Dear Me Johnson really has lost it going by the DT.
Blaming the EU for the cost of living crisis and the demands in terms of changes to the NI protocol aren’t going to happen . Now demanding the removal of the ECJ from that which no business asked for. With no ECJ no access to the single market . Johnson is destroying any chance of an agreement. Utterly despicable .
I would venture to suggest there are two sides to this story and on what I have read of Boris's comment piece he makes some very reasonable points
Within the treaty, provisions were reserved to provide an opportunity to review problems that arose post the implementation and it is clear the ECJ should have no jurisdiction over UK - NI only trade
I understand A16 was part of the treaty and if an impasse becomes stalemate then A16 will no doubt be served
I would just ask how do you think Starmer and labour would unlock this dispute and assuage the DUP
There is no trust or goodwill left because Johnson trashed that . The EU responded with some compromises which were totally ignored by no 10.
The way to get the EU to move more was to go to NI months ago and speak to all parties not ignore Sinn Fein and the other pro protocol parties and just suck up to the DUP.
The DUP want to pretend Brexit never happened and think that things can return to what they were before , they can’t .
Mitigation’s yes but that’s it .
It seems Boris's comment piece has been received quite well and is constructive
You can attack the DUP but they are not going away and as for going to NI months ago, the protocol has been constantly discussed across NI - UK and Europe
By whom . And his rant in the DT won’t go down well with the EU.
We cannot allow the impression that one strand is deemed more important than others; or that EU custom codes — designed for vast container ships coming from Shanghai to Rotterdam, not supermarket lorries from Liverpool to Belfast — somehow trump everything else.
We must remember that all parties to the Protocol made a commitment to be willing to revisit, adapt and change these arrangements over time — and to protect the internal market of the UK.
In the absence of change, the prior commitments made by the British Government — to protect all three strands of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, to protect economic rights and parity of esteem — are coming into sharper focus.
Every unionist representative campaigned against the Protocol, as currently constituted. More importantly, every party, across the divide, seeks mitigations and change. None support a zealous zero risk approach to its implementation.
None wants to see grace periods terminated, as the EU insist they must be in return for limited mitigations elsewhere. Some feel that their economic rights as members of the United Kingdom are threatened, which the 1998 Agreement is supposed to protect. The simple reason for this is that the East-West dimension — by far and away the principal artery in Northern Ireland’s economic life — is taking too much of the strain.
Strand 3 of the Agreement, which promised the “harmonious and mutually beneficial development of the totality of the relationship among the people of these islands”, is not functioning as it must.
And Strands 1 and 2 — of equal importance and mutually dependent — are now being negatively impacted too.
Many things have changed since the Protocol was agreed. It was designed in the absence of a Trade and Cooperation Agreement and when it was unclear one would be agreed. It has not been adapted to reflect the realities of the TCA.
I've read the whole thing, and the tone is OK, but its significance is elusive. Apart from urging everyone to play nicely, is he saying anything new ar all?
I'm the grandson of humble immigrants to this country, it was a private education that allowed my father and myself to flourish and succeed in this country.
Wonderful stuff indeed. That means people cannot critique overrepresentation of the public school educated?
The latest fashion is for your children to be tutored personally through A levels - 4 subjects, 4 tutors, while “attending” a local state institution.
This is cheaper than private school and allows you to claim that your are a member of the Head Count.
The state schools play along, to the point of not reporting absence, since having a child with 4 predicted A************* and going to a top university makes you look better…..
There’s an interesting rule for UK expatriates, that one must be resident in the UK for two years before university admission, in order to “take advantage” of the UK uni fees schedule.
Until a few years ago, this would lead to expatriate parents moving back to the UK as their kids approached GCSEs, but now it’s resulting in their decision to remain expatriates and deal with the ‘overseas’ fees, because of the discrimination against private schools.
I'm always slightly nervous about calling the discrimination card without clear evidence. I'm also well aware that when I was at Cambridge, from a State school, 1992-95 then there was an awful lot of the same noise about how Private school pupils were disadvantage.
The issue I had was that - at that time - those colleges with the highest proportion of State pupils (Trinity and Kings) were top of the Topkins Table (i.e. got the most Firsts).
Because it seems like it would be pretty easy to see if less talented - on average - people were coming from the State schools. Simply: does a 21 year old from a private school achieve better academic results (on average) or not.
If one judged (and incentivized) the Colleges on output, then it would clearly be in their interests to attract those with the most potential.
And, fwiw, I suspect that would mean that (on average) State school pupils would come in with slightly lower grades, because they would be less likely to have fully achieved their potential.
The parents/students are not the only ones trying to game the system.
The Colleges are just as interested in gaming the system.
So, for example, if the Admissions Tutor admits students from Hills Rd SFC, or Varndean SFC, or Farnborough SFC (to name 3 outstanding state schools who get tonnes of people into Oxbridge), then their socio-economic background is no different from students at private schools like Haberdashers Aske or St Pauls or Nottingham High School -- but the former make the College look much better as they can hit "state school" targets.
The overwhelming bias of Oxbridge remains geography -- 40 to 45 per cent of the intake is usually London and the South East.
Erm, doesn't roughly 40 per cent of the population of England live in London and the South-East?
Approximately 1 in 3. By official region. Although I reckon few would consider Hertfordshire and Essex not to be SE. Nor, necessarily Oxon and Bucks to be so.
I would.
Despite the government’s designation, I would put the whole Thames watershed (Oxon, Bucks, Berks, Herts, Surrey, Essex) plus Kent and Sussex in the South East.
Hampshire not.
Anywhere south or east of Galashiels is the South East.
Lamberton Toll and Denholm surely.
I am currently in Ardnamurchan, where Oban is South East.
Dear Me Johnson really has lost it going by the DT.
Blaming the EU for the cost of living crisis and the demands in terms of changes to the NI protocol aren’t going to happen . Now demanding the removal of the ECJ from that which no business asked for. With no ECJ no access to the single market . Johnson is destroying any chance of an agreement. Utterly despicable .
I would venture to suggest there are two sides to this story and on what I have read of Boris's comment piece he makes some very reasonable points
Within the treaty, provisions were reserved to provide an opportunity to review problems that arose post the implementation and it is clear the ECJ should have no jurisdiction over UK - NI only trade
I understand A16 was part of the treaty and if an impasse becomes stalemate then A16 will no doubt be served
I would just ask how do you think Starmer and labour would unlock this dispute and assuage the DUP
I think some people's attitude is to look down their nose at the DUP, blame them for the impasse, and wish them to go away.
Nevermind that the DUP thanks to the GFA and the election results need to be brought onside in order for the Assembly to even sit. Far easier to just hate the DUP and blame them and think nothing should be done to rectify the situation before putting their head back into the sand.
That would be easier to do if the DUP didn't posture like little children about every little damn thing. It makes finding a way to address their concerns harder than it needs to be because of their histrionics.
Yes, everyone should still have listened to the boy who cried wolf given the importance of responding to wolf attacks, but it's understandable that people just got sick of the attention seeking and tuned it out.
When the Shinners cried over every little thing and Blair & Co. stubbled over themselves to hurry to salve egos, the DUP et. al. were taking notes.
All the Shinners needed was "We won't don't advocate violence, but if we don't get our way The Men Of Violence will be upset".
When 72 people claimed to be in the mens urinal at Magennis's (including 20 plus women) - and the PSNI were ordered to keep their names out of the papers - well, people listened.
They aren't angry, you see. They just want some of that nice stuff that people get for indirectly threatening a bit of Trouble.
They've been taught this is how things work. Carefully, exactly, for decades.
I'm the grandson of humble immigrants to this country, it was a private education that allowed my father and myself to flourish and succeed in this country.
Wonderful stuff indeed. That means people cannot critique overrepresentation of the public school educated?
The latest fashion is for your children to be tutored personally through A levels - 4 subjects, 4 tutors, while “attending” a local state institution.
This is cheaper than private school and allows you to claim that your are a member of the Head Count.
The state schools play along, to the point of not reporting absence, since having a child with 4 predicted A************* and going to a top university makes you look better…..
There’s an interesting rule for UK expatriates, that one must be resident in the UK for two years before university admission, in order to “take advantage” of the UK uni fees schedule.
Until a few years ago, this would lead to expatriate parents moving back to the UK as their kids approached GCSEs, but now it’s resulting in their decision to remain expatriates and deal with the ‘overseas’ fees, because of the discrimination against private schools.
I'm always slightly nervous about calling the discrimination card without clear evidence. I'm also well aware that when I was at Cambridge, from a State school, 1992-95 then there was an awful lot of the same noise about how Private school pupils were disadvantage.
The issue I had was that - at that time - those colleges with the highest proportion of State pupils (Trinity and Kings) were top of the Topkins Table (i.e. got the most Firsts).
Because it seems like it would be pretty easy to see if less talented - on average - people were coming from the State schools. Simply: does a 21 year old from a private school achieve better academic results (on average) or not.
If one judged (and incentivized) the Colleges on output, then it would clearly be in their interests to attract those with the most potential.
And, fwiw, I suspect that would mean that (on average) State school pupils would come in with slightly lower grades, because they would be less likely to have fully achieved their potential.
The parents/students are not the only ones trying to game the system.
The Colleges are just as interested in gaming the system.
So, for example, if the Admissions Tutor admits students from Hills Rd SFC, or Varndean SFC, or Farnborough SFC (to name 3 outstanding state schools who get tonnes of people into Oxbridge), then their socio-economic background is no different from students at private schools like Haberdashers Aske or St Pauls or Nottingham High School -- but the former make the College look much better as they can hit "state school" targets.
The overwhelming bias of Oxbridge remains geography -- 40 to 45 per cent of the intake is usually London and the South East.
Erm, doesn't roughly 40 per cent of the population of England live in London and the South-East?
Approximately 1 in 3. By official region. Although I reckon few would consider Hertfordshire and Essex not to be SE. Nor, necessarily Oxon and Bucks to be so.
I would.
Despite the government’s designation, I would put the whole Thames watershed (Oxon, Bucks, Berks, Herts, Surrey, Essex) plus Kent and Sussex in the South East.
Hampshire not.
Yeah. The SE is often talked about. But it's a bit of an ill-defined concept Where does it begin and end? Not by the official definition for sure. So where is Hampshire by your reckoning? It's a bit like Lincolnshire and Cumbria. A county without an obvious region. And Banbury is less than an hour from Birmingham.
Trouble with Hampshire is that it's so damn big. Anywhere north and east of about WInchester is definitely "looking towards London" South East. The west, from Andover down to the New Forest is convincingly Wessex. And had the Portsmouth-Southampton conurbation been turned into a metropolitan county, nobody would have been that surprised.
Funnily enough, the BBC seem to agree. There isn't a Radio Hampshire, instead being covered by Solent, Surrey and Berkshire.
Hello, fellow erstwhile Gosport dweller.
No true Gosporter would ever think they are in the South East (in my opinion).
My late Aunt Dora could just about cope with Hayling Island but any further afield and there be demons.
Must have been terribly exotic taking the boat over to Pompey Harbour Station. Quite romantic really.
There’s a joke here somewhere about Priddy’s Hard but I am not quite able to make it.
Looking forward to another trip there sometime, actually, to the Navy weapons museum at the old ammunition depot - my dad was an armaments specialist in the RN and I wouldn't mind another look around. Also to see the Weevil Victualling Yard where IIRC they made the salt pork and biscuits - I believe the seafront is more accessible than it used to be.
“Solent City” in theory has it all. Weather, coastline, boating, Russell Group universities.
I'm the grandson of humble immigrants to this country, it was a private education that allowed my father and myself to flourish and succeed in this country.
Wonderful stuff indeed. That means people cannot critique overrepresentation of the public school educated?
The latest fashion is for your children to be tutored personally through A levels - 4 subjects, 4 tutors, while “attending” a local state institution.
This is cheaper than private school and allows you to claim that your are a member of the Head Count.
The state schools play along, to the point of not reporting absence, since having a child with 4 predicted A************* and going to a top university makes you look better…..
There’s an interesting rule for UK expatriates, that one must be resident in the UK for two years before university admission, in order to “take advantage” of the UK uni fees schedule.
Until a few years ago, this would lead to expatriate parents moving back to the UK as their kids approached GCSEs, but now it’s resulting in their decision to remain expatriates and deal with the ‘overseas’ fees, because of the discrimination against private schools.
I'm always slightly nervous about calling the discrimination card without clear evidence. I'm also well aware that when I was at Cambridge, from a State school, 1992-95 then there was an awful lot of the same noise about how Private school pupils were disadvantage.
The issue I had was that - at that time - those colleges with the highest proportion of State pupils (Trinity and Kings) were top of the Topkins Table (i.e. got the most Firsts).
Because it seems like it would be pretty easy to see if less talented - on average - people were coming from the State schools. Simply: does a 21 year old from a private school achieve better academic results (on average) or not.
If one judged (and incentivized) the Colleges on output, then it would clearly be in their interests to attract those with the most potential.
And, fwiw, I suspect that would mean that (on average) State school pupils would come in with slightly lower grades, because they would be less likely to have fully achieved their potential.
The parents/students are not the only ones trying to game the system.
The Colleges are just as interested in gaming the system.
So, for example, if the Admissions Tutor admits students from Hills Rd SFC, or Varndean SFC, or Farnborough SFC (to name 3 outstanding state schools who get tonnes of people into Oxbridge), then their socio-economic background is no different from students at private schools like Haberdashers Aske or St Pauls or Nottingham High School -- but the former make the College look much better as they can hit "state school" targets.
The overwhelming bias of Oxbridge remains geography -- 40 to 45 per cent of the intake is usually London and the South East.
Erm, doesn't roughly 40 per cent of the population of England live in London and the South-East?
Approximately 1 in 3. By official region. Although I reckon few would consider Hertfordshire and Essex not to be SE. Nor, necessarily Oxon and Bucks to be so.
I would.
Despite the government’s designation, I would put the whole Thames watershed (Oxon, Bucks, Berks, Herts, Surrey, Essex) plus Kent and Sussex in the South East.
Hampshire not.
Yeah. The SE is often talked about. But it's a bit of an ill-defined concept Where does it begin and end? Not by the official definition for sure. So where is Hampshire by your reckoning? It's a bit like Lincolnshire and Cumbria. A county without an obvious region. And Banbury is less than an hour from Birmingham.
Trouble with Hampshire is that it's so damn big. Anywhere north and east of about WInchester is definitely "looking towards London" South East. The west, from Andover down to the New Forest is convincingly Wessex. And had the Portsmouth-Southampton conurbation been turned into a metropolitan county, nobody would have been that surprised.
Funnily enough, the BBC seem to agree. There isn't a Radio Hampshire, instead being covered by Solent, Surrey and Berkshire.
Hello, fellow erstwhile Gosport dweller.
No true Gosporter would ever think they are in the South East (in my opinion).
My late Aunt Dora could just about cope with Hayling Island but any further afield and there be demons.
Must have been terribly exotic taking the boat over to Pompey Harbour Station. Quite romantic really.
There’s a joke here somewhere about Priddy’s Hard but I am not quite able to make it.
Looking forward to another trip there sometime, actually, to the Navy weapons museum at the old ammunition depot - my dad was an armaments specialist in the RN and I wouldn't mind another look around. Also to see the Weevil Victualling Yard where IIRC they made the salt pork and biscuits - I believe the seafront is more accessible than it used to be.
“Solent City” in theory has it all. Weather, coastline, boating, Russell Group universities.
It’s very mostly awful. Discuss.
Hmm! I tend to go for the military-industrial archaeology. Which I suppose makes your point ...
Nelson’s Victory is astonishing, simply amazing.
The Dockyard should be a UNESCO World Heritage site, I’m not sure why it’s not.
But generally speaking, the place (the Soton-Portsmouth metro) is dreary, tatty, and depressing. It is also - like the north - “left behind”.
Because it was bombed to shit in WW2 and, like too much of Britain, cheaply and shoddily rebuilt - and our narcisstic wanker-elite class of architects/town planners don’t have the brains, humility or wits to solve the problems of their own creation, despite 70 years having passed
Absolutely. But why? And why isn’t this the case in certain bombed-to-shit parts of Europe?
Dear Me Johnson really has lost it going by the DT.
Blaming the EU for the cost of living crisis and the demands in terms of changes to the NI protocol aren’t going to happen . Now demanding the removal of the ECJ from that which no business asked for. With no ECJ no access to the single market . Johnson is destroying any chance of an agreement. Utterly despicable .
I would venture to suggest there are two sides to this story and on what I have read of Boris's comment piece he makes some very reasonable points
Within the treaty, provisions were reserved to provide an opportunity to review problems that arose post the implementation and it is clear the ECJ should have no jurisdiction over UK - NI only trade
I understand A16 was part of the treaty and if an impasse becomes stalemate then A16 will no doubt be served
I would just ask how do you think Starmer and labour would unlock this dispute and assuage the DUP
There is no trust or goodwill left because Johnson trashed that . The EU responded with some compromises which were totally ignored by no 10.
The way to get the EU to move more was to go to NI months ago and speak to all parties not ignore Sinn Fein and the other pro protocol parties and just suck up to the DUP.
The DUP want to pretend Brexit never happened and think that things can return to what they were before , they can’t .
Mitigation’s yes but that’s it .
It seems Boris's comment piece has been received quite well and is constructive
You can attack the DUP but they are not going away and as for going to NI months ago, the protocol has been constantly discussed across NI - UK and Europe
By whom . And his rant in the DT won’t go down well with the EU.
I do not think the British PM whoever it is should be influenced whether their comments are pleasing to the EU
Dear Me Johnson really has lost it going by the DT.
Blaming the EU for the cost of living crisis and the demands in terms of changes to the NI protocol aren’t going to happen . Now demanding the removal of the ECJ from that which no business asked for. With no ECJ no access to the single market . Johnson is destroying any chance of an agreement. Utterly despicable .
I would venture to suggest there are two sides to this story and on what I have read of Boris's comment piece he makes some very reasonable points
Within the treaty, provisions were reserved to provide an opportunity to review problems that arose post the implementation and it is clear the ECJ should have no jurisdiction over UK - NI only trade
I understand A16 was part of the treaty and if an impasse becomes stalemate then A16 will no doubt be served
I would just ask how do you think Starmer and labour would unlock this dispute and assuage the DUP
There is no trust or goodwill left because Johnson trashed that . The EU responded with some compromises which were totally ignored by no 10.
The way to get the EU to move more was to go to NI months ago and speak to all parties not ignore Sinn Fein and the other pro protocol parties and just suck up to the DUP.
The DUP want to pretend Brexit never happened and think that things can return to what they were before , they can’t .
Mitigation’s yes but that’s it .
Again you're just looking your nose down on the DUP and assuming the pro-Protocol parties must be satisfied.
That's not how the GFA works. The GFA works by compromise, all parties must be satisfied or none are.
Unless you can get the DUP on board, Sinn Fein can't do anything and the Assembly can't even sit. They hold a veto. So stop bitching and moaning and try being constructive about how you're going to make the DUP happy other than what the government are already doing.
Yup. The market can’t be bucked. Those who don’t embrace it will lose the best staff to those who do.
I don't understand why conservatives seem so wound up by WFH. As you say the market will decide. A myriad of individuals and organizations will make their own decisions. Reminds me of the kind of price signals stuff and little platoons that tories are supposed to believe in rather than the state deciding.
But of course Johnson's government isn't remotely conservative.
Every time they go for populist rant.
I've assumed that the commercial landlords are lobbying ministers. Developers are major donors to the party ~20%.
I'm the grandson of humble immigrants to this country, it was a private education that allowed my father and myself to flourish and succeed in this country.
Wonderful stuff indeed. That means people cannot critique overrepresentation of the public school educated?
The latest fashion is for your children to be tutored personally through A levels - 4 subjects, 4 tutors, while “attending” a local state institution.
This is cheaper than private school and allows you to claim that your are a member of the Head Count.
The state schools play along, to the point of not reporting absence, since having a child with 4 predicted A************* and going to a top university makes you look better…..
There’s an interesting rule for UK expatriates, that one must be resident in the UK for two years before university admission, in order to “take advantage” of the UK uni fees schedule.
Until a few years ago, this would lead to expatriate parents moving back to the UK as their kids approached GCSEs, but now it’s resulting in their decision to remain expatriates and deal with the ‘overseas’ fees, because of the discrimination against private schools.
I'm always slightly nervous about calling the discrimination card without clear evidence. I'm also well aware that when I was at Cambridge, from a State school, 1992-95 then there was an awful lot of the same noise about how Private school pupils were disadvantage.
The issue I had was that - at that time - those colleges with the highest proportion of State pupils (Trinity and Kings) were top of the Topkins Table (i.e. got the most Firsts).
Because it seems like it would be pretty easy to see if less talented - on average - people were coming from the State schools. Simply: does a 21 year old from a private school achieve better academic results (on average) or not.
If one judged (and incentivized) the Colleges on output, then it would clearly be in their interests to attract those with the most potential.
And, fwiw, I suspect that would mean that (on average) State school pupils would come in with slightly lower grades, because they would be less likely to have fully achieved their potential.
The parents/students are not the only ones trying to game the system.
The Colleges are just as interested in gaming the system.
So, for example, if the Admissions Tutor admits students from Hills Rd SFC, or Varndean SFC, or Farnborough SFC (to name 3 outstanding state schools who get tonnes of people into Oxbridge), then their socio-economic background is no different from students at private schools like Haberdashers Aske or St Pauls or Nottingham High School -- but the former make the College look much better as they can hit "state school" targets.
The overwhelming bias of Oxbridge remains geography -- 40 to 45 per cent of the intake is usually London and the South East.
Erm, doesn't roughly 40 per cent of the population of England live in London and the South-East?
Approximately 1 in 3. By official region. Although I reckon few would consider Hertfordshire and Essex not to be SE. Nor, necessarily Oxon and Bucks to be so.
I would.
Despite the government’s designation, I would put the whole Thames watershed (Oxon, Bucks, Berks, Herts, Surrey, Essex) plus Kent and Sussex in the South East.
Hampshire not.
Yeah. The SE is often talked about. But it's a bit of an ill-defined concept Where does it begin and end? Not by the official definition for sure. So where is Hampshire by your reckoning? It's a bit like Lincolnshire and Cumbria. A county without an obvious region. And Banbury is less than an hour from Birmingham.
Trouble with Hampshire is that it's so damn big. Anywhere north and east of about WInchester is definitely "looking towards London" South East. The west, from Andover down to the New Forest is convincingly Wessex. And had the Portsmouth-Southampton conurbation been turned into a metropolitan county, nobody would have been that surprised.
Funnily enough, the BBC seem to agree. There isn't a Radio Hampshire, instead being covered by Solent, Surrey and Berkshire.
Hello, fellow erstwhile Gosport dweller.
No true Gosporter would ever think they are in the South East (in my opinion).
My late Aunt Dora could just about cope with Hayling Island but any further afield and there be demons.
Must have been terribly exotic taking the boat over to Pompey Harbour Station. Quite romantic really.
There’s a joke here somewhere about Priddy’s Hard but I am not quite able to make it.
Looking forward to another trip there sometime, actually, to the Navy weapons museum at the old ammunition depot - my dad was an armaments specialist in the RN and I wouldn't mind another look around. Also to see the Weevil Victualling Yard where IIRC they made the salt pork and biscuits - I believe the seafront is more accessible than it used to be.
“Solent City” in theory has it all. Weather, coastline, boating, Russell Group universities.
I'm the grandson of humble immigrants to this country, it was a private education that allowed my father and myself to flourish and succeed in this country.
Wonderful stuff indeed. That means people cannot critique overrepresentation of the public school educated?
The latest fashion is for your children to be tutored personally through A levels - 4 subjects, 4 tutors, while “attending” a local state institution.
This is cheaper than private school and allows you to claim that your are a member of the Head Count.
The state schools play along, to the point of not reporting absence, since having a child with 4 predicted A************* and going to a top university makes you look better…..
There’s an interesting rule for UK expatriates, that one must be resident in the UK for two years before university admission, in order to “take advantage” of the UK uni fees schedule.
Until a few years ago, this would lead to expatriate parents moving back to the UK as their kids approached GCSEs, but now it’s resulting in their decision to remain expatriates and deal with the ‘overseas’ fees, because of the discrimination against private schools.
I'm always slightly nervous about calling the discrimination card without clear evidence. I'm also well aware that when I was at Cambridge, from a State school, 1992-95 then there was an awful lot of the same noise about how Private school pupils were disadvantage.
The issue I had was that - at that time - those colleges with the highest proportion of State pupils (Trinity and Kings) were top of the Topkins Table (i.e. got the most Firsts).
Because it seems like it would be pretty easy to see if less talented - on average - people were coming from the State schools. Simply: does a 21 year old from a private school achieve better academic results (on average) or not.
If one judged (and incentivized) the Colleges on output, then it would clearly be in their interests to attract those with the most potential.
And, fwiw, I suspect that would mean that (on average) State school pupils would come in with slightly lower grades, because they would be less likely to have fully achieved their potential.
The parents/students are not the only ones trying to game the system.
The Colleges are just as interested in gaming the system.
So, for example, if the Admissions Tutor admits students from Hills Rd SFC, or Varndean SFC, or Farnborough SFC (to name 3 outstanding state schools who get tonnes of people into Oxbridge), then their socio-economic background is no different from students at private schools like Haberdashers Aske or St Pauls or Nottingham High School -- but the former make the College look much better as they can hit "state school" targets.
The overwhelming bias of Oxbridge remains geography -- 40 to 45 per cent of the intake is usually London and the South East.
Erm, doesn't roughly 40 per cent of the population of England live in London and the South-East?
Approximately 1 in 3. By official region. Although I reckon few would consider Hertfordshire and Essex not to be SE. Nor, necessarily Oxon and Bucks to be so.
I would.
Despite the government’s designation, I would put the whole Thames watershed (Oxon, Bucks, Berks, Herts, Surrey, Essex) plus Kent and Sussex in the South East.
Hampshire not.
Yeah. The SE is often talked about. But it's a bit of an ill-defined concept Where does it begin and end? Not by the official definition for sure. So where is Hampshire by your reckoning? It's a bit like Lincolnshire and Cumbria. A county without an obvious region. And Banbury is less than an hour from Birmingham.
Trouble with Hampshire is that it's so damn big. Anywhere north and east of about WInchester is definitely "looking towards London" South East. The west, from Andover down to the New Forest is convincingly Wessex. And had the Portsmouth-Southampton conurbation been turned into a metropolitan county, nobody would have been that surprised.
Funnily enough, the BBC seem to agree. There isn't a Radio Hampshire, instead being covered by Solent, Surrey and Berkshire.
Hello, fellow erstwhile Gosport dweller.
No true Gosporter would ever think they are in the South East (in my opinion).
My late Aunt Dora could just about cope with Hayling Island but any further afield and there be demons.
Must have been terribly exotic taking the boat over to Pompey Harbour Station. Quite romantic really.
There’s a joke here somewhere about Priddy’s Hard but I am not quite able to make it.
Looking forward to another trip there sometime, actually, to the Navy weapons museum at the old ammunition depot - my dad was an armaments specialist in the RN and I wouldn't mind another look around. Also to see the Weevil Victualling Yard where IIRC they made the salt pork and biscuits - I believe the seafront is more accessible than it used to be.
“Solent City” in theory has it all. Weather, coastline, boating, Russell Group universities.
It’s very mostly awful. Discuss.
Hmm! I tend to go for the military-industrial archaeology. Which I suppose makes your point ...
Nelson’s Victory is astonishing, simply amazing.
The Dockyard should be a UNESCO World Heritage site, I’m not sure why it’s not.
But generally speaking, the place (the Soton-Portsmouth metro) is dreary, tatty, and depressing. It is also - like the north - “left behind”.
Because it was bombed to shit in WW2 and, like too much of Britain, cheaply and shoddily rebuilt - and our narcisstic wanker-elite class of architects/town planners don’t have the brains, humility or wits to solve the problems of their own creation, despite 70 years having passed
Absolutely. But why? And why isn’t this the case in certain bombed-to-shit parts of Europe?
It could be so much better.
Because in many other places the architects weren't failures. Failures at the social engineering they tried. Failures at building structures for humans to inhabit and live in.
The DUP want a hard border on the island and they won’t play second fiddle to Sinn Fein.
Neither demand (never vocalised but implicit in their actions) can actually be accommodated at all.
HMG is using them in its EU war, but ultimately they will be fucked over. Again.
The GFA means that the DUP have to be satisfied for the NI Assembly to proceed.
I thought you wanted the GFA to be respected.
Did you want the GFA to be respected, except for where it serves the agenda of the DUP?
No, the GFA doesn’t say that.
The GFA sets up power-sharing and parity of esteem for both communities, but it doesn’t imply that one party of 20% (which is less than half of the unionist community), can obstruct Stormont indefinitely.
The DUP are actually against the GFA, see my points upthread about what their implicit objectives are (both are anti-GFA).
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I think folk have to be encouraged to go into the office at least some of the time. I'm not convinced 100% WFH is any more optimal than 100% in the office ever was.
Almost nobody wants 100% wfh. That’s a straw man.
Come work where I work (major financial services organisation).
Doesn't matter what people say they want, you see what they actually do. The reality is no-one comes in because no-one else comes in, so essentially nearly everyone is WFH nearly 100% of the time bar a relatively tiny cohort that are choosing to go in and sit in near empty offices. Unless the bosses actually tell folk to be in X% of the time or whatever, nearly everyone just stays home.
What we are beginning to see is little clumps of people that used to sit near each other (even when they didn't work that closely) trying to individually reach out to each other to try and recreate that once a month, or whatever, because otherwise you're just sat at home on your own the whole time.
We’re at roughly 50%, based on most people doing two or three days and overlapping. Our offices were set up for 70% and hot-desking, so it basically just makes it nicer at work AND let’s us all wfh 2/3 times a week. Great for morale and, I think, productivity.
Boris' 2,200 word essay on Northern Ireland and the Protocol in the Belfast Telegraph. He also says he is ready to work with Michele O'Neill as First Minister
Yup. The market can’t be bucked. Those who don’t embrace it will lose the best staff to those who do.
I don't understand why conservatives seem so wound up by WFH. As you say the market will decide. A myriad of individuals and organizations will make their own decisions. Reminds me of the kind of price signals stuff and little platoons that tories are supposed to believe in rather than the state deciding.
But of course Johnson's government isn't remotely conservative.
Every time they go for populist rant.
I've assumed that the commercial landlords are lobbying ministers. Developers are major donors to the party ~20%.
The banks are up to their ears in commercial property debt.....
We cannot allow the impression that one strand is deemed more important than others; or that EU custom codes — designed for vast container ships coming from Shanghai to Rotterdam, not supermarket lorries from Liverpool to Belfast — somehow trump everything else.
We must remember that all parties to the Protocol made a commitment to be willing to revisit, adapt and change these arrangements over time — and to protect the internal market of the UK.
In the absence of change, the prior commitments made by the British Government — to protect all three strands of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, to protect economic rights and parity of esteem — are coming into sharper focus.
Every unionist representative campaigned against the Protocol, as currently constituted. More importantly, every party, across the divide, seeks mitigations and change. None support a zealous zero risk approach to its implementation.
None wants to see grace periods terminated, as the EU insist they must be in return for limited mitigations elsewhere. Some feel that their economic rights as members of the United Kingdom are threatened, which the 1998 Agreement is supposed to protect. The simple reason for this is that the East-West dimension — by far and away the principal artery in Northern Ireland’s economic life — is taking too much of the strain.
Strand 3 of the Agreement, which promised the “harmonious and mutually beneficial development of the totality of the relationship among the people of these islands”, is not functioning as it must.
And Strands 1 and 2 — of equal importance and mutually dependent — are now being negatively impacted too.
Many things have changed since the Protocol was agreed. It was designed in the absence of a Trade and Cooperation Agreement and when it was unclear one would be agreed. It has not been adapted to reflect the realities of the TCA.
I've read the whole thing, and the tone is OK, but its significance is elusive. Apart from urging everyone to play nicely, is he saying anything new ar all?
He seems to be setting up the logic - quite rightly - for why the Protocol as it operates is contra to the GFA.
No, he does not offer any solutions that I can see. Typically, HMG has not, presumably as part of some kind of negotiating ideology.
The DUP want a hard border on the island and they won’t play second fiddle to Sinn Fein.
Neither demand (never vocalised but implicit in their actions) can actually be accommodated at all.
HMG is using them in its EU war, but ultimately they will be fucked over. Again.
The GFA means that the DUP have to be satisfied for the NI Assembly to proceed.
I thought you wanted the GFA to be respected.
Did you want the GFA to be respected, except for where it serves the agenda of the DUP?
No, the GFA doesn’t say that.
The GFA sets up power-sharing and parity of esteem for both communities, but it doesn’t imply that one party of 20% (which is less than half of the unionist community), can obstruct Stormont indefinitely.
The DUP are actually against the GFA, see my points upthread about what their implicit objectives are (both are anti-GFA).
So how do you stop the DUP obstructing Stormont indefinitely if you just dismiss them
The Kyiv Independent @KyivIndependent ⚡️ General Staff: Russian troops staffed at less than 20% of full capacities in certain areas.
Sounds great, and good to hear, but which capacity? if its there air defence capacity, or tank capacity that that's great, If its military bands or catering capacity then much less significant.
Dear Me Johnson really has lost it going by the DT.
Blaming the EU for the cost of living crisis and the demands in terms of changes to the NI protocol aren’t going to happen . Now demanding the removal of the ECJ from that which no business asked for. With no ECJ no access to the single market . Johnson is destroying any chance of an agreement. Utterly despicable .
I would venture to suggest there are two sides to this story and on what I have read of Boris's comment piece he makes some very reasonable points
Within the treaty, provisions were reserved to provide an opportunity to review problems that arose post the implementation and it is clear the ECJ should have no jurisdiction over UK - NI only trade
I understand A16 was part of the treaty and if an impasse becomes stalemate then A16 will no doubt be served
I would just ask how do you think Starmer and labour would unlock this dispute and assuage the DUP
There is no trust or goodwill left because Johnson trashed that . The EU responded with some compromises which were totally ignored by no 10.
The way to get the EU to move more was to go to NI months ago and speak to all parties not ignore Sinn Fein and the other pro protocol parties and just suck up to the DUP.
The DUP want to pretend Brexit never happened and think that things can return to what they were before , they can’t .
Mitigation’s yes but that’s it .
It seems Boris's comment piece has been received quite well and is constructive
You can attack the DUP but they are not going away and as for going to NI months ago, the protocol has been constantly discussed across NI - UK and Europe
By whom . And his rant in the DT won’t go down well with the EU.
I do not think the British PM whoever it is should be influenced whether their comments are pleasing to the EU
We have left
You’re missing the point ! Clearly if you want to try and rebuild relations you need a bit more tact and diplomacy . For someone that apparently wants rid of Johnson you seem very staunch on his defence regardless of how much damage he does to EU UK relations .
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I think folk have to be encouraged to go into the office at least some of the time. I'm not convinced 100% WFH is any more optimal than 100% in the office ever was.
Almost nobody wants 100% wfh. That’s a straw man.
Come work where I work (major financial services organisation).
Doesn't matter what people say they want, you see what they actually do. The reality is no-one comes in because no-one else comes in, so essentially nearly everyone is WFH nearly 100% of the time bar a relatively tiny cohort that are choosing to go in and sit in near empty offices. Unless the bosses actually tell folk to be in X% of the time or whatever, nearly everyone just stays home.
What we are beginning to see is little clumps of people that used to sit near each other (even when they didn't work that closely) trying to individually reach out to each other to try and recreate that once a month, or whatever, because otherwise you're just sat at home on your own the whole time.
We’re at roughly 50%, based on most people doing two or three days and overlapping. Our offices were set up for 70% and hot-desking, so it basically just makes it nicer at work AND let’s us all wfh 2/3 times a week. Great for morale and, I think, productivity.
That sounds like a good and fair mix to me.
I suspect if the bosses where I'm at don't try make a move towards something a little more like that in our place I'll leave and go somewhere that will. I'm not intending to sit on my own WFH for the rest of my career, even if it is saving me £££ commuting.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I think folk have to be encouraged to go into the office at least some of the time. I'm not convinced 100% WFH is any more optimal than 100% in the office ever was.
Almost nobody wants 100% wfh. That’s a straw man.
Come work where I work (major financial services organisation).
Doesn't matter what people say they want, you see what they actually do. The reality is no-one comes in because no-one else comes in, so essentially nearly everyone is WFH nearly 100% of the time bar a relatively tiny cohort that are choosing to go in and sit in near empty offices. Unless the bosses actually tell folk to be in X% of the time or whatever, nearly everyone just stays home.
What we are beginning to see is little clumps of people that used to sit near each other (even when they didn't work that closely) trying to individually reach out to each other to try and recreate that once a month, or whatever, because otherwise you're just sat at home on your own the whole time.
I think people vary, frankly. Anecdotally I know HR people in two organisations (not mine, yet) who say that it is getting much harder to retain staff if they are required to work in the office. Organisations that offer to let you skip the commute and work at home apparently have a decisive edge for many people, and HR departments from the other end of the country are able to lure good staff away that way, even at slightly lower salaries.
I have two people in my UK team who work entirely from home, several hundred miles away. They're excellent. If I insisted they move so they could be near work, I expect they'd resign at once.
The Kyiv Independent @KyivIndependent ⚡️ General Staff: Russian troops staffed at less than 20% of full capacities in certain areas.
Sounds great, and good to hear, but which capacity? if its there air defence capacity, or tank capacity that that's great, If its military bands or catering capacity then much less significant.
Pretty sure the catering capacity of RU forces went a very long few weeks ago.
The DUP want a hard border on the island and they won’t play second fiddle to Sinn Fein.
Neither demand (never vocalised but implicit in their actions) can actually be accommodated at all.
HMG is using them in its EU war, but ultimately they will be fucked over. Again.
The GFA means that the DUP have to be satisfied for the NI Assembly to proceed.
I thought you wanted the GFA to be respected.
Did you want the GFA to be respected, except for where it serves the agenda of the DUP?
No, the GFA doesn’t say that.
The GFA sets up power-sharing and parity of esteem for both communities, but it doesn’t imply that one party of 20% (which is less than half of the unionist community), can obstruct Stormont indefinitely.
The DUP are actually against the GFA, see my points upthread about what their implicit objectives are (both are anti-GFA).
The current system was quite explicitly setup so that the largest party on each side of the sectarian divide had a veto on NI government. Either they both form a government together or there is no government.
That was the exact plan.
Of course, when it was invented, the idea was a UUP/SDLP government. Forever. With the Shinners and the DUP tagging along at the back....
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I think folk have to be encouraged to go into the office at least some of the time. I'm not convinced 100% WFH is any more optimal than 100% in the office ever was.
Almost nobody wants 100% wfh. That’s a straw man.
Come work where I work (major financial services organisation).
Doesn't matter what people say they want, you see what they actually do. The reality is no-one comes in because no-one else comes in, so essentially nearly everyone is WFH nearly 100% of the time bar a relatively tiny cohort that are choosing to go in and sit in near empty offices. Unless the bosses actually tell folk to be in X% of the time or whatever, nearly everyone just stays home.
What we are beginning to see is little clumps of people that used to sit near each other (even when they didn't work that closely) trying to individually reach out to each other to try and recreate that once a month, or whatever, because otherwise you're just sat at home on your own the whole time.
We’re at roughly 50%, based on most people doing two or three days and overlapping. Our offices were set up for 70% and hot-desking, so it basically just makes it nicer at work AND let’s us all wfh 2/3 times a week. Great for morale and, I think, productivity.
“ and, I think, productivity”
All the studies are massively against that arn’t they? WFH is building in inefficiency and less productivity into the UK economy. People were efficient and productive when sharing knowledge without realising it, without having to be asked, without remote workers stumped for ages with what would have been instantly shared in office. Slow down knowledge share teeny bit builds in massive inefficiency and kills speed needed for value for money and productivity.
"A catastrophe for the British economy': Entrepreneur and philanthropist John Cauldwell condemns WFH culture as an 'epidemic of inefficiency sweeping the country' as he demands civil servants get back to their desks"
If only Phones4u wasn't a company that went bust eight years ago ...
Its worth noting that Phone4u was nothing to do with Caudwell when it went bust. He had sold it 8 years previous to a private equity group. He was actually very smart to exit at the time, along with a number of others that made massive sums, as they had successfully exploited opportunity in the mobile sector then realising that it was only going to become increasing competitive and the stuff like being able to give away an Playstation with each contract etc (paid for by the mobile companies) was not going to fly for much longer.
That been said, Caudwell had a reputation as an absolute terrible employer from everybody I know from back home. A tyrant of a boss.
The DUP want a hard border on the island and they won’t play second fiddle to Sinn Fein.
Neither demand (never vocalised but implicit in their actions) can actually be accommodated at all.
HMG is using them in its EU war, but ultimately they will be fucked over. Again.
The GFA means that the DUP have to be satisfied for the NI Assembly to proceed.
I thought you wanted the GFA to be respected.
Did you want the GFA to be respected, except for where it serves the agenda of the DUP?
No, the GFA doesn’t say that.
The GFA sets up power-sharing and parity of esteem for both communities, but it doesn’t imply that one party of 20% (which is less than half of the unionist community), can obstruct Stormont indefinitely.
The DUP are actually against the GFA, see my points upthread about what their implicit objectives are (both are anti-GFA).
So how do you stop the DUP obstructing Stormont indefinitely if you just dismiss them
I don’t know. I am not an expert in the St Andrew’s agreement etc. I suggested on here that maybe lawyers could find a way to award Deputy First Ministership to the UUP.
The DUP will hope for new elections which will restore them to “rightful” first, but that also seems unlikely given the dynamics at play (moderate unionists peeling off).
Dear Me Johnson really has lost it going by the DT.
Blaming the EU for the cost of living crisis and the demands in terms of changes to the NI protocol aren’t going to happen . Now demanding the removal of the ECJ from that which no business asked for. With no ECJ no access to the single market . Johnson is destroying any chance of an agreement. Utterly despicable .
I would venture to suggest there are two sides to this story and on what I have read of Boris's comment piece he makes some very reasonable points
Within the treaty, provisions were reserved to provide an opportunity to review problems that arose post the implementation and it is clear the ECJ should have no jurisdiction over UK - NI only trade
I understand A16 was part of the treaty and if an impasse becomes stalemate then A16 will no doubt be served
I would just ask how do you think Starmer and labour would unlock this dispute and assuage the DUP
There is no trust or goodwill left because Johnson trashed that . The EU responded with some compromises which were totally ignored by no 10.
The way to get the EU to move more was to go to NI months ago and speak to all parties not ignore Sinn Fein and the other pro protocol parties and just suck up to the DUP.
The DUP want to pretend Brexit never happened and think that things can return to what they were before , they can’t .
Mitigation’s yes but that’s it .
Again you're just looking your nose down on the DUP and assuming the pro-Protocol parties must be satisfied.
That's not how the GFA works. The GFA works by compromise, all parties must be satisfied or none are.
Unless you can get the DUP on board, Sinn Fein can't do anything and the Assembly can't even sit. They hold a veto. So stop bitching and moaning and try being constructive about how you're going to make the DUP happy other than what the government are already doing.
There is no perfect outcome for the DUP which they seem to want . Brexit has happened and trade cannot be exactly the same . The DUP seem to want to ignore this fact . I’d have more sympathy if they hadn’t backed Brexit , they did so they should just suck it up and accept the best is damage limitation .
Dear Me Johnson really has lost it going by the DT.
Blaming the EU for the cost of living crisis and the demands in terms of changes to the NI protocol aren’t going to happen . Now demanding the removal of the ECJ from that which no business asked for. With no ECJ no access to the single market . Johnson is destroying any chance of an agreement. Utterly despicable .
I would venture to suggest there are two sides to this story and on what I have read of Boris's comment piece he makes some very reasonable points
Within the treaty, provisions were reserved to provide an opportunity to review problems that arose post the implementation and it is clear the ECJ should have no jurisdiction over UK - NI only trade
I understand A16 was part of the treaty and if an impasse becomes stalemate then A16 will no doubt be served
I would just ask how do you think Starmer and labour would unlock this dispute and assuage the DUP
There is no trust or goodwill left because Johnson trashed that . The EU responded with some compromises which were totally ignored by no 10.
The way to get the EU to move more was to go to NI months ago and speak to all parties not ignore Sinn Fein and the other pro protocol parties and just suck up to the DUP.
The DUP want to pretend Brexit never happened and think that things can return to what they were before , they can’t .
Mitigation’s yes but that’s it .
It seems Boris's comment piece has been received quite well and is constructive
You can attack the DUP but they are not going away and as for going to NI months ago, the protocol has been constantly discussed across NI - UK and Europe
By whom . And his rant in the DT won’t go down well with the EU.
I do not think the British PM whoever it is should be influenced whether their comments are pleasing to the EU
We have left
You’re missing the point ! Clearly if you want to try and rebuild relations you need a bit more tact and diplomacy . For someone that apparently wants rid of Johnson you seem very staunch on his defence regardless of how much damage he does to EU UK relations .
Actually on this I think Boris has hit the right tone and I hope in his meetings tomorrow and over the following days all parties will recognise his desire to get Stormont up and running again and each compromise accordingly
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I think folk have to be encouraged to go into the office at least some of the time. I'm not convinced 100% WFH is any more optimal than 100% in the office ever was.
Almost nobody wants 100% wfh. That’s a straw man.
Come work where I work (major financial services organisation).
Doesn't matter what people say they want, you see what they actually do. The reality is no-one comes in because no-one else comes in, so essentially nearly everyone is WFH nearly 100% of the time bar a relatively tiny cohort that are choosing to go in and sit in near empty offices. Unless the bosses actually tell folk to be in X% of the time or whatever, nearly everyone just stays home.
What we are beginning to see is little clumps of people that used to sit near each other (even when they didn't work that closely) trying to individually reach out to each other to try and recreate that once a month, or whatever, because otherwise you're just sat at home on your own the whole time.
I think people vary, frankly. Anecdotally I know HR people in two organisations (not mine, yet) who say that it is getting much harder to retain staff if they are required to work in the office. Organisations that offer to let you skip the commute and work at home apparently have a decisive edge for many people, and HR departments from the other end of the country are able to lure good staff away that way, even at slightly lower salaries.
I have two people in my UK team who work entirely from home, several hundred miles away. They're excellent. If I insisted they move so they could be near work, I expect they'd resign at once.
Where I work, the younger the staff, the higher the attendance - all the graduate interns come into the office every day.
They really, really don't like working from home. For many, there is no space for an office setup, and working off a small laptop screen is bad for the back, eyes and soul.
Dear Me Johnson really has lost it going by the DT.
Blaming the EU for the cost of living crisis and the demands in terms of changes to the NI protocol aren’t going to happen . Now demanding the removal of the ECJ from that which no business asked for. With no ECJ no access to the single market . Johnson is destroying any chance of an agreement. Utterly despicable .
I would venture to suggest there are two sides to this story and on what I have read of Boris's comment piece he makes some very reasonable points
Within the treaty, provisions were reserved to provide an opportunity to review problems that arose post the implementation and it is clear the ECJ should have no jurisdiction over UK - NI only trade
I understand A16 was part of the treaty and if an impasse becomes stalemate then A16 will no doubt be served
I would just ask how do you think Starmer and labour would unlock this dispute and assuage the DUP
There is no trust or goodwill left because Johnson trashed that . The EU responded with some compromises which were totally ignored by no 10.
The way to get the EU to move more was to go to NI months ago and speak to all parties not ignore Sinn Fein and the other pro protocol parties and just suck up to the DUP.
The DUP want to pretend Brexit never happened and think that things can return to what they were before , they can’t .
Mitigation’s yes but that’s it .
It seems Boris's comment piece has been received quite well and is constructive
You can attack the DUP but they are not going away and as for going to NI months ago, the protocol has been constantly discussed across NI - UK and Europe
By whom . And his rant in the DT won’t go down well with the EU.
I do not think the British PM whoever it is should be influenced whether their comments are pleasing to the EU
We have left
You’re missing the point ! Clearly if you want to try and rebuild relations you need a bit more tact and diplomacy . For someone that apparently wants rid of Johnson you seem very staunch on his defence regardless of how much damage he does to EU UK relations .
Such is the way with Big G. He repeatedly says he wants Boris gone, but expends all his rhetoric on reasons why he should stay.
The DUP want a hard border on the island and they won’t play second fiddle to Sinn Fein.
Neither demand (never vocalised but implicit in their actions) can actually be accommodated at all.
HMG is using them in its EU war, but ultimately they will be fucked over. Again.
The GFA means that the DUP have to be satisfied for the NI Assembly to proceed.
I thought you wanted the GFA to be respected.
Did you want the GFA to be respected, except for where it serves the agenda of the DUP?
No, the GFA doesn’t say that.
The GFA sets up power-sharing and parity of esteem for both communities, but it doesn’t imply that one party of 20% (which is less than half of the unionist community), can obstruct Stormont indefinitely.
The DUP are actually against the GFA, see my points upthread about what their implicit objectives are (both are anti-GFA).
It absolutely and explicitly means the DUP as the elected representatives for the unionists hold a veto over the government sitting and can obstruct Stormont indefinitely.
Just as Sinn Fein as the elected representatives for the nationalists held one when they were the secondary party and Stormont failed to sit for years until eventually Martin McGuinness agreed to sit as Deputy First Minister after a compromise was reached.
Either a compromise is reached satisfying the unionists or Stormont can't sit. That's how the GFA works.
I'm the grandson of humble immigrants to this country, it was a private education that allowed my father and myself to flourish and succeed in this country.
Wonderful stuff indeed. That means people cannot critique overrepresentation of the public school educated?
The latest fashion is for your children to be tutored personally through A levels - 4 subjects, 4 tutors, while “attending” a local state institution.
This is cheaper than private school and allows you to claim that your are a member of the Head Count.
The state schools play along, to the point of not reporting absence, since having a child with 4 predicted A************* and going to a top university makes you look better…..
There’s an interesting rule for UK expatriates, that one must be resident in the UK for two years before university admission, in order to “take advantage” of the UK uni fees schedule.
Until a few years ago, this would lead to expatriate parents moving back to the UK as their kids approached GCSEs, but now it’s resulting in their decision to remain expatriates and deal with the ‘overseas’ fees, because of the discrimination against private schools.
I'm always slightly nervous about calling the discrimination card without clear evidence. I'm also well aware that when I was at Cambridge, from a State school, 1992-95 then there was an awful lot of the same noise about how Private school pupils were disadvantage.
The issue I had was that - at that time - those colleges with the highest proportion of State pupils (Trinity and Kings) were top of the Topkins Table (i.e. got the most Firsts).
Because it seems like it would be pretty easy to see if less talented - on average - people were coming from the State schools. Simply: does a 21 year old from a private school achieve better academic results (on average) or not.
If one judged (and incentivized) the Colleges on output, then it would clearly be in their interests to attract those with the most potential.
And, fwiw, I suspect that would mean that (on average) State school pupils would come in with slightly lower grades, because they would be less likely to have fully achieved their potential.
The parents/students are not the only ones trying to game the system.
The Colleges are just as interested in gaming the system.
So, for example, if the Admissions Tutor admits students from Hills Rd SFC, or Varndean SFC, or Farnborough SFC (to name 3 outstanding state schools who get tonnes of people into Oxbridge), then their socio-economic background is no different from students at private schools like Haberdashers Aske or St Pauls or Nottingham High School -- but the former make the College look much better as they can hit "state school" targets.
The overwhelming bias of Oxbridge remains geography -- 40 to 45 per cent of the intake is usually London and the South East.
Erm, doesn't roughly 40 per cent of the population of England live in London and the South-East?
Approximately 1 in 3. By official region. Although I reckon few would consider Hertfordshire and Essex not to be SE. Nor, necessarily Oxon and Bucks to be so.
I would.
Despite the government’s designation, I would put the whole Thames watershed (Oxon, Bucks, Berks, Herts, Surrey, Essex) plus Kent and Sussex in the South East.
Hampshire not.
Yeah. The SE is often talked about. But it's a bit of an ill-defined concept Where does it begin and end? Not by the official definition for sure. So where is Hampshire by your reckoning? It's a bit like Lincolnshire and Cumbria. A county without an obvious region. And Banbury is less than an hour from Birmingham.
Trouble with Hampshire is that it's so damn big. Anywhere north and east of about WInchester is definitely "looking towards London" South East. The west, from Andover down to the New Forest is convincingly Wessex. And had the Portsmouth-Southampton conurbation been turned into a metropolitan county, nobody would have been that surprised.
Funnily enough, the BBC seem to agree. There isn't a Radio Hampshire, instead being covered by Solent, Surrey and Berkshire.
Hello, fellow erstwhile Gosport dweller.
No true Gosporter would ever think they are in the South East (in my opinion).
My late Aunt Dora could just about cope with Hayling Island but any further afield and there be demons.
Must have been terribly exotic taking the boat over to Pompey Harbour Station. Quite romantic really.
There’s a joke here somewhere about Priddy’s Hard but I am not quite able to make it.
Looking forward to another trip there sometime, actually, to the Navy weapons museum at the old ammunition depot - my dad was an armaments specialist in the RN and I wouldn't mind another look around. Also to see the Weevil Victualling Yard where IIRC they made the salt pork and biscuits - I believe the seafront is more accessible than it used to be.
“Solent City” in theory has it all. Weather, coastline, boating, Russell Group universities.
I'm the grandson of humble immigrants to this country, it was a private education that allowed my father and myself to flourish and succeed in this country.
Wonderful stuff indeed. That means people cannot critique overrepresentation of the public school educated?
The latest fashion is for your children to be tutored personally through A levels - 4 subjects, 4 tutors, while “attending” a local state institution.
This is cheaper than private school and allows you to claim that your are a member of the Head Count.
The state schools play along, to the point of not reporting absence, since having a child with 4 predicted A************* and going to a top university makes you look better…..
There’s an interesting rule for UK expatriates, that one must be resident in the UK for two years before university admission, in order to “take advantage” of the UK uni fees schedule.
Until a few years ago, this would lead to expatriate parents moving back to the UK as their kids approached GCSEs, but now it’s resulting in their decision to remain expatriates and deal with the ‘overseas’ fees, because of the discrimination against private schools.
I'm always slightly nervous about calling the discrimination card without clear evidence. I'm also well aware that when I was at Cambridge, from a State school, 1992-95 then there was an awful lot of the same noise about how Private school pupils were disadvantage.
The issue I had was that - at that time - those colleges with the highest proportion of State pupils (Trinity and Kings) were top of the Topkins Table (i.e. got the most Firsts).
Because it seems like it would be pretty easy to see if less talented - on average - people were coming from the State schools. Simply: does a 21 year old from a private school achieve better academic results (on average) or not.
If one judged (and incentivized) the Colleges on output, then it would clearly be in their interests to attract those with the most potential.
And, fwiw, I suspect that would mean that (on average) State school pupils would come in with slightly lower grades, because they would be less likely to have fully achieved their potential.
The parents/students are not the only ones trying to game the system.
The Colleges are just as interested in gaming the system.
So, for example, if the Admissions Tutor admits students from Hills Rd SFC, or Varndean SFC, or Farnborough SFC (to name 3 outstanding state schools who get tonnes of people into Oxbridge), then their socio-economic background is no different from students at private schools like Haberdashers Aske or St Pauls or Nottingham High School -- but the former make the College look much better as they can hit "state school" targets.
The overwhelming bias of Oxbridge remains geography -- 40 to 45 per cent of the intake is usually London and the South East.
Erm, doesn't roughly 40 per cent of the population of England live in London and the South-East?
Approximately 1 in 3. By official region. Although I reckon few would consider Hertfordshire and Essex not to be SE. Nor, necessarily Oxon and Bucks to be so.
I would.
Despite the government’s designation, I would put the whole Thames watershed (Oxon, Bucks, Berks, Herts, Surrey, Essex) plus Kent and Sussex in the South East.
Hampshire not.
Yeah. The SE is often talked about. But it's a bit of an ill-defined concept Where does it begin and end? Not by the official definition for sure. So where is Hampshire by your reckoning? It's a bit like Lincolnshire and Cumbria. A county without an obvious region. And Banbury is less than an hour from Birmingham.
Trouble with Hampshire is that it's so damn big. Anywhere north and east of about WInchester is definitely "looking towards London" South East. The west, from Andover down to the New Forest is convincingly Wessex. And had the Portsmouth-Southampton conurbation been turned into a metropolitan county, nobody would have been that surprised.
Funnily enough, the BBC seem to agree. There isn't a Radio Hampshire, instead being covered by Solent, Surrey and Berkshire.
Hello, fellow erstwhile Gosport dweller.
No true Gosporter would ever think they are in the South East (in my opinion).
My late Aunt Dora could just about cope with Hayling Island but any further afield and there be demons.
Must have been terribly exotic taking the boat over to Pompey Harbour Station. Quite romantic really.
There’s a joke here somewhere about Priddy’s Hard but I am not quite able to make it.
Looking forward to another trip there sometime, actually, to the Navy weapons museum at the old ammunition depot - my dad was an armaments specialist in the RN and I wouldn't mind another look around. Also to see the Weevil Victualling Yard where IIRC they made the salt pork and biscuits - I believe the seafront is more accessible than it used to be.
“Solent City” in theory has it all. Weather, coastline, boating, Russell Group universities.
It’s very mostly awful. Discuss.
Hmm! I tend to go for the military-industrial archaeology. Which I suppose makes your point ...
Nelson’s Victory is astonishing, simply amazing.
The Dockyard should be a UNESCO World Heritage site, I’m not sure why it’s not.
But generally speaking, the place (the Soton-Portsmouth metro) is dreary, tatty, and depressing. It is also - like the north - “left behind”.
Because it was bombed to shit in WW2 and, like too much of Britain, cheaply and shoddily rebuilt - and our narcisstic wanker-elite class of architects/town planners don’t have the brains, humility or wits to solve the problems of their own creation, despite 70 years having passed
Absolutely. But why? And why isn’t this the case in certain bombed-to-shit parts of Europe?
It could be so much better.
Because in many other places the architects weren't failures. Failures at the social engineering they tried. Failures at building structures for humans to inhabit and live in.
Again, why? Is there something in the chalky tap water that made/makes British architects failures?
I doubt it.
I urge you to dig deep for structural explanations.
Dear Me Johnson really has lost it going by the DT.
Blaming the EU for the cost of living crisis and the demands in terms of changes to the NI protocol aren’t going to happen . Now demanding the removal of the ECJ from that which no business asked for. With no ECJ no access to the single market . Johnson is destroying any chance of an agreement. Utterly despicable .
I would venture to suggest there are two sides to this story and on what I have read of Boris's comment piece he makes some very reasonable points
Within the treaty, provisions were reserved to provide an opportunity to review problems that arose post the implementation and it is clear the ECJ should have no jurisdiction over UK - NI only trade
I understand A16 was part of the treaty and if an impasse becomes stalemate then A16 will no doubt be served
I would just ask how do you think Starmer and labour would unlock this dispute and assuage the DUP
There is no trust or goodwill left because Johnson trashed that . The EU responded with some compromises which were totally ignored by no 10.
The way to get the EU to move more was to go to NI months ago and speak to all parties not ignore Sinn Fein and the other pro protocol parties and just suck up to the DUP.
The DUP want to pretend Brexit never happened and think that things can return to what they were before , they can’t .
Mitigation’s yes but that’s it .
It seems Boris's comment piece has been received quite well and is constructive
You can attack the DUP but they are not going away and as for going to NI months ago, the protocol has been constantly discussed across NI - UK and Europe
By whom . And his rant in the DT won’t go down well with the EU.
I do not think the British PM whoever it is should be influenced whether their comments are pleasing to the EU
We have left
You’re missing the point ! Clearly if you want to try and rebuild relations you need a bit more tact and diplomacy . For someone that apparently wants rid of Johnson you seem very staunch on his defence regardless of how much damage he does to EU UK relations .
Such is the way with Big G. He repeatedly says he wants Boris gone, but expends all his rhetoric on reasons why he should stay.
When Boris does something sensible then I have no problem in saying so
The tribal nature of politics crowds out credit where it is due
It does not change one iota that I believe he should be replaced by his mps
The DUP want a hard border on the island and they won’t play second fiddle to Sinn Fein.
Neither demand (never vocalised but implicit in their actions) can actually be accommodated at all.
HMG is using them in its EU war, but ultimately they will be fucked over. Again.
The GFA means that the DUP have to be satisfied for the NI Assembly to proceed.
I thought you wanted the GFA to be respected.
Did you want the GFA to be respected, except for where it serves the agenda of the DUP?
No, the GFA doesn’t say that.
The GFA sets up power-sharing and parity of esteem for both communities, but it doesn’t imply that one party of 20% (which is less than half of the unionist community), can obstruct Stormont indefinitely.
The DUP are actually against the GFA, see my points upthread about what their implicit objectives are (both are anti-GFA).
So how do you stop the DUP obstructing Stormont indefinitely if you just dismiss them
I don’t know. I am not an expert in the St Andrew’s agreement etc. I suggested on here that maybe lawyers could find a way to award Deputy First Ministership to the UUP.
The DUP will hope for new elections which will restore them to “rightful” first, but that also seems unlikely given the dynamics at play (moderate unionists peeling off).
No, they can't start giving the prizes away, just because the winners don't want them.
The whole point of how the system was designed was that government local to NI would only consist of the biggest party from each side of the sectarian divide working together. Either that or no government.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I think folk have to be encouraged to go into the office at least some of the time. I'm not convinced 100% WFH is any more optimal than 100% in the office ever was.
Almost nobody wants 100% wfh. That’s a straw man.
Come work where I work (major financial services organisation).
Doesn't matter what people say they want, you see what they actually do. The reality is no-one comes in because no-one else comes in, so essentially nearly everyone is WFH nearly 100% of the time bar a relatively tiny cohort that are choosing to go in and sit in near empty offices. Unless the bosses actually tell folk to be in X% of the time or whatever, nearly everyone just stays home.
What we are beginning to see is little clumps of people that used to sit near each other (even when they didn't work that closely) trying to individually reach out to each other to try and recreate that once a month, or whatever, because otherwise you're just sat at home on your own the whole time.
I think people vary, frankly. Anecdotally I know HR people in two organisations (not mine, yet) who say that it is getting much harder to retain staff if they are required to work in the office. Organisations that offer to let you skip the commute and work at home apparently have a decisive edge for many people, and HR departments from the other end of the country are able to lure good staff away that way, even at slightly lower salaries.
I have two people in my UK team who work entirely from home, several hundred miles away. They're excellent. If I insisted they move so they could be near work, I expect they'd resign at once.
I don't want to require folk to work in the office. I doubt anyone does. But I'd like to see my work at least broadly recommend folk should aim to be in the/an office at least one day a week, without them actually policing that particularly seriously. The sort of set up @biggles was mentioning seems to me something close to the ideal.
WFH is great for flexibility of hours and saving money commuting and accessing broader talent pools that work a way away from your physical footprint, but at the same time I think you still need some sort of a core hub to focus around where people gather regularly even without necessarily a good reason to. From the perspective of my work, I'd say 2 and a quarter years of almost total WFH has had a massively deleterious effect on the structure of our team.
Hybrid is a good thing to aim for - the problem seems to me to be some places don't really want hybrid because it's just harder to manage than having either everyone in an office or everyone WFH.
Fascinating graph in the link. Overall, Russian equipment losses seem to have been running around 3x those of Ukraine. You can quibble about the identification and counting methodology, but whatever. There’s one massive outlier.
https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1525583759738798080 … Whats most interesting is that the base ratio is close to being matched also for all subsets of equipment except one. Russian logistics losses are running at a staggering more than 15 pieces for every 1 Ukrainian...
You do have to consider that the invader, by definition, has a longer logistics tail than the defender within its own borders.
True for the battles around Kyiv, but not really in the east. Indeed you could say the opposite is true to some extent.
We cannot allow the impression that one strand is deemed more important than others; or that EU custom codes — designed for vast container ships coming from Shanghai to Rotterdam, not supermarket lorries from Liverpool to Belfast — somehow trump everything else.
We must remember that all parties to the Protocol made a commitment to be willing to revisit, adapt and change these arrangements over time — and to protect the internal market of the UK.
In the absence of change, the prior commitments made by the British Government — to protect all three strands of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, to protect economic rights and parity of esteem — are coming into sharper focus.
Every unionist representative campaigned against the Protocol, as currently constituted. More importantly, every party, across the divide, seeks mitigations and change. None support a zealous zero risk approach to its implementation.
None wants to see grace periods terminated, as the EU insist they must be in return for limited mitigations elsewhere. Some feel that their economic rights as members of the United Kingdom are threatened, which the 1998 Agreement is supposed to protect. The simple reason for this is that the East-West dimension — by far and away the principal artery in Northern Ireland’s economic life — is taking too much of the strain.
Strand 3 of the Agreement, which promised the “harmonious and mutually beneficial development of the totality of the relationship among the people of these islands”, is not functioning as it must.
And Strands 1 and 2 — of equal importance and mutually dependent — are now being negatively impacted too.
Many things have changed since the Protocol was agreed. It was designed in the absence of a Trade and Cooperation Agreement and when it was unclear one would be agreed. It has not been adapted to reflect the realities of the TCA.
I've read the whole thing, and the tone is OK, but its significance is elusive. Apart from urging everyone to play nicely, is he saying anything new ar all?
He seems to be setting up the logic - quite rightly - for why the Protocol as it operates is contra to the GFA.
No, he does not offer any solutions that I can see. Typically, HMG has not, presumably as part of some kind of negotiating ideology.
I have solutions leaping out at me. But they are all over the papers too, so it’s wrong to spin the UK government have no solution.
Firstly, the problem is explained to us and shocking if not everybody agrees. If goods moving from mainland UK into NI just for consumption in NI, why should it pass Through a EU border?
It shouldn’t. It’s potty solution the EU insisted on.
Secondly, the UK solution, (that will be adopted eventually so why don’t EU just grow up, and adopt it this week) Goods for NI consumption should sail through under a green light. If it further crosses into EU, smuggling in other words, it’s in interest of EU to agree with us to harsh penalties on the smugglers, it just shows what a sham EU border policy always been if they won’t, but UK always maintains proper borders.
That’s a perfectly workable solution proposed by UK government, everyone needs to get behind it.
I'm the grandson of humble immigrants to this country, it was a private education that allowed my father and myself to flourish and succeed in this country.
Wonderful stuff indeed. That means people cannot critique overrepresentation of the public school educated?
The latest fashion is for your children to be tutored personally through A levels - 4 subjects, 4 tutors, while “attending” a local state institution.
This is cheaper than private school and allows you to claim that your are a member of the Head Count.
The state schools play along, to the point of not reporting absence, since having a child with 4 predicted A************* and going to a top university makes you look better…..
There’s an interesting rule for UK expatriates, that one must be resident in the UK for two years before university admission, in order to “take advantage” of the UK uni fees schedule.
Until a few years ago, this would lead to expatriate parents moving back to the UK as their kids approached GCSEs, but now it’s resulting in their decision to remain expatriates and deal with the ‘overseas’ fees, because of the discrimination against private schools.
I'm always slightly nervous about calling the discrimination card without clear evidence. I'm also well aware that when I was at Cambridge, from a State school, 1992-95 then there was an awful lot of the same noise about how Private school pupils were disadvantage.
The issue I had was that - at that time - those colleges with the highest proportion of State pupils (Trinity and Kings) were top of the Topkins Table (i.e. got the most Firsts).
Because it seems like it would be pretty easy to see if less talented - on average - people were coming from the State schools. Simply: does a 21 year old from a private school achieve better academic results (on average) or not.
If one judged (and incentivized) the Colleges on output, then it would clearly be in their interests to attract those with the most potential.
And, fwiw, I suspect that would mean that (on average) State school pupils would come in with slightly lower grades, because they would be less likely to have fully achieved their potential.
The parents/students are not the only ones trying to game the system.
The Colleges are just as interested in gaming the system.
So, for example, if the Admissions Tutor admits students from Hills Rd SFC, or Varndean SFC, or Farnborough SFC (to name 3 outstanding state schools who get tonnes of people into Oxbridge), then their socio-economic background is no different from students at private schools like Haberdashers Aske or St Pauls or Nottingham High School -- but the former make the College look much better as they can hit "state school" targets.
The overwhelming bias of Oxbridge remains geography -- 40 to 45 per cent of the intake is usually London and the South East.
Erm, doesn't roughly 40 per cent of the population of England live in London and the South-East?
Approximately 1 in 3. By official region. Although I reckon few would consider Hertfordshire and Essex not to be SE. Nor, necessarily Oxon and Bucks to be so.
I would.
Despite the government’s designation, I would put the whole Thames watershed (Oxon, Bucks, Berks, Herts, Surrey, Essex) plus Kent and Sussex in the South East.
Hampshire not.
Yeah. The SE is often talked about. But it's a bit of an ill-defined concept Where does it begin and end? Not by the official definition for sure. So where is Hampshire by your reckoning? It's a bit like Lincolnshire and Cumbria. A county without an obvious region. And Banbury is less than an hour from Birmingham.
Trouble with Hampshire is that it's so damn big. Anywhere north and east of about WInchester is definitely "looking towards London" South East. The west, from Andover down to the New Forest is convincingly Wessex. And had the Portsmouth-Southampton conurbation been turned into a metropolitan county, nobody would have been that surprised.
Funnily enough, the BBC seem to agree. There isn't a Radio Hampshire, instead being covered by Solent, Surrey and Berkshire.
Hello, fellow erstwhile Gosport dweller.
No true Gosporter would ever think they are in the South East (in my opinion).
My late Aunt Dora could just about cope with Hayling Island but any further afield and there be demons.
Must have been terribly exotic taking the boat over to Pompey Harbour Station. Quite romantic really.
There’s a joke here somewhere about Priddy’s Hard but I am not quite able to make it.
Looking forward to another trip there sometime, actually, to the Navy weapons museum at the old ammunition depot - my dad was an armaments specialist in the RN and I wouldn't mind another look around. Also to see the Weevil Victualling Yard where IIRC they made the salt pork and biscuits - I believe the seafront is more accessible than it used to be.
“Solent City” in theory has it all. Weather, coastline, boating, Russell Group universities.
I'm the grandson of humble immigrants to this country, it was a private education that allowed my father and myself to flourish and succeed in this country.
Wonderful stuff indeed. That means people cannot critique overrepresentation of the public school educated?
The latest fashion is for your children to be tutored personally through A levels - 4 subjects, 4 tutors, while “attending” a local state institution.
This is cheaper than private school and allows you to claim that your are a member of the Head Count.
The state schools play along, to the point of not reporting absence, since having a child with 4 predicted A************* and going to a top university makes you look better…..
There’s an interesting rule for UK expatriates, that one must be resident in the UK for two years before university admission, in order to “take advantage” of the UK uni fees schedule.
Until a few years ago, this would lead to expatriate parents moving back to the UK as their kids approached GCSEs, but now it’s resulting in their decision to remain expatriates and deal with the ‘overseas’ fees, because of the discrimination against private schools.
I'm always slightly nervous about calling the discrimination card without clear evidence. I'm also well aware that when I was at Cambridge, from a State school, 1992-95 then there was an awful lot of the same noise about how Private school pupils were disadvantage.
The issue I had was that - at that time - those colleges with the highest proportion of State pupils (Trinity and Kings) were top of the Topkins Table (i.e. got the most Firsts).
Because it seems like it would be pretty easy to see if less talented - on average - people were coming from the State schools. Simply: does a 21 year old from a private school achieve better academic results (on average) or not.
If one judged (and incentivized) the Colleges on output, then it would clearly be in their interests to attract those with the most potential.
And, fwiw, I suspect that would mean that (on average) State school pupils would come in with slightly lower grades, because they would be less likely to have fully achieved their potential.
The parents/students are not the only ones trying to game the system.
The Colleges are just as interested in gaming the system.
So, for example, if the Admissions Tutor admits students from Hills Rd SFC, or Varndean SFC, or Farnborough SFC (to name 3 outstanding state schools who get tonnes of people into Oxbridge), then their socio-economic background is no different from students at private schools like Haberdashers Aske or St Pauls or Nottingham High School -- but the former make the College look much better as they can hit "state school" targets.
The overwhelming bias of Oxbridge remains geography -- 40 to 45 per cent of the intake is usually London and the South East.
Erm, doesn't roughly 40 per cent of the population of England live in London and the South-East?
Approximately 1 in 3. By official region. Although I reckon few would consider Hertfordshire and Essex not to be SE. Nor, necessarily Oxon and Bucks to be so.
I would.
Despite the government’s designation, I would put the whole Thames watershed (Oxon, Bucks, Berks, Herts, Surrey, Essex) plus Kent and Sussex in the South East.
Hampshire not.
Yeah. The SE is often talked about. But it's a bit of an ill-defined concept Where does it begin and end? Not by the official definition for sure. So where is Hampshire by your reckoning? It's a bit like Lincolnshire and Cumbria. A county without an obvious region. And Banbury is less than an hour from Birmingham.
Trouble with Hampshire is that it's so damn big. Anywhere north and east of about WInchester is definitely "looking towards London" South East. The west, from Andover down to the New Forest is convincingly Wessex. And had the Portsmouth-Southampton conurbation been turned into a metropolitan county, nobody would have been that surprised.
Funnily enough, the BBC seem to agree. There isn't a Radio Hampshire, instead being covered by Solent, Surrey and Berkshire.
Hello, fellow erstwhile Gosport dweller.
No true Gosporter would ever think they are in the South East (in my opinion).
My late Aunt Dora could just about cope with Hayling Island but any further afield and there be demons.
Must have been terribly exotic taking the boat over to Pompey Harbour Station. Quite romantic really.
There’s a joke here somewhere about Priddy’s Hard but I am not quite able to make it.
Looking forward to another trip there sometime, actually, to the Navy weapons museum at the old ammunition depot - my dad was an armaments specialist in the RN and I wouldn't mind another look around. Also to see the Weevil Victualling Yard where IIRC they made the salt pork and biscuits - I believe the seafront is more accessible than it used to be.
“Solent City” in theory has it all. Weather, coastline, boating, Russell Group universities.
It’s very mostly awful. Discuss.
Hmm! I tend to go for the military-industrial archaeology. Which I suppose makes your point ...
Nelson’s Victory is astonishing, simply amazing.
The Dockyard should be a UNESCO World Heritage site, I’m not sure why it’s not.
But generally speaking, the place (the Soton-Portsmouth metro) is dreary, tatty, and depressing. It is also - like the north - “left behind”.
Because it was bombed to shit in WW2 and, like too much of Britain, cheaply and shoddily rebuilt - and our narcisstic wanker-elite class of architects/town planners don’t have the brains, humility or wits to solve the problems of their own creation, despite 70 years having passed
Absolutely. But why? And why isn’t this the case in certain bombed-to-shit parts of Europe?
It could be so much better.
Because in many other places the architects weren't failures. Failures at the social engineering they tried. Failures at building structures for humans to inhabit and live in.
Again, why? Is there something in the chalky tap water that made/makes British architects failures?
I doubt it.
I urge you to dig deep for structural explanations.
No deep reasons needed - the cult of The Man From The Ministry, combined with promises from the architects that their social engineering would be cheaper. The lack of local voices was what allowed this to go ahead - truly local voices. In the UK, the leaders of various city councils signed on the dotted lines. It was a cross party thing - implemented across Labour and Conservative governments.
In Germany and elsewhere, local politicians took one look at similar plans and binned them.
The DUP want a hard border on the island and they won’t play second fiddle to Sinn Fein.
Neither demand (never vocalised but implicit in their actions) can actually be accommodated at all.
HMG is using them in its EU war, but ultimately they will be fucked over. Again.
The GFA means that the DUP have to be satisfied for the NI Assembly to proceed.
I thought you wanted the GFA to be respected.
Did you want the GFA to be respected, except for where it serves the agenda of the DUP?
No, the GFA doesn’t say that.
The GFA sets up power-sharing and parity of esteem for both communities, but it doesn’t imply that one party of 20% (which is less than half of the unionist community), can obstruct Stormont indefinitely.
The DUP are actually against the GFA, see my points upthread about what their implicit objectives are (both are anti-GFA).
So how do you stop the DUP obstructing Stormont indefinitely if you just dismiss them
I don’t know. I am not an expert in the St Andrew’s agreement etc. I suggested on here that maybe lawyers could find a way to award Deputy First Ministership to the UUP.
The DUP will hope for new elections which will restore them to “rightful” first, but that also seems unlikely given the dynamics at play (moderate unionists peeling off).
No, they can't start giving the prizes away, just because the winners don't want them.
The whole point of how the system was designed was that government local to NI would only consist of the biggest party from each side of the sectarian divide working together. Either that or no government.
Indeed. When Sinn Fein were the secondary party they had to be satisfied or the government couldn't sit. there was no talk about "why not just give Sinn Fein's role to the SDLP".
Now that the roles are reversed, suddenly the DUP doing what they're perfectly entitled to do and Sinn Fein did for years is utterly outrageous.
No, the GFA is about compromise. Either the DUP and Sinn Fein reach a compromise that both can live with, or neither get their prizes.
Where I work, the younger the staff, the higher the attendance - all the graduate interns come into the office every day.
They really, really don't like working from home. For many, there is no space for an office setup, and working off a small laptop screen is bad for the back, eyes and soul.
It's the reverse here. This area is very expensive, so the junior staff mostly live a longish way off. Not having to commute is a big plus for them - some say that they'll gladly work half an hour overtime at home rather than spend two hours sitting on trains and buses. Older staff tend to spend more of their days in meetings, and they generally prefer to have those face to face.
We operate with 2 days in the office, 3 at home for people who live nearby. Because that is mostly the older staff, it works OK.
Dear Me Johnson really has lost it going by the DT.
Blaming the EU for the cost of living crisis and the demands in terms of changes to the NI protocol aren’t going to happen . Now demanding the removal of the ECJ from that which no business asked for. With no ECJ no access to the single market . Johnson is destroying any chance of an agreement. Utterly despicable .
I would venture to suggest there are two sides to this story and on what I have read of Boris's comment piece he makes some very reasonable points
Within the treaty, provisions were reserved to provide an opportunity to review problems that arose post the implementation and it is clear the ECJ should have no jurisdiction over UK - NI only trade
I understand A16 was part of the treaty and if an impasse becomes stalemate then A16 will no doubt be served
I would just ask how do you think Starmer and labour would unlock this dispute and assuage the DUP
There is no trust or goodwill left because Johnson trashed that . The EU responded with some compromises which were totally ignored by no 10.
The way to get the EU to move more was to go to NI months ago and speak to all parties not ignore Sinn Fein and the other pro protocol parties and just suck up to the DUP.
The DUP want to pretend Brexit never happened and think that things can return to what they were before , they can’t .
Mitigation’s yes but that’s it .
It seems Boris's comment piece has been received quite well and is constructive
You can attack the DUP but they are not going away and as for going to NI months ago, the protocol has been constantly discussed across NI - UK and Europe
By whom . And his rant in the DT won’t go down well with the EU.
I do not think the British PM whoever it is should be influenced whether their comments are pleasing to the EU
We have left
You’re missing the point ! Clearly if you want to try and rebuild relations you need a bit more tact and diplomacy . For someone that apparently wants rid of Johnson you seem very staunch on his defence regardless of how much damage he does to EU UK relations .
Such is the way with Big G. He repeatedly says he wants Boris gone, but expends all his rhetoric on reasons why he should stay.
When Boris does something sensible then I have no problem in saying so
The tribal nature of politics crowds out credit where it is due
It does not change one iota that I believe he should be replaced by his mps
But Big Dog’s having a good few weeks. He now looks a political giant amongst his cabinet and parliamentary party. He’s in strong fight back mode. He’s nowhere near being replaced.
I don’t want to come over all Yes Minister, but it probably took him 2 years to learn the job and get into swing of things, like he is now.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I think folk have to be encouraged to go into the office at least some of the time. I'm not convinced 100% WFH is any more optimal than 100% in the office ever was.
Almost nobody wants 100% wfh. That’s a straw man.
Come work where I work (major financial services organisation).
Doesn't matter what people say they want, you see what they actually do. The reality is no-one comes in because no-one else comes in, so essentially nearly everyone is WFH nearly 100% of the time bar a relatively tiny cohort that are choosing to go in and sit in near empty offices. Unless the bosses actually tell folk to be in X% of the time or whatever, nearly everyone just stays home.
What we are beginning to see is little clumps of people that used to sit near each other (even when they didn't work that closely) trying to individually reach out to each other to try and recreate that once a month, or whatever, because otherwise you're just sat at home on your own the whole time.
We’re at roughly 50%, based on most people doing two or three days and overlapping. Our offices were set up for 70% and hot-desking, so it basically just makes it nicer at work AND let’s us all wfh 2/3 times a week. Great for morale and, I think, productivity.
“ and, I think, productivity”
All the studies are massively against that arn’t they? WFH is building in inefficiency and less productivity into the UK economy. People were efficient and productive when sharing knowledge without realising it, without having to be asked, without remote workers stumped for ages with what would have been instantly shared in office. Slow down knowledge share teeny bit builds in massive inefficiency and kills speed needed for value for money and productivity.
I'm the grandson of humble immigrants to this country, it was a private education that allowed my father and myself to flourish and succeed in this country.
Wonderful stuff indeed. That means people cannot critique overrepresentation of the public school educated?
The latest fashion is for your children to be tutored personally through A levels - 4 subjects, 4 tutors, while “attending” a local state institution.
This is cheaper than private school and allows you to claim that your are a member of the Head Count.
The state schools play along, to the point of not reporting absence, since having a child with 4 predicted A************* and going to a top university makes you look better…..
There’s an interesting rule for UK expatriates, that one must be resident in the UK for two years before university admission, in order to “take advantage” of the UK uni fees schedule.
Until a few years ago, this would lead to expatriate parents moving back to the UK as their kids approached GCSEs, but now it’s resulting in their decision to remain expatriates and deal with the ‘overseas’ fees, because of the discrimination against private schools.
I'm always slightly nervous about calling the discrimination card without clear evidence. I'm also well aware that when I was at Cambridge, from a State school, 1992-95 then there was an awful lot of the same noise about how Private school pupils were disadvantage.
The issue I had was that - at that time - those colleges with the highest proportion of State pupils (Trinity and Kings) were top of the Topkins Table (i.e. got the most Firsts).
Because it seems like it would be pretty easy to see if less talented - on average - people were coming from the State schools. Simply: does a 21 year old from a private school achieve better academic results (on average) or not.
If one judged (and incentivized) the Colleges on output, then it would clearly be in their interests to attract those with the most potential.
And, fwiw, I suspect that would mean that (on average) State school pupils would come in with slightly lower grades, because they would be less likely to have fully achieved their potential.
The parents/students are not the only ones trying to game the system.
The Colleges are just as interested in gaming the system.
So, for example, if the Admissions Tutor admits students from Hills Rd SFC, or Varndean SFC, or Farnborough SFC (to name 3 outstanding state schools who get tonnes of people into Oxbridge), then their socio-economic background is no different from students at private schools like Haberdashers Aske or St Pauls or Nottingham High School -- but the former make the College look much better as they can hit "state school" targets.
The overwhelming bias of Oxbridge remains geography -- 40 to 45 per cent of the intake is usually London and the South East.
Erm, doesn't roughly 40 per cent of the population of England live in London and the South-East?
Approximately 1 in 3. By official region. Although I reckon few would consider Hertfordshire and Essex not to be SE. Nor, necessarily Oxon and Bucks to be so.
I would.
Despite the government’s designation, I would put the whole Thames watershed (Oxon, Bucks, Berks, Herts, Surrey, Essex) plus Kent and Sussex in the South East.
Hampshire not.
Yeah. The SE is often talked about. But it's a bit of an ill-defined concept Where does it begin and end? Not by the official definition for sure. So where is Hampshire by your reckoning? It's a bit like Lincolnshire and Cumbria. A county without an obvious region. And Banbury is less than an hour from Birmingham.
Trouble with Hampshire is that it's so damn big. Anywhere north and east of about WInchester is definitely "looking towards London" South East. The west, from Andover down to the New Forest is convincingly Wessex. And had the Portsmouth-Southampton conurbation been turned into a metropolitan county, nobody would have been that surprised.
Funnily enough, the BBC seem to agree. There isn't a Radio Hampshire, instead being covered by Solent, Surrey and Berkshire.
Hello, fellow erstwhile Gosport dweller.
No true Gosporter would ever think they are in the South East (in my opinion).
My late Aunt Dora could just about cope with Hayling Island but any further afield and there be demons.
Must have been terribly exotic taking the boat over to Pompey Harbour Station. Quite romantic really.
There’s a joke here somewhere about Priddy’s Hard but I am not quite able to make it.
Looking forward to another trip there sometime, actually, to the Navy weapons museum at the old ammunition depot - my dad was an armaments specialist in the RN and I wouldn't mind another look around. Also to see the Weevil Victualling Yard where IIRC they made the salt pork and biscuits - I believe the seafront is more accessible than it used to be.
“Solent City” in theory has it all. Weather, coastline, boating, Russell Group universities.
I'm the grandson of humble immigrants to this country, it was a private education that allowed my father and myself to flourish and succeed in this country.
Wonderful stuff indeed. That means people cannot critique overrepresentation of the public school educated?
The latest fashion is for your children to be tutored personally through A levels - 4 subjects, 4 tutors, while “attending” a local state institution.
This is cheaper than private school and allows you to claim that your are a member of the Head Count.
The state schools play along, to the point of not reporting absence, since having a child with 4 predicted A************* and going to a top university makes you look better…..
There’s an interesting rule for UK expatriates, that one must be resident in the UK for two years before university admission, in order to “take advantage” of the UK uni fees schedule.
Until a few years ago, this would lead to expatriate parents moving back to the UK as their kids approached GCSEs, but now it’s resulting in their decision to remain expatriates and deal with the ‘overseas’ fees, because of the discrimination against private schools.
I'm always slightly nervous about calling the discrimination card without clear evidence. I'm also well aware that when I was at Cambridge, from a State school, 1992-95 then there was an awful lot of the same noise about how Private school pupils were disadvantage.
The issue I had was that - at that time - those colleges with the highest proportion of State pupils (Trinity and Kings) were top of the Topkins Table (i.e. got the most Firsts).
Because it seems like it would be pretty easy to see if less talented - on average - people were coming from the State schools. Simply: does a 21 year old from a private school achieve better academic results (on average) or not.
If one judged (and incentivized) the Colleges on output, then it would clearly be in their interests to attract those with the most potential.
And, fwiw, I suspect that would mean that (on average) State school pupils would come in with slightly lower grades, because they would be less likely to have fully achieved their potential.
The parents/students are not the only ones trying to game the system.
The Colleges are just as interested in gaming the system.
So, for example, if the Admissions Tutor admits students from Hills Rd SFC, or Varndean SFC, or Farnborough SFC (to name 3 outstanding state schools who get tonnes of people into Oxbridge), then their socio-economic background is no different from students at private schools like Haberdashers Aske or St Pauls or Nottingham High School -- but the former make the College look much better as they can hit "state school" targets.
The overwhelming bias of Oxbridge remains geography -- 40 to 45 per cent of the intake is usually London and the South East.
Erm, doesn't roughly 40 per cent of the population of England live in London and the South-East?
Approximately 1 in 3. By official region. Although I reckon few would consider Hertfordshire and Essex not to be SE. Nor, necessarily Oxon and Bucks to be so.
I would.
Despite the government’s designation, I would put the whole Thames watershed (Oxon, Bucks, Berks, Herts, Surrey, Essex) plus Kent and Sussex in the South East.
Hampshire not.
Yeah. The SE is often talked about. But it's a bit of an ill-defined concept Where does it begin and end? Not by the official definition for sure. So where is Hampshire by your reckoning? It's a bit like Lincolnshire and Cumbria. A county without an obvious region. And Banbury is less than an hour from Birmingham.
Trouble with Hampshire is that it's so damn big. Anywhere north and east of about WInchester is definitely "looking towards London" South East. The west, from Andover down to the New Forest is convincingly Wessex. And had the Portsmouth-Southampton conurbation been turned into a metropolitan county, nobody would have been that surprised.
Funnily enough, the BBC seem to agree. There isn't a Radio Hampshire, instead being covered by Solent, Surrey and Berkshire.
Hello, fellow erstwhile Gosport dweller.
No true Gosporter would ever think they are in the South East (in my opinion).
My late Aunt Dora could just about cope with Hayling Island but any further afield and there be demons.
Must have been terribly exotic taking the boat over to Pompey Harbour Station. Quite romantic really.
There’s a joke here somewhere about Priddy’s Hard but I am not quite able to make it.
Looking forward to another trip there sometime, actually, to the Navy weapons museum at the old ammunition depot - my dad was an armaments specialist in the RN and I wouldn't mind another look around. Also to see the Weevil Victualling Yard where IIRC they made the salt pork and biscuits - I believe the seafront is more accessible than it used to be.
“Solent City” in theory has it all. Weather, coastline, boating, Russell Group universities.
It’s very mostly awful. Discuss.
Hmm! I tend to go for the military-industrial archaeology. Which I suppose makes your point ...
Nelson’s Victory is astonishing, simply amazing.
The Dockyard should be a UNESCO World Heritage site, I’m not sure why it’s not.
But generally speaking, the place (the Soton-Portsmouth metro) is dreary, tatty, and depressing. It is also - like the north - “left behind”.
Because it was bombed to shit in WW2 and, like too much of Britain, cheaply and shoddily rebuilt - and our narcisstic wanker-elite class of architects/town planners don’t have the brains, humility or wits to solve the problems of their own creation, despite 70 years having passed
Absolutely. But why? And why isn’t this the case in certain bombed-to-shit parts of Europe?
It could be so much better.
Because in many other places the architects weren't failures. Failures at the social engineering they tried. Failures at building structures for humans to inhabit and live in.
Again, why? Is there something in the chalky tap water that made/makes British architects failures?
I doubt it.
I urge you to dig deep for structural explanations.
Some of it was because of cheap and shoddy- quantity was more important than quality. Because that's what Britain tends to do.
Some of it was because of the attempt to make the cities car-friendly. Has that ever been done in a way that enhances the look of a city?
Still, in Solent City's case, it could have been worse. There was a real plan in the 1960's to put an MK-style grid on the area;
We cannot allow the impression that one strand is deemed more important than others; or that EU custom codes — designed for vast container ships coming from Shanghai to Rotterdam, not supermarket lorries from Liverpool to Belfast — somehow trump everything else.
We must remember that all parties to the Protocol made a commitment to be willing to revisit, adapt and change these arrangements over time — and to protect the internal market of the UK.
In the absence of change, the prior commitments made by the British Government — to protect all three strands of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, to protect economic rights and parity of esteem — are coming into sharper focus.
Every unionist representative campaigned against the Protocol, as currently constituted. More importantly, every party, across the divide, seeks mitigations and change. None support a zealous zero risk approach to its implementation.
None wants to see grace periods terminated, as the EU insist they must be in return for limited mitigations elsewhere. Some feel that their economic rights as members of the United Kingdom are threatened, which the 1998 Agreement is supposed to protect. The simple reason for this is that the East-West dimension — by far and away the principal artery in Northern Ireland’s economic life — is taking too much of the strain.
Strand 3 of the Agreement, which promised the “harmonious and mutually beneficial development of the totality of the relationship among the people of these islands”, is not functioning as it must.
And Strands 1 and 2 — of equal importance and mutually dependent — are now being negatively impacted too.
Many things have changed since the Protocol was agreed. It was designed in the absence of a Trade and Cooperation Agreement and when it was unclear one would be agreed. It has not been adapted to reflect the realities of the TCA.
I've read the whole thing, and the tone is OK, but its significance is elusive. Apart from urging everyone to play nicely, is he saying anything new ar all?
He seems to be setting up the logic - quite rightly - for why the Protocol as it operates is contra to the GFA.
No, he does not offer any solutions that I can see. Typically, HMG has not, presumably as part of some kind of negotiating ideology.
I have solutions leaping out at me. But they are all over the papers too, so it’s wrong to spin the UK government have no solution.
Firstly, the problem is explained to us and shocking if not everybody agrees. If goods moving from mainland UK into NI just for consumption in NI, why should it pass Through a EU border?
It shouldn’t. It’s potty solution the EU insisted on.
Secondly, the UK solution, (that will be adopted eventually so why don’t EU just grow up, and adopt it this week) Goods for NI consumption should sail through under a green light. If it further crosses into EU, smuggling in other words, it’s in interest of EU to agree with us to harsh penalties on the smugglers, it just shows what a sham EU border policy always been if they won’t, but UK always maintains proper borders.
That’s a perfectly workable solution proposed by UK government, everyone needs to get behind it.
No border anywhere, tackle the smugglers, is the proposal I've been making for five long years here.
It is the only viable end-game that keeps both communities of NI partisans happy. The problem since day one is that some people just want to override the other community in NI in the name of the GFA when the GFA is explicitly and deliberately about compromise.
Where I work, the younger the staff, the higher the attendance - all the graduate interns come into the office every day.
They really, really don't like working from home. For many, there is no space for an office setup, and working off a small laptop screen is bad for the back, eyes and soul.
It's the reverse here. This area is very expensive, so the junior staff mostly live a longish way off. Not having to commute is a big plus for them - some say that they'll gladly work half an hour overtime at home rather than spend two hours sitting on trains and buses. Older staff tend to spend more of their days in meetings, and they generally prefer to have those face to face.
We operate with 2 days in the office, 3 at home for people who live nearby. Because that is mostly the older staff, it works OK.
Interesting how the patterns are different.
We are based in Bank, in London. The younger staff are commuting long distances, but want to come into central London anyway. That's where they socialise.
The DUP want a hard border on the island and they won’t play second fiddle to Sinn Fein.
Neither demand (never vocalised but implicit in their actions) can actually be accommodated at all.
HMG is using them in its EU war, but ultimately they will be fucked over. Again.
The GFA means that the DUP have to be satisfied for the NI Assembly to proceed.
I thought you wanted the GFA to be respected.
Did you want the GFA to be respected, except for where it serves the agenda of the DUP?
No, the GFA doesn’t say that.
The GFA sets up power-sharing and parity of esteem for both communities, but it doesn’t imply that one party of 20% (which is less than half of the unionist community), can obstruct Stormont indefinitely.
The DUP are actually against the GFA, see my points upthread about what their implicit objectives are (both are anti-GFA).
So how do you stop the DUP obstructing Stormont indefinitely if you just dismiss them
I don’t know. I am not an expert in the St Andrew’s agreement etc. I suggested on here that maybe lawyers could find a way to award Deputy First Ministership to the UUP.
The DUP will hope for new elections which will restore them to “rightful” first, but that also seems unlikely given the dynamics at play (moderate unionists peeling off).
DUP = Theresa May
Both called unnecessary elections in which they lost pole position.
I'm the grandson of humble immigrants to this country, it was a private education that allowed my father and myself to flourish and succeed in this country.
Wonderful stuff indeed. That means people cannot critique overrepresentation of the public school educated?
The latest fashion is for your children to be tutored personally through A levels - 4 subjects, 4 tutors, while “attending” a local state institution.
This is cheaper than private school and allows you to claim that your are a member of the Head Count.
The state schools play along, to the point of not reporting absence, since having a child with 4 predicted A************* and going to a top university makes you look better…..
There’s an interesting rule for UK expatriates, that one must be resident in the UK for two years before university admission, in order to “take advantage” of the UK uni fees schedule.
Until a few years ago, this would lead to expatriate parents moving back to the UK as their kids approached GCSEs, but now it’s resulting in their decision to remain expatriates and deal with the ‘overseas’ fees, because of the discrimination against private schools.
I'm always slightly nervous about calling the discrimination card without clear evidence. I'm also well aware that when I was at Cambridge, from a State school, 1992-95 then there was an awful lot of the same noise about how Private school pupils were disadvantage.
The issue I had was that - at that time - those colleges with the highest proportion of State pupils (Trinity and Kings) were top of the Topkins Table (i.e. got the most Firsts).
Because it seems like it would be pretty easy to see if less talented - on average - people were coming from the State schools. Simply: does a 21 year old from a private school achieve better academic results (on average) or not.
If one judged (and incentivized) the Colleges on output, then it would clearly be in their interests to attract those with the most potential.
And, fwiw, I suspect that would mean that (on average) State school pupils would come in with slightly lower grades, because they would be less likely to have fully achieved their potential.
The parents/students are not the only ones trying to game the system.
The Colleges are just as interested in gaming the system.
So, for example, if the Admissions Tutor admits students from Hills Rd SFC, or Varndean SFC, or Farnborough SFC (to name 3 outstanding state schools who get tonnes of people into Oxbridge), then their socio-economic background is no different from students at private schools like Haberdashers Aske or St Pauls or Nottingham High School -- but the former make the College look much better as they can hit "state school" targets.
The overwhelming bias of Oxbridge remains geography -- 40 to 45 per cent of the intake is usually London and the South East.
Erm, doesn't roughly 40 per cent of the population of England live in London and the South-East?
Approximately 1 in 3. By official region. Although I reckon few would consider Hertfordshire and Essex not to be SE. Nor, necessarily Oxon and Bucks to be so.
I would.
Despite the government’s designation, I would put the whole Thames watershed (Oxon, Bucks, Berks, Herts, Surrey, Essex) plus Kent and Sussex in the South East.
Hampshire not.
Yeah. The SE is often talked about. But it's a bit of an ill-defined concept Where does it begin and end? Not by the official definition for sure. So where is Hampshire by your reckoning? It's a bit like Lincolnshire and Cumbria. A county without an obvious region. And Banbury is less than an hour from Birmingham.
Trouble with Hampshire is that it's so damn big. Anywhere north and east of about WInchester is definitely "looking towards London" South East. The west, from Andover down to the New Forest is convincingly Wessex. And had the Portsmouth-Southampton conurbation been turned into a metropolitan county, nobody would have been that surprised.
Funnily enough, the BBC seem to agree. There isn't a Radio Hampshire, instead being covered by Solent, Surrey and Berkshire.
Hello, fellow erstwhile Gosport dweller.
No true Gosporter would ever think they are in the South East (in my opinion).
My late Aunt Dora could just about cope with Hayling Island but any further afield and there be demons.
Must have been terribly exotic taking the boat over to Pompey Harbour Station. Quite romantic really.
There’s a joke here somewhere about Priddy’s Hard but I am not quite able to make it.
Looking forward to another trip there sometime, actually, to the Navy weapons museum at the old ammunition depot - my dad was an armaments specialist in the RN and I wouldn't mind another look around. Also to see the Weevil Victualling Yard where IIRC they made the salt pork and biscuits - I believe the seafront is more accessible than it used to be.
“Solent City” in theory has it all. Weather, coastline, boating, Russell Group universities.
I'm the grandson of humble immigrants to this country, it was a private education that allowed my father and myself to flourish and succeed in this country.
Wonderful stuff indeed. That means people cannot critique overrepresentation of the public school educated?
The latest fashion is for your children to be tutored personally through A levels - 4 subjects, 4 tutors, while “attending” a local state institution.
This is cheaper than private school and allows you to claim that your are a member of the Head Count.
The state schools play along, to the point of not reporting absence, since having a child with 4 predicted A************* and going to a top university makes you look better…..
There’s an interesting rule for UK expatriates, that one must be resident in the UK for two years before university admission, in order to “take advantage” of the UK uni fees schedule.
Until a few years ago, this would lead to expatriate parents moving back to the UK as their kids approached GCSEs, but now it’s resulting in their decision to remain expatriates and deal with the ‘overseas’ fees, because of the discrimination against private schools.
I'm always slightly nervous about calling the discrimination card without clear evidence. I'm also well aware that when I was at Cambridge, from a State school, 1992-95 then there was an awful lot of the same noise about how Private school pupils were disadvantage.
The issue I had was that - at that time - those colleges with the highest proportion of State pupils (Trinity and Kings) were top of the Topkins Table (i.e. got the most Firsts).
Because it seems like it would be pretty easy to see if less talented - on average - people were coming from the State schools. Simply: does a 21 year old from a private school achieve better academic results (on average) or not.
If one judged (and incentivized) the Colleges on output, then it would clearly be in their interests to attract those with the most potential.
And, fwiw, I suspect that would mean that (on average) State school pupils would come in with slightly lower grades, because they would be less likely to have fully achieved their potential.
The parents/students are not the only ones trying to game the system.
The Colleges are just as interested in gaming the system.
So, for example, if the Admissions Tutor admits students from Hills Rd SFC, or Varndean SFC, or Farnborough SFC (to name 3 outstanding state schools who get tonnes of people into Oxbridge), then their socio-economic background is no different from students at private schools like Haberdashers Aske or St Pauls or Nottingham High School -- but the former make the College look much better as they can hit "state school" targets.
The overwhelming bias of Oxbridge remains geography -- 40 to 45 per cent of the intake is usually London and the South East.
Erm, doesn't roughly 40 per cent of the population of England live in London and the South-East?
Approximately 1 in 3. By official region. Although I reckon few would consider Hertfordshire and Essex not to be SE. Nor, necessarily Oxon and Bucks to be so.
I would.
Despite the government’s designation, I would put the whole Thames watershed (Oxon, Bucks, Berks, Herts, Surrey, Essex) plus Kent and Sussex in the South East.
Hampshire not.
Yeah. The SE is often talked about. But it's a bit of an ill-defined concept Where does it begin and end? Not by the official definition for sure. So where is Hampshire by your reckoning? It's a bit like Lincolnshire and Cumbria. A county without an obvious region. And Banbury is less than an hour from Birmingham.
Trouble with Hampshire is that it's so damn big. Anywhere north and east of about WInchester is definitely "looking towards London" South East. The west, from Andover down to the New Forest is convincingly Wessex. And had the Portsmouth-Southampton conurbation been turned into a metropolitan county, nobody would have been that surprised.
Funnily enough, the BBC seem to agree. There isn't a Radio Hampshire, instead being covered by Solent, Surrey and Berkshire.
Hello, fellow erstwhile Gosport dweller.
No true Gosporter would ever think they are in the South East (in my opinion).
My late Aunt Dora could just about cope with Hayling Island but any further afield and there be demons.
Must have been terribly exotic taking the boat over to Pompey Harbour Station. Quite romantic really.
There’s a joke here somewhere about Priddy’s Hard but I am not quite able to make it.
Looking forward to another trip there sometime, actually, to the Navy weapons museum at the old ammunition depot - my dad was an armaments specialist in the RN and I wouldn't mind another look around. Also to see the Weevil Victualling Yard where IIRC they made the salt pork and biscuits - I believe the seafront is more accessible than it used to be.
“Solent City” in theory has it all. Weather, coastline, boating, Russell Group universities.
It’s very mostly awful. Discuss.
Hmm! I tend to go for the military-industrial archaeology. Which I suppose makes your point ...
Nelson’s Victory is astonishing, simply amazing.
The Dockyard should be a UNESCO World Heritage site, I’m not sure why it’s not.
But generally speaking, the place (the Soton-Portsmouth metro) is dreary, tatty, and depressing. It is also - like the north - “left behind”.
Because it was bombed to shit in WW2 and, like too much of Britain, cheaply and shoddily rebuilt - and our narcisstic wanker-elite class of architects/town planners don’t have the brains, humility or wits to solve the problems of their own creation, despite 70 years having passed
Absolutely. But why? And why isn’t this the case in certain bombed-to-shit parts of Europe?
It could be so much better.
Because in many other places the architects weren't failures. Failures at the social engineering they tried. Failures at building structures for humans to inhabit and live in.
Again, why? Is there something in the chalky tap water that made/makes British architects failures?
I doubt it.
I urge you to dig deep for structural explanations.
No deep reasons needed - the cult of The Man From The Ministry, combined with promises from the architects that their social engineering would be cheaper. The lack of local voices was what allowed this to go ahead - truly local voices. In the UK, the leaders of various city councils signed on the dotted lines. It was a cross party thing - implemented across Labour and Conservative governments.
In Germany and elsewhere, local politicians took one look at similar plans and binned them.
There was also a massive rejection of the old amongst the architectural class. I don't know if that was also the case on the continent, but if it was the continentals appear to have been better at gettnig the architects to deliver what the customer wanted, not what the architects wanted. Of course, there was a lot of modernism on the continent too. But, I think, less demolition of perfectly good nineteenth century buidlings.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I think folk have to be encouraged to go into the office at least some of the time. I'm not convinced 100% WFH is any more optimal than 100% in the office ever was.
Almost nobody wants 100% wfh. That’s a straw man.
Come work where I work (major financial services organisation).
Doesn't matter what people say they want, you see what they actually do. The reality is no-one comes in because no-one else comes in, so essentially nearly everyone is WFH nearly 100% of the time bar a relatively tiny cohort that are choosing to go in and sit in near empty offices. Unless the bosses actually tell folk to be in X% of the time or whatever, nearly everyone just stays home.
What we are beginning to see is little clumps of people that used to sit near each other (even when they didn't work that closely) trying to individually reach out to each other to try and recreate that once a month, or whatever, because otherwise you're just sat at home on your own the whole time.
We’re at roughly 50%, based on most people doing two or three days and overlapping. Our offices were set up for 70% and hot-desking, so it basically just makes it nicer at work AND let’s us all wfh 2/3 times a week. Great for morale and, I think, productivity.
“ and, I think, productivity”
All the studies are massively against that arn’t they? WFH is building in inefficiency and less productivity into the UK economy. People were efficient and productive when sharing knowledge without realising it, without having to be asked, without remote workers stumped for ages with what would have been instantly shared in office. Slow down knowledge share teeny bit builds in massive inefficiency and kills speed needed for value for money and productivity.
Studies? Citation needed.
I don't know of any studies, but what MoonRabit describes is exactly my experience.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I think folk have to be encouraged to go into the office at least some of the time. I'm not convinced 100% WFH is any more optimal than 100% in the office ever was.
Almost nobody wants 100% wfh. That’s a straw man.
Come work where I work (major financial services organisation).
Doesn't matter what people say they want, you see what they actually do. The reality is no-one comes in because no-one else comes in, so essentially nearly everyone is WFH nearly 100% of the time bar a relatively tiny cohort that are choosing to go in and sit in near empty offices. Unless the bosses actually tell folk to be in X% of the time or whatever, nearly everyone just stays home.
What we are beginning to see is little clumps of people that used to sit near each other (even when they didn't work that closely) trying to individually reach out to each other to try and recreate that once a month, or whatever, because otherwise you're just sat at home on your own the whole time.
We’re at roughly 50%, based on most people doing two or three days and overlapping. Our offices were set up for 70% and hot-desking, so it basically just makes it nicer at work AND let’s us all wfh 2/3 times a week. Great for morale and, I think, productivity.
“ and, I think, productivity”
All the studies are massively against that arn’t they? WFH is building in inefficiency and less productivity into the UK economy. People were efficient and productive when sharing knowledge without realising it, without having to be asked, without remote workers stumped for ages with what would have been instantly shared in office. Slow down knowledge share teeny bit builds in massive inefficiency and kills speed needed for value for money and productivity.
Studies? Citation needed.
This episode contains academic research on the matter.
As somebody who has been WFH for 10 years before the pandemic, I can say you have to be very dedicated, disciplined and focused to ensure you are productive. I think you have to be a certain type of character (and have the living setup that allows it) to really make it work well. Also, it is super easy to put on tonnes of weight, as Boris rightly pointed out you go to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and come back with a whole meal.
When I started doing it I put on a load of weight and had to move to a intermittent fasting regime to ensure I don't end up like a Boris.
The DUP want a hard border on the island and they won’t play second fiddle to Sinn Fein.
Neither demand (never vocalised but implicit in their actions) can actually be accommodated at all.
HMG is using them in its EU war, but ultimately they will be fucked over. Again.
The GFA means that the DUP have to be satisfied for the NI Assembly to proceed.
I thought you wanted the GFA to be respected.
Did you want the GFA to be respected, except for where it serves the agenda of the DUP?
No, the GFA doesn’t say that.
The GFA sets up power-sharing and parity of esteem for both communities, but it doesn’t imply that one party of 20% (which is less than half of the unionist community), can obstruct Stormont indefinitely.
The DUP are actually against the GFA, see my points upthread about what their implicit objectives are (both are anti-GFA).
So how do you stop the DUP obstructing Stormont indefinitely if you just dismiss them
I don’t know. I am not an expert in the St Andrew’s agreement etc. I suggested on here that maybe lawyers could find a way to award Deputy First Ministership to the UUP.
The DUP will hope for new elections which will restore them to “rightful” first, but that also seems unlikely given the dynamics at play (moderate unionists peeling off).
DUP = Theresa May
Both called unnecessary elections in which they lost pole position.
Arguably Theresa May's problem was not calling an early election but not calling one soon enough. Although in technical terms TM had a majority, it was nowhere near enough, given that parliament, to get Brexit through. And six weeks before the 2017 election the Conservatives had been coasting to a series of unlikely victories in the locals. Perhaps if TM had called a snap election - you know, an actual snap election, three weeks from now, like snap elections used to be - either as soon as she was bedded in as PM, or, at the absolute latest, to coincide with the locals, she might have coasted to victory. Whether it would have been enough to get Brexit through I don't know. But there is a perfectly plausible alternative reality in which TM manages to build on Cameron's majority.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I think folk have to be encouraged to go into the office at least some of the time. I'm not convinced 100% WFH is any more optimal than 100% in the office ever was.
Almost nobody wants 100% wfh. That’s a straw man.
Come work where I work (major financial services organisation).
Doesn't matter what people say they want, you see what they actually do. The reality is no-one comes in because no-one else comes in, so essentially nearly everyone is WFH nearly 100% of the time bar a relatively tiny cohort that are choosing to go in and sit in near empty offices. Unless the bosses actually tell folk to be in X% of the time or whatever, nearly everyone just stays home.
What we are beginning to see is little clumps of people that used to sit near each other (even when they didn't work that closely) trying to individually reach out to each other to try and recreate that once a month, or whatever, because otherwise you're just sat at home on your own the whole time.
We’re at roughly 50%, based on most people doing two or three days and overlapping. Our offices were set up for 70% and hot-desking, so it basically just makes it nicer at work AND let’s us all wfh 2/3 times a week. Great for morale and, I think, productivity.
“ and, I think, productivity”
All the studies are massively against that arn’t they? WFH is building in inefficiency and less productivity into the UK economy. People were efficient and productive when sharing knowledge without realising it, without having to be asked, without remote workers stumped for ages with what would have been instantly shared in office. Slow down knowledge share teeny bit builds in massive inefficiency and kills speed needed for value for money and productivity.
Studies? Citation needed.
Firstly it’s comes down to measurement.
It can’t be measured solely as working from home getting tasks done versus in office getting tasks done. If productivity appears up with home workers because people slip into longer working hours, the pay off is burn out and mental health.
If knowledge share drops off due to remote working, it’s a huge hit on productivity that can only be noticed over longer time spans not shorter ones most studies have.
Also don’t call it working from home, call it remote working, for then you have people working remotely since year dot, and all the studies going way back into their productivity.
One that comes to my mind is virtually anthropological. It’s sixty years old. People fixing office machinery each knew a different trick the others didn’t. When they all got together in a diner for a meal they shared all these tricks and productivity shot up.
Also studies fall apart because everyone’s circumstance is different. Those trying to work from home whilst child minding are obviously less productive than both themselves in office and a colleague wfh without distractions.
Also depends on tasks. A task needing face-to-face communication is going to be less productive without it.
I'm the grandson of humble immigrants to this country, it was a private education that allowed my father and myself to flourish and succeed in this country.
Wonderful stuff indeed. That means people cannot critique overrepresentation of the public school educated?
The latest fashion is for your children to be tutored personally through A levels - 4 subjects, 4 tutors, while “attending” a local state institution.
This is cheaper than private school and allows you to claim that your are a member of the Head Count.
The state schools play along, to the point of not reporting absence, since having a child with 4 predicted A************* and going to a top university makes you look better…..
There’s an interesting rule for UK expatriates, that one must be resident in the UK for two years before university admission, in order to “take advantage” of the UK uni fees schedule.
Until a few years ago, this would lead to expatriate parents moving back to the UK as their kids approached GCSEs, but now it’s resulting in their decision to remain expatriates and deal with the ‘overseas’ fees, because of the discrimination against private schools.
I'm always slightly nervous about calling the discrimination card without clear evidence. I'm also well aware that when I was at Cambridge, from a State school, 1992-95 then there was an awful lot of the same noise about how Private school pupils were disadvantage.
The issue I had was that - at that time - those colleges with the highest proportion of State pupils (Trinity and Kings) were top of the Topkins Table (i.e. got the most Firsts).
Because it seems like it would be pretty easy to see if less talented - on average - people were coming from the State schools. Simply: does a 21 year old from a private school achieve better academic results (on average) or not.
If one judged (and incentivized) the Colleges on output, then it would clearly be in their interests to attract those with the most potential.
And, fwiw, I suspect that would mean that (on average) State school pupils would come in with slightly lower grades, because they would be less likely to have fully achieved their potential.
The parents/students are not the only ones trying to game the system.
The Colleges are just as interested in gaming the system.
So, for example, if the Admissions Tutor admits students from Hills Rd SFC, or Varndean SFC, or Farnborough SFC (to name 3 outstanding state schools who get tonnes of people into Oxbridge), then their socio-economic background is no different from students at private schools like Haberdashers Aske or St Pauls or Nottingham High School -- but the former make the College look much better as they can hit "state school" targets.
The overwhelming bias of Oxbridge remains geography -- 40 to 45 per cent of the intake is usually London and the South East.
Erm, doesn't roughly 40 per cent of the population of England live in London and the South-East?
Approximately 1 in 3. By official region. Although I reckon few would consider Hertfordshire and Essex not to be SE. Nor, necessarily Oxon and Bucks to be so.
I would.
Despite the government’s designation, I would put the whole Thames watershed (Oxon, Bucks, Berks, Herts, Surrey, Essex) plus Kent and Sussex in the South East.
Hampshire not.
Yeah. The SE is often talked about. But it's a bit of an ill-defined concept Where does it begin and end? Not by the official definition for sure. So where is Hampshire by your reckoning? It's a bit like Lincolnshire and Cumbria. A county without an obvious region. And Banbury is less than an hour from Birmingham.
Trouble with Hampshire is that it's so damn big. Anywhere north and east of about WInchester is definitely "looking towards London" South East. The west, from Andover down to the New Forest is convincingly Wessex. And had the Portsmouth-Southampton conurbation been turned into a metropolitan county, nobody would have been that surprised.
Funnily enough, the BBC seem to agree. There isn't a Radio Hampshire, instead being covered by Solent, Surrey and Berkshire.
Hello, fellow erstwhile Gosport dweller.
No true Gosporter would ever think they are in the South East (in my opinion).
My late Aunt Dora could just about cope with Hayling Island but any further afield and there be demons.
Must have been terribly exotic taking the boat over to Pompey Harbour Station. Quite romantic really.
There’s a joke here somewhere about Priddy’s Hard but I am not quite able to make it.
Looking forward to another trip there sometime, actually, to the Navy weapons museum at the old ammunition depot - my dad was an armaments specialist in the RN and I wouldn't mind another look around. Also to see the Weevil Victualling Yard where IIRC they made the salt pork and biscuits - I believe the seafront is more accessible than it used to be.
“Solent City” in theory has it all. Weather, coastline, boating, Russell Group universities.
I'm the grandson of humble immigrants to this country, it was a private education that allowed my father and myself to flourish and succeed in this country.
Wonderful stuff indeed. That means people cannot critique overrepresentation of the public school educated?
The latest fashion is for your children to be tutored personally through A levels - 4 subjects, 4 tutors, while “attending” a local state institution.
This is cheaper than private school and allows you to claim that your are a member of the Head Count.
The state schools play along, to the point of not reporting absence, since having a child with 4 predicted A************* and going to a top university makes you look better…..
There’s an interesting rule for UK expatriates, that one must be resident in the UK for two years before university admission, in order to “take advantage” of the UK uni fees schedule.
Until a few years ago, this would lead to expatriate parents moving back to the UK as their kids approached GCSEs, but now it’s resulting in their decision to remain expatriates and deal with the ‘overseas’ fees, because of the discrimination against private schools.
I'm always slightly nervous about calling the discrimination card without clear evidence. I'm also well aware that when I was at Cambridge, from a State school, 1992-95 then there was an awful lot of the same noise about how Private school pupils were disadvantage.
The issue I had was that - at that time - those colleges with the highest proportion of State pupils (Trinity and Kings) were top of the Topkins Table (i.e. got the most Firsts).
Because it seems like it would be pretty easy to see if less talented - on average - people were coming from the State schools. Simply: does a 21 year old from a private school achieve better academic results (on average) or not.
If one judged (and incentivized) the Colleges on output, then it would clearly be in their interests to attract those with the most potential.
And, fwiw, I suspect that would mean that (on average) State school pupils would come in with slightly lower grades, because they would be less likely to have fully achieved their potential.
The parents/students are not the only ones trying to game the system.
The Colleges are just as interested in gaming the system.
So, for example, if the Admissions Tutor admits students from Hills Rd SFC, or Varndean SFC, or Farnborough SFC (to name 3 outstanding state schools who get tonnes of people into Oxbridge), then their socio-economic background is no different from students at private schools like Haberdashers Aske or St Pauls or Nottingham High School -- but the former make the College look much better as they can hit "state school" targets.
The overwhelming bias of Oxbridge remains geography -- 40 to 45 per cent of the intake is usually London and the South East.
Erm, doesn't roughly 40 per cent of the population of England live in London and the South-East?
Approximately 1 in 3. By official region. Although I reckon few would consider Hertfordshire and Essex not to be SE. Nor, necessarily Oxon and Bucks to be so.
I would.
Despite the government’s designation, I would put the whole Thames watershed (Oxon, Bucks, Berks, Herts, Surrey, Essex) plus Kent and Sussex in the South East.
Hampshire not.
Yeah. The SE is often talked about. But it's a bit of an ill-defined concept Where does it begin and end? Not by the official definition for sure. So where is Hampshire by your reckoning? It's a bit like Lincolnshire and Cumbria. A county without an obvious region. And Banbury is less than an hour from Birmingham.
Trouble with Hampshire is that it's so damn big. Anywhere north and east of about WInchester is definitely "looking towards London" South East. The west, from Andover down to the New Forest is convincingly Wessex. And had the Portsmouth-Southampton conurbation been turned into a metropolitan county, nobody would have been that surprised.
Funnily enough, the BBC seem to agree. There isn't a Radio Hampshire, instead being covered by Solent, Surrey and Berkshire.
Hello, fellow erstwhile Gosport dweller.
No true Gosporter would ever think they are in the South East (in my opinion).
My late Aunt Dora could just about cope with Hayling Island but any further afield and there be demons.
Must have been terribly exotic taking the boat over to Pompey Harbour Station. Quite romantic really.
There’s a joke here somewhere about Priddy’s Hard but I am not quite able to make it.
Looking forward to another trip there sometime, actually, to the Navy weapons museum at the old ammunition depot - my dad was an armaments specialist in the RN and I wouldn't mind another look around. Also to see the Weevil Victualling Yard where IIRC they made the salt pork and biscuits - I believe the seafront is more accessible than it used to be.
“Solent City” in theory has it all. Weather, coastline, boating, Russell Group universities.
It’s very mostly awful. Discuss.
Hmm! I tend to go for the military-industrial archaeology. Which I suppose makes your point ...
Nelson’s Victory is astonishing, simply amazing.
The Dockyard should be a UNESCO World Heritage site, I’m not sure why it’s not.
But generally speaking, the place (the Soton-Portsmouth metro) is dreary, tatty, and depressing. It is also - like the north - “left behind”.
Because it was bombed to shit in WW2 and, like too much of Britain, cheaply and shoddily rebuilt - and our narcisstic wanker-elite class of architects/town planners don’t have the brains, humility or wits to solve the problems of their own creation, despite 70 years having passed
Absolutely. But why? And why isn’t this the case in certain bombed-to-shit parts of Europe?
It could be so much better.
Because in many other places the architects weren't failures. Failures at the social engineering they tried. Failures at building structures for humans to inhabit and live in.
Again, why? Is there something in the chalky tap water that made/makes British architects failures?
I doubt it.
I urge you to dig deep for structural explanations.
No deep reasons needed - the cult of The Man From The Ministry, combined with promises from the architects that their social engineering would be cheaper. The lack of local voices was what allowed this to go ahead - truly local voices. In the UK, the leaders of various city councils signed on the dotted lines. It was a cross party thing - implemented across Labour and Conservative governments.
In Germany and elsewhere, local politicians took one look at similar plans and binned them.
There was also a massive rejection of the old amongst the architectural class. I don't know if that was also the case on the continent, but if it was the continentals appear to have been better at gettnig the architects to deliver what the customer wanted, not what the architects wanted. Of course, there was a lot of modernism on the continent too. But, I think, less demolition of perfectly good nineteenth century buidlings.
I don’t know about this. Modernism was pretty much invented on the Continent (Bauhaus, Corbusier) and probably applied more successfully.
I tend to think that it’s a combination of:
- very weak local leadership - a dysfunctional planning culture - an over-obsession with traffic control - An unholy alliance between the right (build cheap) and the left (good design is a bourgeois affectation).
The DUP want a hard border on the island and they won’t play second fiddle to Sinn Fein.
Neither demand (never vocalised but implicit in their actions) can actually be accommodated at all.
HMG is using them in its EU war, but ultimately they will be fucked over. Again.
The GFA means that the DUP have to be satisfied for the NI Assembly to proceed.
I thought you wanted the GFA to be respected.
Did you want the GFA to be respected, except for where it serves the agenda of the DUP?
No, the GFA doesn’t say that.
The GFA sets up power-sharing and parity of esteem for both communities, but it doesn’t imply that one party of 20% (which is less than half of the unionist community), can obstruct Stormont indefinitely.
The DUP are actually against the GFA, see my points upthread about what their implicit objectives are (both are anti-GFA).
It absolutely and explicitly means the DUP as the elected representatives for the unionists hold a veto over the government sitting and can obstruct Stormont indefinitely.
Just as Sinn Fein as the elected representatives for the nationalists held one when they were the secondary party and Stormont failed to sit for years until eventually Martin McGuinness agreed to sit as Deputy First Minister after a compromise was reached.
Either a compromise is reached satisfying the unionists or Stormont can't sit. That's how the GFA works.
I'm the grandson of humble immigrants to this country, it was a private education that allowed my father and myself to flourish and succeed in this country.
Wonderful stuff indeed. That means people cannot critique overrepresentation of the public school educated?
The latest fashion is for your children to be tutored personally through A levels - 4 subjects, 4 tutors, while “attending” a local state institution.
This is cheaper than private school and allows you to claim that your are a member of the Head Count.
The state schools play along, to the point of not reporting absence, since having a child with 4 predicted A************* and going to a top university makes you look better…..
There’s an interesting rule for UK expatriates, that one must be resident in the UK for two years before university admission, in order to “take advantage” of the UK uni fees schedule.
Until a few years ago, this would lead to expatriate parents moving back to the UK as their kids approached GCSEs, but now it’s resulting in their decision to remain expatriates and deal with the ‘overseas’ fees, because of the discrimination against private schools.
I'm always slightly nervous about calling the discrimination card without clear evidence. I'm also well aware that when I was at Cambridge, from a State school, 1992-95 then there was an awful lot of the same noise about how Private school pupils were disadvantage.
The issue I had was that - at that time - those colleges with the highest proportion of State pupils (Trinity and Kings) were top of the Topkins Table (i.e. got the most Firsts).
Because it seems like it would be pretty easy to see if less talented - on average - people were coming from the State schools. Simply: does a 21 year old from a private school achieve better academic results (on average) or not.
If one judged (and incentivized) the Colleges on output, then it would clearly be in their interests to attract those with the most potential.
And, fwiw, I suspect that would mean that (on average) State school pupils would come in with slightly lower grades, because they would be less likely to have fully achieved their potential.
The parents/students are not the only ones trying to game the system.
The Colleges are just as interested in gaming the system.
So, for example, if the Admissions Tutor admits students from Hills Rd SFC, or Varndean SFC, or Farnborough SFC (to name 3 outstanding state schools who get tonnes of people into Oxbridge), then their socio-economic background is no different from students at private schools like Haberdashers Aske or St Pauls or Nottingham High School -- but the former make the College look much better as they can hit "state school" targets.
The overwhelming bias of Oxbridge remains geography -- 40 to 45 per cent of the intake is usually London and the South East.
Erm, doesn't roughly 40 per cent of the population of England live in London and the South-East?
Approximately 1 in 3. By official region. Although I reckon few would consider Hertfordshire and Essex not to be SE. Nor, necessarily Oxon and Bucks to be so.
I would.
Despite the government’s designation, I would put the whole Thames watershed (Oxon, Bucks, Berks, Herts, Surrey, Essex) plus Kent and Sussex in the South East.
Hampshire not.
Yeah. The SE is often talked about. But it's a bit of an ill-defined concept Where does it begin and end? Not by the official definition for sure. So where is Hampshire by your reckoning? It's a bit like Lincolnshire and Cumbria. A county without an obvious region. And Banbury is less than an hour from Birmingham.
Trouble with Hampshire is that it's so damn big. Anywhere north and east of about WInchester is definitely "looking towards London" South East. The west, from Andover down to the New Forest is convincingly Wessex. And had the Portsmouth-Southampton conurbation been turned into a metropolitan county, nobody would have been that surprised.
Funnily enough, the BBC seem to agree. There isn't a Radio Hampshire, instead being covered by Solent, Surrey and Berkshire.
Hello, fellow erstwhile Gosport dweller.
No true Gosporter would ever think they are in the South East (in my opinion).
My late Aunt Dora could just about cope with Hayling Island but any further afield and there be demons.
Must have been terribly exotic taking the boat over to Pompey Harbour Station. Quite romantic really.
There’s a joke here somewhere about Priddy’s Hard but I am not quite able to make it.
Looking forward to another trip there sometime, actually, to the Navy weapons museum at the old ammunition depot - my dad was an armaments specialist in the RN and I wouldn't mind another look around. Also to see the Weevil Victualling Yard where IIRC they made the salt pork and biscuits - I believe the seafront is more accessible than it used to be.
“Solent City” in theory has it all. Weather, coastline, boating, Russell Group universities.
I'm the grandson of humble immigrants to this country, it was a private education that allowed my father and myself to flourish and succeed in this country.
Wonderful stuff indeed. That means people cannot critique overrepresentation of the public school educated?
The latest fashion is for your children to be tutored personally through A levels - 4 subjects, 4 tutors, while “attending” a local state institution.
This is cheaper than private school and allows you to claim that your are a member of the Head Count.
The state schools play along, to the point of not reporting absence, since having a child with 4 predicted A************* and going to a top university makes you look better…..
There’s an interesting rule for UK expatriates, that one must be resident in the UK for two years before university admission, in order to “take advantage” of the UK uni fees schedule.
Until a few years ago, this would lead to expatriate parents moving back to the UK as their kids approached GCSEs, but now it’s resulting in their decision to remain expatriates and deal with the ‘overseas’ fees, because of the discrimination against private schools.
I'm always slightly nervous about calling the discrimination card without clear evidence. I'm also well aware that when I was at Cambridge, from a State school, 1992-95 then there was an awful lot of the same noise about how Private school pupils were disadvantage.
The issue I had was that - at that time - those colleges with the highest proportion of State pupils (Trinity and Kings) were top of the Topkins Table (i.e. got the most Firsts).
Because it seems like it would be pretty easy to see if less talented - on average - people were coming from the State schools. Simply: does a 21 year old from a private school achieve better academic results (on average) or not.
If one judged (and incentivized) the Colleges on output, then it would clearly be in their interests to attract those with the most potential.
And, fwiw, I suspect that would mean that (on average) State school pupils would come in with slightly lower grades, because they would be less likely to have fully achieved their potential.
The parents/students are not the only ones trying to game the system.
The Colleges are just as interested in gaming the system.
So, for example, if the Admissions Tutor admits students from Hills Rd SFC, or Varndean SFC, or Farnborough SFC (to name 3 outstanding state schools who get tonnes of people into Oxbridge), then their socio-economic background is no different from students at private schools like Haberdashers Aske or St Pauls or Nottingham High School -- but the former make the College look much better as they can hit "state school" targets.
The overwhelming bias of Oxbridge remains geography -- 40 to 45 per cent of the intake is usually London and the South East.
Erm, doesn't roughly 40 per cent of the population of England live in London and the South-East?
Approximately 1 in 3. By official region. Although I reckon few would consider Hertfordshire and Essex not to be SE. Nor, necessarily Oxon and Bucks to be so.
I would.
Despite the government’s designation, I would put the whole Thames watershed (Oxon, Bucks, Berks, Herts, Surrey, Essex) plus Kent and Sussex in the South East.
Hampshire not.
Yeah. The SE is often talked about. But it's a bit of an ill-defined concept Where does it begin and end? Not by the official definition for sure. So where is Hampshire by your reckoning? It's a bit like Lincolnshire and Cumbria. A county without an obvious region. And Banbury is less than an hour from Birmingham.
Trouble with Hampshire is that it's so damn big. Anywhere north and east of about WInchester is definitely "looking towards London" South East. The west, from Andover down to the New Forest is convincingly Wessex. And had the Portsmouth-Southampton conurbation been turned into a metropolitan county, nobody would have been that surprised.
Funnily enough, the BBC seem to agree. There isn't a Radio Hampshire, instead being covered by Solent, Surrey and Berkshire.
Hello, fellow erstwhile Gosport dweller.
No true Gosporter would ever think they are in the South East (in my opinion).
My late Aunt Dora could just about cope with Hayling Island but any further afield and there be demons.
Must have been terribly exotic taking the boat over to Pompey Harbour Station. Quite romantic really.
There’s a joke here somewhere about Priddy’s Hard but I am not quite able to make it.
Looking forward to another trip there sometime, actually, to the Navy weapons museum at the old ammunition depot - my dad was an armaments specialist in the RN and I wouldn't mind another look around. Also to see the Weevil Victualling Yard where IIRC they made the salt pork and biscuits - I believe the seafront is more accessible than it used to be.
“Solent City” in theory has it all. Weather, coastline, boating, Russell Group universities.
It’s very mostly awful. Discuss.
Hmm! I tend to go for the military-industrial archaeology. Which I suppose makes your point ...
Nelson’s Victory is astonishing, simply amazing.
The Dockyard should be a UNESCO World Heritage site, I’m not sure why it’s not.
But generally speaking, the place (the Soton-Portsmouth metro) is dreary, tatty, and depressing. It is also - like the north - “left behind”.
Because it was bombed to shit in WW2 and, like too much of Britain, cheaply and shoddily rebuilt - and our narcisstic wanker-elite class of architects/town planners don’t have the brains, humility or wits to solve the problems of their own creation, despite 70 years having passed
Absolutely. But why? And why isn’t this the case in certain bombed-to-shit parts of Europe?
It could be so much better.
Because in many other places the architects weren't failures. Failures at the social engineering they tried. Failures at building structures for humans to inhabit and live in.
Again, why? Is there something in the chalky tap water that made/makes British architects failures?
I doubt it.
I urge you to dig deep for structural explanations.
No deep reasons needed - the cult of The Man From The Ministry, combined with promises from the architects that their social engineering would be cheaper. The lack of local voices was what allowed this to go ahead - truly local voices. In the UK, the leaders of various city councils signed on the dotted lines. It was a cross party thing - implemented across Labour and Conservative governments.
In Germany and elsewhere, local politicians took one look at similar plans and binned them.
There was also a massive rejection of the old amongst the architectural class. I don't know if that was also the case on the continent, but if it was the continentals appear to have been better at gettnig the architects to deliver what the customer wanted, not what the architects wanted. Of course, there was a lot of modernism on the continent too. But, I think, less demolition of perfectly good nineteenth century buidlings.
I don’t know about this. Modernism was pretty much invented on the Continent (Bauhaus, Corbusier) and probably applied more successfully.
I tend to think that it’s a combination of:
- very weak local leadership - a dysfunctional planning culture - an over-obsession with traffic control - An unholy alliance between the right (build cheap) and the left (good design is a bourgeois affectation).
Yes, I'd agree about it being invented on the continent. And it has been responsible for some just-as-horrible-as-ours developments on the continent too (as well as some which work - but Britain, when it was trying, has also delivered the odd modernism-which-works, .ike the Barbican: it can be done).
An a member of the RTPI I might defend my profession against your second point, but can't quibble with the other three. I think the third point is especially relevant - so much of our cities is actually essentially designed by highways engineers. That, I think, is much truer of the UK than the continent.
Where I work, the younger the staff, the higher the attendance - all the graduate interns come into the office every day.
They really, really don't like working from home. For many, there is no space for an office setup, and working off a small laptop screen is bad for the back, eyes and soul.
It's the reverse here. This area is very expensive, so the junior staff mostly live a longish way off. Not having to commute is a big plus for them - some say that they'll gladly work half an hour overtime at home rather than spend two hours sitting on trains and buses. Older staff tend to spend more of their days in meetings, and they generally prefer to have those face to face.
We operate with 2 days in the office, 3 at home for people who live nearby. Because that is mostly the older staff, it works OK.
Interesting how the patterns are different.
We are based in Bank, in London. The younger staff are commuting long distances, but want to come into central London anyway. That's where they socialise.
Bank station new southbound Northern line platform opens tomorrow morning!
We cannot allow the impression that one strand is deemed more important than others; or that EU custom codes — designed for vast container ships coming from Shanghai to Rotterdam, not supermarket lorries from Liverpool to Belfast — somehow trump everything else.
We must remember that all parties to the Protocol made a commitment to be willing to revisit, adapt and change these arrangements over time — and to protect the internal market of the UK.
In the absence of change, the prior commitments made by the British Government — to protect all three strands of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, to protect economic rights and parity of esteem — are coming into sharper focus.
Every unionist representative campaigned against the Protocol, as currently constituted. More importantly, every party, across the divide, seeks mitigations and change. None support a zealous zero risk approach to its implementation.
None wants to see grace periods terminated, as the EU insist they must be in return for limited mitigations elsewhere. Some feel that their economic rights as members of the United Kingdom are threatened, which the 1998 Agreement is supposed to protect. The simple reason for this is that the East-West dimension — by far and away the principal artery in Northern Ireland’s economic life — is taking too much of the strain.
Strand 3 of the Agreement, which promised the “harmonious and mutually beneficial development of the totality of the relationship among the people of these islands”, is not functioning as it must.
And Strands 1 and 2 — of equal importance and mutually dependent — are now being negatively impacted too.
Many things have changed since the Protocol was agreed. It was designed in the absence of a Trade and Cooperation Agreement and when it was unclear one would be agreed. It has not been adapted to reflect the realities of the TCA.
I've read the whole thing, and the tone is OK, but its significance is elusive. Apart from urging everyone to play nicely, is he saying anything new ar all?
He seems to be setting up the logic - quite rightly - for why the Protocol as it operates is contra to the GFA.
No, he does not offer any solutions that I can see. Typically, HMG has not, presumably as part of some kind of negotiating ideology.
I have solutions leaping out at me. But they are all over the papers too, so it’s wrong to spin the UK government have no solution.
Firstly, the problem is explained to us and shocking if not everybody agrees. If goods moving from mainland UK into NI just for consumption in NI, why should it pass Through a EU border?
It shouldn’t. It’s potty solution the EU insisted on.
Secondly, the UK solution, (that will be adopted eventually so why don’t EU just grow up, and adopt it this week) Goods for NI consumption should sail through under a green light. If it further crosses into EU, smuggling in other words, it’s in interest of EU to agree with us to harsh penalties on the smugglers, it just shows what a sham EU border policy always been if they won’t, but UK always maintains proper borders.
That’s a perfectly workable solution proposed by UK government, everyone needs to get behind it.
No border anywhere, tackle the smugglers, is the proposal I've been making for five long years here.
It is the only viable end-game that keeps both communities of NI partisans happy. The problem since day one is that some people just want to override the other community in NI in the name of the GFA when the GFA is explicitly and deliberately about compromise.
You have probably written government policy St Bart. Number 10 wonks reading PB for inspiration how to Make Brexit Great Again! 🙂
Where I work, the younger the staff, the higher the attendance - all the graduate interns come into the office every day.
They really, really don't like working from home. For many, there is no space for an office setup, and working off a small laptop screen is bad for the back, eyes and soul.
It's the reverse here. This area is very expensive, so the junior staff mostly live a longish way off. Not having to commute is a big plus for them - some say that they'll gladly work half an hour overtime at home rather than spend two hours sitting on trains and buses. Older staff tend to spend more of their days in meetings, and they generally prefer to have those face to face.
We operate with 2 days in the office, 3 at home for people who live nearby. Because that is mostly the older staff, it works OK.
Interesting how the patterns are different.
We are based in Bank, in London. The younger staff are commuting long distances, but want to come into central London anyway. That's where they socialise.
Bank station new southbound Northern line platform opens tomorrow morning!
Hi Sunil, it actually opened today, a day earlier than expected.
Where I work, the younger the staff, the higher the attendance - all the graduate interns come into the office every day.
They really, really don't like working from home. For many, there is no space for an office setup, and working off a small laptop screen is bad for the back, eyes and soul.
It's the reverse here. This area is very expensive, so the junior staff mostly live a longish way off. Not having to commute is a big plus for them - some say that they'll gladly work half an hour overtime at home rather than spend two hours sitting on trains and buses. Older staff tend to spend more of their days in meetings, and they generally prefer to have those face to face.
We operate with 2 days in the office, 3 at home for people who live nearby. Because that is mostly the older staff, it works OK.
Interesting how the patterns are different.
We are based in Bank, in London. The younger staff are commuting long distances, but want to come into central London anyway. That's where they socialise.
Bank station new southbound Northern line platform opens tomorrow morning!
I think they asked you to cut the ribbon and punch the first oyster?
I might have seen underground poster a few weeks ago “NEW PLATFORM TO BE OPENED SUNDAY 15th MAY BY PB’s RAIL GURU - SUNIL - assisted by special guest Liz Hurley. Underground memorabilia sale 10am - 12pm”.
I think Liz may have worn her special “twin track” dress as well 🙂
Where I work, the younger the staff, the higher the attendance - all the graduate interns come into the office every day.
They really, really don't like working from home. For many, there is no space for an office setup, and working off a small laptop screen is bad for the back, eyes and soul.
It's the reverse here. This area is very expensive, so the junior staff mostly live a longish way off. Not having to commute is a big plus for them - some say that they'll gladly work half an hour overtime at home rather than spend two hours sitting on trains and buses. Older staff tend to spend more of their days in meetings, and they generally prefer to have those face to face.
We operate with 2 days in the office, 3 at home for people who live nearby. Because that is mostly the older staff, it works OK.
Interesting how the patterns are different.
We are based in Bank, in London. The younger staff are commuting long distances, but want to come into central London anyway. That's where they socialise.
Yes, that's very different. You'd have to be rather sad to come to Godalming for a great night out. We've got a Wetherspoons and a Pizza Express...
Where I work, the younger the staff, the higher the attendance - all the graduate interns come into the office every day.
They really, really don't like working from home. For many, there is no space for an office setup, and working off a small laptop screen is bad for the back, eyes and soul.
It's the reverse here. This area is very expensive, so the junior staff mostly live a longish way off. Not having to commute is a big plus for them - some say that they'll gladly work half an hour overtime at home rather than spend two hours sitting on trains and buses. Older staff tend to spend more of their days in meetings, and they generally prefer to have those face to face.
We operate with 2 days in the office, 3 at home for people who live nearby. Because that is mostly the older staff, it works OK.
Interesting how the patterns are different.
We are based in Bank, in London. The younger staff are commuting long distances, but want to come into central London anyway. That's where they socialise.
Bank station new southbound Northern line platform opens tomorrow morning!
Hi Sunil, it actually opened today, a day earlier than expected.
Where I work, the younger the staff, the higher the attendance - all the graduate interns come into the office every day.
They really, really don't like working from home. For many, there is no space for an office setup, and working off a small laptop screen is bad for the back, eyes and soul.
It's the reverse here. This area is very expensive, so the junior staff mostly live a longish way off. Not having to commute is a big plus for them - some say that they'll gladly work half an hour overtime at home rather than spend two hours sitting on trains and buses. Older staff tend to spend more of their days in meetings, and they generally prefer to have those face to face.
We operate with 2 days in the office, 3 at home for people who live nearby. Because that is mostly the older staff, it works OK.
Interesting how the patterns are different.
We are based in Bank, in London. The younger staff are commuting long distances, but want to come into central London anyway. That's where they socialise.
Yes, that's very different. You'd have to be rather sad to come to Godalming for a great night out. We've got a Wetherspoons and a Pizza Express...
Is that why Godalming sounds like a blasphemous curse word?
Where I work, the younger the staff, the higher the attendance - all the graduate interns come into the office every day.
They really, really don't like working from home. For many, there is no space for an office setup, and working off a small laptop screen is bad for the back, eyes and soul.
It's the reverse here. This area is very expensive, so the junior staff mostly live a longish way off. Not having to commute is a big plus for them - some say that they'll gladly work half an hour overtime at home rather than spend two hours sitting on trains and buses. Older staff tend to spend more of their days in meetings, and they generally prefer to have those face to face.
We operate with 2 days in the office, 3 at home for people who live nearby. Because that is mostly the older staff, it works OK.
Interesting how the patterns are different.
We are based in Bank, in London. The younger staff are commuting long distances, but want to come into central London anyway. That's where they socialise.
Bank station new southbound Northern line platform opens tomorrow morning!
Hi Sunil, it actually opened today, a day earlier than expected.
A very good result for the Greens and indeed for the CDU. The pre-election polls suggested 33-34% but once again the polls underestimated the CDU vote and overestimated the SPD who finished up down on the 2017 numbers. A poor result for them but worse for the FDP who only just remained in the Landtag along with Alternative.
In terms of the 199-seat Landag, CDU have 78, SPD 58, Greens 39, FDP 12 and Alternative 12
The existing CDU-FDP Government has therefore lost its majority but there's no obvious alternative as SPD/Green also falls just short. The strong Green performance seems to echo the positive ratings for the Greens in the Federal Government and they are now the kingmakers in NRW. The CDU leader Wust took over from Armin Laschet just 6 months ago but has clearly got a boost from distancing himself from the old Laschet administration.
Turnout was pretty dreadful particularly in SPD strongholds like Duisburg and only the Greens seem to have made proper vote gains. Looks like SPD voters stayed at home on mass as well as switching to the Greens while FDP voters switched to the CDU.
I have no real idea what will happen TBH, SPD-Green also fell just short in 2010 when they formed a minority gvt although that was with the support of die Linke who have now been obliterated.
CDU-Green has a majority but I would have thought they'd be reluctant to do that (at least without heavy concessions) in Merz's home state.
Where I work, the younger the staff, the higher the attendance - all the graduate interns come into the office every day.
They really, really don't like working from home. For many, there is no space for an office setup, and working off a small laptop screen is bad for the back, eyes and soul.
It's the reverse here. This area is very expensive, so the junior staff mostly live a longish way off. Not having to commute is a big plus for them - some say that they'll gladly work half an hour overtime at home rather than spend two hours sitting on trains and buses. Older staff tend to spend more of their days in meetings, and they generally prefer to have those face to face.
We operate with 2 days in the office, 3 at home for people who live nearby. Because that is mostly the older staff, it works OK.
Interesting how the patterns are different.
We are based in Bank, in London. The younger staff are commuting long distances, but want to come into central London anyway. That's where they socialise.
Yes, that's very different. You'd have to be rather sad to come to Godalming for a great night out. We've got a Wetherspoons and a Pizza Express...
Is that why Godalming sounds like a blasphemous curse word?
“Having slain the dragon, he watched the beast with eight heads rise from the Abyss. What the Godalming do they expect me to do with this - he muttered.”
“Reginald pick the Daily Telegraph up from the mat and perused the headline. What the Godalming is this new hell - he growled.”
The latest military setbacks are placing the Russian forces in the Izyum pocket at considerable risk, yet there seems to be no attempt to extract troops from this danger, despite the fact that the new Ukrainian artillery has already demonstrated their enhanced capability. This maybe because the Russians cannot get them out, and this is the largest single force the Russians have in Ukraine, if so then there is a real risk that Izyum could become a decisive defeat for the invaders.
The Russian response to the formal Finnish application to join NATO also has a few people scratching their heads here. Cutting off of Russian electricity supply has essentially no impact on Finland, whereas cutting off gas would have created problems. The implication is that this is simply a gesture, rather than anything substantive. The question is why the response is so low key, when the rhetoric coming from Moscow remains so determinedly bellicose. It seems that there is some uncertainty in Russia right now.
What we are hearing is that the Kremlin is increasingly unable to take effective decisions, and that this could be the result of Putin´s rumoured health problems. Certainly it now seems that there is something of a debate in the security comittee about what to do next. As I mentioned a few days ago, there has been an undeclared call up, but this too small to add to the military capability of Russia and the new troops are anyway insufficiently trained and are being thinly distributed in combat groups that are already heavily demoralised. The Russian losses may indeed be closer to the UA estimates of 28,000 dead than the 15,000 estimate of the British MoD. Diplomatic pressure on Moscow is not only coming from the West, but from China and even from supposed allies in Central Asia.
We feel that something big is brewing in Moscow, but when this breaks remains to be seen. The Kremlin is slowily losing its freedom of action and the military crisis is inexorably leading to a political crisis.
If Putin does keel over, any word on a likely replacement?
I believe under the constitution Mishustin is still next in line but all the indications are he's a fairly peripheral figure. Any possible Khrushchevs to his Malenkov?
Putin is clearly toast. I don't think anyone knows who might replace him though. It's just a vacuum.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
What worries me is it might be somebody worse. Sure, the Soviet leadership gradually improved from Stalin, but the Tsar to Lvov to Kerensky to Lenin to Stalin was definitely a series of backward steps (which is not based on any starry-eyed enthusiasm for the Tsar, Lvov, Kerensky or Lenin).
Certainly there are plenty of extreme RU nationalists around who see Putin as a ponceyboots. If one of them picks up the crown...
On the other hand there is Navalny …
Navalny has been more Russian ethno-nationalist than Putin at many stages in his long and mutable political philosophy. He has made videos about shooting muslims and has dropped the X word (ethnic slur targeted at Ukrainians, equivalent to the N word) on a few occasions.
Comments
I thought you wanted the GFA to be respected.
Did you want the GFA to be respected, except for where it serves the agenda of the DUP?
All the Shinners needed was "We won't don't advocate violence, but if we don't get our way The Men Of Violence will be upset".
When 72 people claimed to be in the mens urinal at Magennis's (including 20 plus women) - and the PSNI were ordered to keep their names out of the papers - well, people listened.
They aren't angry, you see. They just want some of that nice stuff that people get for indirectly threatening a bit of Trouble.
They've been taught this is how things work. Carefully, exactly, for decades.
Why can't they have their share?
And why isn’t this the case in certain bombed-to-shit parts of Europe?
It could be so much better.
We have left
That's not how the GFA works. The GFA works by compromise, all parties must be satisfied or none are.
Unless you can get the DUP on board, Sinn Fein can't do anything and the Assembly can't even sit. They hold a veto. So stop bitching and moaning and try being constructive about how you're going to make the DUP happy other than what the government are already doing.
The GFA sets up power-sharing and parity of esteem for both communities, but it doesn’t imply that one party of 20% (which is less than half of the unionist community), can obstruct Stormont indefinitely.
The DUP are actually against the GFA, see my points upthread about what their implicit objectives are (both are anti-GFA).
https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/comment/stormont-must-be-restored-so-politicians-can-deliver-for-the-people-of-ni-41652590.html
No, he does not offer any solutions that I can see. Typically, HMG has not, presumably as part of some kind of negotiating ideology.
I suspect if the bosses where I'm at don't try make a move towards something a little more like that in our place I'll leave and go somewhere that will. I'm not intending to sit on my own WFH for the rest of my career, even if it is saving me £££ commuting.
I have two people in my UK team who work entirely from home, several hundred miles away. They're excellent. If I insisted they move so they could be near work, I expect they'd resign at once.
That was the exact plan.
Of course, when it was invented, the idea was a UUP/SDLP government. Forever. With the Shinners and the DUP tagging along at the back....
All the studies are massively against that arn’t they? WFH is building in inefficiency and less productivity into the UK economy. People were efficient and productive when sharing knowledge without realising it, without having to be asked, without remote workers stumped for ages with what would have been instantly shared in office. Slow down knowledge share teeny bit builds in massive inefficiency and kills speed needed for value for money and productivity.
That been said, Caudwell had a reputation as an absolute terrible employer from everybody I know from back home. A tyrant of a boss.
I am not an expert in the St Andrew’s agreement etc. I suggested on here that maybe lawyers could find a way to award Deputy First Ministership to the UUP.
The DUP will hope for new elections which will restore them to “rightful” first, but that also seems unlikely given the dynamics at play (moderate unionists peeling off).
There is no perfect outcome for the DUP which they seem to want . Brexit has happened and trade cannot be exactly the same . The DUP seem to want to ignore this fact . I’d have more sympathy if they hadn’t backed Brexit , they did so they should just suck it up and accept the best is damage limitation .
They really, really don't like working from home. For many, there is no space for an office setup, and working off a small laptop screen is bad for the back, eyes and soul.
He repeatedly says he wants Boris gone, but expends all his rhetoric on reasons why he should stay.
Just as Sinn Fein as the elected representatives for the nationalists held one when they were the secondary party and Stormont failed to sit for years until eventually Martin McGuinness agreed to sit as Deputy First Minister after a compromise was reached.
Either a compromise is reached satisfying the unionists or Stormont can't sit. That's how the GFA works.
Is there something in the chalky tap water that made/makes British architects failures?
I doubt it.
I urge you to dig deep for structural explanations.
The tribal nature of politics crowds out credit where it is due
It does not change one iota that I believe he should be replaced by his mps
The whole point of how the system was designed was that government local to NI would only consist of the biggest party from each side of the sectarian divide working together. Either that or no government.
WFH is great for flexibility of hours and saving money commuting and accessing broader talent pools that work a way away from your physical footprint, but at the same time I think you still need some sort of a core hub to focus around where people gather regularly even without necessarily a good reason to. From the perspective of my work, I'd say 2 and a quarter years of almost total WFH has had a massively deleterious effect on the structure of our team.
Hybrid is a good thing to aim for - the problem seems to me to be some places don't really want hybrid because it's just harder to manage than having either everyone in an office or everyone WFH.
Firstly, the problem is explained to us and shocking if not everybody agrees. If goods moving from mainland UK into NI just for consumption in NI, why should it pass Through a EU border?
It shouldn’t. It’s potty solution the EU insisted on.
Secondly, the UK solution, (that will be adopted eventually so why don’t EU just grow up, and adopt it this week) Goods for NI consumption should sail through under a green light. If it further crosses into EU, smuggling in other words, it’s in interest of EU to agree with us to harsh penalties on the smugglers, it just shows what a sham EU border policy always been if they won’t, but UK always maintains proper borders.
That’s a perfectly workable solution proposed by UK government, everyone needs to get behind it.
In Germany and elsewhere, local politicians took one look at similar plans and binned them.
Now that the roles are reversed, suddenly the DUP doing what they're perfectly entitled to do and Sinn Fein did for years is utterly outrageous.
No, the GFA is about compromise. Either the DUP and Sinn Fein reach a compromise that both can live with, or neither get their prizes.
We operate with 2 days in the office, 3 at home for people who live nearby. Because that is mostly the older staff, it works OK.
I don’t want to come over all Yes Minister, but it probably took him 2 years to learn the job and get into swing of things, like he is now.
PMQs should be interesting in coming weeks.
Some of it was because of the attempt to make the cities car-friendly. Has that ever been done in a way that enhances the look of a city?
Still, in Solent City's case, it could have been worse. There was a real plan in the 1960's to put an MK-style grid on the area;
https://andrewlainton.wordpress.com/2018/06/24/buchanan-the-linear-city-and-lessons-for-todays-strategic-plans/
It is the only viable end-game that keeps both communities of NI partisans happy. The problem since day one is that some people just want to override the other community in NI in the name of the GFA when the GFA is explicitly and deliberately about compromise.
We are based in Bank, in London. The younger staff are commuting long distances, but want to come into central London anyway. That's where they socialise.
Both called unnecessary elections in which they lost pole position.
Of course, there was a lot of modernism on the continent too. But, I think, less demolition of perfectly good nineteenth century buidlings.
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/will-work-from-home-work-forever-ep-464/
When I started doing it I put on a load of weight and had to move to a intermittent fasting regime to ensure I don't end up like a Boris.
Whether it would have been enough to get Brexit through I don't know. But there is a perfectly plausible alternative reality in which TM manages to build on Cameron's majority.
It can’t be measured solely as working from home getting tasks done versus in office getting tasks done. If productivity appears up with home workers because people slip into longer working hours, the pay off is burn out and mental health.
If knowledge share drops off due to remote working, it’s a huge hit on productivity that can only be noticed over longer time spans not shorter ones most studies have.
Also don’t call it working from home, call it remote working, for then you have people working remotely since year dot, and all the studies going way back into their productivity.
One that comes to my mind is virtually anthropological. It’s sixty years old. People fixing office machinery each knew a different trick the others didn’t. When they all got together in a diner for a meal they shared all these tricks and productivity shot up.
Also studies fall apart because everyone’s circumstance is different. Those trying to work from home whilst child minding are obviously less productive than both themselves in office and a colleague wfh without distractions.
Also depends on tasks. A task needing face-to-face communication is going to be less productive without it.
Modernism was pretty much invented on the Continent (Bauhaus, Corbusier) and probably applied more successfully.
I tend to think that it’s a combination of:
- very weak local leadership
- a dysfunctional planning culture
- an over-obsession with traffic control
- An unholy alliance between the right (build cheap) and the left (good design is a bourgeois affectation).
An a member of the RTPI I might defend my profession against your second point, but can't quibble with the other three. I think the third point is especially relevant - so much of our cities is actually essentially designed by highways engineers. That, I think, is much truer of the UK than the continent.
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/northern-line-open-city-bank-b2079559.html
I might have seen underground poster a few weeks ago “NEW PLATFORM TO BE OPENED SUNDAY 15th MAY BY PB’s RAIL GURU - SUNIL - assisted by special guest Liz Hurley. Underground memorabilia sale 10am - 12pm”.
I think Liz may have worn her special “twin track” dress as well 🙂
I have no real idea what will happen TBH, SPD-Green also fell just short in 2010 when they formed a minority gvt although that was with the support of die Linke who have now been obliterated.
CDU-Green has a majority but I would have thought they'd be reluctant to do that (at least without heavy concessions) in Merz's home state.
“Reginald pick the Daily Telegraph up from the mat and perused the headline. What the Godalming is this new hell - he growled.”
Mark Nobel retires after spending his whole career playing for the Hammers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmxPeiOsE84
When is the next candlelight vigil , rinse and repeat on a daily basis !
So thankful to live in Europe where you can go to the supermarket or church and not get your head blown off . The USA is a lost cause .