally no fucking idea what these rules meant or entailed or required of individuals.
Talk about living in an elite, entitled, metropolitan bubble.
Or fucking Versailles.
It's very much Carrie Antoinette even down to cakes being involved.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
You haven't addressed any of the points about grammar schools being replaced by selection by ability to afford a house in the right catchment area.
This is the modern psychiatric definition of Demonic Possession
“In the entry article on Dissociative Identity Disorder, the DSM-5 states, "possession-form identities in dissociative identity disorder typically manifest as behaviors that appear as if a 'spirit,' supernatural being, or outside person has taken control such that the individual begins speaking or acting in a distinctly different manner".[97] The symptoms vary across cultures.[90] The DSM-5 indicates that personality states of dissociative identity disorder may be interpreted as possession in some cultures, and instances of spirit possession are often related to traumatic experiences—suggesting that possession experiences may be caused by mental distress.[96] In cases of dissociative identity disorder in which the alter personality is questioned as to its identity, 29 percent are reported to identify themselves as demons.[98] A 19th century term for a mental disorder in which the patient believes that they are possessed by demons or evil spirits is demonomania or cacodemonomanis.[99]”
Germany went through the traumatic state of the First World War, then the Spanish Flu, THEN the great inflation, Great Depression, Weimar chaos. It was multiply traumatised, it was a national personality ripe for Possession
The Demonic Spirit of a half starved, quarter Slavic, obscure but hideously evil Austrian ex-soldier then took possession of the German soul, or persona, causing it to act in extremely unusual ways, including mass murder (cf Linda Blair murdering the Englishman in the Exorcist)
Germany went from speaking like a normal European nation to growling in guttural and atavistic ways, its head twisted 180 degrees away from the nation that gave us Goethe, Bach and Beethoven
I'm supposed to be going to Sri Lanka next year. I think I will stay away from the gin when I'm there.
Your mother sucks cocks in hell.
I was once talking on the phone to a friend who had just lost his mother. I was flailing around, wondering what to say, and for some God-awful reason that resonant line from the Exorcist sprang to mind and I said it, in some weird attempt to make light of the situation. A nanosecond later I thought OMFG what have I just said, he will now hate me forever, justifiably, but what I had said was so outrageous he didn’t notice. Like the famous video of the gorilla on the basketball court, perhaps
There’s an excellent passage in an otherwise middling David Baddiel novel where he talks about this. The strange desire to say the Worst thing possible, in awkward situations. He’s right. It exists
I wonder if it is akin to the stray furtive desire we all have, on occasion: to jump under a Tube Train, as it trundles in to the station
That Baddiel line in itself is an extension of a sketch, I assume, he wrote for the Mary Whitehouse experience About wanting to hump at the most inopportune time. In the case of,the sketch it was a funeral,IIRC.
There was no need for that to happen.
There's a reasonable amount of coupling that takes place after wakes.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
I had to do some research once and it showed in an area like Coventry (this was back in 2007) that the ‘school premium’ for house prices was something like 10%. As you said, the wealthier liberals get on their high horse about sending their kids to state schools whilst being able to pay a housing premium plus tutors where appropriate.
If you want to see the scale of the hypocrisy, suggest bussing in of kids from poorer areas into the well performing schools in nice areas to redress equality. The mask quickly slips.
What point are you actually making here?
A fairly simple one to understand. Middle class parents benefit from the current system by being able to game it, whether it by being able to pay for houses in areas with good schools or afford private tutors.
My parents were unemployed. I went to a private school through the Assisted Places Scheme, then Oxbridge and then onwards. If I hadn’t had gone to that school, I would have gone to what was one of the worst comprehensives in Manchester simply based on where we lived.
So yet another private school boy criticising comprehensive schools.
One was ambushed by a cake. Another one walked oblivious into a cake trap. 😕
NEW: Rishi Sunak accidentally went to Boris Johnson's No 10 birthday event I'm told he was present when the birthday cake was served but was unaware it was going to happen as he'd gone to the room specifically for COVID strategy committee meeting.
Mother of God. Another one. How long was he there? Did he sing? Did he consume anything?
It sounds lethal. They couldn’t move safely round the building without dangers of coming across a party.
No wonder there was so much fraud with RIshi's loans. The poor man was trying to get some work done and kept running into surprise parties when he was trying to meet his boss.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
Rich (lol) coming from you. You literally admitted that your main political objective was to preserve the wealth of the rich.
Preserve the wealth of everyone not just the rich
That's the same thing. Wealth is relative and thus if you preserve the wealth of the rich, the poor stay poor.
No, most in the middle own property too, sale of council houses even gave many of the poor some real assets for the first time
So? What has that got to do with my point?
Everything, Conservatives try to get even the poor to have assets, socialists want to keep the poor poor and dependent on the state and voting Labour
Has anyone heard the Sumption interview at lunchtime? He raised some interesting legal arguments. Now I think legal arguments are - to a very great extent - missing the point about why this is a political problem for the Tories. The sense of solidarity, of all being in this together, has been trashed.
But the police can only investigate a breach of the law. And if you look at the Regulations - not the guidance - which were in place at the time, the offence was being away from your home without a "reasonable excuse".
This was not defined though a number of examples are given. Being at work - if this could not reasonably be done at home - would be a reasonable excuse.
So let's take all those people at No 10 on the day of Boris's birthday. If they had to be at work they were not committing any offence by being away from home because they had a reasonable excuse. There was no separate offence of eating cakes, birthday or otherwise. If someone brought a cake to celebrate a birthday this does not automatically make their presence at work unreasonable.
Ah but what about the numbers of people there you ask? Well Regulation 7 did indeed impose restrictions on gatherings but in "public places".
Offices at No 10 are not public places are they? So it is not clear to me that there has been a breach of this regulation in relation to the birthday party. It may of course depend on precisely where the gathering was etc.
I only point this out because the police will not simply have to collect the facts but also understand the relevant legal restrictions and ensure that they apply the law to the facts. Not guidance. Not what people thought it all meant. And one thing we do know is that when they tried prosecuting people before under these Regulations they were found, once the CPS looked into it, to have often got it wrong.
All of this is is utterly irrelevant to the political impact, which is what should be concerning Tory MPs. That political impact is two-fold:-
1. The general 2-fingers up approach to the rest of us. 2. The lies in Parliament about it all.
But the idea that the police can cheerfully hand out Fixed Penalty Notices to everyone who was singing Happy Birthday to the PM while they were in the office because "they broke the law" may not survive legal scrutiny by those acting for those in the police's sights.
Lots of people are saying I couldn't have a birthday party etc. But that was because you could not go to someone's home for any sort of celebration. But if you had a reasonable excuse for being somewhere I struggle to see what law was in place which made it a crime to share a cake with the people also at that place of work.
No doubt other lawyers on here will put me right if I've got this wrong.
Interesting as all of this is to those of us without a life, the reality is that Tory MPs need to stop outsourcing their consciences to Sue Gray or the Met and grow a spine.
Was not Carrie Johnson away from home without a reasonable excuse?
Very possibly. It would be richly ironic if she gets fined but not Boris.
PM confirms he has received Sue Gray’s inquiry into partygate this evening. Will make statement in House 3pm tomorrow and take Qs from MPs. Report will be published in entirety
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
Rich (lol) coming from you. You literally admitted that your main political objective was to preserve the wealth of the rich.
Preserve the wealth of everyone not just the rich
That's the same thing. Wealth is relative and thus if you preserve the wealth of the rich, the poor stay poor.
No, most in the middle own property too, sale of council houses even gave many of the poor some real assets for the first time
So? What has that got to do with my point?
Everything, Conservatives try to get even the poor to have assets, socialists want to keep the poor poor and dependent on the state and voting Labour
If you earn £100k and the average salary is £20k, you're rich.
if you still earn £100k but the average salary is now £100k, you're no longer rich.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
I had to do some research once and it showed in an area like Coventry (this was back in 2007) that the ‘school premium’ for house prices was something like 10%. As you said, the wealthier liberals get on their high horse about sending their kids to state schools whilst being able to pay a housing premium plus tutors where appropriate.
If you want to see the scale of the hypocrisy, suggest bussing in of kids from poorer areas into the well performing schools in nice areas to redress equality. The mask quickly slips.
What point are you actually making here?
A fairly simple one to understand. Middle class parents benefit from the current system by being able to game it, whether it by being able to pay for houses in areas with good schools or afford private tutors.
My parents were unemployed. I went to a private school through the Assisted Places Scheme, then Oxbridge and then onwards. If I hadn’t had gone to that school, I would have gone to what was one of the worst comprehensives in Manchester simply based on where we lived.
So yet another private school boy criticising comprehensive schools.
I don't think Mr Ed is criticising Comprehensive schools. His argument is the same as mine, the best fix is random selection by lottery rather than distance from school. That removes any advantage gained from paying 20% extra to live next to the school.
About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
To the off-topicker of this: As you don't see why it is a response to the question, you are too stupid to breathe, never mind contribute usefully to this website.
Also, pretty fucking obvious who you are. Tee.
Mini dick in off topic shock
Mate: nobody knows who you are, except I do, and every time you do this I revise my estimate of the size of your penis down 50%. The other people who do are the mods because they receive an unwelcome email every single time someone hits the off topic button. Which annoys them, understandably.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only. A I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
Nope, I believe in comprehensive schools and selection by lottery (within council boundaries) rather than distance.
I am a conservative and believe in choice, I want more free schools, more grammar schools, more academies, not just one size fits all comprehensives and selection by lottery.
I can think of a specific area where you’re not in favour of choice.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
I had to do some research once and it showed in an area like Coventry (this was back in 2007) that the ‘school premium’ for house prices was something like 10%. As you said, the wealthier liberals get on their high horse about sending their kids to state schools whilst being able to pay a housing premium plus tutors where appropriate.
If you want to see the scale of the hypocrisy, suggest bussing in of kids from poorer areas into the well performing schools in nice areas to redress equality. The mask quickly slips.
What point are you actually making here?
A fairly simple one to understand. Middle class parents benefit from the current system by being able to game it, whether it by being able to pay for houses in areas with good schools or afford private tutors.
My parents were unemployed. I went to a private school through the Assisted Places Scheme, then Oxbridge and then onwards. If I hadn’t had gone to that school, I would have gone to what was one of the worst comprehensives in Manchester simply based on where we lived.
So yet another private school boy criticising comprehensive schools.
So says someone who is obviously some middle class prick who flaunts how he went to the local ‘comp’ and how that makes him so cool. How pathetic.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
I had to do some research once and it showed in an area like Coventry (this was back in 2007) that the ‘school premium’ for house prices was something like 10%. As you said, the wealthier liberals get on their high horse about sending their kids to state schools whilst being able to pay a housing premium plus tutors where appropriate.
If you want to see the scale of the hypocrisy, suggest bussing in of kids from poorer areas into the well performing schools in nice areas to redress equality. The mask quickly slips.
What point are you actually making here?
A fairly simple one to understand. Middle class parents benefit from the current system by being able to game it, whether it by being able to pay for houses in areas with good schools or afford private tutors.
My parents were unemployed. I went to a private school through the Assisted Places Scheme, then Oxbridge and then onwards. If I hadn’t had gone to that school, I would have gone to what was one of the worst comprehensives in Manchester simply based on where we lived.
So yet another private school boy criticising comprehensive schools.
There is no such thing as a genuine comprehensive school, all schools are different with different intakes and some better than others.
Same as supermarkets vary from Waitrose to Sainsburys to Asda, Tesco and Lidl and in the customers who go to them
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
Rich (lol) coming from you. You literally admitted that your main political objective was to preserve the wealth of the rich.
Preserve the wealth of everyone not just the rich
That's the same thing. Wealth is relative and thus if you preserve the wealth of the rich, the poor stay poor.
No, most in the middle own property too, sale of council houses even gave many of the poor some real assets for the first time
So? What has that got to do with my point?
Everything, Conservatives try to get even the poor to have assets, socialists want to keep the poor poor and dependent on the state and voting Labour
If you earn £100k and the average salary is £20k, you're rich.
if you still earn £100k but the average salary is now £100k, you're no longer rich.
But if you did earn £20k and now you earn £100k, but the rich now earn £300k, you're still poor.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
I had to do some research once and it showed in an area like Coventry (this was back in 2007) that the ‘school premium’ for house prices was something like 10%. As you said, the wealthier liberals get on their high horse about sending their kids to state schools whilst being able to pay a housing premium plus tutors where appropriate.
If you want to see the scale of the hypocrisy, suggest bussing in of kids from poorer areas into the well performing schools in nice areas to redress equality. The mask quickly slips.
What point are you actually making here?
A fairly simple one to understand. Middle class parents benefit from the current system by being able to game it, whether it by being able to pay for houses in areas with good schools or afford private tutors.
My parents were unemployed. I went to a private school through the Assisted Places Scheme, then Oxbridge and then onwards. If I hadn’t had gone to that school, I would have gone to what was one of the worst comprehensives in Manchester simply based on where we lived.
So yet another private school boy criticising comprehensive schools.
So says someone who is obviously some middle class prick who flaunts how he went to the local ‘comp’ and how that makes him so cool. How pathetic.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
What about an inadequate private school or grammar school?
According to HY they are still head and shoulders better than a well run Comp.
The Crypt School in Gloucester was infamously bad when I was growing up, with results barely above those of Newent, St Peter’s and Chosen Hill, well below those of Balcarras.
But, oddly, that never seemed to affect recruitment. It may have been lucky that the nearest comps - Oxstalls, Beaudesert and Severn Vale - were not brilliant themselves.
I went on a geography A level field trip to Orielton in Pembrokeshire, on the course were some students from the Crypt. They seemed more interested in bunking off to the pub, which was very much against the rules.
I went to the superb Woodrush High School in Hollywood, Worcs. in the 1970s. It was well funded, it was in a good catchment area, it was full of young enthusiastic dynamic teachers, and the results were excellent. Now it's a dreary academy. You know the Grammar School I went to and I hated every moment I spent there, and the academic results weren't as clever as all that. 100% passes in O level Chemistry was achieved by anyone who might fail being pulled from the exam.
HY is talking through his partisan backside.
Throwing children on a scrap heap at 11 is immoral. Fund mainstream education properly and the world would be a better place. Academies are not that model.
Utter rubbish.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
Thank you for your kind words.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
Of course there is also entry at 13 and 16 to grammars, not just 11.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
You believe in selective schools and sink schools. I'm alright Jack, I'm on the bus, Conductor ring the bell.
You believe in selection by house price and vicar's reference in the state sector and selection by parents wallet to get into private schools only.
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
I had to do some research once and it showed in an area like Coventry (this was back in 2007) that the ‘school premium’ for house prices was something like 10%. As you said, the wealthier liberals get on their high horse about sending their kids to state schools whilst being able to pay a housing premium plus tutors where appropriate.
If you want to see the scale of the hypocrisy, suggest bussing in of kids from poorer areas into the well performing schools in nice areas to redress equality. The mask quickly slips.
What point are you actually making here?
A fairly simple one to understand. Middle class parents benefit from the current system by being able to game it, whether it by being able to pay for houses in areas with good schools or afford private tutors.
My parents were unemployed. I went to a private school through the Assisted Places Scheme, then Oxbridge and then onwards. If I hadn’t had gone to that school, I would have gone to what was one of the worst comprehensives in Manchester simply based on where we lived.
So yet another private school boy criticising comprehensive schools.
I don't think Mr Ed is criticising Comprehensive schools. His argument is the same as mine, the best fix is random selection by lottery rather than distance from school. That removes any advantage gained from paying 20% extra to live next to the school.
Comments
In terms of a career, cricket is a crap opportunity, compared to especially football. Unless you make it to IPL / international level, the money is utter garbage, so much so players regularly supplement their income with other jobs or not having an off-season (rather going to the southern hemisphere to play as a pro). Rugby also now pays really well.
And it was only a month or so ago that Panorama did a whole piece on how football agents are signing up young, especially black kids, where they tour all the "cages" and sign them up and the the EPL academy system hoovers up all the talent it can find, as only getting 1-2 good players a year pays for the whole thing.
Also remember if you sign up to an EPL academy they have a huge say on what you can get involved in outside of this (if you even had time). I have a family friend whose kid is currently in one, and before they played every sport going, no it is just football and only academy. No local club, no school, just academy. I also have another family friend who made it, when they signed at 16, they weren't even allowed to continue to play thing like golf (which they were very good at).
The same thing is happening in the West Indies, but it is US sports and athletics that hoovers up the talent.
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
If you live in a poor seaside town or ex industrial area or deprived part of an inner city and had poor parents who were not graduates getting into a grammar school was probably your only chance of getting into a top university and professional career.
Now we don't have selection by IQ, in the state sector we have selection by catchment area and house price and church attendance instead
I'm not joking, HCPT banned it because its likely some children are missing limbs.
In this case, people would pull the carriage by hand to get them to the border.
Nothing has really changed and won’t.
It’s down to Tory MPs: put up or shut you pathetic ditherers.
https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/04/01/taking-liberties/
WTAF???
Also, pretty fucking obvious who you are. Tee.
They consider lockdown gatherings in No 10 to have been part of a "household bubble".
They do not seem to grasp public anger.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/conservatives/2022/01/boris-johnson-is-entering-his-moment-of-greatest-peril https://twitter.com/harrytlambert/status/1486068501509021698/photo/1
There was no need for that to happen.
With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about.
Your love of Grammar Schools is simply down to your ideology. The 11 plus is not the best way to educate a nation.
I don't know what is the best way, but I know a pup when I see one.
NEW: Rishi Sunak accidentally went to Boris Johnson's No 10 birthday event
I'm told he was present when the birthday cake was served but was unaware it was going to happen as he'd gone to the room specifically for COVID strategy committee meeting.
Mother of God. Another one. How long was he there? Did he sing? Did he consume anything?
It sounds lethal. They couldn’t move safely round the building without dangers of coming across a party.
A universal return to grammars is not likely but there should certainly at least be ballots allowed to open new grammars, not just close them.
Especially in poorer and more deprived areas where they are most needed. As a Tory I believe in choice, that includes private schools, free schools, academies and grammar schools too
It remains theoretically possible it could be published and the PM faces the Commons tomorrow but not in time for PMQs.
But starting to sound like Thursday is more likely
https://twitter.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1486087114613735425?s=20
Poor Dom, aimed to bring down Boris but has now caught Rishi in the crossfire too
Rugby used to be like that, but now as a fully professional sport that pays well, its becoming much more diverse.
Tennis is another good example. There was a really good video with Liam Broady saying if you aren't top 100, you aren't making any real money out of tennis. He's 128th in the world and still can't afford his own house, and says he relies on making it through the first round of a major each year to just afford his strength and conditioning coach.
How could he afford to even consider this as a career...well a clue might be his middle name is Tarquin and his dad sold the family home to pay for him.
Love this:
https://twitter.com/ladbible/status/1486011229701394432?s=20
I'm alright jack if you have middle class parents, no chance of getting on if you have poor parents and live in a poor area and your parents don't go to church. You could have gone to a grammar in the past if bright enough, now your only choice is likely an inadequate or requires improvement comprehensive or academy
Carrie can hardly resign as First Wife can she?
https://t.co/LrlnyzyNIp
If you are only average or crap at sport, education is obviously far more important as you have zero chance of a professional sports career but your education level will likely determine your future earnings. You can still play sport for fun or fitness but grades come first
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1486091522395283461
If you want to see the scale of the hypocrisy, suggest bussing in of kids from poorer areas into the well performing schools in nice areas to redress equality. The mask quickly slips.
It's so often the case in politics and political debate "the truth" doesn't matter very much - it's what people believe to be the truth that matters - we've seen this with the coronavirus and now we see this with the Prime Minister's travails.
It doesn't matter if the letter of the law says Boris Johnson did no wrong - the fact is millions of people were unable to spend time physically with loved ones, family members, work colleagues (almost as important to some it seems) because they were voluntarily obeying "guidelines" and "advice" from the medical experts and re-enforced by the political leadership and Oliver Dowden.
People took this action partly from fear (in truth) and partly because they were and remain respectful law-abiding members of society who do follow the rules (even if at times they find such rules irksome). This caused huge amounts of misery, distress, discomfort and plain ordinary hurt.
Now, it seems while all this was going on those who were encouraging us to live by the rules and follow the guidelines were themselves carrying on as though there was no virus, no problem and life was as normal. I can well imagine the pressure cooker atmosphere of Government from mid-March 2020 onward, the stress, the tension as the truth of rising case numbers, deaths and overcrowded hospitals was being fed through every day.
I get that - except none of it matters. Living "by the rules" isn't just a maxim or an adage - it's something everyone has to do and even if you think you've done nothing wrong, the perception of what you have done - how it appears to those who denied themselves the time and contact with loved ones they wanted because they were following the rules on which you were pronouncing daily - you can see how awkward that might look.
Probably not the best room for a surprise party?
True levelling up means demand goes down in London (and up in the regions) and that means lower house prices and lower salaries.
An ursine arboreal habit level revelation.
Aside from updates on the visible effects of Faustian pacts, interesting programme.
Once we knew the key phrases required to get into the local catholic secondary school we've helped plenty of others get in as well.
Cricket, if you only make it to county cricket, again, no you will be on crap money. Minimum county cricket salary is £24k a year. Its only if you make it to international or IPL level that you can make real money.
And if they are not liars they they are literally saying that the Prime Minister was imposing the most extreme measures every taken outside of war time on the whole population and he had literally no fucking idea what these rules meant or entailed or required of individuals.
Talk about living in an elite, entitled, metropolitan bubble.
Or fucking Versailles.
Or so I've been told.
https://twitter.com/Nigella_Lawson/status/1486092328867663877
Farm workers in Portugal appear to have been working illegally long hours picking berries destined for Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Waitrose for less than the minimum wage, according to a Guardian investigation.
Speaking anonymously, for fear of retribution from their employers, workers claimed the hours listed on their payslips were often fewer than the hours they had actually worked.
The workers, mostly from south Asia, are the backbone of Portugal’s £200m berry industry, which employs upwards of 10,000 migrants.
They have been drawn to the country by immigration laws that allow foreigners of all nationalities to gain legal status (and eventually citizenship) through full-time employment and the payment of taxes.
While they dream of what some jokingly call the “raspberry passport”, many migrant workers fear changing jobs would nullify their residency application, despite what they describe as exploitative conditions.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/25/workers-paid-less-than-minimum-wage-to-pick-berries-allegedly-sold-in-uk-supermarkets
So why can't Portugal recruit any of those Eastern Europeans that are supposedly now available because of Brexit ?
Perhaps because none of them wants to be exploited when there are better opportunities.
My parents were unemployed. I went to a private school through the Assisted Places Scheme, then Oxbridge and then onwards. If I hadn’t had gone to that school, I would have gone to what was one of the worst comprehensives in Manchester simply based on where we lived.
https://twitter.com/lmharpin/status/1486094264593436684
Why did news about the parties break when it did (early December)?
Many people (including Big Bad Dom) knew this information on parties before. They could have destroyed Boris any time they chose.
It basically broke when Boris was considering whether to reimpose stringent restrictions because of the emerging Omicron threat.
Is that why?
if you still earn £100k but the average salary is now £100k, you're no longer rich.
Mate: nobody knows who you are, except I do, and every time you do this I revise my estimate of the size of your penis down 50%. The other people who do are the mods because they receive an unwelcome email every single time someone hits the off topic button. Which annoys them, understandably.
Same as supermarkets vary from Waitrose to Sainsburys to Asda, Tesco and Lidl and in the customers who go to them
NEW THREAD