Ah great, another outing for "what does working class mean?"
It is an interesting question. Is it about money? - you're working class if you don't have any. Or occupation? - you're working class if your job isn't white collar professional managerial. Or culture? - you're working class if you have "working class values" (tbd).
My view is it's about money. The "occupation" test doesn't fit for how the workplace is these days. And the "values" test is too soft and allows too much bullshit into the equation. So, it's money, pure and simple. You're working class - regardless of whether you actually work - if you don't have much capital and your income is modest or low. All such people are working class and nobody else is.
To stress test this:
A bloke called Frank who's been a labourer for 25 years, just about managing, wins the lottery. No, let's make it more heartwarming, he gets an acca up on the horses and it pays out £2m.
And at about the same time -
Prince Andrew loses everything but his title. Gets kicked out of Windsor Castle and starts a new life on Universal Credit in Slough. Is allocated a bedsit and has £50 a week for extras like food and heating.
Has Frank ceased to be working class? Has Prince Andrew (and he is still a Prince remember) immediately *become* working class?
The answer to both is Yes.
The stress test is passed. My definition is the one to go with.
No it is not just about money.
In most countries it is about money and wealth and to some extent education level too.
In the UK however money is just a small factor in it, birth is also important and where you went to school also matters. Alan Sugar and David Beckham for example will never be posher than the Duke of Richmond even if they are now richer than him.
Prince Andrew even if he lived in a bedsit on UC would still be posher than Frank the labourer even if Frank won the lottery and became much richer than him
I think this is too woolly. Money clarifies. But we can reconcile your view to mine by uncoupling 'class' from 'background'. Most of what you're talking about is relevant to background and somebody's background is very often different to their class.
Me, for example. I have a working class background - since my family met the acid test of "little or no capital, low to modest income" - but I myself am not working class since I fail that test myself.
It's really easy, this, once you get the hang of it.
You are still working class by background even if you yourself are now middle class
Subtle but absolutely vital edit - I'm not working class by background, I'm not working class at all, only my background is. My background is working class. I am not working class. This formulation successfully uncouples 'background' from 'person'.
So, back to the link to politics - which is the point of this - the priority for government (imo) should be serving the interests of people like I used to be not of people like I am now.
Dodgy PM lies to Parliament over a grave matter of life and death. Mass protests on the streets. Civil war within the Party, poison dripping from every unofficial briefing from “unnamed sources” and more than a few named ones. A perception of cronyism and financial grubbiness takes hold. Rising voter unease at the high tax burden, growing government debt and economist forecasts of an increase in interest rates of 200 or even 300 bps to come. This is what happens when a PM who has become almost bigger than his party is gifted such a massive majority. He swans about the world playing toy soldiers to massage his own ego and disguise domestic shortcomings, with his chancellor littering deficit funded goodies in the direction of his core vote. A mood builds among an angry minority that the man in Downing St would be more appropriately housed behind bars.
The Government then loses +800 seats at local elections, only two years before the next general, as unspectacular and uninspiring leader of oppo soaks up 500+ new seats. And look, even the Lib Dems are on the up.
And…. two years later Tony Blair wins a reduced but comfortable majority at the 2005 general election.
In that example, the PM lost just under 50 seats; a reduction in almost 100 off of his majority.
That'd leave Johnson right back where he started, in a painfully Hung Parliament, but with the DUP unlikely to be large enough to give him confidence and supply. During a period of stagflation and cost of living crisis.
That might not turn out well for the Conservative Party.
🟨 SNP 25.9% (19 seats, 30.2% of seats) 🟧 Lib Dem 20.5% (12 seats, 19%) 🟥 Labour 19.1% (13 seats, 20.6%) 🟦 Conservative 17.5% (9 seats, 14.3%) 🟩 Green 14.2% (10 seats, 19%) ⬛ Other 1.9% (0 seats) ⬜ Independents 0.9% (0)
I believe this is a partial glimpse into the transfers. Don't read too much into the overrepresentation of the SNP, that can come about from being the largest party. Look instead down the list at the Conservatives and Greens. I have a strong suspicion that we're seeing transfers across the union/indy divide more than previously, and unionist tactical voting reduced. Simply: Labour and Lib Dems favouring Greens more and Conservative less than last time.
Caveat: still just a hunch; I haven't dug into the data properly and this is just one council.
There is no question that the Tories were a lot less transfer friendly this time than in the last several elections. Anger at Boris, the fading memory of Ruth, the inconsistencies of Ross and a budget that in the face of a cost of living crisis did not seem to give a damn about the least well off all sickened people. The Tory brand has been retoxified and the price for that in Scotland with its STV and other proportional systems is going to be particularly high.
Are you sure? I'd arsgue that the Scottish setup is actually quite Tory-friendly; the Tories have clung on in ways which would be impossible in full FPTP systems, even to the extent of having senior MSPs totally dependent on the list system for being there in Holyrood at all. Just look at Ms-as-was Davidson and Prof Tomkins - only some of the time did she, at least, have a FPTP seat.
Quite agree, devolution, Holyrood and various associated voting systems have been the making of SCons, more so than the Ruth effect or whatever. Their negativity towards all or some of these things strikes me as most ungrateful.
Without STV this lad wouldn't have been elected in the first place to one of the poorest wards in Glasgow, let alone reelected when his colleagues were being flushed down the toilet all over Scotland.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
In case you hadn't noticed, there are no Cs at GCSE any more.
Also I didn't know anyone with an A* when I was there, let alone straight A*s.
I did know lots of people with 2 E offers.
I had one friend who went to Warwick with a 2 Es offer after failing to get a place at Cambridge. None from my school got the offer of 2 Es for Oxbridge. I'm guessing they had prowess in sport or music?
It was back in the days of fourth-term entrance; you did three entrance exams set by Oxford and if they still liked you after the interview(s) then you got an "unconditional" (in practice 2 E) offer.
It made for an unstressed Y13 after Christmas...
And 2/3 of Oxbridge students got straight A*s anyway
Nope: none of those with a 2 E offer did.
Actually I know someone with an E grade offer who did indeed still get straight A*s.
And the 2 E offer is rarely given to more than a small minority of those given Oxbridge offers. The standard offer is normally at least 2 or 3 A* grades
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
Not posh enough for some people, I see.
OK if you would like to be operated on or defended in court or have a big commercial deal negotiated by someone with 2 E grades at A level, C grade gcses and a 2.2 from a new university, be my guest
Actually given ages you probably are today. At A levels 1979/80 I had lots of friends who applied to do architecture and got places with Ds and Es they will have built some bg buildings by now. I cant see why lawyers will be much different.
Yes but we did not have new universities back then and just 10% were graduates not 40% like now and an E grade at A level then would likely be a C grade now and a C grade then would probably be an A now and an A then would now be an A* thanks to grade inflation
Better teaching as well as grade inflation. Mr Chips had no interactive whiteboard and had not even heard of spaced repetition, though perhaps the best teachers did it anyway. Better-motivated students too.
Not so much better teaching as teaching how to pass exams more effectively. Much more emphasis on revision techniques and past paper work, less time to go off on an interesting tangent.
🟨 SNP 25.9% (19 seats, 30.2% of seats) 🟧 Lib Dem 20.5% (12 seats, 19%) 🟥 Labour 19.1% (13 seats, 20.6%) 🟦 Conservative 17.5% (9 seats, 14.3%) 🟩 Green 14.2% (10 seats, 19%) ⬛ Other 1.9% (0 seats) ⬜ Independents 0.9% (0)
I believe this is a partial glimpse into the transfers. Don't read too much into the overrepresentation of the SNP, that can come about from being the largest party. Look instead down the list at the Conservatives and Greens. I have a strong suspicion that we're seeing transfers across the union/indy divide more than previously, and unionist tactical voting reduced. Simply: Labour and Lib Dems favouring Greens more and Conservative less than last time.
Caveat: still just a hunch; I haven't dug into the data properly and this is just one council.
There is no question that the Tories were a lot less transfer friendly this time than in the last several elections. Anger at Boris, the fading memory of Ruth, the inconsistencies of Ross and a budget that in the face of a cost of living crisis did not seem to give a damn about the least well off all sickened people. The Tory brand has been retoxified and the price for that in Scotland with its STV and other proportional systems is going to be particularly high.
Are you sure? I'd arsgue that the Scottish setup is actually quite Tory-friendly; the Tories have clung on in ways which would be impossible in full FPTP systems, even to the extent of having senior MSPs totally dependent on the list system for being there in Holyrood at all. Just look at Ms-as-was Davidson and Prof Tomkins - only some of the time did she, at least, have a FPTP seat.
It is true that the Scottish systems are friendly to minority voices. Under FPTP there would not be a single Green, for example. But the extent of that friendliness depends on you not being beyond the pale as a second choice. As the leaders of the Unionist cause the Tories have managed that for the best part of a decade but I fear no longer. On present trends the number of list MSPs for the Tories at the next election could collapse.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
Not posh enough for some people, I see.
OK if you would like to be operated on or defended in court or have a big commercial deal negotiated by someone with 2 E grades at A level, C grade gcses and a 2.2 from a new university, be my guest
Actually given ages you probably are today. At A levels 1979/80 I had lots of friends who applied to do architecture and got places with Ds and Es they will have built some bg buildings by now. I cant see why lawyers will be much different.
Yes but we did not have new universities back then and just 10% were graduates not 40% like now and an E grade at A level then would likely be a C grade now and a C grade then would probably be an A now and an A then would now be an A* thanks to grade inflation
We had Polytechs which were places where people actually had to do work. I did a language degree and got my classes down to 8 hours a week. The occasional essay and translation disturbed an otherwise tranquil week.
Polytechnics did vocational practical courses, now most of them are universities doing academic degrees not what they were created for
Of course. So would you rather have been served by someone trained in their vocation or a social science grad who is picking it up as they go along ?
🟨 SNP 25.9% (19 seats, 30.2% of seats) 🟧 Lib Dem 20.5% (12 seats, 19%) 🟥 Labour 19.1% (13 seats, 20.6%) 🟦 Conservative 17.5% (9 seats, 14.3%) 🟩 Green 14.2% (10 seats, 19%) ⬛ Other 1.9% (0 seats) ⬜ Independents 0.9% (0)
I believe this is a partial glimpse into the transfers. Don't read too much into the overrepresentation of the SNP, that can come about from being the largest party. Look instead down the list at the Conservatives and Greens. I have a strong suspicion that we're seeing transfers across the union/indy divide more than previously, and unionist tactical voting reduced. Simply: Labour and Lib Dems favouring Greens more and Conservative less than last time.
Caveat: still just a hunch; I haven't dug into the data properly and this is just one council.
There is no question that the Tories were a lot less transfer friendly this time than in the last several elections. Anger at Boris, the fading memory of Ruth, the inconsistencies of Ross and a budget that in the face of a cost of living crisis did not seem to give a damn about the least well off all sickened people. The Tory brand has been retoxified and the price for that in Scotland with its STV and other proportional systems is going to be particularly high.
Are you sure? I'd arsgue that the Scottish setup is actually quite Tory-friendly; the Tories have clung on in ways which would be impossible in full FPTP systems, even to the extent of having senior MSPs totally dependent on the list system for being there in Holyrood at all. Just look at Ms-as-was Davidson and Prof Tomkins - only some of the time did she, at least, have a FPTP seat.
It is true that the Scottish systems are friendly to minority voices. Under FPTP there would not be a single Green, for example. But the extent of that friendliness depends on you not being beyond the pale as a second choice. As the leaders of the Unionist cause the Tories have managed that for the best part of a decade but I fear no longer. On present trends the number of list MSPs for the Tories at the next election could collapse.
Thanks. That's actually very pessimistic - I normally think of the ScoTories as having a hard core of about 22%. But the new BUP and events in NI might, I suppose, attack them further from the right.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
In case you hadn't noticed, there are no Cs at GCSE any more.
Also I didn't know anyone with an A* when I was there, let alone straight A*s.
I did know lots of people with 2 E offers.
I had one friend who went to Warwick with a 2 Es offer after failing to get a place at Cambridge. None from my school got the offer of 2 Es for Oxbridge. I'm guessing they had prowess in sport or music?
It was back in the days of fourth-term entrance; you did three entrance exams set by Oxford and if they still liked you after the interview(s) then you got an "unconditional" (in practice 2 E) offer.
It made for an unstressed Y13 after Christmas...
And 2/3 of Oxbridge students got straight A*s anyway
Nope: none of those with a 2 E offer did.
Actually I know someone with an E grade offer who did indeed still get straight A*s.
And the 2 E offer is rarely given to more than a small minority of those given Oxbridge offers. The standard offer is normally at least 2 or 3 A* grades
The entrance exam was phased out in 1997; the A* was introduced in 2010.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
In case you hadn't noticed, there are no Cs at GCSE any more.
Also I didn't know anyone with an A* when I was there, let alone straight A*s.
I did know lots of people with 2 E offers.
I had one friend who went to Warwick with a 2 Es offer after failing to get a place at Cambridge. None from my school got the offer of 2 Es for Oxbridge. I'm guessing they had prowess in sport or music?
It was back in the days of fourth-term entrance; you did three entrance exams set by Oxford and if they still liked you after the interview(s) then you got an "unconditional" (in practice 2 E) offer.
It made for an unstressed Y13 after Christmas...
And 2/3 of Oxbridge students got straight A*s anyway
Nope: none of those with a 2 E offer did.
Actually I know someone with an E grade offer who did indeed still get straight A*s.
And the 2 E offer is rarely given to more than a small minority of those given Oxbridge offers. The standard offer is normally at least 2 or 3 A* grades
The entrance exam was phased out in 1997; the A* was introduced in 2010.
E grade offers are still given in a few cases even without the entrance exam. Plus the most popular courses like law now have their own entry tests too as has been mentioned
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
Not posh enough for some people, I see.
OK if you would like to be operated on or defended in court or have a big commercial deal negotiated by someone with 2 E grades at A level, C grade gcses and a 2.2 from a new university, be my guest
OH, s\o you would rather be dealt with by a posh incompetent than someone who knew the job?!
I believe there was/is an etiquette where doctors are always operated on by consultants. My wife made the point that if she was to have her appendix out she would rather it taken out by someone whipping them out day after day.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
Not posh enough for some people, I see.
OK if you would like to be operated on or defended in court or have a big commercial deal negotiated by someone with 2 E grades at A level, C grade gcses and a 2.2 from a new university, be my guest
OH, s\o you would rather be dealt with by a posh incompetent than someone who knew the job?!
Clearly you would rather be dealt with by an incompetent full stop, posh or not
You're misreading. I want a competent. I don't give a shite if they are cringing Royalists with a MBE that went to Christchurch at Oxford*.
*Friend of mine did. But, despite that, he's highly competent at his profession.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
Not posh enough for some people, I see.
OK if you would like to be operated on or defended in court or have a big commercial deal negotiated by someone with 2 E grades at A level, C grade gcses and a 2.2 from a new university, be my guest
Actually given ages you probably are today. At A levels 1979/80 I had lots of friends who applied to do architecture and got places with Ds and Es they will have built some bg buildings by now. I cant see why lawyers will be much different.
Yes but we did not have new universities back then and just 10% were graduates not 40% like now and an E grade at A level then would likely be a C grade now and a C grade then would probably be an A now and an A then would now be an A* thanks to grade inflation
We had Polytechs which were places where people actually had to do work. I did a language degree and got my classes down to 8 hours a week. The occasional essay and translation disturbed an otherwise tranquil week.
Polytechnics did vocational practical courses, now most of them are universities doing academic degrees not what they were created for
Of course. So would you rather have been served by someone trained in their vocation or a social science grad who is picking it up as they go along ?
A social science graduate with top grade GCSES and A levels who did a Russell Group degree and the law conversion course where they did well in I would certainly prefer over someone with a 2.2 from a new university as my lawyer.
Polytechnics did practical courses for trades rather than academic degrees and that is what they were good at
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
In case you hadn't noticed, there are no Cs at GCSE any more.
Also I didn't know anyone with an A* when I was there, let alone straight A*s.
I did know lots of people with 2 E offers.
I had one friend who went to Warwick with a 2 Es offer after failing to get a place at Cambridge. None from my school got the offer of 2 Es for Oxbridge. I'm guessing they had prowess in sport or music?
It was back in the days of fourth-term entrance; you did three entrance exams set by Oxford and if they still liked you after the interview(s) then you got an "unconditional" (in practice 2 E) offer.
It made for an unstressed Y13 after Christmas...
And 2/3 of Oxbridge students got straight A*s anyway
Nope: none of those with a 2 E offer did.
Actually I know someone with an E grade offer who did indeed still get straight A*s.
And the 2 E offer is rarely given to more than a small minority of those given Oxbridge offers. The standard offer is normally at least 2 or 3 A* grades
The entrance exam was phased out in 1997; the A* was introduced in 2010.
E grade offers are still given in a few cases even without the entrance exam
But not a matter of routine.
There would have to be truly exceptional circumstances for Oxbridge to do that, though there was spate of universities making such offers to students as long as they made them their first choice. This made sense for the university as it gave them certainty when planning, but it induced too many Y13s to opt for a course they would not have chosen otherwise. Schools didn't like it either as it is difficult to motivate a student to do their best when they only need two Es.
Lots of graduates on here wanting to remove the ladder for future generations of graduates, I suspect.
For what it's worth, the only degree courses I'd ban would be Business Studies and related subjects. Absolute waste of time both intellectually and in terms of future productivity. Much more useless than Sociology, Media Studies, History, 18th Century Peruvian Literature etc.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
Not posh enough for some people, I see.
OK if you would like to be operated on or defended in court or have a big commercial deal negotiated by someone with 2 E grades at A level, C grade gcses and a 2.2 from a new university, be my guest
OH, s\o you would rather be dealt with by a posh incompetent than someone who knew the job?!
Clearly you would rather be dealt with by an incompetent full stop, posh or not
You're misreading. I want a competent. I don't give a shite if they are cringing Royalists with a MBE that went to Christchurch at Oxford*.
*Friend of mine did. But, despite that, he's highly competent at his profession.
You just said you would be perfectly happy to be operated on by a surgeon who had got no better than C grade GCSEs, 2 E grade A levels and a 2.2 from a new university.
Money ALWAYS comes into play - but yes you're exactly right that defining 'working class' is about what you're going to do with the definition when you have it.
Eg I need to define what 'working class' means in order to make sense of my core political belief - that the priority objective of government should be shifting wealth and opportunity towards the working class. You have to know what the 'working class' is if you're going to run with that.
I think I would suggest that you'd be better off rephrasing your priority objective as "shifting wealth to the less well-off" rather than setting a definition of "working-class" to match what you're really trying to achieve. It makes your aims clearer to others, and avoids the risk that the wider cultural definition of 'working class' bleeds back in and results in policies being mis-targeted, for instance.
I also like the 'money' metric because it gets rid of so much clutter. It's interesting to talk about things like accents and clothes and table habits etc, and they do matter in life, but they don't relate to the above hard policy objective.
It gets rid of clutter by chopping away a lot of the key parts of the phenomenon of 'class', though. Personally I tend to think that class as it is experienced is largely cultural, and it correlates strongly with wealth (for systematic reasons) but isn't defined by it.
Grayson Perry's observation that the cafetiere is an icon of middle-classness is spot-on, incidentally.
🟨 SNP 25.9% (19 seats, 30.2% of seats) 🟧 Lib Dem 20.5% (12 seats, 19%) 🟥 Labour 19.1% (13 seats, 20.6%) 🟦 Conservative 17.5% (9 seats, 14.3%) 🟩 Green 14.2% (10 seats, 19%) ⬛ Other 1.9% (0 seats) ⬜ Independents 0.9% (0)
I believe this is a partial glimpse into the transfers. Don't read too much into the overrepresentation of the SNP, that can come about from being the largest party. Look instead down the list at the Conservatives and Greens. I have a strong suspicion that we're seeing transfers across the union/indy divide more than previously, and unionist tactical voting reduced. Simply: Labour and Lib Dems favouring Greens more and Conservative less than last time.
Caveat: still just a hunch; I haven't dug into the data properly and this is just one council.
There is no question that the Tories were a lot less transfer friendly this time than in the last several elections. Anger at Boris, the fading memory of Ruth, the inconsistencies of Ross and a budget that in the face of a cost of living crisis did not seem to give a damn about the least well off all sickened people. The Tory brand has been retoxified and the price for that in Scotland with its STV and other proportional systems is going to be particularly high.
Are you sure? I'd arsgue that the Scottish setup is actually quite Tory-friendly; the Tories have clung on in ways which would be impossible in full FPTP systems, even to the extent of having senior MSPs totally dependent on the list system for being there in Holyrood at all. Just look at Ms-as-was Davidson and Prof Tomkins - only some of the time did she, at least, have a FPTP seat.
It is true that the Scottish systems are friendly to minority voices. Under FPTP there would not be a single Green, for example. But the extent of that friendliness depends on you not being beyond the pale as a second choice. As the leaders of the Unionist cause the Tories have managed that for the best part of a decade but I fear no longer. On present trends the number of list MSPs for the Tories at the next election could collapse.
Thanks. That's actually very pessimistic - I normally think of the ScoTories as having a hard core of about 22%. But the new BUP and events in NI might, I suppose, attack them further from the right.
I am not so worried about attacks from the right but the Scottish Tories have a lot of serious thinking to do. I think that they need to break away from the UK party (albeit still sit with them in Westminster), make it clear that Holyrood is the centre of their existence and start developing policies that reflect that which go beyond no to a second referendum.
I have a strong interest in education. I really have no idea how the Tories plan to fix the current mess of Scottish schools and Universities. Only party obsessives will because they don't talk about it.
How do we attract consultants to Scotland when they have to pay higher taxes here? What should be done about the desperately underfunded care sector? Most importantly, how do we start to repair the Scottish economy so that there is enough money to address these other problems? How do we attract the inward investment we so desperately need? How do we improve our skills base so that it is competitive and attractive?
Scotland desperately needs some new ideas and thoughts to replace a failing government that survives on the neverendum principle. I would love it if Labour did the same.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
HYUFD is that you?
Utter classist rubbish. Education is the key to a civil society. Right wing populists demanding education only for the elites (generally themselves) reminds me why I have never voted Conservative.
I also disagree the middle class is only the highest 10% of earners.
The middle class is defined now as about 50% of the population ie upper middle class ABs and lower middle class C1s. You can be AB even if not in the top 10% of earners if a professional still and C1 basically as long as you have a job which is not manual labour
Broadly, I'd define the middle class (in the British, not the American sense) as about 25% of the population. A lot of very ill-paid jobs don't involve manual labour.
This stirs a very dim memory of Are You Being Served? where the porter explains his higher wages than Mr Lucas as the penalty you pay for calling yourself middle-class.
🟨 SNP 25.9% (19 seats, 30.2% of seats) 🟧 Lib Dem 20.5% (12 seats, 19%) 🟥 Labour 19.1% (13 seats, 20.6%) 🟦 Conservative 17.5% (9 seats, 14.3%) 🟩 Green 14.2% (10 seats, 19%) ⬛ Other 1.9% (0 seats) ⬜ Independents 0.9% (0)
I believe this is a partial glimpse into the transfers. Don't read too much into the overrepresentation of the SNP, that can come about from being the largest party. Look instead down the list at the Conservatives and Greens. I have a strong suspicion that we're seeing transfers across the union/indy divide more than previously, and unionist tactical voting reduced. Simply: Labour and Lib Dems favouring Greens more and Conservative less than last time.
Caveat: still just a hunch; I haven't dug into the data properly and this is just one council.
There is no question that the Tories were a lot less transfer friendly this time than in the last several elections. Anger at Boris, the fading memory of Ruth, the inconsistencies of Ross and a budget that in the face of a cost of living crisis did not seem to give a damn about the least well off all sickened people. The Tory brand has been retoxified and the price for that in Scotland with its STV and other proportional systems is going to be particularly high.
Are you sure? I'd arsgue that the Scottish setup is actually quite Tory-friendly; the Tories have clung on in ways which would be impossible in full FPTP systems, even to the extent of having senior MSPs totally dependent on the list system for being there in Holyrood at all. Just look at Ms-as-was Davidson and Prof Tomkins - only some of the time did she, at least, have a FPTP seat.
It is true that the Scottish systems are friendly to minority voices. Under FPTP there would not be a single Green, for example. But the extent of that friendliness depends on you not being beyond the pale as a second choice. As the leaders of the Unionist cause the Tories have managed that for the best part of a decade but I fear no longer. On present trends the number of list MSPs for the Tories at the next election could collapse.
I don't think the Scots Conservatives came out of it too badly (in terms of seats). They were only down 20%.
South of the Border, I wonder if the Conservatives will add Croydon Borough Council to the Mayoralty. Six London boroughs would be far from the worst result for London Conservatives in my lifetime.
Very quickly away from beer gate and the local elections - COVID. It looks like it really is over in the UK. The ONS survey is matching the weekly drops seen in the dashboard, just from a higher base. The advanced data says prevalence for thus week is ~1 in 45 in England which would be around 80k per day being infected and falling rapidly.
This can also be seen in the hospitalisation data. The government deserves a lot of credit for ignoring the "experts" in the WHO and across Europe and ploughing ahead with reopening and not having a lockdown or shutdown over the winter because of Omicron.
We're not going on holiday anywhere this summer but I'm really a lot less bothered than I thought, firstly excitement for the baby but also every time I think about going to Europe I get the general sense of foreboding that I'll be going back into a country that still has all of the COVID shite with masks and passes. We met some Italian friends last night and they were shocked at how few people bother with masks and how my wife doesn't bother with them despite being pregnant. They said in Italy mask compliance on public transport is still 100% and indoors in optional places it's close to it. They still scan QR codes etc... We asked them to what end given that in a similarly sized country like the UK having no restrictions hasn't made any difference but they were adamant that Italy has it right and we have it wrong. There was an almost religious response to criticism of ongoing COVID measures so we dropped it.
I fear that countries which made COVID measures part of the fabric of life are going to struggle to remove them. People in these countries seem scared to let go, we had the ridiculous scene of them donning their masks in an Uber from our house to the restaurant, they wore them in the restaurant until we sat down then they took them off for the whole evening. Not to mention they didn't wear them in our living room where we sat together for a couple of hours. I resisted the urge to point out how idiotic the theatre is but my wife and I did have a good chuckle when we got home.
Very quickly away from beer gate and the local elections - COVID. It looks like it really is over in the UK. The ONS survey is matching the weekly drops seen in the dashboard, just from a higher base. The advanced data says prevalence for thus week is ~1 in 45 in England which would be around 80k per day being infected and falling rapidly.
This can also be seen in the hospitalisation data. The government deserves a lot of credit for ignoring the "experts" in the WHO and across Europe and ploughing ahead with reopening and not having a lockdown or shutdown over the winter because of Omicron.
We're not going on holiday anywhere this summer but I'm really a lot less bothered than I thought, firstly excitement for the baby but also every time I think about going to Europe I get the general sense of foreboding that I'll be going back into a country that still has all of the COVID shite with masks and passes. We met some Italian friends last night and they were shocked at how few people bother with masks and how my wife doesn't bother with them despite being pregnant. They said in Italy mask compliance on public transport is still 100% and indoors in optional places it's close to it. They still scan QR codes etc... We asked them to what end given that in a similarly sized country like the UK having no restrictions hasn't made any difference but they were adamant that Italy has it right and we have it wrong. There was an almost religious response to criticism of ongoing COVID measures so we dropped it.
I fear that countries which made COVID measures part of the fabric of life are going to struggle to remove them. People in these countries seem scared to let go, we had the ridiculous scene of them donning their masks in an Uber from our house to the restaurant, they wore them in the restaurant until we sat down then they took them off for the whole evening. Not to mention they didn't wear them in our living room where we sat together for a couple of hours. I resisted the urge to point out how idiotic the theatre is but my wife and I did have a good chuckle when we got home.
My wife tested positive on Thursday having been negative but unwell on Tuesday. So far I have avoided it. She is really tired, got a bad cough and generally feeling crap. I am restricting my movements around the country as much as possible until she is clear.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
Not posh enough for some people, I see.
OK if you would like to be operated on or defended in court or have a big commercial deal negotiated by someone with 2 E grades at A level, C grade gcses and a 2.2 from a new university, be my guest
OH, s\o you would rather be dealt with by a posh incompetent than someone who knew the job?!
Clearly you would rather be dealt with by an incompetent full stop, posh or not
You're misreading. I want a competent. I don't give a shite if they are cringing Royalists with a MBE that went to Christchurch at Oxford*.
*Friend of mine did. But, despite that, he's highly competent at his profession.
Actually, I think if you want a good advocate, an excellent academic resume might be desirable, but it's far from essential. There are other skills that are more important, such as being able to sift through evidence, and pick out what's relevant; the ability to present an argument coherently, and being well organised. 90% of advocacy is about good preparation.
There *are* specialist areas of law, such as tax, or some of the work relating to land law or inheritance where academic skills are of greater importance.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
Not posh enough for some people, I see.
OK if you would like to be operated on or defended in court or have a big commercial deal negotiated by someone with 2 E grades at A level, C grade gcses and a 2.2 from a new university, be my guest
Actually given ages you probably are today. At A levels 1979/80 I had lots of friends who applied to do architecture and got places with Ds and Es they will have built some bg buildings by now. I cant see why lawyers will be much different.
Yes but we did not have new universities back then and just 10% were graduates not 40% like now and an E grade at A level then would likely be a C grade now and a C grade then would probably be an A now and an A then would now be an A* thanks to grade inflation
We had Polytechs which were places where people actually had to do work. I did a language degree and got my classes down to 8 hours a week. The occasional essay and translation disturbed an otherwise tranquil week.
Polytechnics did vocational practical courses, now most of them are universities doing academic degrees not what they were created for
Of course. So would you rather have been served by someone trained in their vocation or a social science grad who is picking it up as they go along ?
A social science graduate with top grade GCSES and A levels who did a Russell Group degree and the law conversion course where they did well in I would certainly prefer over someone with a 2.2 from a new university as my lawyer.
Polytechnics did practical courses for trades rather than academic degrees and that is what they were good at
degrees are no guarantee of ability - see D Cameron. I've met lots of people from good universities and a university is no guarantee of anything. After about 10 years in the workforce degrees are largely irrelevant and ability is all.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
They do, because they’re £50k in debt and earning £10 an hour.
Yes, education is a good thing and we need more of it. That doesn’t mean that we need half of 18 year olds moving across the country, to get £50k into debt in exchange for a mostly worthless piece of paper.
The whole sector is ripe for reform of the products it offers, we need more flexible learning options such as two-year crammer degrees, online-only courses, part time study etc, as well as more of what the US calls Community Colleges.
This Govt was keen on flexible learning approaches before the pandemic, but is now responding to Daily Mail headlines and insisting all teaching has to be face-to-face. Just like it was keen on video calls to GPs before the pandemic but is now insisting GPs must always see patients in the flesh. The Govt simply isn’t serious about anything: it’s all for show.
If the students have paid fo rate in-person experience, then that is what should be delivered to them as soon as the pandemic is over. My argument is that the universities should be making more use of selling different types of courses, which is a very different argument.
Many GPs appear to be still using the pandemic as an excuse to mostly put their feet up while getting paid. Again, the choice is the key thing. People who want an in-person appointment should be seen in-person, and people who are happy to take a remote appointment can be offered that if it’s convenient.
Lots of graduates on here wanting to remove the ladder for future generations of graduates, I suspect.
For what it's worth, the only degree courses I'd ban would be Business Studies and related subjects. Absolute waste of time both intellectually and in terms of future productivity. Much more useless than Sociology, Media Studies, History, 18th Century Peruvian Literature etc.
Removing the ladder? It seems to me that the current setup is designed specifically to maintain a comfy life for university staff.
A friend of mine works for the government body that dishes out funding for scientific research. He told me that a lot of the uni staff he interacts with were very pro-Corbyn, except for one policy. Would you like to guess which?
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
Not posh enough for some people, I see.
OK if you would like to be operated on or defended in court or have a big commercial deal negotiated by someone with 2 E grades at A level, C grade gcses and a 2.2 from a new university, be my guest
Actually given ages you probably are today. At A levels 1979/80 I had lots of friends who applied to do architecture and got places with Ds and Es they will have built some bg buildings by now. I cant see why lawyers will be much different.
Yes but we did not have new universities back then and just 10% were graduates not 40% like now and an E grade at A level then would likely be a C grade now and a C grade then would probably be an A now and an A then would now be an A* thanks to grade inflation
We had Polytechs which were places where people actually had to do work. I did a language degree and got my classes down to 8 hours a week. The occasional essay and translation disturbed an otherwise tranquil week.
Polytechnics did vocational practical courses, now most of them are universities doing academic degrees not what they were created for
Of course. So would you rather have been served by someone trained in their vocation or a social science grad who is picking it up as they go along ?
A social science graduate with top grade GCSES and A levels who did a Russell Group degree and the law conversion course where they did well in I would certainly prefer over someone with a 2.2 from a new university as my lawyer.
Polytechnics did practical courses for trades rather than academic degrees and that is what they were good at
degrees are no guarantee of ability - see D Cameron. I've met lots of people from good universities and a university is no guarantee of anything. After about 10 years in the workforce degrees are largely irrelevant and ability is all.
A university degree from a top university generally indicates you at least have the ability to do a job which requires a high level of intelligence and IQ. For example be a doctor or lawyer or academic or engineer.
For other jobs practical experience is more important and in politics probably judgement too eg Churchill and Truman were not university graduates but were effective as PM and President. Although even in politics having a degree helps with understanding complex legislation and policy
Lots of graduates on here wanting to remove the ladder for future generations of graduates, I suspect.
For what it's worth, the only degree courses I'd ban would be Business Studies and related subjects. Absolute waste of time both intellectually and in terms of future productivity. Much more useless than Sociology, Media Studies, History, 18th Century Peruvian Literature etc.
The problem is more that the current arrangement is a ladder that leads to nowhere, for quite a lot of people, IMHO.
Why does pb revert to school exam grades once every couple of weeks? In real life not sure I have discussed them with anyone in the last decade or two.
Lots of graduates on here wanting to remove the ladder for future generations of graduates, I suspect.
For what it's worth, the only degree courses I'd ban would be Business Studies and related subjects. Absolute waste of time both intellectually and in terms of future productivity. Much more useless than Sociology, Media Studies, History, 18th Century Peruvian Literature etc.
The problem is more that the current arrangement is a ladder that leads to nowhere, for quite a lot of people, IMHO.
Lots of graduates on here wanting to remove the ladder for future generations of graduates, I suspect.
For what it's worth, the only degree courses I'd ban would be Business Studies and related subjects. Absolute waste of time both intellectually and in terms of future productivity. Much more useless than Sociology, Media Studies, History, 18th Century Peruvian Literature etc.
The problem is more that the current arrangement is a ladder that leads to nowhere, for quite a lot of people, IMHO.
And, campus universities are madrassas for left-liberal values.
Lots of graduates on here wanting to remove the ladder for future generations of graduates, I suspect.
For what it's worth, the only degree courses I'd ban would be Business Studies and related subjects. Absolute waste of time both intellectually and in terms of future productivity. Much more useless than Sociology, Media Studies, History, 18th Century Peruvian Literature etc.
The problem is more that the current arrangement is a ladder that leads to nowhere, for quite a lot of people, IMHO.
Presumably they were going nowhere anyway, and this way they spend a few years at leisure relatively cheaply, compared to spending the leisure during early retirement on a full pension.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
They do, because they’re £50k in debt and earning £10 an hour.
Yes, education is a good thing and we need more of it. That doesn’t mean that we need half of 18 year olds moving across the country, to get £50k into debt in exchange for a mostly worthless piece of paper.
The whole sector is ripe for reform of the products it offers, we need more flexible learning options such as two-year crammer degrees, online-only courses, part time study etc, as well as more of what the US calls Community Colleges.
This Govt was keen on flexible learning approaches before the pandemic, but is now responding to Daily Mail headlines and insisting all teaching has to be face-to-face. Just like it was keen on video calls to GPs before the pandemic but is now insisting GPs must always see patients in the flesh. The Govt simply isn’t serious about anything: it’s all for show.
If the students have paid fo rate in-person experience, then that is what should be delivered to them as soon as the pandemic is over. My argument is that the universities should be making more use of selling different types of courses, which is a very different argument.
Many GPs appear to be still using the pandemic as an excuse to mostly put their feet up while getting paid. Again, the choice is the key thing. People who want an in-person appointment should be seen in-person, and people who are happy to take a remote appointment can be offered that if it’s convenient.
My experience at secondary level is that face-to-face teaching is several time more effective than online teaching; the ability to look round a class and see who has understood, who needs a bit more help, and who needs waking up is impossible to replicate on a screen.
Why does pb revert to school exam grades once every couple of weeks? In real life not sure I have discussed them with anyone in the last decade or two.
As PB has a higher proportion of nerds and geeks by definition than the average population I imagine. Most normal people don't spend hours discussing politics with each other like we do either
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
They do, because they’re £50k in debt and earning £10 an hour.
Yes, education is a good thing and we need more of it. That doesn’t mean that we need half of 18 year olds moving across the country, to get £50k into debt in exchange for a mostly worthless piece of paper.
The whole sector is ripe for reform of the products it offers, we need more flexible learning options such as two-year crammer degrees, online-only courses, part time study etc, as well as more of what the US calls Community Colleges.
This Govt was keen on flexible learning approaches before the pandemic, but is now responding to Daily Mail headlines and insisting all teaching has to be face-to-face. Just like it was keen on video calls to GPs before the pandemic but is now insisting GPs must always see patients in the flesh. The Govt simply isn’t serious about anything: it’s all for show.
If the students have paid fo rate in-person experience, then that is what should be delivered to them as soon as the pandemic is over. My argument is that the universities should be making more use of selling different types of courses, which is a very different argument.
Many GPs appear to be still using the pandemic as an excuse to mostly put their feet up while getting paid. Again, the choice is the key thing. People who want an in-person appointment should be seen in-person, and people who are happy to take a remote appointment can be offered that if it’s convenient.
The two great problems with GPs are that an awful lot have retired and the ones who are left only work part-time. In short, there aren't enough doctors.
Why does pb revert to school exam grades once every couple of weeks? In real life not sure I have discussed them with anyone in the last decade or two.
Some of us are teachers, so we only dip into real life occasionally.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
In case you hadn't noticed, there are no Cs at GCSE any more.
Also I didn't know anyone with an A* when I was there, let alone straight A*s.
I did know lots of people with 2 E offers.
I had one friend who went to Warwick with a 2 Es offer after failing to get a place at Cambridge. None from my school got the offer of 2 Es for Oxbridge. I'm guessing they had prowess in sport or music?
It was back in the days of fourth-term entrance; you did three entrance exams set by Oxford and if they still liked you after the interview(s) then you got an "unconditional" (in practice 2 E) offer.
It made for an unstressed Y13 after Christmas...
And 2/3 of Oxbridge students got straight A*s anyway
Nope: none of those with a 2 E offer did.
Actually I know someone with an E grade offer who did indeed still get straight A*s.
And the 2 E offer is rarely given to more than a small minority of those given Oxbridge offers. The standard offer is normally at least 2 or 3 A* grades
The entrance exam was phased out in 1997; the A* was introduced in 2010.
E grade offers are still given in a few cases even without the entrance exam. Plus the most popular courses like law now have their own entry tests too as has been mentioned
My son's offer from Cambridge was lower than any other offer he received, but then he had won an international prize from Cambridge in the lower 6th for a paper he had written on game theory and did reach the final stage (all done at Cambridge) on 3 different subjects (Physics, Chemistry, Informatics) to try and get into the British Olympiad team for each of those subjects, so they did sort of know him.
My advice for the Conservatives (other than ditching Boris. I don't share loathing that some here have for the man, but he is plainly corrupt) is:-
1. Encourage lots of house-building. My own view is that owner occupation is absolutely key to future Conservative voting. If that pisses off the NIMBY's, tough.
2. Rebalance tax away from income towards capital. I'm arguing against my own interests, here, as I'll likely inherit a lot of money in the next decade, but my need is less than the needs of my own step-children, and my nephews and nieces. Work has to pay, and it doesn't when people are facing high marginal rates of income tax.
3. Put a few hundred million pounds into fixing the criminal justice system. That does not mean more police. It means providing sufficient resources to enable justice to be delivered swiftly, which is fair to both victims and defendants. This is an area that has been shamefully neglected since 2010.
None of these things guarantee victory, but they are worth doing in themselves, and 1 and 2 will yield dividends for the Conservatives in the future.
All you F1 fans out there, very excited because this morning (in USA) the Marty & McGee show on ESPN radio (and SEC TV) is broadcasting from Miami.
They just interviewed a British racer (didn't catch his name) and are going to have Mario Andretti on the show shortly.
Talking about a) new burst of US enthusiasm and interest in F1 in addition to NASCAR; and b) some Euro types disgruntled about having F1 in America in the first place.
Why does pb revert to school exam grades once every couple of weeks? In real life not sure I have discussed them with anyone in the last decade or two.
Because it is seriously important. This country's natural resources have largely been depleted. We live on our skills, our trading ability and our ability to compete with our neighbours. An absolutely key part of this is ensuring that our children are at least as well educated and, ideally, better educated than our competitors. And we are failing.
Most of our largest economic problems flow from this: our poor productivity, low wages for the unskilled, inequality and casual labour. Many of our social problems flow from this: alienation of those failed by a school system not fit for purpose; drugs social instability. and inequality. Some of our political problems flow from this; the fact that so many of our politicians come from such a narrow segment of our population with little understanding of the others.
The UK has been rightly angsting about its education system for more than 150 years after we saw the consequences of a superior German system producing more engineers and technicians. And we still haven't got close to fixing it.
On the topic of the "Westminister bubble", I think that MPs are more immune to it than the media. The MPs go back to their constituencies, the Lobby never does. It is the media that most loves the fetid late night gossip, and this is pretty unhealthy for our democracy. The fact that the PM and various ministers are journalists themselves is also part of the problem. Partygate and other microscandals are deeply unserious and discredit British politics around the world. As a former Finnish PM said last week "Britain needs to pull its socks up".
Well said. The bubble stuff looks ridiculous watching from afar.
Lying to parliament isn't bubble stuff. The Ministerial Code is there for a reason. Standards in public life are there for a reason. And the same pattern of dishonesty and hypocrisy runs through everything this PM and his coterie does. They are poisoning the well of political life in this country. This matters.
“Were there any more ‘parties’?” “No” “But, but two years ago you spent nine minutes being ambushed by your wife with a birthday cake. You’re a lying liar who should resign for lying”
It looks ridiculous watching from afar.
I thought the same when Princess Di met her maker. I was coming back from South Africa and was told by a British Airways stewardess. I could see that being able to tell someone who didn't already know made her day. But within two minutes I'd stopped thinking about it......When I got back I couldn't believe it. It was epic!
Some things just hit a nerve and Boris Partying at that moment did it in a way that few other things have. I suppose if you analysed it it was several things coming together ....an imperious feeling of entitlement when everyone was having a bad time.....and all catalogued with unforgettable images....the smug grin .....the table in the sunshine ..the hapless Aleggra...Rees Mogg......It was quite cinematic. It was the moment Marie Antoinette quaffed one too many buns.
You put out a post like that and think you can cover up your days dogging behind the KFC in West Bromwich.
You're fooling no-one Roger.
How we've missed you! Still selling tractors in Ludlow? Trade must be brisk after the Neil Parish affair.
My tractor videos have been proving enormously successful, I let your friend Giuseppe Veneziano do the editing and it just took off.
Ludlow is just springing back to life but in the week I am now working in Stoke. Etruria to be prcise, which as you know is latin for Tuscany. I fill my days drinking fine reds and eating salsiccia before I go to the welding shop and spend happy hours with an angle grinder.
I didn't realise people worked in Stoke. I thought it only existed to supply 'Leavers' for Johnson's political ambitions. Talking about Johnson sorry to hear about the DUP humiliation. You know what they say about dogs and fleas.
You refer to the Stoke of myth which populates the nightmares of twittering class would-be intellectuals shaking in fear at the products of their conformist ideological fervour. In the real Stoke there is much industry and enterprise and not only Bet365.
The myth of Stoke is about losing football matches in December. I never believed it!
My advice for the Conservatives (other than ditching Boris. I don't share loathing that some here have for the man, but he is plainly corrupt) is:-
1. Encourage lots of house-building. My own view is that owner occupation is absolutely key to future Conservative voting. If that pisses off the NIMBY's, tough.
2. Rebalance tax away from income towards capital. I'm arguing against my own interests, here, as I'll likely inherit a lot of money in the next decade, but my need is less than the needs of my own step-children, and my nephews and nieces. Work has to pay, and it doesn't when people are facing high marginal rates of income tax.
3. Put a few hundred million pounds into fixing the criminal justice system. That does not mean more police. It means providing sufficient resources to enable justice to be delivered swiftly, which is fair to both victims and defendants. This is an area that has been shamefully neglected since 2010.
None of these things guarantee victory, but they are worth doing in themselves, and 1 and 2 will yield dividends for the Conservatives in the future.
The Tory core vote of pensioners is still voting Tory because greenbelt land is not over developed and their capital is not too heavily taxed, see how badly the dementia tax went down.
Start building on greenbelt land as well as brown belt and taxing wealth and inheritance and property more and they will go LD, Independent or RefUK or even Labour and assuming the young still vote Labour and they cannot win back the middle aged they have lost since 2019 the Tories would be left with nobody and facing 1997 style wipeout.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
Not posh enough for some people, I see.
OK if you would like to be operated on or defended in court or have a big commercial deal negotiated by someone with 2 E grades at A level, C grade gcses and a 2.2 from a new university, be my guest
Actually given ages you probably are today. At A levels 1979/80 I had lots of friends who applied to do architecture and got places with Ds and Es they will have built some bg buildings by now. I cant see why lawyers will be much different.
Yes but we did not have new universities back then and just 10% were graduates not 40% like now and an E grade at A level then would likely be a C grade now and a C grade then would probably be an A now and an A then would now be an A* thanks to grade inflation
We had Polytechs which were places where people actually had to do work. I did a language degree and got my classes down to 8 hours a week. The occasional essay and translation disturbed an otherwise tranquil week.
Polytechnics did vocational practical courses, now most of them are universities doing academic degrees not what they were created for
Of course. So would you rather have been served by someone trained in their vocation or a social science grad who is picking it up as they go along ?
A social science graduate with top grade GCSES and A levels who did a Russell Group degree and the law conversion course where they did well in I would certainly prefer over someone with a 2.2 from a new university as my lawyer.
Polytechnics did practical courses for trades rather than academic degrees and that is what they were good at
degrees are no guarantee of ability - see D Cameron. I've met lots of people from good universities and a university is no guarantee of anything. After about 10 years in the workforce degrees are largely irrelevant and ability is all.
A university degree from a top university generally indicates you at least have the ability to do a job which requires a high level of intelligence and IQ. For example be a doctor or lawyer or academic or engineer.
For other jobs practical experience is more important and in politics probably judgement too eg Churchill and Truman were not university graduates but were effective as PM and President. Although even in politics having a degree helps with understanding complex legislation and policy
As someone who is married to a Doctor I think she would say memory is a key factor and to be a surgeon dexterity is important. Now I consider myself to be reasonably bright, but only a fool would let me near any sharp instruments.
All you F1 fans out there, very excited because this morning (in USA) the Marty & McGee show on ESPN radio (and SEC TV) is broadcasting from Miami.
They just interviewed a British racer (didn't catch his name) and are going to have Mario Andretti on the show shortly.
Talking about a) new burst of US enthusiasm and interest in F1 in addition to NASCAR; and b) some Euro types disgruntled about having F1 in America in the first place.
The Miami event is totally bonkers, even by F1 standards. It’s like they’re hosting the Super Bowl this weekend, there’s an estimated half a million ticketless fans turning up in the city, to watch the race in parks and bars.
My advice for the Conservatives (other than ditching Boris. I don't share loathing that some here have for the man, but he is plainly corrupt) is:-
1. Encourage lots of house-building. My own view is that owner occupation is absolutely key to future Conservative voting. If that pisses off the NIMBY's, tough.
2. Rebalance tax away from income towards capital. I'm arguing against my own interests, here, as I'll likely inherit a lot of money in the next decade, but my need is less than the needs of my own step-children, and my nephews and nieces. Work has to pay, and it doesn't when people are facing high marginal rates of income tax.
3. Put a few hundred million pounds into fixing the criminal justice system. That does not mean more police. It means providing sufficient resources to enable justice to be delivered swiftly, which is fair to both victims and defendants. This is an area that has been shamefully neglected since 2010.
None of these things guarantee victory, but they are worth doing in themselves, and 1 and 2 will yield dividends for the Conservatives in the future.
The Tory core vote of pensioners is still voting Tory because greenbelt land is not over developed and their capital is not too heavily taxed, see how badly the dementia tax went down.
Start building on greenbelt land as well as brown belt and taxing wealth and inheritance and property more and they will go LD, Independent or RefUK or even Labour and assuming the young still vote Labour and they cannot win back the middle aged they have lost since 2019 the Tories would be left with nobody and facing 1997 style wipeout.
I agree with you on 3 though
That doesn’t make sense. Why would they switch their votes to parties that want to do more of that sort of thing?
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
Not posh enough for some people, I see.
OK if you would like to be operated on or defended in court or have a big commercial deal negotiated by someone with 2 E grades at A level, C grade gcses and a 2.2 from a new university, be my guest
Actually given ages you probably are today. At A levels 1979/80 I had lots of friends who applied to do architecture and got places with Ds and Es they will have built some bg buildings by now. I cant see why lawyers will be much different.
Yes but we did not have new universities back then and just 10% were graduates not 40% like now and an E grade at A level then would likely be a C grade now and a C grade then would probably be an A now and an A then would now be an A* thanks to grade inflation
We had Polytechs which were places where people actually had to do work. I did a language degree and got my classes down to 8 hours a week. The occasional essay and translation disturbed an otherwise tranquil week.
Polytechnics did vocational practical courses, now most of them are universities doing academic degrees not what they were created for
Of course. So would you rather have been served by someone trained in their vocation or a social science grad who is picking it up as they go along ?
A social science graduate with top grade GCSES and A levels who did a Russell Group degree and the law conversion course where they did well in I would certainly prefer over someone with a 2.2 from a new university as my lawyer.
Polytechnics did practical courses for trades rather than academic degrees and that is what they were good at
degrees are no guarantee of ability - see D Cameron. I've met lots of people from good universities and a university is no guarantee of anything. After about 10 years in the workforce degrees are largely irrelevant and ability is all.
But you went to a very good university. In fact you're about the only person who went to that university who hasn't appeared on film or been used for a voice over
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
Not posh enough for some people, I see.
OK if you would like to be operated on or defended in court or have a big commercial deal negotiated by someone with 2 E grades at A level, C grade gcses and a 2.2 from a new university, be my guest
Actually given ages you probably are today. At A levels 1979/80 I had lots of friends who applied to do architecture and got places with Ds and Es they will have built some bg buildings by now. I cant see why lawyers will be much different.
Yes but we did not have new universities back then and just 10% were graduates not 40% like now and an E grade at A level then would likely be a C grade now and a C grade then would probably be an A now and an A then would now be an A* thanks to grade inflation
We had Polytechs which were places where people actually had to do work. I did a language degree and got my classes down to 8 hours a week. The occasional essay and translation disturbed an otherwise tranquil week.
Polytechnics did vocational practical courses, now most of them are universities doing academic degrees not what they were created for
Of course. So would you rather have been served by someone trained in their vocation or a social science grad who is picking it up as they go along ?
A social science graduate with top grade GCSES and A levels who did a Russell Group degree and the law conversion course where they did well in I would certainly prefer over someone with a 2.2 from a new university as my lawyer.
Polytechnics did practical courses for trades rather than academic degrees and that is what they were good at
degrees are no guarantee of ability - see D Cameron. I've met lots of people from good universities and a university is no guarantee of anything. After about 10 years in the workforce degrees are largely irrelevant and ability is all.
A university degree from a top university generally indicates you at least have the ability to do a job which requires a high level of intelligence and IQ. For example be a doctor or lawyer or academic or engineer.
For other jobs practical experience is more important and in politics probably judgement too eg Churchill and Truman were not university graduates but were effective as PM and President. Although even in politics having a degree helps with understanding complex legislation and policy
As someone who is married to a Doctor I think she would say memory is a key factor and to be a surgeon dexterity is important. Now I consider myself to be reasonably bright, but only a fool would let me near any sharp instruments.
Memory is of course a key factor of intelligence and you cannot be thick and pass medical exams which you have to before you get near an operating theatre
On the topic of the "Westminister bubble", I think that MPs are more immune to it than the media. The MPs go back to their constituencies, the Lobby never does. It is the media that most loves the fetid late night gossip, and this is pretty unhealthy for our democracy. The fact that the PM and various ministers are journalists themselves is also part of the problem. Partygate and other microscandals are deeply unserious and discredit British politics around the world. As a former Finnish PM said last week "Britain needs to pull its socks up".
Well said. The bubble stuff looks ridiculous watching from afar.
Lying to parliament isn't bubble stuff. The Ministerial Code is there for a reason. Standards in public life are there for a reason. And the same pattern of dishonesty and hypocrisy runs through everything this PM and his coterie does. They are poisoning the well of political life in this country. This matters.
“Were there any more ‘parties’?” “No” “But, but two years ago you spent nine minutes being ambushed by your wife with a birthday cake. You’re a lying liar who should resign for lying”
It looks ridiculous watching from afar.
I thought the same when Princess Di met her maker. I was coming back from South Africa and was told by a British Airways stewardess. I could see that being able to tell someone who didn't already know made her day. But within two minutes I'd stopped thinking about it......When I got back I couldn't believe it. It was epic!
Some things just hit a nerve and Boris Partying at that moment did it in a way that few other things have. I suppose if you analysed it it was several things coming together ....an imperious feeling of entitlement when everyone was having a bad time.....and all catalogued with unforgettable images....the smug grin .....the table in the sunshine ..the hapless Aleggra...Rees Mogg......It was quite cinematic. It was the moment Marie Antoinette quaffed one too many buns.
You put out a post like that and think you can cover up your days dogging behind the KFC in West Bromwich.
You're fooling no-one Roger.
How we've missed you! Still selling tractors in Ludlow? Trade must be brisk after the Neil Parish affair.
My tractor videos have been proving enormously successful, I let your friend Giuseppe Veneziano do the editing and it just took off.
Ludlow is just springing back to life but in the week I am now working in Stoke. Etruria to be prcise, which as you know is latin for Tuscany. I fill my days drinking fine reds and eating salsiccia before I go to the welding shop and spend happy hours with an angle grinder.
I didn't realise people worked in Stoke. I thought it only existed to supply 'Leavers' for Johnson's political ambitions. Talking about Johnson sorry to hear about the DUP humiliation. You know what they say about dogs and fleas.
You refer to the Stoke of myth which populates the nightmares of twittering class would-be intellectuals shaking in fear at the products of their conformist ideological fervour. In the real Stoke there is much industry and enterprise and not only Bet365.
The myth of Stoke is about losing football matches in December. I never believed it!
My advice for the Conservatives (other than ditching Boris. I don't share loathing that some here have for the man, but he is plainly corrupt) is:-
1. Encourage lots of house-building. My own view is that owner occupation is absolutely key to future Conservative voting. If that pisses off the NIMBY's, tough.
2. Rebalance tax away from income towards capital. I'm arguing against my own interests, here, as I'll likely inherit a lot of money in the next decade, but my need is less than the needs of my own step-children, and my nephews and nieces. Work has to pay, and it doesn't when people are facing high marginal rates of income tax.
3. Put a few hundred million pounds into fixing the criminal justice system. That does not mean more police. It means providing sufficient resources to enable justice to be delivered swiftly, which is fair to both victims and defendants. This is an area that has been shamefully neglected since 2010.
None of these things guarantee victory, but they are worth doing in themselves, and 1 and 2 will yield dividends for the Conservatives in the future.
The Tory core vote of pensioners is still voting Tory because greenbelt land is not over developed and their capital is not too heavily taxed, see how badly the dementia tax went down.
Start building on greenbelt land as well as brown belt and taxing wealth and inheritance and property more and they will go LD, Independent or RefUK or even Labour and assuming the young still vote Labour and they cannot win back the middle aged they have lost since 2019 the Tories would be left with nobody and facing 1997 style wipeout.
I agree with you on 3 though
That doesn’t make sense. Why would they switch their votes to parties that want to do more of that sort of thing?
The LDs are often NIMBY and firmly anti more houses in the greenbelt, see Chesham and Amersham. RefUK want to scrap inheritance tax altogether.
The Tories are also still winning over 55s, remember however in 1997 Blair won every age group, even over 55s and pensioners.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
Not posh enough for some people, I see.
OK if you would like to be operated on or defended in court or have a big commercial deal negotiated by someone with 2 E grades at A level, C grade gcses and a 2.2 from a new university, be my guest
Actually given ages you probably are today. At A levels 1979/80 I had lots of friends who applied to do architecture and got places with Ds and Es they will have built some bg buildings by now. I cant see why lawyers will be much different.
Yes but we did not have new universities back then and just 10% were graduates not 40% like now and an E grade at A level then would likely be a C grade now and a C grade then would probably be an A now and an A then would now be an A* thanks to grade inflation
We had Polytechs which were places where people actually had to do work. I did a language degree and got my classes down to 8 hours a week. The occasional essay and translation disturbed an otherwise tranquil week.
Polytechnics did vocational practical courses, now most of them are universities doing academic degrees not what they were created for
Of course. So would you rather have been served by someone trained in their vocation or a social science grad who is picking it up as they go along ?
A social science graduate with top grade GCSES and A levels who did a Russell Group degree and the law conversion course where they did well in I would certainly prefer over someone with a 2.2 from a new university as my lawyer.
Polytechnics did practical courses for trades rather than academic degrees and that is what they were good at
degrees are no guarantee of ability - see D Cameron. I've met lots of people from good universities and a university is no guarantee of anything. After about 10 years in the workforce degrees are largely irrelevant and ability is all.
A university degree from a top university generally indicates you at least have the ability to do a job which requires a high level of intelligence and IQ. For example be a doctor or lawyer or academic or engineer.
For other jobs practical experience is more important and in politics probably judgement too eg Churchill and Truman were not university graduates but were effective as PM and President. Although even in politics having a degree helps with understanding complex legislation and policy
So, H, who are you leaning towards for new Eton Provost to replace Lord Waldegrave of North Hill? Looks to be 3 in the running, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, Sir Geoffrey Adams, or (my tip) Princess Antonia the Duchess of Wellington
🟨 SNP 25.9% (19 seats, 30.2% of seats) 🟧 Lib Dem 20.5% (12 seats, 19%) 🟥 Labour 19.1% (13 seats, 20.6%) 🟦 Conservative 17.5% (9 seats, 14.3%) 🟩 Green 14.2% (10 seats, 19%) ⬛ Other 1.9% (0 seats) ⬜ Independents 0.9% (0)
I believe this is a partial glimpse into the transfers. Don't read too much into the overrepresentation of the SNP, that can come about from being the largest party. Look instead down the list at the Conservatives and Greens. I have a strong suspicion that we're seeing transfers across the union/indy divide more than previously, and unionist tactical voting reduced. Simply: Labour and Lib Dems favouring Greens more and Conservative less than last time.
Caveat: still just a hunch; I haven't dug into the data properly and this is just one council.
Looking like another SNP-Labour run administration. Or SNP-LD-Grn?
Jackie Baillie making positive noises re SLab-SCon cooperation. An awful lot of SLab activists and voters are going to be furious.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
Not posh enough for some people, I see.
OK if you would like to be operated on or defended in court or have a big commercial deal negotiated by someone with 2 E grades at A level, C grade gcses and a 2.2 from a new university, be my guest
Actually given ages you probably are today. At A levels 1979/80 I had lots of friends who applied to do architecture and got places with Ds and Es they will have built some bg buildings by now. I cant see why lawyers will be much different.
Yes but we did not have new universities back then and just 10% were graduates not 40% like now and an E grade at A level then would likely be a C grade now and a C grade then would probably be an A now and an A then would now be an A* thanks to grade inflation
We had Polytechs which were places where people actually had to do work. I did a language degree and got my classes down to 8 hours a week. The occasional essay and translation disturbed an otherwise tranquil week.
Polytechnics did vocational practical courses, now most of them are universities doing academic degrees not what they were created for
Of course. So would you rather have been served by someone trained in their vocation or a social science grad who is picking it up as they go along ?
A social science graduate with top grade GCSES and A levels who did a Russell Group degree and the law conversion course where they did well in I would certainly prefer over someone with a 2.2 from a new university as my lawyer.
Polytechnics did practical courses for trades rather than academic degrees and that is what they were good at
degrees are no guarantee of ability - see D Cameron. I've met lots of people from good universities and a university is no guarantee of anything. After about 10 years in the workforce degrees are largely irrelevant and ability is all.
A university degree from a top university generally indicates you at least have the ability to do a job which requires a high level of intelligence and IQ. For example be a doctor or lawyer or academic or engineer.
For other jobs practical experience is more important and in politics probably judgement too eg Churchill and Truman were not university graduates but were effective as PM and President. Although even in politics having a degree helps with understanding complex legislation and policy
As someone who is married to a Doctor I think she would say memory is a key factor and to be a surgeon dexterity is important. Now I consider myself to be reasonably bright, but only a fool would let me near any sharp instruments.
Memory is of course a key factor of intelligence and you cannot be thick and pass medical exams which you have to before you get near an operating theatre
Memory and intelligence are related, but not the same.
My advice for the Conservatives (other than ditching Boris. I don't share loathing that some here have for the man, but he is plainly corrupt) is:-
1. Encourage lots of house-building. My own view is that owner occupation is absolutely key to future Conservative voting. If that pisses off the NIMBY's, tough.
2. Rebalance tax away from income towards capital. I'm arguing against my own interests, here, as I'll likely inherit a lot of money in the next decade, but my need is less than the needs of my own step-children, and my nephews and nieces. Work has to pay, and it doesn't when people are facing high marginal rates of income tax.
3. Put a few hundred million pounds into fixing the criminal justice system. That does not mean more police. It means providing sufficient resources to enable justice to be delivered swiftly, which is fair to both victims and defendants. This is an area that has been shamefully neglected since 2010.
None of these things guarantee victory, but they are worth doing in themselves, and 1 and 2 will yield dividends for the Conservatives in the future.
The Tory core vote of pensioners is still voting Tory because greenbelt land is not over developed and their capital is not too heavily taxed, see how badly the dementia tax went down.
Start building on greenbelt land as well as brown belt and taxing wealth and inheritance and property more and they will go LD, Independent or RefUK or even Labour and assuming the young still vote Labour and they cannot win back the middle aged they have lost since 2019 the Tories would be left with nobody and facing 1997 style wipeout.
I agree with you on 3 though
That doesn’t make sense. Why would they switch their votes to parties that want to do more of that sort of thing?
The LDs are often NIMBY and firmly anti more houses in the greenbelt, see Chesham and Amersham. RefUK want to scrap inheritance tax altogether.
The Tories are also still winning over 55s, remember however in 1997 Blair won every age group, even over 55s and pensioners.
So your strategy for the Tories to win the next election is to propose reducing house building, and reducing tax on the most well off?
My advice for the Conservatives (other than ditching Boris. I don't share loathing that some here have for the man, but he is plainly corrupt) is:-
1. Encourage lots of house-building. My own view is that owner occupation is absolutely key to future Conservative voting. If that pisses off the NIMBY's, tough.
2. Rebalance tax away from income towards capital. I'm arguing against my own interests, here, as I'll likely inherit a lot of money in the next decade, but my need is less than the needs of my own step-children, and my nephews and nieces. Work has to pay, and it doesn't when people are facing high marginal rates of income tax.
3. Put a few hundred million pounds into fixing the criminal justice system. That does not mean more police. It means providing sufficient resources to enable justice to be delivered swiftly, which is fair to both victims and defendants. This is an area that has been shamefully neglected since 2010.
None of these things guarantee victory, but they are worth doing in themselves, and 1 and 2 will yield dividends for the Conservatives in the future.
The Tory core vote of pensioners is still voting Tory because greenbelt land is not over developed and their capital is not too heavily taxed, see how badly the dementia tax went down.
Start building on greenbelt land as well as brown belt and taxing wealth and inheritance and property more and they will go LD, Independent or RefUK or even Labour and assuming the young still vote Labour and they cannot win back the middle aged they have lost since 2019 the Tories would be left with nobody and facing 1997 style wipeout.
I agree with you on 3 though
That doesn’t make sense. Why would they switch their votes to parties that want to do more of that sort of thing?
The LDs are often NIMBY and firmly anti more houses in the greenbelt, see Chesham and Amersham. RefUK want to scrap inheritance tax altogether.
The Tories are also still winning over 55s, remember however in 1997 Blair won every age group, even over 55s and pensioners.
So your strategy for the Tories to win the next election is to propose reducing house building, and reducing tax on the most well off?
Madness.
FUDHY is an ideologist. He doesn’t understand basic disciplines like demography and social trends, let alone economics.
My advice for the Conservatives (other than ditching Boris. I don't share loathing that some here have for the man, but he is plainly corrupt) is:-
1. Encourage lots of house-building. My own view is that owner occupation is absolutely key to future Conservative voting. If that pisses off the NIMBY's, tough.
2. Rebalance tax away from income towards capital. I'm arguing against my own interests, here, as I'll likely inherit a lot of money in the next decade, but my need is less than the needs of my own step-children, and my nephews and nieces. Work has to pay, and it doesn't when people are facing high marginal rates of income tax.
3. Put a few hundred million pounds into fixing the criminal justice system. That does not mean more police. It means providing sufficient resources to enable justice to be delivered swiftly, which is fair to both victims and defendants. This is an area that has been shamefully neglected since 2010.
None of these things guarantee victory, but they are worth doing in themselves, and 1 and 2 will yield dividends for the Conservatives in the future.
The Tory core vote of pensioners is still voting Tory because greenbelt land is not over developed and their capital is not too heavily taxed, see how badly the dementia tax went down.
Start building on greenbelt land as well as brown belt and taxing wealth and inheritance and property more and they will go LD, Independent or RefUK or even Labour and assuming the young still vote Labour and they cannot win back the middle aged they have lost since 2019 the Tories would be left with nobody and facing 1997 style wipeout.
I agree with you on 3 though
That doesn’t make sense. Why would they switch their votes to parties that want to do more of that sort of thing?
The LDs are often NIMBY and firmly anti more houses in the greenbelt, see Chesham and Amersham. RefUK want to scrap inheritance tax altogether.
The Tories are also still winning over 55s, remember however in 1997 Blair won every age group, even over 55s and pensioners.
So your strategy for the Tories to win the next election is to propose reducing house building, and reducing tax on the most well off?
Madness.
The Tories are unlikely to win the next general election, the choice is more between narrow defeat by keeping the over 55 vote or landslide defeat by losing the over 55 vote.
I am not anti house building but it should be focused on brownbelt land in London and the Home counties where it is most needed.
The well off home owners are the Tory core vote, as well as now committed pro hard Brexit working class voters
My advice for the Conservatives (other than ditching Boris. I don't share loathing that some here have for the man, but he is plainly corrupt) is:-
1. Encourage lots of house-building. My own view is that owner occupation is absolutely key to future Conservative voting. If that pisses off the NIMBY's, tough.
2. Rebalance tax away from income towards capital. I'm arguing against my own interests, here, as I'll likely inherit a lot of money in the next decade, but my need is less than the needs of my own step-children, and my nephews and nieces. Work has to pay, and it doesn't when people are facing high marginal rates of income tax.
3. Put a few hundred million pounds into fixing the criminal justice system. That does not mean more police. It means providing sufficient resources to enable justice to be delivered swiftly, which is fair to both victims and defendants. This is an area that has been shamefully neglected since 2010.
None of these things guarantee victory, but they are worth doing in themselves, and 1 and 2 will yield dividends for the Conservatives in the future.
The Tory core vote of pensioners is still voting Tory because greenbelt land is not over developed and their capital is not too heavily taxed, see how badly the dementia tax went down.
Start building on greenbelt land as well as brown belt and taxing wealth and inheritance and property more and they will go LD, Independent or RefUK or even Labour and assuming the young still vote Labour and they cannot win back the middle aged they have lost since 2019 the Tories would be left with nobody and facing 1997 style wipeout.
I agree with you on 3 though
The Conservatives won't have a future if they base their electoral strategy on appealing to current pensioners. From the 1920's to the 1980's, the Conservatives understood very well that if they wished to grow their vote, housebuilding was key.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
Not posh enough for some people, I see.
OK if you would like to be operated on or defended in court or have a big commercial deal negotiated by someone with 2 E grades at A level, C grade gcses and a 2.2 from a new university, be my guest
Actually given ages you probably are today. At A levels 1979/80 I had lots of friends who applied to do architecture and got places with Ds and Es they will have built some bg buildings by now. I cant see why lawyers will be much different.
Yes but we did not have new universities back then and just 10% were graduates not 40% like now and an E grade at A level then would likely be a C grade now and a C grade then would probably be an A now and an A then would now be an A* thanks to grade inflation
We had Polytechs which were places where people actually had to do work. I did a language degree and got my classes down to 8 hours a week. The occasional essay and translation disturbed an otherwise tranquil week.
Polytechnics did vocational practical courses, now most of them are universities doing academic degrees not what they were created for
Of course. So would you rather have been served by someone trained in their vocation or a social science grad who is picking it up as they go along ?
A social science graduate with top grade GCSES and A levels who did a Russell Group degree and the law conversion course where they did well in I would certainly prefer over someone with a 2.2 from a new university as my lawyer.
Polytechnics did practical courses for trades rather than academic degrees and that is what they were good at
degrees are no guarantee of ability - see D Cameron. I've met lots of people from good universities and a university is no guarantee of anything. After about 10 years in the workforce degrees are largely irrelevant and ability is all.
A university degree from a top university generally indicates you at least have the ability to do a job which requires a high level of intelligence and IQ. For example be a doctor or lawyer or academic or engineer.
For other jobs practical experience is more important and in politics probably judgement too eg Churchill and Truman were not university graduates but were effective as PM and President. Although even in politics having a degree helps with understanding complex legislation and policy
As someone who is married to a Doctor I think she would say memory is a key factor and to be a surgeon dexterity is important. Now I consider myself to be reasonably bright, but only a fool would let me near any sharp instruments.
Memory is of course a key factor of intelligence and you cannot be thick and pass medical exams which you have to before you get near an operating theatre
Ah. I thought you might say that. And it is true there is a correlation between memory and intelligence, but it is not absolute. There are plenty of very thick people who have fantastic memories and of course absent minded bright people. I remember at school there was a lad who had a fantastic memory for lists of stuff. Struggled to pass a CSE though (which were just about impossible to fail).
I agree though there aren't many stupid doctors. There was the dexterity point also though. Another requiring a specific skill set is an anaesthetist. Spending most of your time in theatre reading Mills & Boon and then occasionally working in blind panic (or in their case not being in a blind panic).
My advice for the Conservatives (other than ditching Boris. I don't share loathing that some here have for the man, but he is plainly corrupt) is:-
1. Encourage lots of house-building. My own view is that owner occupation is absolutely key to future Conservative voting. If that pisses off the NIMBY's, tough.
2. Rebalance tax away from income towards capital. I'm arguing against my own interests, here, as I'll likely inherit a lot of money in the next decade, but my need is less than the needs of my own step-children, and my nephews and nieces. Work has to pay, and it doesn't when people are facing high marginal rates of income tax.
3. Put a few hundred million pounds into fixing the criminal justice system. That does not mean more police. It means providing sufficient resources to enable justice to be delivered swiftly, which is fair to both victims and defendants. This is an area that has been shamefully neglected since 2010.
None of these things guarantee victory, but they are worth doing in themselves, and 1 and 2 will yield dividends for the Conservatives in the future.
I agree with all of this. And I might also add (4) put more money into defence and foreign affairs and (5) into education and not the bottomless pit of health and social care. Also, make a common sense case on culture war issues (i.e. play them down and isolate the extremes at either fringe).
Home ownership, low tax, crime and justice, strong defence and education together with moderation and good governance is a winning mix.
The Conservatives must govern in the interests of the whole nation and not just the retired. If all the above means pension ages/entitlements need to be trimmed back then so be it.
Lots of graduates on here wanting to remove the ladder for future generations of graduates, I suspect.
For what it's worth, the only degree courses I'd ban would be Business Studies and related subjects. Absolute waste of time both intellectually and in terms of future productivity. Much more useless than Sociology, Media Studies, History, 18th Century Peruvian Literature etc.
The problem is more that the current arrangement is a ladder that leads to nowhere, for quite a lot of people, IMHO.
And, campus universities are madrassas for left-liberal values.
Winner of todays most prejudices in one sentence contest!
My advice for the Conservatives (other than ditching Boris. I don't share loathing that some here have for the man, but he is plainly corrupt) is:-
1. Encourage lots of house-building. My own view is that owner occupation is absolutely key to future Conservative voting. If that pisses off the NIMBY's, tough.
2. Rebalance tax away from income towards capital. I'm arguing against my own interests, here, as I'll likely inherit a lot of money in the next decade, but my need is less than the needs of my own step-children, and my nephews and nieces. Work has to pay, and it doesn't when people are facing high marginal rates of income tax.
3. Put a few hundred million pounds into fixing the criminal justice system. That does not mean more police. It means providing sufficient resources to enable justice to be delivered swiftly, which is fair to both victims and defendants. This is an area that has been shamefully neglected since 2010.
None of these things guarantee victory, but they are worth doing in themselves, and 1 and 2 will yield dividends for the Conservatives in the future.
The Tory core vote of pensioners is still voting Tory because greenbelt land is not over developed and their capital is not too heavily taxed, see how badly the dementia tax went down.
Start building on greenbelt land as well as brown belt and taxing wealth and inheritance and property more and they will go LD, Independent or RefUK or even Labour and assuming the young still vote Labour and they cannot win back the middle aged they have lost since 2019 the Tories would be left with nobody and facing 1997 style wipeout.
I agree with you on 3 though
The Conservatives won't have a future if they base their electoral strategy on appealing to current pensioners. From the 1920's to the 1980's, the Conservatives understood very well that if they wished to grow their vote, housebuilding was key.
Agreed. Honing their offering to pensioners is a guaranteed slow death for the party. Quite literally.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
Not posh enough for some people, I see.
OK if you would like to be operated on or defended in court or have a big commercial deal negotiated by someone with 2 E grades at A level, C grade gcses and a 2.2 from a new university, be my guest
Actually given ages you probably are today. At A levels 1979/80 I had lots of friends who applied to do architecture and got places with Ds and Es they will have built some bg buildings by now. I cant see why lawyers will be much different.
Yes but we did not have new universities back then and just 10% were graduates not 40% like now and an E grade at A level then would likely be a C grade now and a C grade then would probably be an A now and an A then would now be an A* thanks to grade inflation
We had Polytechs which were places where people actually had to do work. I did a language degree and got my classes down to 8 hours a week. The occasional essay and translation disturbed an otherwise tranquil week.
Polytechnics did vocational practical courses, now most of them are universities doing academic degrees not what they were created for
Of course. So would you rather have been served by someone trained in their vocation or a social science grad who is picking it up as they go along ?
A social science graduate with top grade GCSES and A levels who did a Russell Group degree and the law conversion course where they did well in I would certainly prefer over someone with a 2.2 from a new university as my lawyer.
Polytechnics did practical courses for trades rather than academic degrees and that is what they were good at
degrees are no guarantee of ability - see D Cameron. I've met lots of people from good universities and a university is no guarantee of anything. After about 10 years in the workforce degrees are largely irrelevant and ability is all.
A university degree from a top university generally indicates you at least have the ability to do a job which requires a high level of intelligence and IQ. For example be a doctor or lawyer or academic or engineer.
For other jobs practical experience is more important and in politics probably judgement too eg Churchill and Truman were not university graduates but were effective as PM and President. Although even in politics having a degree helps with understanding complex legislation and policy
So, H, who are you leaning towards for new Eton Provost to replace Lord Waldegrave of North Hill? Looks to be 3 in the running, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, Sir Geoffrey Adams, or (my tip) Princess Antonia the Duchess of Wellington
My advice for the Conservatives (other than ditching Boris. I don't share loathing that some here have for the man, but he is plainly corrupt) is:-
1. Encourage lots of house-building. My own view is that owner occupation is absolutely key to future Conservative voting. If that pisses off the NIMBY's, tough.
2. Rebalance tax away from income towards capital. I'm arguing against my own interests, here, as I'll likely inherit a lot of money in the next decade, but my need is less than the needs of my own step-children, and my nephews and nieces. Work has to pay, and it doesn't when people are facing high marginal rates of income tax.
3. Put a few hundred million pounds into fixing the criminal justice system. That does not mean more police. It means providing sufficient resources to enable justice to be delivered swiftly, which is fair to both victims and defendants. This is an area that has been shamefully neglected since 2010.
None of these things guarantee victory, but they are worth doing in themselves, and 1 and 2 will yield dividends for the Conservatives in the future.
The Tory core vote of pensioners is still voting Tory because greenbelt land is not over developed and their capital is not too heavily taxed, see how badly the dementia tax went down.
Start building on greenbelt land as well as brown belt and taxing wealth and inheritance and property more and they will go LD, Independent or RefUK or even Labour and assuming the young still vote Labour and they cannot win back the middle aged they have lost since 2019 the Tories would be left with nobody and facing 1997 style wipeout.
I agree with you on 3 though
The Conservatives won't have a future if they base their electoral strategy on appealing to current pensioners. From the 1920's to the 1980's, the Conservatives understood very well that if they wished to grow their vote, housebuilding was key.
Agreed. Honing their offering to pensioners is a guaranteed slow death for the party. Quite literally.
No it isn't, they are our core vote.
Lose them and we face 1997 style annihilation or 2022 style Les Republicains annihilation as occurred when Major and Pecresse lost the pensioner vote to Blair and Macron as well as every other age group
My advice for the Conservatives (other than ditching Boris. I don't share loathing that some here have for the man, but he is plainly corrupt) is:-
1. Encourage lots of house-building. My own view is that owner occupation is absolutely key to future Conservative voting. If that pisses off the NIMBY's, tough.
2. Rebalance tax away from income towards capital. I'm arguing against my own interests, here, as I'll likely inherit a lot of money in the next decade, but my need is less than the needs of my own step-children, and my nephews and nieces. Work has to pay, and it doesn't when people are facing high marginal rates of income tax.
3. Put a few hundred million pounds into fixing the criminal justice system. That does not mean more police. It means providing sufficient resources to enable justice to be delivered swiftly, which is fair to both victims and defendants. This is an area that has been shamefully neglected since 2010.
None of these things guarantee victory, but they are worth doing in themselves, and 1 and 2 will yield dividends for the Conservatives in the future.
The Tory core vote of pensioners is still voting Tory because greenbelt land is not over developed and their capital is not too heavily taxed, see how badly the dementia tax went down.
Start building on greenbelt land as well as brown belt and taxing wealth and inheritance and property more and they will go LD, Independent or RefUK or even Labour and assuming the young still vote Labour and they cannot win back the middle aged they have lost since 2019 the Tories would be left with nobody and facing 1997 style wipeout.
I agree with you on 3 though
I think one problem with reforming planning law is the poor quality and unimaginative/unconstrained nature of large scale developments here, which often look awful and take years and years to complete.
People fear it will mean a free for all, with lots of disruption and bespoilment of their locality.
I'd like to see far more developments of 15-20 homes in the vernacular that complete in 12 months rather than 5 year megaplan Barratt and Persimmon monsters.
As ever John Harris adds something to the conversation that is worth sitting up and listening to. No one in political journalism does more thinking and scratching around beneath the headlines than this guy imho.
Thread of the evening.
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h You won't hear much political sociology in reporting of these election results. But a lot of them tell you about how a large chunk of the English middle class no longer meets old-fashioned stereotypes. (1)
John Harris @johnharris1969 · 4h Replying to @johnharris1969 It's increasingly liberal & worldly, thanks partly to the expansion of Higher Education, but also to how far cities' cultures now stretch well into suburbia and the commuter belt (2)
John Harris @johnharris1969 P.s Blair's expansion of Higher Education May yet prove to be as transformative as Thatcher's sale of council houses
Its a combination of the expansion of graduates with degrees of little use and the massive expansion of debt they're stuck with to get those degrees of little use.
The result is a huge number of new graduates each year who having been to university think they're entitled to a middle class lifestyle but don't have the skillset to achieve it.
Which inevitably leads them to blaming the government, the economic system, society as a whole.
And produces a class of people who require the creation of public sector middle class non-jobs for them to achieve the middle class lifestyle they think they're entitled to.
They can certainly still be middle class even if not necessarily upper middle class or rich enough to be in the top 10% of earners. That would largely have required them to go to Russell Group universities only to study law, medicine, economics or a STEM subject.
What is clear too is the expansion if graduates from about 10% of 25 year olds 40 years ago to about 40% now has also turned Labour from the party of the working class to the party of university graduates.
The Tories can still win graduates with a Cameron like leader but not a Boris type leader, although Boris has far more appeal and still does to the skilled working class voters in particular who have left Labour
That depends upon how you define middle class.
For me if you cannot afford to buy the average home in your area then you're not middle class.
That's a problem the Conservatives will have to deal with in southern England.
And promises about possible future inheritances aren't going to help.
Reading @another_richard and @HYUFD private dialogue is like dipping back into the 1950s and watching a smoke filled talking heads debate on a black and white TV
"Class depends on where one was educated, or what sort of a home one can afford". What a load of old nonsense.
Educate as many as one can to a high standard it drags up society, a nation of fewer hooligans and reprobates. Who cares if all the Baristas have a Sociology degree from the University of Worcester? Good on them.
That's fine as long as you make clear to those getting Sociology degrees from the University of Worcester that all their degree is good for is a life as a Barista. Stop coning people into thinking a degree is a gateway to a better job and a better life whilst at the same time so completely trashing the value of those degrees that in effect you are lying to them and that all you are really giving them is a lifetime of debt and low pay.
No, we must encourage employers to treat all graduates equally. It will be good for both sides and the country. Unless there really is something about an Oxford humanities degree that qualifies one to run a hedge fund or a country.
That is utter rubbish. Why should an employer put any value on a qualification which has no intrinsic value in itself and which does not in any way reflect the abilities of the candidate as a potential employee.
There are plenty of degrees that do have real world value in the specific areas they relate to but the idea that as an employer i should look favourably on someone simply because they have been through the degree factory and stayed out of gainful employment for an extra 3 years is idiotic.
Or put it the other way. Why should I look less favourably on someone who left school at 18 and went out and got a job so that by 21 they have 3 years experience of real employment compared with a graduate? That is what you are actually asking employers to do.
Or why should someone with 2 E grade A levels and straight Cs at GCSE at a new university be put on an equal plane for a job as a lawyer or doctor with someone with straight A*s at A level and GCSE with a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university
Not posh enough for some people, I see.
OK if you would like to be operated on or defended in court or have a big commercial deal negotiated by someone with 2 E grades at A level, C grade gcses and a 2.2 from a new university, be my guest
Actually given ages you probably are today. At A levels 1979/80 I had lots of friends who applied to do architecture and got places with Ds and Es they will have built some bg buildings by now. I cant see why lawyers will be much different.
Yes but we did not have new universities back then and just 10% were graduates not 40% like now and an E grade at A level then would likely be a C grade now and a C grade then would probably be an A now and an A then would now be an A* thanks to grade inflation
We had Polytechs which were places where people actually had to do work. I did a language degree and got my classes down to 8 hours a week. The occasional essay and translation disturbed an otherwise tranquil week.
Polytechnics did vocational practical courses, now most of them are universities doing academic degrees not what they were created for
Of course. So would you rather have been served by someone trained in their vocation or a social science grad who is picking it up as they go along ?
A social science graduate with top grade GCSES and A levels who did a Russell Group degree and the law conversion course where they did well in I would certainly prefer over someone with a 2.2 from a new university as my lawyer.
Polytechnics did practical courses for trades rather than academic degrees and that is what they were good at
degrees are no guarantee of ability - see D Cameron. I've met lots of people from good universities and a university is no guarantee of anything. After about 10 years in the workforce degrees are largely irrelevant and ability is all.
A university degree from a top university generally indicates you at least have the ability to do a job which requires a high level of intelligence and IQ. For example be a doctor or lawyer or academic or engineer.
For other jobs practical experience is more important and in politics probably judgement too eg Churchill and Truman were not university graduates but were effective as PM and President. Although even in politics having a degree helps with understanding complex legislation and policy
As someone who is married to a Doctor I think she would say memory is a key factor and to be a surgeon dexterity is important. Now I consider myself to be reasonably bright, but only a fool would let me near any sharp instruments.
Dexterity can be taught fairly easily. I agree on memory, but ultimately doctors need to be analytic, reflective and flexible of thought more than anything else.
In South Belfast, leader of NI Green Party, Claire Bailey, loses her seat in the Assembly in final
Elected = 1 SF, 1 DU (Poots), 1 SDLP and 2 Alliance the last of whom beat out Bailey for last seat.
Personifies the rise in Alliance votes and seats this election, which among other things squeezed the Green vote across Northern Ireland.
Looking at the details, my guess is that Alliance will just fall short in North Antrim, but gain from SDLP in North Belfast and South Down, and it will be incredibly tight between them and Sinn Fein for the last seat in Upper Bann.
Why does pb revert to school exam grades once every couple of weeks? In real life not sure I have discussed them with anyone in the last decade or two.
Because it is seriously important. This country's natural resources have largely been depleted. We live on our skills, our trading ability and our ability to compete with our neighbours. An absolutely key part of this is ensuring that our children are at least as well educated and, ideally, better educated than our competitors. And we are failing.
Most of our largest economic problems flow from this: our poor productivity, low wages for the unskilled, inequality and casual labour. Many of our social problems flow from this: alienation of those failed by a school system not fit for purpose; drugs social instability. and inequality. Some of our political problems flow from this; the fact that so many of our politicians come from such a narrow segment of our population with little understanding of the others.
The UK has been rightly angsting about its education system for more than 150 years after we saw the consequences of a superior German system producing more engineers and technicians. And we still haven't got close to fixing it.
But the solution advocated by most people on pb.com today is less education.
For some reason we have a deeply anti-education culture in this country. I can't think of another country in the world where people would seriously entertain the idea that too many people were receiving a university education. And we have a media class that seems to be perversely proud of its lack of numerical competency.
This can all be summed up by the winning slogan in the Brexit referendum campaign - "The people of this country have had enough of experts."
A lot of this seems to be bound up with our culture of class distinctions, where the apex of the pyramid to be aspired to is to be rich enough to be able to employ staff who can worry about the counting, and so actually having to be competent is a signifier of relative poverty. This is also why we possibly have a tendency to teach the wrong things or to draw such a rigid distinction between academic and technical education, and place academic education at a higher level in the social pyramid.
I suspect that to a substantial extent, if we were able to improve the culture around education then we would see dramatic improvements, and we'd find that the details of teaching methods and organisation were much less consequential.
My advice for the Conservatives (other than ditching Boris. I don't share loathing that some here have for the man, but he is plainly corrupt) is:-
1. Encourage lots of house-building. My own view is that owner occupation is absolutely key to future Conservative voting. If that pisses off the NIMBY's, tough.
2. Rebalance tax away from income towards capital. I'm arguing against my own interests, here, as I'll likely inherit a lot of money in the next decade, but my need is less than the needs of my own step-children, and my nephews and nieces. Work has to pay, and it doesn't when people are facing high marginal rates of income tax.
3. Put a few hundred million pounds into fixing the criminal justice system. That does not mean more police. It means providing sufficient resources to enable justice to be delivered swiftly, which is fair to both victims and defendants. This is an area that has been shamefully neglected since 2010.
None of these things guarantee victory, but they are worth doing in themselves, and 1 and 2 will yield dividends for the Conservatives in the future.
The Tory core vote of pensioners is still voting Tory because greenbelt land is not over developed and their capital is not too heavily taxed, see how badly the dementia tax went down.
Start building on greenbelt land as well as brown belt and taxing wealth and inheritance and property more and they will go LD, Independent or RefUK or even Labour and assuming the young still vote Labour and they cannot win back the middle aged they have lost since 2019 the Tories would be left with nobody and facing 1997 style wipeout.
I agree with you on 3 though
I think one problem with reforming planning law is the poor quality and unimaginative/unconstrained nature of large scale developments here, which often look awful and take years and years to complete.
People fear it will mean a free for all, with lots of disruption and bespoilment of their locality.
I'd like to see far more developments of 15-20 homes in the vernacular that complete in 12 months rather than 5 year megaplan Barratt and Persimmon monsters.
And more plots of land sold to individual builders. UK seems to be one of very few places in the world, where people don’t routinely build their own house.
My advice for the Conservatives (other than ditching Boris. I don't share loathing that some here have for the man, but he is plainly corrupt) is:-
1. Encourage lots of house-building. My own view is that owner occupation is absolutely key to future Conservative voting. If that pisses off the NIMBY's, tough.
2. Rebalance tax away from income towards capital. I'm arguing against my own interests, here, as I'll likely inherit a lot of money in the next decade, but my need is less than the needs of my own step-children, and my nephews and nieces. Work has to pay, and it doesn't when people are facing high marginal rates of income tax.
3. Put a few hundred million pounds into fixing the criminal justice system. That does not mean more police. It means providing sufficient resources to enable justice to be delivered swiftly, which is fair to both victims and defendants. This is an area that has been shamefully neglected since 2010.
None of these things guarantee victory, but they are worth doing in themselves, and 1 and 2 will yield dividends for the Conservatives in the future.
The Tory core vote of pensioners is still voting Tory because greenbelt land is not over developed and their capital is not too heavily taxed, see how badly the dementia tax went down.
Start building on greenbelt land as well as brown belt and taxing wealth and inheritance and property more and they will go LD, Independent or RefUK or even Labour and assuming the young still vote Labour and they cannot win back the middle aged they have lost since 2019 the Tories would be left with nobody and facing 1997 style wipeout.
I agree with you on 3 though
The Conservatives won't have a future if they base their electoral strategy on appealing to current pensioners. From the 1920's to the 1980's, the Conservatives understood very well that if they wished to grow their vote, housebuilding was key.
Agreed. Honing their offering to pensioners is a guaranteed slow death for the party. Quite literally.
No it isn't, they are our core vote.
Lose them and we face 1997 style annihilation or 2022 style Les Republicains annihilation as occurred when Major and Pecresse lost the pensioner vote to Blair and Macron as well as every other age group
If you love something, let it go.
You Tories are absolute fools. You relentlessly appeal to your core vote. Core vote is never going to get you very far. You need to reach beyond your comfort zone.
All you F1 fans out there, very excited because this morning (in USA) the Marty & McGee show on ESPN radio (and SEC TV) is broadcasting from Miami.
They just interviewed a British racer (didn't catch his name) and are going to have Mario Andretti on the show shortly.
Talking about a) new burst of US enthusiasm and interest in F1 in addition to NASCAR; and b) some Euro types disgruntled about having F1 in America in the first place.
The Miami event is totally bonkers, even by F1 standards. It’s like they’re hosting the Super Bowl this weekend, there’s an estimated half a million ticketless fans turning up in the city, to watch the race in parks and bars.
Miami Herald - The inaugural F1 Miami Grand Prix will be a quintessentially South Florida spectacle
SSI - Marty & McGee were talking about Euro F1 fans reacting (rather sarcastically) to sight of a yacht moored on a fake sea of concrete. Get with the program, dudes!
It is really sickening to see LBC try to draw equivalence between Starmer and Johnson.
Johnson lied. Repeatedly. He said there were no parties at all. Zero. Zilch. He lied.
Keir Starmer has never lied about this. He’s never denied what happened or that the photos aren’t genuine.
One has been investigated. Found to have lied and been fined.
The other has not lied and has been found not guilty.
I know I’m biased but can anyone sensible honestly conclude Starmer and Johnson are at all alike? I can’t imagine past Tory parties putting up with this kind of thing.
I suspect your probably right, but I would say that Starmer's behaviour that night tells us that he wasn't nearly as worried about COVID as the mask wearing in the Commons would suggest. For all we know, he's only been caught once.
Starmer's problem, if he is fined, isn't Johnson. Perhaps he could argue that Johnson's behaviour is materially worse.
But Starmer called for Sunak to resign. Now, good luck explaining how Starmer's behaviour isn't nearly as bad as Sunak's.
He has to go sooner rather than later. Starmer cannot handle a peak Partygate response whilst an FPN is hanging over him. If he stays, Johnson is off the Partygate hook despite a potential slew of FPNs and Gray's expected to be damning report. That is an outrage.
If I were Starmer I would resign now. Rayner must go too.
My advice for the Conservatives (other than ditching Boris. I don't share loathing that some here have for the man, but he is plainly corrupt) is:-
1. Encourage lots of house-building. My own view is that owner occupation is absolutely key to future Conservative voting. If that pisses off the NIMBY's, tough.
2. Rebalance tax away from income towards capital. I'm arguing against my own interests, here, as I'll likely inherit a lot of money in the next decade, but my need is less than the needs of my own step-children, and my nephews and nieces. Work has to pay, and it doesn't when people are facing high marginal rates of income tax.
3. Put a few hundred million pounds into fixing the criminal justice system. That does not mean more police. It means providing sufficient resources to enable justice to be delivered swiftly, which is fair to both victims and defendants. This is an area that has been shamefully neglected since 2010.
None of these things guarantee victory, but they are worth doing in themselves, and 1 and 2 will yield dividends for the Conservatives in the future.
The Tory core vote of pensioners is still voting Tory because greenbelt land is not over developed and their capital is not too heavily taxed, see how badly the dementia tax went down.
Start building on greenbelt land as well as brown belt and taxing wealth and inheritance and property more and they will go LD, Independent or RefUK or even Labour and assuming the young still vote Labour and they cannot win back the middle aged they have lost since 2019 the Tories would be left with nobody and facing 1997 style wipeout.
I agree with you on 3 though
The Conservatives won't have a future if they base their electoral strategy on appealing to current pensioners. From the 1920's to the 1980's, the Conservatives understood very well that if they wished to grow their vote, housebuilding was key.
The Tories also kept a tighter grip on immigration then too, reducing demand.
The Conservatives won't even have a base if they lose pensioners but face 1997 style wipeout.
I am not anti housebuilding as I said just anti excess building in the greenbelt and countryside
All you F1 fans out there, very excited because this morning (in USA) the Marty & McGee show on ESPN radio (and SEC TV) is broadcasting from Miami.
They just interviewed a British racer (didn't catch his name) and are going to have Mario Andretti on the show shortly.
Talking about a) new burst of US enthusiasm and interest in F1 in addition to NASCAR; and b) some Euro types disgruntled about having F1 in America in the first place.
The Miami event is totally bonkers, even by F1 standards. It’s like they’re hosting the Super Bowl this weekend, there’s an estimated half a million ticketless fans turning up in the city, to watch the race in parks and bars.
Miami Herald - The inaugural F1 Miami Grand Prix will be a quintessentially South Florida spectacle
SSI - Marty & McGee were talking about Euro F1 fans reacting (rather sarcastically) to sight of a yacht moored on a fake sea of concrete. Get with the program, dudes!
The fake harbour would have been okay if it were actually a lake of water, as opposed to a scaffolding structure with a blue carpet around the boats. People are paying several thousand dollars a head, to be on those boats this weekend!
SF 18 nc DUP 17 -1 All 11 +4 UUP 5 -1 SDLP 3 -1 oth 2 nc
So Unionist parties 23 seats (including DUP and UUP and 1 for TUV) and Nationalist parties 21 seats combining SF and SDLP.
Almost neck and neck after transfers for largest party now too
Alliance are Progressive, so 32 including SF, SDLP, and Alliance.
If the DUP and UUP entered a formal alliance would they get the right to nominate 1st Minister (assuming that made them larger than SF of course)? I cannot see the Unionist community there giving that up easily.
Money ALWAYS comes into play - but yes you're exactly right that defining 'working class' is about what you're going to do with the definition when you have it.
Eg I need to define what 'working class' means in order to make sense of my core political belief - that the priority objective of government should be shifting wealth and opportunity towards the working class. You have to know what the 'working class' is if you're going to run with that.
I think I would suggest that you'd be better off rephrasing your priority objective as "shifting wealth to the less well-off" rather than setting a definition of "working-class" to match what you're really trying to achieve. It makes your aims clearer to others, and avoids the risk that the wider cultural definition of 'working class' bleeds back in and results in policies being mis-targeted, for instance.
I also like the 'money' metric because it gets rid of so much clutter. It's interesting to talk about things like accents and clothes and table habits etc, and they do matter in life, but they don't relate to the above hard policy objective.
It gets rid of clutter by chopping away a lot of the key parts of the phenomenon of 'class', though. Personally I tend to think that class as it is experienced is largely cultural, and it correlates strongly with wealth (for systematic reasons) but isn't defined by it.
Grayson Perry's observation that the cafetiere is an icon of middle-classness is spot-on, incidentally.
SF 18 nc DUP 17 -1 All 11 +4 UUP 5 -1 SDLP 3 -1 oth 2 nc
So Unionist parties 23 seats (including DUP and UUP and 1 for TUV) and Nationalist parties 21 seats combining SF and SDLP.
Almost neck and neck after transfers for largest party now too between SF and DUP
I think the DUP will lose three in the end, one to Alliance, and two to indpendent Unionists, and the UUP will lose one. But, it's just possible they could lose a seat to Alliance in North Antrim.
Sinn Fein may gain from SDLP in Upper Bann and Fermanagh South Tyrone.
Why does pb revert to school exam grades once every couple of weeks? In real life not sure I have discussed them with anyone in the last decade or two.
I've just thought about it and I can still remember my GCSE grades. I was faintly surprised: it's the type of memory that could have faded through lack of use years ago.
All you F1 fans out there, very excited because this morning (in USA) the Marty & McGee show on ESPN radio (and SEC TV) is broadcasting from Miami.
They just interviewed a British racer (didn't catch his name) and are going to have Mario Andretti on the show shortly.
Talking about a) new burst of US enthusiasm and interest in F1 in addition to NASCAR; and b) some Euro types disgruntled about having F1 in America in the first place.
The Miami event is totally bonkers, even by F1 standards. It’s like they’re hosting the Super Bowl this weekend, there’s an estimated half a million ticketless fans turning up in the city, to watch the race in parks and bars.
Miami Herald - The inaugural F1 Miami Grand Prix will be a quintessentially South Florida spectacle
SSI - Marty & McGee were talking about Euro F1 fans reacting (rather sarcastically) to sight of a yacht moored on a fake sea of concrete. Get with the program, dudes!
Addendum - M&McG just reminiscing re: their youths misspent watching "Miami Vice" and the impact that had on them as young redneck-hillbilly types growing up in the Upper South. Largely visual, and positive it seems.
Why does pb revert to school exam grades once every couple of weeks? In real life not sure I have discussed them with anyone in the last decade or two.
Because it is seriously important. This country's natural resources have largely been depleted. We live on our skills, our trading ability and our ability to compete with our neighbours. An absolutely key part of this is ensuring that our children are at least as well educated and, ideally, better educated than our competitors. And we are failing.
Most of our largest economic problems flow from this: our poor productivity, low wages for the unskilled, inequality and casual labour. Many of our social problems flow from this: alienation of those failed by a school system not fit for purpose; drugs social instability. and inequality. Some of our political problems flow from this; the fact that so many of our politicians come from such a narrow segment of our population with little understanding of the others.
The UK has been rightly angsting about its education system for more than 150 years after we saw the consequences of a superior German system producing more engineers and technicians. And we still haven't got close to fixing it.
But the solution advocated by most people on pb.com today is less education.
For some reason we have a deeply anti-education culture in this country. I can't think of another country in the world where people would seriously entertain the idea that too many people were receiving a university education. And we have a media class that seems to be perversely proud of its lack of numerical competency.
This can all be summed up by the winning slogan in the Brexit referendum campaign - "The people of this country have had enough of experts."
A lot of this seems to be bound up with our culture of class distinctions, where the apex of the pyramid to be aspired to is to be rich enough to be able to employ staff who can worry about the counting, and so actually having to be competent is a signifier of relative poverty. This is also why we possibly have a tendency to teach the wrong things or to draw such a rigid distinction between academic and technical education, and place academic education at a higher level in the social pyramid.
I suspect that to a substantial extent, if we were able to improve the culture around education then we would see dramatic improvements, and we'd find that the details of teaching methods and organisation were much less consequential.
No it is not less education. It is stop lying about what that education means in terms of both career opportunities and debt and, more importantly, stop using education as a means of keeping the young off the unemployment lists.
There is nothing wrong with having 50% of the population in education to 21. There is a lot wrong with doing it in such a way that you simultaneously put them into massive debt for much of the rest of their lives and also completely devalue the education they are getting. All the more so when that education is coming at the price - to the country - of a far less skilled workforce because of the abandonment of apprenticeships and vocational courses.
Personally I would have stayed in education my whole life if I could have. I loved everything about it. But in the end we all need to work. The country needs us to work. And that work needs to be done by people with the skills and aptitude for careers that generally need very little in the way of a university education - at least certainly not the type of university education most of our graduates are getting at the moment.
Money ALWAYS comes into play - but yes you're exactly right that defining 'working class' is about what you're going to do with the definition when you have it.
Eg I need to define what 'working class' means in order to make sense of my core political belief - that the priority objective of government should be shifting wealth and opportunity towards the working class. You have to know what the 'working class' is if you're going to run with that.
I think I would suggest that you'd be better off rephrasing your priority objective as "shifting wealth to the less well-off" rather than setting a definition of "working-class" to match what you're really trying to achieve. It makes your aims clearer to others, and avoids the risk that the wider cultural definition of 'working class' bleeds back in and results in policies being mis-targeted, for instance.
I also like the 'money' metric because it gets rid of so much clutter. It's interesting to talk about things like accents and clothes and table habits etc, and they do matter in life, but they don't relate to the above hard policy objective.
It gets rid of clutter by chopping away a lot of the key parts of the phenomenon of 'class', though. Personally I tend to think that class as it is experienced is largely cultural, and it correlates strongly with wealth (for systematic reasons) but isn't defined by it.
Grayson Perry's observation that the cafetiere is an icon of middle-classness is spot-on, incidentally.
Yep, it's a fair criticism (of my definition) that 'class = money' means the word isn't bringing anything to the table that isn't already there with 'rich' vs 'poor'. But this is also the point and the beauty of it.
My definition is for use in developing political policy as opposed to in general chitchat. For the latter, of course you can explore all sorts of stuff, family background, schooling, where you go on holiday, ever seen a play, do you like John Inverdale, do you have a goldfish, etc, all of this is crucial in chitchat about class since it'd be boring as hell otherwise, you'd just say class = money and walk off, ie there wouldn't *be* any chitchat.
But when it comes to real world policy - eg allocating X places at a top uni for 'working class' applicants, then you need to strip all that away and use what it's really all about - money.
"Imperial College announces that at least 80% of their intake this year will be drawn from kids whose parents don't have a cafetiere."
- Tories losing 43% of their seats in Wales without a single gain and losing their only council. - Plaid gaining 3 Councils (albeit with small nett seat loss) - First seats for Gwlad & Propel
My faith in the Welsh electorate has been restored.
SF 18 nc DUP 17 -1 All 11 +4 UUP 5 -1 SDLP 3 -1 oth 2 nc
So Unionist parties 23 seats (including DUP and UUP and 1 for TUV) and Nationalist parties 21 seats combining SF and SDLP.
Almost neck and neck after transfers for largest party now too between SF and DUP
I think the DUP will lose three in the end, one to Alliance, and two to indpendent Unionists, and the UUP will lose one. But, it's just possible they could lose a seat to Alliance in North Antrim.
Sinn Fein may gain from SDLP in Upper Bann and Fermanagh South Tyrone.
The general trend then is almost no change between the Unionist and Nationalist seat totals.
The main shift is DUP to TUV and DUP and UUP to Alliance and SDLP to SF and Alliance
My advice for the Conservatives (other than ditching Boris. I don't share loathing that some here have for the man, but he is plainly corrupt) is:-
1. Encourage lots of house-building. My own view is that owner occupation is absolutely key to future Conservative voting. If that pisses off the NIMBY's, tough.
2. Rebalance tax away from income towards capital. I'm arguing against my own interests, here, as I'll likely inherit a lot of money in the next decade, but my need is less than the needs of my own step-children, and my nephews and nieces. Work has to pay, and it doesn't when people are facing high marginal rates of income tax.
3. Put a few hundred million pounds into fixing the criminal justice system. That does not mean more police. It means providing sufficient resources to enable justice to be delivered swiftly, which is fair to both victims and defendants. This is an area that has been shamefully neglected since 2010.
None of these things guarantee victory, but they are worth doing in themselves, and 1 and 2 will yield dividends for the Conservatives in the future.
Interesting. Current Labour Party policy is pretty close to your list - certainly closer than current Tory policy - lefties like me would endorse what you say. Welcome to the dark side.
My advice for the Conservatives (other than ditching Boris. I don't share loathing that some here have for the man, but he is plainly corrupt) is:-
1. Encourage lots of house-building. My own view is that owner occupation is absolutely key to future Conservative voting. If that pisses off the NIMBY's, tough.
2. Rebalance tax away from income towards capital. I'm arguing against my own interests, here, as I'll likely inherit a lot of money in the next decade, but my need is less than the needs of my own step-children, and my nephews and nieces. Work has to pay, and it doesn't when people are facing high marginal rates of income tax.
3. Put a few hundred million pounds into fixing the criminal justice system. That does not mean more police. It means providing sufficient resources to enable justice to be delivered swiftly, which is fair to both victims and defendants. This is an area that has been shamefully neglected since 2010.
None of these things guarantee victory, but they are worth doing in themselves, and 1 and 2 will yield dividends for the Conservatives in the future.
The Tory core vote of pensioners is still voting Tory because greenbelt land is not over developed and their capital is not too heavily taxed, see how badly the dementia tax went down.
Start building on greenbelt land as well as brown belt and taxing wealth and inheritance and property more and they will go LD, Independent or RefUK or even Labour and assuming the young still vote Labour and they cannot win back the middle aged they have lost since 2019 the Tories would be left with nobody and facing 1997 style wipeout.
I agree with you on 3 though
I think one problem with reforming planning law is the poor quality and unimaginative/unconstrained nature of large scale developments here, which often look awful and take years and years to complete.
People fear it will mean a free for all, with lots of disruption and bespoilment of their locality.
I'd like to see far more developments of 15-20 homes in the vernacular that complete in 12 months rather than 5 year megaplan Barratt and Persimmon monsters.
The latter is a direct result of the planning laws, which currently incentivise the Barratt monsters.
Where are we now with the local results? This time yesterday the narrative was 'bad for the Tories but not the total catastrophe predicted'. Is the narrative now 'it's the total catastrophe predicted'?
Comments
So, back to the link to politics - which is the point of this - the priority for government (imo) should be serving the interests of people like I used to be not of people like I am now.
That'd leave Johnson right back where he started, in a painfully Hung Parliament, but with the DUP unlikely to be large enough to give him confidence and supply. During a period of stagflation and cost of living crisis.
That might not turn out well for the Conservative Party.
Without STV this lad wouldn't have been elected in the first place to one of the poorest wards in Glasgow, let alone reelected when his colleagues were being flushed down the toilet all over Scotland.
And the 2 E offer is rarely given to more than a small minority of those given Oxbridge offers. The standard offer is normally at least 2 or 3 A* grades
*Friend of mine did. But, despite that, he's highly competent at his profession.
Polytechnics did practical courses for trades rather than academic degrees and that is what they were good at
There would have to be truly exceptional circumstances for Oxbridge to do that, though there was spate of universities making such offers to students as long as they made them their first choice. This made sense for the university as it gave them certainty when planning, but it induced too many Y13s to opt for a course they would not have chosen otherwise. Schools didn't like it either as it is difficult to motivate a student to do their best when they only need two Es.
For what it's worth, the only degree courses I'd ban would be Business Studies and related subjects. Absolute waste of time both intellectually and in terms of future productivity. Much more useless than Sociology, Media Studies, History, 18th Century Peruvian Literature etc.
Grayson Perry's observation that the cafetiere is an icon of middle-classness is spot-on, incidentally.
I have a strong interest in education. I really have no idea how the Tories plan to fix the current mess of Scottish schools and Universities. Only party obsessives will because they don't talk about it.
How do we attract consultants to Scotland when they have to pay higher taxes here? What should be done about the desperately underfunded care sector? Most importantly, how do we start to repair the Scottish economy so that there is enough money to address these other problems? How do we attract the inward investment we so desperately need? How do we improve our skills base so that it is competitive and attractive?
Scotland desperately needs some new ideas and thoughts to replace a failing government that survives on the neverendum principle. I would love it if Labour did the same.
South of the Border, I wonder if the Conservatives will add Croydon Borough Council to the Mayoralty. Six London boroughs would be far from the worst result for London Conservatives in my lifetime.
This can also be seen in the hospitalisation data. The government deserves a lot of credit for ignoring the "experts" in the WHO and across Europe and ploughing ahead with reopening and not having a lockdown or shutdown over the winter because of Omicron.
We're not going on holiday anywhere this summer but I'm really a lot less bothered than I thought, firstly excitement for the baby but also every time I think about going to Europe I get the general sense of foreboding that I'll be going back into a country that still has all of the COVID shite with masks and passes. We met some Italian friends last night and they were shocked at how few people bother with masks and how my wife doesn't bother with them despite being pregnant. They said in Italy mask compliance on public transport is still 100% and indoors in optional places it's close to it. They still scan QR codes etc... We asked them to what end given that in a similarly sized country like the UK having no restrictions hasn't made any difference but they were adamant that Italy has it right and we have it wrong. There was an almost religious response to criticism of ongoing COVID measures so we dropped it.
I fear that countries which made COVID measures part of the fabric of life are going to struggle to remove them. People in these countries seem scared to let go, we had the ridiculous scene of them donning their masks in an Uber from our house to the restaurant, they wore them in the restaurant until we sat down then they took them off for the whole evening. Not to mention they didn't wear them in our living room where we sat together for a couple of hours. I resisted the urge to point out how idiotic the theatre is but my wife and I did have a good chuckle when we got home.
There *are* specialist areas of law, such as tax, or some of the work relating to land law or inheritance where academic skills are of greater importance.
Russia has reacted ferociously to Britain's new sanctions on Russian media outlets
Russia summoned Britain's ambassador and warned that these moves could presage the "final destruction" of British-Russian relations
https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1522905003345723395
Many GPs appear to be still using the pandemic as an excuse to mostly put their feet up while getting paid. Again, the choice is the key thing. People who want an in-person appointment should be seen in-person, and people who are happy to take a remote appointment can be offered that if it’s convenient.
A friend of mine works for the government body that dishes out funding for scientific research. He told me that a lot of the uni staff he interacts with were very pro-Corbyn, except for one policy. Would you like to guess which?
For other jobs practical experience is more important and in politics probably judgement too eg Churchill and Truman were not university graduates but were effective as PM and President. Although even in politics having a degree helps with understanding complex legislation and policy
1. Encourage lots of house-building. My own view is that owner occupation is absolutely key to future Conservative voting. If that pisses off the NIMBY's, tough.
2. Rebalance tax away from income towards capital. I'm arguing against my own interests, here, as I'll likely inherit a lot of money in the next decade, but my need is less than the needs of my own step-children, and my nephews and nieces. Work has to pay, and it doesn't when people are facing high marginal rates of income tax.
3. Put a few hundred million pounds into fixing the criminal justice system. That does not mean more police. It means providing sufficient resources to enable justice to be delivered swiftly, which is fair to both victims and defendants. This is an area that has been shamefully neglected since 2010.
None of these things guarantee victory, but they are worth doing in themselves, and 1 and 2 will yield dividends for the Conservatives in the future.
They just interviewed a British racer (didn't catch his name) and are going to have Mario Andretti on the show shortly.
Talking about a) new burst of US enthusiasm and interest in F1 in addition to NASCAR; and b) some Euro types disgruntled about having F1 in America in the first place.
Most of our largest economic problems flow from this: our poor productivity, low wages for the unskilled, inequality and casual labour.
Many of our social problems flow from this: alienation of those failed by a school system not fit for purpose; drugs social instability. and inequality.
Some of our political problems flow from this; the fact that so many of our politicians come from such a narrow segment of our population with little understanding of the others.
The UK has been rightly angsting about its education system for more than 150 years after we saw the consequences of a superior German system producing more engineers and technicians. And we still haven't got close to fixing it.
Start building on greenbelt land as well as brown belt and taxing wealth and inheritance and property more and they will go LD, Independent or RefUK or even Labour and assuming the young still vote Labour and they cannot win back the middle aged they have lost since 2019 the Tories would be left with nobody and facing 1997 style wipeout.
I agree with you on 3 though
The Tories are also still winning over 55s, remember however in 1997 Blair won every age group, even over 55s and pensioners.
(I've ruled out Simon Vivian)
Jackie Baillie making positive noises re SLab-SCon cooperation. An awful lot of SLab activists and voters are going to be furious.
Madness.
I am not anti house building but it should be focused on brownbelt land in London and the Home counties where it is most needed.
The well off home owners are the Tory core vote, as well as now committed pro hard Brexit working class voters
I agree though there aren't many stupid doctors. There was the dexterity point also though. Another requiring a specific skill set is an anaesthetist. Spending most of your time in theatre reading Mills & Boon and then occasionally working in blind panic (or in their case not being in a blind panic).
Home ownership, low tax, crime and justice, strong defence and education together with moderation and good governance is a winning mix.
The Conservatives must govern in the interests of the whole nation and not just the retired. If all the above means pension ages/entitlements need to be trimmed back then so be it.
Elected = 1 SF, 1 DU (Poots), 1 SDLP and 2 Alliance the last of whom beat out Bailey for last seat.
Personifies the rise in Alliance votes and seats this election, which among other things squeezed the Green vote across Northern Ireland.
Lose them and we face 1997 style annihilation or 2022 style Les Republicains annihilation as occurred when Major and Pecresse lost the pensioner vote to Blair and Macron as well as every other age group
People fear it will mean a free for all, with lots of disruption and bespoilment of their locality.
I'd like to see far more developments of 15-20 homes in the vernacular that complete in 12 months rather than 5 year megaplan Barratt and Persimmon monsters.
SF 18 nc
DUP 17 -1
All 11 +4
UUP 5 -1
SDLP 3 -1
oth 2 nc
For some reason we have a deeply anti-education culture in this country. I can't think of another country in the world where people would seriously entertain the idea that too many people were receiving a university education. And we have a media class that seems to be perversely proud of its lack of numerical competency.
This can all be summed up by the winning slogan in the Brexit referendum campaign - "The people of this country have had enough of experts."
A lot of this seems to be bound up with our culture of class distinctions, where the apex of the pyramid to be aspired to is to be rich enough to be able to employ staff who can worry about the counting, and so actually having to be competent is a signifier of relative poverty. This is also why we possibly have a tendency to teach the wrong things or to draw such a rigid distinction between academic and technical education, and place academic education at a higher level in the social pyramid.
I suspect that to a substantial extent, if we were able to improve the culture around education then we would see dramatic improvements, and we'd find that the details of teaching methods and organisation were much less consequential.
Almost neck and neck after transfers for largest party now too between SF and DUP
You Tories are absolute fools. You relentlessly appeal to your core vote. Core vote is never going to get you very far. You need to reach beyond your comfort zone.
https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/nascar-auto-racing/article261020367.html
SSI - Marty & McGee were talking about Euro F1 fans reacting (rather sarcastically) to sight of a yacht moored on a fake sea of concrete. Get with the program, dudes!
If I were Starmer I would resign now. Rayner must go too.
The Conservatives won't even have a base if they lose pensioners but face 1997 style wipeout.
I am not anti housebuilding as I said just anti excess building in the greenbelt and countryside
- “Douglas Ross under threat as Tory colleagues plot to dump him as Scottish Conservatives leader”
Record
Sinn Fein may gain from SDLP in Upper Bann and Fermanagh South Tyrone.
There is nothing wrong with having 50% of the population in education to 21. There is a lot wrong with doing it in such a way that you simultaneously put them into massive debt for much of the rest of their lives and also completely devalue the education they are getting. All the more so when that education is coming at the price - to the country - of a far less skilled workforce because of the abandonment of apprenticeships and vocational courses.
Personally I would have stayed in education my whole life if I could have. I loved everything about it. But in the end we all need to work. The country needs us to work. And that work needs to be done by people with the skills and aptitude for careers that generally need very little in the way of a university education - at least certainly not the type of university education most of our graduates are getting at the moment.
My definition is for use in developing political policy as opposed to in general chitchat. For the latter, of course you can explore all sorts of stuff, family background, schooling, where you go on holiday, ever seen a play, do you like John Inverdale, do you have a goldfish, etc, all of this is crucial in chitchat about class since it'd be boring as hell otherwise, you'd just say class = money and walk off, ie there wouldn't *be* any chitchat.
But when it comes to real world policy - eg allocating X places at a top uni for 'working class' applicants, then you need to strip all that away and use what it's really all about - money.
"Imperial College announces that at least 80% of their intake this year will be drawn from kids whose parents don't have a cafetiere."
I don't think so.
- Plaid gaining 3 Councils (albeit with small nett seat loss)
- First seats for Gwlad & Propel
My faith in the Welsh electorate has been restored.
The main shift is DUP to TUV and DUP and UUP to Alliance and SDLP to SF and Alliance