Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
Fun slave trade fact of the day: Royal African Company slaves were routinely branded DOY for Duke of York. Given his unstellar performance as James II you would have expected them to retire the title in perpetuity rather than label the current incumbent with it. Though I suppose it gives him a colourable claim not to be the worst DOY evah.
There have been better Dukes of York than either.
Such as? Henry VIII might be a contender perhaps. Or Georges V and VI. Otherwise most occupants of that stall have been rather undistinguished. Charles I, Richard Duke of York, Edmund of Langley, they've all been pretty ropey.
A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
I have seen this effect in play at family weddings, but the NYT are really missing out on an important piece of the jigsaw. They need to discover how bad the governance of Ireland is as well. American visitors always need a crash course in the many past mistakes and misdemeanours of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.
For sure
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
Indeed and in any case the threat to America is from China not us, we are only a middle ranking power now
I wouldn’t say we were “middle ranking”. I think better to numerically rank based on combos of size, economy, population, military power, soft power etc.
1st Rank US and China
2nd UK, France, Germany, Japan maybe India
3rd Italy, Russia,
I don’t know why I bothered to write that but there you go! Just mental diarrhoea.
In terms of economy, South Korea is arguably more influential than the UK. And Poland and Turkey may soon have superior conventional armed forces.
Tbh if you're in NATO it doesn't matter how strong your armed forces are, you have the guarantee of all other members.
This has never been properly tested. Let's hope that remains the case
Because I am unconvinced we would go to the brink of nuclear war with Russia, if Putin invaded the Baltics
I'm equally doubtful we would defend Romania or Bulgaria either. Turkey is tricky. Greece probably, Poland probably. Slovakia? Hmm
It would be fun to chart the mental map of REAL NATO, ie the NATO that contains the countries we would actually go to total war to defend. It is smaller than Theoretical Legal NATO
I think we'd go to war for Vilnius, Talinn or Riga if needs must. London would be annihilated if it came to it but so would most of Russia's cities.
The one I'm not sure about is Turkey, as they're always up to some mischief themselves in the region.
Deterrence is cheaper the earlier you do it. NATO’s nuclear umbrella primarily acts as a deterrent against Russian first strike. It has a secondary role at deterring conventional attack. But it’s a not wholly effective deterrent to conventional attack. That is why Nato has sensibly been increasing its conventional presence in Eastern Europe. And indeed is arming non Nato Ukraine.
If you want to deter an attempted conventional attack on “core Nato” in Western Europe, you are better off shifting the deterrent to “earlier” in that conflict, by making it sufficiently painful for Russia to consider attacking Riga or Vilnius that it never bothers, much less attacking London, Paris or Berlin. Hence the conventional weapons buildup there.
Leon’s musing on whether we would bother going to war to defend Riga or Vilnius is a question that Russian war strategists have also been pondering for some time. The cheapest way to give the Russians the firm answer without waiting for them to ask the question, is to react in the way we are in non-Nato Ukraine. Fortunately we seem to have advisors in Washington and London that understand this and who are for now being listened to.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
I don't in principle have a problem with parents choosing between schools, but the choice shouldn't be too consequential.
At the present time, because school quality is uneven, and the effects too consequential, we have selection by house price, which results in a lot of social ghettoisation, even in a small city/large town like Exeter.
As far as I can tell there are lots of better education systems we could learn from, if we wanted to. I don't know how they manage to afford much smaller class sizes in Sweden or the Netherlands. Something about the Irish system seems to work pretty well, despite class sizes as large as Britain's.
Not sure whether there are other countries that have grammar schools.
Yes that nails it - choice remains but it loses its 'life or death' aura.
One side effect, minor but deceptively benign, of Optimal Education System - aka all kids go to a big diverse high quality comp in their area - is an end to parents going through all the agonizing about it. The endless spats around the kitchen table as to where son/daughter should go, should they move house to facilitate it, should they start going to church, should they fork out for actual school fees, etc etc.
Bye bye to all that. And all of the guilt, assumed and projected and mutual, that goes along with it.
Getting excited just typing this actually. It can be done if we just flick a mental switch to the right position - drop our fetishes and oneupmanships and focus on the best collective outcome, the national interest, a genuine levelling up in that there'll be tons more winners than losers.
Interesting and long thread on where things stand strategy-wise:
Mick Ryan, AM @WarintheFuture Back in May, I examined Ukraine’s military strategy in a thread that I informally called ‘The Ukrainians are Masters of 21st Century War”. Today, an update on the Ukrainian approach - the "strategy of corrosion". 1/25
One thought I had reading this if Ukrainians are really Russians as Putin believes, how come they seem as a people to be that much more agile and adaptive than real Russians?
I listened to a Yale history podcast about the ancient Greeks and the learned professor made the argument that every newly free people have achieved stunning military successes - Thebes, Athens, France, US - and you might view the Ukrainians in the same vein.
Motivation makes a really big difference.
Russia and the GPW also a pretty good example, but not in tune with the mood music.
A view from the States: "Economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift, [the UK] is being cut down to size. The right’s Brexit fantasy — of a revitalized Britain, able once again to confidently assert itself — is finished." ~AA
Ah, the New York Times reverts to its histrionic Britain-bashing. It must please a segment of its liberal readership
A few months ago I worked out why they do this. It's because of the desperate state of American politics, with seemingly no way out of the nightmare. Add in racial conflict, mass shootings, foreign policy disasters, global retreat, surging crime, homelessness and drugs, and America's clear descent from top country status, and it is very depressing to be American right now. But they get some solace from pointing at Britain and saying "but look this place is fucked up too, and by rightwing populists who are just as bad as ours"
I have seen this effect in play at family weddings, but the NYT are really missing out on an important piece of the jigsaw. They need to discover how bad the governance of Ireland is as well. American visitors always need a crash course in the many past mistakes and misdemeanours of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.
For sure
And, to be fair, the UK press does exactly this as well. Whenever Britain feels a bit miserable, a lot of papers will print articles pointing out how newly crap everything is another country similar to ours (generally France, Germany, Italy, or the EU as a whole). And of course there is an entire school of journalists who spend careers writing America-is-terrible articles, they are particularly noticeable whenever there is a mass shooting
It is a sign of insecurity, and all countries suffer from it, sporadically. Some smaller, more insecure countries do it all the time (eg Ireland vis a vis the UK)
What's new here is AMERICAN insecurity. They have been top dog for a long while, but as that conviction of superiority fast speedily away, on multiple fronts, they are becoming more like other countries, with attendant neuroses
Indeed and in any case the threat to America is from China not us, we are only a middle ranking power now
I wouldn’t say we were “middle ranking”. I think better to numerically rank based on combos of size, economy, population, military power, soft power etc.
1st Rank US and China
2nd UK, France, Germany, Japan maybe India
3rd Italy, Russia,
I don’t know why I bothered to write that but there you go! Just mental diarrhoea.
In terms of economy, South Korea is arguably more influential than the UK. And Poland and Turkey may soon have superior conventional armed forces.
Tbh if you're in NATO it doesn't matter how strong your armed forces are, you have the guarantee of all other members.
This has never been properly tested. Let's hope that remains the case
Because I am unconvinced we would go to the brink of nuclear war with Russia, if Putin invaded the Baltics
I'm equally doubtful we would defend Romania or Bulgaria either. Turkey is tricky. Greece probably, Poland probably. Slovakia? Hmm
It would be fun to chart the mental map of REAL NATO, ie the NATO that contains the countries we would actually go to total war to defend. It is smaller than Theoretical Legal NATO
I think we'd go to war for Vilnius, Talinn or Riga if needs must. London would be annihilated if it came to it but so would most of Russia's cities.
The one I'm not sure about is Turkey, as they're always up to some mischief themselves in the region.
Deterrence is cheaper the earlier you do it. NATO’s nuclear umbrella primarily acts as a deterrent against Russian first strike. It has a secondary role at deterring conventional attack. But it’s a not wholly effective deterrent to conventional attack. That is why Nato has sensibly been increasing its conventional presence in Eastern Europe. And indeed is arming non Nato Ukraine.
If you want to deter an attempted conventional attack on “core Nato” in Western Europe, you are better off shifting the deterrent to “earlier” in that conflict, by making it sufficiently painful for Russia to consider attacking Riga or Vilnius that it never bothers, much less attacking London, Paris or Berlin. Hence the conventional weapons buildup there.
Leon’s musing on whether we would bother going to war to defend Riga or Vilnius is a question that Russian war strategists have also been pondering for some time. The cheapest way to give the Russians the firm answer without waiting for them to ask the question, is to react in the way we are in non-Nato Ukraine. Fortunately we seem to have advisors in Washington and London that understand this and who are for now being listened to.
Unfortunately, if Trump, or another America First ideologue, becomes US President NATO will have to find a way to defend itself without the US.
This should be an urgent task for HMG, but we are pretending the risk doesn't exist.
Still getting anecdotal evidence of people going to Sunak's PR blitz and coming away convinced. I've no idea what proportion of voting members will attend, though.
I'd probably expect most Tory members in an area like SW Surrey to support Sunak.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
I don't in principle have a problem with parents choosing between schools, but the choice shouldn't be too consequential.
At the present time, because school quality is uneven, and the effects too consequential, we have selection by house price, which results in a lot of social ghettoisation, even in a small city/large town like Exeter.
As far as I can tell there are lots of better education systems we could learn from, if we wanted to. I don't know how they manage to afford much smaller class sizes in Sweden or the Netherlands. Something about the Irish system seems to work pretty well, despite class sizes as large as Britain's.
Not sure whether there are other countries that have grammar schools.
Yes that nails it - choice remains but it loses its 'life or death' aura.
One side effect, minor but deceptively benign, of Optimal Education System - aka all kids go to a big diverse high quality comp in their area - is an end to parents going through all the agonizing about it. The endless spats around the kitchen table as to where son/daughter should go, should they move house to facilitate it, should they start going to church, should they fork out for actual school fees, etc etc.
Bye bye to all that. And all of the guilt, assumed and projected and mutual, that goes along with it.
Getting excited just typing this actually. It can be done if we just flick a mental switch to the right position - drop our fetishes and oneupmanships and focus on the best collective outcome, the national interest, a genuine levelling up in that there'll be tons more winners than losers.
I definitely feel like this is how it was when I went to comprehensive in 1984. Almost everyone from my primary went to the same comprehensive, I don't think we considered me going anywhere else for a second. I've always wondered what changed - I suppose it was the league tables and publishing of results etc. The school I went to performed badly when that began and no longer exists.
Almost on topic: Seeing all those front page pictures reminded me of an observation that I made many years ago: Athletes, assuming they are normal size, tend to be better looking than the average. For example, point guards in both men's and women's basketball.
DaveyBoy1961 asked: "Just a question. Can you turn up at a polling station and vote instead of post the ballot paper in?" (In Washington state, which is a vote-by-mail state.)
Also note that voted ballots may also be returned via official ballot drop boxes, which are scattered pretty freely across the Evergreen State landscape. For example, check out this map of drop box locations in King County:
As of this Monday morning in King County (Seattle plus eastern & southern burbs) out of 240k ballots return so far (17% of 1.4 million active registered voters) share returned via drop boxes is 29% compared with 71% returned via US Postal Service (also small number returned via fax & email, which must be validated by hard-copy signature)
This link is source for above plus gives lots of other figures & analysis:
Statewide 835k ballots have been returned (17% of 4.8 million active reg) of which 35% have come back via drop boxes and 65% via mail. NOTE that the percentage of drop box returns will increase esp. due to Election Day returns.
As for what final turnout will be, King Co Elections is forecasting 45% which would amount to approx 630k ballots cast. My own guess is that statewide turnout will be a bit lower, approx 2m (42%).
Almost on topic: Seeing all those front page pictures reminded me of an observation that I made many years ago: Athletes, assuming they are normal size, tend to be better looking than the average. For example, point guards in both men's and women's basketball.
Physically fit healthy young people are better looking than the average person. Errr yes,
Almost on topic: Seeing all those front page pictures reminded me of an observation that I made many years ago: Athletes, assuming they are normal size, tend to be better looking than the average. For example, point guards in both men's and women's basketball.
Physically fit healthy young people are better looking than the average person. Errr yes,
See also - rich people tend to be better looking than average, and, thin people tend to be better looking than average.
Almost on topic: Seeing all those front page pictures reminded me of an observation that I made many years ago: Athletes, assuming they are normal size, tend to be better looking than the average. For example, point guards in both men's and women's basketball.
Professional athletes are very rarely normal size humans, they’re freaks of nature. Basketball being the first example that springs to mind.
Personally I think when in Government the MPs should decide on the leader but that's just me
Yep - a small bunch of members of one political party choosing our PM is an absurdity. Feels wrong, IS wrong.
The party’s members are electing the party leader. The PM is merely whoever commands the support of the House of Commons, from among MPs elected by the People.
It has always been a terrible system. In 2003 there was a very insightful letter written to the Times on this very subject:
MPs pick the last 2 candidates, members then pick the leader from them.
It works fine and respects the need for the leader to have the support of MPs in Parliament and the voluntary party who do the campaigning and fundraising to get them elected
Failures
Truss over Sunak Johnson over Hunt (Leadsom would have beaten May bar the withdrawal) Duncan Smith over Clarke Corbyn over Smith Corbyn over Burnham Ed over David (not solely members but it was the member who dunnit)
Successes
Cameron over Davis Starmer over Long-Bailey
It works of course, but it does not work fine, it generally picks either a more extreme candidate or one who promises stuff thats undeliverable. We are stuck with it though, no way the members give up their power.
The 'failures' thrown up by this post (regarding the Tory process at any rate) don't belong to the members, but the MPs, for whittling the final two down to a weak candidate and an unsuitable candidate, confident in the mistaken belief that they had oh-so-cleverly forced the members to grudgingly elect their favoured candidate to avoid the weak alternative.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
I don't in principle have a problem with parents choosing between schools, but the choice shouldn't be too consequential.
At the present time, because school quality is uneven, and the effects too consequential, we have selection by house price, which results in a lot of social ghettoisation, even in a small city/large town like Exeter.
As far as I can tell there are lots of better education systems we could learn from, if we wanted to. I don't know how they manage to afford much smaller class sizes in Sweden or the Netherlands. Something about the Irish system seems to work pretty well, despite class sizes as large as Britain's.
Not sure whether there are other countries that have grammar schools.
Yes that nails it - choice remains but it loses its 'life or death' aura.
One side effect, minor but deceptively benign, of Optimal Education System - aka all kids go to a big diverse high quality comp in their area - is an end to parents going through all the agonizing about it. The endless spats around the kitchen table as to where son/daughter should go, should they move house to facilitate it, should they start going to church, should they fork out for actual school fees, etc etc.
Bye bye to all that. And all of the guilt, assumed and projected and mutual, that goes along with it.
Getting excited just typing this actually. It can be done if we just flick a mental switch to the right position - drop our fetishes and oneupmanships and focus on the best collective outcome, the national interest, a genuine levelling up in that there'll be tons more winners than losers.
Why not just outlaw privately owned firearms in the USA is also an exciting mental switch-flick - best collective outcome, the national interest, a genuine levelling up in that there'll be tons more winners than losers. As far as I can see private education is illegal only in Cuba, North Korea and Finland. Don't think I don't sympathise but you are only going to abolish it by making the free alternative so appetising that it dies of market forces. The NHS is the model to copy, because it is good enough that the cost advantage is enough to push it ahead of the private sector (and actually it is miles superior, money aside, for serious procedures). Perhaps try to redistribute some of the slavish drooling from hospitals to education? The imbalance being probably another example of old voter skew in Britpol.
Almost on topic: Seeing all those front page pictures reminded me of an observation that I made many years ago: Athletes, assuming they are normal size, tend to be better looking than the average. For example, point guards in both men's and women's basketball.
What struck me about the women's football was not how cute they are - well OK a bit, but it wasn't the overriding impression, and I also expect successful young athletes to be attractive - but how similar in looks. Tall thin white girls with blonde ponytails. Almost every team was like that
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Perhaps the whole discussion of grammar vs comprehensive is inherently futile. No one seems to go back to a fresh sheet of paper here.
I would personally like to see the results of a trial where kids self select at 14. They can go either the academic route as per now leading to a levels and university or go to a more skills based route which teaches them plumbing, brick laying etc with industry certificates replacing gcse's also classes in basic book keeping and running a small business.
Our current system tends to assume all children are academically inclined and that is simply not true. Some that fail in the academic system would I have no doubt shine in a system which taught them valuable skills they could turn into a small business of their own
Disagree that "state v private" and "selection v comp" is a futile discussion. I think it's important. But your point - academic or skills? - is too. I agree that children who aren't academic but have other aptitudes should be able to follow this path instead and it mustn't be seen as inferior. One thought occurs. Middle class parents will likely be resistant to their children being steered in a Skills direction. So we'll need to build something into our Optimum Education System to counter this. But anyway, this whole Skills side that you've raised is a strand I didn't have - biased as I am towards academic education due to my background - so it's great to now have it. We are rocking here.
On Russian state TV, State Duma Defense Committee's head Andrey Kartapolov proposed taking Ukrainian children from occupied territories and shipping them off to military boarding schools in Russia. Not one word about asking for their parents' permission or even their own wishes. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1554122972935372804
Another thing to bear in mind for those who advocate a land for peace deal.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
I don't in principle have a problem with parents choosing between schools, but the choice shouldn't be too consequential.
At the present time, because school quality is uneven, and the effects too consequential, we have selection by house price, which results in a lot of social ghettoisation, even in a small city/large town like Exeter.
As far as I can tell there are lots of better education systems we could learn from, if we wanted to. I don't know how they manage to afford much smaller class sizes in Sweden or the Netherlands. Something about the Irish system seems to work pretty well, despite class sizes as large as Britain's.
Not sure whether there are other countries that have grammar schools.
Yes that nails it - choice remains but it loses its 'life or death' aura.
One side effect, minor but deceptively benign, of Optimal Education System - aka all kids go to a big diverse high quality comp in their area - is an end to parents going through all the agonizing about it. The endless spats around the kitchen table as to where son/daughter should go, should they move house to facilitate it, should they start going to church, should they fork out for actual school fees, etc etc.
Bye bye to all that. And all of the guilt, assumed and projected and mutual, that goes along with it.
Getting excited just typing this actually. It can be done if we just flick a mental switch to the right position - drop our fetishes and oneupmanships and focus on the best collective outcome, the national interest, a genuine levelling up in that there'll be tons more winners than losers.
What rubbish, you can't magically make all schools outstanding.
Catchment area will remain key, wealth of the area will remain key, education of parents in the area will remain key plus standard of teaching and disipline will remain key.
You improve schools by choice not one size fits all mediocrity
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
Almost on topic: Seeing all those front page pictures reminded me of an observation that I made many years ago: Athletes, assuming they are normal size, tend to be better looking than the average. For example, point guards in both men's and women's basketball.
Physically fit healthy young people are better looking than the average person. Errr yes,
I think there's more to it than that. No reason cricketers shouldn't look like Rory Stewart, but they don't. Theory: odd looking kids tend not to be asked to join in ball games at crucial, young ages at which ball skills are acquired
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
I don't in principle have a problem with parents choosing between schools, but the choice shouldn't be too consequential.
At the present time, because school quality is uneven, and the effects too consequential, we have selection by house price, which results in a lot of social ghettoisation, even in a small city/large town like Exeter.
As far as I can tell there are lots of better education systems we could learn from, if we wanted to. I don't know how they manage to afford much smaller class sizes in Sweden or the Netherlands. Something about the Irish system seems to work pretty well, despite class sizes as large as Britain's.
Not sure whether there are other countries that have grammar schools.
Yes that nails it - choice remains but it loses its 'life or death' aura.
One side effect, minor but deceptively benign, of Optimal Education System - aka all kids go to a big diverse high quality comp in their area - is an end to parents going through all the agonizing about it. The endless spats around the kitchen table as to where son/daughter should go, should they move house to facilitate it, should they start going to church, should they fork out for actual school fees, etc etc.
Bye bye to all that. And all of the guilt, assumed and projected and mutual, that goes along with it.
Getting excited just typing this actually. It can be done if we just flick a mental switch to the right position - drop our fetishes and oneupmanships and focus on the best collective outcome, the national interest, a genuine levelling up in that there'll be tons more winners than losers.
What rubbish, you can't magically make all schools outstanding.
Catchment area will remain key, wealth of the area will remain key, education of parents in the area will remain key plus standard of teaching and disipline will remain key.
You improve schools by choice not one size fits all mediocrity
Almost on topic: Seeing all those front page pictures reminded me of an observation that I made many years ago: Athletes, assuming they are normal size, tend to be better looking than the average. For example, point guards in both men's and women's basketball.
What struck me about the women's football was not how cute they are - well OK a bit, but it wasn't the overriding impression, and I also expect successful young athletes to be attractive - but how similar in looks. Tall thin white girls with blonde ponytails. Almost every team was like that
That was the comment in our house. How similar they all look. I suppose there must be an element of practicability about the hairstyles.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
Interesting and long thread on where things stand strategy-wise:
Mick Ryan, AM @WarintheFuture Back in May, I examined Ukraine’s military strategy in a thread that I informally called ‘The Ukrainians are Masters of 21st Century War”. Today, an update on the Ukrainian approach - the "strategy of corrosion". 1/25
One thought I had reading this if Ukrainians are really Russians as Putin believes, how come they seem as a people to be that much more agile and adaptive than real Russians?
Because in war, there's no better teacher than defeat. When Peter the Great captured Swedish generals at Poltava, he gave them a banquet afterwards, and toasted them as "My teachers." The Ukrainians took their defeat in 2014 to heart and learned from it.
I think Bill Gates was quoted as saying "Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.".
I'm sure he wasn't the first person to say a similar thing - but it came to mind when I was picturing Putin planning the Ukraine invasion.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Very honest and yes grammar schools are about helping the comfortable and well off ensure their childrens lives are comfortable and well off. If we had a genuine meritocracy and an education system to support that, this would be less likely at the individual level for those with privileged parents, but as a nation we could move up the proportion of comfortable and well off in future generations.
Sandpit said: "Professional athletes are very rarely normal size humans, they’re freaks of nature. Basketball being the first example that springs to mind."
That's why I limited it to basketball point guards, who are almost always the shortest players on their teams -- and the best looking. For a local example, Sue Bird, even at 41, is probably the best looking player on the Seattle Storm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_Bird At 5'9", she's just 3 inches taller than what British men consider the "ideal" height (according to a quick search.
(I should warn those looking for a wealthy athletic woman to marry that Bird is engaged to another famous athlete, Megan Rapinoe.)
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
I don't in principle have a problem with parents choosing between schools, but the choice shouldn't be too consequential.
At the present time, because school quality is uneven, and the effects too consequential, we have selection by house price, which results in a lot of social ghettoisation, even in a small city/large town like Exeter.
As far as I can tell there are lots of better education systems we could learn from, if we wanted to. I don't know how they manage to afford much smaller class sizes in Sweden or the Netherlands. Something about the Irish system seems to work pretty well, despite class sizes as large as Britain's.
Not sure whether there are other countries that have grammar schools.
Yes that nails it - choice remains but it loses its 'life or death' aura.
One side effect, minor but deceptively benign, of Optimal Education System - aka all kids go to a big diverse high quality comp in their area - is an end to parents going through all the agonizing about it. The endless spats around the kitchen table as to where son/daughter should go, should they move house to facilitate it, should they start going to church, should they fork out for actual school fees, etc etc.
Bye bye to all that. And all of the guilt, assumed and projected and mutual, that goes along with it.
Getting excited just typing this actually. It can be done if we just flick a mental switch to the right position - drop our fetishes and oneupmanships and focus on the best collective outcome, the national interest, a genuine levelling up in that there'll be tons more winners than losers.
Why not just outlaw privately owned firearms in the USA is also an exciting mental switch-flick - best collective outcome, the national interest, a genuine levelling up in that there'll be tons more winners than losers. As far as I can see private education is illegal only in Cuba, North Korea and Finland. Don't think I don't sympathise but you are only going to abolish it by making the free alternative so appetising that it dies of market forces. The NHS is the model to copy, because it is good enough that the cost advantage is enough to push it ahead of the private sector (and actually it is miles superior, money aside, for serious procedures). Perhaps try to redistribute some of the slavish drooling from hospitals to education? The imbalance being probably another example of old voter skew in Britpol.
If only, there, on the guns. But the private optout here isn't being abolished by law. It's being discouraged by pull (better and more equal state schools) and push (the cap on fees). The essential MO is as stated by you here - the "free" (which it isn't really since taxes will have to fund it) option becomes over time (probably quite a long time) good enough so the rest does indeed wilt away by market forces, the market having been intervened in via the fee cap.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
My comp had a grammar stream, a technical stream and stream for people who were struggling.
Within the grammar stream, there were six sets for English and Maths.
Set 1 in Maths did the O Level a year early, and then pure and applied Maths separately at A level.
Interesting and long thread on where things stand strategy-wise:
Mick Ryan, AM @WarintheFuture Back in May, I examined Ukraine’s military strategy in a thread that I informally called ‘The Ukrainians are Masters of 21st Century War”. Today, an update on the Ukrainian approach - the "strategy of corrosion". 1/25
One thought I had reading this if Ukrainians are really Russians as Putin believes, how come they seem as a people to be that much more agile and adaptive than real Russians?
Because in war, there's no better teacher than defeat. When Peter the Great captured Swedish generals at Poltava, he gave them a banquet afterwards, and toasted them as "My teachers." The Ukrainians took their defeat in 2014 to heart and learned from it.
I think Bill Gates was quoted as saying "Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.".
I'm sure he wasn't the first person to say a similar thing - but it came to mind when I was picturing Putin planning the Ukraine invasion.
Related thought, Johnson and Sunak both head boys of posh schools - very early ersatz pretendy success without responsibility.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
As a parent currently going through this, my motivations are: 1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery. 2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids. 3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks. All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Those are all good arguments for private schools as well. They are also the reasons people buy expensive houses close to very good comprehensive schools. This is all just self interest, there's no need to give it any further thought.
I am in Finland at the moment and went to go and look at the local recently built state school. It is a beautiful modernist inspired structure with vast grounds. Aesthetically it is comparable to somewhere like the recently extended Eastbourne College (£30k fees per year). In Finland tax for someone earning £50k per year is roughly similar to the UK, Finns get a much better deal on education.
On this American v British media thing, and the NYT, and all that
I was reading some American commentary on England's football win last night, and I came across the sentiment - more than once - that British (probably specifically English) attitudes to this are "insufferable". They mean the attitudes of the media rather than the people, I presume
One American voiced the opinion that the British/English are similarly insufferable about.... wait for it..... eurovision. Er, what??
Now, I can understand why Scots might find English media insufferable about the fitba. They've had 1966 rammed down their throats for 50 years, like it has something to do with Scotland and is a cause for all-British pride. But Americans? Why on earth should they care? And if they find our opinions or media insufferable, why not just... ignore it? It's not like they are forced to watch it on the BBC
Maybe @williamglenn's thesis is good. Americans are encountering a powerful English speaking media which is not their own, and they don't like it, because it is not America-centric, and in some ways considers itself superior to America. So: insufferable
I am open to any alternative theories
I'd actually agree that the annual sneering about Eurovision was tiresome and would irritate any foreigner coming across it - it used to read like a relative constantly going on about the dress sense of his brother. It's telling that it stopped when we nearly won. Similarly, our sports coverage is really only interested in Brits doing well.
But aren't most country's media like that?
There is a reason for sneering at Eurovision and it is simple. Most of the music is absolute shite. I can only think of a few that have broken that rule over the years, Abba being one (musically excellent) and possibly Katrina? Anyone else think of anything that when compared to even proper mainstream pop (which is often pretty crap) stands out as good music?
Vaguely related to topic: what chance that Johnson puts a load of footballers in his resignation honours as a cheap trick to try to deflect from the kerfuffle over peerages for his mates?
On this American v British media thing, and the NYT, and all that
I was reading some American commentary on England's football win last night, and I came across the sentiment - more than once - that British (probably specifically English) attitudes to this are "insufferable". They mean the attitudes of the media rather than the people, I presume
One American voiced the opinion that the British/English are similarly insufferable about.... wait for it..... eurovision. Er, what??
Now, I can understand why Scots might find English media insufferable about the fitba. They've had 1966 rammed down their throats for 50 years, like it has something to do with Scotland and is a cause for all-British pride. But Americans? Why on earth should they care? And if they find our opinions or media insufferable, why not just... ignore it? It's not like they are forced to watch it on the BBC
Maybe @williamglenn's thesis is good. Americans are encountering a powerful English speaking media which is not their own, and they don't like it, because it is not America-centric, and in some ways considers itself superior to America. So: insufferable
I am open to any alternative theories
I'd actually agree that the annual sneering about Eurovision was tiresome and would irritate any foreigner coming across it - it used to read like a relative constantly going on about the dress sense of his brother. It's telling that it stopped when we nearly won. Similarly, our sports coverage is really only interested in Brits doing well.
But aren't most country's media like that?
There is a reason for sneering at Eurovision and it is simple. Most of the music is absolute shite. I can only think of a few that have broken that rule over the years, Abba being one (musically excellent) and possibly Katrina? Anyone else think of anything that when compared to even proper mainstream pop (which is often pretty crap) stands out as good music?
I was driving on the night of Eurovision this year so missed it, which I was genuinely disappointed about. I wouldn't make any particular claims about the quality of the music, but I've always enjoyed watching it.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
I don't in principle have a problem with parents choosing between schools, but the choice shouldn't be too consequential.
At the present time, because school quality is uneven, and the effects too consequential, we have selection by house price, which results in a lot of social ghettoisation, even in a small city/large town like Exeter.
As far as I can tell there are lots of better education systems we could learn from, if we wanted to. I don't know how they manage to afford much smaller class sizes in Sweden or the Netherlands. Something about the Irish system seems to work pretty well, despite class sizes as large as Britain's.
Not sure whether there are other countries that have grammar schools.
Yes that nails it - choice remains but it loses its 'life or death' aura.
One side effect, minor but deceptively benign, of Optimal Education System - aka all kids go to a big diverse high quality comp in their area - is an end to parents going through all the agonizing about it. The endless spats around the kitchen table as to where son/daughter should go, should they move house to facilitate it, should they start going to church, should they fork out for actual school fees, etc etc.
Bye bye to all that. And all of the guilt, assumed and projected and mutual, that goes along with it.
Getting excited just typing this actually. It can be done if we just flick a mental switch to the right position - drop our fetishes and oneupmanships and focus on the best collective outcome, the national interest, a genuine levelling up in that there'll be tons more winners than losers.
What rubbish, you can't magically make all schools outstanding.
Catchment area will remain key, wealth of the area will remain key, education of parents in the area will remain key plus standard of teaching and disipline will remain key.
You improve schools by choice not one size fits all mediocrity
It's not magic, it's a blueprint for a high quality education system based on egalitarian principles. You're just chanting your mantras and also mislabelling the objective. It is not to BREAK the link between parental bank balance and childrens prospects it's to REDUCE it.
Breaking it entirely is neither feasible nor desirable - since it's incompatible with personal freedoms - but this doesn't mean we shouldn't seek to reduce it very substantially. And this Optimal Education System is a big part of how we do it imo.
Now I know you don't *want* to reduce the link - being a proud and very traditional shire Tory - but I reckon some others on here do. And if any of them have a better way I'd be interested. Truly I would.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
Which of course gives the kids at Kensington and Chelsea and Surrey comps a huge inbuilt head start over the kids at Stoke and Barnsley and Grimsby comps by default
No, because another strand of the solution - to Optimal Education System - is a very marked skewing of resource to those latter type areas.
Which is irrelevant without change in intake
What particular advantages do grammar schools offer over larger, well streamed comprehensives?
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
Vaguely related to topic: what chance that Johnson puts a load of footballers in his resignation honours as a cheap trick to try to deflect from the kerfuffle over peerages for his mates?
Well, they gave the 2005 Ashes winning cricketers MBEs, so I'd expect it to be a certainty that the whole squad will receive something like that.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
I don't in principle have a problem with parents choosing between schools, but the choice shouldn't be too consequential.
At the present time, because school quality is uneven, and the effects too consequential, we have selection by house price, which results in a lot of social ghettoisation, even in a small city/large town like Exeter.
As far as I can tell there are lots of better education systems we could learn from, if we wanted to. I don't know how they manage to afford much smaller class sizes in Sweden or the Netherlands. Something about the Irish system seems to work pretty well, despite class sizes as large as Britain's.
Not sure whether there are other countries that have grammar schools.
Yes that nails it - choice remains but it loses its 'life or death' aura.
One side effect, minor but deceptively benign, of Optimal Education System - aka all kids go to a big diverse high quality comp in their area - is an end to parents going through all the agonizing about it. The endless spats around the kitchen table as to where son/daughter should go, should they move house to facilitate it, should they start going to church, should they fork out for actual school fees, etc etc.
Bye bye to all that. And all of the guilt, assumed and projected and mutual, that goes along with it.
Getting excited just typing this actually. It can be done if we just flick a mental switch to the right position - drop our fetishes and oneupmanships and focus on the best collective outcome, the national interest, a genuine levelling up in that there'll be tons more winners than losers.
What rubbish, you can't magically make all schools outstanding.
Catchment area will remain key, wealth of the area will remain key, education of parents in the area will remain key plus standard of teaching and disipline will remain key.
You improve schools by choice not one size fits all mediocrity
It's not magic, it's a blueprint for a high quality education system based on egalitarian principles. You're just chanting your mantras and also mislabelling the objective. It is not to BREAK the link between parental bank balance and childrens prospects it's to REDUCE it.
Breaking it entirely is neither feasible nor desirable - since it's incompatible with personal freedoms - but this doesn't mean we shouldn't seek to reduce it very substantially. And this Optimal Education System is a big part of how we do it imo.
Now I know you don't *want* to reduce the link - being a proud and very traditional shire Tory - but I reckon some others on here do. And if any of them have a better way I'd be interested. Truly I would.
No, it is a blueprint for educational communism. No parental choice whatsoever, just assigned to your local school no matter how bad which has no incentive to improve.
No more than nationalising every shop in the high street or online retailer so they all provide and sell the same products and same standard of service
Interesting and long thread on where things stand strategy-wise:
Mick Ryan, AM @WarintheFuture Back in May, I examined Ukraine’s military strategy in a thread that I informally called ‘The Ukrainians are Masters of 21st Century War”. Today, an update on the Ukrainian approach - the "strategy of corrosion". 1/25
One thought I had reading this if Ukrainians are really Russians as Putin believes, how come they seem as a people to be that much more agile and adaptive than real Russians?
Because in war, there's no better teacher than defeat. When Peter the Great captured Swedish generals at Poltava, he gave them a banquet afterwards, and toasted them as "My teachers." The Ukrainians took their defeat in 2014 to heart and learned from it.
I think Bill Gates was quoted as saying "Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.".
I'm sure he wasn't the first person to say a similar thing - but it came to mind when I was picturing Putin planning the Ukraine invasion.
Related thought, Johnson and Sunak both head boys of posh schools - very early ersatz pretendy success without responsibility.
Somewhat different generation and I think that reflects rather better on Winchester than Eton. Rishi looks like a head boy. Boris doesn't.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
I don't in principle have a problem with parents choosing between schools, but the choice shouldn't be too consequential.
At the present time, because school quality is uneven, and the effects too consequential, we have selection by house price, which results in a lot of social ghettoisation, even in a small city/large town like Exeter.
As far as I can tell there are lots of better education systems we could learn from, if we wanted to. I don't know how they manage to afford much smaller class sizes in Sweden or the Netherlands. Something about the Irish system seems to work pretty well, despite class sizes as large as Britain's.
Not sure whether there are other countries that have grammar schools.
Yes that nails it - choice remains but it loses its 'life or death' aura.
One side effect, minor but deceptively benign, of Optimal Education System - aka all kids go to a big diverse high quality comp in their area - is an end to parents going through all the agonizing about it. The endless spats around the kitchen table as to where son/daughter should go, should they move house to facilitate it, should they start going to church, should they fork out for actual school fees, etc etc.
Bye bye to all that. And all of the guilt, assumed and projected and mutual, that goes along with it.
Getting excited just typing this actually. It can be done if we just flick a mental switch to the right position - drop our fetishes and oneupmanships and focus on the best collective outcome, the national interest, a genuine levelling up in that there'll be tons more winners than losers.
I definitely feel like this is how it was when I went to comprehensive in 1984. Almost everyone from my primary went to the same comprehensive, I don't think we considered me going anywhere else for a second. I've always wondered what changed - I suppose it was the league tables and publishing of results etc. The school I went to performed badly when that began and no longer exists.
Yes, it seems we've been getting worse (on this aspect) over the years. The angst has grown apace. Is it related in some way to our obsession with houses as engines of personal wealth creation rather than somewhere to live? Does it come from the same place? I sense it kind of does.
Hence why any big changes are so so difficult to sell. We're smashing up against some deeply ingrained feelings and attitudes. And even harder to counter since many of them are totally understandable and make sense on their own terms.
Plenty of Conservative party members won't like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won't be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy not the poor – and they don't work.
Good on him - brave, for a Tory MP. Essential reading for HYUFD; grammar schools aid the wealthy not the poor, and do not benefit social mobility. Nor is their achievement anything special given their intake.
Utter rubbish. Working class pupils in grammar schools get better results than those of equal intelligence in state schools. Grammar schools are also generally the only state schools that really challenge private schools.
Hence I have always and will always back grammars. I mean you can't even ballot to open new grammars now only to close existing ones. Hardly parental choice!
Ability/aptitude streaming in comps achieves the same goals as grammars, without the social stigmas for those who don't get in. And without the enormous pressure on 11-year old kids. Also, you learn to look after yourself...!
YOU making decent points - what gives?
Comps that are streamed for ability are better than grammars in my view. Learn with people of your ability, mix with everybody. And no stigma. Everybody wears the same uniform.
They can be a bit rough, but as long as the staff sit on the bullies and protect those who want to learn, they work very well.
Yes, I think big diverse Comprehensive Schools, all kids going to their nearest one, whilst not the solution in itself to "Optimal Education System" is the platform on which to construct it.
I don't in principle have a problem with parents choosing between schools, but the choice shouldn't be too consequential.
At the present time, because school quality is uneven, and the effects too consequential, we have selection by house price, which results in a lot of social ghettoisation, even in a small city/large town like Exeter.
As far as I can tell there are lots of better education systems we could learn from, if we wanted to. I don't know how they manage to afford much smaller class sizes in Sweden or the Netherlands. Something about the Irish system seems to work pretty well, despite class sizes as large as Britain's.
Not sure whether there are other countries that have grammar schools.
Yes that nails it - choice remains but it loses its 'life or death' aura.
One side effect, minor but deceptively benign, of Optimal Education System - aka all kids go to a big diverse high quality comp in their area - is an end to parents going through all the agonizing about it. The endless spats around the kitchen table as to where son/daughter should go, should they move house to facilitate it, should they start going to church, should they fork out for actual school fees, etc etc.
Bye bye to all that. And all of the guilt, assumed and projected and mutual, that goes along with it.
Getting excited just typing this actually. It can be done if we just flick a mental switch to the right position - drop our fetishes and oneupmanships and focus on the best collective outcome, the national interest, a genuine levelling up in that there'll be tons more winners than losers.
I definitely feel like this is how it was when I went to comprehensive in 1984. Almost everyone from my primary went to the same comprehensive, I don't think we considered me going anywhere else for a second. I've always wondered what changed - I suppose it was the league tables and publishing of results etc. The school I went to performed badly when that began and no longer exists.
Yes, it seems we've been getting worse (on this aspect) over the years. The angst has grown apace. Is it related in some way to our obsession with houses as engines of personal wealth creation rather than somewhere to live? Does it come from the same place? I sense it kind of does.
Hence why any big changes are so so difficult to sell. We're smashing up against some deeply ingrained feelings and attitudes. And even harder to counter since many of them are totally understandable and make sense on their own terms.
Reasons for angst: Perceived (real) reduction in class room discipline impacting certain schools more and holding back working class mobility? Oil and water divisions of localities based on social problems and lawlessness? Greater emphasis on exam grades within society? Higher stakes meritocracy undermines middle class feelings of stability?
Comments
My comp, for example, had seven different math sets.
If you want to deter an attempted conventional attack on “core Nato” in Western Europe, you are better off shifting the deterrent to “earlier” in that conflict, by making it sufficiently painful for Russia to consider attacking Riga or Vilnius that it never bothers, much less attacking London, Paris or Berlin. Hence the conventional weapons buildup there.
Leon’s musing on whether we would bother going to war to defend Riga or Vilnius is a question that Russian war strategists have also been pondering for some time. The cheapest way to give the Russians the firm answer without waiting for them to ask the question, is to react in the way we are in non-Nato Ukraine. Fortunately we seem to have advisors in Washington and London that understand this and who are for now being listened to.
One side effect, minor but deceptively benign, of Optimal Education System - aka all kids go to a big diverse high quality comp in their area - is an end to parents going through all the agonizing about it. The endless spats around the kitchen table as to where son/daughter should go, should they move house to facilitate it, should they start going to church, should they fork out for actual school fees, etc etc.
Bye bye to all that. And all of the guilt, assumed and projected and mutual, that goes along with it.
Getting excited just typing this actually. It can be done if we just flick a mental switch to the right position - drop our fetishes and oneupmanships and focus on the best collective outcome, the national interest, a genuine levelling up in that there'll be tons more winners than losers.
This should be an urgent task for HMG, but we are pretending the risk doesn't exist.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/22/trump-says-he-threatened-not-defend-nato-russia/
However LLG remains 57, ConRef up to 38
Labour leads by 4%, narrowest lead since 5 June.
Westminster Voting Intention (31 July):
Labour 38% (-3)
Conservative 34% (+1)
Liberal Democrat 12% (–)
Green 7% (+2)
Scottish National Party 4% (–)
Reform UK 4% (+1)
Other 1% (–)
Changes +/- 27 July
https://t.co/bLVRBVpun7 https://t.co/wyNyh8mTki
https://kingcounty.gov/depts/elections/how-to-vote/ballots/returning-my-ballot/ballot-drop-boxes.aspx
As of this Monday morning in King County (Seattle plus eastern & southern burbs) out of 240k ballots return so far (17% of 1.4 million active registered voters) share returned via drop boxes is 29% compared with 71% returned via US Postal Service (also small number returned via fax & email, which must be validated by hard-copy signature)
This link is source for above plus gives lots of other figures & analysis:
https://kingcounty.gov/depts/elections/results/ballot-return-statistics/2022/202208.aspx
AND here link to official statewide ballot returns as of Friday, posted by WA Secretary of State:
https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/research/ballot-return-statistics.aspx
Statewide 835k ballots have been returned (17% of 4.8 million active reg) of which 35% have come back via drop boxes and 65% via mail. NOTE that the percentage of drop box returns will increase esp. due to Election Day returns.
As for what final turnout will be, King Co Elections is forecasting 45% which would amount to approx 630k ballots cast. My own guess is that statewide turnout will be a bit lower, approx 2m (42%).
1) Grammar schools weed out most of the kids who make your kids' lives a misery.
2) Comprehensives have a lot of more challenging kidd, and a lot of kids who will need a bit more effort to get them over 5 grade Cs territory. This will leave fewer resources and focus for my kids.
3) Locally, but I don't thi k this is uncommon: the grammar school is just nicer. Better maintained, less graffiti, fewer leaks.
All entirely selfish motivations, but show me someone who makes decision their kids' education based on what will be best for other kids?
Catchment area will remain key, wealth of the area will remain key, education of parents in the area will remain key plus standard of teaching and disipline will remain key.
You improve schools by choice not one size fits all mediocrity
I suppose there must be an element of practicability about the hairstyles.
I'm sure he wasn't the first person to say a similar thing - but it came to mind when I was picturing Putin planning the Ukraine invasion.
That's why I limited it to basketball point guards, who are almost always the shortest players on their teams -- and the best looking. For a local example, Sue Bird, even at 41, is probably the best looking player on the Seattle Storm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_Bird At 5'9", she's just 3 inches taller than what British men consider the "ideal" height (according to a quick search.
(I should warn those looking for a wealthy athletic woman to marry that Bird is engaged to another famous athlete, Megan Rapinoe.)
Within the grammar stream, there were six sets for English and Maths.
Set 1 in Maths did the O Level a year early, and then pure and applied Maths separately at A level.
I am in Finland at the moment and went to go and look at the local recently built state school. It is a beautiful modernist inspired structure with vast grounds. Aesthetically it is comparable to somewhere like the recently extended Eastbourne College (£30k fees per year). In Finland tax for someone earning £50k per year is roughly similar to the UK, Finns get a much better deal on education.
Breaking it entirely is neither feasible nor desirable - since it's incompatible with personal freedoms - but this doesn't mean we shouldn't seek to reduce it very substantially. And this Optimal Education System is a big part of how we do it imo.
Now I know you don't *want* to reduce the link - being a proud and very traditional shire Tory - but I reckon some others on here do. And if any of them have a better way I'd be interested. Truly I would.
First time since March that a Conservative leads Starmer.
At this moment, which of the following individuals do voters think would be the better PM for the United Kingdom? (31 July)
Truss 37% (+4)
Starmer 36% (+2)
Changes +/- 27 July https://t.co/jqaoCc6XPk
Truss's ratungs rise has been very swift and steep. Suggests a big bounce and a big collapse possible or indeed probable.
In the meantime, lol @ SKS
No more than nationalising every shop in the high street or online retailer so they all provide and sell the same products and same standard of service
However only half of them sustained that bounce to a general election majority.
Hence why any big changes are so so difficult to sell. We're smashing up against some deeply ingrained feelings and attitudes. And even harder to counter since many of them are totally understandable and make sense on their own terms.