Ok, I’m going to try and mount a defence of Liz Truss re the schooling.
I find it somewhat curious that the Guardian is now seeking to uphold the quality of state school education under the Thatcher government. I suspect that their issue here isn’t someone complaining that they didn’t feel their state school was able to compete in giving opportunities to their students, but who is saying it. Funny, that.
I also find it amusing that so much energy is being expended to rebut Truss’s experiences (what happened to people’s own “truth”?) which I suspect would not be the case if, say, a figure on the left had the same complaints.
A lot of what Truss says rings true in the state school system of that era: there were good and bad schools, but no matter how good the school was run or well meaning the teachers were they couldn’t compete with the private sector in terms of the opportunities and attention they could bestow on their students. I’m not suggesting that means the school was terrible (perhaps Truss could be accused of over-egging the pudding here).
The angle I think is far more damaging is the fact that she is complaining about the Thatcher era education system whilst… err… running as the heir to Thatcher. In fact there seems to be a lot about Tory governments Liz doesn’t like. She didn’t think her school was up to scratch under Thatcher, she thinks that the Tory government she’s been a member of wasn’t radical enough on the economy, and she certainly doesn’t agree with her government’s tax rises. Perhaps someone needs to ask Liz what she is doing running for leader of a Party she seems to have been at odds with for large chunks of her life?
Someone - maybe an enterprising young journalist perhaps! - should ask her whether she thinks her school would have been better staying as two separate (girl/boy) grammars and being 11+ plus selective or as a merged, expanded comp.
Richard Quest in his S Times piece says a lot of the problems were around shellshocked former grammar school teachers suddenly facing a new, wider non-11-plus intake and being totally lost and unable to maintain control.
That I can well believe. My father (an ex-headmaster) used to say that a lot of grammar (and private) schools coasted on the ability of their selective intake who could mostly teach themselves in a pinch. He believed they ought to have got far better results out of their intake, but no one was pulling them up on how poor their teaching actually was.
It is not that poor for the more academic intake, it is focused on top A level and GCSE grades, Oxbridge and Russell Group entry and hence then entry to the professions and senior management and largely delivers that.
Hence of the top 100 schools by Oxbridge entry success rate, 48 are independent, 23 are grammars, 19 are sixth form colleges and just 7 are comprehensives or academies.
Comprehensives main target, inevitably as a result of their intake, is usually just getting most to get 5 C grade GCSEs
Er, hang on a minute. Comprehensives are not Secondary Moderns, there is no selection, so they should have a full range of abilities in their intake.
Most comprehensives intake would have gone to secondary moderns when education was selective UK wide, hence their main target is focused on getting most of their pupils to C grade GCSEs.
No it isn't, and what you say makes no sense.
Yes it does, grammar schools generally took the top 10 to 25% of the academic spectrum, the rest went to secondary moderns. So most comprehensives intake inevitably would have been in the 75% who went to secondary moderns
But that doesn’t mean that their only goal is 5 GCSE passes.
That is their main goal.
Private schools and grammar schools by their generally more selective intake however have a main goal of maximising top A* and A grade GCSEs and A Levels and Oxbridge entry
Every comprehensive school I have visited has photos of its top performing pupils detailing their high exam grades. Getting good grades for their top performing pupils is very much one of their main goals.
He doesn't care about the schools that 85+% of UK pupils go to. Only Oxbridge and Russell Group matter to him.
I am a Tory, I support private schools and grammar schools and would happily have more of them and that has always been my position. I believe in choice and would happily have a grammar school and private school in every town and city in the UK if a general election could be won enabling that
Of course it could. But what's the point of producing more academically advanced teenagers when they're going to universities anyway? That's the part I don't get.
If you are from a working class background in a poor seaside or ex industrial town or northern inner city, you are far more likely to get into a top university from a grammar school than the local comp
Except that very few of those places have grammar schools at all.
Precisely the point, the remaining grammar schools now are concentrated mainly in the home counties or wealthy suburbs of London and Manchester and Birmingham or prosperous towns like Ripon or Stratford on Avon where they are least needed not in poorer, mainly working class areas
Ok, I’m going to try and mount a defence of Liz Truss re the schooling.
I find it somewhat curious that the Guardian is now seeking to uphold the quality of state school education under the Thatcher government. I suspect that their issue here isn’t someone complaining that they didn’t feel their state school was able to compete in giving opportunities to their students, but who is saying it. Funny, that.
I also find it amusing that so much energy is being expended to rebut Truss’s experiences (what happened to people’s own “truth”?) which I suspect would not be the case if, say, a figure on the left had the same complaints.
A lot of what Truss says rings true in the state school system of that era: there were good and bad schools, but no matter how good the school was run or well meaning the teachers were they couldn’t compete with the private sector in terms of the opportunities and attention they could bestow on their students. I’m not suggesting that means the school was terrible (perhaps Truss could be accused of over-egging the pudding here).
The angle I think is far more damaging is the fact that she is complaining about the Thatcher era education system whilst… err… running as the heir to Thatcher. In fact there seems to be a lot about Tory governments Liz doesn’t like. She didn’t think her school was up to scratch under Thatcher, she thinks that the Tory government she’s been a member of wasn’t radical enough on the economy, and she certainly doesn’t agree with her government’s tax rises. Perhaps someone needs to ask Liz what she is doing running for leader of a Party she seems to have been at odds with for large chunks of her life?
Someone - maybe an enterprising young journalist perhaps! - should ask her whether she thinks her school would have been better staying as two separate (girl/boy) grammars and being 11+ plus selective or as a merged, expanded comp.
Richard Quest in his S Times piece says a lot of the problems were around shellshocked former grammar school teachers suddenly facing a new, wider non-11-plus intake and being totally lost and unable to maintain control.
That I can well believe. My father (an ex-headmaster) used to say that a lot of grammar (and private) schools coasted on the ability of their selective intake who could mostly teach themselves in a pinch. He believed they ought to have got far better results out of their intake, but no one was pulling them up on how poor their teaching actually was.
It is not that poor for the more academic intake, it is focused on top A level and GCSE grades, Oxbridge and Russell Group entry and hence then entry to the professions and senior management and largely delivers that.
Hence of the top 100 schools by Oxbridge entry success rate, 48 are independent, 23 are grammars, 19 are sixth form colleges and just 7 are comprehensives or academies.
Comprehensives main target, inevitably as a result of their intake, is usually just getting most to get 5 C grade GCSEs
Er, hang on a minute. Comprehensives are not Secondary Moderns, there is no selection, so they should have a full range of abilities in their intake.
Most comprehensives intake would have gone to secondary moderns when education was selective UK wide, hence their main target is focused on getting most of their pupils to C grade GCSEs.
No it isn't, and what you say makes no sense.
Yes it does, grammar schools generally took the top 10 to 25% of the academic spectrum, the rest went to secondary moderns. So most comprehensives intake inevitably would have been in the 75% who went to secondary moderns
But that doesn’t mean that their only goal is 5 GCSE passes.
That is their main goal.
Private schools and grammar schools by their generally more selective intake however have a main goal of maximising top A* and A grade GCSEs and A Levels and Oxbridge entry
Every comprehensive school I have visited has photos of its top performing pupils detailing their high exam grades. Getting good grades for their top performing pupils is very much one of their main goals.
He doesn't care about the schools that 85+% of UK pupils go to. Only Oxbridge and Russell Group matter to him.
I am a Tory, I support private schools and grammar schools and would happily have more of them and that has always been my position. I believe in choice and would happily have a grammar school and private school in every town and city in the UK if a general election could be won enabling that
You don't "believe in choice", except for choice for a) those who can afford private schools, and b) the sharp-elbowed, largely middle classes, who get their kids through the eleven plus to get into grammar schools. Those who don't succeed have no "choice", and they would be the vast majority under your preferred system.
I'm bemused by the fixation on lockdown. The past has happened and can't be changed. Yes you can learn lessons for the future. But anger about the past, rather than looking forward is quite futile. It's gone.
Bit like Brexit. I voted Remain but accepted the result as soon as it was in. We might rejoin in 20 or 30 years time if circumstances change.
Yes. Me too. How we move forward from now on both fronts is the important question. I happen to think Brexit was a mistake. But I'm not viscerally angry about it. It's happened. We lost. Make the best of it.
Good news on the grain front. Lloyds of London are providing insurance for Ukrainian shipments.
In terms of gas supply this winter, assuming Europe maxes out its inbound LNG imports, with Norwegian gas diverted to the continent and the UK using LNG imports, I'd think they could make it through. But then one assumes there will be other countries outbid for the LNG shipments, and they will suffer.
I think LNG imports will be limited more by shipping and terminal capacity than anything else.
Ok, I’m going to try and mount a defence of Liz Truss re the schooling.
I find it somewhat curious that the Guardian is now seeking to uphold the quality of state school education under the Thatcher government. I suspect that their issue here isn’t someone complaining that they didn’t feel their state school was able to compete in giving opportunities to their students, but who is saying it. Funny, that.
I also find it amusing that so much energy is being expended to rebut Truss’s experiences (what happened to people’s own “truth”?) which I suspect would not be the case if, say, a figure on the left had the same complaints.
A lot of what Truss says rings true in the state school system of that era: there were good and bad schools, but no matter how good the school was run or well meaning the teachers were they couldn’t compete with the private sector in terms of the opportunities and attention they could bestow on their students. I’m not suggesting that means the school was terrible (perhaps Truss could be accused of over-egging the pudding here).
The angle I think is far more damaging is the fact that she is complaining about the Thatcher era education system whilst… err… running as the heir to Thatcher. In fact there seems to be a lot about Tory governments Liz doesn’t like. She didn’t think her school was up to scratch under Thatcher, she thinks that the Tory government she’s been a member of wasn’t radical enough on the economy, and she certainly doesn’t agree with her government’s tax rises. Perhaps someone needs to ask Liz what she is doing running for leader of a Party she seems to have been at odds with for large chunks of her life?
Someone - maybe an enterprising young journalist perhaps! - should ask her whether she thinks her school would have been better staying as two separate (girl/boy) grammars and being 11+ plus selective or as a merged, expanded comp.
Richard Quest in his S Times piece says a lot of the problems were around shellshocked former grammar school teachers suddenly facing a new, wider non-11-plus intake and being totally lost and unable to maintain control.
That I can well believe. My father (an ex-headmaster) used to say that a lot of grammar (and private) schools coasted on the ability of their selective intake who could mostly teach themselves in a pinch. He believed they ought to have got far better results out of their intake, but no one was pulling them up on how poor their teaching actually was.
It is not that poor for the more academic intake, it is focused on top A level and GCSE grades, Oxbridge and Russell Group entry and hence then entry to the professions and senior management and largely delivers that.
Hence of the top 100 schools by Oxbridge entry success rate, 48 are independent, 23 are grammars, 19 are sixth form colleges and just 7 are comprehensives or academies.
Comprehensives main target, inevitably as a result of their intake, is usually just getting most to get 5 C grade GCSEs
Er, hang on a minute. Comprehensives are not Secondary Moderns, there is no selection, so they should have a full range of abilities in their intake.
Most comprehensives intake would have gone to secondary moderns when education was selective UK wide, hence their main target is focused on getting most of their pupils to C grade GCSEs.
No it isn't, and what you say makes no sense.
Yes it does, grammar schools generally took the top 10 to 25% of the academic spectrum, the rest went to secondary moderns. So most comprehensives intake inevitably would have been in the 75% who went to secondary moderns
But that doesn’t mean that their only goal is 5 GCSE passes.
That is their main goal.
Private schools and grammar schools by their generally more selective intake however have a main goal of maximising top A* and A grade GCSEs and A Levels and Oxbridge entry
Every comprehensive school I have visited has photos of its top performing pupils detailing their high exam grades. Getting good grades for their top performing pupils is very much one of their main goals.
He doesn't care about the schools that 85+% of UK pupils go to. Only Oxbridge and Russell Group matter to him.
I am a Tory, I support private schools and grammar schools and would happily have more of them and that has always been my position. I believe in choice and would happily have a grammar school and private school in every town and city in the UK if a general election could be won enabling that
Of course it could. But what's the point of producing more academically advanced teenagers when they're going to universities anyway? That's the part I don't get.
If you are from a working class background in a poor seaside or ex industrial town or northern inner city, you are far more likely to get into a top university from a grammar school than the local comp
Presumably because you passed an exam, so you're more able than the average? But anyway, even if creating grammars and the necessary crap-tier schools increases education quality on average, it can't be true for society overall that admissions increase, even if you create 200 grammar schools and 200 sink schools for the D-grade class. You would need a totally different policy about increasing top university admissions.
Ok, I’m going to try and mount a defence of Liz Truss re the schooling.
I find it somewhat curious that the Guardian is now seeking to uphold the quality of state school education under the Thatcher government. I suspect that their issue here isn’t someone complaining that they didn’t feel their state school was able to compete in giving opportunities to their students, but who is saying it. Funny, that.
I also find it amusing that so much energy is being expended to rebut Truss’s experiences (what happened to people’s own “truth”?) which I suspect would not be the case if, say, a figure on the left had the same complaints.
A lot of what Truss says rings true in the state school system of that era: there were good and bad schools, but no matter how good the school was run or well meaning the teachers were they couldn’t compete with the private sector in terms of the opportunities and attention they could bestow on their students. I’m not suggesting that means the school was terrible (perhaps Truss could be accused of over-egging the pudding here).
The angle I think is far more damaging is the fact that she is complaining about the Thatcher era education system whilst… err… running as the heir to Thatcher. In fact there seems to be a lot about Tory governments Liz doesn’t like. She didn’t think her school was up to scratch under Thatcher, she thinks that the Tory government she’s been a member of wasn’t radical enough on the economy, and she certainly doesn’t agree with her government’s tax rises. Perhaps someone needs to ask Liz what she is doing running for leader of a Party she seems to have been at odds with for large chunks of her life?
Someone - maybe an enterprising young journalist perhaps! - should ask her whether she thinks her school would have been better staying as two separate (girl/boy) grammars and being 11+ plus selective or as a merged, expanded comp.
Richard Quest in his S Times piece says a lot of the problems were around shellshocked former grammar school teachers suddenly facing a new, wider non-11-plus intake and being totally lost and unable to maintain control.
That I can well believe. My father (an ex-headmaster) used to say that a lot of grammar (and private) schools coasted on the ability of their selective intake who could mostly teach themselves in a pinch. He believed they ought to have got far better results out of their intake, but no one was pulling them up on how poor their teaching actually was.
It is not that poor for the more academic intake, it is focused on top A level and GCSE grades, Oxbridge and Russell Group entry and hence then entry to the professions and senior management and largely delivers that.
Hence of the top 100 schools by Oxbridge entry success rate, 48 are independent, 23 are grammars, 19 are sixth form colleges and just 7 are comprehensives or academies.
Comprehensives main target, inevitably as a result of their intake, is usually just getting most to get 5 C grade GCSEs
Er, hang on a minute. Comprehensives are not Secondary Moderns, there is no selection, so they should have a full range of abilities in their intake.
Most comprehensives intake would have gone to secondary moderns when education was selective UK wide, hence their main target is focused on getting most of their pupils to C grade GCSEs.
No it isn't, and what you say makes no sense.
Yes it does, grammar schools generally took the top 10 to 25% of the academic spectrum, the rest went to secondary moderns. So most comprehensives intake inevitably would have been in the 75% who went to secondary moderns
But that doesn’t mean that their only goal is 5 GCSE passes.
That is their main goal.
Private schools and grammar schools by their generally more selective intake however have a main goal of maximising top A* and A grade GCSEs and A Levels and Oxbridge entry
Every comprehensive school I have visited has photos of its top performing pupils detailing their high exam grades. Getting good grades for their top performing pupils is very much one of their main goals.
He doesn't care about the schools that 85+% of UK pupils go to. Only Oxbridge and Russell Group matter to him.
I am a Tory, I support private schools and grammar schools and would happily have more of them and that has always been my position. I believe in choice and would happily have a grammar school and private school in every town and city in the UK if a general election could be won enabling that
Of course it could. But what's the point of producing more academically advanced teenagers when they're going to universities anyway? That's the part I don't get.
If you are from a working class background in a poor seaside or ex industrial town or northern inner city, you are far more likely to get into a top university from a grammar school than the local comp
Except that very few of those places have grammar schools at all.
Precisely the point, the remaining grammar schools now are concentrated mainly in the home counties or wealthy suburbs of London and Manchester and Birmingham or prosperous towns like Ripon or Stratford on Avon where they are least needed not in poorer, mainly working class areas
Owen Jones would rather see a Tory Government forever.
He has not done anything for the working class
Neither have any political party,though we call out labour as they claim to be the party of the working class
Today's Yougov has Labour on 39% with middle class ABC1s but only 37% with working class C2DEs.
Labour ceased to be the party of the working class long ago, it is now the party of the public sector, the welfare dependant and students. They are its core vote and middle class graduates more likely to vote for it than working class voters in the private sector
Ok, I’m going to try and mount a defence of Liz Truss re the schooling.
I find it somewhat curious that the Guardian is now seeking to uphold the quality of state school education under the Thatcher government. I suspect that their issue here isn’t someone complaining that they didn’t feel their state school was able to compete in giving opportunities to their students, but who is saying it. Funny, that.
I also find it amusing that so much energy is being expended to rebut Truss’s experiences (what happened to people’s own “truth”?) which I suspect would not be the case if, say, a figure on the left had the same complaints.
A lot of what Truss says rings true in the state school system of that era: there were good and bad schools, but no matter how good the school was run or well meaning the teachers were they couldn’t compete with the private sector in terms of the opportunities and attention they could bestow on their students. I’m not suggesting that means the school was terrible (perhaps Truss could be accused of over-egging the pudding here).
The angle I think is far more damaging is the fact that she is complaining about the Thatcher era education system whilst… err… running as the heir to Thatcher. In fact there seems to be a lot about Tory governments Liz doesn’t like. She didn’t think her school was up to scratch under Thatcher, she thinks that the Tory government she’s been a member of wasn’t radical enough on the economy, and she certainly doesn’t agree with her government’s tax rises. Perhaps someone needs to ask Liz what she is doing running for leader of a Party she seems to have been at odds with for large chunks of her life?
Someone - maybe an enterprising young journalist perhaps! - should ask her whether she thinks her school would have been better staying as two separate (girl/boy) grammars and being 11+ plus selective or as a merged, expanded comp.
Richard Quest in his S Times piece says a lot of the problems were around shellshocked former grammar school teachers suddenly facing a new, wider non-11-plus intake and being totally lost and unable to maintain control.
That I can well believe. My father (an ex-headmaster) used to say that a lot of grammar (and private) schools coasted on the ability of their selective intake who could mostly teach themselves in a pinch. He believed they ought to have got far better results out of their intake, but no one was pulling them up on how poor their teaching actually was.
It is not that poor for the more academic intake, it is focused on top A level and GCSE grades, Oxbridge and Russell Group entry and hence then entry to the professions and senior management and largely delivers that.
Hence of the top 100 schools by Oxbridge entry success rate, 48 are independent, 23 are grammars, 19 are sixth form colleges and just 7 are comprehensives or academies.
Comprehensives main target, inevitably as a result of their intake, is usually just getting most to get 5 C grade GCSEs
Er, hang on a minute. Comprehensives are not Secondary Moderns, there is no selection, so they should have a full range of abilities in their intake.
Most comprehensives intake would have gone to secondary moderns when education was selective UK wide, hence their main target is focused on getting most of their pupils to C grade GCSEs.
No it isn't, and what you say makes no sense.
Yes it does, grammar schools generally took the top 10 to 25% of the academic spectrum, the rest went to secondary moderns. So most comprehensives intake inevitably would have been in the 75% who went to secondary moderns
But that doesn’t mean that their only goal is 5 GCSE passes.
That is their main goal.
Private schools and grammar schools by their generally more selective intake however have a main goal of maximising top A* and A grade GCSEs and A Levels and Oxbridge entry
Every comprehensive school I have visited has photos of its top performing pupils detailing their high exam grades. Getting good grades for their top performing pupils is very much one of their main goals.
He doesn't care about the schools that 85+% of UK pupils go to. Only Oxbridge and Russell Group matter to him.
I am a Tory, I support private schools and grammar schools and would happily have more of them and that has always been my position. I believe in choice and would happily have a grammar school and private school in every town and city in the UK if a general election could be won enabling that
Of course it could. But what's the point of producing more academically advanced teenagers when they're going to universities anyway? That's the part I don't get.
If you are from a working class background in a poor seaside or ex industrial town or northern inner city, you are far more likely to get into a top university from a grammar school than the local comp
Except that very few of those places have grammar schools at all.
Precisely the point, the remaining grammar schools now are concentrated mainly in the home counties or wealthy suburbs of London and Manchester and Birmingham or prosperous towns like Ripon or Stratford on Avon where they are least needed not in poorer, mainly working class areas
They aren't needed at all.
They absolutely are, the more of them the better as far as I am concerned
I'm bemused by the fixation on lockdown. The past has happened and can't be changed. Yes you can learn lessons for the future. But anger about the past, rather than looking forward is quite futile. It's gone.
I suppose some people think it's not the past. If the men in white coats walk up to PM Sunak before winter, and warn him that hundreds of thousands will die due to the new monkeypox hybrid variant, mixed with the first flu season for years, unless he closes down schools for another few months, isn't it at least somewhat likely that he locks down?
Ok, I’m going to try and mount a defence of Liz Truss re the schooling.
I find it somewhat curious that the Guardian is now seeking to uphold the quality of state school education under the Thatcher government. I suspect that their issue here isn’t someone complaining that they didn’t feel their state school was able to compete in giving opportunities to their students, but who is saying it. Funny, that.
I also find it amusing that so much energy is being expended to rebut Truss’s experiences (what happened to people’s own “truth”?) which I suspect would not be the case if, say, a figure on the left had the same complaints.
A lot of what Truss says rings true in the state school system of that era: there were good and bad schools, but no matter how good the school was run or well meaning the teachers were they couldn’t compete with the private sector in terms of the opportunities and attention they could bestow on their students. I’m not suggesting that means the school was terrible (perhaps Truss could be accused of over-egging the pudding here).
The angle I think is far more damaging is the fact that she is complaining about the Thatcher era education system whilst… err… running as the heir to Thatcher. In fact there seems to be a lot about Tory governments Liz doesn’t like. She didn’t think her school was up to scratch under Thatcher, she thinks that the Tory government she’s been a member of wasn’t radical enough on the economy, and she certainly doesn’t agree with her government’s tax rises. Perhaps someone needs to ask Liz what she is doing running for leader of a Party she seems to have been at odds with for large chunks of her life?
Someone - maybe an enterprising young journalist perhaps! - should ask her whether she thinks her school would have been better staying as two separate (girl/boy) grammars and being 11+ plus selective or as a merged, expanded comp.
Richard Quest in his S Times piece says a lot of the problems were around shellshocked former grammar school teachers suddenly facing a new, wider non-11-plus intake and being totally lost and unable to maintain control.
That I can well believe. My father (an ex-headmaster) used to say that a lot of grammar (and private) schools coasted on the ability of their selective intake who could mostly teach themselves in a pinch. He believed they ought to have got far better results out of their intake, but no one was pulling them up on how poor their teaching actually was.
It is not that poor for the more academic intake, it is focused on top A level and GCSE grades, Oxbridge and Russell Group entry and hence then entry to the professions and senior management and largely delivers that.
Hence of the top 100 schools by Oxbridge entry success rate, 48 are independent, 23 are grammars, 19 are sixth form colleges and just 7 are comprehensives or academies.
Comprehensives main target, inevitably as a result of their intake, is usually just getting most to get 5 C grade GCSEs
Er, hang on a minute. Comprehensives are not Secondary Moderns, there is no selection, so they should have a full range of abilities in their intake.
Most comprehensives intake would have gone to secondary moderns when education was selective UK wide, hence their main target is focused on getting most of their pupils to C grade GCSEs.
No it isn't, and what you say makes no sense.
Yes it does, grammar schools generally took the top 10 to 25% of the academic spectrum, the rest went to secondary moderns. So most comprehensives intake inevitably would have been in the 75% who went to secondary moderns
But that doesn’t mean that their only goal is 5 GCSE passes.
That is their main goal.
Private schools and grammar schools by their generally more selective intake however have a main goal of maximising top A* and A grade GCSEs and A Levels and Oxbridge entry
Every comprehensive school I have visited has photos of its top performing pupils detailing their high exam grades. Getting good grades for their top performing pupils is very much one of their main goals.
He doesn't care about the schools that 85+% of UK pupils go to. Only Oxbridge and Russell Group matter to him.
I am a Tory, I support private schools and grammar schools and would happily have more of them and that has always been my position. I believe in choice and would happily have a grammar school and private school in every town and city in the UK if a general election could be won enabling that
You don't "believe in choice", except for choice for a) those who can afford private schools, and b) the sharp-elbowed, largely middle classes, who get their kids through the eleven plus to get into grammar schools. Those who don't succeed have no "choice", and they would be the vast majority under your preferred system.
As opposed to the one size fits all bog standard comp for all you and the left prefer
Ok, I’m going to try and mount a defence of Liz Truss re the schooling.
I find it somewhat curious that the Guardian is now seeking to uphold the quality of state school education under the Thatcher government. I suspect that their issue here isn’t someone complaining that they didn’t feel their state school was able to compete in giving opportunities to their students, but who is saying it. Funny, that.
I also find it amusing that so much energy is being expended to rebut Truss’s experiences (what happened to people’s own “truth”?) which I suspect would not be the case if, say, a figure on the left had the same complaints.
A lot of what Truss says rings true in the state school system of that era: there were good and bad schools, but no matter how good the school was run or well meaning the teachers were they couldn’t compete with the private sector in terms of the opportunities and attention they could bestow on their students. I’m not suggesting that means the school was terrible (perhaps Truss could be accused of over-egging the pudding here).
The angle I think is far more damaging is the fact that she is complaining about the Thatcher era education system whilst… err… running as the heir to Thatcher. In fact there seems to be a lot about Tory governments Liz doesn’t like. She didn’t think her school was up to scratch under Thatcher, she thinks that the Tory government she’s been a member of wasn’t radical enough on the economy, and she certainly doesn’t agree with her government’s tax rises. Perhaps someone needs to ask Liz what she is doing running for leader of a Party she seems to have been at odds with for large chunks of her life?
Someone - maybe an enterprising young journalist perhaps! - should ask her whether she thinks her school would have been better staying as two separate (girl/boy) grammars and being 11+ plus selective or as a merged, expanded comp.
Richard Quest in his S Times piece says a lot of the problems were around shellshocked former grammar school teachers suddenly facing a new, wider non-11-plus intake and being totally lost and unable to maintain control.
That I can well believe. My father (an ex-headmaster) used to say that a lot of grammar (and private) schools coasted on the ability of their selective intake who could mostly teach themselves in a pinch. He believed they ought to have got far better results out of their intake, but no one was pulling them up on how poor their teaching actually was.
It is not that poor for the more academic intake, it is focused on top A level and GCSE grades, Oxbridge and Russell Group entry and hence then entry to the professions and senior management and largely delivers that.
Hence of the top 100 schools by Oxbridge entry success rate, 48 are independent, 23 are grammars, 19 are sixth form colleges and just 7 are comprehensives or academies.
Comprehensives main target, inevitably as a result of their intake, is usually just getting most to get 5 C grade GCSEs
Er, hang on a minute. Comprehensives are not Secondary Moderns, there is no selection, so they should have a full range of abilities in their intake.
Most comprehensives intake would have gone to secondary moderns when education was selective UK wide, hence their main target is focused on getting most of their pupils to C grade GCSEs.
No it isn't, and what you say makes no sense.
Yes it does, grammar schools generally took the top 10 to 25% of the academic spectrum, the rest went to secondary moderns. So most comprehensives intake inevitably would have been in the 75% who went to secondary moderns
But that doesn’t mean that their only goal is 5 GCSE passes.
That is their main goal.
Private schools and grammar schools by their generally more selective intake however have a main goal of maximising top A* and A grade GCSEs and A Levels and Oxbridge entry
Every comprehensive school I have visited has photos of its top performing pupils detailing their high exam grades. Getting good grades for their top performing pupils is very much one of their main goals.
He doesn't care about the schools that 85+% of UK pupils go to. Only Oxbridge and Russell Group matter to him.
I am a Tory, I support private schools and grammar schools and would happily have more of them and that has always been my position. I believe in choice and would happily have a grammar school and private school in every town and city in the UK if a general election could be won enabling that
You don't "believe in choice", except for choice for a) those who can afford private schools, and b) the sharp-elbowed, largely middle classes, who get their kids through the eleven plus to get into grammar schools. Those who don't succeed have no "choice", and they would be the vast majority under your preferred system.
As opposed to the one size fits all bog standard comp for all you and the left prefer
Hang on - you yourself want the country to be full of schools that are like comps, except with all the talented kids removed.
I'm bemused by the fixation on lockdown. The past has happened and can't be changed. Yes you can learn lessons for the future. But anger about the past, rather than looking forward is quite futile. It's gone.
I suppose some people think it's not the past. If the men in white coats walk up to PM Sunak before winter, and warn him that hundreds of thousands will die due to the new monkeypox hybrid variant, mixed with the first flu season for years, unless he closes down schools for another few months, isn't it at least somewhat likely that he locks down?
I find this class breakdown of voting to be a function of age and outdated views of class categories. If that weren't true why are Labour constituencies poorer on average than Tory ones? The 1950's class stratification is redundant.
SCOOP: Portland Public Schools is now teaching elementary school students to subvert the sexuality of “white colonizers,” acknowledge that girls can have penises, and begin experimenting with “ze/zir” pronouns and exploring “the infinite gender spectrum.”
Owen Jones would rather see a Tory Government forever.
He has not done anything for the working class
Neither have any political party,though we call out labour as they claim to be the party of the working class
The Tories have been doing a fair amount of that recently I'm told.
Pffft claiming they are and doing so are two entirely different things. Sadly in this country politicians dont give a shit about anyone earning less than a 100k a year and pensioners....both sets more liable to vote. We are governed for their benefit not for the majority of the countries
I find this class breakdown of voting to be a function of age and outdated views of class categories. If that weren't true why are Labour constituencies poorer on average than Tory ones? The 1950's class stratification is redundant.
You are right, and the explanation is that ABC1 occupation is a barely-effective classifier of middle-class identity. Essentially for historical reasons nurses and most school staff count as ABC1 professionals, and those professions have grown by a lot as a share of the economy during the postwar even though you could earn more as a notionally low-skilled clerical or secretarial worker in the City.
I find this class breakdown of voting to be a function of age and outdated views of class categories. If that weren't true why are Labour constituencies poorer on average than Tory ones? The 1950's class stratification is redundant.
Yes, a bit like the "Red Wall" the ABC1C2DE classification is becoming quite redundant. It is a shorthand that conceals as much as it illuminates. Age, education and income are probably better markers of voting behaviour.
Owen Jones would rather see a Tory Government forever.
He has not done anything for the working class
Neither have any political party,though we call out labour as they claim to be the party of the working class
The Tories have been doing a fair amount of that recently I'm told.
Pffft claiming they are and doing so are two entirely different things. Sadly in this country politicians dont give a shit about anyone earning less than a 100k a year and pensioners....both sets more liable to vote. We are governed for their benefit not for the majority of the countries
Ok, I’m going to try and mount a defence of Liz Truss re the schooling.
I find it somewhat curious that the Guardian is now seeking to uphold the quality of state school education under the Thatcher government. I suspect that their issue here isn’t someone complaining that they didn’t feel their state school was able to compete in giving opportunities to their students, but who is saying it. Funny, that.
I also find it amusing that so much energy is being expended to rebut Truss’s experiences (what happened to people’s own “truth”?) which I suspect would not be the case if, say, a figure on the left had the same complaints.
A lot of what Truss says rings true in the state school system of that era: there were good and bad schools, but no matter how good the school was run or well meaning the teachers were they couldn’t compete with the private sector in terms of the opportunities and attention they could bestow on their students. I’m not suggesting that means the school was terrible (perhaps Truss could be accused of over-egging the pudding here).
The angle I think is far more damaging is the fact that she is complaining about the Thatcher era education system whilst… err… running as the heir to Thatcher. In fact there seems to be a lot about Tory governments Liz doesn’t like. She didn’t think her school was up to scratch under Thatcher, she thinks that the Tory government she’s been a member of wasn’t radical enough on the economy, and she certainly doesn’t agree with her government’s tax rises. Perhaps someone needs to ask Liz what she is doing running for leader of a Party she seems to have been at odds with for large chunks of her life?
Someone - maybe an enterprising young journalist perhaps! - should ask her whether she thinks her school would have been better staying as two separate (girl/boy) grammars and being 11+ plus selective or as a merged, expanded comp.
Richard Quest in his S Times piece says a lot of the problems were around shellshocked former grammar school teachers suddenly facing a new, wider non-11-plus intake and being totally lost and unable to maintain control.
That I can well believe. My father (an ex-headmaster) used to say that a lot of grammar (and private) schools coasted on the ability of their selective intake who could mostly teach themselves in a pinch. He believed they ought to have got far better results out of their intake, but no one was pulling them up on how poor their teaching actually was.
It is not that poor for the more academic intake, it is focused on top A level and GCSE grades, Oxbridge and Russell Group entry and hence then entry to the professions and senior management and largely delivers that.
Hence of the top 100 schools by Oxbridge entry success rate, 48 are independent, 23 are grammars, 19 are sixth form colleges and just 7 are comprehensives or academies.
Comprehensives main target, inevitably as a result of their intake, is usually just getting most to get 5 C grade GCSEs
Er, hang on a minute. Comprehensives are not Secondary Moderns, there is no selection, so they should have a full range of abilities in their intake.
Most comprehensives intake would have gone to secondary moderns when education was selective UK wide, hence their main target is focused on getting most of their pupils to C grade GCSEs.
No it isn't, and what you say makes no sense.
Yes it does, grammar schools generally took the top 10 to 25% of the academic spectrum, the rest went to secondary moderns. So most comprehensives intake inevitably would have been in the 75% who went to secondary moderns
But that doesn’t mean that their only goal is 5 GCSE passes.
That is their main goal.
Private schools and grammar schools by their generally more selective intake however have a main goal of maximising top A* and A grade GCSEs and A Levels and Oxbridge entry
Every comprehensive school I have visited has photos of its top performing pupils detailing their high exam grades. Getting good grades for their top performing pupils is very much one of their main goals.
Yet less so than getting C grade GCSEs, as that is what will determine their league table position given the vast majority of comprehensives cannot hope to challenge most private and grammar schools on Oxbridge entry
A little out of date, nowadays schools get a progress 8 score based on the 8 best gcse grades across the baccalaureate subjects. Grade 9 is worth 9 pts, grade 4 ( the old C ) is worth 4 pts.
SCOOP: Portland Public Schools is now teaching elementary school students to subvert the sexuality of “white colonizers,” acknowledge that girls can have penises, and begin experimenting with “ze/zir” pronouns and exploring “the infinite gender spectrum.”
Off topic, and on a lighter note: Now that you have proven the feasibility of guard emus (however accidentally), perhaps some entrepeneur will want to create a business providing them to other small businesses. I think they would cost less to feed than guard dogs of the same size.
The Trans-Woke stuff is going to destroy the Democrats in America
I note woke has now become trans woke.
Because this is one subset of Wokeness
The obsession with gender identity. It is absolutely toxic if you read American media - because it is angering parents across the country. I don’t think the US Left understands how badly it is going down with regular Americans
After the Roe v Wade decision I reckoned the Republicans had blown it, and women would move en masse to the Dems (and who can blame them). But the Culture War stuff is driving them back to the right, I suspect
Off topic, and on a lighter note: Now that you have proven the feasibility of guard emus (however accidentally), perhaps some entrepeneur will want to create a business providing them to other small businesses. I think they would cost less to feed than guard dogs of the same size.
(Ostriches might be too dangerous.)
40 years ago my mates dad who was a security guard on Harley Street, had a swan rather than a dog.
The Trans-Woke stuff is going to destroy the Democrats in America
I note woke has now become trans woke.
Because this is one subset of Wokeness
The obsession with gender identity. It is absolutely toxic if you read American media - because it is angering parents across the country. I don’t think the US Left understands how badly it is going down with regular Americans
After the Roe v Wade decision I reckoned the Republicans had blown it, and women would move en masse to the Dems (and who can blame them). But the Culture War stuff is driving them back to the right, I suspect
I don't think it is as simple as that, because people can more easily sort themselves by preferred tenor of municipality policies than by state and national policies that apply equally to Austin as to Midland.
AIUI the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case on whether Holyrood can hold a referendum unilaterally. That's possibly a good sign for the Nats, as the government argument was that the case didn't even deserve a hearing as proper process hadn't been followed.
It's rather difficult to see how they could rule in Sturgeon's favour under the law, but then the Supreme Court has form for bizarre judgements which bear as much relationship to the law as SeanT does to sobriety. Prorogation and Shamima Begum spring to mind.
Referendum allowed, no possible legal effect from said referendum ?
Not really satisfactory as that would then be asking councils to spend money on something that had no legal force. What if one of them refused to comply?
AFAIK, the Scottish Government pays for the expense of conducting the Referendum. As it is a legal duty under the Referendums (Scotland) Act 2020 for LAs to raise awareness and encourage people to vote, councillors refusing to cooperate could probably be suspended if they refuse to do so.
I find this class breakdown of voting to be a function of age and outdated views of class categories. If that weren't true why are Labour constituencies poorer on average than Tory ones? The 1950's class stratification is redundant.
In 2019 they weren't.
Average earnings in seats the Tories gained from Labour in 2019 were lower than average earnings in seats Labour held
I find this class breakdown of voting to be a function of age and outdated views of class categories. If that weren't true why are Labour constituencies poorer on average than Tory ones? The 1950's class stratification is redundant.
In 2019 they weren't.
Average earnings in seats the Tories gained from Labour in 2019 were lower than average earnings in seats Labour held
The Trans-Woke stuff is going to destroy the Democrats in America
I note woke has now become trans woke.
Because this is one subset of Wokeness
The obsession with gender identity. It is absolutely toxic if you read American media - because it is angering parents across the country. I don’t think the US Left understands how badly it is going down with regular Americans
After the Roe v Wade decision I reckoned the Republicans had blown it, and women would move en masse to the Dems (and who can blame them). But the Culture War stuff is driving them back to the right, I suspect
In Congress in the House in November most likely, in the Senate depends on the candidate and at presidential level depends who the Democrats nominate in 2024. Buttigieg I expect would avoid the culture war, AOC or Harris would fall into the GOP trap and fight it. Biden is not that woke personally but would be dominated by those in the Democrat party below him who are
The Trans-Woke stuff is going to destroy the Democrats in America
I note woke has now become trans woke.
Because this is one subset of Wokeness
The obsession with gender identity. It is absolutely toxic if you read American media - because it is angering parents across the country. I don’t think the US Left understands how badly it is going down with regular Americans
After the Roe v Wade decision I reckoned the Republicans had blown it, and women would move en masse to the Dems (and who can blame them). But the Culture War stuff is driving them back to the right, I suspect
I don't think it is as simple as that, because people can more easily sort themselves by preferred tenor of municipality policies than by state and national policies that apply equally to Austin as to Midland.
The Culture War is nationwide. And one side will lose
Why? India is not racist just because it does not have a white PM.
Sunak has many qualities that could make him an effective PM but his race should not be a factor. It might boost UK Indian relations but his failure to win the post does not mean the UK or Tories are racist, polling showed members voting for Badenoch
Sonia Gandhi is white. She won the 2004 election for the Congress Party, but had to make way for Manmohan Singh.
I find this class breakdown of voting to be a function of age and outdated views of class categories. If that weren't true why are Labour constituencies poorer on average than Tory ones? The 1950's class stratification is redundant.
In 2019 they weren't.
Average earnings in seats the Tories gained from Labour in 2019 were lower than average earnings in seats Labour held
No accusation is more damning against a politician in the Western world than that she "wants to build a million homes". How sad that we ended up with this being true.
The Trans-Woke stuff is going to destroy the Democrats in America
I note woke has now become trans woke.
Because this is one subset of Wokeness
The obsession with gender identity. It is absolutely toxic if you read American media - because it is angering parents across the country. I don’t think the US Left understands how badly it is going down with regular Americans
After the Roe v Wade decision I reckoned the Republicans had blown it, and women would move en masse to the Dems (and who can blame them). But the Culture War stuff is driving them back to the right, I suspect
In Congress in the House in November most likely, in the Senate depends on the candidate and at presidential level depends who the Democrats nominate in 2024. Buttigieg I expect would avoid the culture war, AOC or Harris would fall into the GOP trap and fight it. Biden is not that woke personally but would be dominated by those in the Democrat party below him who are
But it’s out of the hands of the politicians, and the people know it
Eg Wokeness has just stormed American medicine. This week:
“The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) just released its official Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Competencies. Designed for curriculum development, the competencies function as DEI educational standards, providing a set of ideal “diversity” and “inclusion” skills for three stages of a physician’s education. For graduating medical students, the competencies include “describ[ing] the impact of various systems of oppression on health and health care (e.g., colonization, White supremacy, acculturation, assimilation).” For graduating residents, they include “promoting social justice and engag[ing] in efforts to eliminate health care disparities,” and for faculty physicians, “teach[ing] how systems of power, privilege, and oppression inform policies and practices and how to engage with systems to disrupt oppressive practices.”
“Ultimately, these new competencies provide a blueprint for infusing the themes of identity politics—“intersectionality,” “white privilege,” “microaggression,” “allyship”—into medical education. In March, the National Association of Scholars acquired and published a draft version of the competencies. A number of critics spoke up, noting how the competencies would function as an obvious threat to academic freedom and, more broadly, sound medical education.
With the publication of these official competencies, the AAMC appears to be doubling-down.”
it’s a war to the end. Woke has to be driven into the sea or it is the end of the USA and, ultimately, the end of the West. Woke wants to destroy the scientific method and ruin western education. All hands on deck
I find this class breakdown of voting to be a function of age and outdated views of class categories. If that weren't true why are Labour constituencies poorer on average than Tory ones? The 1950's class stratification is redundant.
In 2019 they weren't.
Average earnings in seats the Tories gained from Labour in 2019 were lower than average earnings in seats Labour held
It is, in 2019 the lowest earning seats were won by the Tories, the seats Labour held had significantly higher average earnings even if slightly less than traditionally Tory seats.
Confirmation yet further that Labour is no longer the party of the working class, indeed if anything Labour has expanded that trend further with Starmer making his biggest gains from the Tories amongst middle class graduate Remainers, especially in London and the South.
Although he is doing better in the redwall than Corbyn did the Tories still lead with working class Leave voters
Ok, I’m going to try and mount a defence of Liz Truss re the schooling.
I find it somewhat curious that the Guardian is now seeking to uphold the quality of state school education under the Thatcher government. I suspect that their issue here isn’t someone complaining that they didn’t feel their state school was able to compete in giving opportunities to their students, but who is saying it. Funny, that.
I also find it amusing that so much energy is being expended to rebut Truss’s experiences (what happened to people’s own “truth”?) which I suspect would not be the case if, say, a figure on the left had the same complaints.
A lot of what Truss says rings true in the state school system of that era: there were good and bad schools, but no matter how good the school was run or well meaning the teachers were they couldn’t compete with the private sector in terms of the opportunities and attention they could bestow on their students. I’m not suggesting that means the school was terrible (perhaps Truss could be accused of over-egging the pudding here).
The angle I think is far more damaging is the fact that she is complaining about the Thatcher era education system whilst… err… running as the heir to Thatcher. In fact there seems to be a lot about Tory governments Liz doesn’t like. She didn’t think her school was up to scratch under Thatcher, she thinks that the Tory government she’s been a member of wasn’t radical enough on the economy, and she certainly doesn’t agree with her government’s tax rises. Perhaps someone needs to ask Liz what she is doing running for leader of a Party she seems to have been at odds with for large chunks of her life?
Someone - maybe an enterprising young journalist perhaps! - should ask her whether she thinks her school would have been better staying as two separate (girl/boy) grammars and being 11+ plus selective or as a merged, expanded comp.
Richard Quest in his S Times piece says a lot of the problems were around shellshocked former grammar school teachers suddenly facing a new, wider non-11-plus intake and being totally lost and unable to maintain control.
That I can well believe. My father (an ex-headmaster) used to say that a lot of grammar (and private) schools coasted on the ability of their selective intake who could mostly teach themselves in a pinch. He believed they ought to have got far better results out of their intake, but no one was pulling them up on how poor their teaching actually was.
It is not that poor for the more academic intake, it is focused on top A level and GCSE grades, Oxbridge and Russell Group entry and hence then entry to the professions and senior management and largely delivers that.
Hence of the top 100 schools by Oxbridge entry success rate, 48 are independent, 23 are grammars, 19 are sixth form colleges and just 7 are comprehensives or academies.
Comprehensives main target, inevitably as a result of their intake, is usually just getting most to get 5 C grade GCSEs
Er, hang on a minute. Comprehensives are not Secondary Moderns, there is no selection, so they should have a full range of abilities in their intake.
Most comprehensives intake would have gone to secondary moderns when education was selective UK wide, hence their main target is focused on getting most of their pupils to C grade GCSEs.
That is one of your most moronic posts.
You are fixated with exam results, you never consider added value.
The entire premise of your post, apart from being utterly nonsensical, is a terrible indictment on your aspiration for the education of the UK population as a political operator with a desire for high office. Liz Truss is no better, and as far from reality as you are.
Both my children went to Comprehensive School, a fantastic Roman Catholic High School in Barry with excellent results, which is your benchmark, and a great pastoral reputation with well over half of the GCSE year group going on to St David's sixth form College in Cardiff. Not 6 miles from where I live is Cowbridge High School with an excellent academic reputation and a Rugby Academy. Whitchurch High School in Cardiff, where I used to live has a sports academy that produced Gareth Bale, Sam Warburton and the late Tom Maynard. Cardiff High School in Llanishen is excellent as is the Olchfa in Swansea, and I could probably name loads more within twenty miles to the East and West of me if I tried hard enough.
Yes there are sink schools in England, Scotland and Wales, but they tend to follow the social and economic trends of the catchment area they serve. But your cover all assessment that unless a school is selective either by wealth or the 11 plus is an absolute crock
You are an educational elitist, and a clueless one at that.
Ok, I’m going to try and mount a defence of Liz Truss re the schooling.
I find it somewhat curious that the Guardian is now seeking to uphold the quality of state school education under the Thatcher government. I suspect that their issue here isn’t someone complaining that they didn’t feel their state school was able to compete in giving opportunities to their students, but who is saying it. Funny, that.
I also find it amusing that so much energy is being expended to rebut Truss’s experiences (what happened to people’s own “truth”?) which I suspect would not be the case if, say, a figure on the left had the same complaints.
A lot of what Truss says rings true in the state school system of that era: there were good and bad schools, but no matter how good the school was run or well meaning the teachers were they couldn’t compete with the private sector in terms of the opportunities and attention they could bestow on their students. I’m not suggesting that means the school was terrible (perhaps Truss could be accused of over-egging the pudding here).
The angle I think is far more damaging is the fact that she is complaining about the Thatcher era education system whilst… err… running as the heir to Thatcher. In fact there seems to be a lot about Tory governments Liz doesn’t like. She didn’t think her school was up to scratch under Thatcher, she thinks that the Tory government she’s been a member of wasn’t radical enough on the economy, and she certainly doesn’t agree with her government’s tax rises. Perhaps someone needs to ask Liz what she is doing running for leader of a Party she seems to have been at odds with for large chunks of her life?
Someone - maybe an enterprising young journalist perhaps! - should ask her whether she thinks her school would have been better staying as two separate (girl/boy) grammars and being 11+ plus selective or as a merged, expanded comp.
Richard Quest in his S Times piece says a lot of the problems were around shellshocked former grammar school teachers suddenly facing a new, wider non-11-plus intake and being totally lost and unable to maintain control.
That I can well believe. My father (an ex-headmaster) used to say that a lot of grammar (and private) schools coasted on the ability of their selective intake who could mostly teach themselves in a pinch. He believed they ought to have got far better results out of their intake, but no one was pulling them up on how poor their teaching actually was.
It is not that poor for the more academic intake, it is focused on top A level and GCSE grades, Oxbridge and Russell Group entry and hence then entry to the professions and senior management and largely delivers that.
Hence of the top 100 schools by Oxbridge entry success rate, 48 are independent, 23 are grammars, 19 are sixth form colleges and just 7 are comprehensives or academies.
Comprehensives main target, inevitably as a result of their intake, is usually just getting most to get 5 C grade GCSEs
Er, hang on a minute. Comprehensives are not Secondary Moderns, there is no selection, so they should have a full range of abilities in their intake.
Most comprehensives intake would have gone to secondary moderns when education was selective UK wide, hence their main target is focused on getting most of their pupils to C grade GCSEs.
That is one of your most moronic posts.
You are fixated with exam results, you never consider added value.
The entire premise of your post, apart from being utterly nonsensical, is a terrible indictment on your aspiration for the education of the UK population, as a political operator with a desire for high office.
Both my children went to Comprehensive School, a fantastic Roman Catholic High School in Barry with excellent results, which is your benchmark, and a great pastoral reputation with well over half of the GCSE year group going on to St David's sixth form College in Cardiff. Not 6 miles from where I live is Cowbridge High School with an excellent academic reputation and a Rugby Academy. Whitchurch High School in Cardiff, where I used to live has a sports academy that produced Gareth Bale, Sam Warburton and the late Tom Maynard. Cardiff High School in Llanishen is excellent as is the Olchfa in Swansea, and I could probably name loads more within twenty miles to the East and West of me if I tried hard enough.
Yes there are sink schools in England, Scotland and Wales, but they tend to follow the social and economic trends of the catchment area they serve. But your cover all assessment that unless a school is selective either by wealth or the 11 plus is an absolute crock
You are an educational elitist, and a clueless one at that.
I am an educational elitist and proud of it, the top of our league tables for exam results and Oxbridge entry remain dominated by private and grammar schools.
The Vale of Glamorgan is a relatively prosperous part of Wales, hardly disputes the point comprehensives do least well in the poorest and most working class areas
The Trans-Woke stuff is going to destroy the Democrats in America
I note woke has now become trans woke.
Well, it was only a matter of time before woke itself decided it was unsure of its gender and started phoning doctors to discuss chemicals and surgery.
Good news on the grain front. Lloyds of London are providing insurance for Ukrainian shipments.
In terms of gas supply this winter, assuming Europe maxes out its inbound LNG imports, with Norwegian gas diverted to the continent and the UK using LNG imports, I'd think they could make it through. But then one assumes there will be other countries outbid for the LNG shipments, and they will suffer.
I think LNG imports will be limited more by shipping and terminal capacity than anything else.
I find this class breakdown of voting to be a function of age and outdated views of class categories. If that weren't true why are Labour constituencies poorer on average than Tory ones? The 1950's class stratification is redundant.
In 2019 they weren't.
Average earnings in seats the Tories gained from Labour in 2019 were lower than average earnings in seats Labour held
It is, in 2019 the lowest earning seats were won by the Tories, the seats Labour held had significantly higher average earnings even if slightly less than traditionally Tory seats.
Confirmation yet further that Labour is no longer the party of the working class, indeed if anything Labour has expanded that trend further with Starmer making his biggest gains from the Tories amongst middle class graduate Remainers, especially in London and the South.
Although he is doing better in the redwall than Corbyn did the Tories still lead with working class Leave voters
No, the data show that on average Tory seats had annual incomes around £1k higher than Labour seats (because the ratio of holds to gains is something like 85:15).
Ok, I’m going to try and mount a defence of Liz Truss re the schooling.
I find it somewhat curious that the Guardian is now seeking to uphold the quality of state school education under the Thatcher government. I suspect that their issue here isn’t someone complaining that they didn’t feel their state school was able to compete in giving opportunities to their students, but who is saying it. Funny, that.
I also find it amusing that so much energy is being expended to rebut Truss’s experiences (what happened to people’s own “truth”?) which I suspect would not be the case if, say, a figure on the left had the same complaints.
A lot of what Truss says rings true in the state school system of that era: there were good and bad schools, but no matter how good the school was run or well meaning the teachers were they couldn’t compete with the private sector in terms of the opportunities and attention they could bestow on their students. I’m not suggesting that means the school was terrible (perhaps Truss could be accused of over-egging the pudding here).
The angle I think is far more damaging is the fact that she is complaining about the Thatcher era education system whilst… err… running as the heir to Thatcher. In fact there seems to be a lot about Tory governments Liz doesn’t like. She didn’t think her school was up to scratch under Thatcher, she thinks that the Tory government she’s been a member of wasn’t radical enough on the economy, and she certainly doesn’t agree with her government’s tax rises. Perhaps someone needs to ask Liz what she is doing running for leader of a Party she seems to have been at odds with for large chunks of her life?
Someone - maybe an enterprising young journalist perhaps! - should ask her whether she thinks her school would have been better staying as two separate (girl/boy) grammars and being 11+ plus selective or as a merged, expanded comp.
Richard Quest in his S Times piece says a lot of the problems were around shellshocked former grammar school teachers suddenly facing a new, wider non-11-plus intake and being totally lost and unable to maintain control.
That I can well believe. My father (an ex-headmaster) used to say that a lot of grammar (and private) schools coasted on the ability of their selective intake who could mostly teach themselves in a pinch. He believed they ought to have got far better results out of their intake, but no one was pulling them up on how poor their teaching actually was.
It is not that poor for the more academic intake, it is focused on top A level and GCSE grades, Oxbridge and Russell Group entry and hence then entry to the professions and senior management and largely delivers that.
Hence of the top 100 schools by Oxbridge entry success rate, 48 are independent, 23 are grammars, 19 are sixth form colleges and just 7 are comprehensives or academies.
Comprehensives main target, inevitably as a result of their intake, is usually just getting most to get 5 C grade GCSEs
Er, hang on a minute. Comprehensives are not Secondary Moderns, there is no selection, so they should have a full range of abilities in their intake.
Most comprehensives intake would have gone to secondary moderns when education was selective UK wide, hence their main target is focused on getting most of their pupils to C grade GCSEs.
That is one of your most moronic posts.
You are fixated with exam results, you never consider added value.
The entire premise of your post, apart from being utterly nonsensical, is a terrible indictment on your aspiration for the education of the UK population, as a political operator with a desire for high office.
Both my children went to Comprehensive School, a fantastic Roman Catholic High School in Barry with excellent results, which is your benchmark, and a great pastoral reputation with well over half of the GCSE year group going on to St David's sixth form College in Cardiff. Not 6 miles from where I live is Cowbridge High School with an excellent academic reputation and a Rugby Academy. Whitchurch High School in Cardiff, where I used to live has a sports academy that produced Gareth Bale, Sam Warburton and the late Tom Maynard. Cardiff High School in Llanishen is excellent as is the Olchfa in Swansea, and I could probably name loads more within twenty miles to the East and West of me if I tried hard enough.
Yes there are sink schools in England, Scotland and Wales, but they tend to follow the social and economic trends of the catchment area they serve. But your cover all assessment that unless a school is selective either by wealth or the 11 plus is an absolute crock
You are an educational elitist, and a clueless one at that.
I am an educational elitist and proud of it, the top of our league tables for exam results and Oxbridge entry remain dominated by private and grammar schools.
The Vale of Glamorgan is a relatively prosperous part of Wales, hardly disputes the point comprehensives do least well in the poorest and most working class areas
Yes but your elitism isn't to tease excellence out of some kid from a council estate. It is to furnish tosspots like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees Mogg with places at Oxford.
On education you are absolutely away with the fairies.
The part of the Western Vale where I live is wealthy, but Barry where my children went to school is not. It was an excellent school because it was well funded (by the Catholic Church amongst others). That is the problem, funding. A well oiled education system or scrapping the NI increases? That is the choice!
In my opinion the figures should be something like this: [assumes the new boundaries are in force]
NOM 2.22 Con Maj 2.22 Lab Maj 10
Important point about new boundaries. The oft quoted extra 10 Tory seats are projected assuming a repeat of the 2019 vote share. There is evidence with a Labour lead of around 6 that there is no gain for the Conservatives whatsoever.
I don’t see how would that work? The South East for instance is gaining 7 seats while Wales drops 8. So there should be an advantage for the Tories over the status quo almost regardless of the national swing.
I ran Redfield’s recent poll showing a 6-point Labour lead through Electoral Calculus. It showed a 12-seat net advantage for Con on the new boundaries.
SCOOP: Portland Public Schools is now teaching elementary school students to subvert the sexuality of “white colonizers,” acknowledge that girls can have penises, and begin experimenting with “ze/zir” pronouns and exploring “the infinite gender spectrum.”
Ok, I’m going to try and mount a defence of Liz Truss re the schooling.
I find it somewhat curious that the Guardian is now seeking to uphold the quality of state school education under the Thatcher government. I suspect that their issue here isn’t someone complaining that they didn’t feel their state school was able to compete in giving opportunities to their students, but who is saying it. Funny, that.
I also find it amusing that so much energy is being expended to rebut Truss’s experiences (what happened to people’s own “truth”?) which I suspect would not be the case if, say, a figure on the left had the same complaints.
A lot of what Truss says rings true in the state school system of that era: there were good and bad schools, but no matter how good the school was run or well meaning the teachers were they couldn’t compete with the private sector in terms of the opportunities and attention they could bestow on their students. I’m not suggesting that means the school was terrible (perhaps Truss could be accused of over-egging the pudding here).
The angle I think is far more damaging is the fact that she is complaining about the Thatcher era education system whilst… err… running as the heir to Thatcher. In fact there seems to be a lot about Tory governments Liz doesn’t like. She didn’t think her school was up to scratch under Thatcher, she thinks that the Tory government she’s been a member of wasn’t radical enough on the economy, and she certainly doesn’t agree with her government’s tax rises. Perhaps someone needs to ask Liz what she is doing running for leader of a Party she seems to have been at odds with for large chunks of her life?
Someone - maybe an enterprising young journalist perhaps! - should ask her whether she thinks her school would have been better staying as two separate (girl/boy) grammars and being 11+ plus selective or as a merged, expanded comp.
Richard Quest in his S Times piece says a lot of the problems were around shellshocked former grammar school teachers suddenly facing a new, wider non-11-plus intake and being totally lost and unable to maintain control.
That I can well believe. My father (an ex-headmaster) used to say that a lot of grammar (and private) schools coasted on the ability of their selective intake who could mostly teach themselves in a pinch. He believed they ought to have got far better results out of their intake, but no one was pulling them up on how poor their teaching actually was.
It is not that poor for the more academic intake, it is focused on top A level and GCSE grades, Oxbridge and Russell Group entry and hence then entry to the professions and senior management and largely delivers that.
Hence of the top 100 schools by Oxbridge entry success rate, 48 are independent, 23 are grammars, 19 are sixth form colleges and just 7 are comprehensives or academies.
Comprehensives main target, inevitably as a result of their intake, is usually just getting most to get 5 C grade GCSEs
Er, hang on a minute. Comprehensives are not Secondary Moderns, there is no selection, so they should have a full range of abilities in their intake.
Most comprehensives intake would have gone to secondary moderns when education was selective UK wide, hence their main target is focused on getting most of their pupils to C grade GCSEs.
That is one of your most moronic posts.
You are fixated with exam results, you never consider added value.
The entire premise of your post, apart from being utterly nonsensical, is a terrible indictment on your aspiration for the education of the UK population, as a political operator with a desire for high office.
Both my children went to Comprehensive School, a fantastic Roman Catholic High School in Barry with excellent results, which is your benchmark, and a great pastoral reputation with well over half of the GCSE year group going on to St David's sixth form College in Cardiff. Not 6 miles from where I live is Cowbridge High School with an excellent academic reputation and a Rugby Academy. Whitchurch High School in Cardiff, where I used to live has a sports academy that produced Gareth Bale, Sam Warburton and the late Tom Maynard. Cardiff High School in Llanishen is excellent as is the Olchfa in Swansea, and I could probably name loads more within twenty miles to the East and West of me if I tried hard enough.
Yes there are sink schools in England, Scotland and Wales, but they tend to follow the social and economic trends of the catchment area they serve. But your cover all assessment that unless a school is selective either by wealth or the 11 plus is an absolute crock
You are an educational elitist, and a clueless one at that.
I am an educational elitist and proud of it, the top of our league tables for exam results and Oxbridge entry remain dominated by private and grammar schools.
The Vale of Glamorgan is a relatively prosperous part of Wales, hardly disputes the point comprehensives do least well in the poorest and most working class areas
Yes but your elitism isn't to tease excellence out of some kid from a council estate. It is to furnish tosspots like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees Mogg with places at Oxford.
On education you are absolutely away with the fairies.
The part of the Western Vale where I live is wealthy, but Barry where my children went to school is not. It was an excellent school because it was well funded (by the Catholic Church amongst others). That is the problem, funding. A well oiled education system or scrapping the NI increases? That is the choice!
If it was a Catholic school it would be selective anyway, just based on rate of church attendance at weekly Mass
I find this class breakdown of voting to be a function of age and outdated views of class categories. If that weren't true why are Labour constituencies poorer on average than Tory ones? The 1950's class stratification is redundant.
In 2019 they weren't.
Average earnings in seats the Tories gained from Labour in 2019 were lower than average earnings in seats Labour held
It is, in 2019 the lowest earning seats were won by the Tories, the seats Labour held had significantly higher average earnings even if slightly less than traditionally Tory seats.
Confirmation yet further that Labour is no longer the party of the working class, indeed if anything Labour has expanded that trend further with Starmer making his biggest gains from the Tories amongst middle class graduate Remainers, especially in London and the South.
Although he is doing better in the redwall than Corbyn did the Tories still lead with working class Leave voters
Labour's one gain from the Tories in 2019, Putney, is one of the most middle-class seats in the country and has one of the highest percentage of graduates of any seat.
The Trans-Woke stuff is going to destroy the Democrats in America
I note woke has now become trans woke.
Because this is one subset of Wokeness
The obsession with gender identity. It is absolutely toxic if you read American media - because it is angering parents across the country. I don’t think the US Left understands how badly it is going down with regular Americans
After the Roe v Wade decision I reckoned the Republicans had blown it, and women would move en masse to the Dems (and who can blame them). But the Culture War stuff is driving them back to the right, I suspect
The Democrats in the US ought to be roughly where Labour is in this country on woke-ism, which is slightly woke but not massively so. In reality they're about 100 times more woke than Labour.
In my opinion the figures should be something like this: [assumes the new boundaries are in force]
NOM 2.22 Con Maj 2.22 Lab Maj 10
Important point about new boundaries. The oft quoted extra 10 Tory seats are projected assuming a repeat of the 2019 vote share. There is evidence with a Labour lead of around 6 that there is no gain for the Conservatives whatsoever.
I don’t see how would that work? The South East for instance is gaining 7 seats while Wales drops 8. So there should be an advantage for the Tories over the status quo almost regardless of the national swing.
I ran Redfield’s recent poll showing a 6-point Labour lead through Electoral Calculus. It showed a 12-seat net advantage for Con on the new boundaries.
At some vote share, and given the tendency of party support to cluster in certain places, the creation of "new seats" in a Conservative region ought to help Labour, because it reduces the vote share required to win the most-winnable or most-gainable seat. For example, if population growth leads to one seat being more narrowly focused on a winnable area which had previously been diluted in true-blue commuter belt, the bar to win 1 more seat in Essex is lower. But I imagine that on net, it would take a large vote share to get to the point where a dozen new seats in strong Conservative areas are winnable for Labour.
I find this class breakdown of voting to be a function of age and outdated views of class categories. If that weren't true why are Labour constituencies poorer on average than Tory ones? The 1950's class stratification is redundant.
In 2019 they weren't.
Average earnings in seats the Tories gained from Labour in 2019 were lower than average earnings in seats Labour held
It is, in 2019 the lowest earning seats were won by the Tories, the seats Labour held had significantly higher average earnings even if slightly less than traditionally Tory seats.
Confirmation yet further that Labour is no longer the party of the working class, indeed if anything Labour has expanded that trend further with Starmer making his biggest gains from the Tories amongst middle class graduate Remainers, especially in London and the South.
Although he is doing better in the redwall than Corbyn did the Tories still lead with working class Leave voters
No, the data show that on average Tory seats had annual incomes around £1k higher than Labour seats (because the ratio of holds to gains is something like 85:15).
The data showed that the Tories gains were all in seats lower in earnings on average than the average seat Labour held.
I repeat, Labour is no longer the party of the working class.
The average Labour voter now is a middle class graduate who works in the public sector, it is more a middle class than working class party. Those of the working class who are mainly welfare dependent for most of their income and in social housing might still mainly vote Labour but they are a minority of the working class.
The Tories are still leading with working class Leave voters, it is middle class Remainers they are miles behind with
Ok, I’m going to try and mount a defence of Liz Truss re the schooling.
I find it somewhat curious that the Guardian is now seeking to uphold the quality of state school education under the Thatcher government. I suspect that their issue here isn’t someone complaining that they didn’t feel their state school was able to compete in giving opportunities to their students, but who is saying it. Funny, that.
I also find it amusing that so much energy is being expended to rebut Truss’s experiences (what happened to people’s own “truth”?) which I suspect would not be the case if, say, a figure on the left had the same complaints.
A lot of what Truss says rings true in the state school system of that era: there were good and bad schools, but no matter how good the school was run or well meaning the teachers were they couldn’t compete with the private sector in terms of the opportunities and attention they could bestow on their students. I’m not suggesting that means the school was terrible (perhaps Truss could be accused of over-egging the pudding here).
The angle I think is far more damaging is the fact that she is complaining about the Thatcher era education system whilst… err… running as the heir to Thatcher. In fact there seems to be a lot about Tory governments Liz doesn’t like. She didn’t think her school was up to scratch under Thatcher, she thinks that the Tory government she’s been a member of wasn’t radical enough on the economy, and she certainly doesn’t agree with her government’s tax rises. Perhaps someone needs to ask Liz what she is doing running for leader of a Party she seems to have been at odds with for large chunks of her life?
Someone - maybe an enterprising young journalist perhaps! - should ask her whether she thinks her school would have been better staying as two separate (girl/boy) grammars and being 11+ plus selective or as a merged, expanded comp.
Richard Quest in his S Times piece says a lot of the problems were around shellshocked former grammar school teachers suddenly facing a new, wider non-11-plus intake and being totally lost and unable to maintain control.
That I can well believe. My father (an ex-headmaster) used to say that a lot of grammar (and private) schools coasted on the ability of their selective intake who could mostly teach themselves in a pinch. He believed they ought to have got far better results out of their intake, but no one was pulling them up on how poor their teaching actually was.
It is not that poor for the more academic intake, it is focused on top A level and GCSE grades, Oxbridge and Russell Group entry and hence then entry to the professions and senior management and largely delivers that.
Hence of the top 100 schools by Oxbridge entry success rate, 48 are independent, 23 are grammars, 19 are sixth form colleges and just 7 are comprehensives or academies.
Comprehensives main target, inevitably as a result of their intake, is usually just getting most to get 5 C grade GCSEs
Er, hang on a minute. Comprehensives are not Secondary Moderns, there is no selection, so they should have a full range of abilities in their intake.
Most comprehensives intake would have gone to secondary moderns when education was selective UK wide, hence their main target is focused on getting most of their pupils to C grade GCSEs.
That is one of your most moronic posts.
You are fixated with exam results, you never consider added value.
The entire premise of your post, apart from being utterly nonsensical, is a terrible indictment on your aspiration for the education of the UK population, as a political operator with a desire for high office.
Both my children went to Comprehensive School, a fantastic Roman Catholic High School in Barry with excellent results, which is your benchmark, and a great pastoral reputation with well over half of the GCSE year group going on to St David's sixth form College in Cardiff. Not 6 miles from where I live is Cowbridge High School with an excellent academic reputation and a Rugby Academy. Whitchurch High School in Cardiff, where I used to live has a sports academy that produced Gareth Bale, Sam Warburton and the late Tom Maynard. Cardiff High School in Llanishen is excellent as is the Olchfa in Swansea, and I could probably name loads more within twenty miles to the East and West of me if I tried hard enough.
Yes there are sink schools in England, Scotland and Wales, but they tend to follow the social and economic trends of the catchment area they serve. But your cover all assessment that unless a school is selective either by wealth or the 11 plus is an absolute crock
You are an educational elitist, and a clueless one at that.
I am an educational elitist and proud of it, the top of our league tables for exam results and Oxbridge entry remain dominated by private and grammar schools.
The Vale of Glamorgan is a relatively prosperous part of Wales, hardly disputes the point comprehensives do least well in the poorest and most working class areas
Yes but your elitism isn't to tease excellence out of some kid from a council estate. It is to furnish tosspots like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees Mogg with places at Oxford.
On education you are absolutely away with the fairies.
The part of the Western Vale where I live is wealthy, but Barry where my children went to school is not. It was an excellent school because it was well funded (by the Catholic Church amongst others). That is the problem, funding. A well oiled education system or scrapping the NI increases? That is the choice!
If it was a Catholic school it would be selective anyway, just based on rate of church attendance at weekly Mass
It was selective in two stages. Are you a Catholic who lives in the catchment area? Yes, in you come or no, but don't worry. Do you live in the catchment area? Yes, fantastic in you come. Neither myself nor my children are papists.
I find this class breakdown of voting to be a function of age and outdated views of class categories. If that weren't true why are Labour constituencies poorer on average than Tory ones? The 1950's class stratification is redundant.
In 2019 they weren't.
Average earnings in seats the Tories gained from Labour in 2019 were lower than average earnings in seats Labour held
It is, in 2019 the lowest earning seats were won by the Tories, the seats Labour held had significantly higher average earnings even if slightly less than traditionally Tory seats.
Confirmation yet further that Labour is no longer the party of the working class, indeed if anything Labour has expanded that trend further with Starmer making his biggest gains from the Tories amongst middle class graduate Remainers, especially in London and the South.
Although he is doing better in the redwall than Corbyn did the Tories still lead with working class Leave voters
No, the data show that on average Tory seats had annual incomes around £1k higher than Labour seats (because the ratio of holds to gains is something like 85:15).
The data showed that the Tories gains were all in seats lower in earnings on average than the average seat Labour held.
I repeat, Labour is no longer the party of the working class.
The average Labour voter now is a middle class graduate who works in the public sector, it is more a middle class than working class party. Those of the working class who are mainly welfare dependent for most of their income and in social housing might still mainly vote Labour but they are a minority of the working class.
The Tories are still leading with working class Leave voters, it is middle class Remainers they are miles behind with
The Tories only gained about 50 seats from Labour. Far more of their seats were 2017 wins, which had much higher incomes, so on average, incomes in their seats were still £1k above Labour. (Even this is somewhat beside the point. Pensioners vote Tory and have low average incomes, but that doesn't make them working-class.)
Ok, I’m going to try and mount a defence of Liz Truss re the schooling.
I find it somewhat curious that the Guardian is now seeking to uphold the quality of state school education under the Thatcher government. I suspect that their issue here isn’t someone complaining that they didn’t feel their state school was able to compete in giving opportunities to their students, but who is saying it. Funny, that.
I also find it amusing that so much energy is being expended to rebut Truss’s experiences (what happened to people’s own “truth”?) which I suspect would not be the case if, say, a figure on the left had the same complaints.
A lot of what Truss says rings true in the state school system of that era: there were good and bad schools, but no matter how good the school was run or well meaning the teachers were they couldn’t compete with the private sector in terms of the opportunities and attention they could bestow on their students. I’m not suggesting that means the school was terrible (perhaps Truss could be accused of over-egging the pudding here).
The angle I think is far more damaging is the fact that she is complaining about the Thatcher era education system whilst… err… running as the heir to Thatcher. In fact there seems to be a lot about Tory governments Liz doesn’t like. She didn’t think her school was up to scratch under Thatcher, she thinks that the Tory government she’s been a member of wasn’t radical enough on the economy, and she certainly doesn’t agree with her government’s tax rises. Perhaps someone needs to ask Liz what she is doing running for leader of a Party she seems to have been at odds with for large chunks of her life?
Someone - maybe an enterprising young journalist perhaps! - should ask her whether she thinks her school would have been better staying as two separate (girl/boy) grammars and being 11+ plus selective or as a merged, expanded comp.
Richard Quest in his S Times piece says a lot of the problems were around shellshocked former grammar school teachers suddenly facing a new, wider non-11-plus intake and being totally lost and unable to maintain control.
That I can well believe. My father (an ex-headmaster) used to say that a lot of grammar (and private) schools coasted on the ability of their selective intake who could mostly teach themselves in a pinch. He believed they ought to have got far better results out of their intake, but no one was pulling them up on how poor their teaching actually was.
It is not that poor for the more academic intake, it is focused on top A level and GCSE grades, Oxbridge and Russell Group entry and hence then entry to the professions and senior management and largely delivers that.
Hence of the top 100 schools by Oxbridge entry success rate, 48 are independent, 23 are grammars, 19 are sixth form colleges and just 7 are comprehensives or academies.
Comprehensives main target, inevitably as a result of their intake, is usually just getting most to get 5 C grade GCSEs
Er, hang on a minute. Comprehensives are not Secondary Moderns, there is no selection, so they should have a full range of abilities in their intake.
Most comprehensives intake would have gone to secondary moderns when education was selective UK wide, hence their main target is focused on getting most of their pupils to C grade GCSEs.
No it isn't, and what you say makes no sense.
Yes it does, grammar schools generally took the top 10 to 25% of the academic spectrum, the rest went to secondary moderns. So most comprehensives intake inevitably would have been in the 75% who went to secondary moderns
But that doesn’t mean that their only goal is 5 GCSE passes.
That is their main goal.
Private schools and grammar schools by their generally more selective intake however have a main goal of maximising top A* and A grade GCSEs and A Levels and Oxbridge entry
Every comprehensive school I have visited has photos of its top performing pupils detailing their high exam grades. Getting good grades for their top performing pupils is very much one of their main goals.
He doesn't care about the schools that 85+% of UK pupils go to. Only Oxbridge and Russell Group matter to him.
I am a Tory, I support private schools and grammar schools and would happily have more of them and that has always been my position. I believe in choice and would happily have a grammar school and private school in every town and city in the UK if a general election could be won enabling that
You don't "believe in choice", except for choice for a) those who can afford private schools, and b) the sharp-elbowed, largely middle classes, who get their kids through the eleven plus to get into grammar schools. Those who don't succeed have no "choice", and they would be the vast majority under your preferred system.
Hey, if people make the choice to be born poorer and with disadvantages that's their own fault.
No accusation is more damning against a politician in the Western world than that she "wants to build a million homes". How sad that we ended up with this being true.
Not quite true - they can say it, indeed might be expected to say it, but they damn well better not do anything to facilitate it unless it involves saying 'Brownfield first' a million times and not much else.
The Trans-Woke stuff is going to destroy the Democrats in America
I note woke has now become trans woke.
Because this is one subset of Wokeness
The obsession with gender identity. It is absolutely toxic if you read American media - because it is angering parents across the country. I don’t think the US Left understands how badly it is going down with regular Americans
After the Roe v Wade decision I reckoned the Republicans had blown it, and women would move en masse to the Dems (and who can blame them). But the Culture War stuff is driving them back to the right, I suspect
The Democrats in the US ought to be roughly where Labour is in this country on woke-ism, which is slightly woke but not massively so. In reality they're about 100 times more woke than Labour.
In the US Biden is done for, not because of his views on chicks with dicks, but on the price of gas. However GB News paint it, the price of petrol is also the price of incumbency in this country too.
Voters don't gives a monkeys about "woke" when they can't afford to fuel the car, heat the home or feed the kids. Woke is an indulgence for boom not bust.
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Wednesday said they had struck a climate, health and tax package deal — weeks after Manchin seemingly had scuttled any chance of an agreement because of his worries over inflation.
The Trans-Woke stuff is going to destroy the Democrats in America
I note woke has now become trans woke.
Because this is one subset of Wokeness
The obsession with gender identity. It is absolutely toxic if you read American media - because it is angering parents across the country. I don’t think the US Left understands how badly it is going down with regular Americans
After the Roe v Wade decision I reckoned the Republicans had blown it, and women would move en masse to the Dems (and who can blame them). But the Culture War stuff is driving them back to the right, I suspect
The Democrats in the US ought to be roughly where Labour is in this country on woke-ism, which is slightly woke but not massively so. In reality they're about 100 times more woke than Labour.
In the US Biden is done for, not because of his views on chicks with dicks, but on the price of gas. However GB News paint it, the price of petrol is also the price of incumbency in this country too.
Voters don't gives a monkeys about "woke" when they can't afford to fuel the car, heat the home or feed the kids. Woke is an indulgence for boom not bust.
That would actually be a minor positive of a bust then that the loonier side can stop pushing the crazier stuff and the paranoid side can stop worrying about the non loony element, and we all hear a lot less about it.
I find this class breakdown of voting to be a function of age and outdated views of class categories. If that weren't true why are Labour constituencies poorer on average than Tory ones? The 1950's class stratification is redundant.
In 2019 they weren't.
Average earnings in seats the Tories gained from Labour in 2019 were lower than average earnings in seats Labour held
It is, in 2019 the lowest earning seats were won by the Tories, the seats Labour held had significantly higher average earnings even if slightly less than traditionally Tory seats.
Confirmation yet further that Labour is no longer the party of the working class, indeed if anything Labour has expanded that trend further with Starmer making his biggest gains from the Tories amongst middle class graduate Remainers, especially in London and the South.
Although he is doing better in the redwall than Corbyn did the Tories still lead with working class Leave voters
Labour's one gain from the Tories in 2019, Putney, is one of the most middle-class seats in the country and has one of the highest percentage of graduates of any seat.
True: 2019 continued a gradual realignment since 2015-17 of stronger Labour support in youthful constituencies in the south with high incomes (but even higher housing costs). What would be an incorrect inference: one gain represents the seats as a whole. Labour still represents Birmingham, and Tories Surrey. Another incorrect inference would be: low incomes among pensioners reflect their class status relative to workers. A lot of the trade is young, high income, but no assets going Labour; old, low income due to retirement, but housing equity going Tory.
I find this class breakdown of voting to be a function of age and outdated views of class categories. If that weren't true why are Labour constituencies poorer on average than Tory ones? The 1950's class stratification is redundant.
In 2019 they weren't.
Average earnings in seats the Tories gained from Labour in 2019 were lower than average earnings in seats Labour held
It is, in 2019 the lowest earning seats were won by the Tories, the seats Labour held had significantly higher average earnings even if slightly less than traditionally Tory seats.
Confirmation yet further that Labour is no longer the party of the working class, indeed if anything Labour has expanded that trend further with Starmer making his biggest gains from the Tories amongst middle class graduate Remainers, especially in London and the South.
Although he is doing better in the redwall than Corbyn did the Tories still lead with working class Leave voters
Labour's one gain from the Tories in 2019, Putney, is one of the most middle-class seats in the country and has one of the highest percentage of graduates of any seat.
It must really suck to be the only incumbent on your side to lose your seat (to the main opponent at any rate). Whatever the unique characteristics of the seat it cannot be so unique as to explain why you were literally the only one to suffer such a consequence.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1h People said Sunak would expose Truss' weaknesses easily once they were head to head. A weak later the decaying remains of Sunak's campaign are twisting gently in the wind whilst they're picked at by crows. Can't wait to see what she does to Starmer.
Recently, I came to the tentative coonclusion that the "Varsity Blues" 2019 college admissions scandal could be partly explained by parents' desire to give their kids an edge in the marriage market. (And, perhaps in contacts, too.)
The amounts spent could, often, have bought enormous amounts of one-on-one tutoring, if the parents were trying to increase what the kids were learning, so i don't think that was the main motive.
(And, of course I understand that a desire for status was another motive.)
Could similar motives be important in school choice for parents in Britain?
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1h People said Sunak would expose Truss' weaknesses easily once they were head to head. A weak later the decaying remains of Sunak's campaign are twisting gently in the wind whilst they're picked at by crows. Can't wait to see what she does to Starmer.
@iainmartin1 How @trussliz routed the Tory establishment. Call her crackers all you like. She's winning, having outwitted Sunak's team.
Recently, I came to the tentative coonclusion that the "Varsity Blues" 2019 college admissions scandal could be partly explained by parents' desire to give their kids an edge in the marriage market. (And, perhaps in contacts, too.)
The amounts spent could, often, have bought enormous amounts of one-on-one tutoring, if the parents were trying to increase what the kids were learning, so i don't think that was the main motive.
(And, of course I understand that a desire for status was another motive.)
Could similar motives be important in school choice for parents in Britain?
There are still industries where contacts made at University matter. Fewer than there used to be, mercifully.
It might not even need to be about salary: Felicity Huffman might have just wanted her daughter to work in a low-paid internship or job, but with all the right people. Executive assistant at a fashion magazine, or working at a non-profit with an Obama or a Kennedy on the board. That kind of thing. Perhaps marriage is part of it, but it’s wider than that.
I find this class breakdown of voting to be a function of age and outdated views of class categories. If that weren't true why are Labour constituencies poorer on average than Tory ones? The 1950's class stratification is redundant.
In 2019 they weren't.
Average earnings in seats the Tories gained from Labour in 2019 were lower than average earnings in seats Labour held
It is, in 2019 the lowest earning seats were won by the Tories, the seats Labour held had significantly higher average earnings even if slightly less than traditionally Tory seats.
Confirmation yet further that Labour is no longer the party of the working class, indeed if anything Labour has expanded that trend further with Starmer making his biggest gains from the Tories amongst middle class graduate Remainers, especially in London and the South.
Although he is doing better in the redwall than Corbyn did the Tories still lead with working class Leave voters
Labour's one gain from the Tories in 2019, Putney, is one of the most middle-class seats in the country and has one of the highest percentage of graduates of any seat.
It must really suck to be the only incumbent on your side to lose your seat (to the main opponent at any rate). Whatever the unique characteristics of the seat it cannot be so unique as to explain why you were literally the only one to suffer such a consequence.
The Tories expelled the incumbent for treason to Brexit or whatever, so that's part of the story. The loss of Conservative vote share was a few percentage points more than in the rest of Wandsworth, so really you could say it was unique circumstances of lost incumbency plus beginning as a marginal in a youthful area of London.
ITV have a piece tonight about A&E and ambulances and queuing.
The key person in the piece seems to me to be a 90-odd year old woman and her daughter, the former has been on a trolley for 12 hours or so.
She has severe back pain. Been like that for days.
I'm sorry - not to belittle her pain, but How the feck is that A&E?
That's a call to the GP and remain at home until he says otherwise. Some painkillers maybe. Possibly he will come to house and exam. Then a referral if he is unsure. X-ray down the track etc etc.
This is the problem imho.
People are just flooding A&E with stuff that ten years ago you would have gone to a GP about.
No accusation is more damning against a politician in the Western world than that she "wants to build a million homes". How sad that we ended up with this being true.
Not quite true - they can say it, indeed might be expected to say it, but they damn well better not do anything to facilitate it unless it involves saying 'Brownfield first' a million times and not much else.
I think I'd probably vote for Truss if I could now. Sunak's platform is the most turgid tripe I've seen in all my days.
ITV have a piece tonight about A&E and ambulances and queuing.
The key person in the piece seems to me to be a 90-odd year old woman and her daughter, the former has been on a trolley for 12 hours or so.
She has severe back pain. Been like that for days.
I'm sorry - not to belittle her pain, but How the feck is that A&E?
That's a call to the GP and remain at home until he says otherwise. Some painkillers maybe. Possibly he will come to house and exam. Then a referral if he is unsure. X-ray down the track etc etc.
This is the problem imho.
People are just flooding A&E with stuff that ten years ago you would have gone to a GP about.
Call me old fashioned but this is ludicrous.
The problem happens before A&E when they call the GP at 8am and are 143rd in the queue.
Sorry, no appointments left, try again tomorrow.
Unfortunately, paying GPs more hasn't encouraged people to become GPs, it has just meant the existing ones can retire early and start the death spiral where it ceases to be an attractive profession for those left.
At least, that's how it appears in my local practice, which has collapsed and had to be merged with another one. All the experienced doctors now work 2 or 3 days or have retired completely.
ITV have a piece tonight about A&E and ambulances and queuing.
The key person in the piece seems to me to be a 90-odd year old woman and her daughter, the former has been on a trolley for 12 hours or so.
She has severe back pain. Been like that for days.
I'm sorry - not to belittle her pain, but How the feck is that A&E?
That's a call to the GP and remain at home until he says otherwise. Some painkillers maybe. Possibly he will come to house and exam. Then a referral if he is unsure. X-ray down the track etc etc.
This is the problem imho.
People are just flooding A&E with stuff that ten years ago you would have gone to a GP about.
Call me old fashioned but this is ludicrous.
My other half was in and out the hospital a fair bit earlier this year. Hospital is certainly the place to be if you want to increase backpain.
111 probably told her to go there tbh. 20 second chat with a Doctor she could probably be discharged
The Trans-Woke stuff is going to destroy the Democrats in America
I note woke has now become trans woke.
Because this is one subset of Wokeness
The obsession with gender identity. It is absolutely toxic if you read American media - because it is angering parents across the country. I don’t think the US Left understands how badly it is going down with regular Americans
After the Roe v Wade decision I reckoned the Republicans had blown it, and women would move en masse to the Dems (and who can blame them). But the Culture War stuff is driving them back to the right, I suspect
The Democrats in the US ought to be roughly where Labour is in this country on woke-ism, which is slightly woke but not massively so. In reality they're about 100 times more woke than Labour.
In the US Biden is done for, not because of his views on chicks with dicks, but on the price of gas. However GB News paint it, the price of petrol is also the price of incumbency in this country too.
Voters don't gives a monkeys about "woke" when they can't afford to fuel the car, heat the home or feed the kids. Woke is an indulgence for boom not bust.
That would actually be a minor positive of a bust then that the loonier side can stop pushing the crazier stuff and the paranoid side can stop worrying about the non loony element, and we all hear a lot less about it.
I'm not sure I agree that woke is a secondary issue. We saw with the Brexit referendum that voters (on both sides) value identity issues more strongly than questions of how rich they will be. And woke presents issues of identity which are much closer to home than those presented by Brexit, particularly, for example, if you are a parent of a child in Oregon. On this side of the Atlantic, the issue of drag queens reading to pre-schoolers sounds not dissimilar, in a drably British way. Personally, I'd go without gas all winter if it meant my children's schools would desist from banging on and on and on and on about the menu of sexualities on offer and from trying to slot them into a gender identity. But I don't think that's a trade off. All serious parties (now that the Labour Party has moved beyond Corbyn) agree that high gas prices are bad, that Putin is bad, that other sources of energy must be found; so other differntiators arise.
ITV have a piece tonight about A&E and ambulances and queuing.
The key person in the piece seems to me to be a 90-odd year old woman and her daughter, the former has been on a trolley for 12 hours or so.
She has severe back pain. Been like that for days.
I'm sorry - not to belittle her pain, but How the feck is that A&E?
That's a call to the GP and remain at home until he says otherwise. Some painkillers maybe. Possibly he will come to house and exam. Then a referral if he is unsure. X-ray down the track etc etc.
This is the problem imho.
People are just flooding A&E with stuff that ten years ago you would have gone to a GP about.
Call me old fashioned but this is ludicrous.
The problem happens before A&E when they call the GP at 8am and are 143rd in the queue.
Sorry, no appointments left, try again tomorrow.
Unfortunately, paying GPs more hasn't encouraged people to become GPs, it has just meant the existing ones can retire early and start the death spiral where it ceases to be an attractive profession for those left.
At least, that's how it appears in my local practice, which has collapsed and had to be merged with another one. All the experienced doctors now work 2 or 3 days or have retired completely.
Some A&E departments have an in-house GP surgery down the hall, where they can send people. Not sure if making that universal would decrease or increase the problem!
ITV have a piece tonight about A&E and ambulances and queuing.
The key person in the piece seems to me to be a 90-odd year old woman and her daughter, the former has been on a trolley for 12 hours or so.
She has severe back pain. Been like that for days.
I'm sorry - not to belittle her pain, but How the feck is that A&E?
That's a call to the GP and remain at home until he says otherwise. Some painkillers maybe. Possibly he will come to house and exam. Then a referral if he is unsure. X-ray down the track etc etc.
This is the problem imho.
People are just flooding A&E with stuff that ten years ago you would have gone to a GP about.
Call me old fashioned but this is ludicrous.
The problem happens before A&E when they call the GP at 8am and are 143rd in the queue.
Sorry, no appointments left, try again tomorrow.
Unfortunately, paying GPs more hasn't encouraged people to become GPs, it has just meant the existing ones can retire early and start the death spiral where it ceases to be an attractive profession for those left.
At least, that's how it appears in my local practice, which has collapsed and had to be merged with another one. All the experienced doctors now work 2 or 3 days or have retired completely.
Some A&E departments have an in-house GP surgery down the hall, where they can send people. Not sure if making that universal would decrease or increase the problem!
Yes, my local hospital does that. I believe it does work to some extent, although there isn't much space allocated (as there probably isn't much space available).
Given you no longer seem to be able to see the same person at GP practices we might as well move to larger drop in centres and scale down GPs. Economy of scale and all that. Maybe not so convenient for those who can't travel easily, though.
We have such a place locally (mostly for out of hours appointments) and to be honest it works much better than the GP.
We're a long way away from my grandfather's time where he would traipse across the fields through the snow to visit a patient...
How many Union rights will remain with the Tories winning another election in 2024.
I understand Tarry wants to support the strikers and they do have a fair claim but sometimes I do wonder whether the left of the party want to win an election .
The optics of Labour cabinet ministers on the picket line would be a gift to the Tories and the right wing papers which will make hay over this and use it as a stick to beat Labour in the run up to the next GE .
The Trans-Woke stuff is going to destroy the Democrats in America
I note woke has now become trans woke.
Because this is one subset of Wokeness
The obsession with gender identity. It is absolutely toxic if you read American media - because it is angering parents across the country. I don’t think the US Left understands how badly it is going down with regular Americans
After the Roe v Wade decision I reckoned the Republicans had blown it, and women would move en masse to the Dems (and who can blame them). But the Culture War stuff is driving them back to the right, I suspect
The Democrats in the US ought to be roughly where Labour is in this country on woke-ism, which is slightly woke but not massively so. In reality they're about 100 times more woke than Labour.
In the US Biden is done for, not because of his views on chicks with dicks, but on the price of gas. However GB News paint it, the price of petrol is also the price of incumbency in this country too.
Voters don't gives a monkeys about "woke" when they can't afford to fuel the car, heat the home or feed the kids. Woke is an indulgence for boom not bust.
He's got another two years, who knows what the oil price will be in two years.
No accusation is more damning against a politician in the Western world than that she "wants to build a million homes". How sad that we ended up with this being true.
Not quite true - they can say it, indeed might be expected to say it, but they damn well better not do anything to facilitate it unless it involves saying 'Brownfield first' a million times and not much else.
I think I'd probably vote for Truss if I could now. Sunak's platform is the most turgid tripe I've seen in all my days.
It has to be Truss.
A change of economic tack is needed, Sunak screwed up with the tax hikes and he's too wooden and inflexible. He's got all the adaptability of a bunny in the headlights right now.
Truss can change as required, as we face the coming storm that is exactly what is needed.
Gas prices have been declining in the US: "For the sixth straight week, the nation’s average gas price has dropped, falling 17.4 cents from a week ago to $4.33 per gallon today according to GasBuddy data compiled from more than 11 million individual price reports covering over 150,000 gas stations across the country. The national average is down 56.7 cents from a month ago and $1.19 per gallon higher than a year ago. The national average price of diesel has declined 13.0 cents in the last week and stands at $5.41 per gallon.
“Gas prices continue falling coast to coast, with the national average last week declining for the sixth straight week, or 40 days in a row. The national average is now down an astounding 70 cents in that timeframe,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy. “I have no reason yet to expect the decline won’t reach seven straight weeks, as gas stations still have plenty of room to decline as oil prices remain under $100 per barrel." source: https://www.gasbuddy.com/go/gas-price-plummet-picks-up-steam-9-states-under-4
The analyst is more worried, immediately, about bad weather in the tropics than other factors.
I beleive that the $4.33/gallon is below the price in most other industrialized nations, including the UK.
Francis Elliott @elliottengage · 2h Was convinced by an old hand today that early election is underpriced especially if Truss wins. But then I see those energy bill projections..Would she really run into that?
Any Tory leader would have to be pretty silly not to wait 12 months until the new boundaries are available, which could give the party an extra 10 seats.
The voter-suppression effects of photo ID might be more important.
Francis Elliott @elliottengage · 2h Was convinced by an old hand today that early election is underpriced especially if Truss wins. But then I see those energy bill projections..Would she really run into that?
Any Tory leader would have to be pretty silly not to wait 12 months until the new boundaries are available, which could give the party an extra 10 seats.
The voter-suppression effects of photo ID might be more important.
Let's hope it never happens. There's hardly any fraud at polling stations. Postal votes may be slightly different.
So if the dollar now climbs in value again against the pound is that going to send petrol prices even more northward?
Petrol pricing are coming down. 7p a litre so far round here. Local garage was 189.9 for unleaded now 182.9 seen it as low as 179.9 at a shell garage just off the A1 in North Yorks.
Don't want to blow my own trumpet but I was against closing schools the whole time, apart from maybe the first few weeks.
And I believe you were wrong.
Firstly, you have to remember not what we know now, but what we knew then. And it was next to nothing. Applying what we know now to decisions we made in March 2020 is foolish.
Secondly, we get the stories of the evils of that first lockdown now. What we don't get is the counter-factual: what would have happened if we had not locked down. And it would not have been pretty.
IMV the government acted reasonably - and perhaps even a little slowly - up until December 2020. That was a slight farce, and the situation markedly changed once most people had two jabs in their arms.
So if the dollar now climbs in value again against the pound is that going to send petrol prices even more northward?
Petrol pricing are coming down. 7p a litre so far round here. Local garage was 189.9 for unleaded now 182.9 seen it as low as 179.9 at a shell garage just off the A1 in North Yorks.
Forecast is further falls too.
I know that but I’m referring to the Fed’s interest rate rise yesterday
Comments
How we move forward from now on both fronts is the important question.
I happen to think Brexit was a mistake. But I'm not viscerally angry about it. It's happened. We lost. Make the best of it.
Labour ceased to be the party of the working class long ago, it is now the party of the public sector, the welfare dependant and students. They are its core vote and middle class graduates more likely to vote for it than working class voters in the private sector
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/q96mhy2h8e/TheTimes_VI_Tracked_AdHoc_220722_W.pdf
@AndyBurnhamGM
If true, this is VERY encouraging news. But we will wait to see the detail.👇🏻🤞🏻
https://twitter.com/andyburnhamgm/status/1552399975887380487
If that weren't true why are Labour constituencies poorer on average than Tory ones?
The 1950's class stratification is redundant.
Here's the story. 🧵
https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1552391305778860032?s=21&t=6Dpa_Xo7mu1I6oBp-hqliQ
(Ostriches might be too dangerous.)
The obsession with gender identity. It is absolutely toxic if you read American media - because it is angering parents across the country. I don’t think the US Left understands how badly it is going down with regular Americans
After the Roe v Wade decision I reckoned the Republicans had blown it, and women would move en masse to the Dems (and who can blame them). But the Culture War stuff is driving them back to the right, I suspect
Average earnings in seats the Tories gained from Labour in 2019 were lower than average earnings in seats Labour held
https://www.ft.com/content/48495b7f-b749-407b-9cfe-c1a34f6a9cf5
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/07/27/rishi-sunak-save-britains-precious-green-belt/
The Culture War is nationwide. And one side will lose
Eg Wokeness has just stormed American medicine. This week:
“The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) just released its official Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Competencies. Designed for curriculum development, the competencies function as DEI educational standards, providing a set of ideal “diversity” and “inclusion” skills for three stages of a physician’s education. For graduating medical students, the competencies include “describ[ing] the impact of various systems of oppression on health and health care (e.g., colonization, White supremacy, acculturation, assimilation).” For graduating residents, they include “promoting social justice and engag[ing] in efforts to eliminate health care disparities,” and for faculty physicians, “teach[ing] how systems of power, privilege, and oppression inform policies and practices and how to engage with systems to disrupt oppressive practices.”
“Ultimately, these new competencies provide a blueprint for infusing the themes of identity politics—“intersectionality,” “white privilege,” “microaggression,” “allyship”—into medical education. In March, the National Association of Scholars acquired and published a draft version of the competencies. A number of critics spoke up, noting how the competencies would function as an obvious threat to academic freedom and, more broadly, sound medical education.
With the publication of these official competencies, the AAMC appears to be doubling-down.”
it’s a war to the end. Woke has to be driven into the sea or it is the end of the USA and, ultimately, the end of the West. Woke wants to destroy the scientific method and ruin western education. All hands on deck
https://twitter.com/lkrauss1/status/1550462661355360258?s=21&t=J_dogBxd8hRWOppvVwm4sg
Confirmation yet further that Labour is no longer the party of the working class, indeed if anything Labour has expanded that trend further with Starmer making his biggest gains from the Tories amongst middle class graduate Remainers, especially in London and the South.
Although he is doing better in the redwall than Corbyn did the Tories still lead with working class Leave voters
You are fixated with exam results, you never consider added value.
The entire premise of your post, apart from being utterly nonsensical, is a terrible indictment on your aspiration for the education of the UK population as a political operator with a desire for high office. Liz Truss is no better, and as far from reality as you are.
Both my children went to Comprehensive School, a fantastic Roman Catholic High School in Barry with excellent results, which is your benchmark, and a great pastoral reputation with well over half of the GCSE year group going on to St David's sixth form College in Cardiff. Not 6 miles from where I live is Cowbridge High School with an excellent academic reputation and a Rugby Academy. Whitchurch High School in Cardiff, where I used to live has a sports academy that produced Gareth Bale, Sam Warburton and the late Tom Maynard. Cardiff High School in Llanishen is excellent as is the Olchfa in Swansea, and I could probably name loads more within twenty miles to the East and West of me if I tried hard enough.
Yes there are sink schools in England, Scotland and Wales, but they tend to follow the social and economic trends of the catchment area they serve. But your cover all assessment that unless a school is selective either by wealth or the 11 plus is an absolute crock
You are an educational elitist, and a clueless one at that.
Probably the loveliest country in the world.
The Vale of Glamorgan is a relatively prosperous part of Wales, hardly disputes the point comprehensives do least well in the poorest and most working class areas
On education you are absolutely away with the fairies.
The part of the Western Vale where I live is wealthy, but Barry where my children went to school is not. It was an excellent school because it was well funded (by the Catholic Church amongst others). That is the problem, funding. A well oiled education system or scrapping the NI increases? That is the choice!
I ran Redfield’s recent poll showing a 6-point Labour lead through Electoral Calculus. It showed a 12-seat net advantage for Con on the new boundaries.
I repeat, Labour is no longer the party of the working class.
The average Labour voter now is a middle class graduate who works in the public sector, it is more a middle class than working class party. Those of the working class who are mainly welfare dependent for most of their income and in social housing might still mainly vote Labour but they are a minority of the working class.
The Tories are still leading with working class Leave voters, it is middle class Remainers they are miles behind with
As Leeds prepares to host hustings, residents of leafy suburb where Truss grew up take issue with her claims about the area
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/27/shes-delusional-roundhay-voters-on-tory-leadership-contender-liz-truss
Note a couple of the Tory members said she was talking nonsense but would still vote for her as they trusted her…
Mick Lynch.
It's a bit American, but it could work Lab as a slogan?
Voters don't gives a monkeys about "woke" when they can't afford to fuel the car, heat the home or feed the kids. Woke is an indulgence for boom not bust.
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Wednesday said they had struck a climate, health and tax package deal — weeks after Manchin seemingly had scuttled any chance of an agreement because of his worries over inflation.
The Hill
Andrew Lilico
@andrew_lilico
·
1h
People said Sunak would expose Truss' weaknesses easily once they were head to head. A weak later the decaying remains of Sunak's campaign are twisting gently in the wind whilst they're picked at by crows.
Can't wait to see what she does to Starmer.
The amounts spent could, often, have bought enormous amounts of one-on-one tutoring, if the parents were trying to increase what the kids were learning, so i don't think that was the main motive.
(And, of course I understand that a desire for status was another motive.)
Could similar motives be important in school choice for parents in Britain?
How @trussliz routed the Tory establishment. Call her crackers all you like. She's winning, having outwitted Sunak's team.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/9ff053a2-0dc3-11ed-93cf-b011fa7fe86b?shareToken=2e0019997ec742ef0bc939df1248d478
https://twitter.com/iainmartin1/status/1552414657389928448
It might not even need to be about salary: Felicity Huffman might have just wanted her daughter to work in a low-paid internship or job, but with all the right people. Executive assistant at a fashion magazine, or working at a non-profit with an Obama or a Kennedy on the board. That kind of thing. Perhaps marriage is part of it, but it’s wider than that.
The key person in the piece seems to me to be a 90-odd year old woman and her daughter, the former has been on a trolley for 12 hours or so.
She has severe back pain. Been like that for days.
I'm sorry - not to belittle her pain, but How the feck is that A&E?
That's a call to the GP and remain at home until he says otherwise. Some painkillers maybe. Possibly he will come to house and exam. Then a referral if he is unsure. X-ray down the track etc etc.
This is the problem imho.
People are just flooding A&E with stuff that ten years ago you would have gone to a GP about.
Call me old fashioned but this is ludicrous.
Sorry, no appointments left, try again tomorrow.
Unfortunately, paying GPs more hasn't encouraged people to become GPs, it has just meant the existing ones can retire early and start the death spiral where it ceases to be an attractive profession for those left.
At least, that's how it appears in my local practice, which has collapsed and had to be merged with another one. All the experienced doctors now work 2 or 3 days or have retired completely.
Hospital is certainly the place to be if you want to increase backpain.
111 probably told her to go there tbh. 20 second chat with a Doctor she could probably be discharged
We saw with the Brexit referendum that voters (on both sides) value identity issues more strongly than questions of how rich they will be.
And woke presents issues of identity which are much closer to home than those presented by Brexit, particularly, for example, if you are a parent of a child in Oregon. On this side of the Atlantic, the issue of drag queens reading to pre-schoolers sounds not dissimilar, in a drably British way.
Personally, I'd go without gas all winter if it meant my children's schools would desist from banging on and on and on and on about the menu of sexualities on offer and from trying to slot them into a gender identity. But I don't think that's a trade off. All serious parties (now that the Labour Party has moved beyond Corbyn) agree that high gas prices are bad, that Putin is bad, that other sources of energy must be found; so other differntiators arise.
Given you no longer seem to be able to see the same person at GP practices we might as well move to larger drop in centres and scale down GPs. Economy of scale and all that. Maybe not so convenient for those who can't travel easily, though.
We have such a place locally (mostly for out of hours appointments) and to be honest it works much better than the GP.
We're a long way away from my grandfather's time where he would traipse across the fields through the snow to visit a patient...
I understand Tarry wants to support the strikers and they do have a fair claim but sometimes I do wonder whether the left of the party want to win an election .
The optics of Labour cabinet ministers on the picket line would be a gift to the Tories and the right wing papers which will make hay over this and use it as a stick to beat Labour in the run up to the next GE .
It was a catastrophic, humiliating, mistake.
I am appalled that I ever accepted it.
A change of economic tack is needed, Sunak screwed up with the tax hikes and he's too wooden and inflexible. He's got all the adaptability of a bunny in the headlights right now.
Truss can change as required, as we face the coming storm that is exactly what is needed.
"For the sixth straight week, the nation’s average gas price has dropped, falling 17.4 cents from a week ago to $4.33 per gallon today according to GasBuddy data compiled from more than 11 million individual price reports covering over 150,000 gas stations across the country. The national average is down 56.7 cents from a month ago and $1.19 per gallon higher than a year ago. The national average price of diesel has declined 13.0 cents in the last week and stands at $5.41 per gallon.
“Gas prices continue falling coast to coast, with the national average last week declining for the sixth straight week, or 40 days in a row. The national average is now down an astounding 70 cents in that timeframe,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy. “I have no reason yet to expect the decline won’t reach seven straight weeks, as gas stations still have plenty of room to decline as oil prices remain under $100 per barrel."
source: https://www.gasbuddy.com/go/gas-price-plummet-picks-up-steam-9-states-under-4
The analyst is more worried, immediately, about bad weather in the tropics than other factors.
I beleive that the $4.33/gallon is below the price in most other industrialized nations, including the UK.
Borrowing tactics from the 2016 Leave campaign, the foreign secretary has made Sunak look complacent and inflexible
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-liz-truss-routed-the-tory-establishment-9f7lr685q (£££)
Betfair next prime minister
1.2 Liz Truss 83%
5.8 Rishi Sunak 17%
Next Conservative leader
1.18 Liz Truss 85%
6.6 Rishi Sunak 15%
Forecast is further falls too.
Firstly, you have to remember not what we know now, but what we knew then. And it was next to nothing. Applying what we know now to decisions we made in March 2020 is foolish.
Secondly, we get the stories of the evils of that first lockdown now. What we don't get is the counter-factual: what would have happened if we had not locked down. And it would not have been pretty.
IMV the government acted reasonably - and perhaps even a little slowly - up until December 2020. That was a slight farce, and the situation markedly changed once most people had two jabs in their arms.