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Might Southend West not be a total certainty for the Tories? – politicalbetting.com

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  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    WHY IS IT ALL SO DULL

    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.
    You are a pain in the arse, but do keep posting Auden and Exorcism references. They are very enjoyable.
    Was it you who upset Z? 😠
    Who is Z?
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 8,243
    HYUFD said:

    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.

    Carrie can hardly resign as First Second Third Wife can she?
    Fixed it for you
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,497

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    WHY IS IT ALL SO DULL

    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.
    You are a pain in the arse, but do keep posting Auden and Exorcism references. They are very enjoyable.
    Was it you who upset Z? 😠
    Who is Z?
    In the ancient pits they would hang them from their tits.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 8,243

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:


    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.
    Wealth is absolute
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