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The first post-Christmas poll has LAB leading by 26% – politicalbetting.com
The first post-Christmas poll has LAB leading by 26% – politicalbetting.com
In a break from our yearly game of Whamageddon, we did a poll. Christmas has come early for Sir Keir with Labour moving over the 50% mark.Con: 25% (-1 from 15th Dec)Lab: 51% (+4)Lib Dem 7% (-2)Green 5%(-1)Reform UK 6% (NC)SNP 4% (-1)? 1/8 pic.twitter.com/8wzchta0tW
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In the most technical sense possible.
Starmer is, I fear moderate centre-left. I suspect he will be far too moderate to achieve much good.
I honestly bear no ill will towards either Casino or his daughter but to keep the VAT exemption and charitable status of private education, which is clearly a service offered for fees, is unsustainable.
Casino told us some time ago what his salary is; it's a good salary and no doubt well-deserved. Since the government judges that an adult can live on £335 pm, a couple on £525 pm, and a child on £245 pm I suspect Casino will find a way to fund the VAT on his daughter's school fees.
However at least 25% is better than the 22% they were polling under Truss before Sunak replaced her as leader and PM. 6% for RefUK to squeeze too
https://www.omnisis.co.uk/media/1138/vi-006-bring-back-boris-tabs-22102022.xlsx
Can it do it? I really don't know. The past 12 years have been an unmitigated disaster for the UK. There are no sunny uplands. We are a country experiencing rapid decline with decaying public services, rising poverty and inequality, and much of this lies squarely at the hands of the Tories. The Tories in Government prove that politics matters
What you list simply isn't the case. Coupled with all the other calls on our income, and taxes, our pockets are not limitless and this is deeply personal for my my wife and I, and my daughter in particular.
I am going to step away from the keyboard for the rest of the evening in case I say something I really regret.
Goodnight.
Bear in mind things are going to get worse for the Tories before they get better - the recession has barely begun to bite.
The Tories don't know what their problem is, so they have no chance of addressing that problem - some think they need to dial back the ideology, some think they need more of it.
I guess Starmer might get pushed on it during the election campaign. I don’t think @Casino_Royale should worry too much. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it quietly dropped once Labour were in office.
They remind me that Labour is still supported by people who are insanely envious of anyone that has done better than them. That is is always someone else's fault for their own sad mediocrity. If only they had the privileges of private education then they too could be "rich", but of course they wouldn't really want that would they?
Labour is the mover of everything to the lowest common denominator; the purveyors of the belief that more government and more taxation is always the answer, that society can be made better by them paying attention to nasty and vindictive policy change that will not move the dial of human happiness one iota.
Yes, his posts definitely moved me.
But it's a bloody shocker for the Tories.
If my family Xmas was anything to go by, it was a rare inter-generational whingeathon about the state of the nation.
Magnified by travel chaos.
Elderly relatives particularly shocked working people won't put the heating on because they are skint.
That's about it really.
If they lose the next election someone will blame Brexit... wouldn't be surprised to see them wanting to rejoin. Resisted by the Labour government.
What shapes my thinking these days, more and more, is not 'insane envy of anyone who has done better than me'. No, it's the time I spend each week as a Citizens Advice volunteer, trying to help people who really are struggling.
In that context (plus the knowledge that private businesses set charges at "as much as we can get away with" more than "cost plus reasonable margin"), I'm not sure that private schools should be a priority for tax allowances. Not because of hate or envy, just because there are other kids who would benefit more.
As a parent the utility of private schools is to extract your kids from practical problems arising from the inherent state of inequality that exists in any society. If the private school option is closed off, along with the grammar school option, then you can solve the issue by buying a house in a better area. Unless you create a communist utopia, then this is how the situation will always play out.
Fundamentally I believe we pay too little tax for the services we want. The harder question is how you levy those taxes in a fair way. Personally I’d prefer flat taxation. The more you earn, the more you pay, but no stupid cliff edges and marginal rates. Seems simple to me, so there must be something wrong with it.
Everyone wants to ignore the elephant in the room when it comes to spending decisions but we're getting to the point now where both parties will have to say there's no unlimited pot for pensions and healthcare for our parents generation and either they self fund it through higher taxes on their wealth/pension income or the government finally, finally cuts service provision and pensions.
It would kill the smaller private schools (many of which are in fact already businesses) like Chase Grammar here in Cannock* or many of the cathedral schools, or Redland and Reigate. They do charge 'as much as they can get away with' but even at that many of them are struggling to pay bills right now. One school in south Wales has just dramatically increased class sizes (as in, they're getting on for the size of state school classes) which makes you wonder how long they can sustain parental interest.
The effect would probably be therefore a modest rise in government revenue but a substantial rise in the numbers going to state school, while leaving genuine privilege untouched.
*I have to say given the stories there are about this school, that might actually be rather a good thing.
(I believe your obsession with DB pensions is somewhat overblown but that would be a different point.)
At least private education offers top quality education, including for those unable to afford the fees which will then benefit society overall eg at least half of doctors and surgeons were privately educated.
Private education offers choice as much as capitalism not just one state provided monopoly
So, are private schools a social good? Well, they reduce the pressure on state schools by allowing parents with the ability to pay to pay, which increases the overall spend per child in state schools. They engage in charitable acts, supporting the community and other educational institutions in and around that community. They increase free choice, giving people more of a say in the way they want their children to be educated. They give kids who might be, for example, bullied or have special needs, an alternative to their local comp. They reduce ridiculous distortions in the housing market, where people pay more to live in relevant catchment areas. All of these sound like net positives so far, and good arguments for zero rating school fees for VAT, the same way books are zero rated.
But the really perverse thing about Labour's policy is just how much it's going to reduce social mobility. At the moment, you have people like Casino who are making sacrifices to give their children an education they think will be better than the local state school (borne out by lower class sizes, better grades at gcse / a level etc). An instant 20% increase in prices is going to mean a lot of children taken out of school, and also a lot of smaller, less illustrious private schools shutting up shop (look at how many shut up shop during and after the GFC - it's lots!).
What this means is you'll end up with an even more bifurcated system, where the very rich are still able to send their kids to the "top" public schools, with all the negative "old school tie", "establishment" connotations that comes with. The pool from which the establishment tends to draw its ranks will actually grow smaller and more elitist. Meanwhile all the good things that the so-called lesser private schools do, both directly in terms of community outreach and indirectly in terms of reducing pressure on state schools, will be lost. Net result, a smaller, more elite pool of elitists, with more advantages than everyone else.
Of course, the real answer to all of this is to make private education undesirable by making state schools so good, nobody feels the need to fork out 30% or more of their post tax income to give their kids a better start in life.
But I don't hear that from any of the anti-private-school-brigade. No suggestions on how to improve things. No suggestions on how to improve choice for parents, or how to improve educational outcomes for state educated kids.
All I hear is the steady beat of the old class war drum that wants to create an "us and them" division in society. I wonder why that is.
VAT is always a bit daft, hence cakes vs biscuits, whether a pasty is still warm etc.
A reasonable approach is to require a school to spend more of its income on charitable acts than it saves in VAT in order to maintain charitable status.
I think I oppose the existence of private schools but similarly to my views on the Royal Family, I can see no benefit for making them illegal or making them all become state schools. The solution is to make state schools better.
You can choose to shop at Waitrose - but you don't get a tax cut because you do.
The idea parents do it to relieve pressure on the state system is clearly absurd.
Nowadays the people going are rich Russians, Asians and Saudis. The idea it's all hard-working folks making ends meet to send their kids there at least around here, is a story that ended about 15 years ago.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/12/28/joe-biden-fire-jetting-caribbean-monster-storm/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-onward-journey
We need more funding.
We lost £571 per pupil last year. We could do a lot with that.
I don't hear much of that from the pro-private school brigade.
Of course the funding isn't everything. But it's a necessary start.
That may be about to happen anyway depending on what happens with fuel bills, of course.
As for Waitrose, it's not vouchers that mean poor people can suddenly shop there lol. It's that Waitrose price match certain products to Tesco/Sainsburys, the so-called "basics" range.
If Labour want to be bold in the manifesto they need to be preparing the ground already. Education needs a generational leap in funding IMO, if that means cuts to the NHS to pay for it then that's a sacrifice worth paying to ensure kids are getting a world class education and are prepared for a globalised world competing with kids from Asia who are streets ahead of ours.
Instead we've had 20 years of everything being sacrificed at the altar of pensions and healthcare. Shitcan the triple lock, make state pensions means tested so that retired people with private incomes over £40k start to lose it at a 3:1 ratio and anyone with £67k income or higher doesn't receive it. Introduce a wealth tax which mirrors how a beneficial trust would work.
Labour have an opportunity to really change the face of the nation, but boring Starmer seems to be one of those politicians who's whole purpose is to be in favour of winning and not in favour of losing.
This would require about a doubling of revenue spending, even before we considered where to put the extra schools or how to pay for building them.
The chances of this happening are about the same as the odds of Braverman doing something sane and honourable.
'Fairness' in these circumstances depends on how sympathetic you are to the position various people find themselves in.
Do you have any children, horse? If so, what did you do to help them? If not, what would you do to help them?
Perhaps VAT is the wrong tax to add, something that scales with wealth is quite a good idea perhaps.
Much as I have argued it's wrong to exempt fees from VAT, I can't see it being a huge vote winner for Labour. Few voters will say 'that settles it then, I am voting Labour' on the basis of taxing school fees.
A question of huge importance hanging over the next two years is 'What is going to be in the Labour manifesto?'
I fear a damp squib but maybe they are keeping their powder dry. I do hope Labour come up with a bit more than VAT on school fees.
I think my bigger concern with any policy along these lines is, how and where do you draw the line? I offer tutoring services, including adult learning. Do I have to charge VAT on that? If so, do I charge it for adult education which we should be encouraging? Or just for schoolchildren? 40% of my students are based abroad. Do I charge them VAT? If so, at what rate? What about training courses for doctors to learn about new medicines? That's technically a form of private education. So are universities. Do we add VAT to tuition fees? If so, who pays for it?
I think that's a bigger risk of unintended consequences than trying to disentangle the impact on schools.
The success of a school should be judged not just by those pupils who get five A's, but by those who could not read or add when they entered school, but pass exams when they leave.
Spielman, who is a twat who doesn't understand education, abolished it because it meant schools that didn't get amazing exam results were being graded outstanding just because the children in them could read and write on leaving having not been quite sure what a pen was on arrival.
Which led to a whole load of very good schools suddenly dropping multiple grades to 'requires improvement' or 'inadequate.'
PRUs were among the worst hit.
It's too easy to say "we need more money" much harder to start making losers elsewhere so you can win.
But even allowing for the fact there are over 7000 of the useless fuckers on extortionate wages, I doubt if that would save sufficient money to spend on something useful, although the morale lift might be worth a couple of billion on its own.
My sister helps out with the PTA and was supervising children watching a movie after school (I guess to give parents time to do Christmas shopping, that sort of thing). The behaviour she witnessed was appalling and the teachers (not including the teacher in question) were not interested in doing much about it.
From what we can tell, the teacher's biggest crime was to have the misfortune to be given a class full of misbehaving brats (not my niece, of course). I get that you have to manage performance of teachers, but it sounds like an absolute shit show to have a teacher simply walk out.
Anyway, my sister has been agonising about whether or not to send her kids to private school. This episode has not helped. Personally, I think she worries too much and I'm grateful to Labour for their policy as it's another weapon for me to use in arguing against her doing it.
There are 615,000 private school places in the UK, with fees averaging £15654 per year.
If we assume unitary elasticity for a moment, a 20% tax would reduce the number of public school students to 492,000. This would mean the 20% tax would raise an extra £3130 per head, or £1539 million in all.
Divide that by the number of state school pupils (approx 10.5m), and you get £149.20 more per pupil per year to spend.
Ah yes, but there's a problem here. Finding places for the other 123,000 former private school students who now need a state school place.
Average spend per head in the state system was 6970 last year, so you'd need to find an extra 857m just to pay for the extra state places required.
This would therefore mean you'd actually only be looking at an extra £64.33 spend per pupil.
And for that, you would be uprooting the lives of 123,000 children, as well as significantly reducing their educational outcomes, and reducing social mobility (due to the increased bifurcation I mentioned in my previous post) all for an extra £64.33 spend per state school pupil.
The numbers don't add up.
Absolutely everything in the country is being sacrificed at the altar of old age spending and old people attempting push the liabilities of their lifestyle to their kids and grandkids.
Beijing's announcement that it will issue ordinary passports and visas means millions of Chinese people could go abroad for next month's Lunar New Year holiday - and concerns that China opening up could lead to a new global spread of COVID are already being realised."
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-patients-no-longer-have-to-quarantine-in-hong-kong-as-restrictions-are-lifted-12775498
(Bloomberg) -- Italian health authorities will begin testing all arrivals from China for Covid after almost half of the passengers on two flights to Milan were found to have the virus.
CNN: U.S. will require airline passengers traveling from China to test negative for Covid
https://twitter.com/PonchoZoho/status/1608201518125142024?s=20&t=7mUGpkQErBPa7cbv9r8lDw
I went to school in Hampshire/Surrey so I am sure my views will be based on those experiences. When I started off, it was similar to the view HYUFD gives across, that's certainly the background my parents came from.
But as time went on and the fees became higher it became more Russians/Asians/Saudis. I have some friends who have much younger siblings still at these schools and they are now completely different people going. My parents wouldn't be able to afford it now but also I am not sure I'd want to go, it's mixing with Princes and Royalty and gives a very distorted view of the world in my experience of these kids.
So perhaps it is different elsewhere in the country but I cannot see how putting VAT on these parents can be anything but positive overall.
Hopefully the Final Great Chinese Wave will be the end of Covid as a significant emergency. And it will become a new flu, dangerous to some, but no cause to reorder society
It feels like the last set of rocks on a nasty white water rafting course. You are nearly through, but there is still one last chance you will drown
Trying to model the impact of such a policy is tricky. On the one hand, private education might be resilient to such a tax hike. Most people might just make more sacrifices to keep paying the fees.
On the other hand, there might be a tipping point. If demand falls enough, many schools might become unviable and close. The options for private education would fall meaning more don't bother with it even if they were willing to pay the increased fees.
Also, I suspect the effect might take time to come through. If you're already sending your kid to private school, you will probably do what it takes to keep them going. But, if you're in the position my sister is, you might decide not to bother sending them in the first place.
With day-only schools - well, it's a horse of a different colour.
Sudden compromise occurs to me - put VAT on boarding fees only. That might cause issues with some state boarding schools, but it should be possible to manage that.
Boarding school is the real passport to the top 1% not just private school