Lineker gets his job back with the BBC bosses the losers – politicalbetting.com

System

Lineker gets his job back with the BBC bosses the losers – politicalbetting.com

After a surreal few days, I’m delighted that we have navigated a way through this. I want to thank you all for the incredible support, particularly my colleagues at BBC Sport, for the remarkable show of solidarity. Football is a team game but their backing was overwhelming. 1/4

Read the full story here

Benpointer

First, like Lineker in this dispute

MarqueeMark

Benpointer said:

First, like Lineker in this dispute

Hmm. Unless it is a game of two halves....

DecrepiterJohnL

BBC bosses won't have lost until they are forced to resign.

GIN1138

MarqueeMark said:

Benpointer said:

First, like Lineker in this dispute

Hmm. Unless it is a game of two halves....

Yep, his days are surely numbered at the BBC. But they'll have to play the long game.

Pagan2

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Carnyx

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Nigelb

GIN1138 said:

MarqueeMark said:

Benpointer said:

First, like Lineker in this dispute

Hmm. Unless it is a game of two halves....

Yep, his days are surely numbered at the BBC. But they'll have to play the long game.

They've only got the next two years.

Benpointer

GIN1138 said:

MarqueeMark said:

Benpointer said:

First, like Lineker in this dispute

Hmm. Unless it is a game of two halves....

Yep, his days are surely numbered at the BBC. But they'll have to play the long game.

By which time Starmer will PM, the BBC will have a new Chairman, and Lineker will probably still be hosting MotD.

Benpointer

Nigelb said:

GIN1138 said:

MarqueeMark said:

Benpointer said:

First, like Lineker in this dispute

Hmm. Unless it is a game of two halves....

Yep, his days are surely numbered at the BBC. But they'll have to play the long game.

They've only got the next two years.

In all likelihood only 12 -18 months.

Big_G_NorthWales

I simply do not see anything in those tweets that is controversial

Lineker supports refugees and has accommodated some

It does not mean that we should not stand firm against the boats and I would expect the public do support stopping the boats

Polling on this will be interesting

Nigelb

Leftist rag comments.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1635222019766734849
The BBC has apologised over the impartiality row with Gary Lineker and acknowledged its guidelines were at fault.

SeaShantyIrish2

MarqueeMark said:

Benpointer said:

First, like Lineker in this dispute

Hmm. Unless it is a game of two halves....

What gives you confidence, that the boneheads "running" the BBC or HMG are capable of beating Gary Lineker at Go Fish, let alone media & message management?

GIN1138

Benpointer said:

GIN1138 said:

MarqueeMark said:

Benpointer said:

First, like Lineker in this dispute

Hmm. Unless it is a game of two halves....

Yep, his days are surely numbered at the BBC. But they'll have to play the long game.

By which time Starmer will PM, the BBC will have a new Chairman, and Lineker will probably still be hosting MotD.

What happens when he starts attacking the policies of the next Labour government though?

As he surely will at some point because he's an absolute rent-a-gob and thinks he's untouchable - which he is for now to be fair.

TheKitchenCabinet

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

MarqueeMark said:

Benpointer said:

First, like Lineker in this dispute

Hmm. Unless it is a game of two halves....

What gives you confidence, that the boneheads "running" the BBC or HMG are capable of beating Gary Lineker at Go Fish, let alone media & message management?

Realistically, though, do we really think this is a huge vote changer?

Stuartinromford

Benpointer said:

Nigelb said:

GIN1138 said:

MarqueeMark said:

Benpointer said:

First, like Lineker in this dispute

Hmm. Unless it is a game of two halves....

Yep, his days are surely numbered at the BBC. But they'll have to play the long game.

They've only got the next two years.

In all likelihood only 12 -18 months.

And Lineker's opponents will still be doing the political equivalent of waving their fists and saying "I'll get you, Penelope Pitstop..."

Nigelb

If the Fed hadn't acted, today would have been a meltdown for multiple US banks.

BREAKING: First Republic Bank shares drop by record 67% at the open before trading halted
https://mobile.twitter.com/business/status/1635273035203887105

eek

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

LostPassword

GIN1138 said:

Benpointer said:

GIN1138 said:

MarqueeMark said:

Benpointer said:

First, like Lineker in this dispute

Hmm. Unless it is a game of two halves....

Yep, his days are surely numbered at the BBC. But they'll have to play the long game.

By which time Starmer will PM, the BBC will have a new Chairman, and Lineker will probably still be hosting MotD.

What happens when he starts attacking the policies of the next Labour government though?

As he surely will at some point because he's an absolute rent-a-gob and thinks he's untouchable - which he is for now to be fair.

Starmer has positioned himself in a Blairite way as a centrist now, so he'd welcome a dose of criticism from his left flank as useful evidence to centrist voters that he's not giving in to his left-wing base.

Nigelb

GIN1138 said:

Benpointer said:

GIN1138 said:

MarqueeMark said:

Benpointer said:

First, like Lineker in this dispute

Hmm. Unless it is a game of two halves....

Yep, his days are surely numbered at the BBC. But they'll have to play the long game.

By which time Starmer will PM, the BBC will have a new Chairman, and Lineker will probably still be hosting MotD.

What happens when he starts attacking the policies of the next Labour government though?

As he surely will at some point because he's an absolute rent-a-gob and thinks he's untouchable - which he is for now to be fair.

Who cares ?
If they've any sense, they'll ignore it, as they ought to have done this time around.

Big_G_NorthWales

Benpointer said:

GIN1138 said:

MarqueeMark said:

Benpointer said:

First, like Lineker in this dispute

Hmm. Unless it is a game of two halves....

Yep, his days are surely numbered at the BBC. But they'll have to play the long game.

By which time Starmer will PM, the BBC will have a new Chairman, and Lineker will probably still be hosting MotD.

I think the BBC will have a new chairman before the next GE in view of Sunak's failure to endorse his appointment today, referring to the current investigation into his appointment

Pagan2

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

FF43

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

More precisely parents of school age children are a key demographic for the next election.

Not before time, I should add.

MaxPB

I don't like the signals coming from the US that the Fed is going to halt interest rate rises to protect the banking sector. While it's probably necessary, it turns out that the machinery of the state in the US has chosen to protect bankers and their shit regulations by extending high inflation for consumers. In the end ordinary people will suffer now because the Fed has much less room to raise rates and high inflation will go on for an extra 8-12 months. I hope the Biden administration pushes the capital requirements lower limit back down to $50bn, or extends it to $25bn.

GIN1138

Can anyone explain what's going on with the banks? I've not been keeping a close eye on developments lately and suddenly this weekend it seems UK and US banks are in trouble?

Are we heading for another banking crash? Or it just this weeks fake crisis from the media?

FF43

FF43 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

More precisely parents of school age children are a key demographic for the next election.

Not before time, I should add.

Particularly for Conservatives. If they don't make headway amongst millennials they are in terminal decline.

SeaShantyIrish2

TheKitchenCabinet said:

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

MarqueeMark said:

Benpointer said:

First, like Lineker in this dispute

Hmm. Unless it is a game of two halves....

What gives you confidence, that the boneheads "running" the BBC or HMG are capable of beating Gary Lineker at Go Fish, let alone media & message management?

Realistically, though, do we really think this is a huge vote changer?

Many a mickle makes a muckle - even south of the border.

Certainly going out of ones way to alienate plenty of otherwise apolitical sports fans is NOT smart politics?

kyf_100

Nigelb said:

If the Fed hadn't acted, today would have been a meltdown for multiple US banks.

BREAKING: First Republic Bank shares drop by record 67% at the open before trading halted
https://mobile.twitter.com/business/status/1635273035203887105

If this is what a not-meltdown looks like, I'd hate to think what an actual-meltdown looks like.

Fundamentally, something has to break soon. Either the Fed continues raising interest rates, and the banks break (as per SVB), or they reverse course, and inflation becomes hyperinflation.

Pagan2

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Northern_Al

Gosh, there's some bad losers on here. Lineker's clearly won this battle. But the losers want to change the rules of the game and are saying - 'hang on, we're more interested in the years-long war than in this battle'.

When Lineker retires from MotD on his 70th birthday, they'll be saying - 'told you this wouldn't end well for him'.

MaxPB

GIN1138 said:

Can anyone explain what's going on with the banks? I've not been keeping a close eye on developments lately and suddenly this weekend it seems UK and US banks are in trouble?

Are we heading for another banking crash? Or it just this weeks fake crisis from the media?

US mid sized banks did an RBS and the US government have bailed out depositors.

UK banks are fine.

GIN1138

MaxPB said:

GIN1138 said:

Can anyone explain what's going on with the banks? I've not been keeping a close eye on developments lately and suddenly this weekend it seems UK and US banks are in trouble?

Are we heading for another banking crash? Or it just this weeks fake crisis from the media?

US mid sized banks did an RBS and the US government have bailed out depositors.

UK banks are fine.

Oh right, I thought I heard something about Jeremy Hunt might bail out a bank? Pleased to hear our own banks are OK then. Worrying about developments in US.

So everything should be OK? We're not at another 2008 point?

MaxPB

kyf_100 said:

Nigelb said:

If the Fed hadn't acted, today would have been a meltdown for multiple US banks.

BREAKING: First Republic Bank shares drop by record 67% at the open before trading halted
https://mobile.twitter.com/business/status/1635273035203887105

If this is what a not-meltdown looks like, I'd hate to think what an actual-meltdown looks like.

Fundamentally, something has to break soon. Either the Fed continues raising interest rates, and the banks break (as per SVB), or they reverse course, and inflation becomes hyperinflation.

Or they reintroduce proper capital requirements from $25bn upwards and give the banks a timeframe to get their houses in order. It was pointed out at the time when Trump relaxed capital regulations that this was a potential outcome and so it has come to pass.

Nigelb

MaxPB said:

GIN1138 said:

Can anyone explain what's going on with the banks? I've not been keeping a close eye on developments lately and suddenly this weekend it seems UK and US banks are in trouble?

Are we heading for another banking crash? Or it just this weeks fake crisis from the media?

US mid sized banks did an RBS and the US government have bailed out depositors.

UK banks are fine.

More like a Northern Rock, perhaps ?

MaxPB

GIN1138 said:

MaxPB said:

GIN1138 said:

Can anyone explain what's going on with the banks? I've not been keeping a close eye on developments lately and suddenly this weekend it seems UK and US banks are in trouble?

Are we heading for another banking crash? Or it just this weeks fake crisis from the media?

US mid sized banks did an RBS and the US government have bailed out depositors.

UK banks are fine.

Oh right, I thought I heard something about Jeremy Hunt might bail out a UK bank? Pleased to hear our own banks are OK then, Worrying about developments in US.

So everything should be OK? We're not at another 2008 point?

No, no bailouts here. Definitely not at a 2008 point. The UK banking sector is probably one of the most resilient in the world, for once lessons really do seem to have been learned.

Richard_Tyndall

I know that many will not agree with me on some or all of the reasons but on the whole I think this has been a good news day.

- Sense has prevailed and Lineker has been reinstated. I will now continue to completely fail to watch Match of the Day as I have done for the last 5 decades.

- The Oscar results were very pleasing. Whilst I am sorry that Banshees of Inisherin failed to win any awards, I am delighted at the wins for Everything, Everywhere All At Once, Navalny and Pinocchio. And particularly pleased with the well deserved win for Brendan Fraser.

- The Government has moved swiftly and decisively on the Silicon Valley Banking crisis. I feared they would dither as usual and we would see a lot of small businesses go under as a result. The solution seems very sensible to me. I am in an incredibly rare position of praising the Government for something (actually not quite that rare as I did it over the Windsor Framework a few weeks ago. I must try and break this worrying habit.)

GIN1138

MaxPB said:

GIN1138 said:

MaxPB said:

GIN1138 said:

Can anyone explain what's going on with the banks? I've not been keeping a close eye on developments lately and suddenly this weekend it seems UK and US banks are in trouble?

Are we heading for another banking crash? Or it just this weeks fake crisis from the media?

US mid sized banks did an RBS and the US government have bailed out depositors.

UK banks are fine.

Oh right, I thought I heard something about Jeremy Hunt might bail out a UK bank? Pleased to hear our own banks are OK then, Worrying about developments in US.

So everything should be OK? We're not at another 2008 point?

No, no bailouts here. Definitely not at a 2008 point. The UK banking sector is probably one of the most resilient in the world, for once lessons really do seem to have been learned.

Excellent. Thanks Max

MaxPB

Nigelb said:

MaxPB said:

GIN1138 said:

Can anyone explain what's going on with the banks? I've not been keeping a close eye on developments lately and suddenly this weekend it seems UK and US banks are in trouble?

Are we heading for another banking crash? Or it just this weeks fake crisis from the media?

US mid sized banks did an RBS and the US government have bailed out depositors.

UK banks are fine.

More like a Northern Rock, perhaps ?

Maybe not as bad as that, NR was operating at something mad like 140:1 leverage when it all came crashing down. RBS was a paltry 70:1, I think SVB US had something like ~2% core tier 1 capital at the end of last weekend vs ~12% for SVB UK.

Nigelb

FF43 said:

FF43 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

More precisely parents of school age children are a key demographic for the next election.

Not before time, I should add.

Particularly for Conservatives. If they don't make headway amongst millennials they are in terminal decline.

They have more in common with the BBC than they realise ?

squareroot2

Lineker has agreed to button it until the review. They think it's all over. It isnt.

OnlyLivingBoy

Northern_Al said:

Gosh, there's some bad losers on here. Lineker's clearly won this battle. But the losers want to change the rules of the game and are saying - 'hang on, we're more interested in the years-long war than in this battle'.

When Lineker retires from MotD on his 70th birthday, they'll be saying - 'told you this wouldn't end well for him'.

They want to pick up their ball and go home with it, but the problem is it's not their ball.

Nigelb

GIN1138 said:

MaxPB said:

GIN1138 said:

Can anyone explain what's going on with the banks? I've not been keeping a close eye on developments lately and suddenly this weekend it seems UK and US banks are in trouble?

Are we heading for another banking crash? Or it just this weeks fake crisis from the media?

US mid sized banks did an RBS and the US government have bailed out depositors.

UK banks are fine.

Oh right, I thought I heard something about Jeremy Hunt might bail out a bank? Pleased to hear our own banks are OK then. Worrying about developments in US.

So everything should be OK? We're not at another 2008 point?

No.
The UK subsidiary of the failed U.S. bank has been bought by HSBC for £1.

SouthamObserver

GIN1138 said:

Benpointer said:

GIN1138 said:

MarqueeMark said:

Benpointer said:

First, like Lineker in this dispute

Hmm. Unless it is a game of two halves....

Yep, his days are surely numbered at the BBC. But they'll have to play the long game.

By which time Starmer will PM, the BBC will have a new Chairman, and Lineker will probably still be hosting MotD.

What happens when he starts attacking the policies of the next Labour government though?

As he surely will at some point because he's an absolute rent-a-gob and thinks he's untouchable - which he is for now to be fair.

He is a regular Labour attacker. It's just that these Tweets do not get amplified. He directly called for Corbyn's removal in 2017, for example. Lineker, like most old footballers, probably felt very comfortable with Cameron/Osborne Toryism prior to 2016.

Carnyx

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

Nigelb

MaxPB said:

Nigelb said:

MaxPB said:

GIN1138 said:

Can anyone explain what's going on with the banks? I've not been keeping a close eye on developments lately and suddenly this weekend it seems UK and US banks are in trouble?

Are we heading for another banking crash? Or it just this weeks fake crisis from the media?

US mid sized banks did an RBS and the US government have bailed out depositors.

UK banks are fine.

More like a Northern Rock, perhaps ?

Maybe not as bad as that, NR was operating at something mad like 140:1 leverage when it all came crashing down. RBS was a paltry 70:1, I think SVB US had something like ~2% core tier 1 capital at the end of last weekend vs ~12% for SVB UK.

But the essential mechanism is similar.
RBS was all about gearing up to acquire other banks, which isn't really what did for SVB.

ping

John Bull can stand many things, but he cannot stand two percent.

eek

squareroot2 said:

Lineker has agreed to button it until the review. They think it's all over. It isnt.

Has he? he has agreed to follow the BBC's current social media rules.

And the last tweet in his response was hardly buttoning it - it was more doubling down than keeping quiet.

Nigelb

Richard_Tyndall said:

I know that many will not agree with me on some or all of the reasons but on the whole I think this has been a good news day.

- Sense has prevailed and Lineker has been reinstated. I will now continue to completely fail to watch Match of the Day as I have done for the last 5 decades.

- The Oscar results were very pleasing. Whilst I am sorry that Banshees of Inisherin failed to win any awards, I am delighted at the wins for Everything, Everywhere All At Once, Navalny and Pinocchio. And particularly pleased with the well deserved win for Brendan Fraser.

- The Government has moved swiftly and decisively on the Silicon Valley Banking crisis. I feared they would dither as usual and we would see a lot of small businesses go under as a result. The solution seems very sensible to me. I am in an incredibly rare position of praising the Government for something (actually not quite that rare as I did it over the Windsor Framework a few weeks ago. I must try and break this worrying habit.)

Agree with all of that (with some reservations about Navalny).

DougSeal

squareroot2 said:

Lineker has agreed to button it until the review. They think it's all over. It isnt.

Yeah. His Tweet this morning about supporting migrants was a sure sign of him “buttoning” it.

SeaShantyIrish2

Lest we forget, FPT -

New Milton Advertiser & Lymington Times - Gary Lineker row: Tory councillor Alexis McEvoy faces New Forest District Council investigation over 'typical black hypocrite' tweet about Ian Wright

A CONSERVATIVE councillor is being investigated by New Forest District Council and her local party over allegations of racism after she branded ex-footballer Ian Wright a "typical black hypocrite" in a now-deleted tweet.

Cllr Alexis McEvoy, who goes by @Lexxie_m on Twitter, published the message to her more than 500 followers on Saturday amid the row over Gary Lineker's online criticism of the government's language on immigration.

She represents the ward of Fawley, BLACKFIELD & Langley on NFDC, and the South Waterside division on Hampshire County Council. She is also a member of the New Forest National Park Authority.

NFDC's Tory leader Cllr Jill Cleary responded, telling the A&T: "A complaint has been made to the Conservative group and to NFDC. We're both carrying out investigations into this complaint."

Cllr Malcolm Wade, leader of NFDC's Lib Dem opposition group, has written to Cllr Cleary urging her to take "robust" action.

But Cllr McEvoy has insisted her comments have been "taken out of context", refused to apologise, and accused the Liberal Democrats of harassing her.

She told the A&T: "I've removed the tweet now, and it was taken out of context.

"I'm not really going to comment on it. I've had enough of it, quite frankly – people like [Lib Dem] Cllr Jack Davies trying to portray me in a bad light."

She added: "I've deleted the tweet because of the comments he was making. He's a trouble-making person and I've taken the tweet down.

"Are we going to talk about all the good things I do for people, whatever colour they are? I do a lot of good things for people. I'm not prepared to make a further comment on it.

"I'm tired of Jack Davies trying to stir things up – that's why I've now blocked him on Twitter. He's troublesome.

"I'M NOT STUPID; we've got the elections coming up and people are looking for an excuse to try and discredit me." . . .

https://www.advertiserandtimes.co.uk/news/lineker-row-new-forest-councillor-investigated-over-typica-9303372/

Nigelb

MaxPB said:

kyf_100 said:

Nigelb said:

If the Fed hadn't acted, today would have been a meltdown for multiple US banks.

BREAKING: First Republic Bank shares drop by record 67% at the open before trading halted
https://mobile.twitter.com/business/status/1635273035203887105

If this is what a not-meltdown looks like, I'd hate to think what an actual-meltdown looks like.

Fundamentally, something has to break soon. Either the Fed continues raising interest rates, and the banks break (as per SVB), or they reverse course, and inflation becomes hyperinflation.

Or they reintroduce proper capital requirements from $25bn upwards and give the banks a timeframe to get their houses in order. It was pointed out at the time when Trump relaxed capital regulations that this was a potential outcome and so it has come to pass.

Trump, characteristically, is blaming Biden.

rcs1000

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

The Institute for Fiscal Studies is a pretty solid organisation, and they aren't in the pocket of any particular politicians (albeit they were originally funded by a former boss of mine, Nils Taube). So, while the number may - or may not - be strictly accurate, I'm sure the analysis will be fairly decent.

numbertwelve

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

There is an argument however for looking at things holistically.

Do I think that communities have been impacted negatively by the closure of local facilities over recent years? Yes I do. Am I able to evidence exactly how and why? Well, no, because these things are interconnected.

Sometimes we need to take a bit more faith in my opinion. We can have a pretty good idea that community facilities if open to all and their aims being properly targeted will help people meet others and facilitate collaboration. It can spur on new initiatives in the community, including small enterprise. I have previously referred to the potential impact on anti-social behaviour, petty crime, etc. It can also give people a sense of belonging, of value, and if properly targeted can enhance community cohesion.

But it’s hard to measure all these things through government tick box exercises.

Yes there needs to be some form of cost-benefit analysis, because you can’t just throw public money away and you need to make sure it is not being misused, but I am not sure I see it quite so much in terms of black and white - this is the objective, if objective not met, do not pass go. do not collect £200.

Driver

Nigelb said:

MaxPB said:

kyf_100 said:

Nigelb said:

If the Fed hadn't acted, today would have been a meltdown for multiple US banks.

BREAKING: First Republic Bank shares drop by record 67% at the open before trading halted
https://mobile.twitter.com/business/status/1635273035203887105

If this is what a not-meltdown looks like, I'd hate to think what an actual-meltdown looks like.

Fundamentally, something has to break soon. Either the Fed continues raising interest rates, and the banks break (as per SVB), or they reverse course, and inflation becomes hyperinflation.

Or they reintroduce proper capital requirements from $25bn upwards and give the banks a timeframe to get their houses in order. It was pointed out at the time when Trump relaxed capital regulations that this was a potential outcome and so it has come to pass.

Trump, characteristically, is blaming Biden.

Well, Biden is the president...

LDLF

In a manner frighteningly reminiscent of Britain's appeasement of Germany in the 1930s, BBC management has conceded.

(Perhaps a good thing though ultimately; this was blown out of al proportion on both sides of the debate.)

SeaShantyIrish2

SouthamObserver said:

GIN1138 said:

Benpointer said:

GIN1138 said:

MarqueeMark said:

Benpointer said:

First, like Lineker in this dispute

Hmm. Unless it is a game of two halves....

Yep, his days are surely numbered at the BBC. But they'll have to play the long game.

By which time Starmer will PM, the BBC will have a new Chairman, and Lineker will probably still be hosting MotD.

What happens when he starts attacking the policies of the next Labour government though?

As he surely will at some point because he's an absolute rent-a-gob and thinks he's untouchable - which he is for now to be fair.

He is a regular Labour attacker. It's just that these Tweets do not get amplified. He directly called for Corbyn's removal in 2017, for example. Lineker, like most old footballers, probably felt very comfortable with Cameron/Osborne Toryism prior to 2016.

So THAT'S why the Blue Meanies hate Lineker? Because he wanted to deprive them of having the Yard Gnome as a handy garden tool, for wacking the Labour Party?

Pagan2

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start.

The other point was

"The direct savings to the NHS from fewer hospitalisations at ages 5–11 amount to about £5 million per cohort, or just 0.4% of average annual spending on Sure Start. Including the longer-run savings from fewer injuries as well, the financial benefits reach around 6% of Sure Start’s budget"

Savings amounted to 6£ for every 100£ spent. While obviously a win individually for children that dodged a trip to hospital I am less convinced this shows as good on a cost/benefit analysis

maxh

FPT

"Safe routes is an ideal if you are willing to have unlimited immigration" Do you really mean that @Big_G_NorthWales? I always read what you write with interest on here, but this reads to me like you saying you don't think we should provide any safe and legal route for someone fleeing persecution to reach this country at all. Are you sure you mean that?

SeaShantyIrish2

Driver said:

Nigelb said:

MaxPB said:

kyf_100 said:

Nigelb said:

If the Fed hadn't acted, today would have been a meltdown for multiple US banks.

BREAKING: First Republic Bank shares drop by record 67% at the open before trading halted
https://mobile.twitter.com/business/status/1635273035203887105

If this is what a not-meltdown looks like, I'd hate to think what an actual-meltdown looks like.

Fundamentally, something has to break soon. Either the Fed continues raising interest rates, and the banks break (as per SVB), or they reverse course, and inflation becomes hyperinflation.

Or they reintroduce proper capital requirements from $25bn upwards and give the banks a timeframe to get their houses in order. It was pointed out at the time when Trump relaxed capital regulations that this was a potential outcome and so it has come to pass.

Trump, characteristically, is blaming Biden.

Well, Biden is the president...

Really? Thought that in the MAGA universe, Trump is STILL the 'secret' POTUS?

Certainly Donald Trump is VERY well qualified, to discuss the ins and outs of banking?

Just ask the boys & girls at Deutsche Bank!

Carnyx

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start.

The other point was

"The direct savings to the NHS from fewer hospitalisations at ages 5–11 amount to about £5 million per cohort, or just 0.4% of average annual spending on Sure Start. Including the longer-run savings from fewer injuries as well, the financial benefits reach around 6% of Sure Start’s budget"

Savings amounted to 6£ for every 100£ spent. While obviously a win individually for children that dodged a trip to hospital I am less convinced this shows as good on a cost/benefit analysis

(a) long term effect on children and families (edit: imagine e.g. if SureStart helps childrten become good mothers, that will only show up years later even if SureStart closed down)
(b) that's only part of it

PS: should have said that IANAE but was very struck by the conversation months back now with the friend who pointed ut the reports in the BMJ (IIRC they are the ones I looked up): friend is a statistician and was absolutely clear that SureStart was very much worthwhile and shocked when the current lot abolished it.

rcs1000

MaxPB said:

Nigelb said:

MaxPB said:

GIN1138 said:

Can anyone explain what's going on with the banks? I've not been keeping a close eye on developments lately and suddenly this weekend it seems UK and US banks are in trouble?

Are we heading for another banking crash? Or it just this weeks fake crisis from the media?

US mid sized banks did an RBS and the US government have bailed out depositors.

UK banks are fine.

More like a Northern Rock, perhaps ?

Maybe not as bad as that, NR was operating at something mad like 140:1 leverage when it all came crashing down. RBS was a paltry 70:1, I think SVB US had something like ~2% core tier 1 capital at the end of last weekend vs ~12% for SVB UK.

I don't think that's true.

At the end of Q4, SVB (consolidated) had $16.3bn of equity (and tier one capital will be larger as it will include equity like instruments). Total loans were only about $74bn. Total assets were $212bn, of which a large chunk was in US Treasuring (where, ironically, they took a bath as interest rates rose.)

SVB US was killed by a bank run, not because its assets were suddenly dwarfed by its liabilities. Once a bank run starts, then the fundamental credit worthiness of the institution is irrelevant. No bank can survive half its depositors heading for the door at the same time. If half the depositors of Lloyds or HSBC or Standard Chartered wished to remove their money in one go then without BoE support, they would all go bust.

eek

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start.

The other point was

"The direct savings to the NHS from fewer hospitalisations at ages 5–11 amount to about £5 million per cohort, or just 0.4% of average annual spending on Sure Start. Including the longer-run savings from fewer injuries as well, the financial benefits reach around 6% of Sure Start’s budget"

Savings amounted to 6£ for every 100£ spent. While obviously a win individually for children that dodged a trip to hospital I am less convinced this shows as good on a cost/benefit analysis

You seem to assume that the only outcome of surestart was lower hospital admissions - in reality it was a minor by product.

Pagan2

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start.

The other point was

"The direct savings to the NHS from fewer hospitalisations at ages 5–11 amount to about £5 million per cohort, or just 0.4% of average annual spending on Sure Start. Including the longer-run savings from fewer injuries as well, the financial benefits reach around 6% of Sure Start’s budget"

Savings amounted to 6£ for every 100£ spent. While obviously a win individually for children that dodged a trip to hospital I am less convinced this shows as good on a cost/benefit analysis

(a) long term effect on children and families
(b) that's only part of it

As I said I am not opposed to schemes like sure start. I come at this purely from a point of "Are the benefits worth what we are paying?". Too many politicians and indeed civil servants come up with schemes and because we don't measure or set targets we never know. Let's throw out the bad is all I am saying and try something else. We have limited resources for governments to spend whether labour or tory. Is it that controversial that I want them to spend it wisely?

maxh

FPT - reposting here as its an ongoing discussion

williamglenn said:

maxh said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

nico679 said:

There are no safe and legal routes to the UK available to the vast majority of those crossing on boats now .

So effectively asylum is now off the table for many who would have passed the threshold for that . The bill regardless of what no 10 have lied about does allow for the detention and deportation of children.

And this bill is being pushed as compassionate and moral ! One wonders what yardstick this government is using !

I suppose we should be grateful they weren’t put against a wall and shot !

We're not going to get the international cooperation we need to actually deal with small boats if we make claiming asylum impossible for anyone arriving here by irregular means while failing to provide safe routes for them. It's this lack of safe routes that very clearly signals what the government is after here is a political dividing line, not a solution.

There's a fundamental divide, not a synthetic dividing line, about the nature of the problem.

To some people, it's purely an administrative issue and we should welcome as many people as possible as quickly as possible. To others, there is a structural issue with the asylum system because it wasn't designed for a world of 8 billion people and easy global travel, therefore we cannot afford to adopt the solutions that the first group would like to see implemented.

That's a false binary. To others we should have a globally agreed system by which we take what is agreed at the UN to be our fair share of genuine refugees, with a far better system for finding the cases of highest need coupled with proper systems to catch and deport those who try to work around that system (which many on here have described how to do).

I am further to the left than most on migration, and even I wouldn't say we should welcome as many people as possible as quickly as possible.

It's not a false binary. Plenty of people argue that we should "lead the world" on accepting asylum seekers.

Ah, thanks for spotting my dead post on a dead thread (I'm always doing that).

Perhaps this is a misinterpretation then? I'd argue, that because of our levels of prosperity, and because of the historical reasons for our prosperity, we should lead the world on accepting asylum seekers. As I said on the last thread I cannot fathom how we can accept that Turkey and Lebanon are having their border towns utterly transformed by migration, and not be prepared to take some of the pressure off that.

But for me, leading the world on this would involve sticking our necks out and using the global power we have to try to create the globally agreed system I refer to.

I think you'll find very, very few who would argue for unlimited immigration.

Carnyx

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start.

The other point was

"The direct savings to the NHS from fewer hospitalisations at ages 5–11 amount to about £5 million per cohort, or just 0.4% of average annual spending on Sure Start. Including the longer-run savings from fewer injuries as well, the financial benefits reach around 6% of Sure Start’s budget"

Savings amounted to 6£ for every 100£ spent. While obviously a win individually for children that dodged a trip to hospital I am less convinced this shows as good on a cost/benefit analysis

(a) long term effect on children and families
(b) that's only part of it

As I said I am not opposed to schemes like sure start. I come at this purely from a point of "Are the benefits worth what we are paying?". Too many politicians and indeed civil servants come up with schemes and because we don't measure or set targets we never know. Let's throw out the bad is all I am saying and try something else. We have limited resources for governments to spend whether labour or tory. Is it that controversial that I want them to spend it wisely?

That is actually an assessment of one small part of it. Which seems to be about 6% of the cost instantly saved. Even more so if at the current margin of overfull hospitals.

(see my ps/edit)

Pagan2

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start.

The other point was

"The direct savings to the NHS from fewer hospitalisations at ages 5–11 amount to about £5 million per cohort, or just 0.4% of average annual spending on Sure Start. Including the longer-run savings from fewer injuries as well, the financial benefits reach around 6% of Sure Start’s budget"

Savings amounted to 6£ for every 100£ spent. While obviously a win individually for children that dodged a trip to hospital I am less convinced this shows as good on a cost/benefit analysis

You seem to assume that the only outcome of surestart was lower hospital admissions - in reality it was a minor by product.

You are getting hung up on Surestart because I used it as an example. Once again I am not claiming it was a bad or good thing. I am merely asking for rigourous metrics that show it was a worthwhile investment. We have from Carnyx's link a 6% return on the funding. Feel free to link reports that cover the other 94%

SeaShantyIrish2

rcs1000 said:

MaxPB said:

Nigelb said:

MaxPB said:

GIN1138 said:

Can anyone explain what's going on with the banks? I've not been keeping a close eye on developments lately and suddenly this weekend it seems UK and US banks are in trouble?

Are we heading for another banking crash? Or it just this weeks fake crisis from the media?

US mid sized banks did an RBS and the US government have bailed out depositors.

UK banks are fine.

More like a Northern Rock, perhaps ?

Maybe not as bad as that, NR was operating at something mad like 140:1 leverage when it all came crashing down. RBS was a paltry 70:1, I think SVB US had something like ~2% core tier 1 capital at the end of last weekend vs ~12% for SVB UK.

I don't think that's true.

At the end of Q4, SVB (consolidated) had $16.3bn of equity (and tier one capital will be larger as it will include equity like instruments). Total loans were only about $74bn. Total assets were $212bn, of which a large chunk was in US Treasuring (where, ironically, they took a bath as interest rates rose.)

SVB US was killed by a bank run, not because its assets were suddenly dwarfed by its liabilities. Once a bank run starts, then the fundamental credit worthiness of the institution is irrelevant. No bank can survive half its depositors heading for the door at the same time. If half the depositors of Lloyds or HSBC or Standard Chartered wished to remove their money in one go then without BoE support, they would all go bust.

For context -

It's A Wonderful Life - Bank Run
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPkJH6BT7dM

Nigelb

LDLF said:

In a manner frighteningly reminiscent of Britain's appeasement of Germany in the 1930s, BBC management has conceded.

(Perhaps a good thing though ultimately; this was blown out of al proportion on both sides of the debate.)

The phrase is "not dissimilar".

And I'm not entirely persuaded that a power grab by Lineker is to follow.

nico679

Tragic . 3 year old in Texas accidentally kills her 4 year old sister with a semi - automatic pistol .

Nothing to see here ....

maxh

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start.

The other point was

"The direct savings to the NHS from fewer hospitalisations at ages 5–11 amount to about £5 million per cohort, or just 0.4% of average annual spending on Sure Start. Including the longer-run savings from fewer injuries as well, the financial benefits reach around 6% of Sure Start’s budget"

Savings amounted to 6£ for every 100£ spent. While obviously a win individually for children that dodged a trip to hospital I am less convinced this shows as good on a cost/benefit analysis

(a) long term effect on children and families
(b) that's only part of it

As I said I am not opposed to schemes like sure start. I come at this purely from a point of "Are the benefits worth what we are paying?". Too many politicians and indeed civil servants come up with schemes and because we don't measure or set targets we never know. Let's throw out the bad is all I am saying and try something else. We have limited resources for governments to spend whether labour or tory. Is it that controversial that I want them to spend it wisely?

"just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start."

We see this all the time in school - a defining feature of working with young people is that their very early childhood experiences compound inequality (in either direction) as they go through school.

Often kids arrive at primary school appearing to be in a broadly similar place educationally, but by the end of primary school there are huge disparities. Often (not always) these disparities are down to their early childhood experiences, which is why Sure Start was so good.

I can't comment on the hospital admissions part of it (the above refers only to educational outcomes) but it doesn't surprise me.

Edited to remove phantom quotes!

FF43

Following remarks on the previous thread about Lineker being graceless in victory, he did tweet this,

Also, I’d like to thank Tim Davie for his understanding during this difficult period. He has an almost impossible job keeping everybody happy, particularly in the area of impartiality. I am delighted that we’ll continue to fight the good fight, together.

https://twitter.com/GaryLineker/status/1635226878138277891

Nigelb

rcs1000 said:

MaxPB said:

Nigelb said:

MaxPB said:

GIN1138 said:

Can anyone explain what's going on with the banks? I've not been keeping a close eye on developments lately and suddenly this weekend it seems UK and US banks are in trouble?

Are we heading for another banking crash? Or it just this weeks fake crisis from the media?

US mid sized banks did an RBS and the US government have bailed out depositors.

UK banks are fine.

More like a Northern Rock, perhaps ?

Maybe not as bad as that, NR was operating at something mad like 140:1 leverage when it all came crashing down. RBS was a paltry 70:1, I think SVB US had something like ~2% core tier 1 capital at the end of last weekend vs ~12% for SVB UK.

I don't think that's true.

At the end of Q4, SVB (consolidated) had $16.3bn of equity (and tier one capital will be larger as it will include equity like instruments). Total loans were only about $74bn. Total assets were $212bn, of which a large chunk was in US Treasuring (where, ironically, they took a bath as interest rates rose.)

SVB US was killed by a bank run, not because its assets were suddenly dwarfed by its liabilities. Once a bank run starts, then the fundamental credit worthiness of the institution is irrelevant. No bank can survive half its depositors heading for the door at the same time. If half the depositors of Lloyds or HSBC or Standard Chartered wished to remove their money in one go then without BoE support, they would all go bust.

But it's what triggers the bank run.

Northern Rock, to be fair, took far more rash decisions than did SVB in its dash for growth.

maxh

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start.

The other point was

"The direct savings to the NHS from fewer hospitalisations at ages 5–11 amount to about £5 million per cohort, or just 0.4% of average annual spending on Sure Start. Including the longer-run savings from fewer injuries as well, the financial benefits reach around 6% of Sure Start’s budget"

Savings amounted to 6£ for every 100£ spent. While obviously a win individually for children that dodged a trip to hospital I am less convinced this shows as good on a cost/benefit analysis

You seem to assume that the only outcome of surestart was lower hospital admissions - in reality it was a minor by product.

You are getting hung up on Surestart because I used it as an example. Once again I am not claiming it was a bad or good thing. I am merely asking for rigourous metrics that show it was a worthwhile investment. We have from Carnyx's link a 6% return on the funding. Feel free to link reports that cover the other 94%

"Feel free to link reports that cover the other 94%" I respect where you're coming from on this, but speaking as a teacher and previously a statistician trying to do exactly what you're asking for (evaluate the impact of government policy) this is incredibly hard to do.

I acknowledge SureStart is just an example, but it is a good one, as its effects will be felt throughout school, indeed throughout a person's life. Everyone who experienced SureStart will still be benefiting from it (assuming it was beneficial to them) but it will be incredibly hard to disentangle how much of any benefit they gain in life can be attributed to SureStart. But crucially that doesn't mean the benefit isn't there.

Stuartinromford

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start.

The other point was

"The direct savings to the NHS from fewer hospitalisations at ages 5–11 amount to about £5 million per cohort, or just 0.4% of average annual spending on Sure Start. Including the longer-run savings from fewer injuries as well, the financial benefits reach around 6% of Sure Start’s budget"

Savings amounted to 6£ for every 100£ spent. While obviously a win individually for children that dodged a trip to hospital I am less convinced this shows as good on a cost/benefit analysis

Bear in mind that that's £6 per £100 in savings to one service; we don't know what other advantages accrue to those who experienced Sure Start.

(Though here's agovernment study from 2011, flagging another 10% or so gained back by parents being able to return to work sooner;

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-evaluation-of-sure-start-local-programmes-an-economic-perspective)

The difficulty for government is that, although the spending is obvious here and now, the benefits are harder to corral into one place and happen over decades. And over-valuing the first at the expense of the second is something of a British disease.

As to why- excellent question which I suspect nobody knows for sure. But if I had to guess, I imagine that children who are better socialised are less likely to do risky things as they grow older. It doesn't show up in under 5's, becuase they are pretty well watched all the time. But it becomes increasingly important as they grow older. There's a massive Matthew Effect in education and child development ("to those who have, more shall be given") and catching up is pretty damn hard. Which is why intervention with the very young is so important.

Pagan2

maxh said:

"just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start."

We see this all the time in school - a defining feature of working with young people is that their very early childhood experiences compound inequality (in either direction) as they go through school.

Often kids arrive at primary school appearing to be in a broadly similar place educationally, but by the end of primary school there are huge disparities. Often (not always) these disparities are down to their early childhood experiences, which is why Sure Start was so good.

I can't comment on the hospital admissions part of it (the above refers only to educational outcomes) but it doesn't surprise me.

Edited to remove phantom quotes!

Yes vanilla is playing up for me for some reason.

I guess I shouldn't have used surestart as an example as people are viewing it as me saying surestart shouldn't have occurred whereas all I am saying is fine do things like surestart but set targets for what you think it will achieve and then measure to see if we are close to targets.

To go back to my hypothetical scheme costing 500mill to reduce adult illiteracy by 50%. If it does that then value for money. If it only reduces it by 1% go well that scheme didn't work so lets cut it and try something else with the money.

noneoftheabove

FF43 said:

Following remarks on the previous thread about Lineker being graceless in victory, he did tweet this,

Also, I’d like to thank Tim Davie for his understanding during this difficult period. He has an almost impossible job keeping everybody happy, particularly in the area of impartiality. I am delighted that we’ll continue to fight the good fight, together.

https://twitter.com/GaryLineker/status/1635226878138277891

I am sure the permanently offended are capable of finding something objectionable in that too, all the while being champions of free speech and against cancel culture, of course.

Carnyx

Stuartinromford said:

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start.

The other point was

"The direct savings to the NHS from fewer hospitalisations at ages 5–11 amount to about £5 million per cohort, or just 0.4% of average annual spending on Sure Start. Including the longer-run savings from fewer injuries as well, the financial benefits reach around 6% of Sure Start’s budget"

Savings amounted to 6£ for every 100£ spent. While obviously a win individually for children that dodged a trip to hospital I am less convinced this shows as good on a cost/benefit analysis

Bear in mind that that's £6 per £100 in savings to one service; we don't know what other advantages accrue to those who experienced Sure Start.

(Though here's agovernment study from 2011, flagging another 10% or so gained back by parents being able to return to work sooner;

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-evaluation-of-sure-start-local-programmes-an-economic-perspective)

The difficulty for government is that, although the spending is obvious here and now, the benefits are harder to corral into one place and happen over decades. And over-valuing the first at the expense of the second is something of a British disease.

As to why- excellent question which I suspect nobody knows for sure. But if I had to guess, I imagine that children who are better socialised are less likely to do risky things as they grow older. It doesn't show up in under 5's, becuase they are pretty well watched all the time. But it becomes increasingly important as they grow older. There's a massive Matthew Effect in education and child development ("to those who have, more shall be given") and catching up is pretty damn hard. Which is why intervention with the very young is so important.

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

"just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start."

We see this all the time in school - a defining feature of working with young people is that their very early childhood experiences compound inequality (in either direction) as they go through school.

Often kids arrive at primary school appearing to be in a broadly similar place educationally, but by the end of primary school there are huge disparities. Often (not always) these disparities are down to their early childhood experiences, which is why Sure Start was so good.

I can't comment on the hospital admissions part of it (the above refers only to educational outcomes) but it doesn't surprise me.

Edited to remove phantom quotes!

Yes vanilla is playing up for me for some reason.

I guess I shouldn't have used surestart as an example as people are viewing it as me saying surestart shouldn't have occurred whereas all I am saying is fine do things like surestart but set targets for what you think it will achieve and then measure to see if we are close to targets.

To go back to my hypothetical scheme costing 500mill to reduce adult illiteracy by 50%. If it does that then value for money. If it only reduces it by 1% go well that scheme didn't work so lets cut it and try something else with the money.

Bear in mind my 6% is (a) prretty solid as those things go and (b) what I remember, not from a detailed survey, but simply an imperfect and incomplete memory of a passing remark from a statistician friend. I looked in the BMJ because that's what tje friend mentioned at the time. That comes up with medical stuff, of course, as you would expect.

It's a primarily educational scheme, though, so there will be more studies on the educational side.

Luckyguy1983

The Gary Lineker furore has quite a few similarities with the Marcus Rashford furore. Both cases involved a footballer heroically attacking the 'forces of conservatism', to an obligingly flat-footed response, followed by emerging victorious and (in the view of commentariat) with career prospects enhanced. Both Rishi Sunak playing the stooge as well.

And in both cases (certainly in my opinion), welcoming their contribution to the debate but actively engaging with it rather than capitulating is what a good Conservative Government would have done.

The BBC has certainly caved at the optimum moment for Lineker - had the stand-off lasted another week, they would have been forced to create an actual MOTD programme, and barring them getting Joey from Friends to present it, it could well have proven more popular.

Theuniondivvie

Big_G_NorthWales said:

I simply do not see anything in those tweets that is controversial

Lineker supports refugees and has accommodated some

It does not mean that we should not stand firm against the boats and I would expect the public do support stopping the boats

Polling on this will be interesting

Especially the Voodoo stuff..

Stuartinromford

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

"just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start."

We see this all the time in school - a defining feature of working with young people is that their very early childhood experiences compound inequality (in either direction) as they go through school.

Often kids arrive at primary school appearing to be in a broadly similar place educationally, but by the end of primary school there are huge disparities. Often (not always) these disparities are down to their early childhood experiences, which is why Sure Start was so good.

I can't comment on the hospital admissions part of it (the above refers only to educational outcomes) but it doesn't surprise me.

Edited to remove phantom quotes!

Yes vanilla is playing up for me for some reason.

I guess I shouldn't have used surestart as an example as people are viewing it as me saying surestart shouldn't have occurred whereas all I am saying is fine do things like surestart but set targets for what you think it will achieve and then measure to see if we are close to targets.

To go back to my hypothetical scheme costing 500mill to reduce adult illiteracy by 50%. If it does that then value for money. If it only reduces it by 1% go well that scheme didn't work so lets cut it and try something else with the money.

The difficulty with that is that not everything follows a "do a thing, get a measurable response in a small number of years time." Sometimes the benefits are real, substantial and come in over a whole lifetime. And whilst there are financial tools to answer the question of whether spending X now is worth return Y in 30 years time, that's only part of the question.

And the problem with that sort of scientific management is that it can warp the process to favour the things that can be measured easily.

Nigelb

Hadn't seen this before.

An excellent description of Libertarians.
https://twitter.com/kriswernowsky/status/1635139574933651456

squareroot2

eek said:

squareroot2 said:

Lineker has agreed to button it until the review. They think it's all over. It isnt.

Has he? he has agreed to follow the BBC's current social media rules.

And the last tweet in his response was hardly buttoning it - it was more doubling down than keeping quiet.

We will see. It looked like a truculent had to have the last word tweet.

williamglenn

maxh said:

FPT - reposting here as its an ongoing discussion

williamglenn said:

maxh said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

nico679 said:

There are no safe and legal routes to the UK available to the vast majority of those crossing on boats now .

So effectively asylum is now off the table for many who would have passed the threshold for that . The bill regardless of what no 10 have lied about does allow for the detention and deportation of children.

And this bill is being pushed as compassionate and moral ! One wonders what yardstick this government is using !

I suppose we should be grateful they weren’t put against a wall and shot !

We're not going to get the international cooperation we need to actually deal with small boats if we make claiming asylum impossible for anyone arriving here by irregular means while failing to provide safe routes for them. It's this lack of safe routes that very clearly signals what the government is after here is a political dividing line, not a solution.

There's a fundamental divide, not a synthetic dividing line, about the nature of the problem.

To some people, it's purely an administrative issue and we should welcome as many people as possible as quickly as possible. To others, there is a structural issue with the asylum system because it wasn't designed for a world of 8 billion people and easy global travel, therefore we cannot afford to adopt the solutions that the first group would like to see implemented.

That's a false binary. To others we should have a globally agreed system by which we take what is agreed at the UN to be our fair share of genuine refugees, with a far better system for finding the cases of highest need coupled with proper systems to catch and deport those who try to work around that system (which many on here have described how to do).

I am further to the left than most on migration, and even I wouldn't say we should welcome as many people as possible as quickly as possible.

It's not a false binary. Plenty of people argue that we should "lead the world" on accepting asylum seekers.

Ah, thanks for spotting my dead post on a dead thread (I'm always doing that).

Perhaps this is a misinterpretation then? I'd argue, that because of our levels of prosperity, and because of the historical reasons for our prosperity, we should lead the world on accepting asylum seekers. As I said on the last thread I cannot fathom how we can accept that Turkey and Lebanon are having their border towns utterly transformed by migration, and not be prepared to take some of the pressure off that.

But for me, leading the world on this would involve sticking our necks out and using the global power we have to try to create the globally agreed system I refer to.

I think you'll find very, very few who would argue for unlimited immigration.

Very few would argue openly for unlimited immigration, but they would argue against anything that makes limits tangible, so it amounts to the same thing in practice.

squareroot2

FF43 said:

Following remarks on the previous thread about Lineker being graceless in victory, he did tweet this,

Also, I’d like to thank Tim Davie for his understanding during this difficult period. He has an almost impossible job keeping everybody happy, particularly in the area of impartiality. I am delighted that we’ll continue to fight the good fight, together.

https://twitter.com/GaryLineker/status/1635226878138277891

Pass the sick bag.

Luckyguy1983

Nigelb said:

Hadn't seen this before.

An excellent description of Libertarians.
https://twitter.com/kriswernowsky/status/1635139574933651456

House cats can survive in the wild. It's dogs (afaicr) that have had it bred out of them and need humans (again afaicr even the wild dogs need nearby humans).

Nigelb

squareroot2 said:

eek said:

squareroot2 said:

Lineker has agreed to button it until the review. They think it's all over. It isnt.

Has he? he has agreed to follow the BBC's current social media rules.

And the last tweet in his response was hardly buttoning it - it was more doubling down than keeping quiet.

We will see. It looked like a truculent had to have the last word tweet.

Or a polite acknowledgment of the support he has received.
(You might view my reply as a truculent attempt at having the last word.)

noneoftheabove

williamglenn said:

maxh said:

FPT - reposting here as its an ongoing discussion

williamglenn said:

maxh said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

nico679 said:

There are no safe and legal routes to the UK available to the vast majority of those crossing on boats now .

So effectively asylum is now off the table for many who would have passed the threshold for that . The bill regardless of what no 10 have lied about does allow for the detention and deportation of children.

And this bill is being pushed as compassionate and moral ! One wonders what yardstick this government is using !

I suppose we should be grateful they weren’t put against a wall and shot !

We're not going to get the international cooperation we need to actually deal with small boats if we make claiming asylum impossible for anyone arriving here by irregular means while failing to provide safe routes for them. It's this lack of safe routes that very clearly signals what the government is after here is a political dividing line, not a solution.

There's a fundamental divide, not a synthetic dividing line, about the nature of the problem.

To some people, it's purely an administrative issue and we should welcome as many people as possible as quickly as possible. To others, there is a structural issue with the asylum system because it wasn't designed for a world of 8 billion people and easy global travel, therefore we cannot afford to adopt the solutions that the first group would like to see implemented.

That's a false binary. To others we should have a globally agreed system by which we take what is agreed at the UN to be our fair share of genuine refugees, with a far better system for finding the cases of highest need coupled with proper systems to catch and deport those who try to work around that system (which many on here have described how to do).

I am further to the left than most on migration, and even I wouldn't say we should welcome as many people as possible as quickly as possible.

It's not a false binary. Plenty of people argue that we should "lead the world" on accepting asylum seekers.

Ah, thanks for spotting my dead post on a dead thread (I'm always doing that).

Perhaps this is a misinterpretation then? I'd argue, that because of our levels of prosperity, and because of the historical reasons for our prosperity, we should lead the world on accepting asylum seekers. As I said on the last thread I cannot fathom how we can accept that Turkey and Lebanon are having their border towns utterly transformed by migration, and not be prepared to take some of the pressure off that.

But for me, leading the world on this would involve sticking our necks out and using the global power we have to try to create the globally agreed system I refer to.

I think you'll find very, very few who would argue for unlimited immigration.

Very few would argue openly for unlimited immigration, but they would argue against anything that makes limits tangible, so it amounts to the same thing in practice.

This is only true in a world where:

Anything = Putting in place new illegal laws that will be ineffectual because they are err, illegal, and will not be carried out

And, things like providing funding and resources for the home office, judiciary and immigration services or severe fines on the illegal employers of illegal migrants are not counted as anything.

But hey ho, good soundbite.

Carnyx

squareroot2 said:

eek said:

squareroot2 said:

Lineker has agreed to button it until the review. They think it's all over. It isnt.

Has he? he has agreed to follow the BBC's current social media rules.

And the last tweet in his response was hardly buttoning it - it was more doubling down than keeping quiet.

We will see. It looked like a truculent had to have the last word tweet.

No: just reassuring people that the rules had not changed from what they were all along.

Nigelb said:

squareroot2 said:

eek said:

squareroot2 said:

Lineker has agreed to button it until the review. They think it's all over. It isnt.

Has he? he has agreed to follow the BBC's current social media rules.

And the last tweet in his response was hardly buttoning it - it was more doubling down than keeping quiet.

We will see. It looked like a truculent had to have the last word tweet.

Or a polite acknowledgment of the support he has received.
(You might view my reply as a truculent attempt at having the last word.)

I read it as partly trying to cool things down by reassuring people he hadn't been muzzled contrary to the rules and contrary to BBC treatment of right wing presenters.

Pagan2

Carnyx said:

Stuartinromford said:

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start.

The other point was

"The direct savings to the NHS from fewer hospitalisations at ages 5–11 amount to about £5 million per cohort, or just 0.4% of average annual spending on Sure Start. Including the longer-run savings from fewer injuries as well, the financial benefits reach around 6% of Sure Start’s budget"

Savings amounted to 6£ for every 100£ spent. While obviously a win individually for children that dodged a trip to hospital I am less convinced this shows as good on a cost/benefit analysis

Bear in mind that that's £6 per £100 in savings to one service; we don't know what other advantages accrue to those who experienced Sure Start.

(Though here's agovernment study from 2011, flagging another 10% or so gained back by parents being able to return to work sooner;

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-evaluation-of-sure-start-local-programmes-an-economic-perspective)

The difficulty for government is that, although the spending is obvious here and now, the benefits are harder to corral into one place and happen over decades. And over-valuing the first at the expense of the second is something of a British disease.

As to why- excellent question which I suspect nobody knows for sure. But if I had to guess, I imagine that children who are better socialised are less likely to do risky things as they grow older. It doesn't show up in under 5's, becuase they are pretty well watched all the time. But it becomes increasingly important as they grow older. There's a massive Matthew Effect in education and child development ("to those who have, more shall be given") and catching up is pretty damn hard. Which is why intervention with the very young is so important.

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

"just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start."

We see this all the time in school - a defining feature of working with young people is that their very early childhood experiences compound inequality (in either direction) as they go through school.

Often kids arrive at primary school appearing to be in a broadly similar place educationally, but by the end of primary school there are huge disparities. Often (not always) these disparities are down to their early childhood experiences, which is why Sure Start was so good.

I can't comment on the hospital admissions part of it (the above refers only to educational outcomes) but it doesn't surprise me.

Edited to remove phantom quotes!

Yes vanilla is playing up for me for some reason.

I guess I shouldn't have used surestart as an example as people are viewing it as me saying surestart shouldn't have occurred whereas all I am saying is fine do things like surestart but set targets for what you think it will achieve and then measure to see if we are close to targets.

To go back to my hypothetical scheme costing 500mill to reduce adult illiteracy by 50%. If it does that then value for money. If it only reduces it by 1% go well that scheme didn't work so lets cut it and try something else with the money.

Bear in mind my 6% is (a) prretty solid as those things go and (b) what I remember, not from a detailed survey, but simply an imperfect and incomplete memory of a passing remark from a statistician friend. I looked in the BMJ because that's what tje friend mentioned at the time. That comes up with medical stuff, of course, as you would expect.

It's a primarily educational scheme, though, so there will be more studies on the educational side.

I am not by any means arguing that 6% is a bad thing or as I have said sure start was a bad thing. I just want figures so we can say "scheme A cost us 1 billion but here are the figures we got a 200 mill reduction in health care, 600 million in education benefits, 300 million in crime reduction" etc....then we can say scheme A was worthwhile and should be continued. I want this analysis independent of the government of the day so we don't get good schemes shit canned, conversely we do get scheme B shit canned where it cost us 1 billion but only deliver 100 million of benefits to the tax payer

maxh

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

"just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start."

We see this all the time in school - a defining feature of working with young people is that their very early childhood experiences compound inequality (in either direction) as they go through school.

Often kids arrive at primary school appearing to be in a broadly similar place educationally, but by the end of primary school there are huge disparities. Often (not always) these disparities are down to their early childhood experiences, which is why Sure Start was so good.

I can't comment on the hospital admissions part of it (the above refers only to educational outcomes) but it doesn't surprise me.

Edited to remove phantom quotes!

Yes vanilla is playing up for me for some reason.

I guess I shouldn't have used surestart as an example as people are viewing it as me saying surestart shouldn't have occurred whereas all I am saying is fine do things like surestart but set targets for what you think it will achieve and then measure to see if we are close to targets.

To go back to my hypothetical scheme costing 500mill to reduce adult illiteracy by 50%. If it does that then value for money. If it only reduces it by 1% go well that scheme didn't work so lets cut it and try something else with the money.

No I don't think people are interpreting you as being against SureStart (at least, I'm not). I think it's a really useful test case for what you're arguing for.

Okay, if I was in government, and trying to argue for SureStart being reintroduced (which I definitely would be, and as quick as I could before I was cancelled for having FAR too many skeletons in my closet to be a politician..) I'd set the following targets:
- Attendance at primary school being in the range X% to X% for Sure Start attendees.
- Employment levels and reported satisfaction amongst parents of children at Sure Start.
- Mental health admissions for parents of children at Sure Start being below a certain level
- Apparently, something on hospital admissions (who knew!)
- Attainment levels at end of primary school being higher than comparable peers who have not attended Sure Start (or equivalent early years provision).
- Similar attainment levels at secondary school
- Employment levels of attendees of Sure Start
- and many more longitudinally throughout the attendees' life.

We'd also need to be open to unintended effects, both positive and negative. But yeah I agree that if a policy like Sure Start didn't achieve the first two or three of the above agreed targets, it should be scrapped.

I'm sure I've missed some important effects, but if I was in DfE rather than sitting with my kid asleep on my lap I'd hope that I'd have a chance to do this more rigorously.

ETA: of course you then run into the problem of how to value these impacts in monetary terms, which will always be debated and is never easy to do fairly (cf valuing nature)

TheScreamingEagles

Labour leads by 21%.

Westminster VI (12 March):

Labour 48% (-2)
Conservative 27% (+3)
Liberal Democrat 11% (+2)
Reform UK 6% (-1)
Green 5% (–)
Scottish National Party 3% (–)
Other 1% (–)

Changes +/- 5 March

redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voti…


https://twitter.com/redfieldwilton/status/1635324845880918016?s=46&t=jkvRY6JsvE1I-2t12-QBqQ

Carnyx

Theuniondivvie said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

I simply do not see anything in those tweets that is controversial

Lineker supports refugees and has accommodated some

It does not mean that we should not stand firm against the boats and I would expect the public do support stopping the boats

Polling on this will be interesting

Especially the Voodoo stuff..

BigG is a manifestation of vodou? Very appropriate name.

Nigelb

Damn.
This could have been amazing.

Before he died, Akira Kurosawa was planning an adaptation of The Masque of the Red Death. The screenplay exists in English translation. “If Brueghel had described a district ravaged by the black plaque, the picture would probably look like this”. One of the great unmade films
https://twitter.com/hering_david/status/1634466837357375489

Carnyx

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Stuartinromford said:

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start.

The other point was

"The direct savings to the NHS from fewer hospitalisations at ages 5–11 amount to about £5 million per cohort, or just 0.4% of average annual spending on Sure Start. Including the longer-run savings from fewer injuries as well, the financial benefits reach around 6% of Sure Start’s budget"

Savings amounted to 6£ for every 100£ spent. While obviously a win individually for children that dodged a trip to hospital I am less convinced this shows as good on a cost/benefit analysis

Bear in mind that that's £6 per £100 in savings to one service; we don't know what other advantages accrue to those who experienced Sure Start.

(Though here's agovernment study from 2011, flagging another 10% or so gained back by parents being able to return to work sooner;

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-evaluation-of-sure-start-local-programmes-an-economic-perspective)

The difficulty for government is that, although the spending is obvious here and now, the benefits are harder to corral into one place and happen over decades. And over-valuing the first at the expense of the second is something of a British disease.

As to why- excellent question which I suspect nobody knows for sure. But if I had to guess, I imagine that children who are better socialised are less likely to do risky things as they grow older. It doesn't show up in under 5's, becuase they are pretty well watched all the time. But it becomes increasingly important as they grow older. There's a massive Matthew Effect in education and child development ("to those who have, more shall be given") and catching up is pretty damn hard. Which is why intervention with the very young is so important.

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

"just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start."

We see this all the time in school - a defining feature of working with young people is that their very early childhood experiences compound inequality (in either direction) as they go through school.

Often kids arrive at primary school appearing to be in a broadly similar place educationally, but by the end of primary school there are huge disparities. Often (not always) these disparities are down to their early childhood experiences, which is why Sure Start was so good.

I can't comment on the hospital admissions part of it (the above refers only to educational outcomes) but it doesn't surprise me.

Edited to remove phantom quotes!

Yes vanilla is playing up for me for some reason.

I guess I shouldn't have used surestart as an example as people are viewing it as me saying surestart shouldn't have occurred whereas all I am saying is fine do things like surestart but set targets for what you think it will achieve and then measure to see if we are close to targets.

To go back to my hypothetical scheme costing 500mill to reduce adult illiteracy by 50%. If it does that then value for money. If it only reduces it by 1% go well that scheme didn't work so lets cut it and try something else with the money.

Bear in mind my 6% is (a) prretty solid as those things go and (b) what I remember, not from a detailed survey, but simply an imperfect and incomplete memory of a passing remark from a statistician friend. I looked in the BMJ because that's what tje friend mentioned at the time. That comes up with medical stuff, of course, as you would expect.

It's a primarily educational scheme, though, so there will be more studies on the educational side.

I am not by any means arguing that 6% is a bad thing or as I have said sure start was a bad thing. I just want figures so we can say "scheme A cost us 1 billion but here are the figures we got a 200 mill reduction in health care, 600 million in education benefits, 300 million in crime reduction" etc....then we can say scheme A was worthwhile and should be continued. I want this analysis independent of the government of the day so we don't get good schemes shit canned, conversely we do get scheme B shit canned where it cost us 1 billion but only deliver 100 million of benefits to the tax payer

Fair enough. Maybe one of us knows the scheme fully, but it's not exactly current now - been dead for some years and only now partly reanimated.

Big_G_NorthWales

Carnyx said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

I simply do not see anything in those tweets that is controversial

Lineker supports refugees and has accommodated some

It does not mean that we should not stand firm against the boats and I would expect the public do support stopping the boats

Polling on this will be interesting

Especially the Voodoo stuff..

BigG is a manifestation of vodou? Very appropriate name.

I would just say I did apologise last night for my naivety and promised to be more switched on

Pulpstar

Fpt Never realised ogh was head of a church before.

Pagan2

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

"just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start."

We see this all the time in school - a defining feature of working with young people is that their very early childhood experiences compound inequality (in either direction) as they go through school.

Often kids arrive at primary school appearing to be in a broadly similar place educationally, but by the end of primary school there are huge disparities. Often (not always) these disparities are down to their early childhood experiences, which is why Sure Start was so good.

I can't comment on the hospital admissions part of it (the above refers only to educational outcomes) but it doesn't surprise me.

Edited to remove phantom quotes!

Yes vanilla is playing up for me for some reason.

I guess I shouldn't have used surestart as an example as people are viewing it as me saying surestart shouldn't have occurred whereas all I am saying is fine do things like surestart but set targets for what you think it will achieve and then measure to see if we are close to targets.

To go back to my hypothetical scheme costing 500mill to reduce adult illiteracy by 50%. If it does that then value for money. If it only reduces it by 1% go well that scheme didn't work so lets cut it and try something else with the money.

No I don't think people are interpreting you as being against SureStart (at least, I'm not). I think it's a really useful test case for what you're arguing for.

Okay, if I was in government, and trying to argue for SureStart being reintroduced (which I definitely would be, and as quick as I could before I was cancelled for having FAR too many skeletons in my closet to be a politician..) I'd set the following targets:
- Attendance at primary school being in the range X% to X% for Sure Start attendees.
- Employment levels and reported satisfaction amongst parents of children at Sure Start.
- Mental health admissions for parents of children at Sure Start being below a certain level
- Apparently, something on hospital admissions (who knew!)
- Attainment levels at end of primary school being higher than comparable peers who have not attended Sure Start (or equivalent early years provision).
- Similar attainment levels at secondary school
- Employment levels of attendees of Sure Start
- and many more longitudinally throughout the attendees' life.

We'd also need to be open to unintended effects, both positive and negative. But yeah I agree that if a policy like Sure Start didn't achieve the first two or three of the above agreed targets, it should be scrapped.

I'm sure I've missed some important effects, but if I was in DfE rather than sitting with my kid asleep on my lap I'd hope that I'd have a chance to do this more rigorously.

ETA: of course you then run into the problem of how to value these impacts in monetary terms, which will always be debated and is never easy to do fairly (cf valuing nature)

The trouble with politicians and the civil service is they love to measure others, they don't like to be measured themselves

GIN1138

TheScreamingEagles said:

Labour leads by 21%.

Westminster VI (12 March):

Labour 48% (-2)
Conservative 27% (+3)
Liberal Democrat 11% (+2)
Reform UK 6% (-1)
Green 5% (–)
Scottish National Party 3% (–)
Other 1% (–)

Changes +/- 5 March

redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voti…


https://twitter.com/redfieldwilton/status/1635324845880918016?s=46&t=jkvRY6JsvE1I-2t12-QBqQ

Broken, sleazy Labour (and REFORM) on the slide!

maxh

williamglenn said:

maxh said:

FPT - reposting here as its an ongoing discussion

williamglenn said:

maxh said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

nico679 said:

There are no safe and legal routes to the UK available to the vast majority of those crossing on boats now .

So effectively asylum is now off the table for many who would have passed the threshold for that . The bill regardless of what no 10 have lied about does allow for the detention and deportation of children.

And this bill is being pushed as compassionate and moral ! One wonders what yardstick this government is using !

I suppose we should be grateful they weren’t put against a wall and shot !

We're not going to get the international cooperation we need to actually deal with small boats if we make claiming asylum impossible for anyone arriving here by irregular means while failing to provide safe routes for them. It's this lack of safe routes that very clearly signals what the government is after here is a political dividing line, not a solution.

There's a fundamental divide, not a synthetic dividing line, about the nature of the problem.

To some people, it's purely an administrative issue and we should welcome as many people as possible as quickly as possible. To others, there is a structural issue with the asylum system because it wasn't designed for a world of 8 billion people and easy global travel, therefore we cannot afford to adopt the solutions that the first group would like to see implemented.

That's a false binary. To others we should have a globally agreed system by which we take what is agreed at the UN to be our fair share of genuine refugees, with a far better system for finding the cases of highest need coupled with proper systems to catch and deport those who try to work around that system (which many on here have described how to do).

I am further to the left than most on migration, and even I wouldn't say we should welcome as many people as possible as quickly as possible.

It's not a false binary. Plenty of people argue that we should "lead the world" on accepting asylum seekers.

Ah, thanks for spotting my dead post on a dead thread (I'm always doing that).

Perhaps this is a misinterpretation then? I'd argue, that because of our levels of prosperity, and because of the historical reasons for our prosperity, we should lead the world on accepting asylum seekers. As I said on the last thread I cannot fathom how we can accept that Turkey and Lebanon are having their border towns utterly transformed by migration, and not be prepared to take some of the pressure off that.

But for me, leading the world on this would involve sticking our necks out and using the global power we have to try to create the globally agreed system I refer to.

I think you'll find very, very few who would argue for unlimited immigration.

Very few would argue openly for unlimited immigration, but they would argue against anything that makes limits tangible, so it amounts to the same thing in practice.

Take me as someone who is as close to that end of the debate as I think you'll find. I said on the previous thread that I would support stopping the boats if it was coupled with a realistical plan for safe a d legal routes, and the global agreement I referred to above.

As others have said, this site is great for talking to your political opponents, rather than assuming what they believe.

Carnyx

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Carnyx said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

I simply do not see anything in those tweets that is controversial

Lineker supports refugees and has accommodated some

It does not mean that we should not stand firm against the boats and I would expect the public do support stopping the boats

Polling on this will be interesting

Especially the Voodoo stuff..

BigG is a manifestation of vodou? Very appropriate name.

I would just say I did apologise last night for my naivety and promised to be more switched on

Sorry, couldn't resist!

SeaShantyIrish2

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

Oh surestart worked - the fact the Government has quietly reintroduced it tells you all you need to know,

So you can tell me what the aims of surestart were?
So you can tell me what the targets were?
So you can provide a link to a rigourous analysis of whether it met those targets?

I am not for a moment here saying Surestart wasn't a good idea. I am using it as an example of "We don't really know because we never really had any clear targets or analysis"

Pagan2 said:

Carnyx said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

numbertwelve said:

Pagan2 said:

eek said:

numbertwelve said:

maxh said:

kinabalu said:

numbertwelve said:

Political discourse in this country is depressing and has been for some time.

I wish we could have a rational discussion, e.g (a) it is a sensible objective to stop illegal and dangerous border crossings (b) that the country needs an immigration system that is rigorous, fair and consistent (c) that we need to do our fair bit to help those fleeing persecution overseas (d) that people fleeing persecution deserve to be welcomed and given the necessary resources to help them contribute to our society and (e) we need to listen to communities and work together to allow greater integration, collaboration and support, without this being either 1. Right wing reactionary racism or 2. Lefty liberal bleeding heart wokeness.

But then I’m a centrist at heart, probably, and maybe this is the cross I just have to bear!

Raving loony centrists sadly tend to get blotted out. You have to pick a side these days. That's pretty easy for me but I do feel for those less naturally aligned one way or the other.

I was just reflecting something similar to @numbertwelve (though I think I'm more on the left than they are).

TLDR; we need to accept more migrants to protect our own way of life, but to do so we need policies within UK that protect the poor who too often bear the brunt of migration.

A few thoughts:
- Having listened carefully to the arguments, I think we do need to stop the boats. Not because people are dying, sad though that is, but because the boats are creating a deeply unfair imbalance in who can get to UK (those who can make the arduous and illegal journey, as opposed to those in most need).
-There are 100 million displaced people around the world currently. I've had personal experience of what that means for e.g. Turkey (I was in Reyhanli soon after the start of the Syrian civil war, when pretty much overnight it became a 50% Syrian town). Whilst I have sympathy for the argument that it is culturally challenging to accept lots of migrants into UK, I can find no moral justification for why UK should be protected from this cultural upheaval but Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, Uganda etc. should have to bear it. Which leads me to conclude we need to find a way to accept a fair share of displaced people into our country.
- @Pagan2 is someone on here whose poitical views I listen carefully to, even though we are at either sides of the left-right spectrum. I think Pagan is correct to say that if we continue down the path we are currently on, the logical outcome is fortress Britain (I think the film Children of Men is not far from what we can expect). I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't want to bring my kids up into that world. Profoundly so. I think we have to make a choice as to whether we want the end result of global movement of people to be fortress Britain, or the painful compromises that come from taking many, many more migrants into UK. I don't think there is another option.
- It is a morally and practically important fact that the UK is far more wealthy than most nations on earth. I'd argue a significant part of each of our wealth today is directly as a result of exploitative global trade arragements, particularly during the heiight of empire. But even if you dispute that, I find it very hard to make a moral case for why any of us should be prosperous and comfortable enought to e.g. heat our homes simply because of the accident of where we are born.
- It is of course a very thorny political issue as to how we acknowledge the point I have just made, without forcing poorer people in UK to bear the brunt of the good intentions of richer people like me. Therefore the global issue bleeds into our national politics (and for me personally a deep lack of respect for those who are personally wealth and seek to avoid e.g. paying tax). We need to design UK policy to protect both those who are poorer here, and those who arrive on our shores. This isn't easy, but the alternative (fortress Britain) is, I believe, far worse.

A very good and considered post and I agree with the broad thrust of it (it is true I would say I am historically more on the centre right than centre left).

Your point on supporting poorer people particularly chimes with me. This is something that a lot of the sound and fury of the debate conveniently leaves out - on the right because it means spending money, on the left because it is easier to infer bad intentions from someone raising genuine concerns.

Indeed I would say one of the greatest faults of the 2010-2015 government was dismantling a number of local community services ostensibly on cost efficiency grounds whereas what would have been better would have been to look at what was being delivered and how it could be better used to achieve ambitions such as these, without being too constrained by government control once established. This was particularly unfortunate given Cameron’s (I believe genuine) views around the big society - a widely mocked concept but one that had the right underpinnings to it.

Yep - talking about the Big Society while cutting off everything that could support it (Surestart, libraries even) wasn't a good plan.

I will start by saying that I have no qualms on government spending on such items if they make sense. Sadly however because of how politicians of all sides prefer in implementation we often really never know.

We should be demanding a lot more of the following

This is how much it will cost
This is what it is designed to achieve
This is how we will measure it
This is the timescale to get to those results

Then we can drop things if they turn out not to be producing the value claimed for the money. We also need to have those measurements published by someone like ONS so the figures don't get twisted.

An example of this is SureStart....I have heard both it helped poor people and contrariwise that it was mostly used as cheap child care by middle classes and the poor didn't use it in numbers.

Which is true? Damned if I know....somethings will work beyond expectations, somethings won't live upto the hype but unless they are measured against the reasons for doing them how can we know which to expand and which to ditch?

This is an interesting one.

You are right of course that when working with finite resource and public funds there is a pressure to show demonstrable outcomes. However I think to fixate too much on this requires too much interventionism and inflexibility.

I can agree that the government should be a facilitator of community services. As someone who has that centre-right belief in personal agency and accountability and is a bit suspicious of top-down directives and micromanagement, I believe the people who run those services are the ones who have the best knowledge of their local communities and how they are engaged and best supported. Yes there needs to be some sort of metric to measure funding formulae (attendance is usually the bluntest but easiest tool), but a lot of the benefits of these services are much harder to measure - e.g a successful youth service might help in reducing anti social behaviour, but it is hard to make the jump from X to Y.

I think I come down on the side of periodic audits, more than anything else.

I am certainly not suggesting micromanagement here. Merely asking why are you doing this and how are you going to establish it is doing what you claimed so we can decide if it is doing the job or not. If what you suggested isn't doing the job then it is surely better to know that and can it and use the money for something else than keep chucking money at it for no return.

Too many of these schemes come with a lot of nebulous language about what they are meant to achieve and are just assumed to be working it seems to me.

To give an example take a hypothetical adult literacy scheme. Currently we would just get some waffle about giving funding to local authorities to run a course to improve literacy in their area. Funding 500 mill countrywide.

Wouldn't it be better if they had a target of reducing adult illiteracy by say 30%. If the proposed scheme then only reduces it by 1% then we can look and say well is that 1% reduction worth spending half a billion on or should we look at a way of reducing it with a better scheme and send the funding to that?

The way our government work currently (both sides) we would just continue funding it because we would just get quotes from ministers about the wondrous improvement in the life chances of the illiterate. Then the next lot would come in and can it because it wasn't their idea and the originators would be whining about how dare they abolish a brilliant scheme. In truth no one knew if it was a brilliant scheme or not because no one actually went and measured the outcome.

Surestart is an example of the above as far as I can see, cost a fair amount, no actual measurements to show if it was worth it for the money spent or not. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Simple fact is no one really seems to know

A friend who works in medicine mentioned this sort of thing to me some months back

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2303
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2032

Sadly hidden behind a paywall so I can't access the content. If there are actually proper rigourous studies on the effects of SureStart I would be interested. However while I can't read the report itself the precis already sets of alarm bells in my head

"Around 13 000 admissions of children to hospital each year were likely to have been prevented by the work of the Sure Start children’s centres that were set up across England in 1999 to support parents of young children, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded."

This sounds a lot to much like austerity caused 200,000 deaths to me. Possibly the report is right but as I can't read it I can't judge that

That's odd - the BMJ os partly open access, and I thought it would be. Sorry.

But for instance - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/jun/sure-start-delivered-major-health-benefits-children-poorer-neighbourhoods

That one I can read and seems to bear out that SureStart had an effect, moreso in poorer areas however if I may point out two parts one of which puzzles me as I can't see why it should be the case

"Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among children by the time they finish primary school. These effects build over time: while there is no significant effect at age 5, by age 11 greater Sure Start coverage (one more centre per thousand children aged 0–4) prevents around 5,500 hospitalisations per year".

Not disputing they have the stats just puzzles me why it should only appear after the child is no longer in sure start.

The other point was

"The direct savings to the NHS from fewer hospitalisations at ages 5–11 amount to about £5 million per cohort, or just 0.4% of average annual spending on Sure Start. Including the longer-run savings from fewer injuries as well, the financial benefits reach around 6% of Sure Start’s budget"

Savings amounted to 6£ for every 100£ spent. While obviously a win individually for children that dodged a trip to hospital I am less convinced this shows as good on a cost/benefit analysis

You seem to assume that the only outcome of surestart was lower hospital admissions - in reality it was a minor by product.

You are getting hung up on Surestart because I used it as an example. Once again I am not claiming it was a bad or good thing. I am merely asking for rigourous metrics that show it was a worthwhile investment. We have from Carnyx's link a 6% return on the funding. Feel free to link reports that cover the other 94%

"Feel free to link reports that cover the other 94%" I respect where you're coming from on this, but speaking as a teacher and previously a statistician trying to do exactly what you're asking for (evaluate the impact of government policy) this is incredibly hard to do.

I acknowledge SureStart is just an example, but it is a good one, as its effects will be felt throughout school, indeed throughout a person's life. Everyone who experienced SureStart will still be benefiting from it (assuming it was beneficial to them) but it will be incredibly hard to disentangle how much of any benefit they gain in life can be attributed to SureStart. But crucially that doesn't mean the benefit isn't there.

Also appreciate Pagan asking questions with followups on this topic, as well as informative responses.

However, what impress me (also depresses AND pissed me off) is that, when governments - ANY government - are quite willing, indeed eager, to balance budgets on the backs of LITTLE KIDS. While at same time ladling out oodles of lard to insiders, cronies, etc., etc. for their own fun AND profit.

Instead of commencing their public-spirited cheese-paring and belt-tightening with the cronies, NOT the kiddies.