How on Earth are we going to afford tax cuts and simultaneously freeze energy bills?
The energy companies should be paying for this with a windfall tax.
Sure, can you explain how you're going to get Qatar and Norway (those two countries provide over half of our gas) to pay for this?
Good question. While we are googling an answer, perhaps someone can explain why renewably-generated electricity is charged according to the inflated price of gas? The energy market needs someone to stand back and have a good rethink because it ain't working.
Products not on a contract are normally charged for at the marginal, market price of the product. Since gas is setting the marginal price, non contracted renewable energy on a market rate ought to get that.
That ought to then mean that renewable is profitable, which drives investment, which means we stop using gas, which sorts out climate change and ultimately drops the price.
The Tories have made this country so unbalanced that a working class bloke from the South who lives in London is now posh! A man who goes to football matches and occasionally goes for a drink at the pub.
But not Boris Johnson, oh no he's "one of the people". Liz Truss is from what I can tell more authentically of the people and working class but still the media and people here will call Starmer posh.
Reality check, being a Londoner doesn't make you out of touch or posh, London has working class people who need help just like the Red Wall. This country is ruined.
IMO 'poshness' is an attitude, and not a direct sign of privilege or upbringing. Starmer goes to football matches on free tickets worth ?>£1000? (and then fails to declare them in time). He is always smartly dressed. He gives the impression of being able to afford, and like, the finer things in life.
I have zero problem with any of that. But it does not connect him with the red wall. And whilst London has poor people, many of the people in the red wall see 'London' very differently. AS I know from personal experience.
This is where Rayner could help. Perhaps.
Dressing smartly is something that you will find unites a lot of people with working class roots who have gone up in the world. On the left it is something that really distinguishes the middle-class trots from those who had more humble beginnings. The latter are almost always far better turned out than the former.
I have a photo, taken apparently in the 20s, of my coal-miner grandfather and his four coal-miner brothers dressed in their Sunday best. All very smart, with suit and waistcoat!
Did Liz Truss get into Merton College, Oxford, with only two A Levels?
Applications per place for PPE in 2021-22: 8.3.
I expect there was a third one that wasn't in the reporting?
However back in the day the system was that Oxford would do their own admissions testing 9 months before the public exams and if you passed that, you'd only have to get two Es (E being the lowest possible pass) to get your place. I think this was done to show Oxford's contempt for the public system.
Being insufferably nerdy the kids who got into Oxford nearly always got high grades like AAA or the occasional AAB. But there were always rumours of some DGIF gigachad who got the place and then put in so little effort that they only got two E grades. If Truss decided she couldn't be arsed to show up for one of the exams that would indicate very large ladyballs and Mr Putin should be careful not to offend her any more than he already has.
We also get Truss’ own A level results (presumably having been recently exhumed in Gavin Williamson’s Mum’s attic?) – she achieved an A in English, and A in Maths, a B in German and a C in Further Maths. Under her own plans, she would not have got a guaranteed interview (much less three!) and would most likely have not attended Oxford.
AAB in 1996 from a girl from a Comprehensive school -- almost every Oxbridge College would have been absolutely delighted to receive such an excellent application.
A* at A Level only started in 2010, and most folks do 3 A levels (so it seems fair to discount her worst one).
Liz Truss, whatever her politics, has done well to get where she is.
It does seem worth celebrating the *first* Comprehensive educated PM.
And for Labour, it just keeps happening. Why do these 'firsts' never happen to them?
AABC > AAB. C is a disappointing grade, but good for her for doing four A Levels. Nothing suspicious there then. This perhaps explains how she has a bit of a thing about Further Maths. (Which is not to her discredit. She's right that more students should study FM.) She probably pulled her socks up, given how she took a course in mathematical logic later.
The "comprehensive first" is misleading. James Callaghan went to a non-selective state school and didn't go to university.
The Tories have made this country so unbalanced that a working class bloke from the South who lives in London is now posh! A man who goes to football matches and occasionally goes for a drink at the pub.
But not Boris Johnson, oh no he's "one of the people". Liz Truss is from what I can tell more authentically of the people and working class but still the media and people here will call Starmer posh.
Reality check, being a Londoner doesn't make you out of touch or posh, London has working class people who need help just like the Red Wall. This country is ruined.
IMO 'poshness' is an attitude, and not a direct sign of privilege or upbringing. Starmer goes to football matches on free tickets worth ?>£1000? (and then fails to declare them in time). He is always smartly dressed. He gives the impression of being able to afford, and like, the finer things in life.
I have zero problem with any of that. But it does not connect him with the red wall. And whilst London has poor people, many of the people in the red wall see 'London' very differently. AS I know from personal experience.
This is where Rayner could help. Perhaps.
Dressing smartly is something that you will find unites a lot of people with working class roots who have gone up in the world. On the left it is something that really distinguishes the middle-class trots from those who had more humble beginnings. The latter are almost always far better turned out than the former.
Like the 'we didnt have much but kept it clean/too poor to waste dirt' approach.
Would a working class PM leave his short untucked as much as Boris?
The same people that say borrowing is irresponsible and that Labour destroyed the economy want to borrow billions for tax cuts and energy bills.
Okay then, just don't ever claim to be fiscally responsible ever again
You haven't answered the question, how do you propose to tax Norway, Qatar and the rest of the non-UK based gas producers that sell us gas for these high prices? There's a lot of bullshit surrounding windfall taxes, as if they were some kind of silver bullet for high energy prices but as yet no one can come up with how they intend to grab £150bn from the Qatari state without sending a gunboat.
I would not fund the entirety through borrowing as Liz Truss is proposing to.
Then the question is how would you fund it seeing windfall taxes have been properly explained this morning by several posters
So how does SKS handle PMQs. Clearly the Tories will be noisy and excited. I would imagine some choice quotes from the campaign, intertwined with some points of detail that the PM might struggle with might be the best route to dent the party. What’s her Achilles heal?
According to the polls, the public's three priorities are the energy crisis, the economy and climate change.
Liz Truss' three priorities according to her speech yesterday are the economy, the energy crisis and the NHS. And she's put Rees-Mogg in charge of climate change policy.
Attack her on climate change, and it's link to the energy crisis. Also on the general decay in the public realm, such as delays to criminal trials, created by twelve years of Tory cuts. The key thing is to tie Truss to the accumulated defects and mistakes of twelve years of Tory government, rather than allow her to present herself as [another] fresh start, not responsible for the problems inherited from the Cameron, May and Johnson governments.
The problem with the bit in bold is that delays to criminal trials are easily explained by lockdown, which Sir Keir not only supported, but wanted to be deeper and for longer.
You clearly don’t work in the law. Or read the news. The pandemic backlog is peanuts. Delays to criminal trials are caused by the Tory closure of courts, an IT system that does not work, a legal aid system that makes it more profitable for a graduate to become a Costa Coffee barista than a criminal barrister (or, indeed, solicitor)…I could go on but, hey, what would I know…I’m only a solicitor.
Criminal barristers median pay is over £80 000 after a few decades practice. They can earn over £40,000 after expenses once they are 3 years into practice.
“ Ministers say a typical criminal barrister would earn £7,000 more a year under the offer, adding that before expenses, median earnings for criminal barristers in 2019-20 were £79,800, although it admits junior barristers often earn a fraction of this.“ (my emphasis)
Median earnings for all barristers are skewed by the mega bucks earned by those at the top end not doing legal aid work. For your average joe who needs legal aid, say a postmaster falsely accused of theft by an incompetent IT system, the truth is a little less glam -
Barrister set to strike ‘earned £7,000 more per year as coffee shop barista’
Median earnings will not be skewed by megabucks earned by a few.
Mean earnings would be.
Median earnings rise over time as overall numbers of practitioners decline. But you can only get on the train if you have the resources to sustain you through the lean - and getting a lot leaner - early years.
I think you'll find there's a lot of people up and down the country who would be happy with even a junior barristers wage, and don't have a lot of resources.
You might only be able to afford a humble lifestyle in those years, but that's what a lot of people live.
I am not sure that a lot of people up and down the country would be happy with an income of £12,000 or so a year. They could perhaps scrape a living on it, but that is somewhat different.
A lot of people up and down the country do indeed go to work precisely in order to earn that.
And anyone on UC earning more than that is taxed at 70% of their marginal income above that threshold.
If your argument is that isn't liveable it should be addressed for all working for that income, not just barristers.
Your contention was that people earning £12,000 a year are happy to do so. I agree that many people do have to live on it. But most of them are not happy to do so and do not have law degrees and the ability to earn a lot more if they choose to go into other areas of practice. We need barristers to work on criminal cases otherwise the system collapses.
The same people that say borrowing is irresponsible and that Labour destroyed the economy want to borrow billions for tax cuts and energy bills.
Okay then, just don't ever claim to be fiscally responsible ever again
You haven't answered the question, how do you propose to tax Norway, Qatar and the rest of the non-UK based gas producers that sell us gas for these high prices? There's a lot of bullshit surrounding windfall taxes, as if they were some kind of silver bullet for high energy prices but as yet no one can come up with how they intend to grab £150bn from the Qatari state without sending a gunboat.
I would not fund the entirety through borrowing as Liz Truss is proposing to.
Fine, so who are you proposing to raise taxes on? The government has already put up taxes to basically maximum levels for UK based fossil fuel producers. Are you suggesting we put taxes up on renewables generators, those few companies that took early risks and had the foresight to invest because they realised that oil and gas wasn't a good bet? If not them then who?
Did Liz Truss get into Merton College, Oxford, with only two A Levels?
Applications per place for PPE in 2021-22: 8.3.
However back in the day the system was that Oxford would do their own admissions testing 9 months before the public exams and if you passed that, you'd only have to get two Es (E being the lowest possible pass) to get your place. I think this was done to show Oxford's contempt for the public system.
No, 2 Es was to qualify for the Local Authority Grant - nothing to do with attitude to the public system. As you observe most got As.
University Liberal Club. I have not yet been asked to form a government.
the standard offer varied from CCC to BBB in most places. My offer was BBC, though I actually got AAAB.
I did the Oxford entrance exam in November/December 1991 and was given a 2 ‘E’ offer after interview. I took that as an invitation and spent the rest of the Sixth Form getting pissed.
I do wonder what percentage of the increase in top A level grades is grade inflation and what percentage is more motivated or better taught pupils. Has there been any work done on this question?
I suspect the answer is not so much better teaching as more exam focused teaching: for example I use past paper questions all the time now while back in the eighties when I was doing my A-levels the only time I remember seeing a past paper was the mock exam.
Yes, my daughter was all over past papers for her GCSEs. Kids might be smarter too - taking the lead out of petrol must have boosted IQs a bit.
There is clearly big grade inflation - even this year when grades tightened after the farce of covid grades , 50% of entrants to a levels got A* or A . Which is fine as long as it is acknowledged so that employers etc dont discriminate against older job applicants
Employers should not be looking at exam grades once an applicant is more than a year or so out of school. Certainly anyone using grades to compare a 30-year-old with a 20-year-old is in dire need of an HR department.
I'm not sure anyone is in dire need of HR But it would be dumb.
but it follows on - i am still applying for jobs (at 52) where I have to list my O and A levels and many jobs still want degree (which is easier to obtain now that in was 30 ,40 ,years ago) .
Too many jobs require it. At least some will grant, on sufference, 'or equivalent experience'
The trouble with JK Rowling is not that she is transphobic, but that she isn’t. Her honesty has shamed a literary community that thought it could squint a bit and fudge things when it came to the question of “what is a woman and do they matter, anyway?” Because of this, the extreme, violent misrepresentation of Rowling has become a way to defer any reckoning with the harmful messages those in publishing and the creative arts have been waving through…
The monstering is wearing thin. Last week’s collective attempt to trash The Ink Black Heart by people who hadn’t read it felt far less enthusiastic than 2020’s shot at Troubled Blood. I do not think it can last. People like their fiction, but they do eventually tire of lies. https://thecritic.co.uk/publishing-needs-jk-rowling-to-be-a-monster/
Most people attacked back down even if they shouldn't or they escalate themselves and can become what they are accused of being.
I dont see that with Rowling. She's spoken about like a pariah or unperson, but she just seems forthright without being extreme.
Let's forget about JK Rowling for a moment and note the protest by some pro-trans group yesterday outside the Westminster offices of the EHRC. This involved a man, naked under a see-through dress (and in some pictures visibly aroused) pouring urine all over himself. Others in the group deposited 60 bottles of piss outside the offices and in the street.
According to reports, some of the Met's finest then turned up (along with the security guards for the building and, presumably, the cleaners who would have to clean up this disgusting mess).
Can we safely assume that they will be gathering the evidence to charge those involved in the protest with the - at least - three offences committed by them?
And while pondering that question we might wonder which genius thought that such a display would persuade women to share their space with people behaving like this?
The 2 EEs where there as you needed them to get a grant for university - even then the Government wanted some control over who went to university.
Oxford wasn't the only uni making them, either. I got an EE offer from Leeds, in what was clearly a (successful!) bid to get put down on my UCAS form as the second choice uni after Cambridge (who wanted AAA and a STEP paper grade of some form)...
Did Liz Truss get into Merton College, Oxford, with only two A Levels?
Applications per place for PPE in 2021-22: 8.3.
However back in the day the system was that Oxford would do their own admissions testing 9 months before the public exams and if you passed that, you'd only have to get two Es (E being the lowest possible pass) to get your place. I think this was done to show Oxford's contempt for the public system.
No, 2 Es was to qualify for the Local Authority Grant - nothing to do with attitude to the public system. As you observe most got As.
University Liberal Club. I have not yet been asked to form a government.
the standard offer varied from CCC to BBB in most places. My offer was BBC, though I actually got AAAB.
I did the Oxford entrance exam in November/December 1991 and was given a 2 ‘E’ offer after interview. I took that as an invitation and spent the rest of the Sixth Form getting pissed.
I do wonder what percentage of the increase in top A level grades is grade inflation and what percentage is more motivated or better taught pupils. Has there been any work done on this question?
I suspect the answer is not so much better teaching as more exam focused teaching: for example I use past paper questions all the time now while back in the eighties when I was doing my A-levels the only time I remember seeing a past paper was the mock exam.
Yes, my daughter was all over past papers for her GCSEs. Kids might be smarter too - taking the lead out of petrol must have boosted IQs a bit.
There is clearly big grade inflation - even this year when grades tightened after the farce of covid grades , 50% of entrants to a levels got A* or A . Which is fine as long as it is acknowledged so that employers etc dont discriminate against older job applicants
Employers should not be looking at exam grades once an applicant is more than a year or so out of school. Certainly anyone using grades to compare a 30-year-old with a 20-year-old is in dire need of an HR department.
I'm not sure anyone is in dire need of HR But it would be dumb.
but it follows on - i am still applying for jobs (at 52) where I have to list my O and A levels and many jobs still want degree (which is easier to obtain now that in was 30 ,40 ,years ago) .
Asking for a degree is where age discrimination lies.
So just to confirm, Keir Starmer is posh because he's been given free football tickets.
Okay then
I might suggest you re-read what I wrote.
And when you do, here's a question: in what ways do you think Starmer connects with red-wall voters?
The answer is that he can't do any such thing. Labour should ditch him before the next GE. I probably won't be voting Labour while that tosser is leader.
Angela Rayner would connect much better, and besides she does witchcraft across the Commons aisle so she'd have my support.
I am slightly sceptical. Even when I was applying for university (late 80s), it was common knowledge that middle class parents would either do the trick of sending their kids to private school to 16 and then state 6th form and / or get extra tuition for their kids on the side in order to get them into Oxbridge.
Liz didn't do the first but she may have had help with the second. And that really doesn't make it a level playing field because children from poorer families can't afford that.
That "may" seems to me to be doing a lot of work. I went through a state comprehensive and sixth form and went to Oxbridge in the 90s, and I wasn't getting extra tuition beyond what the school and 6fc provided. I don't think I was massively unusual in that respect.
The thing that makes it a less than level playing field IMO is that middle class kids (like me) are usually in families where the expectation is that you'll go to uni, and get to live in the catchment areas of decent schools where the schools expect to be sending a clutch of kids to Oxbridge and are geared up to do so.
Yes, similarly Oxbridge after state all the way through and no tuition, but parents were university educated, we had loads of books in the house, and lived in a middle class kind of town with a decent school, so plenty of helpful cultural capital. I think the tuition thing is a bit of a myth TBH, it does happen but is far from universal. My daughter didn't get any for her GCSEs and neither did most of her friends as far as I know.
I for one am proud for Liz Truss of what she has achieved. She's clearly a hard worker and to get into Oxford with her background is impressive.
But then these same people seem to want to dismiss Keir Starmer's achievements.
Why can't we be happy that both leaders are genuinely from humble beginnings and have worked hard to get where they are?
Her father was a Maths professor. She went to a comprehensive school in a very leafy middle class area. I'm not sure what 'background' you are referring to. I see no evidence of working class/family breakdown/sink school history.
Did Liz Truss get into Merton College, Oxford, with only two A Levels?
Applications per place for PPE in 2021-22: 8.3.
I expect there was a third one that wasn't in the reporting?
However back in the day the system was that Oxford would do their own admissions testing 9 months before the public exams and if you passed that, you'd only have to get two Es (E being the lowest possible pass) to get your place. I think this was done to show Oxford's contempt for the public system.
Being insufferably nerdy the kids who got into Oxford nearly always got high grades like AAA or the occasional AAB. But there were always rumours of some DGIF gigachad who got the place and then put in so little effort that they only got two E grades. If Truss decided she couldn't be arsed to show up for one of the exams that would indicate very large ladyballs and Mr Putin should be careful not to offend her any more than he already has.
We also get Truss’ own A level results (presumably having been recently exhumed in Gavin Williamson’s Mum’s attic?) – she achieved an A in English, and A in Maths, a B in German and a C in Further Maths. Under her own plans, she would not have got a guaranteed interview (much less three!) and would most likely have not attended Oxford.
AAB in 1996 from a girl from a Comprehensive school -- almost every Oxbridge College would have been absolutely delighted to receive such an excellent application.
A* at A Level only started in 2010, and most folks do 3 A levels (so it seems fair to discount her worst one).
Liz Truss, whatever her politics, has done well to get where she is.
It does seem worth celebrating the *first* Comprehensive educated PM.
And for Labour, it just keeps happening. Why do these 'firsts' never happen to them?
AABC > AAB. C is a disappointing grade, but good for her for doing four A Levels. Nothing suspicious there then. This perhaps explains how she has a bit of a thing about Further Maths. (Which is not to her discredit. She's right that more students should study FM.) She probably pulled her socks up, given how she took a course in mathematical logic later.
The "comprehensive first" is misleading. James Callaghan went to a non-selective state school and didn't go to university.
Callaghan and Major did not go to University.
Callaghan does seem to be the only PM who went to a Secondary Modern.
Given the facts as reported on wiki, I'd certainly agree that Jim Callaghan's background was unambiguously very poor & working class.
And his achievement in getting to the heights of PM was then a truly remarkable one.
Thanks for pointing this out. It was very different times -- but I was not aware that Jim Callaghan's early life was such a struggle.
So how does SKS handle PMQs. Clearly the Tories will be noisy and excited. I would imagine some choice quotes from the campaign, intertwined with some points of detail that the PM might struggle with might be the best route to dent the party. What’s her Achilles heal?
According to the polls, the public's three priorities are the energy crisis, the economy and climate change.
Liz Truss' three priorities according to her speech yesterday are the economy, the energy crisis and the NHS. And she's put Rees-Mogg in charge of climate change policy.
Attack her on climate change, and it's link to the energy crisis. Also on the general decay in the public realm, such as delays to criminal trials, created by twelve years of Tory cuts. The key thing is to tie Truss to the accumulated defects and mistakes of twelve years of Tory government, rather than allow her to present herself as [another] fresh start, not responsible for the problems inherited from the Cameron, May and Johnson governments.
The problem with the bit in bold is that delays to criminal trials are easily explained by lockdown, which Sir Keir not only supported, but wanted to be deeper and for longer.
You clearly don’t work in the law. Or read the news. The pandemic backlog is peanuts. Delays to criminal trials are caused by the Tory closure of courts, an IT system that does not work, a legal aid system that makes it more profitable for a graduate to become a Costa Coffee barista than a criminal barrister (or, indeed, solicitor)…I could go on but, hey, what would I know…I’m only a solicitor.
Criminal barristers median pay is over £80 000 after a few decades practice. They can earn over £40,000 after expenses once they are 3 years into practice.
“ Ministers say a typical criminal barrister would earn £7,000 more a year under the offer, adding that before expenses, median earnings for criminal barristers in 2019-20 were £79,800, although it admits junior barristers often earn a fraction of this.“ (my emphasis)
Median earnings for all barristers are skewed by the mega bucks earned by those at the top end not doing legal aid work. For your average joe who needs legal aid, say a postmaster falsely accused of theft by an incompetent IT system, the truth is a little less glam -
Barrister set to strike ‘earned £7,000 more per year as coffee shop barista’
Median earnings will not be skewed by megabucks earned by a few.
Mean earnings would be.
Median earnings rise over time as overall numbers of practitioners decline. But you can only get on the train if you have the resources to sustain you through the lean - and getting a lot leaner - early years.
FWIW, I agree that the criminal justice system is underfunded, and that incomes for junior criminal barristers are an absolute disgrace. When you include expenses and fees to Chambers, pretty much all junior members of the criminal bar are earning less than the minimum wage. Worse: the money can take a year or two to arrive. So your cash earnings for your first few years are likely to be way, way below what you would earn from flipping burgers.
Only when you have been a barrister for a decade, and built a private practice, will you be earning a reasonable sum. But to get there, realistically, requires financial support from somewhere - usually a reasonably well off family.
The Tories have made this country so unbalanced that a working class bloke from the South who lives in London is now posh! A man who goes to football matches and occasionally goes for a drink at the pub.
But not Boris Johnson, oh no he's "one of the people". Liz Truss is from what I can tell more authentically of the people and working class but still the media and people here will call Starmer posh.
Reality check, being a Londoner doesn't make you out of touch or posh, London has working class people who need help just like the Red Wall. This country is ruined.
IMO 'poshness' is an attitude, and not a direct sign of privilege or upbringing. Starmer goes to football matches on free tickets worth ?>£1000? (and then fails to declare them in time). He is always smartly dressed. He gives the impression of being able to afford, and like, the finer things in life.
I have zero problem with any of that. But it does not connect him with the red wall. And whilst London has poor people, many of the people in the red wall see 'London' very differently. AS I know from personal experience.
This is where Rayner could help. Perhaps.
Dressing smartly is something that you will find unites a lot of people with working class roots who have gone up in the world. On the left it is something that really distinguishes the middle-class trots from those who had more humble beginnings. The latter are almost always far better turned out than the former.
I have a photo, taken apparently in the 20s, of my coal-miner grandfather and his four coal-miner brothers dressed in their Sunday best. All very smart, with suit and waistcoat!
I used to spend my afternoons in a betting shop next to a children's boutique that sold more expensive clothes than you'd expect for the area. Its clientele was almost entirely West Indian parents buying their kids Sunday best clothes for church.
I for one am proud for Liz Truss of what she has achieved. She's clearly a hard worker and to get into Oxford with her background is impressive.
But then these same people seem to want to dismiss Keir Starmer's achievements.
Why can't we be happy that both leaders are genuinely from humble beginnings and have worked hard to get where they are?
Her father was a Maths professor. She went to a comprehensive school in a very leafy middle class area. I'm not sure what 'background' you are referring to. I see no evidence of working class/family breakdown/sink school history.
There are different levels. When one school alone supplies a third of our post war PMs (and a higher share before then) someone coming through from a fairly ordinary leafy middle class area is still notable, they don't have to have been fed on gruel with an outdoor bog and father down pit from 3am to midnight.
The Tories have made this country so unbalanced that a working class bloke from the South who lives in London is now posh! A man who goes to football matches and occasionally goes for a drink at the pub.
But not Boris Johnson, oh no he's "one of the people". Liz Truss is from what I can tell more authentically of the people and working class but still the media and people here will call Starmer posh.
Reality check, being a Londoner doesn't make you out of touch or posh, London has working class people who need help just like the Red Wall. This country is ruined.
IMO 'poshness' is an attitude, and not a direct sign of privilege or upbringing. Starmer goes to football matches on free tickets worth ?>£1000? (and then fails to declare them in time). He is always smartly dressed. He gives the impression of being able to afford, and like, the finer things in life.
I have zero problem with any of that. But it does not connect him with the red wall. And whilst London has poor people, many of the people in the red wall see 'London' very differently. AS I know from personal experience.
This is where Rayner could help. Perhaps.
Dressing smartly is something that you will find unites a lot of people with working class roots who have gone up in the world. On the left it is something that really distinguishes the middle-class trots from those who had more humble beginnings. The latter are almost always far better turned out than the former.
Like the 'we didnt have much but kept it clean/too poor to waste dirt' approach.
Would a working class PM leave his short untucked as much as Boris?
And who can forget poshboy Dominic Cummings walking through the door of No10 with his arse almost hanging out?
The Tories have made this country so unbalanced that a working class bloke from the South who lives in London is now posh! A man who goes to football matches and occasionally goes for a drink at the pub.
But not Boris Johnson, oh no he's "one of the people". Liz Truss is from what I can tell more authentically of the people and working class but still the media and people here will call Starmer posh.
Reality check, being a Londoner doesn't make you out of touch or posh, London has working class people who need help just like the Red Wall. This country is ruined.
IMO 'poshness' is an attitude, and not a direct sign of privilege or upbringing. Starmer goes to football matches on free tickets worth ?>£1000? (and then fails to declare them in time). He is always smartly dressed. He gives the impression of being able to afford, and like, the finer things in life.
I have zero problem with any of that. But it does not connect him with the red wall. And whilst London has poor people, many of the people in the red wall see 'London' very differently. AS I know from personal experience.
This is where Rayner could help. Perhaps.
Dressing smartly is something that you will find unites a lot of people with working class roots who have gone up in the world. On the left it is something that really distinguishes the middle-class trots from those who had more humble beginnings. The latter are almost always far better turned out than the former.
I have a photo, taken apparently in the 20s, of my coal-miner grandfather and his four coal-miner brothers dressed in their Sunday best. All very smart, with suit and waistcoat!
All the old fellas in the pub when I was starting out would turn up in a suit.
So how does SKS handle PMQs. Clearly the Tories will be noisy and excited. I would imagine some choice quotes from the campaign, intertwined with some points of detail that the PM might struggle with might be the best route to dent the party. What’s her Achilles heal?
According to the polls, the public's three priorities are the energy crisis, the economy and climate change.
Liz Truss' three priorities according to her speech yesterday are the economy, the energy crisis and the NHS. And she's put Rees-Mogg in charge of climate change policy.
Attack her on climate change, and it's link to the energy crisis. Also on the general decay in the public realm, such as delays to criminal trials, created by twelve years of Tory cuts. The key thing is to tie Truss to the accumulated defects and mistakes of twelve years of Tory government, rather than allow her to present herself as [another] fresh start, not responsible for the problems inherited from the Cameron, May and Johnson governments.
The problem with the bit in bold is that delays to criminal trials are easily explained by lockdown, which Sir Keir not only supported, but wanted to be deeper and for longer.
You clearly don’t work in the law. Or read the news. The pandemic backlog is peanuts. Delays to criminal trials are caused by the Tory closure of courts, an IT system that does not work, a legal aid system that makes it more profitable for a graduate to become a Costa Coffee barista than a criminal barrister (or, indeed, solicitor)…I could go on but, hey, what would I know…I’m only a solicitor.
Criminal barristers median pay is over £80 000 after a few decades practice. They can earn over £40,000 after expenses once they are 3 years into practice.
“ Ministers say a typical criminal barrister would earn £7,000 more a year under the offer, adding that before expenses, median earnings for criminal barristers in 2019-20 were £79,800, although it admits junior barristers often earn a fraction of this.“ (my emphasis)
Median earnings for all barristers are skewed by the mega bucks earned by those at the top end not doing legal aid work. For your average joe who needs legal aid, say a postmaster falsely accused of theft by an incompetent IT system, the truth is a little less glam -
Barrister set to strike ‘earned £7,000 more per year as coffee shop barista’
Median earnings will not be skewed by megabucks earned by a few.
Mean earnings would be.
Median earnings rise over time as overall numbers of practitioners decline. But you can only get on the train if you have the resources to sustain you through the lean - and getting a lot leaner - early years.
FWIW, I agree that the criminal justice system is underfunded, and that incomes for junior criminal barristers are an absolute disgrace. When you include expenses and fees to Chambers, pretty much all junior members of the criminal bar are earning less than the minimum wage. Worse: the money can take a year or two to arrive. So your cash earnings for your first few years are likely to be way, way below what you would earn from flipping burgers.
Only when you have been a barrister for a decade, and built a private practice, will you be earning a reasonable sum. But to get there, realistically, requires financial support from somewhere - usually a reasonably well off family.
Surely that is the whole point of the policy? It is working well and keeping the oiks out?
I think I hate Truss more than Johnson and that's saying something. His repeated failures and scandals while PM had a flavour of tragi-comic entertainment. The Truss regime promises nothing but a boring far right grind delivered in a staccato monotone.
I don't get Zadhawi's role as Minister for Intergovernmental Relations: isn't that the Foreign Secretary's job? Do they mean Intragovernmental Relations?
Devolved and local govts possibly?
It looks like Clarke is responsible for local governments, but you are right, it is for the relationship with devolved governments, apparently Gove used to do that.
I am slightly sceptical. Even when I was applying for university (late 80s), it was common knowledge that middle class parents would either do the trick of sending their kids to private school to 16 and then state 6th form and / or get extra tuition for their kids on the side in order to get them into Oxbridge.
Liz didn't do the first but she may have had help with the second. And that really doesn't make it a level playing field because children from poorer families can't afford that.
That "may" seems to me to be doing a lot of work. I went through a state comprehensive and sixth form and went to Oxbridge in the 90s, and I wasn't getting extra tuition beyond what the school and 6fc provided. I don't think I was massively unusual in that respect.
The thing that makes it a less than level playing field IMO is that middle class kids (like me) are usually in families where the expectation is that you'll go to uni, and get to live in the catchment areas of decent schools where the schools expect to be sending a clutch of kids to Oxbridge and are geared up to do so.
Yes, similarly Oxbridge after state all the way through and no tuition, but parents were university educated, we had loads of books in the house, and lived in a middle class kind of town with a decent school, so plenty of helpful cultural capital. I think the tuition thing is a bit of a myth TBH, it does happen but is far from universal. My daughter didn't get any for her GCSEs and neither did most of her friends as far as I know.
There are lots, and I mean lots, of tutors in shops round here but mainly for the 11+ and entrance exams to the local independent schools; the children are invariably Asian. This is the modern face of private education that seems to have passed our politicians by. I doubt Ofsted gets a look-in either.
I think I hate Truss more than Johnson and that's saying something. His repeated failures and scandals while PM had a flavour of tragi-comic entertainment. The Truss regime promises nothing but a boring far right grind delivered in a staccato monotone.
The same people that say borrowing is irresponsible and that Labour destroyed the economy want to borrow billions for tax cuts and energy bills.
Okay then, just don't ever claim to be fiscally responsible ever again
You haven't answered the question, how do you propose to tax Norway, Qatar and the rest of the non-UK based gas producers that sell us gas for these high prices? There's a lot of bullshit surrounding windfall taxes, as if they were some kind of silver bullet for high energy prices but as yet no one can come up with how they intend to grab £150bn from the Qatari state without sending a gunboat.
Their answer is to windfall-tax companies in the UK who have not made a windfall instead.
The same people that say borrowing is irresponsible and that Labour destroyed the economy want to borrow billions for tax cuts and energy bills.
Okay then, just don't ever claim to be fiscally responsible ever again
You haven't answered the question, how do you propose to tax Norway, Qatar and the rest of the non-UK based gas producers that sell us gas for these high prices? There's a lot of bullshit surrounding windfall taxes, as if they were some kind of silver bullet for high energy prices but as yet no one can come up with how they intend to grab £150bn from the Qatari state without sending a gunboat.
I would not fund the entirety through borrowing as Liz Truss is proposing to.
well quite - there does seem to be a bit of head in sand thinking here about just getting it from borrowing. Its the magic money tree the tories seems to have adopted now - no politician of any colour seems to want to say "no" and pretend everything can be solved by "borrowing" - Borrowing of course effectively means the taxpayer is borrowing for its gas still just doing it through a government scheme rather than themselves- The taxpayer will eventually have to pay for it one way or another. We live in a weak world where a legitimate massive crisis like the gas price increase can be pretend to be totally solved by just err "borrowing" by the government. Of course what needs ot happen and eventually will have to is cuts in government spending (taxation is at an all time high so that cannot be done anymore) - why we are still funding the amount of non-jobs in the public sector i do not know -nobody really wants period officers for instance , male or female
Did Liz Truss get into Merton College, Oxford, with only two A Levels?
Applications per place for PPE in 2021-22: 8.3.
I expect there was a third one that wasn't in the reporting?
However back in the day the system was that Oxford would do their own admissions testing 9 months before the public exams and if you passed that, you'd only have to get two Es (E being the lowest possible pass) to get your place. I think this was done to show Oxford's contempt for the public system.
Being insufferably nerdy the kids who got into Oxford nearly always got high grades like AAA or the occasional AAB. But there were always rumours of some DGIF gigachad who got the place and then put in so little effort that they only got two E grades. If Truss decided she couldn't be arsed to show up for one of the exams that would indicate very large ladyballs and Mr Putin should be careful not to offend her any more than he already has.
We also get Truss’ own A level results (presumably having been recently exhumed in Gavin Williamson’s Mum’s attic?) – she achieved an A in English, and A in Maths, a B in German and a C in Further Maths. Under her own plans, she would not have got a guaranteed interview (much less three!) and would most likely have not attended Oxford.
AAB in 1996 from a girl from a Comprehensive school -- almost every Oxbridge College would have been absolutely delighted to receive such an excellent application.
A* at A Level only started in 2010, and most folks do 3 A levels (so it seems fair to discount her worst one).
Liz Truss, whatever her politics, has done well to get where she is.
It does seem worth celebrating the *first* Comprehensive educated PM.
And for Labour, it just keeps happening. Why do these 'firsts' never happen to them?
AABC > AAB. C is a disappointing grade, but good for her for doing four A Levels. Nothing suspicious there then. This perhaps explains how she has a bit of a thing about Further Maths. (Which is not to her discredit. She's right that more students should study FM.) She probably pulled her socks up, given how she took a course in mathematical logic later.
The "comprehensive first" is misleading. James Callaghan went to a non-selective state school and didn't go to university.
Callaghan and Major did not go to University.
Callaghan does seem to be the only PM who went to a Secondary Modern.
Given the facts as reported on wiki, I'd certainly agree that Jim Callaghan's background was unambiguously very poor & working class.
And his achievement in getting to the heights of PM was then a truly remarkable one.
Thanks for pointing this out. It was very different times -- but I was not aware that Jim Callaghan's early life was such a struggle.
He was my grandparents' next door neighbour in SE London. Lovely bloke.
So how does SKS handle PMQs. Clearly the Tories will be noisy and excited. I would imagine some choice quotes from the campaign, intertwined with some points of detail that the PM might struggle with might be the best route to dent the party. What’s her Achilles heal?
According to the polls, the public's three priorities are the energy crisis, the economy and climate change.
Liz Truss' three priorities according to her speech yesterday are the economy, the energy crisis and the NHS. And she's put Rees-Mogg in charge of climate change policy.
Attack her on climate change, and it's link to the energy crisis. Also on the general decay in the public realm, such as delays to criminal trials, created by twelve years of Tory cuts. The key thing is to tie Truss to the accumulated defects and mistakes of twelve years of Tory government, rather than allow her to present herself as [another] fresh start, not responsible for the problems inherited from the Cameron, May and Johnson governments.
The problem with the bit in bold is that delays to criminal trials are easily explained by lockdown, which Sir Keir not only supported, but wanted to be deeper and for longer.
You clearly don’t work in the law. Or read the news. The pandemic backlog is peanuts. Delays to criminal trials are caused by the Tory closure of courts, an IT system that does not work, a legal aid system that makes it more profitable for a graduate to become a Costa Coffee barista than a criminal barrister (or, indeed, solicitor)…I could go on but, hey, what would I know…I’m only a solicitor.
Criminal barristers median pay is over £80 000 after a few decades practice. They can earn over £40,000 after expenses once they are 3 years into practice.
“ Ministers say a typical criminal barrister would earn £7,000 more a year under the offer, adding that before expenses, median earnings for criminal barristers in 2019-20 were £79,800, although it admits junior barristers often earn a fraction of this.“ (my emphasis)
Median earnings for all barristers are skewed by the mega bucks earned by those at the top end not doing legal aid work. For your average joe who needs legal aid, say a postmaster falsely accused of theft by an incompetent IT system, the truth is a little less glam -
Barrister set to strike ‘earned £7,000 more per year as coffee shop barista’
Median earnings will not be skewed by megabucks earned by a few.
Mean earnings would be.
Median earnings rise over time as overall numbers of practitioners decline. But you can only get on the train if you have the resources to sustain you through the lean - and getting a lot leaner - early years.
I think you'll find there's a lot of people up and down the country who would be happy with even a junior barristers wage, and don't have a lot of resources.
You might only be able to afford a humble lifestyle in those years, but that's what a lot of people live.
I am not sure that a lot of people up and down the country would be happy with an income of £12,000 or so a year. They could perhaps scrape a living on it, but that is somewhat different.
Surely a junior barrister is really still an apprentice? Or do junior barristers hatch fully fledged?
The Tories have made this country so unbalanced that a working class bloke from the South who lives in London is now posh! A man who goes to football matches and occasionally goes for a drink at the pub.
But not Boris Johnson, oh no he's "one of the people". Liz Truss is from what I can tell more authentically of the people and working class but still the media and people here will call Starmer posh.
Reality check, being a Londoner doesn't make you out of touch or posh, London has working class people who need help just like the Red Wall. This country is ruined.
IMO 'poshness' is an attitude, and not a direct sign of privilege or upbringing. Starmer goes to football matches on free tickets worth ?>£1000? (and then fails to declare them in time). He is always smartly dressed. He gives the impression of being able to afford, and like, the finer things in life.
I have zero problem with any of that. But it does not connect him with the red wall. And whilst London has poor people, many of the people in the red wall see 'London' very differently. AS I know from personal experience.
This is where Rayner could help. Perhaps.
Dressing smartly is something that you will find unites a lot of people with working class roots who have gone up in the world. On the left it is something that really distinguishes the middle-class trots from those who had more humble beginnings. The latter are almost always far better turned out than the former.
I have a photo, taken apparently in the 20s, of my coal-miner grandfather and his four coal-miner brothers dressed in their Sunday best. All very smart, with suit and waistcoat!
All the old fellas in the pub when I was starting out would turn up in a suit.
The gardener I sacked for voting Leave (local celebrity:"Inbred Ted") used to mow my lawn in a tie and zip cardigan.
I find it incredible that even the rightwing Legatum Institute, backer of GB News, is now suggesting today that without a 10% uprating of Universal Credit this winter, "a million people will slide into destitution, regardless of the price freeze". After years of tabloid propaganda, the penny is finally dropping, even among the hard right.
Who was the biggest backer of removing the post-pandemic uplift to Universal Credit, as well as repressing the DWP's own internal report suggesting welfare sanctions achieved nothing, except extending poverty ? Step forward one Therese Coffey, best friend of our new PM and new Deputy Prime Minister.
So just to confirm, Keir Starmer is posh because he's been given free football tickets.
Okay then
I might suggest you re-read what I wrote.
And when you do, here's a question: in what ways do you think Starmer connects with red-wall voters?
I think Labour being seventeen points ahead would suggest he does, yes.
I think his upbringing is modest and he's a hard worker.
I think he's moved Labour to the centre ground.
I think he's a normal chap.
So yes I do think he connects with them, you don't because you don't like him.
So now tell me, how does a right wing Thatcherite connect with the Red Wall when they voted against such politics for thirty years?
He has a seventeen-point lead because of the Tories' implosion over the last 18 months.
And he is not 'normal'. What is more, I don't want a 'normal' person as PM: because to be a good PM, you need a set of skills that most people do not have (and we also get into the HHGTTG 'as soon as we decide what is normal' problem).
Yes, I think Truss will have problems connecting with the Red Wall as well, for different reasons. But that does not mean Starmer won't appeal much, either.
The same people that say borrowing is irresponsible and that Labour destroyed the economy want to borrow billions for tax cuts and energy bills.
Okay then, just don't ever claim to be fiscally responsible ever again
You haven't answered the question, how do you propose to tax Norway, Qatar and the rest of the non-UK based gas producers that sell us gas for these high prices? There's a lot of bullshit surrounding windfall taxes, as if they were some kind of silver bullet for high energy prices but as yet no one can come up with how they intend to grab £150bn from the Qatari state without sending a gunboat.
I would not fund the entirety through borrowing as Liz Truss is proposing to.
well quite - there does seem to be a bit of head in sand thinking here about just getting it from borrowing. Its the magic money tree the tories seems to have adopted now - no politician of any colour seems to want to say "no" and pretend everything can be solved by "borrowing" - Borrowing of course effectively means the taxpayer is borrowing for its gas still just doing it through a government scheme rather than themselves- The taxpayer will eventually have to pay for it one way or another. We live in a weak world where a legitimate massive crisis like the gas price increase can be pretend to be totally solved by just err "borrowing" by the government
I for one am proud for Liz Truss of what she has achieved. She's clearly a hard worker and to get into Oxford with her background is impressive.
But then these same people seem to want to dismiss Keir Starmer's achievements.
Why can't we be happy that both leaders are genuinely from humble beginnings and have worked hard to get where they are?
Her father was a Maths professor. She went to a comprehensive school in a very leafy middle class area. I'm not sure what 'background' you are referring to. I see no evidence of working class/family breakdown/sink school history.
I think that is a bit unfair, as it ignores the systematic discrimination against women, which would still have been present & significant in 1992 Oxbridge admissions.
It was only in 2019 that women finally made up 50 per cent of the undergraduate body at Oxford for the first time..
I do think Truss has an appealing slightly goofy grin. I suspect personality wise theres more there than it appears, but she's a bit too blandly careful to show it.
First Blue sacking of Truss' term. Tuchel fired by Chelsea.
Looking forward to JRM adding Chelsea manager to his portfolio of jobs. Smart part of town, spending the day working with dysfunctional millionaires, living on past glories, blue, and a complete mess of random parts thrown together in the hope of success.
So how does SKS handle PMQs. Clearly the Tories will be noisy and excited. I would imagine some choice quotes from the campaign, intertwined with some points of detail that the PM might struggle with might be the best route to dent the party. What’s her Achilles heal?
According to the polls, the public's three priorities are the energy crisis, the economy and climate change.
Liz Truss' three priorities according to her speech yesterday are the economy, the energy crisis and the NHS. And she's put Rees-Mogg in charge of climate change policy.
Attack her on climate change, and it's link to the energy crisis. Also on the general decay in the public realm, such as delays to criminal trials, created by twelve years of Tory cuts. The key thing is to tie Truss to the accumulated defects and mistakes of twelve years of Tory government, rather than allow her to present herself as [another] fresh start, not responsible for the problems inherited from the Cameron, May and Johnson governments.
The problem with the bit in bold is that delays to criminal trials are easily explained by lockdown, which Sir Keir not only supported, but wanted to be deeper and for longer.
You clearly don’t work in the law. Or read the news. The pandemic backlog is peanuts. Delays to criminal trials are caused by the Tory closure of courts, an IT system that does not work, a legal aid system that makes it more profitable for a graduate to become a Costa Coffee barista than a criminal barrister (or, indeed, solicitor)…I could go on but, hey, what would I know…I’m only a solicitor.
Criminal barristers median pay is over £80 000 after a few decades practice. They can earn over £40,000 after expenses once they are 3 years into practice.
“ Ministers say a typical criminal barrister would earn £7,000 more a year under the offer, adding that before expenses, median earnings for criminal barristers in 2019-20 were £79,800, although it admits junior barristers often earn a fraction of this.“ (my emphasis)
Median earnings for all barristers are skewed by the mega bucks earned by those at the top end not doing legal aid work. For your average joe who needs legal aid, say a postmaster falsely accused of theft by an incompetent IT system, the truth is a little less glam -
Barrister set to strike ‘earned £7,000 more per year as coffee shop barista’
Median earnings will not be skewed by megabucks earned by a few.
Mean earnings would be.
Median earnings rise over time as overall numbers of practitioners decline. But you can only get on the train if you have the resources to sustain you through the lean - and getting a lot leaner - early years.
I think you'll find there's a lot of people up and down the country who would be happy with even a junior barristers wage, and don't have a lot of resources.
You might only be able to afford a humble lifestyle in those years, but that's what a lot of people live.
I am not sure that a lot of people up and down the country would be happy with an income of £12,000 or so a year. They could perhaps scrape a living on it, but that is somewhat different.
Surely a junior barrister is really still an apprentice? Or do junior barristers hatch fully fledged?
No. A Pupil Barrister is an apprentice. A Junior Barrister is any barrister who is not a QC. So a 30 year call barrister who never made QC (and there are plenty of decent barristers as such) is still a junior.
So how does SKS handle PMQs. Clearly the Tories will be noisy and excited. I would imagine some choice quotes from the campaign, intertwined with some points of detail that the PM might struggle with might be the best route to dent the party. What’s her Achilles heal?
According to the polls, the public's three priorities are the energy crisis, the economy and climate change.
Liz Truss' three priorities according to her speech yesterday are the economy, the energy crisis and the NHS. And she's put Rees-Mogg in charge of climate change policy.
Attack her on climate change, and it's link to the energy crisis. Also on the general decay in the public realm, such as delays to criminal trials, created by twelve years of Tory cuts. The key thing is to tie Truss to the accumulated defects and mistakes of twelve years of Tory government, rather than allow her to present herself as [another] fresh start, not responsible for the problems inherited from the Cameron, May and Johnson governments.
The problem with the bit in bold is that delays to criminal trials are easily explained by lockdown, which Sir Keir not only supported, but wanted to be deeper and for longer.
You clearly don’t work in the law. Or read the news. The pandemic backlog is peanuts. Delays to criminal trials are caused by the Tory closure of courts, an IT system that does not work, a legal aid system that makes it more profitable for a graduate to become a Costa Coffee barista than a criminal barrister (or, indeed, solicitor)…I could go on but, hey, what would I know…I’m only a solicitor.
Criminal barristers median pay is over £80 000 after a few decades practice. They can earn over £40,000 after expenses once they are 3 years into practice.
“ Ministers say a typical criminal barrister would earn £7,000 more a year under the offer, adding that before expenses, median earnings for criminal barristers in 2019-20 were £79,800, although it admits junior barristers often earn a fraction of this.“ (my emphasis)
Median earnings for all barristers are skewed by the mega bucks earned by those at the top end not doing legal aid work. For your average joe who needs legal aid, say a postmaster falsely accused of theft by an incompetent IT system, the truth is a little less glam -
Barrister set to strike ‘earned £7,000 more per year as coffee shop barista’
Median earnings will not be skewed by megabucks earned by a few.
Mean earnings would be.
Median earnings rise over time as overall numbers of practitioners decline. But you can only get on the train if you have the resources to sustain you through the lean - and getting a lot leaner - early years.
FWIW, I agree that the criminal justice system is underfunded, and that incomes for junior criminal barristers are an absolute disgrace. When you include expenses and fees to Chambers, pretty much all junior members of the criminal bar are earning less than the minimum wage. Worse: the money can take a year or two to arrive. So your cash earnings for your first few years are likely to be way, way below what you would earn from flipping burgers.
Only when you have been a barrister for a decade, and built a private practice, will you be earning a reasonable sum. But to get there, realistically, requires financial support from somewhere - usually a reasonably well off family.
It seems to me there are two things going on here. The financial difficulties of early years at the bar (self employed, outgoings, no work, rubbish work) are ancient and the stuff of stories from Dickens onwards. In effect it has skewed the profession towards those with money, those with connections and those with a London/big city home base. It also skews it, among the rest of humanity, towards those with fantastic degrees of self confidence and ambition - risk takers.
Like life none of this is fair.
This is getting conflated with low absolute fee scales at the bottom end of the bar, especially if your assumption is that you should be able to make a living in the first few years knocking around doing these bits and pieces.
Does the bar want to change both these things, or just the second?
The same people that say borrowing is irresponsible and that Labour destroyed the economy want to borrow billions for tax cuts and energy bills.
Okay then, just don't ever claim to be fiscally responsible ever again
It's a sterile debate - there are always two sides to fiscal responsibility anyway. For example, what shafted the balance sheet after the 2008 crash wasn't the borrowing to bail out the banks, much of which was recovered anyway, but rather the collapse in tax revenues.
The same people that say borrowing is irresponsible and that Labour destroyed the economy want to borrow billions for tax cuts and energy bills.
Okay then, just don't ever claim to be fiscally responsible ever again
You haven't answered the question, how do you propose to tax Norway, Qatar and the rest of the non-UK based gas producers that sell us gas for these high prices? There's a lot of bullshit surrounding windfall taxes, as if they were some kind of silver bullet for high energy prices but as yet no one can come up with how they intend to grab £150bn from the Qatari state without sending a gunboat.
I would not fund the entirety through borrowing as Liz Truss is proposing to.
Fine, so who are you proposing to raise taxes on? The government has already put up taxes to basically maximum levels for UK based fossil fuel producers. Are you suggesting we put taxes up on renewables generators, those few companies that took early risks and had the foresight to invest because they realised that oil and gas wasn't a good bet? If not them then who?
Any tax on producers is a tax on those who "had the foresight to invest", even good old national insurance. That does not mean they do not enjoy windfall profits thanks to that nice Mr Putin. Whether it is practicable to tax them is another question.
The Tories have made this country so unbalanced that a working class bloke from the South who lives in London is now posh! A man who goes to football matches and occasionally goes for a drink at the pub.
But not Boris Johnson, oh no he's "one of the people". Liz Truss is from what I can tell more authentically of the people and working class but still the media and people here will call Starmer posh.
Reality check, being a Londoner doesn't make you out of touch or posh, London has working class people who need help just like the Red Wall. This country is ruined.
IMO 'poshness' is an attitude, and not a direct sign of privilege or upbringing. Starmer goes to football matches on free tickets worth ?>£1000? (and then fails to declare them in time). He is always smartly dressed. He gives the impression of being able to afford, and like, the finer things in life.
I have zero problem with any of that. But it does not connect him with the red wall. And whilst London has poor people, many of the people in the red wall see 'London' very differently. AS I know from personal experience.
This is where Rayner could help. Perhaps.
Dressing smartly is something that you will find unites a lot of people with working class roots who have gone up in the world. On the left it is something that really distinguishes the middle-class trots from those who had more humble beginnings. The latter are almost always far better turned out than the former.
Like the 'we didnt have much but kept it clean/too poor to waste dirt' approach.
Would a working class PM leave his short untucked as much as Boris?
And who can forget poshboy Dominic Cummings walking through the door of No10 with his arse almost hanging out?
@francis_scarr Speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Vladimir Putin insists his country "has lost nothing and will lose nothing" by invading Ukraine
He claims that the "polarisation" now taking place in the world will be "solely of benefit"
Did Liz Truss get into Merton College, Oxford, with only two A Levels?
Applications per place for PPE in 2021-22: 8.3.
However back in the day the system was that Oxford would do their own admissions testing 9 months before the public exams and if you passed that, you'd only have to get two Es (E being the lowest possible pass) to get your place. I think this was done to show Oxford's contempt for the public system.
No, 2 Es was to qualify for the Local Authority Grant - nothing to do with attitude to the public system. As you observe most got As.
University Liberal Club. I have not yet been asked to form a government.
the standard offer varied from CCC to BBB in most places. My offer was BBC, though I actually got AAAB.
I did the Oxford entrance exam in November/December 1991 and was given a 2 ‘E’ offer after interview. I took that as an invitation and spent the rest of the Sixth Form getting pissed.
I do wonder what percentage of the increase in top A level grades is grade inflation and what percentage is more motivated or better taught pupils. Has there been any work done on this question?
I suspect the answer is not so much better teaching as more exam focused teaching: for example I use past paper questions all the time now while back in the eighties when I was doing my A-levels the only time I remember seeing a past paper was the mock exam.
Yes, my daughter was all over past papers for her GCSEs. Kids might be smarter too - taking the lead out of petrol must have boosted IQs a bit.
There is clearly big grade inflation - even this year when grades tightened after the farce of covid grades , 50% of entrants to a levels got A* or A . Which is fine as long as it is acknowledged so that employers etc dont discriminate against older job applicants
Employers should not be looking at exam grades once an applicant is more than a year or so out of school. Certainly anyone using grades to compare a 30-year-old with a 20-year-old is in dire need of an HR department.
I'm not sure anyone is in dire need of HR But it would be dumb.
but it follows on - i am still applying for jobs (at 52) where I have to list my O and A levels and many jobs still want degree (which is easier to obtain now that in was 30 ,40 ,years ago) .
Asking for a degree is where age discrimination lies.
We don't FWIW. Degree or equivalent experience minimum for most roles, masters or equiv. exp. for many and PhD or equiv. exp. for some. At all levels, we've employed older people who don't have the bit of paper, but clearly have the equivalent skills from their past experience (some have then gone on to get the bit of paper, too, supported by us).
So how does SKS handle PMQs. Clearly the Tories will be noisy and excited. I would imagine some choice quotes from the campaign, intertwined with some points of detail that the PM might struggle with might be the best route to dent the party. What’s her Achilles heal?
According to the polls, the public's three priorities are the energy crisis, the economy and climate change.
Liz Truss' three priorities according to her speech yesterday are the economy, the energy crisis and the NHS. And she's put Rees-Mogg in charge of climate change policy.
Attack her on climate change, and it's link to the energy crisis. Also on the general decay in the public realm, such as delays to criminal trials, created by twelve years of Tory cuts. The key thing is to tie Truss to the accumulated defects and mistakes of twelve years of Tory government, rather than allow her to present herself as [another] fresh start, not responsible for the problems inherited from the Cameron, May and Johnson governments.
The problem with the bit in bold is that delays to criminal trials are easily explained by lockdown, which Sir Keir not only supported, but wanted to be deeper and for longer.
You clearly don’t work in the law. Or read the news. The pandemic backlog is peanuts. Delays to criminal trials are caused by the Tory closure of courts, an IT system that does not work, a legal aid system that makes it more profitable for a graduate to become a Costa Coffee barista than a criminal barrister (or, indeed, solicitor)…I could go on but, hey, what would I know…I’m only a solicitor.
Criminal barristers median pay is over £80 000 after a few decades practice. They can earn over £40,000 after expenses once they are 3 years into practice.
“ Ministers say a typical criminal barrister would earn £7,000 more a year under the offer, adding that before expenses, median earnings for criminal barristers in 2019-20 were £79,800, although it admits junior barristers often earn a fraction of this.“ (my emphasis)
Median earnings for all barristers are skewed by the mega bucks earned by those at the top end not doing legal aid work. For your average joe who needs legal aid, say a postmaster falsely accused of theft by an incompetent IT system, the truth is a little less glam -
Barrister set to strike ‘earned £7,000 more per year as coffee shop barista’
Median earnings will not be skewed by megabucks earned by a few.
Mean earnings would be.
Median earnings rise over time as overall numbers of practitioners decline. But you can only get on the train if you have the resources to sustain you through the lean - and getting a lot leaner - early years.
I think you'll find there's a lot of people up and down the country who would be happy with even a junior barristers wage, and don't have a lot of resources.
You might only be able to afford a humble lifestyle in those years, but that's what a lot of people live.
I am not sure that a lot of people up and down the country would be happy with an income of £12,000 or so a year. They could perhaps scrape a living on it, but that is somewhat different.
Surely a junior barrister is really still an apprentice? Or do junior barristers hatch fully fledged?
No. Most barristers are junior barristers. It just means barristers who are not QCs. Apprentice barristers are called pupils (check with DavidL for Scottish terminology).
ETA scooped by Doug Seal. Rumpole of the Bailey, once our most famous fictional barrister, was a 60-70-year-old junior.
I do think Truss has an appealing slightly goofy grin. I suspect personality wise theres more there than it appears, but she's a bit too blandly careful to show it.
Really? Liz's grin makes me shudder. I think it's those tiny, blazing eyes atop of it.
Truss did not come from some poor background. She's middle class.
As for the members of her Cabinet who are either women or from an ethnic minority, let's see how diverse they really are: -
1. Chancellor - Kwarteng - privately educated at one of the most expensive London schools, then Eton and Cambridge. Became a financial analyst in the City. Parents: barrister & economist. 2. Home Secretary - Braverman: parents: nurse & civil servant, uncle was the Mauritian High Commissioner to Britain, educated at a fee-paying school, Cambridge and the Sorbonne, a barrister. 3. FS - Cleverley: privately educated, army, then a degree in hospitality management at a polytechnic. Set up a publishing company. 4. Health - Coffey: independent Catholic school, Oxford, chemistry degree. 5. Cop26 - Sharma: independent school for his education, a physics and electronics degree from Salford. 6. International Trade - Badenoch: largely educated abroad, well connected middle class parents (a GP and Professor), studied engineering, then went into IT and banking. 7. DEFRA - Jayawardena: comprehensive education, then banking. 8. Transport - Trevelyan: private education, then accountancy and PwC 9. Culture - Donelan: state educated, politics & history degree from York then marketing. 10. Work & Pensions - Chloe Smith: state educated, English degree from York then management consultancy.
It is not really as diverse as all that. Cleverley has probably the most diverse background of those in the top 4 positions.
It is very representative of a certain slice of the English middle class. Of the wider nation - England, let alone, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland - much less so.
The Tories have made this country so unbalanced that a working class bloke from the South who lives in London is now posh! A man who goes to football matches and occasionally goes for a drink at the pub.
But not Boris Johnson, oh no he's "one of the people". Liz Truss is from what I can tell more authentically of the people and working class but still the media and people here will call Starmer posh.
Reality check, being a Londoner doesn't make you out of touch or posh, London has working class people who need help just like the Red Wall. This country is ruined.
IMO 'poshness' is an attitude, and not a direct sign of privilege or upbringing. Starmer goes to football matches on free tickets worth ?>£1000? (and then fails to declare them in time). He is always smartly dressed. He gives the impression of being able to afford, and like, the finer things in life.
I have zero problem with any of that. But it does not connect him with the red wall. And whilst London has poor people, many of the people in the red wall see 'London' very differently. AS I know from personal experience.
This is where Rayner could help. Perhaps.
Labour is currently 17 points ahead in the Red Wall.
I dont think people care whether someone is posh or not, even considering many non posh are called posh.
If they like or do not dislike someone they'll excuse poshness, if they dont like them theyll do the opposite.
First Blue sacking of Truss' term. Tuchel fired by Chelsea.
Really - I did not expect that
Madness. Champions League winner.
So was Di Matteo! Just like Parker at Bmouth, went against his players too strongly in interviews. Leipzig job just available as well, wouldn't be surprised if Tuchel was angling for the sack when he did his media comments yesterday.
@francis_scarr Speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Vladimir Putin insists his country "has lost nothing and will lose nothing" by invading Ukraine
He claims that the "polarisation" now taking place in the world will be "solely of benefit"
First Blue sacking of Truss' term. Tuchel fired by Chelsea.
Really - I did not expect that
I would imagine Pochettino would be the sensible available replacement.
Reading Chelsea might go for Potter.
Poch is loyal, he won't want to upset the fans at Spurs by managing the club they hate the most. I know Arsenal are their rivals but it is Chelsea they hate.
Saw the discussion last night on solar farms. Without making a call on whether it's worth it or not, I figured that as the numbers were effectively meaningless to me (is 10,000 acres a lot of farmland on the scale of the country? Is the amount of power a lot on the scale of the country?)
10,000 acres looks to be 0.043% of the farmland in the UK. The annual power output looks to be 0.65% of the current power level of the UK.
So, if we had fifteen of these, we'd get 10% of all current power for the UK at the cost of 0.43% of the farmland. It would, logically, be the least productive 0.43% of the farmland, because farmers aren't stupid.
It's then up to people to make the call as to whether that trade-off is worth it.
First Blue sacking of Truss' term. Tuchel fired by Chelsea.
Really - I did not expect that
I would imagine Pochettino would be the sensible available replacement.
Reading Chelsea might go for Potter.
Poch is loyal, he won't want to upset the fans at Spurs by managing the club they hate the most. I know Arsenal are their rivals but it is Chelsea they hate.
The energy announcement due tomorrow will be by Truss and JRM
Timing and details to be announced
So even if the plan is decent without obvious flaws (which is incredibly unlikely) - the smugness of the presentation will cost the Tories a few million votes...
The energy announcement due tomorrow will be by Truss and JRM
Timing and details to be announced
So even if the plan is decent without obvious flaws (which is incredibly unlikely) - the smugness of the presentation will cost the Tories a few million votes...
I really have great concerns about JRM, indeed the only misstep in her appointments as far as I can see
@francis_scarr Speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Vladimir Putin insists his country "has lost nothing and will lose nothing" by invading Ukraine
He claims that the "polarisation" now taking place in the world will be "solely of benefit"
Quite shockingly insensitive to his own lost troops and their families if that's verbatim.
You're shocked that a notorious sociopath is insensitive ?
I wouldn't say I'm shocked, perhaps 'appallingly' would have been a better word. I would also say I've not seen a full transcript - he may reference the sacrifices elsewhere.
So how does SKS handle PMQs. Clearly the Tories will be noisy and excited. I would imagine some choice quotes from the campaign, intertwined with some points of detail that the PM might struggle with might be the best route to dent the party. What’s her Achilles heal?
According to the polls, the public's three priorities are the energy crisis, the economy and climate change.
Liz Truss' three priorities according to her speech yesterday are the economy, the energy crisis and the NHS. And she's put Rees-Mogg in charge of climate change policy.
Attack her on climate change, and it's link to the energy crisis. Also on the general decay in the public realm, such as delays to criminal trials, created by twelve years of Tory cuts. The key thing is to tie Truss to the accumulated defects and mistakes of twelve years of Tory government, rather than allow her to present herself as [another] fresh start, not responsible for the problems inherited from the Cameron, May and Johnson governments.
The problem with the bit in bold is that delays to criminal trials are easily explained by lockdown, which Sir Keir not only supported, but wanted to be deeper and for longer.
You clearly don’t work in the law. Or read the news. The pandemic backlog is peanuts. Delays to criminal trials are caused by the Tory closure of courts, an IT system that does not work, a legal aid system that makes it more profitable for a graduate to become a Costa Coffee barista than a criminal barrister (or, indeed, solicitor)…I could go on but, hey, what would I know…I’m only a solicitor.
Criminal barristers median pay is over £80 000 after a few decades practice. They can earn over £40,000 after expenses once they are 3 years into practice.
“ Ministers say a typical criminal barrister would earn £7,000 more a year under the offer, adding that before expenses, median earnings for criminal barristers in 2019-20 were £79,800, although it admits junior barristers often earn a fraction of this.“ (my emphasis)
Median earnings for all barristers are skewed by the mega bucks earned by those at the top end not doing legal aid work. For your average joe who needs legal aid, say a postmaster falsely accused of theft by an incompetent IT system, the truth is a little less glam -
Barrister set to strike ‘earned £7,000 more per year as coffee shop barista’
Median earnings will not be skewed by megabucks earned by a few.
Mean earnings would be.
Median earnings rise over time as overall numbers of practitioners decline. But you can only get on the train if you have the resources to sustain you through the lean - and getting a lot leaner - early years.
FWIW, I agree that the criminal justice system is underfunded, and that incomes for junior criminal barristers are an absolute disgrace. When you include expenses and fees to Chambers, pretty much all junior members of the criminal bar are earning less than the minimum wage. Worse: the money can take a year or two to arrive. So your cash earnings for your first few years are likely to be way, way below what you would earn from flipping burgers.
Only when you have been a barrister for a decade, and built a private practice, will you be earning a reasonable sum. But to get there, realistically, requires financial support from somewhere - usually a reasonably well off family.
Surely that is the whole point of the policy? It is working well and keeping the oiks out?
Can someone enlighten me as to what has gone wrong with the criminal justice system?
I have done two spells of jury service, about twenty and six years ago respectively. I sat on four cases: they involved a punch-up outside a night club, a domestic argument in which someone received a small knife wound, the theft of an expensive child's push-buggy, and - the most interesting one - the handling of £51,000 in counterfeit money twenty pound notes. None of these cases appeared to have been sitting around for years waiting for a Court or anything much else before they could proceed.
Now I hear that an alleged child rapist does not have his case heard for over three years because the system is that far behind and in difficulties.
Truss did not come from some poor background. She's middle class.
As for the members of her Cabinet who are either women or from an ethnic minority, let's see how diverse they really are: -
1. Chancellor - Kwarteng - privately educated at one of the most expensive London schools, then Eton and Cambridge. Became a financial analyst in the City. Parents: barrister & economist. 2. Home Secretary - Braverman: parents: nurse & civil servant, uncle was the Mauritian High Commissioner to Britain, educated at a fee-paying school, Cambridge and the Sorbonne, a barrister. 3. FS - Cleverley: privately educated, army, then a degree in hospitality management at a polytechnic. Set up a publishing company. 4. Health - Coffey: independent Catholic school, Oxford, chemistry degree. 5. Cop26 - Sharma: independent school for his education, a physics and electronics degree from Salford. 6. International Trade - Badenoch: largely educated abroad, well connected middle class parents (a GP and Professor), studied engineering, then went into IT and banking. 7. DEFRA - Jayawardena: comprehensive education, then banking. 8. Transport - Trevelyan: private education, then accountancy and PwC 9. Culture - Donelan: state educated, politics & history degree from York then marketing. 10. Work & Pensions - Chloe Smith: state educated, English degree from York then management consultancy.
It is not really as diverse as all that. Cleverley has probably the most diverse background of those in the top 4 positions.
It is very representative of a certain slice of the English middle class. Of the wider nation - England, let alone, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland - much less so.
A very uniform age profile as well. But we can and should applaud the positives even when its far from perfect. The Tories have done remarkably well in bringing women and minorities into the cabinet, well done.
This advance in Kharkiv oblast seems to be visually confirmed, and if the UKR can hold it, significantly exposes the Russian forces around Izium to encirclement. A key cross roads.
Did Liz Truss get into Merton College, Oxford, with only two A Levels?
Applications per place for PPE in 2021-22: 8.3.
I expect there was a third one that wasn't in the reporting?
However back in the day the system was that Oxford would do their own admissions testing 9 months before the public exams and if you passed that, you'd only have to get two Es (E being the lowest possible pass) to get your place. I think this was done to show Oxford's contempt for the public system.
Being insufferably nerdy the kids who got into Oxford nearly always got high grades like AAA or the occasional AAB. But there were always rumours of some DGIF gigachad who got the place and then put in so little effort that they only got two E grades. If Truss decided she couldn't be arsed to show up for one of the exams that would indicate very large ladyballs and Mr Putin should be careful not to offend her any more than he already has.
We also get Truss’ own A level results (presumably having been recently exhumed in Gavin Williamson’s Mum’s attic?) – she achieved an A in English, and A in Maths, a B in German and a C in Further Maths. Under her own plans, she would not have got a guaranteed interview (much less three!) and would most likely have not attended Oxford.
AAB in 1996 from a girl from a Comprehensive school -- almost every Oxbridge College would have been absolutely delighted to receive such an excellent application.
A* at A Level only started in 2010, and most folks do 3 A levels (so it seems fair to discount her worst one).
Liz Truss, whatever her politics, has done well to get where she is.
It does seem worth celebrating the *first* Comprehensive educated PM.
And for Labour, it just keeps happening. Why do these 'firsts' never happen to them?
AABC > AAB. C is a disappointing grade, but good for her for doing four A Levels. Nothing suspicious there then. This perhaps explains how she has a bit of a thing about Further Maths. (Which is not to her discredit. She's right that more students should study FM.) She probably pulled her socks up, given how she took a course in mathematical logic later.
The "comprehensive first" is misleading. James Callaghan went to a non-selective state school and didn't go to university.
Callaghan and Major did not go to University.
Callaghan does seem to be the only PM who went to a Secondary Modern.
Given the facts as reported on wiki, I'd certainly agree that Jim Callaghan's background was unambiguously very poor & working class.
And his achievement in getting to the heights of PM was then a truly remarkable one.
Thanks for pointing this out. It was very different times -- but I was not aware that Jim Callaghan's early life was such a struggle.
He was my grandparents' next door neighbour in SE London. Lovely bloke.
Jim Callaghan was the answer to my 1st question when I made my tv debut - also my tv swansong - on Fifteen To One. I froze and blurted out Michael Foot. Failed on the next 2 as well - didn't even manage a guess - and was thereby eliminated at the earliest possible juncture, 15 seconds of screen time, having uttered just the 2 words, "Michael Foot". What a letdown for friends and family when they gathered round to watch the episode. But still, there I was, On The Telly. And if I had said "Jim Callaghan" - which I should have because it was easy and on politics - I reckon I'd have relaxed, got on a roll and gone deep. So, that's what I mainly remember him for.
The Tories have made this country so unbalanced that a working class bloke from the South who lives in London is now posh! A man who goes to football matches and occasionally goes for a drink at the pub.
But not Boris Johnson, oh no he's "one of the people". Liz Truss is from what I can tell more authentically of the people and working class but still the media and people here will call Starmer posh.
Reality check, being a Londoner doesn't make you out of touch or posh, London has working class people who need help just like the Red Wall. This country is ruined.
IMO 'poshness' is an attitude, and not a direct sign of privilege or upbringing. Starmer goes to football matches on free tickets worth ?>£1000? (and then fails to declare them in time). He is always smartly dressed. He gives the impression of being able to afford, and like, the finer things in life.
I have zero problem with any of that. But it does not connect him with the red wall. And whilst London has poor people, many of the people in the red wall see 'London' very differently. AS I know from personal experience.
This is where Rayner could help. Perhaps.
Labour is currently 17 points ahead in the Red Wall.
I dont think people care whether someone is posh or not, even considering many non posh are called posh.
If they like or do not dislike someone they'll excuse poshness, if they dont like them theyll do the opposite.
Politician attacks working class politician = Everybody attacks them for being elitist.
Although everybody rightly hates poshos who pretend to be ordinary working class people.
Posh is relative. At my school (in a Yorkshire pit village*), I was posh: dad social worker, mum librarian, themselves from respectable WC families; books in the house, broadsheet paper. Going out to uni, I felt less so - then moved to London and tried to get job in publishing and realised that my concept of posh/privilege was entirely out of whack.
*former pit village actually, with all that came with it.
First Blue sacking of Truss' term. Tuchel fired by Chelsea.
Really - I did not expect that
I would imagine Pochettino would be the sensible available replacement.
Reading Chelsea might go for Potter.
Poch is loyal, he won't want to upset the fans at Spurs by managing the club they hate the most. I know Arsenal are their rivals but it is Chelsea they hate.
First Blue sacking of Truss' term. Tuchel fired by Chelsea.
Really - I did not expect that
I would imagine Pochettino would be the sensible available replacement.
Reading Chelsea might go for Potter.
Poch is loyal, he won't want to upset the fans at Spurs by managing the club they hate the most. I know Arsenal are their rivals but it is Chelsea they hate.
Potter is the finest manager in the country. Lacks only a playing career and media quotability, or this would be widely recognised.
Truss did not come from some poor background. She's middle class.
As for the members of her Cabinet who are either women or from an ethnic minority, let's see how diverse they really are: -
1. Chancellor - Kwarteng - privately educated at one of the most expensive London schools, then Eton and Cambridge. Became a financial analyst in the City. Parents: barrister & economist. 2. Home Secretary - Braverman: parents: nurse & civil servant, uncle was the Mauritian High Commissioner to Britain, educated at a fee-paying school, Cambridge and the Sorbonne, a barrister. 3. FS - Cleverley: privately educated, army, then a degree in hospitality management at a polytechnic. Set up a publishing company. 4. Health - Coffey: independent Catholic school, Oxford, chemistry degree. 5. Cop26 - Sharma: independent school for his education, a physics and electronics degree from Salford. 6. International Trade - Badenoch: largely educated abroad, well connected middle class parents (a GP and Professor), studied engineering, then went into IT and banking. 7. DEFRA - Jayawardena: comprehensive education, then banking. 8. Transport - Trevelyan: private education, then accountancy and PwC 9. Culture - Donelan: state educated, politics & history degree from York then marketing. 10. Work & Pensions - Chloe Smith: state educated, English degree from York then management consultancy.
It is not really as diverse as all that. Cleverley has probably the most diverse background of those in the top 4 positions.
It is very representative of a certain slice of the English middle class. Of the wider nation - England, let alone, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland - much less so.
A very uniform age profile as well. But we can and should applaud the positives even when its far from perfect. The Tories have done remarkably well in bringing women and minorities into the cabinet, well done.
Cameron's revenge, as I posted a few days ago. The Tories ran a campaign partly based on Crosbyite White identity politics in 2019, but have some of the more ethnically and gender diverse parliamentary party Cameron made huge efforts to secure.
During the leadership campaign, Truss promised to have a Cabinet-level Minister for the North, a promise which seems to have been broken. Perhaps Starmer could ask her why at PMQ's today.
Did Liz Truss get into Merton College, Oxford, with only two A Levels?
Applications per place for PPE in 2021-22: 8.3.
I expect there was a third one that wasn't in the reporting?
However back in the day the system was that Oxford would do their own admissions testing 9 months before the public exams and if you passed that, you'd only have to get two Es (E being the lowest possible pass) to get your place. I think this was done to show Oxford's contempt for the public system.
Being insufferably nerdy the kids who got into Oxford nearly always got high grades like AAA or the occasional AAB. But there were always rumours of some DGIF gigachad who got the place and then put in so little effort that they only got two E grades. If Truss decided she couldn't be arsed to show up for one of the exams that would indicate very large ladyballs and Mr Putin should be careful not to offend her any more than he already has.
We also get Truss’ own A level results (presumably having been recently exhumed in Gavin Williamson’s Mum’s attic?) – she achieved an A in English, and A in Maths, a B in German and a C in Further Maths. Under her own plans, she would not have got a guaranteed interview (much less three!) and would most likely have not attended Oxford.
AAB in 1996 from a girl from a Comprehensive school -- almost every Oxbridge College would have been absolutely delighted to receive such an excellent application.
A* at A Level only started in 2010, and most folks do 3 A levels (so it seems fair to discount her worst one).
Liz Truss, whatever her politics, has done well to get where she is.
It does seem worth celebrating the *first* Comprehensive educated PM.
And for Labour, it just keeps happening. Why do these 'firsts' never happen to them?
AABC > AAB. C is a disappointing grade, but good for her for doing four A Levels. Nothing suspicious there then. This perhaps explains how she has a bit of a thing about Further Maths. (Which is not to her discredit. She's right that more students should study FM.) She probably pulled her socks up, given how she took a course in mathematical logic later.
The "comprehensive first" is misleading. James Callaghan went to a non-selective state school and didn't go to university.
Callaghan and Major did not go to University.
Callaghan does seem to be the only PM who went to a Secondary Modern.
Given the facts as reported on wiki, I'd certainly agree that Jim Callaghan's background was unambiguously very poor & working class.
And his achievement in getting to the heights of PM was then a truly remarkable one.
Thanks for pointing this out. It was very different times -- but I was not aware that Jim Callaghan's early life was such a struggle.
He made up for his humble beginnings with his connections to Julian Hodge. Callaghan was a bad socialist and a very bad man.
Truss did not come from some poor background. She's middle class.
As for the members of her Cabinet who are either women or from an ethnic minority, let's see how diverse they really are: -
1. Chancellor - Kwarteng - privately educated at one of the most expensive London schools, then Eton and Cambridge. Became a financial analyst in the City. Parents: barrister & economist. 2. Home Secretary - Braverman: parents: nurse & civil servant, uncle was the Mauritian High Commissioner to Britain, educated at a fee-paying school, Cambridge and the Sorbonne, a barrister. 3. FS - Cleverley: privately educated, army, then a degree in hospitality management at a polytechnic. Set up a publishing company. 4. Health - Coffey: independent Catholic school, Oxford, chemistry degree. 5. Cop26 - Sharma: independent school for his education, a physics and electronics degree from Salford. 6. International Trade - Badenoch: largely educated abroad, well connected middle class parents (a GP and Professor), studied engineering, then went into IT and banking. 7. DEFRA - Jayawardena: comprehensive education, then banking. 8. Transport - Trevelyan: private education, then accountancy and PwC 9. Culture - Donelan: state educated, politics & history degree from York then marketing. 10. Work & Pensions - Chloe Smith: state educated, English degree from York then management consultancy.
It is not really as diverse as all that. Cleverley has probably the most diverse background of those in the top 4 positions.
It is very representative of a certain slice of the English middle class. Of the wider nation - England, let alone, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland - much less so.
It is probably more reflective of the fact that non-white people have been able to assimilate successfully into the English middle class. Something worth celebrating but it helps reinforce an idea that social mobility/the glass ceiling is not really about race.
During the leadership campaign, Truss promised to have a Cabinet-level Minister for the North, a promise which seems to have been broken. Perhaps Starmer could ask her why at PMQ's today.
We need more discussion about reducing usage. I saw somewhere that Germany had cut energy (gas?) usage by 15%.
The article carefully describes the problem caused by the Tory/Labour solution - it isn't really possible to disagree; then describes how to solve the problem of the poor, leaving other households to pay up, (while voting Labour next time); and is silent altogether on how to deal with multitudes of small businesses, Tory voters all, going bankrupt. That silence tells it all.
I watched a couple of games on BT SPORT recently (courtesy of freebies from Virgin). On both occasions, the underdogs went a goal up and shut up shop. Wasting time by falling over at the merest touch and playing dead. Embarrassing. If they were on the London underground, they'd never get off the floor.
Why can't the referees send them off. Newcastle were one of the worst culprits and complained when the referee added eight minutes extra time. He could have added an hour, and left them with two players.
During the leadership campaign, Truss promised to have a Cabinet-level Minister for the North, a promise which seems to have been broken. Perhaps Starmer could ask her why at PMQ's today.
Jake Berry?
Chair of the Tory party and Minister without portfolio. So no.
So how does SKS handle PMQs. Clearly the Tories will be noisy and excited. I would imagine some choice quotes from the campaign, intertwined with some points of detail that the PM might struggle with might be the best route to dent the party. What’s her Achilles heal?
According to the polls, the public's three priorities are the energy crisis, the economy and climate change.
Liz Truss' three priorities according to her speech yesterday are the economy, the energy crisis and the NHS. And she's put Rees-Mogg in charge of climate change policy.
Attack her on climate change, and it's link to the energy crisis. Also on the general decay in the public realm, such as delays to criminal trials, created by twelve years of Tory cuts. The key thing is to tie Truss to the accumulated defects and mistakes of twelve years of Tory government, rather than allow her to present herself as [another] fresh start, not responsible for the problems inherited from the Cameron, May and Johnson governments.
The problem with the bit in bold is that delays to criminal trials are easily explained by lockdown, which Sir Keir not only supported, but wanted to be deeper and for longer.
You clearly don’t work in the law. Or read the news. The pandemic backlog is peanuts. Delays to criminal trials are caused by the Tory closure of courts, an IT system that does not work, a legal aid system that makes it more profitable for a graduate to become a Costa Coffee barista than a criminal barrister (or, indeed, solicitor)…I could go on but, hey, what would I know…I’m only a solicitor.
Criminal barristers median pay is over £80 000 after a few decades practice. They can earn over £40,000 after expenses once they are 3 years into practice.
“ Ministers say a typical criminal barrister would earn £7,000 more a year under the offer, adding that before expenses, median earnings for criminal barristers in 2019-20 were £79,800, although it admits junior barristers often earn a fraction of this.“ (my emphasis)
Median earnings for all barristers are skewed by the mega bucks earned by those at the top end not doing legal aid work. For your average joe who needs legal aid, say a postmaster falsely accused of theft by an incompetent IT system, the truth is a little less glam -
Barrister set to strike ‘earned £7,000 more per year as coffee shop barista’
Median earnings will not be skewed by megabucks earned by a few.
Mean earnings would be.
Median earnings rise over time as overall numbers of practitioners decline. But you can only get on the train if you have the resources to sustain you through the lean - and getting a lot leaner - early years.
FWIW, I agree that the criminal justice system is underfunded, and that incomes for junior criminal barristers are an absolute disgrace. When you include expenses and fees to Chambers, pretty much all junior members of the criminal bar are earning less than the minimum wage. Worse: the money can take a year or two to arrive. So your cash earnings for your first few years are likely to be way, way below what you would earn from flipping burgers.
Only when you have been a barrister for a decade, and built a private practice, will you be earning a reasonable sum. But to get there, realistically, requires financial support from somewhere - usually a reasonably well off family.
Surely that is the whole point of the policy? It is working well and keeping the oiks out?
Can someone enlighten me as to what has gone wrong with the criminal justice system?
I have done two spells of jury service, about twenty and six years ago respectively. I sat on four cases: they involved a punch-up outside a night club, a domestic argument in which someone received a small knife wound, the theft of an expensive child's push-buggy, and - the most interesting one - the handling of £51,000 in counterfeit money twenty pound notes. None of these cases appeared to have been sitting around for years waiting for a Court or anything much else before they could proceed.
Now I hear that an alleged child rapist does not have his case heard for over three years because the system is that far behind and in difficulties.
The Tories have made this country so unbalanced that a working class bloke from the South who lives in London is now posh! A man who goes to football matches and occasionally goes for a drink at the pub.
But not Boris Johnson, oh no he's "one of the people". Liz Truss is from what I can tell more authentically of the people and working class but still the media and people here will call Starmer posh.
Reality check, being a Londoner doesn't make you out of touch or posh, London has working class people who need help just like the Red Wall. This country is ruined.
IMO 'poshness' is an attitude, and not a direct sign of privilege or upbringing. Starmer goes to football matches on free tickets worth ?>£1000? (and then fails to declare them in time). He is always smartly dressed. He gives the impression of being able to afford, and like, the finer things in life.
I have zero problem with any of that. But it does not connect him with the red wall. And whilst London has poor people, many of the people in the red wall see 'London' very differently. AS I know from personal experience.
This is where Rayner could help. Perhaps.
Labour is currently 17 points ahead in the Red Wall.
I dont think people care whether someone is posh or not, even considering many non posh are called posh.
If they like or do not dislike someone they'll excuse poshness, if they dont like them theyll do the opposite.
We need more discussion about reducing usage. I saw somewhere that Germany had cut energy (gas?) usage by 15%.
At £2,500 usage will drop significantly. The idea people will only stop using energy if we let the average bill reach £6,000 is one of the weirder bits of pb consensus wisdom.
Truss did not come from some poor background. She's middle class.
As for the members of her Cabinet who are either women or from an ethnic minority, let's see how diverse they really are: -
1. Chancellor - Kwarteng - privately educated at one of the most expensive London schools, then Eton and Cambridge. Became a financial analyst in the City. Parents: barrister & economist. 2. Home Secretary - Braverman: parents: nurse & civil servant, uncle was the Mauritian High Commissioner to Britain, educated at a fee-paying school, Cambridge and the Sorbonne, a barrister. 3. FS - Cleverley: privately educated, army, then a degree in hospitality management at a polytechnic. Set up a publishing company. 4. Health - Coffey: independent Catholic school, Oxford, chemistry degree. 5. Cop26 - Sharma: independent school for his education, a physics and electronics degree from Salford. 6. International Trade - Badenoch: largely educated abroad, well connected middle class parents (a GP and Professor), studied engineering, then went into IT and banking. 7. DEFRA - Jayawardena: comprehensive education, then banking. 8. Transport - Trevelyan: private education, then accountancy and PwC 9. Culture - Donelan: state educated, politics & history degree from York then marketing. 10. Work & Pensions - Chloe Smith: state educated, English degree from York then management consultancy.
It is not really as diverse as all that. Cleverley has probably the most diverse background of those in the top 4 positions.
It is very representative of a certain slice of the English middle class. Of the wider nation - England, let alone, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland - much less so.
It is probably more reflective of the fact that non-white people have been able to assimilate successfully into the English middle class. Something worth celebrating but it helps reinforce an idea that social mobility/the glass ceiling is not really about race.
Class is IMO far more determinative of your chances in Britain than pretty much anything else. But it's the one that gets talked about least in diversity training courses, certainly the ones I've been on, and is a much tougher nut to crack, even if the will were there, which I often doubt.
The Tories have made this country so unbalanced that a working class bloke from the South who lives in London is now posh! A man who goes to football matches and occasionally goes for a drink at the pub.
But not Boris Johnson, oh no he's "one of the people". Liz Truss is from what I can tell more authentically of the people and working class but still the media and people here will call Starmer posh.
Reality check, being a Londoner doesn't make you out of touch or posh, London has working class people who need help just like the Red Wall. This country is ruined.
IMO 'poshness' is an attitude, and not a direct sign of privilege or upbringing. Starmer goes to football matches on free tickets worth ?>£1000? (and then fails to declare them in time). He is always smartly dressed. He gives the impression of being able to afford, and like, the finer things in life.
I have zero problem with any of that. But it does not connect him with the red wall. And whilst London has poor people, many of the people in the red wall see 'London' very differently. AS I know from personal experience.
This is where Rayner could help. Perhaps.
Labour is currently 17 points ahead in the Red Wall.
I dont think people care whether someone is posh or not, even considering many non posh are called posh.
If they like or do not dislike someone they'll excuse poshness, if they dont like them theyll do the opposite.
Politician attacks working class politician = Everybody attacks them for being elitist.
Although everybody rightly hates poshos who pretend to be ordinary working class people.
Posh is relative. At my school (in a Yorkshire pit village*), I was posh: dad social worker, mum librarian, themselves from respectable WC families; books in the house, broadsheet paper. Going out to uni, I felt less so - then moved to London and tried to get job in publishing and realised that my concept of posh/privilege was entirely out of whack.
*former pit village actually, with all that came with it.
It was very good for me, as a middle-class youth from the Southeast (although admittedly Essex), to go for further education to Sunderland. Showed me a completely different selection of lives.
(My grandfather had left the mines by that time to become a Co-op insurance rep.)
Comments
That ought to then mean that renewable is profitable, which drives investment, which means we stop using gas, which sorts out climate change and ultimately drops the price.
The "comprehensive first" is misleading. James Callaghan went to a non-selective state school and didn't go to university.
Would a working class PM leave his short untucked as much as Boris?
Okay then
I want go get my Tory poll lead bet in early
And when you do, here's a question: in what ways do you think Starmer connects with red-wall voters?
According to reports, some of the Met's finest then turned up (along with the security guards for the building and, presumably, the cleaners who would have to clean up this disgusting mess).
Can we safely assume that they will be gathering the evidence to charge those involved in the protest with the - at least - three offences committed by them?
And while pondering that question we might wonder which genius thought that such a display would persuade women to share their space with people behaving like this?
Swing back normally happens in election year, not before. See 2010-2015.
Angela Rayner would connect much better, and besides she does witchcraft across the Commons aisle so she'd have my support.
I think his upbringing is modest and he's a hard worker.
I think he's moved Labour to the centre ground.
I think he's a normal chap.
So yes I do think he connects with them, you don't because you don't like him.
So now tell me, how does a right wing Thatcherite connect with the Red Wall when they voted against such politics for thirty years?
Energy prices for poor people, let's make the poor pay.
Callaghan does seem to be the only PM who went to a Secondary Modern.
Given the facts as reported on wiki, I'd certainly agree that Jim Callaghan's background was unambiguously very poor & working class.
And his achievement in getting to the heights of PM was then a truly remarkable one.
Thanks for pointing this out. It was very different times -- but I was not aware that Jim Callaghan's early life was such a struggle.
Only when you have been a barrister for a decade, and built a private practice, will you be earning a reasonable sum. But to get there, realistically, requires financial support from somewhere - usually a reasonably well off family.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1214173940148580353
Tuchel fired by Chelsea.
We live in a weak world where a legitimate massive crisis like the gas price increase can be pretend to be totally solved by just err "borrowing" by the government. Of course what needs ot happen and eventually will have to is cuts in government spending (taxation is at an all time high so that cannot be done anymore) - why we are still funding the amount of non-jobs in the public sector i do not know -nobody really wants period officers for instance , male or female
Who was the biggest backer of removing the post-pandemic uplift to Universal Credit, as well as repressing the DWP's own internal report suggesting welfare sanctions achieved nothing, except extending poverty ? Step forward one Therese Coffey, best friend of our new PM and new Deputy Prime Minister.
And he is not 'normal'. What is more, I don't want a 'normal' person as PM: because to be a good PM, you need a set of skills that most people do not have (and we also get into the HHGTTG 'as soon as we decide what is normal' problem).
Yes, I think Truss will have problems connecting with the Red Wall as well, for different reasons. But that does not mean Starmer won't appeal much, either.
It was only in 2019 that women finally made up 50 per cent of the undergraduate body at Oxford for the first time..
Like life none of this is fair.
This is getting conflated with low absolute fee scales at the bottom end of the bar, especially if your assumption is that you should be able to make a living in the first few years knocking around doing these bits and pieces.
Does the bar want to change both these things, or just the second?
For example, what shafted the balance sheet after the 2008 crash wasn't the borrowing to bail out the banks, much of which was recovered anyway, but rather the collapse in tax revenues.
ETA scooped by Doug Seal. Rumpole of the Bailey, once our most famous fictional barrister, was a 60-70-year-old junior.
As for the members of her Cabinet who are either women or from an ethnic minority, let's see how diverse they really are: -
1. Chancellor - Kwarteng - privately educated at one of the most expensive London schools, then Eton and Cambridge. Became a financial analyst in the City. Parents: barrister & economist.
2. Home Secretary - Braverman: parents: nurse & civil servant, uncle was the Mauritian High Commissioner to Britain, educated at a fee-paying school, Cambridge and the Sorbonne, a barrister.
3. FS - Cleverley: privately educated, army, then a degree in hospitality management at a polytechnic. Set up a publishing company.
4. Health - Coffey: independent Catholic school, Oxford, chemistry degree.
5. Cop26 - Sharma: independent school for his education, a physics and electronics degree from Salford.
6. International Trade - Badenoch: largely educated abroad, well connected middle class parents (a GP and Professor), studied engineering, then went into IT and banking.
7. DEFRA - Jayawardena: comprehensive education, then banking.
8. Transport - Trevelyan: private education, then accountancy and PwC
9. Culture - Donelan: state educated, politics & history degree from York then marketing.
10. Work & Pensions - Chloe Smith: state educated, English degree from York then management consultancy.
It is not really as diverse as all that. Cleverley has probably the most diverse background of those in the top 4 positions.
It is very representative of a certain slice of the English middle class. Of the wider nation - England, let alone, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland - much less so.
Politician attacks posh politician = Everybody cheers
Politician attacks working class politician = Everybody attacks them for being elitist.
Although everybody rightly hates poshos who pretend to be ordinary working class people.
Poch is loyal, he won't want to upset the fans at Spurs by managing the club they hate the most. I know Arsenal are their rivals but it is Chelsea they hate.
The greater interest is always at Minister of State and PUSS levels
Will Tissue Price get a job overseeing paperclips at the Department of Nothingness?
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-madness-of-truss-s-energy-price-cap
We need more discussion about reducing usage. I saw somewhere that Germany had cut energy (gas?) usage by 15%.
Timing and details to be announced
I have done two spells of jury service, about twenty and six years ago respectively. I sat on four cases: they involved a punch-up outside a night club, a domestic argument in which someone received a small knife wound, the theft of an expensive child's push-buggy, and - the most interesting one - the handling of £51,000 in counterfeit money twenty pound notes. None of these cases appeared to have been sitting around for years waiting for a Court or anything much else before they could proceed.
Now I hear that an alleged child rapist does not have his case heard for over three years because the system is that far behind and in difficulties.
What's going on?
https://twitter.com/YWNReporter/status/1567444400761966593
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1567395435685216256?t=C6uYJt6gp_YjfA3cNDxTYw&s=19
*former pit village actually, with all that came with it.
Lacks only a playing career and media quotability, or this would be widely recognised.
I watched a couple of games on BT SPORT recently (courtesy of freebies from Virgin). On both occasions, the underdogs went a goal up and shut up shop. Wasting time by falling over at the merest touch and playing dead. Embarrassing. If they were on the London underground, they'd never get off the floor.
Why can't the referees send them off. Newcastle were one of the worst culprits and complained when the referee added eight minutes extra time. He could have added an hour, and left them with two players.
Ye Gods. The Tories deserve to be annihilated at the next GE.
You win the Premiership once and it goes to your head.
(My grandfather had left the mines by that time to become a Co-op insurance rep.)