Starmer’s private school policy has upset all the right people on here, so I assume it’ll be a hit with the public. Won’t someone please think of Joquasta’s gymnastics club?
A story which illustrates so many lies and misunderstandings about what is happening out there: 1kg of butter? Who in their right mind buys that for domestic use? So the basic proposition is silly. Whats more, other brands are available who do basically the same product for less cost per kilo.
But - and its a big but - read and understand the comments and analysis about the dairy industry. There have been some *whopping* price rises. So the industry can afford to pay people more. And yet cannot find staff. Because quite simply British workers do not want to work in agriculture / food. At any price. We continue to have a staff shortage. And the "point-based migration" system fails to do its job and bring people in.
You mean its not bringing in people who are being offered competitive salaries?
Or its not bringing in people at basically minimum wage?
The migration system is designed, rightly, now to bring people in if their starting salary is about £30k+ . . . we shouldn't be looking to bring people in who are earning less than that, because if they're on less than that they're a net drain not a positive.
So which jobs aren't being filled for a long time that are meeting that salary? Or do you mean that offering 10% over National Minimum Wage isn't enough?
I mean that in the real world there is no solution other than imported labour. There is no labour pool available in many rural areas to do the work. So you're looking at farmers having to offer incentives to get people to relocate from Widnes to Wisbech to work in their dairy. Which they can't and the people won't. And even if they did the price of milk would then be so crazy that we would switch to cheaper imports.
What you believe is great theory. Meanwhile in the real world...
There are people who live in Wisbech already. Why aren't they doing the work?
If you pay a competitive enough salary, then people will move to take the job. Or you can invest in somewhere there are people.
"Bringing in people" is just getting people to move.
There is no reason those people need to move from another country, rather than somewhere in this one, other than that National Minimum Wage will attract people to move from Eastern Europe to Wisbech but won't get people to move from Widnes to Wisbech. A decent salary and good terms and conditions on the other hand will do.
If anyone is struggling to hire because they aren't paying a good salary, that's their problem, not ours. They either need to pay a good salary, or invest in automation, or their business isn't viable.
People won't move from Widnes to Wisbech when there's nowhere to live in Wisbech, apart from a bed in a dorm room. So many of our economic and social issues come back to the housing crisis.
Well yes, but @RochdalePioneers is arguing people should move from Warsaw to Wisbech, but thinks its impossible to move from Widnes to Wisbech.
If you need people to move for a job, that job needs to pay a competitive enough salary to entice people to move. The problem is that some businesses thought they could entice people to move for National Minimum Wage, where they'd have 7 workers living in a three bedroom house.
That's no longer an option, but it never was healthy either.
Either pay a decent salary, or invest in automation, or your business isn't viable.
Nope he's pointing out that the people in Widnes (who probably have jobs they enjoy) aren't looking for a career change.
And the children of those in Widnes aren't in a position to take on the work because they likewise know there are easier less hassle ways to earn money. Remember that the BBC and everyone else has spent over a decade encouraging people to enter farming with zero success.
So the easiest way of recruiting workers is to offer the work to people from abroad who already know farming or don't have any local ties and are happy to work in a remote location because it feels little different to countryside they came from in Eastern Europe.
Parents who sent children to private schools providing funding via taxation for state schools they do not even use while also funding their own children's education directly.
If there's a subsidy, it's from private school parents to state school children.
Not paying tax is not the same thing as receiving a subsidy.
If tax breaks can exist for religion they can certainly exist for education.
Well, there is an argument for countercyclical spending, what with the imminent recession and all. It will be very difficult to balance the books in the short term. In the longer term they need to balance and it is possible to have a road map to that.
Mrs Thatcher had 3 major pots of money to fund her tax cuts: North Sea oil, privatisations and deregulation of financial services in the big bang.
The next PM won't.
The next couple of years are going to be horrible economically, no matter who’s elected. The whole of the Western world has the same problem.
There needs to be a concerted international effort to put Putin back in his box, and to get global manufacturing and logistics back up and running. In the medium term, make a start on making high-end manufacturing less reliant on supply chains from unreliable autocracies such as China.
The economics of this should not be overdone. Yes, the western world is not quite a rich as it would like to be. But it is entitled insularity not to recall that the inhabitants of Niamey and Porto-Novo aren't either.
It's like how people speak of the 1970s, in a universally dismal voice. They write long dismal books about it. Well, I was 15 when it started and 25 when it ended and I loved every minute of it thank you. If you asked me if I could go back there I will give an unhesitating 'Yes'. Perspective is all.
A story which illustrates so many lies and misunderstandings about what is happening out there: 1kg of butter? Who in their right mind buys that for domestic use? So the basic proposition is silly. Whats more, other brands are available who do basically the same product for less cost per kilo.
But - and its a big but - read and understand the comments and analysis about the dairy industry. There have been some *whopping* price rises. So the industry can afford to pay people more. And yet cannot find staff. Because quite simply British workers do not want to work in agriculture / food. At any price. We continue to have a staff shortage. And the "point-based migration" system fails to do its job and bring people in.
You mean its not bringing in people who are being offered competitive salaries?
Or its not bringing in people at basically minimum wage?
The migration system is designed, rightly, now to bring people in if their starting salary is about £30k+ . . . we shouldn't be looking to bring people in who are earning less than that, because if they're on less than that they're a net drain not a positive.
So which jobs aren't being filled for a long time that are meeting that salary? Or do you mean that offering 10% over National Minimum Wage isn't enough?
I mean that in the real world there is no solution other than imported labour. There is no labour pool available in many rural areas to do the work. So you're looking at farmers having to offer incentives to get people to relocate from Widnes to Wisbech to work in their dairy. Which they can't and the people won't. And even if they did the price of milk would then be so crazy that we would switch to cheaper imports.
What you believe is great theory. Meanwhile in the real world...
There are people who live in Wisbech already. Why aren't they doing the work?
If you pay a competitive enough salary, then people will move to take the job. Or you can invest in somewhere there are people.
"Bringing in people" is just getting people to move.
There is no reason those people need to move from another country, rather than somewhere in this one, other than that National Minimum Wage will attract people to move from Eastern Europe to Wisbech but won't get people to move from Widnes to Wisbech. A decent salary and good terms and conditions on the other hand will do.
If anyone is struggling to hire because they aren't paying a good salary, that's their problem, not ours. They either need to pay a good salary, or invest in automation, or their business isn't viable.
People won't move from Widnes to Wisbech when there's nowhere to live in Wisbech, apart from a bed in a dorm room. So many of our economic and social issues come back to the housing crisis.
Well yes, but @RochdalePioneers is arguing people should move from Warsaw to Wisbech, but thinks its impossible to move from Widnes to Wisbech.
If you need people to move for a job, that job needs to pay a competitive enough salary to entice people to move. The problem is that some businesses thought they could entice people to move for National Minimum Wage, where they'd have 7 workers living in a three bedroom house.
That's no longer an option, but it never was healthy either.
Either pay a decent salary, or invest in automation, or your business isn't viable.
How do you automate a farm? Fruit or vegetable picking as one example?
I know that you are a "market or be damned" libertarian, but we would be damned and then be reliant on cheaper subsidised imports. Which would be strategically bad...
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
Nearly all private schools seem very unlike what I think of when I think of a charity. I have no objection to private schools that actually act in a manner more like a typical charity having charitable status.
The trouble is, that sort of describes Eton which has launched projects in the frozen north. What it does not describe is the new school-in-a-shop phenomenon.
Candidates-wise - are any of them addressing covid issues? Such as:
- We’re already seeing increases in post-covid conditions (over and above the reported long-covid issues). And we can expect more. Significant increases in cardiovascular issues (strokes, TIA, various types of dysrhythmia, inflammatory heart disease, ischemic heart disease, thrombotic disorders), pulmonary issues, diabetes, and the like. Are any of them addressing the healthcare support that will be needed? - - We’re now in the third summer since covid struck and I haven’t seen any noticeable installations of HEPA filters, far-UV air treatment, or the like. If we want to reduce the endemic burden of covid and get ahead of any future respiratory pandemics, then making key areas of indoors similar to outdoors in terms of the air would be a very good idea indeed. For God’s sake, start with schools, care homes, and hospitals and we’d get 90% of the benefits just there.
Because covid has been a pretty big part of what’s been happening, so I’d think it’d be a higher priority for the country than, say “woke.” And doing things that would reduce or remove the need for restrictions or lockdowns would be something I think we'd all like to see. Or are they all just saying “cut taxes cut taxes cut taxes” like a robot that’s slipped a cog?
A story which illustrates so many lies and misunderstandings about what is happening out there: 1kg of butter? Who in their right mind buys that for domestic use? So the basic proposition is silly. Whats more, other brands are available who do basically the same product for less cost per kilo.
But - and its a big but - read and understand the comments and analysis about the dairy industry. There have been some *whopping* price rises. So the industry can afford to pay people more. And yet cannot find staff. Because quite simply British workers do not want to work in agriculture / food. At any price. We continue to have a staff shortage. And the "point-based migration" system fails to do its job and bring people in.
You mean its not bringing in people who are being offered competitive salaries?
Or its not bringing in people at basically minimum wage?
The migration system is designed, rightly, now to bring people in if their starting salary is about £30k+ . . . we shouldn't be looking to bring people in who are earning less than that, because if they're on less than that they're a net drain not a positive.
So which jobs aren't being filled for a long time that are meeting that salary? Or do you mean that offering 10% over National Minimum Wage isn't enough?
I mean that in the real world there is no solution other than imported labour. There is no labour pool available in many rural areas to do the work. So you're looking at farmers having to offer incentives to get people to relocate from Widnes to Wisbech to work in their dairy. Which they can't and the people won't. And even if they did the price of milk would then be so crazy that we would switch to cheaper imports.
What you believe is great theory. Meanwhile in the real world...
There are people who live in Wisbech already. Why aren't they doing the work?
If you pay a competitive enough salary, then people will move to take the job. Or you can invest in somewhere there are people.
"Bringing in people" is just getting people to move.
There is no reason those people need to move from another country, rather than somewhere in this one, other than that National Minimum Wage will attract people to move from Eastern Europe to Wisbech but won't get people to move from Widnes to Wisbech. A decent salary and good terms and conditions on the other hand will do.
If anyone is struggling to hire because they aren't paying a good salary, that's their problem, not ours. They either need to pay a good salary, or invest in automation, or their business isn't viable.
Like I said, your theory is worthless compared to the reality on the ground. Having watched desperate factory managers offer substantially more than they were already paying (which was not minimum wage) in Anglia and not getting enough new staff to add a shift I know what reality is. Unlike you.
And that was before Brexit. Its a lot worse now. There is no labour pool in rural areas waiting for someone to "just pay more".
To save Barty the trouble, he is going to say Well they should shurt down their dairy and build a housing estate because who needs food?
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
If they rely entirely on charitable donations and don't charge for entry then they should keep their charitable status. Otherwise they are just organisations that provide a service primarily to people on above average incomes so it's a bit hard to see why, in an era of squeezed public finances, they are worthy of a public subsidy.
Private school fees have risen way way way ahead of inflation, they're far more expensive in real terms than they were. They've made their bed on this one a long time ago. Fuck 'em.
What? I bought butter yesterday for £1.60. Lurpak at £10?????
The price of Lurpak Spreadable has displaced Meghan as the new Daily Mail obsession.
There is normally an article every day on it the moment.
What’s the underlying issue, they had a factory shut down with Covid, or a supply chain problem with one of the ingredients?
I am not sure if I should spread this rumour but apparently Lurpak are creaming it in by milking the inflation crisis for all its worth. But er indoors thinks this story is not even margarinally true and just churned out by Russian bots.
Aldi own brand butter is now £1.75 per 250g so £7 per 1kg. 30% more for a branded product isn't that big a difference as I'm sure @RochdalePioneers will confirm
Both branded and own brand have their place. Remember that when you buy "Norpak" you are buying a product with a design that rips off the brand almost enough to be illegal but not quite, made by a rival to the big brand.
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
Can you explain why private schools should be subsidised by the general publc?
If they're not charities, what are they - businesses? My guess is that none of them make a profit. They also provide an education free of charge for a proportion of their kids. (What proportion? I don't know. 15%?.)
(I went to a private school in the 80s/90s. I was on a scholarship, though not one provided by the school. It has since turned out that the majority of my friends also were on a scholarship. It must have been a sizeable number who were, though clearly that was 30 years ago and things may be different now.)
A story which illustrates so many lies and misunderstandings about what is happening out there: 1kg of butter? Who in their right mind buys that for domestic use? So the basic proposition is silly. Whats more, other brands are available who do basically the same product for less cost per kilo.
But - and its a big but - read and understand the comments and analysis about the dairy industry. There have been some *whopping* price rises. So the industry can afford to pay people more. And yet cannot find staff. Because quite simply British workers do not want to work in agriculture / food. At any price. We continue to have a staff shortage. And the "point-based migration" system fails to do its job and bring people in.
You mean its not bringing in people who are being offered competitive salaries?
Or its not bringing in people at basically minimum wage?
The migration system is designed, rightly, now to bring people in if their starting salary is about £30k+ . . . we shouldn't be looking to bring people in who are earning less than that, because if they're on less than that they're a net drain not a positive.
So which jobs aren't being filled for a long time that are meeting that salary? Or do you mean that offering 10% over National Minimum Wage isn't enough?
I mean that in the real world there is no solution other than imported labour. There is no labour pool available in many rural areas to do the work. So you're looking at farmers having to offer incentives to get people to relocate from Widnes to Wisbech to work in their dairy. Which they can't and the people won't. And even if they did the price of milk would then be so crazy that we would switch to cheaper imports.
What you believe is great theory. Meanwhile in the real world...
There are people who live in Wisbech already. Why aren't they doing the work?
If you pay a competitive enough salary, then people will move to take the job. Or you can invest in somewhere there are people.
"Bringing in people" is just getting people to move.
There is no reason those people need to move from another country, rather than somewhere in this one, other than that National Minimum Wage will attract people to move from Eastern Europe to Wisbech but won't get people to move from Widnes to Wisbech. A decent salary and good terms and conditions on the other hand will do.
If anyone is struggling to hire because they aren't paying a good salary, that's their problem, not ours. They either need to pay a good salary, or invest in automation, or their business isn't viable.
People won't move from Widnes to Wisbech when there's nowhere to live in Wisbech, apart from a bed in a dorm room. So many of our economic and social issues come back to the housing crisis.
Well yes, but @RochdalePioneers is arguing people should move from Warsaw to Wisbech, but thinks its impossible to move from Widnes to Wisbech.
If you need people to move for a job, that job needs to pay a competitive enough salary to entice people to move. The problem is that some businesses thought they could entice people to move for National Minimum Wage, where they'd have 7 workers living in a three bedroom house.
That's no longer an option, but it never was healthy either.
Either pay a decent salary, or invest in automation, or your business isn't viable.
This is why government is important. A government can identify that housing is the issue causing problems with labour mobility and allocation, and implement policies to alleviate the issue, allowing the rest of the economy to function more efficiently as a result.
Parents who sent children to private schools providing funding via taxation for state schools they do not even use while also funding their own children's education directly.
If there's a subsidy, it's from private school parents to state school children.
Not paying tax is not the same thing as receiving a subsidy.
If tax breaks can exist for religion they can certainly exist for education.
The private schools also provide scholarships to bright kids whose parents can’t afford the fees, and the larger private schools open their facilities such as libraries, sports grounds and swimming pools for community use.
What? I bought butter yesterday for £1.60. Lurpak at £10?????
And it's not like spreadability is an issue in this weather, just leave it out of the fridge
On the one hand apparently 14 million people live in poverty (BBC yesterday passim, something I am sorry to say I profoundly disbelieve), while The DM can worry about the problems of people who pay £4 a kilo more for an imported product than a UK alternative that has been less messed about with.
These are people who get that sort of number, rightly or wrongly:
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
Exactly.
Eton will not be remotely affected by this.
The dear old "There are no marginal cases" PB fallacy. There's plenty of parents for whom this will make the difference between just affordable, and not affordable.
That of course is bollocks. No one chooses between eating, heating, and sending their kids to private school.
Their choices will be between the extra skiing holiday, another new car, and sending their kids to private school. Or similar.
Starmer’s private school policy has upset all the right people on here, so I assume it’ll be a hit with the public. Won’t someone please think of Joquasta’s gymnastics club?
I doubt the voter on the Clapham omnibus gives a stuff about private schools' charitable status. I can't say it keeps me up at night. There are raging inequalities between school types, but this does nothing to address them.
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
If they rely entirely on charitable donations and don't charge for entry then they should keep their charitable status. Otherwise they are just organisations that provide a service primarily to people on above average incomes so it's a bit hard to see why, in an era of squeezed public finances, they are worthy of a public subsidy.
Private school fees have risen way way way ahead of inflation, they're far more expensive in real terms than they were. They've made their bed on this one a long time ago. Fuck 'em.
Well, they are not making a profit, are they? and the reason fees have risen ahead of inflation is almost exclusively increasing wages for teachers. That, and having a tonne of shit Victorian jerry building to maintain.
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
Exactly.
Eton will not be remotely affected by this.
Eton is actually one of the few schools who actually do stuff for the local area (and actually well outside the area). Many other private schools really don't meet the charitable objectives they claim to have and are just a means of reducing taxable profits.
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
Exactly.
Eton will not be remotely affected by this.
The dear old "There are no marginal cases" PB fallacy. There's plenty of parents for whom this will make the difference beween just affordable, and not affordable.
I went to private schools (except for a short period when we lived in the US). I think some of us probably have a view of private schooling formed when we were at school. But private schooling has changed. Over the last quarter century, private school fees have risen at a much higher rate than inflation: see https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-charts-that-shows-how-private-school-fees-have-exploded-a7023056.html I don't know what is driving this process, but it has already made private schools unaffordable for many middle class parents. Meanwhile, state-funded schools have risen in quality. Were my parents making the same choice today, I doubt they would've sent me to a private school.
A story which illustrates so many lies and misunderstandings about what is happening out there: 1kg of butter? Who in their right mind buys that for domestic use? So the basic proposition is silly. Whats more, other brands are available who do basically the same product for less cost per kilo.
But - and its a big but - read and understand the comments and analysis about the dairy industry. There have been some *whopping* price rises. So the industry can afford to pay people more. And yet cannot find staff. Because quite simply British workers do not want to work in agriculture / food. At any price. We continue to have a staff shortage. And the "point-based migration" system fails to do its job and bring people in.
You mean its not bringing in people who are being offered competitive salaries?
Or its not bringing in people at basically minimum wage?
The migration system is designed, rightly, now to bring people in if their starting salary is about £30k+ . . . we shouldn't be looking to bring people in who are earning less than that, because if they're on less than that they're a net drain not a positive.
So which jobs aren't being filled for a long time that are meeting that salary? Or do you mean that offering 10% over National Minimum Wage isn't enough?
I mean that in the real world there is no solution other than imported labour. There is no labour pool available in many rural areas to do the work. So you're looking at farmers having to offer incentives to get people to relocate from Widnes to Wisbech to work in their dairy. Which they can't and the people won't. And even if they did the price of milk would then be so crazy that we would switch to cheaper imports.
What you believe is great theory. Meanwhile in the real world...
There are people who live in Wisbech already. Why aren't they doing the work?
If you pay a competitive enough salary, then people will move to take the job. Or you can invest in somewhere there are people.
"Bringing in people" is just getting people to move.
There is no reason those people need to move from another country, rather than somewhere in this one, other than that National Minimum Wage will attract people to move from Eastern Europe to Wisbech but won't get people to move from Widnes to Wisbech. A decent salary and good terms and conditions on the other hand will do.
If anyone is struggling to hire because they aren't paying a good salary, that's their problem, not ours. They either need to pay a good salary, or invest in automation, or their business isn't viable.
People won't move from Widnes to Wisbech when there's nowhere to live in Wisbech, apart from a bed in a dorm room. So many of our economic and social issues come back to the housing crisis.
Well yes, but @RochdalePioneers is arguing people should move from Warsaw to Wisbech, but thinks its impossible to move from Widnes to Wisbech.
If you need people to move for a job, that job needs to pay a competitive enough salary to entice people to move. The problem is that some businesses thought they could entice people to move for National Minimum Wage, where they'd have 7 workers living in a three bedroom house.
That's no longer an option, but it never was healthy either.
Either pay a decent salary, or invest in automation, or your business isn't viable.
This is why government is important. A government can identify that housing is the issue causing problems with labour mobility and allocation, and implement policies to alleviate the issue, allowing the rest of the economy to function more efficiently as a result.
The wider point is that our farming now needs to compete head on with a subsidised EU market. Where farms across Europe use migrant labour. It isn't a UK-specific lack of people who live in towns wanting to work at Worzel's Farm, its anywhere that is modern and developed.
What has changed is that we have cut ourselves off from the largely eastern European labour force who work on farms across Europe...
Just completed a ConHome survey with 54 combinations of two candidates to choose
So have I
The results are likely to be somewhat skewed, unless the whole of ConHome is similarly obsessive....
.... Ah.
But each MP can only vote for 1 candidate so the whole thing is a lottery. You may want Rishi but if the other choice for the membership promises to cut tax to zero, and is believed, then Rishi doesn't stand a chance.
A story which illustrates so many lies and misunderstandings about what is happening out there: 1kg of butter? Who in their right mind buys that for domestic use? So the basic proposition is silly. Whats more, other brands are available who do basically the same product for less cost per kilo.
But - and its a big but - read and understand the comments and analysis about the dairy industry. There have been some *whopping* price rises. So the industry can afford to pay people more. And yet cannot find staff. Because quite simply British workers do not want to work in agriculture / food. At any price. We continue to have a staff shortage. And the "point-based migration" system fails to do its job and bring people in.
You mean its not bringing in people who are being offered competitive salaries?
Or its not bringing in people at basically minimum wage?
The migration system is designed, rightly, now to bring people in if their starting salary is about £30k+ . . . we shouldn't be looking to bring people in who are earning less than that, because if they're on less than that they're a net drain not a positive.
So which jobs aren't being filled for a long time that are meeting that salary? Or do you mean that offering 10% over National Minimum Wage isn't enough?
I mean that in the real world there is no solution other than imported labour. There is no labour pool available in many rural areas to do the work. So you're looking at farmers having to offer incentives to get people to relocate from Widnes to Wisbech to work in their dairy. Which they can't and the people won't. And even if they did the price of milk would then be so crazy that we would switch to cheaper imports.
What you believe is great theory. Meanwhile in the real world...
There are people who live in Wisbech already. Why aren't they doing the work?
If you pay a competitive enough salary, then people will move to take the job. Or you can invest in somewhere there are people.
"Bringing in people" is just getting people to move.
There is no reason those people need to move from another country, rather than somewhere in this one, other than that National Minimum Wage will attract people to move from Eastern Europe to Wisbech but won't get people to move from Widnes to Wisbech. A decent salary and good terms and conditions on the other hand will do.
If anyone is struggling to hire because they aren't paying a good salary, that's their problem, not ours. They either need to pay a good salary, or invest in automation, or their business isn't viable.
People won't move from Widnes to Wisbech when there's nowhere to live in Wisbech, apart from a bed in a dorm room. So many of our economic and social issues come back to the housing crisis.
Well yes, but @RochdalePioneers is arguing people should move from Warsaw to Wisbech, but thinks its impossible to move from Widnes to Wisbech.
If you need people to move for a job, that job needs to pay a competitive enough salary to entice people to move. The problem is that some businesses thought they could entice people to move for National Minimum Wage, where they'd have 7 workers living in a three bedroom house.
That's no longer an option, but it never was healthy either.
Either pay a decent salary, or invest in automation, or your business isn't viable.
When did you last work in a dairy? Farmers receive very little thanks to the supermarkets forcing prices down. My brother-in-law went through a stage where he was pouring the milk down the drain because keeping it cold for collection and cleaning the diary to the regulated standards was costing more than he was paid from the processors. He was not the only farmer pouring milk away either.
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
So the privately educated Starmer wants to pull the ladder up by removing the charitable status which funds more scholarships and bursaries and leads to facilities being shared with state schools and the community.
Though no surprise, Labour governments always do it, even Blair's
Lol - funds scholarships for paupers like Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
Exactly.
Eton will not be remotely affected by this.
Eton would likely cut its scholarships and bursaries and reduce sharing of facilities with the local community and state schools. Other private schools would follow suit becoming even more exclusive and a few cheaper ones would have to close.
As usual this class war policy which even centrist Labour leaders like Blair and Starmer use as red meat for the Labour membership and Labour core vote always ends up in reality just making private schools more exclusive than they were before
Parents who sent children to private schools providing funding via taxation for state schools they do not even use while also funding their own children's education directly.
If there's a subsidy, it's from private school parents to state school children.
Not paying tax is not the same thing as receiving a subsidy.
If tax breaks can exist for religion they can certainly exist for education.
It is one thing to ask people to pay taxes so that other people's children can get the same education that their kids are getting. It is quite another to ask them to pay taxes to subsidise other people's children to get a better education than their children are getting. Why should I be subsidising other people's kids to push in front of my kids in the queue for university places or jobs? Forget it.
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
If they rely entirely on charitable donations and don't charge for entry then they should keep their charitable status. Otherwise they are just organisations that provide a service primarily to people on above average incomes so it's a bit hard to see why, in an era of squeezed public finances, they are worthy of a public subsidy.
Private school fees have risen way way way ahead of inflation, they're far more expensive in real terms than they were. They've made their bed on this one a long time ago. Fuck 'em.
Well, they are not making a profit, are they? and the reason fees have risen ahead of inflation is almost exclusively increasing wages for teachers. That, and having a tonne of shit Victorian jerry building to maintain.
Dunno about that, my old school spaffed a fortune on a heated swimming pool and mismanaged so badly they've had to merge with the other school in their foundation.
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
Exactly.
Eton will not be remotely affected by this.
The dear old "There are no marginal cases" PB fallacy. There's plenty of parents for whom this will make the difference between just affordable, and not affordable.
That of course is bollocks. No one chooses between eating, heating, and sending their kids to private school.
Their choices will be between the extra skiing holiday, another new car, and sending their kids to private school. Or similar.
I can promise you, first hand, that there are families which do no holidays at all and cut down on heating bills to send their children to fee paying schools. Not saying I approve either of this or odf the framework which makes it possible, but let's not arbitrarily misstate facts shall we?
If I were Sunak and had support to spare, I'd be tempted to try and get someone helpful through the first stage.
Nah, Sunak wants to win the first round by such a margin that some of the bit players want to find positions on his team before it is too late. He has no support to spare in such an endeavour because the more he wins by the more successful it is.
This is not a Boris situation where eliminating the sane Brexiteers leaving him only the nutters so that he could look reasonable worked very well.
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
Nearly all private schools seem very unlike what I think of when I think of a charity. I have no objection to private schools that actually act in a manner more like a typical charity having charitable status.
The trouble is, that sort of describes Eton which has launched projects in the frozen north. What it does not describe is the new school-in-a-shop phenomenon.
Eton is charging £49k per year for an elite service. I don't know other charities that do something similar. Charging £49k per year for an elite service looks like a business to me.
The simplest way would be to close every fifth hospital and GP surgery, and not replace them.
Would anyone notice if the GPs disappeared ?
Considering that they deliver 90% of healthcare consultations in primary care, I suspect so.
Consultations have disappeared and, in my part of the country at least, that seems to be permanent.
No, an email or a phone call isn't adequate.
Everyone moans here about GPs but they're not all the same. I recently changed my GP service and the service I'm getting from my new one is better than any I'd ever received anywhere I've ever lived.
I called my new GP and got an in-person appointment on the same day. As an aside while speaking to the GP I mentioned I was having an issue with my back (not what I'd gone in for) and he mentioned they have an on-site Physio and I could book to get an appointment - I suspect that conversation would never have happened had it been a telephone appointment.
I didn't feel it necessary to see a physio, but I mentioned on here my back issues and multiple people here recommended seeing a physio. So I called my GP surgery back and got an appointment to see the Physio a few days later. The physio diagnosed I'd torn a ligament, he could feel where it was spasming due to the tear, and he gave me a course of exercises to do for recovery.
I'm only half way through the six weeks of exercises he recommended but I already feel much, much better. Much more flexible, nearly back to my normal self again. Had I not seen someone in person (and had people here not recommended I go to see someone) then I doubt I'd have recovered so well. I'd assumed my pains were just part of getting older, I hadn't realised I'd suffered a muscle tear.
My previous GP it was impossible to see anyone in person with. My new one though have bent over backwards to be helpful. They also have posters up in the receptionists office saying they'd won a newspaper competition to find the GP with the best customer service - I can see why!
We need more competition so that GP surgeries that don't give a shit are outcompeted by those like my new one that do.
Parents who sent children to private schools providing funding via taxation for state schools they do not even use while also funding their own children's education directly....
If the annual fees are above £35k, that is not the case, as the VAT forgone would be greater than the £6970 total annual funding allocated to state schools calculated on a per-pupil basis.
(Though I think the average for UK private school fees* is possibly around £15k - quick google, not sure of the methodology behind that.
Parents who sent children to private schools providing funding via taxation for state schools they do not even use while also funding their own children's education directly....
If the annual fees are above £35k, that is not the case, as the VAT forgone would be greater than the £6970 total annual funding allocated to state schools calculated on a per-pupil basis.
Most private day school fees are closer to £10k. Fees of £35k are for boarding schools.
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
If they rely entirely on charitable donations and don't charge for entry then they should keep their charitable status. Otherwise they are just organisations that provide a service primarily to people on above average incomes so it's a bit hard to see why, in an era of squeezed public finances, they are worthy of a public subsidy.
Private school fees have risen way way way ahead of inflation, they're far more expensive in real terms than they were. They've made their bed on this one a long time ago. Fuck 'em.
Well, they are not making a profit, are they? and the reason fees have risen ahead of inflation is almost exclusively increasing wages for teachers. That, and having a tonne of shit Victorian jerry building to maintain.
Dunno about that, my old school spaffed a fortune on a heated swimming pool and mismanaged so badly they've had to merge with the other school in their foundation.
Serve them right, then. There's mismanagement in all walks of life. But presumably they thought the pool was a productive asset in that it would bring the paying punters in?
My prep school in the 70s had an unheated outdoor pool in Shropshire but you wouldn't get away with that these days. Public school had the full 25m heated monty.
A story which illustrates so many lies and misunderstandings about what is happening out there: 1kg of butter? Who in their right mind buys that for domestic use? So the basic proposition is silly. Whats more, other brands are available who do basically the same product for less cost per kilo.
But - and its a big but - read and understand the comments and analysis about the dairy industry. There have been some *whopping* price rises. So the industry can afford to pay people more. And yet cannot find staff. Because quite simply British workers do not want to work in agriculture / food. At any price. We continue to have a staff shortage. And the "point-based migration" system fails to do its job and bring people in.
You mean its not bringing in people who are being offered competitive salaries?
Or its not bringing in people at basically minimum wage?
The migration system is designed, rightly, now to bring people in if their starting salary is about £30k+ . . . we shouldn't be looking to bring people in who are earning less than that, because if they're on less than that they're a net drain not a positive.
So which jobs aren't being filled for a long time that are meeting that salary? Or do you mean that offering 10% over National Minimum Wage isn't enough?
I mean that in the real world there is no solution other than imported labour. There is no labour pool available in many rural areas to do the work. So you're looking at farmers having to offer incentives to get people to relocate from Widnes to Wisbech to work in their dairy. Which they can't and the people won't. And even if they did the price of milk would then be so crazy that we would switch to cheaper imports.
What you believe is great theory. Meanwhile in the real world...
There are people who live in Wisbech already. Why aren't they doing the work?
If you pay a competitive enough salary, then people will move to take the job. Or you can invest in somewhere there are people.
"Bringing in people" is just getting people to move.
There is no reason those people need to move from another country, rather than somewhere in this one, other than that National Minimum Wage will attract people to move from Eastern Europe to Wisbech but won't get people to move from Widnes to Wisbech. A decent salary and good terms and conditions on the other hand will do.
If anyone is struggling to hire because they aren't paying a good salary, that's their problem, not ours. They either need to pay a good salary, or invest in automation, or their business isn't viable.
People won't move from Widnes to Wisbech when there's nowhere to live in Wisbech, apart from a bed in a dorm room. So many of our economic and social issues come back to the housing crisis.
Well yes, but @RochdalePioneers is arguing people should move from Warsaw to Wisbech, but thinks its impossible to move from Widnes to Wisbech.
If you need people to move for a job, that job needs to pay a competitive enough salary to entice people to move. The problem is that some businesses thought they could entice people to move for National Minimum Wage, where they'd have 7 workers living in a three bedroom house.
That's no longer an option, but it never was healthy either.
Either pay a decent salary, or invest in automation, or your business isn't viable.
When did you last work in a dairy? Farmers receive very little thanks to the supermarkets forcing prices down. My brother-in-law went through a stage where he was pouring the milk down the drain because keeping it cold for collection and cleaning the diary to the regulated standards was costing more than he was paid from the processors. He was not the only farmer pouring milk away either.
And the recent surge in retail prices has eliminated that insanity as milk and dairy can actually be a revenue line instead of a loss line. But not by a lot. And if we reset prices as BR wants so that everyone gets paid good money and the farmer makes a decent profit, we will have very little dairy industry and instead be reliant on cheap imports from safe places like Ukraine.
We're finally waking up to how broken our food supply chains are that so much of the west is reliant on wheat and vegetables grown out there. We could grow more domestically. But it is more expensive and consumers can't / won't pay for it.
The simplest way would be to close every fifth hospital and GP surgery, and not replace them.
Following the GBR scheme we could do it by public vote - the hospital / surgery with least votes is eliminated. After all this is a "democracy"
Or The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence could cut the QALY utility score from £20/30k to £2/3k.
We know what will happen.
The tax-slashing winner will get in - do one of the tax cuts probably income tax by adding to the debt pile and then bluster about the others until everyone has forgotten.
Truss's idea about turning covid debt into some kind of extremely long war bond might be worth looking into, but it is a very different world to the 1940s.
It was something worth doing in 2020 or even early 2021. The cost of doing it now is way, way more than it was then.
In 2020 / 2021 inflation was a pipe dream - now it's reality and there is no way my pension fund is going to accept a 3-5% return when inflation is 10%...
Your pension fund might accept below-inflation returns if the alternative is a crashing stock market. Mine is down about three years' worth last time I looked.
Our pension fund has gone from being about 5% in surplus to 19% in surplus this year. Although the capital value of the fund has fallen the increase in gilt rates has had a much more dramatic effect on the liabilities. I expect this trend to continue for a year or two yet.
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
Exactly.
Eton will not be remotely affected by this.
The dear old "There are no marginal cases" PB fallacy. There's plenty of parents for whom this will make the difference between just affordable, and not affordable.
That of course is bollocks. No one chooses between eating, heating, and sending their kids to private school.
Their choices will be between the extra skiing holiday, another new car, and sending their kids to private school. Or similar.
I can promise you, first hand, that there are families which do no holidays at all and cut down on heating bills to send their children to fee paying schools. Not saying I approve either of this or odf the framework which makes it possible, but let's not arbitrarily misstate facts shall we?
With respect, that's all a bit 'Society for Distressed Gentlefolk'
I can assure you that the people choosing between eating and heating (and I have met quite a few through my work with Citizens Advice) DO NOT factor in private school fees when weighing up their priorities.
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
If they rely entirely on charitable donations and don't charge for entry then they should keep their charitable status. Otherwise they are just organisations that provide a service primarily to people on above average incomes so it's a bit hard to see why, in an era of squeezed public finances, they are worthy of a public subsidy.
The whole question raises the dilemma of what a charity is. This deserves renewed attention as a degree of confusion is creeping in. The subject is gigantic.
IMHO a school being a charity should mean that its admission policy is entirely 'needs blind' and admission criteria be wholly unrelated to income. This would exclude most of course, but that would be consistent with what the general public think charities are. and I think they are right.
Most are businesses masquerading as charities.
It cannot be a charitable purpose if a school in practice is accepting pupil X who is less meritorious than Y but has more money. That is the same principle as The Ritz, which is (so far) not a charity.
A story which illustrates so many lies and misunderstandings about what is happening out there: 1kg of butter? Who in their right mind buys that for domestic use? So the basic proposition is silly. Whats more, other brands are available who do basically the same product for less cost per kilo.
But - and its a big but - read and understand the comments and analysis about the dairy industry. There have been some *whopping* price rises. So the industry can afford to pay people more. And yet cannot find staff. Because quite simply British workers do not want to work in agriculture / food. At any price. We continue to have a staff shortage. And the "point-based migration" system fails to do its job and bring people in.
You mean its not bringing in people who are being offered competitive salaries?
Or its not bringing in people at basically minimum wage?
The migration system is designed, rightly, now to bring people in if their starting salary is about £30k+ . . . we shouldn't be looking to bring people in who are earning less than that, because if they're on less than that they're a net drain not a positive.
So which jobs aren't being filled for a long time that are meeting that salary? Or do you mean that offering 10% over National Minimum Wage isn't enough?
I mean that in the real world there is no solution other than imported labour. There is no labour pool available in many rural areas to do the work. So you're looking at farmers having to offer incentives to get people to relocate from Widnes to Wisbech to work in their dairy. Which they can't and the people won't. And even if they did the price of milk would then be so crazy that we would switch to cheaper imports.
What you believe is great theory. Meanwhile in the real world...
There are people who live in Wisbech already. Why aren't they doing the work?
If you pay a competitive enough salary, then people will move to take the job. Or you can invest in somewhere there are people.
"Bringing in people" is just getting people to move.
There is no reason those people need to move from another country, rather than somewhere in this one, other than that National Minimum Wage will attract people to move from Eastern Europe to Wisbech but won't get people to move from Widnes to Wisbech. A decent salary and good terms and conditions on the other hand will do.
If anyone is struggling to hire because they aren't paying a good salary, that's their problem, not ours. They either need to pay a good salary, or invest in automation, or their business isn't viable.
People won't move from Widnes to Wisbech when there's nowhere to live in Wisbech, apart from a bed in a dorm room. So many of our economic and social issues come back to the housing crisis.
Well yes, but @RochdalePioneers is arguing people should move from Warsaw to Wisbech, but thinks its impossible to move from Widnes to Wisbech.
If you need people to move for a job, that job needs to pay a competitive enough salary to entice people to move. The problem is that some businesses thought they could entice people to move for National Minimum Wage, where they'd have 7 workers living in a three bedroom house.
That's no longer an option, but it never was healthy either.
Either pay a decent salary, or invest in automation, or your business isn't viable.
When did you last work in a dairy? Farmers receive very little thanks to the supermarkets forcing prices down. My brother-in-law went through a stage where he was pouring the milk down the drain because keeping it cold for collection and cleaning the diary to the regulated standards was costing more than he was paid from the processors. He was not the only farmer pouring milk away either.
What's that got to do with anything I said?
If people are quite literally pouring their product down the drain, then we presumably have an oversupply of the product, which is why the supermarkets are able to keep prices down.
If that's the case, then it sounds like we have too many people working in the dairy sector, as opposed to not enough.
- 20% cuts to government spending = good. The NHS and schools can just make do with less.
- Removal of 20% tax exemption from private schools = bad. It'll push them out of business and penalise the poor middle class families who send their kids there.
Starmer’s private school policy has upset all the right people on here, so I assume it’ll be a hit with the public. Won’t someone please think of Joquasta’s gymnastics club?
I doubt the voter on the Clapham omnibus gives a stuff about private schools' charitable status. I can't say it keeps me up at night. There are raging inequalities between school types, but this does nothing to address them.
It is the politics of envy. A classic dog whistle to the left to try to get some attention.
Parents who sent children to private schools providing funding via taxation for state schools they do not even use while also funding their own children's education directly....
If the annual fees are above £35k, that is not the case, as the VAT forgone would be greater than the £6970 total annual funding allocated to state schools calculated on a per-pupil basis.
Most private day school fees are closer to £10k. Fees of £35k are for boarding schools.
Nope - picking a local one (Yarm) £14766 aged 11+ Lunch adds £750 on top.
Barnard Castle is £15500 but Lunch seems to be included
That's Day fees for both...
Glasgow Grammar is slightly cheaper £14,000 for the year.
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
Can you explain why private schools should be subsidised by the general publc?
No, because I don't think they are.
A charity doesn't distribute profit to shareholders and is run for one (or more) of a set of particular purposes, one of which is "the advancement of education". A school pretty clearly falls into this category. Giving charitable status to non-profit making organisations with charitable aims is... not a subsidy?
Sure, you can redefine charity to say "education but, wait, not schools". But carving out an exception from a principle because you don't like something is just spite.
As @Sandpit says, this isn't about Eton. Eton can implode in a ball of fire for all I care and the world would probably be better off.
What I do care about is, for example, a friend of mine who's a science technician and, together with her parents, is scrimping and saving to send her kid to a non-selective private school round here. He's a nice kid and has absolutely vanished in the state system, even though the secondaries around here are not bad at all.
Cranking the prices up at that school will hurt kids like him. It will not hurt the future Johnsons and Rees-Moggs of this world one bit. Their parents will still be able to afford to send them to Eton.
You can argue that she shouldn't need to send her son to the private school; that the secondary should be good enough. I agree with you. But right now it isn't. £150m pa from abolishing charitable status will do virtually nothing for the state education system.
I would be entirely in favour of reforming the system so that the charitable status of private schools is better defined, perhaps including a cap on fees or a limit on selectivity. But Labour hammering the kids at Frogglethorpe School because they don't like Eton is just class politics.
Parents who sent children to private schools providing funding via taxation for state schools they do not even use while also funding their own children's education directly....
If the annual fees are above £35k, that is not the case, as the VAT forgone would be greater than the £6970 total annual funding allocated to state schools calculated on a per-pupil basis.
Most private day school fees are closer to £10k. Fees of £35k are for boarding schools.
Nope - picking a local one (Yarm) £14766 aged 11+ Lunch adds £750 on top.
Barnard Castle is £15500 but Lunch seems to be included
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
If they rely entirely on charitable donations and don't charge for entry then they should keep their charitable status. Otherwise they are just organisations that provide a service primarily to people on above average incomes so it's a bit hard to see why, in an era of squeezed public finances, they are worthy of a public subsidy.
Private school fees have risen way way way ahead of inflation, they're far more expensive in real terms than they were. They've made their bed on this one a long time ago. Fuck 'em.
Well, they are not making a profit, are they? and the reason fees have risen ahead of inflation is almost exclusively increasing wages for teachers. That, and having a tonne of shit Victorian jerry building to maintain.
Dunno about that, my old school spaffed a fortune on a heated swimming pool and mismanaged so badly they've had to merge with the other school in their foundation.
Presumably KHVIII? I've been following the story intermittently in the local press. Everyone hates the solution but no-one has reported what the problem was.
A story which illustrates so many lies and misunderstandings about what is happening out there: 1kg of butter? Who in their right mind buys that for domestic use? So the basic proposition is silly. Whats more, other brands are available who do basically the same product for less cost per kilo.
But - and its a big but - read and understand the comments and analysis about the dairy industry. There have been some *whopping* price rises. So the industry can afford to pay people more. And yet cannot find staff. Because quite simply British workers do not want to work in agriculture / food. At any price. We continue to have a staff shortage. And the "point-based migration" system fails to do its job and bring people in.
You mean its not bringing in people who are being offered competitive salaries?
Or its not bringing in people at basically minimum wage?
The migration system is designed, rightly, now to bring people in if their starting salary is about £30k+ . . . we shouldn't be looking to bring people in who are earning less than that, because if they're on less than that they're a net drain not a positive.
So which jobs aren't being filled for a long time that are meeting that salary? Or do you mean that offering 10% over National Minimum Wage isn't enough?
I mean that in the real world there is no solution other than imported labour. There is no labour pool available in many rural areas to do the work. So you're looking at farmers having to offer incentives to get people to relocate from Widnes to Wisbech to work in their dairy. Which they can't and the people won't. And even if they did the price of milk would then be so crazy that we would switch to cheaper imports.
What you believe is great theory. Meanwhile in the real world...
There are people who live in Wisbech already. Why aren't they doing the work?
If you pay a competitive enough salary, then people will move to take the job. Or you can invest in somewhere there are people.
"Bringing in people" is just getting people to move.
There is no reason those people need to move from another country, rather than somewhere in this one, other than that National Minimum Wage will attract people to move from Eastern Europe to Wisbech but won't get people to move from Widnes to Wisbech. A decent salary and good terms and conditions on the other hand will do.
If anyone is struggling to hire because they aren't paying a good salary, that's their problem, not ours. They either need to pay a good salary, or invest in automation, or their business isn't viable.
People won't move from Widnes to Wisbech when there's nowhere to live in Wisbech, apart from a bed in a dorm room. So many of our economic and social issues come back to the housing crisis.
Well yes, but @RochdalePioneers is arguing people should move from Warsaw to Wisbech, but thinks its impossible to move from Widnes to Wisbech.
If you need people to move for a job, that job needs to pay a competitive enough salary to entice people to move. The problem is that some businesses thought they could entice people to move for National Minimum Wage, where they'd have 7 workers living in a three bedroom house.
That's no longer an option, but it never was healthy either.
Either pay a decent salary, or invest in automation, or your business isn't viable.
When did you last work in a dairy? Farmers receive very little thanks to the supermarkets forcing prices down. My brother-in-law went through a stage where he was pouring the milk down the drain because keeping it cold for collection and cleaning the diary to the regulated standards was costing more than he was paid from the processors. He was not the only farmer pouring milk away either.
What's that got to do with anything I said?
If people are quite literally pouring their product down the drain, then we presumably have an oversupply of the product, which is why the supermarkets are able to keep prices down.
If that's the case, then it sounds like we have too many people working in the dairy sector, as opposed to not enough.
That isn't the case. They are pouring it away because the storage / shipping cost is less than the revenue they will get from not pouring it away. Meanwhile we import cheap subsidised dairy.
Parents who sent children to private schools providing funding via taxation for state schools they do not even use while also funding their own children's education directly.
If there's a subsidy, it's from private school parents to state school children.
Not paying tax is not the same thing as receiving a subsidy.
If tax breaks can exist for religion they can certainly exist for education.
It is one thing to ask people to pay taxes so that other people's children can get the same education that their kids are getting. It is quite another to ask them to pay taxes to subsidise other people's children to get a better education than their children are getting. Why should I be subsidising other people's kids to push in front of my kids in the queue for university places or jobs? Forget it.
Usual Labour class envy mentality, even Blair's government abolished the assisted places scheme of course.
The not rich but bright child must not be allowed the best chance to get on and become a higher earning Tory voter
Parents who sent children to private schools providing funding via taxation for state schools they do not even use while also funding their own children's education directly....
If the annual fees are above £35k, that is not the case, as the VAT forgone would be greater than the £6970 total annual funding allocated to state schools calculated on a per-pupil basis.
Most private day school fees are closer to £10k. Fees of £35k are for boarding schools.
Nope - picking a local one (Yarm) £14766 aged 11+ Lunch adds £750 on top.
Barnard Castle is £15500 but Lunch seems to be included
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
Nearly all private schools seem very unlike what I think of when I think of a charity. I have no objection to private schools that actually act in a manner more like a typical charity having charitable status.
The trouble is, that sort of describes Eton which has launched projects in the frozen north. What it does not describe is the new school-in-a-shop phenomenon.
Eton is charging £49k per year for an elite service. I don't know other charities that do something similar. Charging £49k per year for an elite service looks like a business to me.
Lots of charities are also businesses. See the tedious woke debate for examples. Does Eton do charitable stuff? Yes. Vote Labour to save Eton?
I'm not here to defend public schools. There are vast inequalities between privately and state-educated children in terms of life outcomes and yes, something should be done. I can't see this policy will help Labour win the next election.
The simplest way would be to close every fifth hospital and GP surgery, and not replace them.
Following the GBR scheme we could do it by public vote - the hospital / surgery with least votes is eliminated. After all this is a "democracy"
Or The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence could cut the QALY utility score from £20/30k to £2/3k.
We know what will happen.
The tax-slashing winner will get in - do one of the tax cuts probably income tax by adding to the debt pile and then bluster about the others until everyone has forgotten.
Truss's idea about turning covid debt into some kind of extremely long war bond might be worth looking into, but it is a very different world to the 1940s.
It was something worth doing in 2020 or even early 2021. The cost of doing it now is way, way more than it was then.
In 2020 / 2021 inflation was a pipe dream - now it's reality and there is no way my pension fund is going to accept a 3-5% return when inflation is 10%...
Your pension fund might accept below-inflation returns if the alternative is a crashing stock market. Mine is down about three years' worth last time I looked.
Our pension fund has gone from being about 5% in surplus to 19% in surplus this year. Although the capital value of the fund has fallen the increase in gilt rates has had a much more dramatic effect on the liabilities. I expect this trend to continue for a year or two yet.
A story which illustrates so many lies and misunderstandings about what is happening out there: 1kg of butter? Who in their right mind buys that for domestic use? So the basic proposition is silly. Whats more, other brands are available who do basically the same product for less cost per kilo.
But - and its a big but - read and understand the comments and analysis about the dairy industry. There have been some *whopping* price rises. So the industry can afford to pay people more. And yet cannot find staff. Because quite simply British workers do not want to work in agriculture / food. At any price. We continue to have a staff shortage. And the "point-based migration" system fails to do its job and bring people in.
You mean its not bringing in people who are being offered competitive salaries?
Or its not bringing in people at basically minimum wage?
The migration system is designed, rightly, now to bring people in if their starting salary is about £30k+ . . . we shouldn't be looking to bring people in who are earning less than that, because if they're on less than that they're a net drain not a positive.
So which jobs aren't being filled for a long time that are meeting that salary? Or do you mean that offering 10% over National Minimum Wage isn't enough?
I mean that in the real world there is no solution other than imported labour. There is no labour pool available in many rural areas to do the work. So you're looking at farmers having to offer incentives to get people to relocate from Widnes to Wisbech to work in their dairy. Which they can't and the people won't. And even if they did the price of milk would then be so crazy that we would switch to cheaper imports.
What you believe is great theory. Meanwhile in the real world...
There are people who live in Wisbech already. Why aren't they doing the work?
If you pay a competitive enough salary, then people will move to take the job. Or you can invest in somewhere there are people.
"Bringing in people" is just getting people to move.
There is no reason those people need to move from another country, rather than somewhere in this one, other than that National Minimum Wage will attract people to move from Eastern Europe to Wisbech but won't get people to move from Widnes to Wisbech. A decent salary and good terms and conditions on the other hand will do.
If anyone is struggling to hire because they aren't paying a good salary, that's their problem, not ours. They either need to pay a good salary, or invest in automation, or their business isn't viable.
People won't move from Widnes to Wisbech when there's nowhere to live in Wisbech, apart from a bed in a dorm room. So many of our economic and social issues come back to the housing crisis.
Well yes, but @RochdalePioneers is arguing people should move from Warsaw to Wisbech, but thinks its impossible to move from Widnes to Wisbech.
If you need people to move for a job, that job needs to pay a competitive enough salary to entice people to move. The problem is that some businesses thought they could entice people to move for National Minimum Wage, where they'd have 7 workers living in a three bedroom house.
That's no longer an option, but it never was healthy either.
Either pay a decent salary, or invest in automation, or your business isn't viable.
When did you last work in a dairy? Farmers receive very little thanks to the supermarkets forcing prices down. My brother-in-law went through a stage where he was pouring the milk down the drain because keeping it cold for collection and cleaning the diary to the regulated standards was costing more than he was paid from the processors. He was not the only farmer pouring milk away either.
What's that got to do with anything I said?
If people are quite literally pouring their product down the drain, then we presumably have an oversupply of the product, which is why the supermarkets are able to keep prices down.
If that's the case, then it sounds like we have too many people working in the dairy sector, as opposed to not enough.
That isn't the case. They are pouring it away because the storage / shipping cost is less than the revenue they will get from not pouring it away. Meanwhile we import cheap subsidised dairy.
If they're pouring it away, they shouldn't be generating it in the first place. Why the f**k are they producing it only to pour it away? Zero sympathy.
And its funny, all my milk I get from my supermarket tends to normally have a union flag on it and says its made in this country.
A story which illustrates so many lies and misunderstandings about what is happening out there: 1kg of butter? Who in their right mind buys that for domestic use? So the basic proposition is silly. Whats more, other brands are available who do basically the same product for less cost per kilo.
But - and its a big but - read and understand the comments and analysis about the dairy industry. There have been some *whopping* price rises. So the industry can afford to pay people more. And yet cannot find staff. Because quite simply British workers do not want to work in agriculture / food. At any price. We continue to have a staff shortage. And the "point-based migration" system fails to do its job and bring people in.
You mean its not bringing in people who are being offered competitive salaries?
Or its not bringing in people at basically minimum wage?
The migration system is designed, rightly, now to bring people in if their starting salary is about £30k+ . . . we shouldn't be looking to bring people in who are earning less than that, because if they're on less than that they're a net drain not a positive.
So which jobs aren't being filled for a long time that are meeting that salary? Or do you mean that offering 10% over National Minimum Wage isn't enough?
I mean that in the real world there is no solution other than imported labour. There is no labour pool available in many rural areas to do the work. So you're looking at farmers having to offer incentives to get people to relocate from Widnes to Wisbech to work in their dairy. Which they can't and the people won't. And even if they did the price of milk would then be so crazy that we would switch to cheaper imports.
What you believe is great theory. Meanwhile in the real world...
There are people who live in Wisbech already. Why aren't they doing the work?
If you pay a competitive enough salary, then people will move to take the job. Or you can invest in somewhere there are people.
"Bringing in people" is just getting people to move.
There is no reason those people need to move from another country, rather than somewhere in this one, other than that National Minimum Wage will attract people to move from Eastern Europe to Wisbech but won't get people to move from Widnes to Wisbech. A decent salary and good terms and conditions on the other hand will do.
If anyone is struggling to hire because they aren't paying a good salary, that's their problem, not ours. They either need to pay a good salary, or invest in automation, or their business isn't viable.
People won't move from Widnes to Wisbech when there's nowhere to live in Wisbech, apart from a bed in a dorm room. So many of our economic and social issues come back to the housing crisis.
Well yes, but @RochdalePioneers is arguing people should move from Warsaw to Wisbech, but thinks its impossible to move from Widnes to Wisbech.
If you need people to move for a job, that job needs to pay a competitive enough salary to entice people to move. The problem is that some businesses thought they could entice people to move for National Minimum Wage, where they'd have 7 workers living in a three bedroom house.
That's no longer an option, but it never was healthy either.
Either pay a decent salary, or invest in automation, or your business isn't viable.
When did you last work in a dairy? Farmers receive very little thanks to the supermarkets forcing prices down. My brother-in-law went through a stage where he was pouring the milk down the drain because keeping it cold for collection and cleaning the diary to the regulated standards was costing more than he was paid from the processors. He was not the only farmer pouring milk away either.
What's that got to do with anything I said?
If people are quite literally pouring their product down the drain, then we presumably have an oversupply of the product, which is why the supermarkets are able to keep prices down.
If that's the case, then it sounds like we have too many people working in the dairy sector, as opposed to not enough.
That isn't the case. They are pouring it away because the storage / shipping cost is less than the revenue they will get from not pouring it away. Meanwhile we import cheap subsidised dairy.
Supermarket cartel problem, limiting options for sale at decent prices?
Regarding Jenrick. Didn't watch his slot, but there is this quote reported from him regarding Sunak:
"I actually think it’s quite refreshing that we might have a prime minister who’s lived and worked around the world, is extremely knowledgeable about finance and technology, having lived in California and run businesses there, and will be a respected figure on the international stage for the fact that he has those connections and understanding."
I agree. Better to have someone who understands the world than the kind of semi-psychotic insular clueless dross who are also running.
I was a scholarship kid at primary school. Their fees for most of secondary are now £21,720 / year.
However, you can't just apply 20% to that to get the effect to the Exchequer. If schools are required to charge VAT, they would be entitled to recover it.
A story which illustrates so many lies and misunderstandings about what is happening out there: 1kg of butter? Who in their right mind buys that for domestic use? So the basic proposition is silly. Whats more, other brands are available who do basically the same product for less cost per kilo.
But - and its a big but - read and understand the comments and analysis about the dairy industry. There have been some *whopping* price rises. So the industry can afford to pay people more. And yet cannot find staff. Because quite simply British workers do not want to work in agriculture / food. At any price. We continue to have a staff shortage. And the "point-based migration" system fails to do its job and bring people in.
You mean its not bringing in people who are being offered competitive salaries?
Or its not bringing in people at basically minimum wage?
The migration system is designed, rightly, now to bring people in if their starting salary is about £30k+ . . . we shouldn't be looking to bring people in who are earning less than that, because if they're on less than that they're a net drain not a positive.
So which jobs aren't being filled for a long time that are meeting that salary? Or do you mean that offering 10% over National Minimum Wage isn't enough?
I mean that in the real world there is no solution other than imported labour. There is no labour pool available in many rural areas to do the work. So you're looking at farmers having to offer incentives to get people to relocate from Widnes to Wisbech to work in their dairy. Which they can't and the people won't. And even if they did the price of milk would then be so crazy that we would switch to cheaper imports.
What you believe is great theory. Meanwhile in the real world...
There are people who live in Wisbech already. Why aren't they doing the work?
If you pay a competitive enough salary, then people will move to take the job. Or you can invest in somewhere there are people.
"Bringing in people" is just getting people to move.
There is no reason those people need to move from another country, rather than somewhere in this one, other than that National Minimum Wage will attract people to move from Eastern Europe to Wisbech but won't get people to move from Widnes to Wisbech. A decent salary and good terms and conditions on the other hand will do.
If anyone is struggling to hire because they aren't paying a good salary, that's their problem, not ours. They either need to pay a good salary, or invest in automation, or their business isn't viable.
People won't move from Widnes to Wisbech when there's nowhere to live in Wisbech, apart from a bed in a dorm room. So many of our economic and social issues come back to the housing crisis.
Well yes, but @RochdalePioneers is arguing people should move from Warsaw to Wisbech, but thinks its impossible to move from Widnes to Wisbech.
If you need people to move for a job, that job needs to pay a competitive enough salary to entice people to move. The problem is that some businesses thought they could entice people to move for National Minimum Wage, where they'd have 7 workers living in a three bedroom house.
That's no longer an option, but it never was healthy either.
Either pay a decent salary, or invest in automation, or your business isn't viable.
When did you last work in a dairy? Farmers receive very little thanks to the supermarkets forcing prices down. My brother-in-law went through a stage where he was pouring the milk down the drain because keeping it cold for collection and cleaning the diary to the regulated standards was costing more than he was paid from the processors. He was not the only farmer pouring milk away either.
What's that got to do with anything I said?
If people are quite literally pouring their product down the drain, then we presumably have an oversupply of the product, which is why the supermarkets are able to keep prices down.
If that's the case, then it sounds like we have too many people working in the dairy sector, as opposed to not enough.
That isn't the case. They are pouring it away because the storage / shipping cost is less than the revenue they will get from not pouring it away. Meanwhile we import cheap subsidised dairy.
If they're pouring it away, they shouldn't be generating it in the first place. Why the f**k are they producing it only to pour it away? Zero sympathy.
And its funny, all my milk I get from my supermarket tends to normally have a union flag on it and says its made in this country.
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
Can you explain why private schools should be subsidised by the general publc?
No, because I don't think they are.
A charity doesn't distribute profit to shareholders and is run for one (or more) of a set of particular purposes, one of which is "the advancement of education". A school pretty clearly falls into this category. Giving charitable status to non-profit making organisations with charitable aims is... not a subsidy?
Sure, you can redefine charity to say "education but, wait, not schools". But carving out an exception from a principle because you don't like something is just spite.
As @Sandpit says, this isn't about Eton. Eton can implode in a ball of fire for all I care and the world would probably be better off.
What I do care about is, for example, a friend of mine who's a science technician and, together with her parents, is scrimping and saving to send her kid to a non-selective private school round here. He's a nice kid and has absolutely vanished in the state system, even though the secondaries around here are not bad at all.
Cranking the prices up at that school will hurt kids like him. It will not hurt the future Johnsons and Rees-Moggs of this world one bit. Their parents will still be able to afford to send them to Eton.
You can argue that she shouldn't need to send her son to the private school; that the secondary should be good enough. I agree with you. But right now it isn't. £150m pa from abolishing charitable status will do virtually nothing for the state education system.
I would be entirely in favour of reforming the system so that the charitable status of private schools is better defined, perhaps including a cap on fees or a limit on selectivity. But Labour hammering the kids at Frogglethorpe School because they don't like Eton is just class politics.
It's the sort of policy I see goes down well with Labour's left wing but gets quietly kicked into the grass before implementation when the consequences are pointed.
A story which illustrates so many lies and misunderstandings about what is happening out there: 1kg of butter? Who in their right mind buys that for domestic use? So the basic proposition is silly. Whats more, other brands are available who do basically the same product for less cost per kilo.
But - and its a big but - read and understand the comments and analysis about the dairy industry. There have been some *whopping* price rises. So the industry can afford to pay people more. And yet cannot find staff. Because quite simply British workers do not want to work in agriculture / food. At any price. We continue to have a staff shortage. And the "point-based migration" system fails to do its job and bring people in.
You mean its not bringing in people who are being offered competitive salaries?
Or its not bringing in people at basically minimum wage?
The migration system is designed, rightly, now to bring people in if their starting salary is about £30k+ . . . we shouldn't be looking to bring people in who are earning less than that, because if they're on less than that they're a net drain not a positive.
So which jobs aren't being filled for a long time that are meeting that salary? Or do you mean that offering 10% over National Minimum Wage isn't enough?
I mean that in the real world there is no solution other than imported labour. There is no labour pool available in many rural areas to do the work. So you're looking at farmers having to offer incentives to get people to relocate from Widnes to Wisbech to work in their dairy. Which they can't and the people won't. And even if they did the price of milk would then be so crazy that we would switch to cheaper imports.
What you believe is great theory. Meanwhile in the real world...
There are people who live in Wisbech already. Why aren't they doing the work?
If you pay a competitive enough salary, then people will move to take the job. Or you can invest in somewhere there are people.
"Bringing in people" is just getting people to move.
There is no reason those people need to move from another country, rather than somewhere in this one, other than that National Minimum Wage will attract people to move from Eastern Europe to Wisbech but won't get people to move from Widnes to Wisbech. A decent salary and good terms and conditions on the other hand will do.
If anyone is struggling to hire because they aren't paying a good salary, that's their problem, not ours. They either need to pay a good salary, or invest in automation, or their business isn't viable.
People won't move from Widnes to Wisbech when there's nowhere to live in Wisbech, apart from a bed in a dorm room. So many of our economic and social issues come back to the housing crisis.
Well yes, but @RochdalePioneers is arguing people should move from Warsaw to Wisbech, but thinks its impossible to move from Widnes to Wisbech.
If you need people to move for a job, that job needs to pay a competitive enough salary to entice people to move. The problem is that some businesses thought they could entice people to move for National Minimum Wage, where they'd have 7 workers living in a three bedroom house.
That's no longer an option, but it never was healthy either.
Either pay a decent salary, or invest in automation, or your business isn't viable.
When did you last work in a dairy? Farmers receive very little thanks to the supermarkets forcing prices down. My brother-in-law went through a stage where he was pouring the milk down the drain because keeping it cold for collection and cleaning the diary to the regulated standards was costing more than he was paid from the processors. He was not the only farmer pouring milk away either.
What's that got to do with anything I said?
If people are quite literally pouring their product down the drain, then we presumably have an oversupply of the product, which is why the supermarkets are able to keep prices down.
If that's the case, then it sounds like we have too many people working in the dairy sector, as opposed to not enough.
That isn't the case. They are pouring it away because the storage / shipping cost is less than the revenue they will get from not pouring it away. Meanwhile we import cheap subsidised dairy.
If they're pouring it away, they shouldn't be generating it in the first place. Why the f**k are they producing it only to pour it away? Zero sympathy.
And its funny, all my milk I get from my supermarket tends to normally have a union flag on it and says its made in this country.
Thread Fergus Butler-Gallie @_F_B_G_ Been having a look at the official logos of Tory leadership hopefuls and now feel sufficiently informed to judge them.
A story which illustrates so many lies and misunderstandings about what is happening out there: 1kg of butter? Who in their right mind buys that for domestic use? So the basic proposition is silly. Whats more, other brands are available who do basically the same product for less cost per kilo.
But - and its a big but - read and understand the comments and analysis about the dairy industry. There have been some *whopping* price rises. So the industry can afford to pay people more. And yet cannot find staff. Because quite simply British workers do not want to work in agriculture / food. At any price. We continue to have a staff shortage. And the "point-based migration" system fails to do its job and bring people in.
You mean its not bringing in people who are being offered competitive salaries?
Or its not bringing in people at basically minimum wage?
The migration system is designed, rightly, now to bring people in if their starting salary is about £30k+ . . . we shouldn't be looking to bring people in who are earning less than that, because if they're on less than that they're a net drain not a positive.
So which jobs aren't being filled for a long time that are meeting that salary? Or do you mean that offering 10% over National Minimum Wage isn't enough?
I mean that in the real world there is no solution other than imported labour. There is no labour pool available in many rural areas to do the work. So you're looking at farmers having to offer incentives to get people to relocate from Widnes to Wisbech to work in their dairy. Which they can't and the people won't. And even if they did the price of milk would then be so crazy that we would switch to cheaper imports.
What you believe is great theory. Meanwhile in the real world...
There are people who live in Wisbech already. Why aren't they doing the work?
If you pay a competitive enough salary, then people will move to take the job. Or you can invest in somewhere there are people.
"Bringing in people" is just getting people to move.
There is no reason those people need to move from another country, rather than somewhere in this one, other than that National Minimum Wage will attract people to move from Eastern Europe to Wisbech but won't get people to move from Widnes to Wisbech. A decent salary and good terms and conditions on the other hand will do.
If anyone is struggling to hire because they aren't paying a good salary, that's their problem, not ours. They either need to pay a good salary, or invest in automation, or their business isn't viable.
People won't move from Widnes to Wisbech when there's nowhere to live in Wisbech, apart from a bed in a dorm room. So many of our economic and social issues come back to the housing crisis.
Well yes, but @RochdalePioneers is arguing people should move from Warsaw to Wisbech, but thinks its impossible to move from Widnes to Wisbech.
If you need people to move for a job, that job needs to pay a competitive enough salary to entice people to move. The problem is that some businesses thought they could entice people to move for National Minimum Wage, where they'd have 7 workers living in a three bedroom house.
That's no longer an option, but it never was healthy either.
Either pay a decent salary, or invest in automation, or your business isn't viable.
When did you last work in a dairy? Farmers receive very little thanks to the supermarkets forcing prices down. My brother-in-law went through a stage where he was pouring the milk down the drain because keeping it cold for collection and cleaning the diary to the regulated standards was costing more than he was paid from the processors. He was not the only farmer pouring milk away either.
What's that got to do with anything I said?
If people are quite literally pouring their product down the drain, then we presumably have an oversupply of the product, which is why the supermarkets are able to keep prices down.
If that's the case, then it sounds like we have too many people working in the dairy sector, as opposed to not enough.
That isn't the case. They are pouring it away because the storage / shipping cost is less than the revenue they will get from not pouring it away. Meanwhile we import cheap subsidised dairy.
If they're pouring it away, they shouldn't be generating it in the first place. Why the f**k are they producing it only to pour it away? Zero sympathy.
And its funny, all my milk I get from my supermarket tends to normally have a union flag on it and says its made in this country.
Parents who sent children to private schools providing funding via taxation for state schools they do not even use while also funding their own children's education directly.
If there's a subsidy, it's from private school parents to state school children.
Not paying tax is not the same thing as receiving a subsidy.
If tax breaks can exist for religion they can certainly exist for education.
The private schools also provide scholarships to bright kids whose parents can’t afford the fees, and the larger private schools open their facilities such as libraries, sports grounds and swimming pools for community use.
Regarding Jenrick. Didn't watch his slot, but there is this quote reported from him regarding Sunak:
"I actually think it’s quite refreshing that we might have a prime minister who’s lived and worked around the world, is extremely knowledgeable about finance and technology, having lived in California and run businesses there, and will be a respected figure on the international stage for the fact that he has those connections and understanding."
I agree. Better to have someone who understands the world than the kind of semi-psychotic insular clueless dross who are also running.
Yes, Sunak truly is the Davos candidate, the finance man with the international connections.
I’m with @williamglenn, I think we might see Mourdaunt and Badenoch in the final.
I was a scholarship kid at primary school. Their fees for most of secondary are now £21,720 / year.
However, you can't just apply 20% to that to get the effect to the Exchequer. If schools are required to charge VAT, they would be entitled to recover it.
The Exchequer would still receive most of the money though as schools are labour cost intensive. Which means that the Exchequer would definitely be seeing at least 12-17% of the money, probably towards the higher point of that range.
A story which illustrates so many lies and misunderstandings about what is happening out there: 1kg of butter? Who in their right mind buys that for domestic use? So the basic proposition is silly. Whats more, other brands are available who do basically the same product for less cost per kilo.
But - and its a big but - read and understand the comments and analysis about the dairy industry. There have been some *whopping* price rises. So the industry can afford to pay people more. And yet cannot find staff. Because quite simply British workers do not want to work in agriculture / food. At any price. We continue to have a staff shortage. And the "point-based migration" system fails to do its job and bring people in.
You mean its not bringing in people who are being offered competitive salaries?
Or its not bringing in people at basically minimum wage?
The migration system is designed, rightly, now to bring people in if their starting salary is about £30k+ . . . we shouldn't be looking to bring people in who are earning less than that, because if they're on less than that they're a net drain not a positive.
So which jobs aren't being filled for a long time that are meeting that salary? Or do you mean that offering 10% over National Minimum Wage isn't enough?
I mean that in the real world there is no solution other than imported labour. There is no labour pool available in many rural areas to do the work. So you're looking at farmers having to offer incentives to get people to relocate from Widnes to Wisbech to work in their dairy. Which they can't and the people won't. And even if they did the price of milk would then be so crazy that we would switch to cheaper imports.
What you believe is great theory. Meanwhile in the real world...
There are people who live in Wisbech already. Why aren't they doing the work?
If you pay a competitive enough salary, then people will move to take the job. Or you can invest in somewhere there are people.
"Bringing in people" is just getting people to move.
There is no reason those people need to move from another country, rather than somewhere in this one, other than that National Minimum Wage will attract people to move from Eastern Europe to Wisbech but won't get people to move from Widnes to Wisbech. A decent salary and good terms and conditions on the other hand will do.
If anyone is struggling to hire because they aren't paying a good salary, that's their problem, not ours. They either need to pay a good salary, or invest in automation, or their business isn't viable.
People won't move from Widnes to Wisbech when there's nowhere to live in Wisbech, apart from a bed in a dorm room. So many of our economic and social issues come back to the housing crisis.
Well yes, but @RochdalePioneers is arguing people should move from Warsaw to Wisbech, but thinks its impossible to move from Widnes to Wisbech.
If you need people to move for a job, that job needs to pay a competitive enough salary to entice people to move. The problem is that some businesses thought they could entice people to move for National Minimum Wage, where they'd have 7 workers living in a three bedroom house.
That's no longer an option, but it never was healthy either.
Either pay a decent salary, or invest in automation, or your business isn't viable.
When did you last work in a dairy? Farmers receive very little thanks to the supermarkets forcing prices down. My brother-in-law went through a stage where he was pouring the milk down the drain because keeping it cold for collection and cleaning the diary to the regulated standards was costing more than he was paid from the processors. He was not the only farmer pouring milk away either.
What's that got to do with anything I said?
If people are quite literally pouring their product down the drain, then we presumably have an oversupply of the product, which is why the supermarkets are able to keep prices down.
If that's the case, then it sounds like we have too many people working in the dairy sector, as opposed to not enough.
That isn't the case. They are pouring it away because the storage / shipping cost is less than the revenue they will get from not pouring it away. Meanwhile we import cheap subsidised dairy.
Supermarket cartel problem, limiting options for sale at decent prices?
Supermarkets and big dairy companies together. Ultimately though its a judgement call made by many of the big supermarkets independently that consumers can't afford to pay x so artificially crush the price to a more affordable y.
Dairy is only one example. Plenty of others. And when the pressure grows too much we see both prices rising and the erosion of flag-shagging on pack claims. Or they simply do it fraudulently by sticking a Union Flag on foreign product that was finished / packed here.
Parents who sent children to private schools providing funding via taxation for state schools they do not even use while also funding their own children's education directly.
If there's a subsidy, it's from private school parents to state school children.
Not paying tax is not the same thing as receiving a subsidy.
If tax breaks can exist for religion they can certainly exist for education.
It is one thing to ask people to pay taxes so that other people's children can get the same education that their kids are getting. It is quite another to ask them to pay taxes to subsidise other people's children to get a better education than their children are getting. Why should I be subsidising other people's kids to push in front of my kids in the queue for university places or jobs? Forget it.
Usual Labour class envy mentality, even Blair's government abolished the assisted places scheme of course.
The not rich but bright child must not be allowed the best chance to get on and become a higher earning Tory voter
The not rich but bright child is precisely the one who is hurt most by the existence of private schools. Private education exists primarily to help the less bright but rich to jump the queue. It is the absolute antithesis of aspiration and meritocracy.
Thread Fergus Butler-Gallie @_F_B_G_ Been having a look at the official logos of Tory leadership hopefuls and now feel sufficiently informed to judge them.
I remember Fergus when he was a student. Doesn't seem to have grown up much in the intervening period. Really not as funny as he thinks he is.
A story which illustrates so many lies and misunderstandings about what is happening out there: 1kg of butter? Who in their right mind buys that for domestic use? So the basic proposition is silly. Whats more, other brands are available who do basically the same product for less cost per kilo.
But - and its a big but - read and understand the comments and analysis about the dairy industry. There have been some *whopping* price rises. So the industry can afford to pay people more. And yet cannot find staff. Because quite simply British workers do not want to work in agriculture / food. At any price. We continue to have a staff shortage. And the "point-based migration" system fails to do its job and bring people in.
You mean its not bringing in people who are being offered competitive salaries?
Or its not bringing in people at basically minimum wage?
The migration system is designed, rightly, now to bring people in if their starting salary is about £30k+ . . . we shouldn't be looking to bring people in who are earning less than that, because if they're on less than that they're a net drain not a positive.
So which jobs aren't being filled for a long time that are meeting that salary? Or do you mean that offering 10% over National Minimum Wage isn't enough?
I mean that in the real world there is no solution other than imported labour. There is no labour pool available in many rural areas to do the work. So you're looking at farmers having to offer incentives to get people to relocate from Widnes to Wisbech to work in their dairy. Which they can't and the people won't. And even if they did the price of milk would then be so crazy that we would switch to cheaper imports.
What you believe is great theory. Meanwhile in the real world...
There are people who live in Wisbech already. Why aren't they doing the work?
If you pay a competitive enough salary, then people will move to take the job. Or you can invest in somewhere there are people.
"Bringing in people" is just getting people to move.
There is no reason those people need to move from another country, rather than somewhere in this one, other than that National Minimum Wage will attract people to move from Eastern Europe to Wisbech but won't get people to move from Widnes to Wisbech. A decent salary and good terms and conditions on the other hand will do.
If anyone is struggling to hire because they aren't paying a good salary, that's their problem, not ours. They either need to pay a good salary, or invest in automation, or their business isn't viable.
People won't move from Widnes to Wisbech when there's nowhere to live in Wisbech, apart from a bed in a dorm room. So many of our economic and social issues come back to the housing crisis.
Well yes, but @RochdalePioneers is arguing people should move from Warsaw to Wisbech, but thinks its impossible to move from Widnes to Wisbech.
If you need people to move for a job, that job needs to pay a competitive enough salary to entice people to move. The problem is that some businesses thought they could entice people to move for National Minimum Wage, where they'd have 7 workers living in a three bedroom house.
That's no longer an option, but it never was healthy either.
Either pay a decent salary, or invest in automation, or your business isn't viable.
When did you last work in a dairy? Farmers receive very little thanks to the supermarkets forcing prices down. My brother-in-law went through a stage where he was pouring the milk down the drain because keeping it cold for collection and cleaning the diary to the regulated standards was costing more than he was paid from the processors. He was not the only farmer pouring milk away either.
What's that got to do with anything I said?
If people are quite literally pouring their product down the drain, then we presumably have an oversupply of the product, which is why the supermarkets are able to keep prices down.
If that's the case, then it sounds like we have too many people working in the dairy sector, as opposed to not enough.
That isn't the case. They are pouring it away because the storage / shipping cost is less than the revenue they will get from not pouring it away. Meanwhile we import cheap subsidised dairy.
If they're pouring it away, they shouldn't be generating it in the first place. Why the f**k are they producing it only to pour it away? Zero sympathy.
And its funny, all my milk I get from my supermarket tends to normally have a union flag on it and says its made in this country.
One area for cost saving - councils. Everyone needs a council, but noone needs more than that. Some upfront cost, but future savings as duplication is eliminated. Unitary system for all.
I'm not sure there is much left to save with many councils. Other than having them go bust and writing off all their debts.
Two websites needed to be hosted. Two offices, two sets of councillor expenses.
Save the £000s and the millions look after themselves
The Welsh Government noticed this.
Wales has some very small Councils. E.g., Merthyr Tydfil Borough Council serves just 60,000 people. Unbelievably tiny & inefficient.
Carwyn Jones' Government over a decade ago "recommended that the number of councils be reduced, through mergers rather than through boundary changes, from 22 to 10, 11 or 12; and suggested that the cost of merging the councils would be met through savings made within about two years".
Nothing much has happened, the proposals were too controversial.
Not least, the political parties themselves were very reluctant to reduce their Councillor base. If Merthyr Tydfil Borough Council is merged with Rhondda-Cynon-Taff, it is Llafur councillors and patronage that are reduced.
I think it is still a vague aspiration of Llafur to make the Welsh Councils larger, but now they are more concerned with increasing the size of the Senedd to 96 members instead of 60.
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
If they rely entirely on charitable donations and don't charge for entry then they should keep their charitable status. Otherwise they are just organisations that provide a service primarily to people on above average incomes so it's a bit hard to see why, in an era of squeezed public finances, they are worthy of a public subsidy.
Private school fees have risen way way way ahead of inflation, they're far more expensive in real terms than they were. They've made their bed on this one a long time ago. Fuck 'em.
Yes, I've noticed this. When I went to a private school, it focused on giving a good education. Buildings and facilities were better than state schools, but not that much better, and it wasn't always obvious at away rugby matches whether you were at state or private school just from the surroundings. They didn't feel the need to be amazing at everything, and kids who went there were largely from normal middle class families. The gap seems much wider now.
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
Nearly all private schools seem very unlike what I think of when I think of a charity. I have no objection to private schools that actually act in a manner more like a typical charity having charitable status.
The trouble is, that sort of describes Eton which has launched projects in the frozen north. What it does not describe is the new school-in-a-shop phenomenon.
Eton is charging £49k per year for an elite service. I don't know other charities that do something similar. Charging £49k per year for an elite service looks like a business to me.
Lots of charities are also businesses. See the tedious woke debate for examples. Does Eton do charitable stuff? Yes. Vote Labour to save Eton?
I'm not here to defend public schools. There are vast inequalities between privately and state-educated children in terms of life outcomes and yes, something should be done. I can't see this policy will help Labour win the next election.
And if we want to look at the special tax status for ancient institutions, we should take a look at the provisions made for religious organisations.
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
If they rely entirely on charitable donations and don't charge for entry then they should keep their charitable status. Otherwise they are just organisations that provide a service primarily to people on above average incomes so it's a bit hard to see why, in an era of squeezed public finances, they are worthy of a public subsidy.
Private school fees have risen way way way ahead of inflation, they're far more expensive in real terms than they were. They've made their bed on this one a long time ago. Fuck 'em.
Yes, I've noticed this. When I went to a private school, it focused on giving a good education. Buildings and facilities were better than state schools, but not that much better, and it wasn't always obvious at away rugby matches whether you were at state or private school just from the surroundings. They didn't feel the need to be amazing at everything, and kids who went there were largely from normal middle class families. The gap seems much wider now.
Proportion in private schools has fallen from 7% to 6% accordingly.
Repeated from previous thread as I missed that we had started a new one
I have mixed feelings over Zahawi.
On the plus side he has been competent in the various positions he has held - one of a handful along with Wallace and Gove in terms of getting things done and avoiding needless arguments with the stakeholders. Also it has to be said (though it shouldn't matter in his suitability for PM) he has a fab back story.
On the negative side he really screwed the pooch over the last week with taking the devil's coppers and then turning round and stabbing him in the front. Poor show and makes me distrustful of him.
Parents who sent children to private schools providing funding via taxation for state schools they do not even use while also funding their own children's education directly.
If there's a subsidy, it's from private school parents to state school children.
Not paying tax is not the same thing as receiving a subsidy.
If tax breaks can exist for religion they can certainly exist for education.
It is one thing to ask people to pay taxes so that other people's children can get the same education that their kids are getting. It is quite another to ask them to pay taxes to subsidise other people's children to get a better education than their children are getting. Why should I be subsidising other people's kids to push in front of my kids in the queue for university places or jobs? Forget it.
Usual Labour class envy mentality, even Blair's government abolished the assisted places scheme of course.
The not rich but bright child must not be allowed the best chance to get on and become a higher earning Tory voter
The not rich but bright child is precisely the one who is hurt most by the existence of private schools. Private education exists primarily to help the less bright but rich to jump the queue. It is the absolute antithesis of aspiration and meritocracy.
Utter rubbish, it was Wilson's Labour government which started the process of abolishing the state grammar schools which offered results at least as good as private schools. It was the Blair government which abolished assisted places which offered places to the bright but less well off in private schools and Starmer's policy on charitable status will have the same effect.
As so often with Labour class war, restricting choice and dumbing down to the lowest common denominator remains at its heart
Parents who sent children to private schools providing funding via taxation for state schools they do not even use while also funding their own children's education directly.
If there's a subsidy, it's from private school parents to state school children.
Not paying tax is not the same thing as receiving a subsidy.
If tax breaks can exist for religion they can certainly exist for education.
It is one thing to ask people to pay taxes so that other people's children can get the same education that their kids are getting. It is quite another to ask them to pay taxes to subsidise other people's children to get a better education than their children are getting. Why should I be subsidising other people's kids to push in front of my kids in the queue for university places or jobs? Forget it.
Usual Labour class envy mentality, even Blair's government abolished the assisted places scheme of course.
The not rich but bright child must not be allowed the best chance to get on and become a higher earning Tory voter
The not rich but bright child is precisely the one who is hurt most by the existence of private schools. Private education exists primarily to help the less bright but rich to jump the queue. It is the absolute antithesis of aspiration and meritocracy.
So what you're suggesting is that selection to the best schools would be better done via merit? Ability to learn, rather than ability to earn? That way the brightest pupils could go to the best schools, regardless of their parents income or ability to buy their way into the best schools catchment area, or pay the best schools fees.
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
Nearly all private schools seem very unlike what I think of when I think of a charity. I have no objection to private schools that actually act in a manner more like a typical charity having charitable status.
The trouble is, that sort of describes Eton which has launched projects in the frozen north. What it does not describe is the new school-in-a-shop phenomenon.
Eton is charging £49k per year for an elite service. I don't know other charities that do something similar. Charging £49k per year for an elite service looks like a business to me.
Lots of charities are also businesses. See the tedious woke debate for examples. Does Eton do charitable stuff? Yes. Vote Labour to save Eton?
I'm not here to defend public schools. There are vast inequalities between privately and state-educated children in terms of life outcomes and yes, something should be done. I can't see this policy will help Labour win the next election.
And if we want to look at the special tax status for ancient institutions, we should take a look at the provisions made for religious organisations.
We should take a look at neither. The state should leave them alone
"Starmer to confirm pledge to end charitable status of private schools like Eton in speech today in Gateshead. He will say:”When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status."
Taxing aspiration is never a good look.
The problem is not the private schools “Like Eton”, it’s the hundreds of small community private schools up and down the country, to whom the middle classes aspire to send their children, many of whom rely on charitable status to survive. Tax them, to target schools “Like Eton”, and they’ll close, adding to the burden on the State and upsetting tens of thousands of parents.
While leaving the actual Eton able to put their fees up a bit and not notice too much. It’s the worst class politics.
Nearly all private schools seem very unlike what I think of when I think of a charity. I have no objection to private schools that actually act in a manner more like a typical charity having charitable status.
The trouble is, that sort of describes Eton which has launched projects in the frozen north. What it does not describe is the new school-in-a-shop phenomenon.
Eton is charging £49k per year for an elite service. I don't know other charities that do something similar. Charging £49k per year for an elite service looks like a business to me.
Lots of charities are also businesses. See the tedious woke debate for examples. Does Eton do charitable stuff? Yes. Vote Labour to save Eton?
I'm not here to defend public schools. There are vast inequalities between privately and state-educated children in terms of life outcomes and yes, something should be done. I can't see this policy will help Labour win the next election.
I can't see how it solves anything but it's red meat that pleases their members before it disappears into the not a real priority list.
And it really won't be a priority when the local MP asks so which state school are the 500 children at XYZ private school going to in 6 weeks time. Think I'm joking we already see examples of that every year somewhere...
What would actually happen is the private school becomes an academy and things continue as before but the Government picks up the bill. Someone clearly hasn't explained what happened in Darlington and elsewhere to SKS..
Parents who sent children to private schools providing funding via taxation for state schools they do not even use while also funding their own children's education directly.
If there's a subsidy, it's from private school parents to state school children.
Not paying tax is not the same thing as receiving a subsidy.
If tax breaks can exist for religion they can certainly exist for education.
It is one thing to ask people to pay taxes so that other people's children can get the same education that their kids are getting. It is quite another to ask them to pay taxes to subsidise other people's children to get a better education than their children are getting. Why should I be subsidising other people's kids to push in front of my kids in the queue for university places or jobs? Forget it.
Usual Labour class envy mentality, even Blair's government abolished the assisted places scheme of course.
The not rich but bright child must not be allowed the best chance to get on and become a higher earning Tory voter
The not rich but bright child is precisely the one who is hurt most by the existence of private schools. Private education exists primarily to help the less bright but rich to jump the queue. It is the absolute antithesis of aspiration and meritocracy.
Utter rubbish, it was Wilson's Labour government which started the process of abolishing the state grammar schools which offered results at least as good as private schools. It was the Blair government which abolished assisted places which offered places to the bright but less well off in private schools and Starmer's policy on charitable status will have the same effect.
As so often with Labour class war, restricting choice and dumbing down to the lowest common denominator remains at its heart
Laughable. Would love you to tell Tory voters in areas that don't have grammar schools that their kids are "lowest common denominator"
Comments
And the children of those in Widnes aren't in a position to take on the work because they likewise know there are easier less hassle ways to earn money. Remember that the BBC and everyone else has spent over a decade encouraging people to enter farming with zero success.
So the easiest way of recruiting workers is to offer the work to people from abroad who already know farming or don't have any local ties and are happy to work in a remote location because it feels little different to countryside they came from in Eastern Europe.
Parents who sent children to private schools providing funding via taxation for state schools they do not even use while also funding their own children's education directly.
If there's a subsidy, it's from private school parents to state school children.
Not paying tax is not the same thing as receiving a subsidy.
If tax breaks can exist for religion they can certainly exist for education.
It's like how people speak of the 1970s, in a universally dismal voice. They write long dismal books about it. Well, I was 15 when it started and 25 when it ended and I loved every minute of it thank you. If you asked me if I could go back there I will give an unhesitating 'Yes'. Perspective is all.
I know that you are a "market or be damned" libertarian, but we would be damned and then be reliant on cheaper subsidised imports. Which would be strategically bad...
- We’re already seeing increases in post-covid conditions (over and above the reported long-covid issues). And we can expect more. Significant increases in cardiovascular issues (strokes, TIA, various types of dysrhythmia, inflammatory heart disease, ischemic heart disease, thrombotic disorders), pulmonary issues, diabetes, and the like. Are any of them addressing the healthcare support that will be needed?
-
- We’re now in the third summer since covid struck and I haven’t seen any noticeable installations of HEPA filters, far-UV air treatment, or the like. If we want to reduce the endemic burden of covid and get ahead of any future respiratory pandemics, then making key areas of indoors similar to outdoors in terms of the air would be a very good idea indeed. For God’s sake, start with schools, care homes, and hospitals and we’d get 90% of the benefits just there.
Because covid has been a pretty big part of what’s been happening, so I’d think it’d be a higher priority for the country than, say “woke.” And doing things that would reduce or remove the need for restrictions or lockdowns would be something I think we'd all like to see. Or are they all just saying “cut taxes cut taxes cut taxes” like a robot that’s slipped a cog?
I'm all in favour
(I went to a private school in the 80s/90s. I was on a scholarship, though not one provided by the school. It has since turned out that the majority of my friends also were on a scholarship. It must have been a sizeable number who were, though clearly that was 30 years ago and things may be different now.)
https://socialmetricscommission.org.uk/
I am unclear on the extent of the subsidy. The figure in relation to VAT is quoted at £1.6bn - but does this take account of VAT recovery?
I believe the business rates aspect is ~£100m/year.
Their choices will be between the extra skiing holiday, another new car, and sending their kids to private school. Or similar.
What has changed is that we have cut ourselves off from the largely eastern European labour force who work on farms across Europe...
Lol - funds scholarships for paupers like Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.
As usual this class war policy which even centrist Labour leaders like Blair and Starmer use as red meat for the Labour membership and Labour core vote always ends up in reality just making private schools more exclusive than they were before
This is not a Boris situation where eliminating the sane Brexiteers leaving him only the nutters so that he could look reasonable worked very well.
I called my new GP and got an in-person appointment on the same day. As an aside while speaking to the GP I mentioned I was having an issue with my back (not what I'd gone in for) and he mentioned they have an on-site Physio and I could book to get an appointment - I suspect that conversation would never have happened had it been a telephone appointment.
I didn't feel it necessary to see a physio, but I mentioned on here my back issues and multiple people here recommended seeing a physio. So I called my GP surgery back and got an appointment to see the Physio a few days later. The physio diagnosed I'd torn a ligament, he could feel where it was spasming due to the tear, and he gave me a course of exercises to do for recovery.
I'm only half way through the six weeks of exercises he recommended but I already feel much, much better. Much more flexible, nearly back to my normal self again. Had I not seen someone in person (and had people here not recommended I go to see someone) then I doubt I'd have recovered so well. I'd assumed my pains were just part of getting older, I hadn't realised I'd suffered a muscle tear.
My previous GP it was impossible to see anyone in person with. My new one though have bent over backwards to be helpful. They also have posters up in the receptionists office saying they'd won a newspaper competition to find the GP with the best customer service - I can see why!
We need more competition so that GP surgeries that don't give a shit are outcompeted by those like my new one that do.
(Though I think the average for UK private school fees* is possibly around £15k - quick google, not sure of the methodology behind that.
*A lot of day pupils.)
Mr. L, I was thinking he might eliminate the nutters....
My prep school in the 70s had an unheated outdoor pool in Shropshire but you wouldn't get away with that these days. Public school had the full 25m heated monty.
We're finally waking up to how broken our food supply chains are that so much of the west is reliant on wheat and vegetables grown out there. We could grow more domestically. But it is more expensive and consumers can't / won't pay for it.
I can assure you that the people choosing between eating and heating (and I have met quite a few through my work with Citizens Advice) DO NOT factor in private school fees when weighing up their priorities.
IMHO a school being a charity should mean that its admission policy is entirely 'needs blind' and admission criteria be wholly unrelated to income. This would exclude most of course, but that would be consistent with what the general public think charities are. and I think they are right.
Most are businesses masquerading as charities.
It cannot be a charitable purpose if a school in practice is accepting pupil X who is less meritorious than Y but has more money. That is the same principle as The Ritz, which is (so far) not a charity.
If people are quite literally pouring their product down the drain, then we presumably have an oversupply of the product, which is why the supermarkets are able to keep prices down.
If that's the case, then it sounds like we have too many people working in the dairy sector, as opposed to not enough.
- 20% cuts to government spending = good. The NHS and schools can just make do with less.
- Removal of 20% tax exemption from private schools = bad. It'll push them out of business and penalise the poor middle class families who send their kids there.
But it isn't serious politics.
I see we have reached the "how will you pay for it?" phase.
First up is 20% spending cuts across all departments.
It's a view.
Barnard Castle is £15500 but Lunch seems to be included
That's Day fees for both...
Glasgow Grammar is slightly cheaper £14,000 for the year.
A charity doesn't distribute profit to shareholders and is run for one (or more) of a set of particular purposes, one of which is "the advancement of education". A school pretty clearly falls into this category. Giving charitable status to non-profit making organisations with charitable aims is... not a subsidy?
Sure, you can redefine charity to say "education but, wait, not schools". But carving out an exception from a principle because you don't like something is just spite.
As @Sandpit says, this isn't about Eton. Eton can implode in a ball of fire for all I care and the world would probably be better off.
What I do care about is, for example, a friend of mine who's a science technician and, together with her parents, is scrimping and saving to send her kid to a non-selective private school round here. He's a nice kid and has absolutely vanished in the state system, even though the secondaries around here are not bad at all.
Cranking the prices up at that school will hurt kids like him. It will not hurt the future Johnsons and Rees-Moggs of this world one bit. Their parents will still be able to afford to send them to Eton.
You can argue that she shouldn't need to send her son to the private school; that the secondary should be good enough. I agree with you. But right now it isn't. £150m pa from abolishing charitable status will do virtually nothing for the state education system.
I would be entirely in favour of reforming the system so that the charitable status of private schools is better defined, perhaps including a cap on fees or a limit on selectivity. But Labour hammering the kids at Frogglethorpe School because they don't like Eton is just class politics.
The not rich but bright child must not be allowed the best chance to get on and become a higher earning Tory voter
I'm not here to defend public schools. There are vast inequalities between privately and state-educated children in terms of life outcomes and yes, something should be done. I can't see this policy will help Labour win the next election.
And its funny, all my milk I get from my supermarket tends to normally have a union flag on it and says its made in this country.
"I actually think it’s quite refreshing that we might have a prime minister who’s lived and worked around the world, is extremely knowledgeable about finance and technology, having lived in California and run businesses there, and will be a respected figure on the international stage for the fact that he has those connections and understanding."
I agree. Better to have someone who understands the world than the kind of semi-psychotic insular clueless dross who are also running.
However, you can't just apply 20% to that to get the effect to the Exchequer. If schools are required to charge VAT, they would be entitled to recover it.
It's the sort of policy I see goes down well with Labour's left wing but gets quietly kicked into the grass before implementation when the consequences are pointed.
https://twitter.com/_F_B_G_/status/1546239443933200386
Thread
Fergus Butler-Gallie
@_F_B_G_
Been having a look at the official logos of Tory leadership hopefuls and now feel sufficiently informed to judge them.
Others don't.
I’m with @williamglenn, I think we might see Mourdaunt and Badenoch in the final.
Dairy is only one example. Plenty of others. And when the pressure grows too much we see both prices rising and the erosion of flag-shagging on pack claims. Or they simply do it fraudulently by sticking a Union Flag on foreign product that was finished / packed here.
Supposedly we have at least Priti Vacant also to declare - any others? I'm just wondering where the cut is in this rabble - below Tugendhat?
Any specific, achievable proposal will get torn to shreds. So they won't give one.
Wales has some very small Councils. E.g., Merthyr Tydfil Borough Council serves just 60,000 people. Unbelievably tiny & inefficient.
Carwyn Jones' Government over a decade ago "recommended that the number of councils be reduced, through mergers rather than through boundary changes, from 22 to 10, 11 or 12; and suggested that the cost of merging the councils would be met through savings made within about two years".
Nothing much has happened, the proposals were too controversial.
Not least, the political parties themselves were very reluctant to reduce their Councillor base. If Merthyr Tydfil Borough Council is merged with Rhondda-Cynon-Taff, it is Llafur councillors and patronage that are reduced.
I think it is still a vague aspiration of Llafur to make the Welsh Councils larger, but now they are more concerned with increasing the size of the Senedd to 96 members instead of 60.
I have mixed feelings over Zahawi.
On the plus side he has been competent in the various positions he has held - one of a handful along with Wallace and Gove in terms of getting things done and avoiding needless arguments with the stakeholders. Also it has to be said (though it shouldn't matter in his suitability for PM) he has a fab back story.
On the negative side he really screwed the pooch over the last week with taking the devil's coppers and then turning round and stabbing him in the front. Poor show and makes me distrustful of him.
As so often with Labour class war, restricting choice and dumbing down to the lowest common denominator remains at its heart
Once nominations close, it would be good to see a number of hustings, so we can hear what the candidates have to say.
Formal hustings, organised by the party, that can be televised, rather than media-run ‘debates’ designed to produce much more heat than light.
And it really won't be a priority when the local MP asks so which state school are the 500 children at XYZ private school going to in 6 weeks time. Think I'm joking we already see examples of that every year somewhere...
What would actually happen is the private school becomes an academy and things continue as before but the Government picks up the bill. Someone clearly hasn't explained what happened in Darlington and elsewhere to SKS..