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 excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
I was in the same school year as @rcs1000 and went to a top top Kent grammar school. While I don’t remember the exact number, our Oxbridge entrances were comparable to that, and I agree with his observations about late developers. My brother failed the 11 plus but within a couple of years was clearly streets ahead of some of those who’d made it into my school. My parents could afford to send one of us to private school (they’d have struggled with two) but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Most grammars also have entry at 13 and 16 and they offer more choice in the state sector so fewer parents have to go private
Theoretically they might but in practice they don’t.
Grammar schools is one of those bizarre obsessions which is meaningless outside the UK or indeed beyond a particular post-war moment.
Anyone promising to bring them back is in the business of selling snake oil.
But look at the audience at this tory hustings. There is hardly a single person who does not have masses of grey hair.
This is a party whose backbone was born in the 1940s and 1950s.
That has been the case ever since I have been a member, unless they are weird Harry Enfield Tory boys or gay without a family to raise or a local councillor most normal people even if Tory voters don't consider joining the party until they retire and their children have left home and they have more time to go to events, campaign etc.
I am unusual in being a member under 50 and always have been
That won't last.
It will, the Tories almost always win over 65s, even if they lose every other age bracket, the only time they ever lost pensioners was 1997.
However even when we win majorities like 2015 and 2019 and win most voters over 35, most of our members are still over 65
I think he means you will metamorphose from, as you say, Harry Enfield Toryboy to elderly greyhair.
Grammar schools is one of those bizarre obsessions which is meaningless outside the UK or indeed beyond a particular post-war moment.
Anyone promising to bring them back is in the business of selling snake oil.
Germany effectively has grammar schools, gymnasiums
As far as I know, they don’t have selection (and the flip-side, relegation) at 11, which to me is the defining feature of grammar schools.
Well they do have selection, most German states have Gymnasium schools, which select from 10 based on GPA, teacher recommendation or examination. Same with Austria. Those who don't get into them go to Hauptschules
I did a damn stupid thing this weekend so really haven't been on PB much but have we covered this?
Liz Truss is now only five points ahead of Rishi Sunak in the race to succeed Boris Johnson, private polling carried out for the foreign secretary’s campaign suggests.
The survey, which concluded early last week, has support for Truss on 48 per cent compared with 43 per cent for the former chancellor, and 9 per cent of members who were questioned undecided.
The poll is in contrast to the last YouGov survey carried out at the end of the knockout stages that suggested Truss had a 24-point lead over Sunak.
Sources in the Sunak campaign claimed the shift reflected the feedback they had been getting on the ground suggesting that the race was much closer than had previously been thought.
“It really hasn’t felt to us like Liz was doing as well as the polls have been suggesting. Wherever he goes he is getting really good feedback and an awful lot of people are still making up their minds.
“This doesn’t feel like a re-run of 2019 [when Boris Johnson was convincingly ahead of Jeremy Hunt]. Liz’s support feels very soft.”
The polling was carried out by the Italian data and public affairs firm Techne and asked Tory members their views on both candidates as well as their policy plans.
Sources in the Truss camp said it had not been commissioned by them but confirmed it had been shared with the campaign.
Sunset walk up Yes Tor, Dartmoor. In the interests of balance, and to show that holidays sometime refuse to be picturesque:
Slightly hairy at the top and I was glad of the backup of a map and compass. But the variability is part of the attraction, and it'll stick in the memory.
Had to look it up - hadn't realised it is so near Meldon! But it does not look at all like an easy pinpoint to meet in the mist.
Truss is going to have a very narrow window in which to deliver. The public will not be taken for fools twice
She will also likely have a very tight window in which to go early, like Brown.
Unlike Brown, who had dominated the domestic agenda for a decade and had nothing left to do, you get the sense that Truss wants to use the majority to do stuff, so I doubt she’ll want to go for an early election.
Yep. She has two years of proving what she can do before the next GE. Why risk throwing it all away by running for the electorate in October?
She has had about 12 years in govt to prove that she can achieve anything of substance and, to date, her record appears to be rather unimpressive.
Grammar schools is one of those bizarre obsessions which is meaningless outside the UK or indeed beyond a particular post-war moment.
Anyone promising to bring them back is in the business of selling snake oil.
But look at the audience at this tory hustings. There is hardly a single person who does not have masses of grey hair.
This is a party whose backbone was born in the 1940s and 1950s.
That has been the case ever since I have been a member, unless they are weird Harry Enfield Tory boys or gay without a family to raise or a local councillor most normal people even if Tory voters don't consider joining the party until they retire and their children have left home and they have more time to go to events, campaign etc.
I am unusual in being a member under 50 and always have been
That won't last.
It will, the Tories almost always win over 65s, even if they lose every other age bracket, the only time they ever lost pensioners was 1997.
However even when we win majorities like 2015 and 2019 and win most voters over 35, most of our members are still over 65
I think he means you will metamorphose from, as you say, Harry Enfield Toryboy to elderly greyhair.
Yes but I am unusual in having always been Tory.
If I was normal I would have usually voted Labour from 18 to 35, now be a swing voter at 40 and only normally vote Tory once I am well over 55
The only person who has actually been consistent is Bart.
Everyone else has flip flopped from disaster Truss to how good she is.
Not me.
I have gone from thinking she did fine in the first debates and wondering why the audience (and PB) were so down on her, to thinking she’ll be a credible opponent for SKS.
I confess I misjudged her ability to get to the final though, I thought there was a larger anti-Truss vote inside the PCP than there was.
Having said that, we might anticipate already that party management will be a problem.
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
I don't see how the Middle East can remain habitable
What you are rightly saying, is that the human race has been irretrievably fucked by the industrial revolution.
The doubters said that the transatlantic slave trade was the pinnacle of our national achievement. but I said, Be patient!
Outside of the top 2% or so, very few people would welcome a return to the standard of living we had pre-1780.
Who is "we"? I mean, yay that you and I are having a ball compared to our ancestors, but the amount of shit time that people are having now vs then, is x 10 million. Easily. What is good about that?
And do you think that we are not irretrievably fucked by climate change? You might be right, but it's a bold claim.
More people live better lives than ever before.
Also, more people live utterly shit lives than ever before, and they outnumber the better lifers by 1m to 1.
So whenever someone advances the "better lifers" argument I eagerly ask, whether they are members of the better life minority.
Do you realise how small a percentage of existing humanity has ever travelled by plane?
And how small a percentage of them, has ever travelled by private jet?
Have you ever travelled by private jet?
Do you know what proportion of the world has a smart phone? Or access to Wikipedia? Or the ability to contact distant friends? Or access to clean water? Or a chance of living to see the age of 30? Or of being healed after a bacterial infection or the breaking of a limb?
Are you drunk?
You have clearly been to Pooristan, but you have never been to me. Nor, on reflection, to Pooristan.
Poor people don't have distant friends, because how would they have them because how can they afford to travel more than walking distance from where they were born? do you not realise that poor = not having any money? not, not very much money compared to the average Cambridge graduate, but actually not any money?
Fuck smartphones, fuck wikipedia, and the people:drinking water ratio has plummeted because the industrial revolution has multiplied people a fuck of a lot quicker than it has multiplied fresh water.
You know what the great thing is? Being poor is a hell of a lot better now - on any metric - than it was in pre-industrial times.
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
I don't see how the Middle East can remain habitable
What you are rightly saying, is that the human race has been irretrievably fucked by the industrial revolution.
The doubters said that the transatlantic slave trade was the pinnacle of our national achievement. but I said, Be patient!
Outside of the top 2% or so, very few people would welcome a return to the standard of living we had pre-1780.
Who is "we"? I mean, yay that you and I are having a ball compared to our ancestors, but the amount of shit time that people are having now vs then, is x 10 million. Easily. What is good about that?
And do you think that we are not irretrievably fucked by climate change? You might be right, but it's a bold claim.
More people live better lives than ever before.
Also, more people live utterly shit lives than ever before, and they outnumber the better lifers by 1m to 1.
So whenever someone advances the "better lifers" argument I eagerly ask, whether they are members of the better life minority.
Do you realise how small a percentage of existing humanity has ever travelled by plane?
And how small a percentage of them, has ever travelled by private jet?
Have you ever travelled by private jet?
I am sure the average peasant in the Middle Ages would have happily swapped places
Yes, but that is because you have never left Swindon or wherever the fuck you live. In much of abroadland, things are as shit as they ever were. Without even the glorious prospect of being enslaved, abducted and worked to death by THE EMPIRE, hurrah to make up for it.
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
I don't see how the Middle East can remain habitable
What you are rightly saying, is that the human race has been irretrievably fucked by the industrial revolution.
The doubters said that the transatlantic slave trade was the pinnacle of our national achievement. but I said, Be patient!
Outside of the top 2% or so, very few people would welcome a return to the standard of living we had pre-1780.
Who is "we"? I mean, yay that you and I are having a ball compared to our ancestors, but the amount of shit time that people are having now vs then, is x 10 million. Easily. What is good about that?
And do you think that we are not irretrievably fucked by climate change? You might be right, but it's a bold claim.
More people live better lives than ever before.
Also, more people live utterly shit lives than ever before, and they outnumber the better lifers by 1m to 1.
So whenever someone advances the "better lifers" argument I eagerly ask, whether they are members of the better life minority.
Do you realise how small a percentage of existing humanity has ever travelled by plane?
And how small a percentage of them, has ever travelled by private jet?
Have you ever travelled by private jet?
Do you know what proportion of the world has a smart phone? Or access to Wikipedia? Or the ability to contact distant friends? Or access to clean water? Or a chance of living to see the age of 30? Or of being healed after a bacterial infection or the breaking of a limb?
Are you drunk?
You have clearly been to Pooristan, but you have never been to me. Nor, on reflection, to Pooristan.
Poor people don't have distant friends, because how would they have them because how can they afford to travel more than walking distance from where they were born? do you not realise that poor = not having any money? not, not very much money compared to the average Cambridge graduate, but actually not any money?
Fuck smartphones, fuck wikipedia, and the people:drinking water ratio has plummeted because the industrial revolution has multiplied people a fuck of a lot quicker than it has multiplied fresh water.
You know what the great thing is? Being poor is a hell of a lot better now - on any metric - than it was in pre-industrial times.
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
I don't see how the Middle East can remain habitable
What you are rightly saying, is that the human race has been irretrievably fucked by the industrial revolution.
The doubters said that the transatlantic slave trade was the pinnacle of our national achievement. but I said, Be patient!
Outside of the top 2% or so, very few people would welcome a return to the standard of living we had pre-1780.
Who is "we"? I mean, yay that you and I are having a ball compared to our ancestors, but the amount of shit time that people are having now vs then, is x 10 million. Easily. What is good about that?
And do you think that we are not irretrievably fucked by climate change? You might be right, but it's a bold claim.
More people live better lives than ever before.
Also, more people live utterly shit lives than ever before, and they outnumber the better lifers by 1m to 1.
So whenever someone advances the "better lifers" argument I eagerly ask, whether they are members of the better life minority.
Do you realise how small a percentage of existing humanity has ever travelled by plane?
And how small a percentage of them, has ever travelled by private jet?
Have you ever travelled by private jet?
I am sure the average peasant in the Middle Ages would have happily swapped places
Yes, but that is because you have never left Swindon or wherever the fuck you live. In much of abroadland, things are as shit as they ever were. Without even the glorious prospect of being enslaved, abducted and worked to death by THE EMPIRE, hurrah to make up for it.
You seem to be almost completely ignorant about history.
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
I don't see how the Middle East can remain habitable
What you are rightly saying, is that the human race has been irretrievably fucked by the industrial revolution.
The doubters said that the transatlantic slave trade was the pinnacle of our national achievement. but I said, Be patient!
Outside of the top 2% or so, very few people would welcome a return to the standard of living we had pre-1780.
Who is "we"? I mean, yay that you and I are having a ball compared to our ancestors, but the amount of shit time that people are having now vs then, is x 10 million. Easily. What is good about that?
And do you think that we are not irretrievably fucked by climate change? You might be right, but it's a bold claim.
More people live better lives than ever before.
Also, more people live utterly shit lives than ever before, and they outnumber the better lifers by 1m to 1.
So whenever someone advances the "better lifers" argument I eagerly ask, whether they are members of the better life minority.
Do you realise how small a percentage of existing humanity has ever travelled by plane?
And how small a percentage of them, has ever travelled by private jet?
Have you ever travelled by private jet?
Do you know what proportion of the world has a smart phone? Or access to Wikipedia? Or the ability to contact distant friends? Or access to clean water? Or a chance of living to see the age of 30? Or of being healed after a bacterial infection or the breaking of a limb?
Are you drunk?
You have clearly been to Pooristan, but you have never been to me. Nor, on reflection, to Pooristan.
Poor people don't have distant friends, because how would they have them because how can they afford to travel more than walking distance from where they were born? do you not realise that poor = not having any money? not, not very much money compared to the average Cambridge graduate, but actually not any money?
Fuck smartphones, fuck wikipedia, and the people:drinking water ratio has plummeted because the industrial revolution has multiplied people a fuck of a lot quicker than it has multiplied fresh water.
You know what the great thing is? Being poor is a hell of a lot better now - on any metric - than it was in pre-industrial times.
In the first world.
Which is where you live, so all good.
What do you think life expectancy was in India, or China, in 1780, compared to today?
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 excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Kate Clanchy's 'Some kids I taught ...' is really good on this issue. Amazing the attempts to get the book cancelled, despite it being the absolute epitome of left-liberalism. It's actually a superb and very moving piece of writing.
@rcs1000 You describe exactly the Comprehensive I went to as a kid in Cyprus (Combine Armed Forces Education Authority school). 1500+ kids (i.e. ALL the kids from the Western end of the island), up to 20 streams per year. Mobility in streams by subject. House system mixing all streams in your House-taught subjects (e.g. woodworking, metal working, art, music. TD) and in the sports teams.
There were bullies, but the mixing of ability/social strata through the House system helped with self-policing in that area too.
On the second stop of my post-Covid driving holiday, 2 nights in the Breisgau wineland at the foot of the Black Forest before heading across the Alps. Last 2 days were in Ghent.
Leon pronounced to me weeks ago that the itinerary was far too whistlestop. I disagreed - you can get a good sense of a city in one or two days, and the drive is part of the fun. But after a day of Belgian, Luxembourgeois and Alsatian traffic jams and a beautiful stopover like this I’m wondering. Next time a week in the Black Forest with a view of the Belchen.
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
I don't see how the Middle East can remain habitable
What you are rightly saying, is that the human race has been irretrievably fucked by the industrial revolution.
The doubters said that the transatlantic slave trade was the pinnacle of our national achievement. but I said, Be patient!
Outside of the top 2% or so, very few people would welcome a return to the standard of living we had pre-1780.
Who is "we"? I mean, yay that you and I are having a ball compared to our ancestors, but the amount of shit time that people are having now vs then, is x 10 million. Easily. What is good about that?
And do you think that we are not irretrievably fucked by climate change? You might be right, but it's a bold claim.
More people live better lives than ever before.
Also, more people live utterly shit lives than ever before, and they outnumber the better lifers by 1m to 1.
So whenever someone advances the "better lifers" argument I eagerly ask, whether they are members of the better life minority.
Do you realise how small a percentage of existing humanity has ever travelled by plane?
And how small a percentage of them, has ever travelled by private jet?
Have you ever travelled by private jet?
I am sure the average peasant in the Middle Ages would have happily swapped places
Yes, but that is because you have never left Swindon or wherever the fuck you live. In much of abroadland, things are as shit as they ever were. Without even the glorious prospect of being enslaved, abducted and worked to death by THE EMPIRE, hurrah to make up for it.
You seem to be almost completely ignorant about history.
Yes. If only I were a professional, paid, published historian. A man can dream...
Also I have travelled overland, on the cheap, from Capetown to Cairo. No chances there to observe what actual 21st C poverty looks like, though.
Sunset walk up Yes Tor, Dartmoor. In the interests of balance, and to show that holidays sometime refuse to be picturesque:
Slightly hairy at the top and I was glad of the backup of a map and compass. But the variability is part of the attraction, and it'll stick in the memory.
Had to look it up - hadn't realised it is so near Meldon! But it does not look at all like an easy pinpoint to meet in the mist.
I think it's the second highest hill in the south. A nice hill once you're at the top - though I haven't found a good way to do it which doesn't need half an hour's trudge through ankle-twisting rock and bog to reach the top. A trifle sweaty now...
Grammar schools is one of those bizarre obsessions which is meaningless outside the UK or indeed beyond a particular post-war moment.
Anyone promising to bring them back is in the business of selling snake oil.
But look at the audience at this tory hustings. There is hardly a single person who does not have masses of grey hair.
This is a party whose backbone was born in the 1940s and 1950s.
That has been the case ever since I have been a member, unless they are weird Harry Enfield Tory boys or gay without a family to raise or a local councillor most normal people even if Tory voters don't consider joining the party until they retire and their children have left home and they have more time to go to events, campaign etc.
I am unusual in being a member under 50 and always have been
That won't last.
It will, the Tories almost always win over 65s, even if they lose every other age bracket, the only time they ever lost pensioners was 1997.
However even when we win majorities like 2015 and 2019 and win most voters over 35, most of our members are still over 65
You: "I am unusual in being a member under 50 and always have been" Me: "That won't last" You: "It will..."
Sunset walk up Yes Tor, Dartmoor. In the interests of balance, and to show that holidays sometime refuse to be picturesque:
Slightly hairy at the top and I was glad of the backup of a map and compass. But the variability is part of the attraction, and it'll stick in the memory.
Had to look it up - hadn't realised it is so near Meldon! But it does not look at all like an easy pinpoint to meet in the mist.
I think it's the second highest hill in the south. A nice hill once you're at the top - though I haven't found a good way to do it which doesn't need half an hour's trudge through ankle-twisting rock and bog to reach the top. A trifle sweaty now...
I did a damn stupid thing this weekend so really haven't been on PB much but have we covered this?
Liz Truss is now only five points ahead of Rishi Sunak in the race to succeed Boris Johnson, private polling carried out for the foreign secretary’s campaign suggests.
The survey, which concluded early last week, has support for Truss on 48 per cent compared with 43 per cent for the former chancellor, and 9 per cent of members who were questioned undecided.
The poll is in contrast to the last YouGov survey carried out at the end of the knockout stages that suggested Truss had a 24-point lead over Sunak.
Sources in the Sunak campaign claimed the shift reflected the feedback they had been getting on the ground suggesting that the race was much closer than had previously been thought.
“It really hasn’t felt to us like Liz was doing as well as the polls have been suggesting. Wherever he goes he is getting really good feedback and an awful lot of people are still making up their minds.
“This doesn’t feel like a re-run of 2019 [when Boris Johnson was convincingly ahead of Jeremy Hunt]. Liz’s support feels very soft.”
The polling was carried out by the Italian data and public affairs firm Techne and asked Tory members their views on both candidates as well as their policy plans.
Sources in the Truss camp said it had not been commissioned by them but confirmed it had been shared with the campaign.
The only person who has actually been consistent is Bart.
Everyone else has flip flopped from disaster Truss to how good she is.
It’s fair to say she was underestimated: as a tactician, as a retail politician, and as a personality.
What’s surprised me is how poor Sunak has been. I knew he was up against it, but he’s gone to pieces (watch him win now!).
Indeed, his 'campaign' has made Hunt's in 2019 look like a model of professionalism. I think @Rottenborugh upthread summed Sunak up to a tee. I attended his meeting (120 present) to E&W on Saturday. For all his fluency and amiability, there was little 'authenticity'; it all sounded too much pre-packaged devoid of resonance. Perhaps, I'm being a tad unfair - he will get my vote and he could do better than the polls are predicting.
I also agree with HYUFD that if defeated, he will likely quit politics at the next election.
Truss is going to achieve growth to get us out of the CoL crisis.
She'll be the first Tory in 13 years to actually do it if she does, good luck I say
To be fair, the whole of the West has the same CoL crisis as Britain and many voters surely know this. If Truss can make it so its not so bad here as it is elsewhere, that might be enough?
The only person who has actually been consistent is Bart.
Everyone else has flip flopped from disaster Truss to how good she is.
It’s fair to say she was underestimated: as a tactician, as a retail politician, and as a personality.
What’s surprised me is how poor Sunak has been. I knew he was up against it, but he’s gone to pieces (watch him win now!).
Indeed, his 'campaign' has made Hunt's in 2019 look like a model of professionalism. I think @Rottenborugh upthread summed Sunak up to a tee. I attended his meeting (120 present) to E&W on Saturday. For all his fluency and amiability, there was little 'authenticity'; it all sounded too much pre-packaged devoid of resonance. Perhaps, I'm being a tad unfair - he will get my vote and he could do better than the polls are predicting.
I also agree with HYUFD that if defeated, he will likely quit politics at the next election.
Very interesting from a confessed early Rishi-backer.
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
I don't see how the Middle East can remain habitable
What you are rightly saying, is that the human race has been irretrievably fucked by the industrial revolution.
The doubters said that the transatlantic slave trade was the pinnacle of our national achievement. but I said, Be patient!
Outside of the top 2% or so, very few people would welcome a return to the standard of living we had pre-1780.
Who is "we"? I mean, yay that you and I are having a ball compared to our ancestors, but the amount of shit time that people are having now vs then, is x 10 million. Easily. What is good about that?
And do you think that we are not irretrievably fucked by climate change? You might be right, but it's a bold claim.
More people live better lives than ever before.
Also, more people live utterly shit lives than ever before, and they outnumber the better lifers by 1m to 1.
So whenever someone advances the "better lifers" argument I eagerly ask, whether they are members of the better life minority.
Do you realise how small a percentage of existing humanity has ever travelled by plane?
And how small a percentage of them, has ever travelled by private jet?
Have you ever travelled by private jet?
I am sure the average peasant in the Middle Ages would have happily swapped places
Yes, but that is because you have never left Swindon or wherever the fuck you live. In much of abroadland, things are as shit as they ever were. Without even the glorious prospect of being enslaved, abducted and worked to death by THE EMPIRE, hurrah to make up for it.
You seem to be almost completely ignorant about history.
Yes. If only I were a professional, paid, published historian. A man can dream...
Also I have travelled overland, on the cheap, from Capetown to Cairo. No chances there to observe what actual 21st C poverty looks like, though.
But isn't penicillin to blame for that, not the industrial revolution? Or, if you can't accept that, the agricultural revolution? The industrial revolution has done little to contribute to overpopulation. The agricultural and medical revolutions, OTOH ...
Truss is going to achieve growth to get us out of the CoL crisis.
She'll be the first Tory in 13 years to actually do it if she does, good luck I say
To be fair, the whole of the West has the same CoL crisis as Britain and many voters surely know this. If Truss can make it so its not so bad here as it is elsewhere, that might be enough?
Honestly, no.
People don't look at their finances going down the pan and say, "well, it's worse in France".
Maybe in a fair world they should, but they don'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.
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 excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
I was in the same school year as @rcs1000 and went to a top top Kent grammar school. While I don’t remember the exact number, our Oxbridge entrances were comparable to that, and I agree with his observations about late developers. My brother failed the 11 plus but within a couple of years was clearly streets ahead of some of those who’d made it into my school. My parents could afford to send one of us to private school (they’d have struggled with two) but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Most grammars also have entry at 13 and 16 and they offer more choice in the state sector so fewer parents have to go private
His parents only had to send his brother to private school because the blunt tool selection of the eleven plus had consigned him to a substandard school. If they had lived in an area with only comprehensive schools like I did growing up then they could have both attended their local school and his brother would have been streamed into a top set before his GCSEs. My two siblings and I all attended local comps and got into the three oldest universities in the UK. With good quality well resourced local schools for everyone nobody has to go private.
Cava btw is sensationally good value atm because unfashionable compared to prosecco
I breed ponies for fun, and I only do it on the basis that every pony I breed is going to be happier than it would be if it had never been born. It is very hard to be impressed by arguments that yeah lots of ponies were having an even more shit time 200 years ago. So what?
The only person who has actually been consistent is Bart.
Everyone else has flip flopped from disaster Truss to how good she is.
It’s fair to say she was underestimated: as a tactician, as a retail politician, and as a personality.
What’s surprised me is how poor Sunak has been. I knew he was up against it, but he’s gone to pieces (watch him win now!).
Indeed, his 'campaign' has made Hunt's in 2019 look like a model of professionalism. I think @Rottenborugh upthread summed Sunak up to a tee. I attended his meeting (120 present) to E&W on Saturday. For all his fluency and amiability, there was little 'authenticity'; it all sounded too much pre-packaged devoid of resonance. Perhaps, I'm being a tad unfair - he will get my vote and he could do better than the polls are predicting.
I also agree with HYUFD that if defeated, he will likely quit politics at the next election.
So he's taking his ball away if he can't be captain?
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
I don't see how the Middle East can remain habitable
What you are rightly saying, is that the human race has been irretrievably fucked by the industrial revolution.
The doubters said that the transatlantic slave trade was the pinnacle of our national achievement. but I said, Be patient!
Outside of the top 2% or so, very few people would welcome a return to the standard of living we had pre-1780.
Who is "we"? I mean, yay that you and I are having a ball compared to our ancestors, but the amount of shit time that people are having now vs then, is x 10 million. Easily. What is good about that?
And do you think that we are not irretrievably fucked by climate change? You might be right, but it's a bold claim.
More people live better lives than ever before.
Also, more people live utterly shit lives than ever before, and they outnumber the better lifers by 1m to 1.
So whenever someone advances the "better lifers" argument I eagerly ask, whether they are members of the better life minority.
Do you realise how small a percentage of existing humanity has ever travelled by plane?
And how small a percentage of them, has ever travelled by private jet?
Have you ever travelled by private jet?
I am sure the average peasant in the Middle Ages would have happily swapped places
Yes, but that is because you have never left Swindon or wherever the fuck you live. In much of abroadland, things are as shit as they ever were. Without even the glorious prospect of being enslaved, abducted and worked to death by THE EMPIRE, hurrah to make up for it.
You seem to be almost completely ignorant about history.
Let him finish the bottle, and then we'll have peace again until the morning.
On the second stop of my post-Covid driving holiday, 2 nights in the Breisgau wineland at the foot of the Black Forest before heading across the Alps. Last 2 days were in Ghent.
Leon pronounced to me weeks ago that the itinerary was far too whistlestop. I disagreed - you can get a good sense of a city in one or two days, and the drive is part of the fun. But after a day of Belgian, Luxembourgeois and Alsatian traffic jams and a beautiful stopover like this I’m wondering. Next time a week in the Black Forest with a view of the Belchen.
We went to the Black Forest over Easter, it is a lovely part of the world. Very accessible too - two trains from London to Strasbourg via Paris, then a half hour drive in a hire car. The Franco-German border a good reminder of what borders should look like in 21st century Europe, just an empty road and a discreet sign, not the lorry park and rude Border Force wankers clusterfuck you get travelling between Britain and France.
As the article shows, Downing Street receptions were given to the men's World Cup rugby winning team in 2003, and the victorious Ashes team in 2005
I guess you could argue that the rugby team won the WORLD Cup, but the Ashes was... the Ashes, and England have won the Ashes many times: yet Number Ten got caught up in the excitement of an amazing sporting story, and rightly honoured that team
This is the first England football triumph - in the global sport we invented - for over half a century. Tsk. Give them some English Fizz at Number 10 FFS
Truss is going to achieve growth to get us out of the CoL crisis.
She'll be the first Tory in 13 years to actually do it if she does, good luck I say
To be fair, the whole of the West has the same CoL crisis as Britain and many voters surely know this. If Truss can make it so its not so bad here as it is elsewhere, that might be enough?
There are two or three or four different models of CoL crisis though, depending on how dependent a country is on foreign, or indeed Russian, energy; how bad Covid choked supply capability; and the extent to which a country Brexited some of its labour force away.
As the article shows, Downing Street receptions were given to the men's World Cup rugby winning team in 2003, and the victorious Ashes team in 2005
I guess you could argue that the rugby team won the WORLD Cup, but the Ashes was... the Ashes, and England have won the Ashes many times: yet Number Ten got caught up in the excitement of an amazing sporting story, and rightly honoured that team
This is the first England football triumph - in the global sport we invented - for over half a century. Tsk. Give them some English Fizz at Number 10 FFS
I was wondering whether, given Johnson's unpopularity, the team might decline an invitation anyway.
Perhaps this is No 10 heading that one off at the pass?
As the article shows, Downing Street receptions were given to the men's World Cup rugby winning team in 2003, and the victorious Ashes team in 2005
I guess you could argue that the rugby team won the WORLD Cup, but the Ashes was... the Ashes, and England have won the Ashes many times: yet Number Ten got caught up in the excitement of an amazing sporting story, and rightly honoured that team
This is the first England football triumph - in the global sport we invented - for over half a century. Tsk. Give them some English Fizz at Number 10 FFS
Fuck you, ben. I thought I had a reasonable estimate of how small a penis @Taz actually had, and then he likes your post and I have to halve my estimate yet again. Hard to keep up. As I imagine Taz says to his Missus on their twice yearly date nights.
I should probably go to bed. But I am genuinely taken aback: I have been to the shittest parts of the world, and I know how shit life is there. Most of PB hasn't. Also, most of PB thinks Yay, more people = excellent. As if being alive, for most people, was as wonderful as being a well heeled PBer, with perhaps a 10% discount for being 3rd world. Not how it is.
The only person who has actually been consistent is Bart.
Everyone else has flip flopped from disaster Truss to how good she is.
A point of order Mr Speaker - I have consistently maintained that Ms Truss will not do much.
Extra point of order. I've gone from wondering why she was so universally (apart from a few) underrated, to wondering why she's now being overestimated. She's a bit meh. But then so were her leadership opponents. As is SKS. I haven't changed my opinion. She may win the tallest dwarf come next GE.
As the article shows, Downing Street receptions were given to the men's World Cup rugby winning team in 2003, and the victorious Ashes team in 2005
I guess you could argue that the rugby team won the WORLD Cup, but the Ashes was... the Ashes, and England have won the Ashes many times: yet Number Ten got caught up in the excitement of an amazing sporting story, and rightly honoured that team
This is the first England football triumph - in the global sport we invented - for over half a century. Tsk. Give them some English Fizz at Number 10 FFS
Mirrors the situation in the US. The Women's Team win everything under the sun, multiple times. The Men's Team is crap, but still gets more respect*.
As the article shows, Downing Street receptions were given to the men's World Cup rugby winning team in 2003, and the victorious Ashes team in 2005
I guess you could argue that the rugby team won the WORLD Cup, but the Ashes was... the Ashes, and England have won the Ashes many times: yet Number Ten got caught up in the excitement of an amazing sporting story, and rightly honoured that team
This is the first England football triumph - in the global sport we invented - for over half a century. Tsk. Give them some English Fizz at Number 10 FFS
I was wondering whether, given Johnson's unpopularity, the team might decline an invitation anyway.
Perhaps this is No 10 heading that one off at the pass?
No sporting team would refuse an invite to Number 10. Whoever is in charge. It's the prime minister. Moreover, you don't want to snub the PM, the government and the party which can direct life-changing funds towards your sport
I think this is Boris being demob happy and misreading the room. The article says he's off on hols on Wednesday. Probably can't be arsed. It's a mistake Truss would not make. Truss was also at the game, unlike him
As the article shows, Downing Street receptions were given to the men's World Cup rugby winning team in 2003, and the victorious Ashes team in 2005
I guess you could argue that the rugby team won the WORLD Cup, but the Ashes was... the Ashes, and England have won the Ashes many times: yet Number Ten got caught up in the excitement of an amazing sporting story, and rightly honoured that team
This is the first England football triumph - in the global sport we invented - for over half a century. Tsk. Give them some English Fizz at Number 10 FFS
If it doesn’t gain him anything personally then he won’t do it. What’s in it for Johnson at this point?
As the article shows, Downing Street receptions were given to the men's World Cup rugby winning team in 2003, and the victorious Ashes team in 2005
I guess you could argue that the rugby team won the WORLD Cup, but the Ashes was... the Ashes, and England have won the Ashes many times: yet Number Ten got caught up in the excitement of an amazing sporting story, and rightly honoured that team
This is the first England football triumph - in the global sport we invented - for over half a century. Tsk. Give them some English Fizz at Number 10 FFS
If it doesn’t gain him anything personally then he won’t do it. What’s in it for Johnson at this point?
The only person who has actually been consistent is Bart.
Everyone else has flip flopped from disaster Truss to how good she is.
A point of order Mr Speaker - I have consistently maintained that Ms Truss will not do much.
Extra point of order. I've gone from wondering why she was so universally (apart from a few) underrated, to wondering why she's now being overestimated. She's a bit meh. But then so were her leadership opponents. As is SKS. I haven't changed my opinion. She may win the tallest dwarf come next GE.
The suggestion is that Liz is “crazy”, gets “bees in her bonnet”, is a “leaker”, “can’t work with people”, was not “trusted with a big spend ministry”, and that she has questions over her private life.
I’ve no doubt at least some of that is true and as we’ve seen time and time again, the premiership is a cruelly efficient exposer of character flaws.
As the article shows, Downing Street receptions were given to the men's World Cup rugby winning team in 2003, and the victorious Ashes team in 2005
I guess you could argue that the rugby team won the WORLD Cup, but the Ashes was... the Ashes, and England have won the Ashes many times: yet Number Ten got caught up in the excitement of an amazing sporting story, and rightly honoured that team
This is the first England football triumph - in the global sport we invented - for over half a century. Tsk. Give them some English Fizz at Number 10 FFS
If it doesn’t gain him anything personally then he won’t do it. What’s in it for Johnson at this point?
As the article shows, Downing Street receptions were given to the men's World Cup rugby winning team in 2003, and the victorious Ashes team in 2005
I guess you could argue that the rugby team won the WORLD Cup, but the Ashes was... the Ashes, and England have won the Ashes many times: yet Number Ten got caught up in the excitement of an amazing sporting story, and rightly honoured that team
This is the first England football triumph - in the global sport we invented - for over half a century. Tsk. Give them some English Fizz at Number 10 FFS
I was wondering whether, given Johnson's unpopularity, the team might decline an invitation anyway.
Perhaps this is No 10 heading that one off at the pass?
No sporting team would refuse an invite to Number 10. Whoever is in charge. It's the prime minister. Moreover, you don't want to snub the PM, the government and the party which can direct life-changing funds towards your sport
I think this is Boris being demob happy and misreading the room. The article says he's off on hols on Wednesday. Probably can't be arsed. It's a mistake Truss would not make. Truss was also at the game, unlike him
It's time to kick him out and get her in
Quite a history of teams refusing to visit Trump's White House:
As the article shows, Downing Street receptions were given to the men's World Cup rugby winning team in 2003, and the victorious Ashes team in 2005
I guess you could argue that the rugby team won the WORLD Cup, but the Ashes was... the Ashes, and England have won the Ashes many times: yet Number Ten got caught up in the excitement of an amazing sporting story, and rightly honoured that team
This is the first England football triumph - in the global sport we invented - for over half a century. Tsk. Give them some English Fizz at Number 10 FFS
If it doesn’t gain him anything personally then he won’t do it. What’s in it for Johnson at this point?
Athletic young ladies?
Who are more popular than he is? Perhaps that is the root of the problem
[Edit: I see @DougSeal beat me to it by a couple of minutes ]
As the article shows, Downing Street receptions were given to the men's World Cup rugby winning team in 2003, and the victorious Ashes team in 2005
I guess you could argue that the rugby team won the WORLD Cup, but the Ashes was... the Ashes, and England have won the Ashes many times: yet Number Ten got caught up in the excitement of an amazing sporting story, and rightly honoured that team
This is the first England football triumph - in the global sport we invented - for over half a century. Tsk. Give them some English Fizz at Number 10 FFS
What exactly could it be about the prospect of a dozen or so young, athletic blonde females round at Boris' for drinks that is making them hesitate so?
As the article shows, Downing Street receptions were given to the men's World Cup rugby winning team in 2003, and the victorious Ashes team in 2005
I guess you could argue that the rugby team won the WORLD Cup, but the Ashes was... the Ashes, and England have won the Ashes many times: yet Number Ten got caught up in the excitement of an amazing sporting story, and rightly honoured that team
This is the first England football triumph - in the global sport we invented - for over half a century. Tsk. Give them some English Fizz at Number 10 FFS
Boris thinks flange should be on his arm as he makes the headlines, not crowding him off the front pages in Downing Street. So no reception for that lot. They're all woke, telling girls they have a role as actual people. For shame.
On the second stop of my post-Covid driving holiday, 2 nights in the Breisgau wineland at the foot of the Black Forest before heading across the Alps. Last 2 days were in Ghent.
Leon pronounced to me weeks ago that the itinerary was far too whistlestop. I disagreed - you can get a good sense of a city in one or two days, and the drive is part of the fun. But after a day of Belgian, Luxembourgeois and Alsatian traffic jams and a beautiful stopover like this I’m wondering. Next time a week in the Black Forest with a view of the Belchen.
Which route are you using to cross the Alps?
We're planning to drive down to Lake Como next month from the Portsmouth - St Malo ferry, stopping first at Beaune in Burgundy for a couple of nights. Still undecided whether to go via Switzerland from there or use the Mont Blanc or Frejus tunnel.
As Tory members reach for their pens, Liz Truss may get some exposure that's more about "show us how good your performance is" than "make some nice promises" - relating to Taiwan.
"The island dominates production of the chips that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies. That leaves the U.S. and Chinese economies extremely reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. It's a vulnerability stoking alarm in Washington."
< I was wondering whether, given Johnson's unpopularity, the team might decline an invitation anyway.
Perhaps this is No 10 heading that one off at the pass?
No sporting team would refuse an invite to Number 10. Whoever is in charge. It's the prime minister. Moreover, you don't want to snub the PM, the government and the party which can direct life-changing funds towards your sport
I think this is Boris being demob happy and misreading the room. The article says he's off on hols on Wednesday. Probably can't be arsed. It's a mistake Truss would not make. Truss was also at the game, unlike him
It's time to kick him out and get her in
It is time to kick him out, but not for that reason.
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 excellent points: but they equally mean that the 80% of kids left behind at Secondary Moderns suffer more from the problems you identify.
Because, let us be clear, the problem is not grammar schools (which are great), but how you avoid a situation where the people left behind get a worse education.
In a large comprehensive, there will be lots of movement between the second and third deciles: a significant number of kids will drop from first set maths to second... And vice versa. That's really tough to do when the sets are at different schools. Essentially you end up ossifying kids into two groups at a very early age.
And, of course, it's ok for me. If my 10 year old fails the 11+, well I can put him in private education. But what if yours has a bad day? Or is a late developer? It's much much harder for them to climb out of the Secondary Modern into a Grammar.
Finally, there's the issue of kids who are great at one thing, but not another. I was dreadful at languages (bottom in German Tanbridge School 1987!), but excellent at maths. How do you allocate people who are great at one set of subjects, but average (or worse) at another?
Most comprehensives and academies are effectively secondary moderns in all but name, apart from the minority rated Outstanding
That's simply not true.
In my comprehensive, my top set maths was full of exactly the kids who would have been at the local grammar school (had there been grammar schools).
Might have been but the vast majority of the pupils wouldn't have been and the ethos of the school will be mainly directed towards them
I don't really understand your comment.
My comprehensive school, with an upper sixth of perhaps 60 kids, got four kids into Oxbridge in my year. And, by the way, this was a school with a very high proportion of free school meals, and where English wasn't the first language.
But we also had a number of extremely smart, extremely competitive kids (of which I was one). I can see the advantage of putting more smart, competitive kids together.
Would I have really enjoyed a Grammar school?
Yep.
But my school also streamed extremely aggressively. I'm not sure my GCSE maths class would have been any more advanced. Pretty much the entire top set maths did A Level maths. And other than me, pretty much all got As at A Level.
The question is: how much do grammar schools improve the educational outcomes of the top 20%? And do they do so at the expense of the rest?
How many of those who entered the school at 11 though got good GCSE passes? 4 kids into Oxbridge, while better than most comps, is still less than 10% even of the upper sixth. Many top grammars would get more into Oxbridge than that
I was in the same school year as @rcs1000 and went to a top top Kent grammar school. While I don’t remember the exact number, our Oxbridge entrances were comparable to that, and I agree with his observations about late developers. My brother failed the 11 plus but within a couple of years was clearly streets ahead of some of those who’d made it into my school. My parents could afford to send one of us to private school (they’d have struggled with two) but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Most grammars also have entry at 13 and 16 and they offer more choice in the state sector so fewer parents have to go private
His parents only had to send his brother to private school because the blunt tool selection of the eleven plus had consigned him to a substandard school. If they had lived in an area with only comprehensive schools like I did growing up then they could have both attended their local school and his brother would have been streamed into a top set before his GCSEs. My two siblings and I all attended local comps and got into the three oldest universities in the UK. With good quality well resourced local schools for everyone nobody has to go private.
No they couldn't, there are almost no comprehensive schools which get as good results as most private schools.
The only state schools which normally match private schools for results are grammar schools, so if you have the money to go private and no grammar schools in the area then you would almost always go private to get your children into the best school possible. Whereas if you lived in a selective area if your children got into a grammar you could save money and send them there, only sending them private if they did not pass the entrance test.
Fuck you, ben. I thought I had a reasonable estimate of how small a penis @Taz actually had, and then he likes your post and I have to halve my estimate yet again. Hard to keep up. As I imagine Taz says to his Missus on their twice yearly date nights.
I should probably go to bed. But I am genuinely taken aback: I have been to the shittest parts of the world, and I know how shit life is there. Most of PB hasn't. Also, most of PB thinks Yay, more people = excellent. As if being alive, for most people, was as wonderful as being a well heeled PBer, with perhaps a 10% discount for being 3rd world. Not how it is.
It's the presentation not the content of your posts that leads me to assume you've been over-indulging.
On the second stop of my post-Covid driving holiday, 2 nights in the Breisgau wineland at the foot of the Black Forest before heading across the Alps. Last 2 days were in Ghent.
Leon pronounced to me weeks ago that the itinerary was far too whistlestop. I disagreed - you can get a good sense of a city in one or two days, and the drive is part of the fun. But after a day of Belgian, Luxembourgeois and Alsatian traffic jams and a beautiful stopover like this I’m wondering. Next time a week in the Black Forest with a view of the Belchen.
Which route are you using to cross the Alps?
We're planning to drive down to Lake Como next month from the Portsmouth - St Malo ferry, stopping first at Beaune in Burgundy for a couple of nights. Still undecided whether to go via Switzerland from there or use the Mont Blanc or Frejus tunnel.
We’re going Luzerne then Gotthard pass (not tunnel, going to take our time). Then Como 2 nights before ferry from Savona to Corsica.
If you are stopping in Burgundy then by far the nicest bit, where I have a second home, is the Maconnais - around Cluny. Beautiful landscape, beautiful architecture, affordable wine, and conveniently just before the motorway turning via Bourg en Bresse to the Alps.
As Tory members reach for their pens, Liz Truss may get some exposure that's more about "show us how good your performance is" than "make some nice promises" - relating to Taiwan.
"The island dominates production of the chips that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies. That leaves the U.S. and Chinese economies extremely reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. It's a vulnerability stoking alarm in Washington."
America is throwing $50 billion at chip-makers as part of its $280 billion Chips & Science Act. China and South Korea are also throwing tens if not hundreds of billions at their own semiconductor sectors. https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/01/us_chips_act_vs_world/
As Tory members reach for their pens, Liz Truss may get some exposure that's more about "show us how good your performance is" than "make some nice promises" - relating to Taiwan.
"The island dominates production of the chips that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies. That leaves the U.S. and Chinese economies extremely reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. It's a vulnerability stoking alarm in Washington."
A few years ago, some US companies started moving chip fab back to the US simply because of the perceived vulnerability of Taiwan. Even TSMC is opening a US operation
As the article shows, Downing Street receptions were given to the men's World Cup rugby winning team in 2003, and the victorious Ashes team in 2005
I guess you could argue that the rugby team won the WORLD Cup, but the Ashes was... the Ashes, and England have won the Ashes many times: yet Number Ten got caught up in the excitement of an amazing sporting story, and rightly honoured that team
This is the first England football triumph - in the global sport we invented - for over half a century. Tsk. Give them some English Fizz at Number 10 FFS
I was wondering whether, given Johnson's unpopularity, the team might decline an invitation anyway.
Perhaps this is No 10 heading that one off at the pass?
No sporting team would refuse an invite to Number 10. Whoever is in charge. It's the prime minister. Moreover, you don't want to snub the PM, the government and the party which can direct life-changing funds towards your sport
It was reported last year, and then denied, that the men's England football team refused an invitation to No10.
Fuck you, ben. I thought I had a reasonable estimate of how small a penis @Taz actually had, and then he likes your post and I have to halve my estimate yet again. Hard to keep up. As I imagine Taz says to his Missus on their twice yearly date nights.
I should probably go to bed. But I am genuinely taken aback: I have been to the shittest parts of the world, and I know how shit life is there. Most of PB hasn't. Also, most of PB thinks Yay, more people = excellent. As if being alive, for most people, was as wonderful as being a well heeled PBer, with perhaps a 10% discount for being 3rd world. Not how it is.
It's the presentation not the content of your posts that leads me to assume you've been over-indulging.
If I have got that wrong, what's your excuse?
It's hard. As @Taz probably has very little occasion to say.
Otherwise, I dunno. I just do not understand this insane boosterism of the more people = the better. It doesn't.
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
I don't see how the Middle East can remain habitable
What you are rightly saying, is that the human race has been irretrievably fucked by the industrial revolution.
The doubters said that the transatlantic slave trade was the pinnacle of our national achievement. but I said, Be patient!
Outside of the top 2% or so, very few people would welcome a return to the standard of living we had pre-1780.
Who is "we"? I mean, yay that you and I are having a ball compared to our ancestors, but the amount of shit time that people are having now vs then, is x 10 million. Easily. What is good about that?
And do you think that we are not irretrievably fucked by climate change? You might be right, but it's a bold claim.
More people live better lives than ever before.
Also, more people live utterly shit lives than ever before, and they outnumber the better lifers by 1m to 1.
So whenever someone advances the "better lifers" argument I eagerly ask, whether they are members of the better life minority.
Do you realise how small a percentage of existing humanity has ever travelled by plane?
And how small a percentage of them, has ever travelled by private jet?
Have you ever travelled by private jet?
Do you know what proportion of the world has a smart phone? Or access to Wikipedia? Or the ability to contact distant friends? Or access to clean water? Or a chance of living to see the age of 30? Or of being healed after a bacterial infection or the breaking of a limb?
Are you drunk?
You have clearly been to Pooristan, but you have never been to me. Nor, on reflection, to Pooristan.
Poor people don't have distant friends, because how would they have them because how can they afford to travel more than walking distance from where they were born? do you not realise that poor = not having any money? not, not very much money compared to the average Cambridge graduate, but actually not any money?
Fuck smartphones, fuck wikipedia, and the people:drinking water ratio has plummeted because the industrial revolution has multiplied people a fuck of a lot quicker than it has multiplied fresh water.
And yet your chance of making 30, almost irrespective of where you are born, has never been better.
On the second stop of my post-Covid driving holiday, 2 nights in the Breisgau wineland at the foot of the Black Forest before heading across the Alps. Last 2 days were in Ghent.
Leon pronounced to me weeks ago that the itinerary was far too whistlestop. I disagreed - you can get a good sense of a city in one or two days, and the drive is part of the fun. But after a day of Belgian, Luxembourgeois and Alsatian traffic jams and a beautiful stopover like this I’m wondering. Next time a week in the Black Forest with a view of the Belchen.
Which route are you using to cross the Alps?
We're planning to drive down to Lake Como next month from the Portsmouth - St Malo ferry, stopping first at Beaune in Burgundy for a couple of nights. Still undecided whether to go via Switzerland from there or use the Mont Blanc or Frejus tunnel.
We’re going Luzerne then Gotthard pass (not tunnel, going to take our time). Then Como 2 nights before ferry from Savona to Corsica.
If you are stopping in Burgundy then by far the nicest bit, where I have a second home, is the Maconnais - around Cluny. Beautiful landscape, beautiful architecture, affordable wine, and conveniently just before the motorway turning via Bourg en Bresse to the Alps.
I know Cluny. Quite a charming, slightly forgotten corner of France
I note that 40C is forecast there, for Thursday. Ouch. Global warming might fuck the French wine industry
As the article shows, Downing Street receptions were given to the men's World Cup rugby winning team in 2003, and the victorious Ashes team in 2005
I guess you could argue that the rugby team won the WORLD Cup, but the Ashes was... the Ashes, and England have won the Ashes many times: yet Number Ten got caught up in the excitement of an amazing sporting story, and rightly honoured that team
This is the first England football triumph - in the global sport we invented - for over half a century. Tsk. Give them some English Fizz at Number 10 FFS
I was wondering whether, given Johnson's unpopularity, the team might decline an invitation anyway.
Perhaps this is No 10 heading that one off at the pass?
No sporting team would refuse an invite to Number 10. Whoever is in charge. It's the prime minister. Moreover, you don't want to snub the PM, the government and the party which can direct life-changing funds towards your sport
It was reported last year, and then denied, that the men's England football team refused an invitation to No10.
Why would they have been invited?
Unless, of course, Johnson wanted to be seen next to a bunch of losers, because he thought he'd look good by comparison...
One of the most disturbing articles about climate change in recent years was in the Times only the other day. Describing daily life in Iraq and Kuwait
Unfortunately, it is paywall, but it is powerful
"Outside, in Basra and Kuwait, the heat is everywhere, like soup in your mouth or stinging fire in your throat — depending on the humidity. At its worst, you hold your tongue to the back of your front teeth because it hurts to breathe in the air directly. Your eyes prickle, their surfaces drying.
"It didn’t used to be like this. This part of southern Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, was once so fertile that scholars have suggested it could have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden."
I don't see how the Middle East can remain habitable
What you are rightly saying, is that the human race has been irretrievably fucked by the industrial revolution.
The doubters said that the transatlantic slave trade was the pinnacle of our national achievement. but I said, Be patient!
Outside of the top 2% or so, very few people would welcome a return to the standard of living we had pre-1780.
Who is "we"? I mean, yay that you and I are having a ball compared to our ancestors, but the amount of shit time that people are having now vs then, is x 10 million. Easily. What is good about that?
And do you think that we are not irretrievably fucked by climate change? You might be right, but it's a bold claim.
More people live better lives than ever before.
Also, more people live utterly shit lives than ever before, and they outnumber the better lifers by 1m to 1.
So whenever someone advances the "better lifers" argument I eagerly ask, whether they are members of the better life minority.
Do you realise how small a percentage of existing humanity has ever travelled by plane?
And how small a percentage of them, has ever travelled by private jet?
Have you ever travelled by private jet?
Do you know what proportion of the world has a smart phone? Or access to Wikipedia? Or the ability to contact distant friends? Or access to clean water? Or a chance of living to see the age of 30? Or of being healed after a bacterial infection or the breaking of a limb?
Are you drunk?
You have clearly been to Pooristan, but you have never been to me. Nor, on reflection, to Pooristan.
Poor people don't have distant friends, because how would they have them because how can they afford to travel more than walking distance from where they were born? do you not realise that poor = not having any money? not, not very much money compared to the average Cambridge graduate, but actually not any money?
Fuck smartphones, fuck wikipedia, and the people:drinking water ratio has plummeted because the industrial revolution has multiplied people a fuck of a lot quicker than it has multiplied fresh water.
And yet your chance of making 30, almost irrespective of where you are born, has never been better.
And making 30 with a $100k income, a condo and a BMW is just peachy. Yay.
On the second stop of my post-Covid driving holiday, 2 nights in the Breisgau wineland at the foot of the Black Forest before heading across the Alps. Last 2 days were in Ghent.
Leon pronounced to me weeks ago that the itinerary was far too whistlestop. I disagreed - you can get a good sense of a city in one or two days, and the drive is part of the fun. But after a day of Belgian, Luxembourgeois and Alsatian traffic jams and a beautiful stopover like this I’m wondering. Next time a week in the Black Forest with a view of the Belchen.
Which route are you using to cross the Alps?
We're planning to drive down to Lake Como next month from the Portsmouth - St Malo ferry, stopping first at Beaune in Burgundy for a couple of nights. Still undecided whether to go via Switzerland from there or use the Mont Blanc or Frejus tunnel.
We’re going Luzerne then Gotthard pass (not tunnel, going to take our time). Then Como 2 nights before ferry from Savona to Corsica.
If you are stopping in Burgundy then by far the nicest bit, where I have a second home, is the Maconnais - around Cluny. Beautiful landscape, beautiful architecture, affordable wine, and conveniently just before the motorway turning via Bourg en Bresse to the Alps.
To give an idea I got DALL:E to draw a picture of “Cezanne painting of Maconnais landscape with Église de Chapaize in the middle distance”. Captures it pretty well.
First Poll with fieldwork entirely after Picket Gate
Redfield & Wilton Strategies @RedfieldWilton · 4h Labour leads by 4%, narrowest lead since 5 June.
Nobody in the real world gives a fuck about “picket gate”.
People care if Lab is on the side of workers or not
How would you know about the real world?
Most people don't think union people are workers. Because so few people are in unions. That's a bad thing btw.
Real people can empathize with workers taking a stand and not being prepared to take massive real term pay cuts in a COL crisis and can see SKS is not on their side.
Ben Pointer apparently agrees real people dont give a fuck I am surprised at Ben not so much at CHB
As the article shows, Downing Street receptions were given to the men's World Cup rugby winning team in 2003, and the victorious Ashes team in 2005
I guess you could argue that the rugby team won the WORLD Cup, but the Ashes was... the Ashes, and England have won the Ashes many times: yet Number Ten got caught up in the excitement of an amazing sporting story, and rightly honoured that team
This is the first England football triumph - in the global sport we invented - for over half a century. Tsk. Give them some English Fizz at Number 10 FFS
What exactly could it be about the prospect of a dozen or so young, athletic blonde females round at Boris' for drinks that is making them hesitate so?
They presumably would have the requisite skills and ability in order to kick men in the balls when merited.
Are you on board with Truss now Roger? Lots of hostility towards Starmer on show.
I can't stand Truss. I just want Starmer to start showing some backbone. If he's going to become PM for the Leaver Red Wallers then he'll be very lucky to win. Most Labour voters AREN'T Leavers. Not being as bad as Truss might do it but I wouldn't put my house on it.
He is underwhelming, but too much red on red action when the Conservatives are embarking on a love-in with Liz will end in tears.
I agree. As one of his predecessors said 'Labour are at their best when they're at their boldest'. The best thing he's done so far was to say he'd resign if he got an FPN.(He'd have had no choice but that wasn't the point).
Saying he thinks it's immoral to send asylum seekers to Rwanda isn't a difficult answer. Even Prince Charles and the Archbishop of Canterbury could do it. These are not moral dilemmas. Showing the leader of the Labour Party is a civilised human being shouldn't be difficult.
Saying he wants to get closer to the EU is just common sense. Saying nothing just looks feeble minded. If he doesn't start drawing lines with Truss and the Tories now when will he? I don't say the voters will come out for the Tories. They've soiled themselves too badly. But has Starmer given anyone a reason to come out for Labour?'
As Tory members reach for their pens, Liz Truss may get some exposure that's more about "show us how good your performance is" than "make some nice promises" - relating to Taiwan.
"The island dominates production of the chips that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies. That leaves the U.S. and Chinese economies extremely reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. It's a vulnerability stoking alarm in Washington."
America is throwing $50 billion at chip-makers as part of its $280 billion Chips & Science Act. China and South Korea are also throwing tens if not hundreds of billions at their own semiconductor sectors. https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/01/us_chips_act_vs_world/
Interesting.
"The eagerly anticipated spending bill paves the way for $280 billion in funding [...], roughly $52 billion of which is earmarked for boosting US semiconductor production."
"China is said to have already invested $80 billion of a planned $150 billion in government subsidies in its bid to become the global leader in all segments of the semiconductor industry by 2030."
Well she is lying then, because if there is a variant of Covid say that has a mortality rate of 50%, or bird flu mutates to become transmittable through the air between humans without a reduction in mortality we will be locked down far more strictly they we were during the 3 Covid lockdowns or otherwise the dustman will be collecting bodybags.
First Poll with fieldwork entirely after Picket Gate
Redfield & Wilton Strategies @RedfieldWilton · 4h Labour leads by 4%, narrowest lead since 5 June.
Nobody in the real world gives a fuck about “picket gate”.
People care if Lab is on the side of workers or not
How would you know about the real world?
Most people don't think union people are workers. Because so few people are in unions. That's a bad thing btw.
Real people can empathize with workers taking a stand and not being prepared to take massive real term pay cuts in a COL crisis and can see SKS is not on their side.
Ben Pointer apparently agrees real people dont give a fuck I am surprised at Ben
On this one I'm with you. It seems Mandelson/Campbell/Blair are trying a mid -90's strategy. But it's 2022. People asking for an (often) below inflation pay rise aren't being unreasonable at all.
Well she is lying then, because if there is a variant of Covid say that has a mortality rate of 50%, or bird flu mutates to become transmittable through the air between humans without a reduction in mortality we will be locked down far more strictly they we were during the 3 Covid lockdowns or otherwise the dustman will be collecting bodybags.
Yes, it’s a stupid hostage to fortune. However, it’s also a bit of an unfair question.
Comments
I still think she'll lead the Tories to a stepmom level defeat if she doesn't get a handle on the cost of living crisis.
1) transfer friendly
2) becomes the 'loyal to Boris' candidate
3) tax cutting small state agenda
Also I saw Mssrs Meeks and Herdson agreeing that she was value on Twitter.
I can't remember the last time we all agreed about something betting wise. It seemed like an omen....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_(Germany)
Liz Truss is now only five points ahead of Rishi Sunak in the race to succeed Boris Johnson, private polling carried out for the foreign secretary’s campaign suggests.
The survey, which concluded early last week, has support for Truss on 48 per cent compared with 43 per cent for the former chancellor, and 9 per cent of members who were questioned undecided.
The poll is in contrast to the last YouGov survey carried out at the end of the knockout stages that suggested Truss had a 24-point lead over Sunak.
Sources in the Sunak campaign claimed the shift reflected the feedback they had been getting on the ground suggesting that the race was much closer than had previously been thought.
“It really hasn’t felt to us like Liz was doing as well as the polls have been suggesting. Wherever he goes he is getting really good feedback and an awful lot of people are still making up their minds.
“This doesn’t feel like a re-run of 2019 [when Boris Johnson was convincingly ahead of Jeremy Hunt]. Liz’s support feels very soft.”
The polling was carried out by the Italian data and public affairs firm Techne and asked Tory members their views on both candidates as well as their policy plans.
Sources in the Truss camp said it had not been commissioned by them but confirmed it had been shared with the campaign.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-just-five-points-behind-liz-truss-in-latest-tory-leadership-poll-0p2b8nppv
If I was normal I would have usually voted Labour from 18 to 35, now be a swing voter at 40 and only normally vote Tory once I am well over 55
I have gone from thinking she did fine in the first debates and wondering why the audience (and PB) were so down on her, to thinking she’ll be a credible opponent for SKS.
I confess I misjudged her ability to get to the final though, I thought there was a larger anti-Truss vote inside the PCP than there was.
Having said that, we might anticipate already that party management will be a problem.
Which is where you live, so all good.
There were bullies, but the mixing of ability/social strata through the House system helped with self-policing in that area too.
Leon pronounced to me weeks ago that the itinerary was far too whistlestop. I disagreed - you can get a good sense of a city in one or two days, and the drive is part of the fun. But after a day of Belgian, Luxembourgeois and Alsatian traffic jams and a beautiful stopover like this I’m wondering. Next time a week in the Black Forest with a view of the Belchen.
Betfair next prime minister
1.14 Liz Truss 88%
8.4 Rishi Sunak 12%
Next Conservative leader
1.13 Liz Truss 88%
8.4 Rishi Sunak 12%
Also I have travelled overland, on the cheap, from Capetown to Cairo. No chances there to observe what actual 21st C poverty looks like, though.
Me: "That won't last"
You: "It will..."
How are you planning to stay forever under 50?
Truss is going to achieve growth to get us out of the CoL crisis.
She'll be the first Tory in 13 years to actually do it if she does, good luck I say
At last, Putin shows sense.
I also agree with HYUFD that if defeated, he will likely quit politics at the next election.
People don't look at their finances going down the pan and say, "well, it's worse in France".
Maybe in a fair world they should, but they don't.
Cava btw is sensationally good value atm because unfashionable compared to prosecco
I breed ponies for fun, and I only do it on the basis that every pony I breed is going to be happier than it would be if it had never been born. It is very hard to be impressed by arguments that yeah lots of ponies were having an even more shit time 200 years ago. So what?
"No 10 rules out reception for Lionesses"
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/no-10-rules-out-reception-for-lionesses-mfcd6tkdr?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1659378097
As the article shows, Downing Street receptions were given to the men's World Cup rugby winning team in 2003, and the victorious Ashes team in 2005
I guess you could argue that the rugby team won the WORLD Cup, but the Ashes was... the Ashes, and England have won the Ashes many times: yet Number Ten got caught up in the excitement of an amazing sporting story, and rightly honoured that team
This is the first England football triumph - in the global sport we invented - for over half a century. Tsk. Give them some English Fizz at Number 10 FFS
Perhaps this is No 10 heading that one off at the pass?
Betfair next prime minister
1.16 Liz Truss 86%
8 Rishi Sunak 13%
Next Conservative leader
1.15 Liz Truss 87%
7.8 Rishi Sunak 13%
I should probably go to bed. But I am genuinely taken aback: I have been to the shittest parts of the world, and I know how shit life is there. Most of PB hasn't. Also, most of PB thinks Yay, more people = excellent. As if being alive, for most people, was as wonderful as being a well heeled PBer, with perhaps a 10% discount for being 3rd world. Not how it is.
Redfield & Wilton Strategies
@RedfieldWilton
·
4h
Labour leads by 4%, narrowest lead since 5 June.
I've gone from wondering why she was so universally (apart from a few) underrated, to wondering why she's now being overestimated.
She's a bit meh. But then so were her leadership opponents. As is SKS. I haven't changed my opinion. She may win the tallest dwarf come next GE.
* Edit. From the sporting establishment.
I think this is Boris being demob happy and misreading the room. The article says he's off on hols on Wednesday. Probably can't be arsed. It's a mistake Truss would not make. Truss was also at the game, unlike him
It's time to kick him out and get her in
ETA correction: 8/1 including boost at Bet365.
He needs the old heave-ho
I’ve no doubt at least some of that is true and as we’ve seen time and time again, the premiership is a cruelly efficient exposer of character flaws.
https://www.businessinsider.com/championship-teams-trump-white-house-2019-4
[Edit: I see @DougSeal beat me to it by a couple of minutes
How would you know about the real world?
@TrussLiz
says: "No, I wouldn't."
She adds that whenever previous lockdowns were being considered, she was "in favour of doing less rather than more".
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1554191734338457601?s=20&t=usPCGlFD4B63JNzPHxlEyg
Which route are you using to cross the Alps?
We're planning to drive down to Lake Como next month from the Portsmouth - St Malo ferry, stopping first at Beaune in Burgundy for a couple of nights. Still undecided whether to go via Switzerland from there or use the Mont Blanc or Frejus tunnel.
Betfair next prime minister
1.15 Liz Truss 87%
7 Rishi Sunak 14%
Next Conservative leader
1.14 Liz Truss 88%
7.2 Rishi Sunak 14%
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/taiwan-china-chips/
"The island dominates production of the chips that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies. That leaves the U.S. and Chinese economies extremely reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. It's a vulnerability stoking alarm in Washington." It is time to kick him out, but not for that reason.
The only state schools which normally match private schools for results are grammar schools, so if you have the money to go private and no grammar schools in the area then you would almost always go private to get your children into the best school possible. Whereas if you lived in a selective area if your children got into a grammar you could save money and send them there, only sending them private if they did not pass the entrance test.
You might have gone to a reasonable comp and managed but those who have to attend comps in deprived working class areas don't get that choice, hence areas with grammars get proportionally significantly more disadvantaged pupils into top universities than comprehensive areas
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/poor-pupils-at-grammar-schools-twice-as-likely-to-attend-oxbridge-study-claims/
If I have got that wrong, what's your excuse?
If you are stopping in Burgundy then by far the nicest bit, where I have a second home, is the Maconnais - around Cluny. Beautiful landscape, beautiful architecture, affordable wine, and conveniently just before the motorway turning via Bourg en Bresse to the Alps.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/01/us_chips_act_vs_world/
Otherwise, I dunno. I just do not understand this insane boosterism of the more people = the better. It doesn't.
I note that 40C is forecast there, for Thursday. Ouch. Global warming might fuck the French wine industry
Goodness me Liz doesn't have a clue.
Unless, of course, Johnson wanted to be seen next to a bunch of losers, because he thought he'd look good by comparison...
Ben Pointer apparently agrees real people dont give a fuck I am surprised at Ben not so much at CHB
Saying he thinks it's immoral to send asylum seekers to Rwanda isn't a difficult answer. Even Prince Charles and the Archbishop of Canterbury could do it. These are not moral dilemmas. Showing the leader of the Labour Party is a civilised human being shouldn't be difficult.
Saying he wants to get closer to the EU is just common sense. Saying nothing just looks feeble minded. If he doesn't start drawing lines with Truss and the Tories now when will he? I don't say the voters will come out for the Tories. They've soiled themselves too badly. But has Starmer given anyone a reason to come out for Labour?'
"The eagerly anticipated spending bill paves the way for $280 billion in funding [...], roughly $52 billion of which is earmarked for boosting US semiconductor production."
"China is said to have already invested $80 billion of a planned $150 billion in government subsidies in its bid to become the global leader in all segments of the semiconductor industry by 2030."
It seems Mandelson/Campbell/Blair are trying a mid -90's strategy.
But it's 2022. People asking for an (often) below inflation pay rise aren't being unreasonable at all.
However, no matter what you did, you can take modest satisfaction from not being as stupid as Ferrari.