While I am amused by the sheer number of candidates available to the Conservative selectorate, I don’t see that this is a bad thing nor the need for arbitrarily high nomination barriers to weed candidates out: surely the process of elimination from n candidates down to 2 does this process just as well, if not better? The caveat to this is the risk of (as the Tories seem to love) a long and drawn out leadership contest, but surely this can be mitigated against by simply doing what the Lib Dems do: let all MPs rank candidates in order of preference and get the elimination process done in a day. This would have the benefit of reducing the scope for playing silly buggers, though Tory MPs might well complain that this would spoil the fun of the process.
Re private schools - if I donate £1000 to my local state school this is not a charitable donation presumably - but if I give it to Eton College, I can get a tax break. Is that right?
Mr. Sandpit, we might see one of them (Mordaunt currently favourite, of course) but it'd be quite something if Sunak isn't even in the top 2.
It would indeed be quite surprising, but Sunak came out of the blocks early and now seems to be fading fast.
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.
I don't agree with that first part, his nomination lead has been very consistent. There are plenty of undeclared votes and likely transfers of course, but I wouldn't say the trajectory was a problem.
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 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
Rubbish. Wanting a high quality education for everyone is the exact opposite of dumbing down. Selective education imposed the lowest common denominator on most children. The trouble with you Tories is that you can't even comprehend that it's possible to want the best for everyone, rather than dividing society up into people who deserve the best and people who deserve the dregs.
Re private schools - if I donate £1000 to my local state school this is not a charitable donation presumably - but if I give it to Eton College, I can get a tax break. Is that right?
You donate via tax to your local state school, Eton gets no funds from taxpayers
While I am amused by the sheer number of candidates available to the Conservative selectorate, I don’t see that this is a bad thing nor the need for arbitrarily high nomination barriers to weed candidates out: surely the process of elimination from n candidates down to 2 does this process just as well, if not better? The caveat to this is the risk of (as the Tories seem to love) a long and drawn out leadership contest, but surely this can be mitigated against by simply doing what the Lib Dems do: let all MPs rank candidates in order of preference and get the elimination process done in a day. This would have the benefit of reducing the scope for playing silly buggers, though Tory MPs might well complain that this would spoil the fun of the process.
Alternatively they could simply insist on FPTP? The Tory Party seems to love it for everyone but themselves.
I think the Labour policy on charitable status for private schools misses the point.
The objection seems to be that it isn't fair for the rich to buy their children an advantage in the cut throat competition for decent middle class jobs by paying for a better education, and government should stop subsidising that advantage.
But the problem isn't that the rich can buy themselves an advantage in meritocratic competition. The problem is that the ideology of meritocracy is a sham used to justify obscene inequality, and even those people at the bottom of the educational pile should be able to contribute to society and live a life of dignity.
The point of the policy seems to be so that the children of Labour supporters in the middle class who don't use private schools out of principle get a better chance to compete for the secure middle class lifestyle that their peers are buying for their children, and so they can salve their conscience at the inequality between their children and working class children.
Re private schools - if I donate £1000 to my local state school this is not a charitable donation presumably - but if I give it to Eton College, I can get a tax break. Is that right?
Not really. Traditionally, fund-raising for state schools is done by volunteer organisations which are charities. Sometimes it's a PTA, sometimes it's a "Friends Of" association (it's the latter at Capitano Junior's primary). These either have formal charitable status or are de facto charities. https://www.pta.co.uk/running-a-pta/managing-a-pta/charity-governance-faqs/
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.
i.e. grammar schools?
(I am firmly on nether one side nor the other on grammar schools, by the way, and indeed the issue is such a complex one of winners and losers that I am slightly baffled when anyone is able to land firmly and unambiguously on one side of the debate.)
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"
It's dripping in snobbery and condescension isn't it.
Looks as though there will be a members' ballot. Tory MP for Harrow East Bob Blackman, who is joint-executive secretary of the 1922 Committee, has said the threshold for support to enter the first round of the Conservative Party leadership race is likely to be 20.
He told Sky News: "The view is that candidates to get on the ballot paper should demonstrate a broad swathe of support amongst Conservative MPs.
"So we're looking at a proposer, a seconder and either 18 supporters or possibly more supporters in order to reduce that list.
He then says the "first ballot is likely to have a threshold of 10% of the votes, i.e. 36 MPs, supporting a candidate for them to go through to the second ballot. That once again is not confirmed yet, but I suspect that will be the case.
"After that we probably won't need thresholds because the list will shorten considerably."
Blackman also said it is a "condition of nomination" for candidates to agree that they will contest the final postal ballot of party members if they reach the last two, to avoid a situation as in 2016, when Theresa May became prime minister after her final rival, Andrea Leadsom, dropped out. (BBC)
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
The policy of closing state grammar schools was also followed enthusiastically by the 70s Conservative government.
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"
Given most Tory voters want more grammar schools they would have no problem with more choice you leftwingers as usual wish to deny.
It is not the kids that are lowest common denominator but many of the state schools, especially in poorer areas
Looks as though there will be a members' ballot. Tory MP for Harrow East Bob Blackman, who is joint-executive secretary of the 1922 Committee, has said the threshold for support to enter the first round of the Conservative Party leadership race is likely to be 20.
He told Sky News: "The view is that candidates to get on the ballot paper should demonstrate a broad swathe of support amongst Conservative MPs.
"So we're looking at a proposer, a seconder and either 18 supporters or possibly more supporters in order to reduce that list.
He then says the "first ballot is likely to have a threshold of 10% of the votes, i.e. 36 MPs, supporting a candidate for them to go through to the second ballot. That once again is not confirmed yet, but I suspect that will be the case.
"After that we probably won't need thresholds because the list will shorten considerably."
Blackman also said it is a "condition of nomination" for candidates to agree that they will contest the final postal ballot of party members if they reach the last two, to avoid a situation as in 2016, when Theresa May became prime minister after her final rival, Andrea Leadsom, dropped out. (BBC)
Mr. Sandpit, we might see one of them (Mordaunt currently favourite, of course) but it'd be quite something if Sunak isn't even in the top 2.
It would indeed be quite surprising, but Sunak came out of the blocks early and now seems to be fading fast.
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.
I don't agree with that first part, his nomination lead has been very consistent. There are plenty of undeclared votes and likely transfers of course, but I wouldn't say the trajectory was a problem.
Trajectory looks like a big problem for Javid to me.
Who needs 'human experience' when you have McVey ?
...Asked about his "human experience" - the fact he potentially represents a particular generation of Conservatives, having gone to Charterhouse School and to Oxford University, and how he hopes to win votes from people with different background – the former health secretary says he's aware that political leaders need to have a broad appeal.
"That's why, as Tony Blair had John Prescott as his deputy prime minister, I'll have Esther McVey as mine,"...
Re private schools - if I donate £1000 to my local state school this is not a charitable donation presumably - but if I give it to Eton College, I can get a tax break. Is that right?
You donate via tax to your local state school, Eton gets no funds from taxpayers
Lol, all the parents that pay fees are tax dogers natürlich!
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
Circular 10/65 was the result of a report that showed that there was structural problems within the 11 plus exams that biased towards middle class families.
Which is still the case now - those families who can afford pay for preparation prior to the exams do better than those who sit them blind.
Looks as though there will be a members' ballot. Tory MP for Harrow East Bob Blackman, who is joint-executive secretary of the 1922 Committee, has said the threshold for support to enter the first round of the Conservative Party leadership race is likely to be 20.
He told Sky News: "The view is that candidates to get on the ballot paper should demonstrate a broad swathe of support amongst Conservative MPs.
"So we're looking at a proposer, a seconder and either 18 supporters or possibly more supporters in order to reduce that list.
He then says the "first ballot is likely to have a threshold of 10% of the votes, i.e. 36 MPs, supporting a candidate for them to go through to the second ballot. That once again is not confirmed yet, but I suspect that will be the case.
"After that we probably won't need thresholds because the list will shorten considerably."
Blackman also said it is a "condition of nomination" for candidates to agree that they will contest the final postal ballot of party members if they reach the last two, to avoid a situation as in 2016, when Theresa May became prime minister after her final rival, Andrea Leadsom, dropped out. (BBC)
Of course all candidates will say that if they reach the final stage they will contest it, if they didn't there'd be no point in standing, but once it reaches the final two if one pulls out then what's the 1922 going to do about that? I can't see how that can be enforced at all.
Re private schools - if I donate £1000 to my local state school this is not a charitable donation presumably - but if I give it to Eton College, I can get a tax break. Is that right?
You can donate to many state schools and claim appropriate tax relief, although this would usually be in the form of gift aid. Otherwise, academies and MATs can be registered as exempt charities.
"Academies, sixth form colleges, voluntary aided, voluntary controlled and foundation trust schools are exempt charities"
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
The policy of closing state grammar schools was also followed enthusiastically by the 70s Conservative government.
The education minister was one Margaret Thatcher!
It was followed by Ted Heath, Thatcher's boss and they both just let local authorities decide.
However Douglas Home in 1964 stood on a Tory manifesto of keeping the grammar schools, Wilson only beat him by the narrowest of margins UK wide and in England alone Home actually won a majority of seats
Looks as though there will be a members' ballot. Tory MP for Harrow East Bob Blackman, who is joint-executive secretary of the 1922 Committee, has said the threshold for support to enter the first round of the Conservative Party leadership race is likely to be 20.
He told Sky News: "The view is that candidates to get on the ballot paper should demonstrate a broad swathe of support amongst Conservative MPs.
"So we're looking at a proposer, a seconder and either 18 supporters or possibly more supporters in order to reduce that list.
He then says the "first ballot is likely to have a threshold of 10% of the votes, i.e. 36 MPs, supporting a candidate for them to go through to the second ballot. That once again is not confirmed yet, but I suspect that will be the case.
"After that we probably won't need thresholds because the list will shorten considerably."
Blackman also said it is a "condition of nomination" for candidates to agree that they will contest the final postal ballot of party members if they reach the last two, to avoid a situation as in 2016, when Theresa May became prime minister after her final rival, Andrea Leadsom, dropped out. (BBC)
How is the latter enforcable?
Presumably the plan is that, if a candidate drops out of the members’ ballot, they either restart the process or replace them with the last eliminated candidate?
Patel and Bravermann need to work out between themselves who is going to get the 20. Shapps and Javid need to do the same for their prefferred other candidates.
Looks as though there will be a members' ballot. Tory MP for Harrow East Bob Blackman, who is joint-executive secretary of the 1922 Committee, has said the threshold for support to enter the first round of the Conservative Party leadership race is likely to be 20.
He told Sky News: "The view is that candidates to get on the ballot paper should demonstrate a broad swathe of support amongst Conservative MPs.
"So we're looking at a proposer, a seconder and either 18 supporters or possibly more supporters in order to reduce that list.
He then says the "first ballot is likely to have a threshold of 10% of the votes, i.e. 36 MPs, supporting a candidate for them to go through to the second ballot. That once again is not confirmed yet, but I suspect that will be the case.
"After that we probably won't need thresholds because the list will shorten considerably."
Blackman also said it is a "condition of nomination" for candidates to agree that they will contest the final postal ballot of party members if they reach the last two, to avoid a situation as in 2016, when Theresa May became prime minister after her final rival, Andrea Leadsom, dropped out. (BBC)
How is the latter enforcable?
Yes I was wondering that. You can't force someone to run if they do a Leadsom style gaffe and want so shuffle off to the shadows. If it's straight afterwards then you could always bring the third placed candidate back, although they might look tainted as a previous also-ran?
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"
It's dripping in snobbery and condescension isn't it.
I would rather be dripping in Tory snobbery than Labour class war!
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
Circular 10/65 was the result of a report that showed that there was structural problems within the 11 plus exams that biased towards middle class families.
Which is still the case now - those families who can afford pay for preparation prior to the exams do better than those who sit them blind.
Those who sit them blind may have less chance, but they've got more chance than they've got of their parents buying a home in the right catchment area, or paying the school fees.
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.
As if this hasn't been done to death for the last 10 years. If you want to save costs, you need to reduce the number of statutory functions that Council's are responsible for. Instead government has a habit of adding to them, without funding them. There are a lot of myths about duplication and efficiency savings from mergers, but they aren't always born out by reality; what typically happens is that they are incredibly disruptive and expensive.
What the government could do to save money and reinvigorate democracy is to give Council's more power to set whatever level of council tax they so desire. This will ultimately drive actual efficiency, because no one wants to pay £5000 per year in Council tax.
There is also an insane situation where the property industry has been unaminously lobbying government to increase planning fees for several years, and for this money to be 'ring fenced' for the planning service. Instead fees remain low, service is poor, delays are never ending, and the service is cross subsidised by Council tax.
Looks as though there will be a members' ballot. Tory MP for Harrow East Bob Blackman, who is joint-executive secretary of the 1922 Committee, has said the threshold for support to enter the first round of the Conservative Party leadership race is likely to be 20.
He told Sky News: "The view is that candidates to get on the ballot paper should demonstrate a broad swathe of support amongst Conservative MPs.
"So we're looking at a proposer, a seconder and either 18 supporters or possibly more supporters in order to reduce that list.
He then says the "first ballot is likely to have a threshold of 10% of the votes, i.e. 36 MPs, supporting a candidate for them to go through to the second ballot. That once again is not confirmed yet, but I suspect that will be the case.
"After that we probably won't need thresholds because the list will shorten considerably."
Blackman also said it is a "condition of nomination" for candidates to agree that they will contest the final postal ballot of party members if they reach the last two, to avoid a situation as in 2016, when Theresa May became prime minister after her final rival, Andrea Leadsom, dropped out. (BBC)
Of course all candidates will say that if they reach the final stage they will contest it, if they didn't there'd be no point in standing, but once it reaches the final two if one pulls out then what's the 1922 going to do about that? I can't see how that can be enforced at all.
Equally it only takes Bozo to do something stupid in the next 2 weeks (or for his meeting with dubious Russians to reach the news again) for the 1922 to want Bozo gone ASAP.
It's perfectly possible that the 1922 actually doesn't want a membership vote this time round.
Looks as though there will be a members' ballot. Tory MP for Harrow East Bob Blackman, who is joint-executive secretary of the 1922 Committee, has said the threshold for support to enter the first round of the Conservative Party leadership race is likely to be 20.
He told Sky News: "The view is that candidates to get on the ballot paper should demonstrate a broad swathe of support amongst Conservative MPs.
"So we're looking at a proposer, a seconder and either 18 supporters or possibly more supporters in order to reduce that list.
He then says the "first ballot is likely to have a threshold of 10% of the votes, i.e. 36 MPs, supporting a candidate for them to go through to the second ballot. That once again is not confirmed yet, but I suspect that will be the case.
"After that we probably won't need thresholds because the list will shorten considerably."
Blackman also said it is a "condition of nomination" for candidates to agree that they will contest the final postal ballot of party members if they reach the last two, to avoid a situation as in 2016, when Theresa May became prime minister after her final rival, Andrea Leadsom, dropped out. (BBC)
Of course all candidates will say that if they reach the final stage they will contest it, if they didn't there'd be no point in standing, but once it reaches the final two if one pulls out then what's the 1922 going to do about that? I can't see how that can be enforced at all.
Not only that, but if the final MP round has one candidate with, say 60%+ support, then I'm not at all sure that the members should be able to overturn that.
Is this the best Starmer can come up with, just back to the same policy of every previous Labour leader for past whatever years, with some class warfare about private schools that at best does square root of f##k all and worst actively makes problems worse.
The easiest and simplest solution to private schools gaming the system say for university places is post A-Level result applications to uni. Then none of this predicted stuff, hard evidence of how well each kid has done and you can do a bit of calibration based upon the schools they went to i.e. Richy Rich from Eton getting the same scores (or only marginally better scores) as somebody from a very poorly performing school.
Patel and Bravermann need to work out between themselves who is going to get the 20. Shapps and Javid need to do the same for their prefferred other candidates.
I thought most of those standing were only doing so in order to sell their votes to a better candidate in return for a position in the cabinet?
As neither are going to win, there's no incentive to bargain.
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"
Given most Tory voters want more grammar schools they would have no problem with more choice you leftwingers as usual wish to deny.
It is not the kids that are lowest common denominator but many of the state schools, especially in poorer areas
Surely 'most Tory voter's are not parents of school-age children; they might be grandparents of them but parenting days have passed!
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
Circular 10/65 was the result of a report that showed that there was structural problems within the 11 plus exams that biased towards middle class families.
Which is still the case now - those families who can afford pay for preparation prior to the exams do better than those who sit them blind.
The evidence is those working class children who get into grammar schools get better results than working class children of similar ability who don't
Mr. Sandpit, we might see one of them (Mordaunt currently favourite, of course) but it'd be quite something if Sunak isn't even in the top 2.
It would indeed be quite surprising, but Sunak came out of the blocks early and now seems to be fading fast.
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.
I don't agree with that first part, his nomination lead has been very consistent. There are plenty of undeclared votes and likely transfers of course, but I wouldn't say the trajectory was a problem.
Trajectory looks like a big problem for Javid to me.
Truss is the one I'm watching, as the later nominations come in.
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"
It's dripping in snobbery and condescension isn't it.
I would rather be dripping in Tory snobbery than Labour class war!
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.
As if this hasn't been done to death for the last 10 years. If you want to save costs, you need to reduce the number of statutory functions that Council's are responsible for. Instead government has a habit of adding to them, without funding them. There are a lot of myths about duplication and efficiency savings from mergers, but they aren't always born out by reality; what typically happens is that they are incredibly disruptive and expensive.
What the government could do to save money and reinvigorate democracy is to give Council's more power to set whatever level of council tax they so desire. This will ultimately drive actual efficiency, because no one wants to pay £5000 per year in Council tax.
There is also an insane situation where the property industry has been unaminously lobbying government to increase planning fees for several years, and for this money to be 'ring fenced' for the planning service. Instead fees remain low, service is poor, delays are never ending, and the service is cross subsidised by Council tax.
Delays are never ending because anyone sane would leave a planning authority and go to the private sector - wages really haven't gone up for decades.
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
The policy of closing state grammar schools was also followed enthusiastically by the 70s Conservative government.
The education minister was one Margaret Thatcher!
She wasn't a True Tory apparently. Shut grammar schools and was A Remainer!!!!!
Who needs 'human experience' when you have McVey ?
...Asked about his "human experience" - the fact he potentially represents a particular generation of Conservatives, having gone to Charterhouse School and to Oxford University, and how he hopes to win votes from people with different background – the former health secretary says he's aware that political leaders need to have a broad appeal.
"That's why, as Tony Blair had John Prescott as his deputy prime minister, I'll have Esther McVey as mine,"...
Question is, who out of Prescott and McVey has the more effective left jab?
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"
Given most Tory voters want more grammar schools they would have no problem with more choice you leftwingers as usual wish to deny.
It is not the kids that are lowest common denominator but many of the state schools, especially in poorer areas
Surely 'most Tory voter's are not parents of school-age children; they might be grandparents of them but parenting days have passed!
The age more voted Tory than Labour in 2019 was 39 not 69
Looks as though there will be a members' ballot. Tory MP for Harrow East Bob Blackman, who is joint-executive secretary of the 1922 Committee, has said the threshold for support to enter the first round of the Conservative Party leadership race is likely to be 20.
He told Sky News: "The view is that candidates to get on the ballot paper should demonstrate a broad swathe of support amongst Conservative MPs.
"So we're looking at a proposer, a seconder and either 18 supporters or possibly more supporters in order to reduce that list.
He then says the "first ballot is likely to have a threshold of 10% of the votes, i.e. 36 MPs, supporting a candidate for them to go through to the second ballot. That once again is not confirmed yet, but I suspect that will be the case.
"After that we probably won't need thresholds because the list will shorten considerably."
Blackman also said it is a "condition of nomination" for candidates to agree that they will contest the final postal ballot of party members if they reach the last two, to avoid a situation as in 2016, when Theresa May became prime minister after her final rival, Andrea Leadsom, dropped out. (BBC)
So how does that work if all the candidates drop out bar the front runner? Does the out-going exec envisage a process of hustings where the candidate debates with themselves?
While I am amused by the sheer number of candidates available to the Conservative selectorate, I don’t see that this is a bad thing nor the need for arbitrarily high nomination barriers to weed candidates out: surely the process of elimination from n candidates down to 2 does this process just as well, if not better? The caveat to this is the risk of (as the Tories seem to love) a long and drawn out leadership contest, but surely this can be mitigated against by simply doing what the Lib Dems do: let all MPs rank candidates in order of preference and get the elimination process done in a day. This would have the benefit of reducing the scope for playing silly buggers, though Tory MPs might well complain that this would spoil the fun of the process.
Alternatively they could simply insist on FPTP? The Tory Party seems to love it for everyone but themselves.
Pedant hat on: If by that you mean everyone pitches in, they have one round, and the person who gets the highest number of votes is the winner, that wouldn't be FPTP because there is no 'post'. The 'post' (I think) in FPTP elections is half the number of MPs plus one - i.e. enough to form a government.
I know what you mean, but I don't think that system is (or should correctly be called FPTP).
Mr. Sandpit, aye. That'll be an increased burden on state schools with zero extra funding.
Politics of envy bullshit from Starmer.
Yeah even though Corbyn is gone, the hatred and resentment is still there. That's the problem with the labour party.
The other effect of this policy is to boost house prices even further in middle class areas with good schools and make poor places even more impossible to live in, if you are middle class/aspirational. So it actually boosts inequality even further.
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
Circular 10/65 was the result of a report that showed that there was structural problems within the 11 plus exams that biased towards middle class families.
Which is still the case now - those families who can afford pay for preparation prior to the exams do better than those who sit them blind.
The evidence is those working class children who get into grammar schools get better results than working class children of similar ability who don't
Not quite you need to look at the total results for all working class children in an area.
And on that basis a comprehensive system with appropriate streaming results in better results overall compared to a grammar / secondary modern approach.
Looks as though there will be a members' ballot. Tory MP for Harrow East Bob Blackman, who is joint-executive secretary of the 1922 Committee, has said the threshold for support to enter the first round of the Conservative Party leadership race is likely to be 20.
He told Sky News: "The view is that candidates to get on the ballot paper should demonstrate a broad swathe of support amongst Conservative MPs.
"So we're looking at a proposer, a seconder and either 18 supporters or possibly more supporters in order to reduce that list.
He then says the "first ballot is likely to have a threshold of 10% of the votes, i.e. 36 MPs, supporting a candidate for them to go through to the second ballot. That once again is not confirmed yet, but I suspect that will be the case.
"After that we probably won't need thresholds because the list will shorten considerably."
Blackman also said it is a "condition of nomination" for candidates to agree that they will contest the final postal ballot of party members if they reach the last two, to avoid a situation as in 2016, when Theresa May became prime minister after her final rival, Andrea Leadsom, dropped out. (BBC)
Of course all candidates will say that if they reach the final stage they will contest it, if they didn't there'd be no point in standing, but once it reaches the final two if one pulls out then what's the 1922 going to do about that? I can't see how that can be enforced at all.
Not only that, but if the final MP round has one candidate with, say 60%+ support, then I'm not at all sure that the members should be able to overturn that.
I'm not at all sure the members would want to.
A significant chunk of members would want to back whoever the MPs have backed, because they'll trust the MPs judgement. If an overwhelming majority of MPs back a particular candidate, then a significant chunk of members will follow the MPs lead on that.
Any time the MPs have overwhelmingly backed one candidate, that candidate has won.
2019 - MPs backed Boris over Hunt by two to one, so did members. 2016 - MPs backed May over Leadsom by over two to one, so would have members had Leadsom not pulled out. 2005 - MPs backed Cameron over Davis by nearly two to one, so did members. 2001 - MPs were divided three way and didn't give a major lead to anyone, Clarke led IDS by a very small number. Members went against the MPs here.
So only in 2001 did members go against MPs, but that was also the only time the MPs had failed to give any candidate a significant lead.
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.
i.e. grammar schools?
(I am firmly on nether one side nor the other on grammar schools, by the way, and indeed the issue is such a complex one of winners and losers that I am slightly baffled when anyone is able to land firmly and unambiguously on one side of the debate.)
I sympathise with that view.
The system in Kent - a two way divide between grammar schools and bog standard comps, with selection for all - is not an attractive one at all. But I think there is perhaps a place for selective highly academic schools in a more pluralistic system.
One thing I am a fan of is large non selective state sixth form colleges. Which are in my view underfunded.
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
The policy of closing state grammar schools was also followed enthusiastically by the 70s Conservative government.
The education minister was one Margaret Thatcher!
She wasn't a True Tory apparently. Shut grammar schools and was A Remainer!!!!!
Looks as though there will be a members' ballot. Tory MP for Harrow East Bob Blackman, who is joint-executive secretary of the 1922 Committee, has said the threshold for support to enter the first round of the Conservative Party leadership race is likely to be 20.
He told Sky News: "The view is that candidates to get on the ballot paper should demonstrate a broad swathe of support amongst Conservative MPs.
"So we're looking at a proposer, a seconder and either 18 supporters or possibly more supporters in order to reduce that list.
He then says the "first ballot is likely to have a threshold of 10% of the votes, i.e. 36 MPs, supporting a candidate for them to go through to the second ballot. That once again is not confirmed yet, but I suspect that will be the case.
"After that we probably won't need thresholds because the list will shorten considerably."
Blackman also said it is a "condition of nomination" for candidates to agree that they will contest the final postal ballot of party members if they reach the last two, to avoid a situation as in 2016, when Theresa May became prime minister after her final rival, Andrea Leadsom, dropped out. (BBC)
Of course all candidates will say that if they reach the final stage they will contest it, if they didn't there'd be no point in standing, but once it reaches the final two if one pulls out then what's the 1922 going to do about that? I can't see how that can be enforced at all.
You could reinstate the person who was third on the ballot. That should ensure somebody second doesn't end up with the third placed person becoming their PM!
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.
The successful careers of some privately educated PB-ers would seem to prove your point
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"
Given most Tory voters want more grammar schools they would have no problem with more choice you leftwingers as usual wish to deny.
It is not the kids that are lowest common denominator but many of the state schools, especially in poorer areas
Would love to see the evidence that red wall Tories in areas that last had grammar schools half a century ago are clamouring for their return...
In the real world there are already alternatives to the states schools you describe - incidentally if they are run down perhaps you should have funded them better these last 12 years?
Parents clamour for not for grammar schools, but places at academies and even free schools. Well, until the management are revealed to be mentalists doing Govean punishments like stare at the wall for days.
Re private schools - if I donate £1000 to my local state school this is not a charitable donation presumably - but if I give it to Eton College, I can get a tax break. Is that right?
You donate via tax to your local state school, Eton gets no funds from taxpayers
Well, there was the rowing lake they dug for the Olympics. Which was actually surveyed as a gravel pit. So they sold the material dug out and made a profit. A nice piece of clever engineering.
The whole charitable status comedy has been round government several times when labour was in.
1) let’s abolish charitable status for private schools 2) under various legal doctrines it has to be applied fairly. 3) it turns out that many private schools do lots of charity work - percentage of revenue - compared to many charities of the sort of thing that people think of as charities 4) said charities get wind of the avalanche heading their way. 5) proposal dropped as “courageous”
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
The policy of closing state grammar schools was also followed enthusiastically by the 70s Conservative government.
The education minister was one Margaret Thatcher!
She wasn't a True Tory apparently. Shut grammar schools and was A Remainer!!!!!
Looks as though there will be a members' ballot. Tory MP for Harrow East Bob Blackman, who is joint-executive secretary of the 1922 Committee, has said the threshold for support to enter the first round of the Conservative Party leadership race is likely to be 20.
He told Sky News: "The view is that candidates to get on the ballot paper should demonstrate a broad swathe of support amongst Conservative MPs.
"So we're looking at a proposer, a seconder and either 18 supporters or possibly more supporters in order to reduce that list.
He then says the "first ballot is likely to have a threshold of 10% of the votes, i.e. 36 MPs, supporting a candidate for them to go through to the second ballot. That once again is not confirmed yet, but I suspect that will be the case.
"After that we probably won't need thresholds because the list will shorten considerably."
Blackman also said it is a "condition of nomination" for candidates to agree that they will contest the final postal ballot of party members if they reach the last two, to avoid a situation as in 2016, when Theresa May became prime minister after her final rival, Andrea Leadsom, dropped out. (BBC)
So how does that work if all the candidates drop out bar the front runner? Does the out-going exec envisage a process of hustings where the candidate debates with themselves?
Why is everyone asking me ? No doubt the '22 has some cunning plan....
I suppose they could ask them to promise. After all, Tories keep their word, don't they ?
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"
Given most Tory voters want more grammar schools they would have no problem with more choice you leftwingers as usual wish to deny.
It is not the kids that are lowest common denominator but many of the state schools, especially in poorer areas
Surely 'most Tory voter's are not parents of school-age children; they might be grandparents of them but parenting days have passed!
The age more voted Tory than Labour in 2019 was 39 not 69
Really? What about this?
ETA: Ah, you are you talking about the crossover point.
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.
As if this hasn't been done to death for the last 10 years. If you want to save costs, you need to reduce the number of statutory functions that Council's are responsible for. Instead government has a habit of adding to them, without funding them. There are a lot of myths about duplication and efficiency savings from mergers, but they aren't always born out by reality; what typically happens is that they are incredibly disruptive and expensive.
What the government could do to save money and reinvigorate democracy is to give Council's more power to set whatever level of council tax they so desire. This will ultimately drive actual efficiency, because no one wants to pay £5000 per year in Council tax.
There is also an insane situation where the property industry has been unaminously lobbying government to increase planning fees for several years, and for this money to be 'ring fenced' for the planning service. Instead fees remain low, service is poor, delays are never ending, and the service is cross subsidised by Council tax.
Delays are never ending because anyone sane would leave a planning authority and go to the private sector - wages really haven't gone up for decades.
The reality is that the competent people in local government are not in it for the money (although they do quite well, because of the pension arrangements). Many pass over lucrative contracting opportunities which could make them very rich to run essential services which they have a strong commitment to. Quite often they are deeply religious.
While I am amused by the sheer number of candidates available to the Conservative selectorate, I don’t see that this is a bad thing nor the need for arbitrarily high nomination barriers to weed candidates out: surely the process of elimination from n candidates down to 2 does this process just as well, if not better? The caveat to this is the risk of (as the Tories seem to love) a long and drawn out leadership contest, but surely this can be mitigated against by simply doing what the Lib Dems do: let all MPs rank candidates in order of preference and get the elimination process done in a day. This would have the benefit of reducing the scope for playing silly buggers, though Tory MPs might well complain that this would spoil the fun of the process.
Alternatively they could simply insist on FPTP? The Tory Party seems to love it for everyone but themselves.
Pedant hat on: If by that you mean everyone pitches in, they have one round, and the person who gets the highest number of votes is the winner, that wouldn't be FPTP because there is no 'post'. The 'post' (I think) in FPTP elections is half the number of MPs plus one - i.e. enough to form a government.
I know what you mean, but I don't think that system is (or should correctly be called FPTP).
Most Votes Wins would seem to be an appropriate name.
Of course, the election itself could be held under any electoral system and it would default to MVW as there are only two candidates.
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"
Given most Tory voters want more grammar schools they would have no problem with more choice you leftwingers as usual wish to deny.
It is not the kids that are lowest common denominator but many of the state schools, especially in poorer areas
Surely 'most Tory voter's are not parents of school-age children; they might be grandparents of them but parenting days have passed!
The age more voted Tory than Labour in 2019 was 39 not 69
Really? What about this?
That clearly shows 40+ backing Tories, and matches HYUFD's claim that the crossover age was 39.
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
The policy of closing state grammar schools was also followed enthusiastically by the 70s Conservative government.
The education minister was one Margaret Thatcher!
She wasn't a True Tory apparently. Shut grammar schools and was A Remainer!!!!!
She's the reason I'm a Tory.
Um I'm not going to defend Thatcher but she replaced Circular 10/65 (which said close Grammar schools) with Circular 10/70 that returned it to a choice of the local authority.
Unfortunately by then many authorities were in the process of closing their Grammar schools and it was too late to roll the changes back. Equally some (Labour) authorities were happy to continue the process of closing them for ideological reasons
Poor Grant Shapps (not something I thought I'd ever say). He's still longer than Starmer for next PM (on Smarkets, at least)
The irony as his video is arguably the best. No "look at my upbringing"/"here's why I'm hard as nails" commentary.
Only seen the short one on Twitter - is there a longer version? Short one was certainly to the point - I can plan, I can communicate, I can deliver, I can help you win your seat (that last one presumably directed at Conservative rather than Labour MPs ) Even had a hard hat/high vis moment.
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"
Given most Tory voters want more grammar schools they would have no problem with more choice you leftwingers as usual wish to deny.
It is not the kids that are lowest common denominator but many of the state schools, especially in poorer areas
Surely 'most Tory voter's are not parents of school-age children; they might be grandparents of them but parenting days have passed!
The age more voted Tory than Labour in 2019 was 39 not 69
Really? What about this?
ETA: Ah, you are you talking about the crossover point.
That was then...
.. since when the situation has developed somewhat, not necessarily to HYUFD's advantage.
Politicians and pundits, let’s have a practice on this shall we…
“The issue of [grammar schools/private schools] is a complex one, with balances to be made between the outcomes and needs of all parties and the risk of unintended outcomes by making interventions, but on balance, taking all the evidence and understanding of the situation I have into account, my position is that I [[favour the abolition of grammar schools immediately/over a considered period/think we should leave things as they are/favour the expansion of grammar schools]/[[favour the abolition of/taxation of/state support] of private schools]], for reasons x, y and z, though acknowledging counterarguments which include a and b.”
(For the record I am in the leave-things-as-they-are camp in this respect, because while I think it unlikely we have achieved the optimum balance, I don't think either of these issues fall into the top ten of issues to be solved in education.)
Starmer's attack on private schools shows he's unfit for government.
It's the politics of envy.
He's worse than Hitler.
It's not a great policy but again it's been Labour Party policy for 30+ years and yet even with Blair's majority they didn't implement it.
For the reasons I pointed out above - many private schools do more charitable work as a percentage of revenue than some big “charities”. Which then leads to lifting a rock on the NGO sector that would raise a storm of anger and horror in middle class progressive circles.
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.
As if this hasn't been done to death for the last 10 years. If you want to save costs, you need to reduce the number of statutory functions that Council's are responsible for. Instead government has a habit of adding to them, without funding them. There are a lot of myths about duplication and efficiency savings from mergers, but they aren't always born out by reality; what typically happens is that they are incredibly disruptive and expensive.
What the government could do to save money and reinvigorate democracy is to give Council's more power to set whatever level of council tax they so desire. This will ultimately drive actual efficiency, because no one wants to pay £5000 per year in Council tax.
There is also an insane situation where the property industry has been unaminously lobbying government to increase planning fees for several years, and for this money to be 'ring fenced' for the planning service. Instead fees remain low, service is poor, delays are never ending, and the service is cross subsidised by Council tax.
Delays are never ending because anyone sane would leave a planning authority and go to the private sector - wages really haven't gone up for decades.
Except that is inconsistent with your claim before that the local Council had dodgily "put on the backburner" planning consent for a highly-demanded retail park, because they were worried it would be popular. Which is the worst possible reason to refuse consent.
"Don't build this, people might actually want it" - if that's why its getting "put on the backburner" then its a good thing that the people abusing their authority to stifle development are losing their ability to do so. And it doesn't mean that wages are the issue, it means that people having the ability to stand in the way of others doing some development is the problem.
I think the Labour policy on charitable status for private schools misses the point.
The objection seems to be that it isn't fair for the rich to buy their children an advantage in the cut throat competition for decent middle class jobs by paying for a better education, and government should stop subsidising that advantage.
But the problem isn't that the rich can buy themselves an advantage in meritocratic competition. The problem is that the ideology of meritocracy is a sham used to justify obscene inequality, and even those people at the bottom of the educational pile should be able to contribute to society and live a life of dignity.
The point of the policy seems to be so that the children of Labour supporters in the middle class who don't use private schools out of principle get a better chance to compete for the secure middle class lifestyle that their peers are buying for their children, and so they can salve their conscience at the inequality between their children and working class children.
Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of harming the private school system, I doubt this policy will do anything for the kids who really need help: the 15-20% of children who leave school functionally illiterate and/or innumerate.
How can I say that, if the money is (allegedly) going to be spent on the state school system? The answer is simple: fixing illiteracy and innumeracy is difficult, and it won't work if it is tacked-on to existing policies. It really needs to be front and centre of our education policy.
I don't like calling this 'underachievement': it is kids who are let down by their families, the state, and the education system.
Therefore the concentration of policy has to be on them; not on how the money is raised. It is also multidisciplinary: not just in helping the kids in school, but outside school as well.
But I fear too many people - especially the middle classes - really don't care about this scandal.
So, Mr Starmer: let us have education and social policies that piles money onto helping those kids, and not the kids who will do well anyway. But the money will go on the latter kids, because it is much, much simpler.
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"
Given most Tory voters want more grammar schools they would have no problem with more choice you leftwingers as usual wish to deny.
It is not the kids that are lowest common denominator but many of the state schools, especially in poorer areas
Surely 'most Tory voter's are not parents of school-age children; they might be grandparents of them but parenting days have passed!
The age more voted Tory than Labour in 2019 was 39 not 69
Really? What about this?
That clearly shows 40+ backing Tories, and matches HYUFD's claim that the crossover age was 39.
In the best tradition of PB pedantry, it actually suggests the crossover is somewher in 40-49, probably towards the lower end if it's a fairly smooth curve.
Edit: but impossible to be sure from that chart. I'm pretty sure there are single year charts from pollsters (or exit poll projections?) that give a more precise point, although you may fall into sample size problems at single year of age
Edit 2: And now mwadams has posted such a graph, so ignore the above
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.
They have to produce it so the cows don’t burst
I spoke to my cousin recently who works on his Dad's dairy farm. Apparently herd numbers are down on farms in Ireland that overstock and rely on feed to support more cows then they have land to grow grass on. Some farms are buying less fertiliser, because it's so expensive, so expecting to grow less grass, and cutting their cow numbers as a result.
At the same time that input prices for feed, fertiliser and diesel are going up, the price paid for a cow carcass is also up, so it makes financial sense to cull the herd and produce less milk.
Dairy farms in Britain seem to rely a lot more on buying feed, rather than growing grass, so they will have more severe problems at the moment.
While I am amused by the sheer number of candidates available to the Conservative selectorate, I don’t see that this is a bad thing nor the need for arbitrarily high nomination barriers to weed candidates out: surely the process of elimination from n candidates down to 2 does this process just as well, if not better? The caveat to this is the risk of (as the Tories seem to love) a long and drawn out leadership contest, but surely this can be mitigated against by simply doing what the Lib Dems do: let all MPs rank candidates in order of preference and get the elimination process done in a day. This would have the benefit of reducing the scope for playing silly buggers, though Tory MPs might well complain that this would spoil the fun of the process.
Alternatively they could simply insist on FPTP? The Tory Party seems to love it for everyone but themselves.
Pedant hat on: If by that you mean everyone pitches in, they have one round, and the person who gets the highest number of votes is the winner, that wouldn't be FPTP because there is no 'post'. The 'post' (I think) in FPTP elections is half the number of MPs plus one - i.e. enough to form a government.
I know what you mean, but I don't think that system is (or should correctly be called FPTP).
Nah, it means the candidate with the plurality of votes represents the constituency, nothing to do with forming a majority.
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.
As if this hasn't been done to death for the last 10 years. If you want to save costs, you need to reduce the number of statutory functions that Council's are responsible for. Instead government has a habit of adding to them, without funding them. There are a lot of myths about duplication and efficiency savings from mergers, but they aren't always born out by reality; what typically happens is that they are incredibly disruptive and expensive.
What the government could do to save money and reinvigorate democracy is to give Council's more power to set whatever level of council tax they so desire. This will ultimately drive actual efficiency, because no one wants to pay £5000 per year in Council tax.
There is also an insane situation where the property industry has been unaminously lobbying government to increase planning fees for several years, and for this money to be 'ring fenced' for the planning service. Instead fees remain low, service is poor, delays are never ending, and the service is cross subsidised by Council tax.
Delays are never ending because anyone sane would leave a planning authority and go to the private sector - wages really haven't gone up for decades.
Except that is inconsistent with your claim before that the local Council had dodgily "put on the backburner" planning consent for a highly-demanded retail park, because they were worried it would be popular. Which is the worst possible reason to refuse consent.
"Don't build this, people might actually want it" - if that's why its getting "put on the backburner" then its a good thing that the people abusing their authority to stifle development are losing their ability to do so. And it doesn't mean that wages are the issue, it means that people having the ability to stand in the way of others doing some development is the problem.
The local council hadn't the developers had because they knew it was unlikely to be approved - no point wasting money.
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.
The successful careers of some privately educated PB-ers would seem to prove your point
I was thinking more of some of the specimens I encountered at university rather than casting aspersions about fellow members of the PB community.
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.
They have to produce it so the cows don’t burst
I spoke to my cousin recently who works on his Dad's dairy farm. Apparently herd numbers are down on farms in Ireland that overstock and rely on feed to support more cows then they have land to grow grass on. Some farms are buying less fertiliser, because it's so expensive, so expecting to grow less grass, and cutting their cow numbers as a result.
At the same time that input prices for feed, fertiliser and diesel are going up, the price paid for a cow carcass is also up, so it makes financial sense to cull the herd and produce less milk.
Dairy farms in Britain seem to rely a lot more on buying feed, rather than growing grass, so they will have more severe problems at the moment.
Precisely.
Some people are acting as if herd numbers are a fixed law of nature, they're not. If its not economic to produce milk, then fewer cows doing so is an option. If it is profitable, then more is an option.
Its bizarre and weird to simultaneously moan that there aren't enough staff to fill the sector, and also simultaneously complain the sector isn't getting enough money because its producing so much that product is literally being poured down the drain.
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"
Given most Tory voters want more grammar schools they would have no problem with more choice you leftwingers as usual wish to deny.
It is not the kids that are lowest common denominator but many of the state schools, especially in poorer areas
Surely 'most Tory voter's are not parents of school-age children; they might be grandparents of them but parenting days have passed!
The age more voted Tory than Labour in 2019 was 39 not 69
Really? What about this?
That clearly shows 40+ backing Tories, and matches HYUFD's claim that the crossover age was 39.
It shows nothing of the sort, since the statistics are given by decade. And the percentages for the crossover decades strongly suggest that the age of crossover is above 39.
At the moment in terms of MP endorsements it looks like Sunak and Mordaunt as the final 2 sent to the membership unless things change dramatically in the next few days.
Though Tugendhat and Truss are not far behind in joint 3rd
I am surprised that Sunak is not further ahead on declarations. He is certainly still in range of a redistribution stitch up, that keeps him out the top two.
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.
i.e. grammar schools?
(I am firmly on nether one side nor the other on grammar schools, by the way, and indeed the issue is such a complex one of winners and losers that I am slightly baffled when anyone is able to land firmly and unambiguously on one side of the debate.)
I sympathise with that view.
The system in Kent - a two way divide between grammar schools and bog standard comps, with selection for all - is not an attractive one at all. But I think there is perhaps a place for selective highly academic schools in a more pluralistic system.
One thing I am a fan of is large non selective state sixth form colleges. Which are in my view underfunded.
There are no comprehensive schools in Kent, or indeed anywhere with selection.
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.
As if this hasn't been done to death for the last 10 years. If you want to save costs, you need to reduce the number of statutory functions that Council's are responsible for. Instead government has a habit of adding to them, without funding them. There are a lot of myths about duplication and efficiency savings from mergers, but they aren't always born out by reality; what typically happens is that they are incredibly disruptive and expensive.
What the government could do to save money and reinvigorate democracy is to give Council's more power to set whatever level of council tax they so desire. This will ultimately drive actual efficiency, because no one wants to pay £5000 per year in Council tax.
There is also an insane situation where the property industry has been unaminously lobbying government to increase planning fees for several years, and for this money to be 'ring fenced' for the planning service. Instead fees remain low, service is poor, delays are never ending, and the service is cross subsidised by Council tax.
Delays are never ending because anyone sane would leave a planning authority and go to the private sector - wages really haven't gone up for decades.
Except that is inconsistent with your claim before that the local Council had dodgily "put on the backburner" planning consent for a highly-demanded retail park, because they were worried it would be popular. Which is the worst possible reason to refuse consent.
"Don't build this, people might actually want it" - if that's why its getting "put on the backburner" then its a good thing that the people abusing their authority to stifle development are losing their ability to do so. And it doesn't mean that wages are the issue, it means that people having the ability to stand in the way of others doing some development is the problem.
The local council hadn't the developers had because they knew it was unlikely to be approved - no point wasting money.
But a change in how development was approved meant that it could be approved. That is a good thing then, thank goodness the change happened. 👍
We need to find out what other roadblocks are in the way of development being able to occur, and remove them too.
At the moment in terms of MP endorsements it looks like Sunak and Mordaunt as the final 2 sent to the membership unless things change dramatically in the next few days.
Though Tugendhat and Truss are not far behind in joint 3rd
I am surprised that Sunak is not further ahead on declarations. He is certainly still in range of a redistribution stitch up, that keeps him out the top two.
Good point. If people expect him to be runner up, why support him publicly even if he is a preferred choice for an MP? He will need to be in touching distance on the members h2h polls to get to the final two.
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"
Given most Tory voters want more grammar schools they would have no problem with more choice you leftwingers as usual wish to deny.
It is not the kids that are lowest common denominator but many of the state schools, especially in poorer areas
Surely 'most Tory voter's are not parents of school-age children; they might be grandparents of them but parenting days have passed!
The age more voted Tory than Labour in 2019 was 39 not 69
Really? What about this?
That clearly shows 40+ backing Tories, and matches HYUFD's claim that the crossover age was 39.
In the best tradition of PB pedantry, it actually suggests the crossover is somewher in 40-49, probably towards the lower end if it's a fairly smooth curve.
Edit: but impossible to be sure from that chart. I'm pretty sure there are single year charts from pollsters (or exit poll projections?) that give a more precise point, although you may fall into sample size problems at single year of age
Edit 2: And now mwadams has posted such a graph, so ignore the above
And, too late with edit 3: Struggling to reconcile those two graphs, the distibutions in the top don't match the lines in the bottom - bottom graph is very smooth so looks like a simple regression fit rather than the actual data. I'd not expect straight lines really. Crossover is 39 on what looks to be a bit of an oversimplistic model. Likely a bit higher in reality.
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"
Given most Tory voters want more grammar schools they would have no problem with more choice you leftwingers as usual wish to deny.
It is not the kids that are lowest common denominator but many of the state schools, especially in poorer areas
Surely 'most Tory voter's are not parents of school-age children; they might be grandparents of them but parenting days have passed!
The age more voted Tory than Labour in 2019 was 39 not 69
Really? What about this?
That clearly shows 40+ backing Tories, and matches HYUFD's claim that the crossover age was 39.
It shows nothing of the sort, since the statistics are given by decade. And the percentages for the crossover decades strongly suggest that the age of crossover is above 39.
It doesn't show crossover is 39 (but other data and charts do) but it does match the claim, which is all I said.
As it happens, the crossover is 39, other charts have shown that (and its subsequently been editted in) and I knew that from prior discussions, from previous times this issue has been discussed. Same data set, the crossover age is 39.
Patel and Bravermann need to work out between themselves who is going to get the 20. Shapps and Javid need to do the same for their prefferred other candidates.
Here is my current working hypothesis on transfers
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.
As if this hasn't been done to death for the last 10 years. If you want to save costs, you need to reduce the number of statutory functions that Council's are responsible for. Instead government has a habit of adding to them, without funding them. There are a lot of myths about duplication and efficiency savings from mergers, but they aren't always born out by reality; what typically happens is that they are incredibly disruptive and expensive.
What the government could do to save money and reinvigorate democracy is to give Council's more power to set whatever level of council tax they so desire. This will ultimately drive actual efficiency, because no one wants to pay £5000 per year in Council tax.
There is also an insane situation where the property industry has been unaminously lobbying government to increase planning fees for several years, and for this money to be 'ring fenced' for the planning service. Instead fees remain low, service is poor, delays are never ending, and the service is cross subsidised by Council tax.
Delays are never ending because anyone sane would leave a planning authority and go to the private sector - wages really haven't gone up for decades.
Except that is inconsistent with your claim before that the local Council had dodgily "put on the backburner" planning consent for a highly-demanded retail park, because they were worried it would be popular. Which is the worst possible reason to refuse consent.
"Don't build this, people might actually want it" - if that's why its getting "put on the backburner" then its a good thing that the people abusing their authority to stifle development are losing their ability to do so. And it doesn't mean that wages are the issue, it means that people having the ability to stand in the way of others doing some development is the problem.
The local council hadn't the developers had because they knew it was unlikely to be approved - no point wasting money.
But a change in how development was approved meant that it could be approved. That is a good thing then, thank goodness the change happened. 👍
We need to find out what other roadblocks are in the way of development being able to occur, and remove them too.
Clearly you haven't been to the wasteland that is Bishop Auckland's town centre nowadays.
The thing is retail is very much a zero sum game, money spent in St Helen's is money that was once spent in Bishop Auckland town centre.
In the same way that the forthcoming Scotch Corner Designer village (Richmondshire council) will be the death nail to Darlington town centre and Northallerton (Hambleton district council).
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"
Given most Tory voters want more grammar schools they would have no problem with more choice you leftwingers as usual wish to deny.
It is not the kids that are lowest common denominator but many of the state schools, especially in poorer areas
Surely 'most Tory voter's are not parents of school-age children; they might be grandparents of them but parenting days have passed!
The age more voted Tory than Labour in 2019 was 39 not 69
Really? What about this?
That clearly shows 40+ backing Tories, and matches HYUFD's claim that the crossover age was 39.
It shows nothing of the sort, since the statistics are given by decade. And the percentages for the crossover decades strongly suggest that the age of crossover is above 39.
It doesn't show crossover is 39 (but other data and charts do) but it does match the claim, which is all I said.
As it happens, the crossover is 39, other charts have shown that (and its subsequently been editted in) and I knew that from prior discussions, from previous times this issue has been discussed. Same data set, the crossover age is 39.
What does crossover mean? Dees it mean at age X, they are as likely to vote Tory as Labour? Or that for all people aged <X, hey are as likely to vote Tory as Labour (i.e. there are as many Tory voters as Labour ones aged <X)?
While I am amused by the sheer number of candidates available to the Conservative selectorate, I don’t see that this is a bad thing nor the need for arbitrarily high nomination barriers to weed candidates out: surely the process of elimination from n candidates down to 2 does this process just as well, if not better? The caveat to this is the risk of (as the Tories seem to love) a long and drawn out leadership contest, but surely this can be mitigated against by simply doing what the Lib Dems do: let all MPs rank candidates in order of preference and get the elimination process done in a day. This would have the benefit of reducing the scope for playing silly buggers, though Tory MPs might well complain that this would spoil the fun of the process.
Alternatively they could simply insist on FPTP? The Tory Party seems to love it for everyone but themselves.
Pedant hat on: If by that you mean everyone pitches in, they have one round, and the person who gets the highest number of votes is the winner, that wouldn't be FPTP because there is no 'post'. The 'post' (I think) in FPTP elections is half the number of MPs plus one - i.e. enough to form a government.
I know what you mean, but I don't think that system is (or should correctly be called FPTP).
Nah, it means the candidate with the plurality of votes represents the constituency, nothing to do with forming a majority.
That's what it's taken as meaning, but that doesn’t make sense! There is no post in that case to be first past.
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"
Given most Tory voters want more grammar schools they would have no problem with more choice you leftwingers as usual wish to deny.
It is not the kids that are lowest common denominator but many of the state schools, especially in poorer areas
Surely 'most Tory voter's are not parents of school-age children; they might be grandparents of them but parenting days have passed!
The age more voted Tory than Labour in 2019 was 39 not 69
Really? What about this?
That clearly shows 40+ backing Tories, and matches HYUFD's claim that the crossover age was 39.
In the best tradition of PB pedantry, it actually suggests the crossover is somewher in 40-49, probably towards the lower end if it's a fairly smooth curve.
Edit: but impossible to be sure from that chart. I'm pretty sure there are single year charts from pollsters (or exit poll projections?) that give a more precise point, although you may fall into sample size problems at single year of age
Edit 2: And now mwadams has posted such a graph, so ignore the above
And, too late with edit 3: Struggling to reconcile those two graphs, the distibutions in the top don't match the lines in the bottom - bottom graph is very smooth so looks like a simple regression fit rather than the actual data. I'd not expect straight lines really. Crossover is 39 on what looks to be a bit of an oversimplistic model. Likely a bit higher in reality.
Also it's possible that the cross over point is getting higher as the population ages. If it was 42 (say) in 2019 it's very likely to be 43/44 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.
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.
The Times Educational Supplement didn't point that out. One article in TES did, an article by David James. The article notes, "David James is deputy head of an independent school in London". I wonder if he has a particular perspective on the issue...
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.
i.e. grammar schools?
(I am firmly on nether one side nor the other on grammar schools, by the way, and indeed the issue is such a complex one of winners and losers that I am slightly baffled when anyone is able to land firmly and unambiguously on one side of the debate.)
I sympathise with that view.
The system in Kent - a two way divide between grammar schools and bog standard comps, with selection for all - is not an attractive one at all. But I think there is perhaps a place for selective highly academic schools in a more pluralistic system.
One thing I am a fan of is large non selective state sixth form colleges. Which are in my view underfunded.
There are no comprehensive schools in Kent, or indeed anywhere with selection.
True, about Kent. It was a lazy use of a hackneyed phrase, for which I apologise, but doesn't change my point which was an aversion to a system completely bifurcated by selection at the age of 11.
However, it's inaccurate to say there are no comprehensives where there's selection. The are several local authorities with only a handful of selective grammar schools, where the system is indeed mainly comprehensive.
I think the Labour policy on charitable status for private schools misses the point.
The objection seems to be that it isn't fair for the rich to buy their children an advantage in the cut throat competition for decent middle class jobs by paying for a better education, and government should stop subsidising that advantage.
But the problem isn't that the rich can buy themselves an advantage in meritocratic competition. The problem is that the ideology of meritocracy is a sham used to justify obscene inequality, and even those people at the bottom of the educational pile should be able to contribute to society and live a life of dignity.
The point of the policy seems to be so that the children of Labour supporters in the middle class who don't use private schools out of principle get a better chance to compete for the secure middle class lifestyle that their peers are buying for their children, and so they can salve their conscience at the inequality between their children and working class children.
Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of harming the private school system, I doubt this policy will do anything for the kids who really need help: the 15-20% of children who leave school functionally illiterate and/or innumerate.
How can I say that, if the money is (allegedly) going to be spent on the state school system? The answer is simple: fixing illiteracy and innumeracy is difficult, and it won't work if it is tacked-on to existing policies. It really needs to be front and centre of our education policy.
I don't like calling this 'underachievement': it is kids who are let down by their families, the state, and the education system.
Therefore the concentration of policy has to be on them; not on how the money is raised. It is also multidisciplinary: not just in helping the kids in school, but outside school as well.
But I fear too many people - especially the middle classes - really don't care about this scandal.
So, Mr Starmer: let us have education and social policies that piles money onto helping those kids, and not the kids who will do well anyway. But the money will go on the latter kids, because it is much, much simpler.
Indeed. The number of adults unable to move onwards and upwards in their careers because they simply cannot read fairly simple documents nor recognise which of two numbers is bigger is a huge drag on our productivity. Having been through the system I favour "graduating High School". With kids failing years and being held back till they reach the requisite level. A High School diploma is basically turned up, can read, can write. It's pretty goddamn basic. But it focuses minds on those at the lower ends. The system at the moment focuses on the ones who can make 5 GCSE's.
Comments
The caveat to this is the risk of (as the Tories seem to love) a long and drawn out leadership contest, but surely this can be mitigated against by simply doing what the Lib Dems do: let all MPs rank candidates in order of preference and get the elimination process done in a day. This would have the benefit of reducing the scope for playing silly buggers, though Tory MPs might well complain that this would spoil the fun of the process.
The Tory Party seems to love it for everyone but themselves.
The objection seems to be that it isn't fair for the rich to buy their children an advantage in the cut throat competition for decent middle class jobs by paying for a better education, and government should stop subsidising that advantage.
But the problem isn't that the rich can buy themselves an advantage in meritocratic competition. The problem is that the ideology of meritocracy is a sham used to justify obscene inequality, and even those people at the bottom of the educational pile should be able to contribute to society and live a life of dignity.
The point of the policy seems to be so that the children of Labour supporters in the middle class who don't use private schools out of principle get a better chance to compete for the secure middle class lifestyle that their peers are buying for their children, and so they can salve their conscience at the inequality between their children and working class children.
(I am firmly on nether one side nor the other on grammar schools, by the way, and indeed the issue is such a complex one of winners and losers that I am slightly baffled when anyone is able to land firmly and unambiguously on one side of the debate.)
Tory MP for Harrow East Bob Blackman, who is joint-executive secretary of the 1922 Committee, has said the threshold for support to enter the first round of the Conservative Party leadership race is likely to be 20.
He told Sky News: "The view is that candidates to get on the ballot paper should demonstrate a broad swathe of support amongst Conservative MPs.
"So we're looking at a proposer, a seconder and either 18 supporters or possibly more supporters in order to reduce that list.
He then says the "first ballot is likely to have a threshold of 10% of the votes, i.e. 36 MPs, supporting a candidate for them to go through to the second ballot. That once again is not confirmed yet, but I suspect that will be the case.
"After that we probably won't need thresholds because the list will shorten considerably."
Blackman also said it is a "condition of nomination" for candidates to agree that they will contest the final postal ballot of party members if they reach the last two, to avoid a situation as in 2016, when Theresa May became prime minister after her final rival, Andrea Leadsom, dropped out.
(BBC)
The education minister was one Margaret Thatcher!
It is not the kids that are lowest common denominator but many of the state schools, especially in poorer areas
...Asked about his "human experience" - the fact he potentially represents a particular generation of Conservatives, having gone to Charterhouse School and to Oxford University, and how he hopes to win votes from people with different background – the former health secretary says he's aware that political leaders need to have a broad appeal.
"That's why, as Tony Blair had John Prescott as his deputy prime minister, I'll have Esther McVey as mine,"...
Which is still the case now - those families who can afford pay for preparation prior to the exams do better than those who sit them blind.
"Academies, sixth form colleges, voluntary aided, voluntary controlled and foundation trust
schools are exempt charities"
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/294996/Academies_as_exempt_charities_FINAL3.pdf
However Douglas Home in 1964 stood on a Tory manifesto of keeping the grammar schools, Wilson only beat him by the narrowest of margins UK wide and in England alone Home actually won a majority of seats
Shapps and Javid need to do the same for their prefferred other candidates.
Some chance is better than none.
If you want to save costs, you need to reduce the number of statutory functions that Council's are responsible for. Instead government has a habit of adding to them, without funding them.
There are a lot of myths about duplication and efficiency savings from mergers, but they aren't always born out by reality; what typically happens is that they are incredibly disruptive and expensive.
What the government could do to save money and reinvigorate democracy is to give Council's more power to set whatever level of council tax they so desire. This will ultimately drive actual efficiency, because no one wants to pay £5000 per year in Council tax.
There is also an insane situation where the property industry has been unaminously lobbying government to increase planning fees for several years, and for this money to be 'ring fenced' for the planning service. Instead fees remain low, service is poor, delays are never ending, and the service is cross subsidised by Council tax.
It's perfectly possible that the 1922 actually doesn't want a membership vote this time round.
The easiest and simplest solution to private schools gaming the system say for university places is post A-Level result applications to uni. Then none of this predicted stuff, hard evidence of how well each kid has done and you can do a bit of calibration based upon the schools they went to i.e. Richy Rich from Eton getting the same scores (or only marginally better scores) as somebody from a very poorly performing school.
Also, I traded out on Kemi too early, she's come in more than I expected
As neither are going to win, there's no incentive to bargain.
Leadership campaign logos, a thread. (/10 rating is for the logos, not the candidates).
Rishi Sunak - clean, simple, energetic. But reminds me of a dishwasher tablet. 7/10
https://twitter.com/tomhfh/status/1546405987908714498
I think Mordaunt has the best - simple, direct & patriotic - some of them are a bit of a dogs dinner
It's the politics of envy.
He's worse than Hitler.
If by that you mean everyone pitches in, they have one round, and the person who gets the highest number of votes is the winner, that wouldn't be FPTP because there is no 'post'.
The 'post' (I think) in FPTP elections is half the number of MPs plus one - i.e. enough to form a government.
I know what you mean, but I don't think that system is (or should correctly be called FPTP).
The other effect of this policy is to boost house prices even further in middle class areas with good schools and make poor places even more impossible to live in, if you are middle class/aspirational. So it actually boosts inequality even further.
And on that basis a comprehensive system with appropriate streaming results in better results overall compared to a grammar / secondary modern approach.
A significant chunk of members would want to back whoever the MPs have backed, because they'll trust the MPs judgement. If an overwhelming majority of MPs back a particular candidate, then a significant chunk of members will follow the MPs lead on that.
Any time the MPs have overwhelmingly backed one candidate, that candidate has won.
2019 - MPs backed Boris over Hunt by two to one, so did members.
2016 - MPs backed May over Leadsom by over two to one, so would have members had Leadsom not pulled out.
2005 - MPs backed Cameron over Davis by nearly two to one, so did members.
2001 - MPs were divided three way and didn't give a major lead to anyone, Clarke led IDS by a very small number. Members went against the MPs here.
So only in 2001 did members go against MPs, but that was also the only time the MPs had failed to give any candidate a significant lead.
The system in Kent - a two way divide between grammar schools and bog standard comps, with selection for all - is not an attractive one at all.
But I think there is perhaps a place for selective highly academic schools in a more pluralistic system.
One thing I am a fan of is large non selective state sixth form colleges. Which are in my view underfunded.
In the real world there are already alternatives to the states schools you describe - incidentally if they are run down perhaps you should have funded them better these last 12 years?
Parents clamour for not for grammar schools, but places at academies and even free schools. Well, until the management are revealed to be mentalists doing Govean punishments like stare at the wall for days.
The whole charitable status comedy has been round government several times when labour was in.
1) let’s abolish charitable status for private schools
2) under various legal doctrines it has to be applied fairly.
3) it turns out that many private schools do lots of charity work - percentage of revenue - compared to many charities of the sort of thing that people think of as charities
4) said charities get wind of the avalanche heading their way.
5) proposal dropped as “courageous”
No doubt the '22 has some cunning plan....
I suppose they could ask them to promise.
After all, Tories keep their word, don't they ?
ETA: Ah, you are you talking about the crossover point.
Of course, the election itself could be held under any electoral system and it would default to MVW as there are only two candidates.
Unfortunately by then many authorities were in the process of closing their Grammar schools and it was too late to roll the changes back. Equally some (Labour) authorities were happy to continue the process of closing them for ideological reasons
.. since when the situation has developed somewhat, not necessarily to HYUFD's advantage.
Sunak vs Truss seems a sensible set to put to the membership.
Politicians and pundits, let’s have a practice on this shall we…
“The issue of [grammar schools/private schools] is a complex one, with balances to be made between the outcomes and needs of all parties and the risk of unintended outcomes by making interventions, but on balance, taking all the evidence and understanding of the situation I have into account, my position is that I [[favour the abolition of grammar schools immediately/over a considered period/think we should leave things as they are/favour the expansion of grammar schools]/[[favour the abolition of/taxation of/state support] of private schools]], for reasons x, y and z, though acknowledging counterarguments which include a and b.”
(For the record I am in the leave-things-as-they-are camp in this respect, because while I think it unlikely we have achieved the optimum balance, I don't think either of these issues fall into the top ten of issues to be solved in education.)
@YouGov
% who feel positively towards:
🔵 Johnson 30% (+2)
🟡 Sturgeon 25% (-2)
🔴 Corbyn 24% (+3)
🔴 Starmer 22% (-11)
🔴 Blair 19% (-)
🟠 Davey 15% (+4)
Via
@YouGov
, 2nd quarter of 2022 (+/- since 1st quarter)
"Don't build this, people might actually want it" - if that's why its getting "put on the backburner" then its a good thing that the people abusing their authority to stifle development are losing their ability to do so. And it doesn't mean that wages are the issue, it means that people having the ability to stand in the way of others doing some development is the problem.
How can I say that, if the money is (allegedly) going to be spent on the state school system? The answer is simple: fixing illiteracy and innumeracy is difficult, and it won't work if it is tacked-on to existing policies. It really needs to be front and centre of our education policy.
I don't like calling this 'underachievement': it is kids who are let down by their families, the state, and the education system.
Therefore the concentration of policy has to be on them; not on how the money is raised. It is also multidisciplinary: not just in helping the kids in school, but outside school as well.
But I fear too many people - especially the middle classes - really don't care about this scandal.
So, Mr Starmer: let us have education and social policies that piles money onto helping those kids, and not the kids who will do well anyway. But the money will go on the latter kids, because it is much, much simpler.
Edit: but impossible to be sure from that chart. I'm pretty sure there are single year charts from pollsters (or exit poll projections?) that give a more precise point, although you may fall into sample size problems at single year of age
Edit 2: And now mwadams has posted such a graph, so ignore the above
At the same time that input prices for feed, fertiliser and diesel are going up, the price paid for a cow carcass is also up, so it makes financial sense to cull the herd and produce less milk.
Dairy farms in Britain seem to rely a lot more on buying feed, rather than growing grass, so they will have more severe problems at the moment.
https://twitter.com/RMTunion/status/1546425930029187073
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKyf3JV6Gv0
Some people are acting as if herd numbers are a fixed law of nature, they're not. If its not economic to produce milk, then fewer cows doing so is an option. If it is profitable, then more is an option.
Its bizarre and weird to simultaneously moan that there aren't enough staff to fill the sector, and also simultaneously complain the sector isn't getting enough money because its producing so much that product is literally being poured down the drain.
And the percentages for the crossover decades strongly suggest that the age of crossover is above 39.
We need to find out what other roadblocks are in the way of development being able to occur, and remove them too.
NEW: Tory leadership candidate Nadhim Zahawi threatens swinging 20% cuts to public services to fund tax cuts.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/nadhim-zahawi-threatens-20-cuts-27448217
Struggling to reconcile those two graphs, the distibutions in the top don't match the lines in the bottom - bottom graph is very smooth so looks like a simple regression fit rather than the actual data. I'd not expect straight lines really. Crossover is 39 on what looks to be a bit of an oversimplistic model. Likely a bit higher in reality.
As it happens, the crossover is 39, other charts have shown that (and its subsequently been editted in) and I knew that from prior discussions, from previous times this issue has been discussed. Same data set, the crossover age is 39.
it did seem to be VERY carefully worded...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Po2HA9a7DDVi8tuTf-cV-wXdEhIjcCUg2fGqRcvl_cI/edit?usp=sharing
The thing is retail is very much a zero sum game, money spent in St Helen's is money that was once spent in Bishop Auckland town centre.
In the same way that the forthcoming Scotch Corner Designer village (Richmondshire council) will be the death nail to Darlington town centre and Northallerton (Hambleton district council).
Perhaps the question should be "unpopular" rather than " popular".
Dees it mean at age X, they are as likely to vote Tory as Labour?
Or that for all people aged <X, hey are as likely to vote Tory as Labour (i.e. there are as many Tory voters as Labour ones aged <X)?
It was a lazy use of a hackneyed phrase, for which I apologise, but doesn't change my point which was an aversion to a system completely bifurcated by selection at the age of 11.
However, it's inaccurate to say there are no comprehensives where there's selection. The are several local authorities with only a handful of selective grammar schools, where the system is indeed mainly comprehensive.
Having been through the system I favour "graduating High School". With kids failing years and being held back till they reach the requisite level.
A High School diploma is basically turned up, can read, can write. It's pretty goddamn basic. But it focuses minds on those at the lower ends.
The system at the moment focuses on the ones who can make 5 GCSE's.