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.
The trouble with setting tangible limits is that they won't satisfy the pro immigration side as they will lock out deserving cases for asylum as well as useful economic migrants, while they also won't satisfy the anti immigration side as they'll never be low enough and they won't be met. The reality is that the public are broadly okay with current immigration levels even though they are at record high levels.
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.
In a hypothetical ideal world, would you like to see a kind of global version of the European Union?
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.
The time to discuss that is if and when it happens. You clearly don't like GL but it's far from certain that that he will do that so little point speculating about a "what if" that's a couple of years into the future even if it ever occurs.
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"
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
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.
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
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"
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
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.
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.
This is one of the reasons I get so incensed against the "borrowers". We can't keep borrowing because we are stealing from those very children. Our interest repayments are already 12% of tax take....down the line our kids and grandkids won't have much in the way of public services because most of the tax take goes to paying debt
In the whole Lineker saga, something significant might have been overlooked.
Exhibit 1: Following his discussions with Davie, on Thursday night there were confident news stories doing the rounds from "BBC sources" to the effect that Lineker had avoided any sanctions for his actions. At that point the Telegraph and right wing commentators collectively blew a fuse. Then on Friday news broke that Lineker had been suspended.
Exhibit 2: The bit of Lineker's statement that hasn't been widely quoted: "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."
It was unusual that the reporting on Thursday was so wide of the mark, despite being so confidently put. Why was that? I wonder if, following his meeting with Lineker, Davie was prepared to draw a line under the matter and move on, that apparent outcome leaked, but subsequently Sharp was not prepared to go along with it in the face of the fuious reaction from the right, so on Friday Lineker found to his surprise that he'd been suspended. And that also explains Lineker's reference in his statement to the "impossible job" faced by Davie, which could be a reference to Davie's inability to act independently of a politically appointed BBC Chairman.
Anyway, the really good thing to come out of all this is that the furore over Sharp's appointment has been given a new lease of life, defying efforts to sweep it under the carpet.
Removing Lineker had become a distraction from the Government's main goal.
That is passing its Illegal Immigration Bill tonight while Labour and LD MPs voted against it. So in that sense Lineker back in his place ensures there is no distraction from that
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"
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
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.
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
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"
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
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.
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.
This is one of the reasons I get so incensed against the "borrowers". We can't keep borrowing because we are stealing from those very children. Our interest repayments are already 12% of tax take....down the line our kids and grandkids won't have much in the way of public services because most of the tax take goes to paying debt
But SureStart *is* spending on the children's futures, in an apparently cost-effective way (less crime in a decade or two, fewer broken families, less drugs ...).
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.
I have purposefully kept off the topic of SureStart because I admit it is quite a way outside of my knowledge.
When I made my original comments I was probably thinking more towards the government facilitating more independently conceived community projects and initiatives, as opposed to top-down schemes like SureStart (though I can see the benefit in those too). That just comes from personal philosophy, I think.
I would like to see more facilities being returned to local communities. I think a lot of what divides us as a society is emphasised when we exist in bubbles.
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"
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
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.
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
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"
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
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.
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.
Other point is almost every penny of stuff like SureStart will get spent in the UK, by worthy folk for whom it makes a real difference, rather than being stashed in the Cayman Islands or Jersey and spent on imported luxuries.
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...
Thankfully.
I see MTG is saying that the Fed only intervened to bail out its "woke friends" at SVB, and it ought to have been allowed to collapse...
This is one of the reasons I get so incensed against the "borrowers". We can't keep borrowing because we are stealing from those very children. Our interest repayments are already 12% of tax take....down the line our kids and grandkids won't have much in the way of public services because most of the tax take goes to paying debt
But SureStart *is* spending on the children's futures, in an apparently cost-effective way (less crime in a decade or two, fewer broken families, less drugs ...).
Well so far we have established 6% of the funding as a benefit. Still waiting for figures showing as a whole it was a worthwhile investment. Which is sort of my whole point that politicians don't like their schemes being measurable
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.
Not every bank was bailed out in 2008, see Lehmans
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.
In a hypothetical ideal world, would you like to see a kind of global version of the European Union?
Goodness no! More like the COP process for climate change (acknowledging that that has many flaws, in particular the lack of enforcement of agreements).
Anyway, sorry to duck out of this and other conversations, crying baby on my lap!
This is one of the reasons I get so incensed against the "borrowers". We can't keep borrowing because we are stealing from those very children. Our interest repayments are already 12% of tax take....down the line our kids and grandkids won't have much in the way of public services because most of the tax take goes to paying debt
But SureStart *is* spending on the children's futures, in an apparently cost-effective way (less crime in a decade or two, fewer broken families, less drugs ...).
Well so far we have established 6% of the funding as a benefit. Still waiting for figures showing as a whole it was a worthwhile investment. Which is sort of my whole point that politicians don't like their schemes being measurable
Ever tried applying for public money? *Everything* has to be measurable, e.g. university academics [edit] even have to give the number of tweets which will talk about their work or stuff like that. A colleague of mine was overjoyed when he hit the Twatter jackpot for people talking about his research (by the standards of our field) some time back as it was great for his stats reports.
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...
Thankfully.
I see MTG is saying that the Fed only intervened to bail out its "woke friends" at SVB, and it ought to have been allowed to collapse...
Worth watching the reaction in the US on that - the BBC was making the same point today (although in a less MTG fashion) that there is a case for saying the Administration is saving its 'Tech Bro' friends who preach non-Government intervention elsewhere but like a bailout. Don't think the BBC is in the MTG line of politics...
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.
In a hypothetical ideal world, would you like to see a kind of global version of the European Union?
Well, hypothetically, if it was an ideal European Union, it would seem a reasonable way to maximise liberty and settle disputes between democratic countries.
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...
But AIUI it was the Trump administration that changed the rules that allowed this to happen
I have purposefully kept off the topic of SureStart because I admit it is quite a way outside of my knowledge.
When I made my original comments I was probably thinking more towards the government facilitating more independently conceived community projects and initiatives, as opposed to top-down schemes like SureStart (though I can see the benefit in those too). That just comes from personal philosophy, I think.
I would like to see more facilities being returned to local communities. I think a lot of what divides us as a society is emphasised when we exist in bubbles.
If I go to my hypothetical adult illiterally reduced by 50%. What I would actually do if I was in charge is pick the 30 councils with highest adult illiteracy. Say here you are 5 million ring fenced, half adult illiteracy in your area. This is how we are going to measure it. Then go back 2 years later assess them all against target and then roll out the best programs nationwide
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"
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
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.
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
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"
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
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.
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.
On a separate topic, SeaShanty, what's your view on this:
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...
But AIUI it was the Trump administration that changed the rules that allowed this to happen
"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
Not sure about civil servants, but politicians get measured all the time, and in many different ways:
For example, public opinion polling. And election results. Also legislative roll calls, attendance records and the like.
How much politicos LIKE it is debatable, and differs from person to person, situation to situation.
In my experience, they are eager to find out what the numbers are, and look for them about as often as sports fans seek out scores (on & off field).
Whether or not they appreciate what the numbers ARE, well, that's rather . . . subjective.
Part of my thesis re: politicians, is that they are a diverse lot, to put it mildly. With some common tendencies (above-average egos for example) but multitude of different motivations - often within same politico.
Would agree, one common fault, is to establish rules for others that they are disinclined to impose (at least with equal rigor) upon themselves.
But that's the human condition writ large, which is in case of politicos highlighted by their public status AND power access.
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.
Removing Lineker had become a distraction from the Government's main goal.
That is passing its Illegal Immigration Bill tonight while Labour and LD MPs voted against it. So in that sense Lineker back in his place ensures there is no distraction from that
This is one of the reasons I get so incensed against the "borrowers". We can't keep borrowing because we are stealing from those very children. Our interest repayments are already 12% of tax take....down the line our kids and grandkids won't have much in the way of public services because most of the tax take goes to paying debt
But SureStart *is* spending on the children's futures, in an apparently cost-effective way (less crime in a decade or two, fewer broken families, less drugs ...).
Well so far we have established 6% of the funding as a benefit. Still waiting for figures showing as a whole it was a worthwhile investment. Which is sort of my whole point that politicians don't like their schemes being measurable
Ever tried applying for public money? *Everything* has to be measurable, e.g. university academics [edit] even have to give the number of tweets which will talk about their work or stuff like that. A colleague of mine was overjoyed when he hit the Twatter jackpot for people talking about his research (by the standards of our field) some time back as it was great for his stats reports.
No never have but have worked on civil service projects, I suspect mostly they choose the wrong measurements in any case to point to success. They don't seem to regard for some reason benefit to end users as relevant in my experience
I have purposefully kept off the topic of SureStart because I admit it is quite a way outside of my knowledge.
When I made my original comments I was probably thinking more towards the government facilitating more independently conceived community projects and initiatives, as opposed to top-down schemes like SureStart (though I can see the benefit in those too). That just comes from personal philosophy, I think.
I would like to see more facilities being returned to local communities. I think a lot of what divides us as a society is emphasised when we exist in bubbles.
If I go to my hypothetical adult illiterally reduced by 50%. What I would actually do if I was in charge is pick the 30 councils with highest adult illiteracy. Say here you are 5 million ring fenced, half adult illiteracy in your area. This is how we are going to measure it. Then go back 2 years later assess them all against target and then roll out the best programs nationwide
On that comparison Kate Forbes has gone from 7% to 33% - nearly “quintuple”……So Kate has support of “a third” of the electorate and Humzah “under a quarter”….
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?
Bank runs can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, so we shouldn’t be counting our chickens just yet. There’s one more US bank that looks a bit dicey right now.
Hopefully things will settle down & everybody will just move on though.
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"
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
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.
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
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"
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
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.
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.
On a separate topic, SeaShanty, what's your view on this:
In general, I oppose expansion of fossil fuel extraction, especially in Arctic Alaska.
As to particulars of Biden's proposal, don't know enough to comment. Except to say that, it's a balancing act, especially in the context of the Ukraine War and Russian efforts at weaponizing energy.
Am more comfortable with Biden Administration presiding over whatever goes down (literally) and comes up (ditto) than, say, the Trump or DeSantis Interior & Energy depts.
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...
Thankfully.
I see MTG is saying that the Fed only intervened to bail out its "woke friends" at SVB, and it ought to have been allowed to collapse...
Worth watching the reaction in the US on that - the BBC was making the same point today (although in a less MTG fashion) that there is a case for saying the Administration is saving its 'Tech Bro' friends who preach non-Government intervention elsewhere but like a bailout. Don't think the BBC is in the MTG line of politics...
Explain this case, please.
Not intervening would have been utterly mad. As it is, it's cost government absolutely nothing, and saved a huge amount of disruption to the bit of the UK economy which might actually provide some growth.
Harry and Meghan set to lose millions after collapse of SVB Bank. It contained proceeds from the sale of Spare and they allegedly only have insurance on it up to $250 000
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...
But AIUI it was the Trump administration that changed the rules that allowed this to happen
Harry S Truman Applies.
Which is why the administration dealt with it. To suggest that Trump bears no responsibility is just being silly.
I have purposefully kept off the topic of SureStart because I admit it is quite a way outside of my knowledge.
When I made my original comments I was probably thinking more towards the government facilitating more independently conceived community projects and initiatives, as opposed to top-down schemes like SureStart (though I can see the benefit in those too). That just comes from personal philosophy, I think.
I would like to see more facilities being returned to local communities. I think a lot of what divides us as a society is emphasised when we exist in bubbles.
If I go to my hypothetical adult illiterally reduced by 50%. What I would actually do if I was in charge is pick the 30 councils with highest adult illiteracy. Say here you are 5 million ring fenced, half adult illiteracy in your area. This is how we are going to measure it. Then go back 2 years later assess them all against target and then roll out the best programs nationwide
Harry and Meghan set to lose millions after collapse of SVB Bank. It contained proceeds from the sale of Spare and the allegedly only have insurance on it up to $250 000
Harry and Meghan set to lose millions after collapse of SVB Bank. It contained proceeds from the sale of Spare and the allegedly only have insurance on it up to $250 000
Lineker has agreed to button it until the review. They think it's all over. It isnt.
Give up, you are 10-0 down in the fifth minute of extra time. Has anything you have said about the Lineker affair so far actually come to pass?
Yup Lineker has buttoned it. I say it would end in a smudge of weasel words which it has especially the weasel.words of support by Lineker for Davie. We shall see ow it ends. How you think it went depends on you political leaning.
Harry and Meghan set to lose millions after collapse of SVB Bank. It contained proceeds from the sale of Spare and the allegedly only have insurance on it up to $250 000
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...
But AIUI it was the Trump administration that changed the rules that allowed this to happen
Harry S Truman Applies.
Which is why the administration dealt with it. To suggest that Trump bears no responsibility is just being silly.
I'm not. But at the end of the day the sitting president gets the credit for good things that happen that started before his time in office, and similarly the blame for bad things. Unless you're wildly partisan (like, to be fair, about 90% of the American electorate as far as I can tell).
Harry and Meghan set to lose millions after collapse of SVB Bank. It contained proceeds from the sale of Spare and they allegedly only have insurance on it up to $250 000
Harry and Meghan set to lose millions after collapse of SVB Bank. It contained proceeds from the sale of Spare and they allegedly only have insurance on it up to $250 000
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.
But they’d have had to pay Lineker out of his contract (see my posts passim as to why). So they’d have pissed a few mil down the drain over a Tweet.
"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 risk with this is that a solid impartial objective measurement of costs v benefits on big complex initiatives is in itself difficult and expensive. The process can become unwieldy and assume a life of its own.
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...
But AIUI it was the Trump administration that changed the rules that allowed this to happen
Harry S Truman Applies.
Which is why the administration dealt with it. To suggest that Trump bears no responsibility is just being silly.
I'm not. But at the end of the day the sitting president gets the credit for good things that happen that started before his time in office, and similarly the blame for bad things. Unless you're wildly partisan (like, to be fair, about 90% of the American electorate as far as I can tell).
Of course.
And one of the bad things during Trump's term of office was his action to deregulate banks. Which I'm now giving him appropriate credit for.
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.
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...
But AIUI it was the Trump administration that changed the rules that allowed this to happen
Harry S Truman Applies.
Which is why the administration dealt with it. To suggest that Trump bears no responsibility is just being silly.
I'm not. But at the end of the day the sitting president gets the credit for good things that happen that started before his time in office, and similarly the blame for bad things. Unless you're wildly partisan (like, to be fair, about 90% of the American electorate as far as I can tell).
Of course.
And one of the bad things during Trump's term of office was his action to deregulate banks. Which I'm now giving him appropriate credit for.
Let me rephrase that:
But at the end of the day the sitting president gets the credit for good things that happen that started before his time in office, and similarly the blame for bad things. Unless you're wildly partisan (like, to be fair, Nigelb and about 90% of the American electorate as far as I can tell).
"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 risk with this is that a solid impartial objective measurement of costs v benefits on big complex initiatives is in itself difficult and expensive. The process can become unwieldy and assume a life of its own.
Yes not everything is easily cut and dried but that can be coped with fairly easily I think. If a scheme is saying yes we are 70% hitting those targets but some of the benefits wont be apparent for a while we can probably give them a pass.
I fear some governement schemes however fall far short of showing any return and its largely money pissed up the wall for someones pet idea that could be better spent elsewhere. It really is only the latter I want to eliminate
Harry and Meghan set to lose millions after collapse of SVB Bank. It contained proceeds from the sale of Spare and they allegedly only have insurance on it up to $250 000
"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 risk with this is that a solid impartial objective measurement of costs v benefits on big complex initiatives is in itself difficult and expensive. The process can become unwieldy and assume a life of its own.
The bigger risk is that the projects morph into meeting the statistical targets rather than the original intent the measures are designed to support. Still worth doing but the numbers rarely tell the whole story.
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"
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
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.
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
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"
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
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.
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.
This is one of the reasons I get so incensed against the "borrowers". We can't keep borrowing because we are stealing from those very children. Our interest repayments are already 12% of tax take....down the line our kids and grandkids won't have much in the way of public services because most of the tax take goes to paying debt
Your argument here, mirrors what the late US Senator Paul Simon believed, and campaigned on, when he ran for POTUS in 1988.
AND one of the key reasons why he was chief sponsor of proposed US constitutional amendment (not enacted obviously) requiring balanced budgets, with provision for super-majority congressional votes to temporarily override in case of national crisis (such as war, depression, whatever).
Unlike you (I think) Paul Simon was a New Deal liberal, who supported using the fiscal power of the federal government when need be, but also reigning it in, for the fiscal health of the nation AND the benefit of future generations.
But this is one area where (perhap) you & he'd agree - with me!
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...
Thankfully.
I see MTG is saying that the Fed only intervened to bail out its "woke friends" at SVB, and it ought to have been allowed to collapse...
Worth watching the reaction in the US on that - the BBC was making the same point today (although in a less MTG fashion) that there is a case for saying the Administration is saving its 'Tech Bro' friends who preach non-Government intervention elsewhere but like a bailout. Don't think the BBC is in the MTG line of politics...
As an aside, these people really aren't friends of the administration.
https://slate.com/technology/2023/03/silicon-valley-bank-rescue-venture-capital-calacanis-sacks-ackman-tantrum.html ...And yet you still saw famous venture capitalists like PayPal co-founder and Elon Musk buddy David Sacks begging the Federal Reserve to force a merger or a bailout, then insisting he was not asking for a bailout while again asking for a bailout. This may have seemed a bit strange considering Sacks’ previous disparaging of handouts (specifically to Ukraine) and reactionary vitriol for liberalism itself. But then again, Sacks is a longtime associate of investor Peter Thiel, who believes in free markets but not in competition—in capitalism so long as the rules are attuned to satisfy his own interests first and foremost. It was Thiel’s Founders Fund, by the way, that helped kick off the bank run that sank SVB in the first place...
While the the article makes some fair criticisms of the venture capital system, there really is no good reason for the government to have acquiesced in the deposits of small startup companies being lost to them as a result of the bank's collapse. And there are very good reasons indeed to intervene to prevent further runs on banks.
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...
But AIUI it was the Trump administration that changed the rules that allowed this to happen
Harry S Truman Applies.
Which is why the administration dealt with it. To suggest that Trump bears no responsibility is just being silly.
I'm not. But at the end of the day the sitting president gets the credit for good things that happen that started before his time in office, and similarly the blame for bad things. Unless you're wildly partisan (like, to be fair, about 90% of the American electorate as far as I can tell).
Of course.
And one of the bad things during Trump's term of office was his action to deregulate banks. Which I'm now giving him appropriate credit for.
Let me rephrase that:
But at the end of the day the sitting president gets the credit for good things that happen that started before his time in office, and similarly the blame for bad things. Unless you're wildly partisan (like, to be fair, Nigelb and about 90% of the American electorate as far as I can tell).
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...
But AIUI it was the Trump administration that changed the rules that allowed this to happen
Harry S Truman Applies.
Well the government bucks certainly stopped with Don during his presidency,
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"
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
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.
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
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"
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
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.
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.
This is one of the reasons I get so incensed against the "borrowers". We can't keep borrowing because we are stealing from those very children. Our interest repayments are already 12% of tax take....down the line our kids and grandkids won't have much in the way of public services because most of the tax take goes to paying debt
Your argument here, mirrors what the late US Senator Paul Simon believed, and campaigned on, when he ran for POTUS in 1988.
AND one of the key reasons why he was chief sponsor of proposed US constitutional amendment (not enacted obviously) requiring balanced budgets, with provision for super-majority congressional votes to temporarily override in case of national crisis (such as war, depression, whatever).
Unlike you (I think) Paul Simon was a New Deal liberal, who supported using the fiscal power of the federal government when need be, but also reigning it in, for the fiscal health of the nation AND the benefit of future generations.
But this is one area where (perhap) you & he'd agree - with me!
Unlike me? Yes at a younger age I was more akin to a libertarian and was even a member of the party during Chris Mounsie of Devils Kitchen leadership. Nowadays I would call myself more a classical liberal though on the far side, very socially liberal and very economically liberal
Harry and Meghan set to lose millions after collapse of SVB Bank. It contained proceeds from the sale of Spare and they allegedly only have insurance on it up to $250 000
Yep - how does that story work when the US Government has said all the money in SVB is safe and only the shareholders and some bond holders will lose out.
New Substack. Rishi Sunak 1 Gary Lineker 0. Look past the debate this week to explore the data and you'll find some important changes are starting to take place"
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...
But AIUI it was the Trump administration that changed the rules that allowed this to happen
Harry S Truman Applies.
Which is why the administration dealt with it. To suggest that Trump bears no responsibility is just being silly.
I'm not. But at the end of the day the sitting president gets the credit for good things that happen that started before his time in office, and similarly the blame for bad things. Unless you're wildly partisan (like, to be fair, about 90% of the American electorate as far as I can tell).
Of course.
And one of the bad things during Trump's term of office was his action to deregulate banks. Which I'm now giving him appropriate credit for.
Let me rephrase that:
But at the end of the day the sitting president gets the credit for good things that happen that started before his time in office, and similarly the blame for bad things. Unless you're wildly partisan (like, to be fair, Nigelb and about 90% of the American electorate as far as I can tell).
Unless you're wildly partisan OR unless you're not partisan and actually think a little bit about cause and effect rather than not bother with all that.
Harry and Meghan set to lose millions after collapse of SVB Bank. It contained proceeds from the sale of Spare and they allegedly only have insurance on it up to $250 000
Yep - how does that story work when the US Government has said all the money in SVB is safe and only the shareholders and some bond holders will lose out.
The US had a much, much bigger problem to deal with but the difference between what the BoE has achieved and what the Fed has done is very marked. I have yet to be persuaded that Andrew Bailey knows very much inflation or interest rates but he does seem to have expertise in banking regulation and risk. Not normally a fan, to put it mildly, but credit where its due.
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...
Thankfully.
I see MTG is saying that the Fed only intervened to bail out its "woke friends" at SVB, and it ought to have been allowed to collapse...
Worth watching the reaction in the US on that - the BBC was making the same point today (although in a less MTG fashion) that there is a case for saying the Administration is saving its 'Tech Bro' friends who preach non-Government intervention elsewhere but like a bailout. Don't think the BBC is in the MTG line of politics...
Same point being made on CNBC too by several commentators. None of whom are political.
Meanwhile in other "will he lose his employment?" news, Sunak on the Boris question-
I asked the PM if he would try to persuade Tory members of the privileges committee not to impose a sanction on Boris Johnson that could trigger a by-election for the ex PM. Rishi Sunak said “this is a matter for parliament…It’s not right for the government to get involved
If that sticks (and it will look terrible if whips try to apply pressure after saying this), Bozza is toast, is he not? All the opposition + some Conservatives and he's out? The Mail will be furious but the last week has shown that that is less important than we thought.
All Rishi needs to do now is make sure he is out of town on the day of the vote.
Harry and Meghan set to lose millions after collapse of SVB Bank. It contained proceeds from the sale of Spare and they allegedly only have insurance on it up to $250 000
Harry and Meghan set to lose millions after collapse of SVB Bank. It contained proceeds from the sale of Spare and the allegedly only have insurance on it up to $250 000
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...
Thankfully.
I see MTG is saying that the Fed only intervened to bail out its "woke friends" at SVB, and it ought to have been allowed to collapse...
Worth watching the reaction in the US on that - the BBC was making the same point today (although in a less MTG fashion) that there is a case for saying the Administration is saving its 'Tech Bro' friends who preach non-Government intervention elsewhere but like a bailout. Don't think the BBC is in the MTG line of politics...
Same point being made on CNBC too by several commentators. None of whom are political.
Not sure the "tech bro friends of the Democrats" angle is irrelevant. IMHO all domestic bank deposits are de facto insured in major economies. No government will let viable businesses go bust because their bank fails. The hypocrisy of libertarian tech bros getting a bailout stands though.
Harry and Meghan set to lose millions after collapse of SVB Bank. It contained proceeds from the sale of Spare and the allegedly only have insurance on it up to $250 000
Braverman now trying to suggest civil unrest if the boats aren’t stopped . Or hoping for it ! She’s now employing straw man arguments to address perfectly valid concerns .
Meanwhile in other "will he lose his employment?" news, Sunak on the Boris question-
I asked the PM if he would try to persuade Tory members of the privileges committee not to impose a sanction on Boris Johnson that could trigger a by-election for the ex PM. Rishi Sunak said “this is a matter for parliament…It’s not right for the government to get involved
If that sticks (and it will look terrible if whips try to apply pressure after saying this), Bozza is toast, is he not? All the opposition + some Conservatives and he's out? The Mail will be furious but the last week has shown that that is less important than we thought.
All Rishi needs to do now is make sure he is out of town on the day of the vote.
He doesn't even need to do that, surely? He's already given himself cover to not vote by saying the government won't get involved.
New Substack. Rishi Sunak 1 Gary Lineker 0. Look past the debate this week to explore the data and you'll find some important changes are starting to take place"
Harry and Meghan set to lose millions after collapse of SVB Bank. It contained proceeds from the sale of Spare and they allegedly only have insurance on it up to $250 000
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...
But AIUI it was the Trump administration that changed the rules that allowed this to happen
Harry S Truman Applies.
Which is why the administration dealt with it. To suggest that Trump bears no responsibility is just being silly.
Good from Biden imo. Best to act. Be nice if it meant less of the 'most terrifying sentence of all: I'm from the government and I'm here to help' type shtick from now on.
Harry and Meghan set to lose millions after collapse of SVB Bank. It contained proceeds from the sale of Spare and the allegedly only have insurance on it up to $250 000
Braverman now trying to suggest civil unrest if the boats aren’t stopped . Or hoping for it ! She’s now employing straw man arguments to address perfectly valid concerns .
What a horrible woman .
Have there been governments in the past that suggested that there would be violence on the streets if the alien incomers weren’t dealt with?
Braverman now trying to suggest civil unrest if the boats aren’t stopped . Or hoping for it ! She’s now employing straw man arguments to address perfectly valid concerns .
Politico.com - Former Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Elizabeth Warren — two key architects of the post-2008 system of Wall Street regulation — are at odds over what’s dragging down banks once again.
Frank, who chaired the House Financial Services Committee in the wake of the global financial crisis and wrote sweeping new rules enacted in 2010, most recently served on the board of New York’s Signature Bank, which regulators shut down Sunday.
From his front-row seat, he blames Signature’s failure on a panic that began with last year’s cryptocurrency collapse — his bank was one of few that served the industry — compounded by a run triggered by the failure of tech-focused Silicon Valley Bank late last week. Frank disputes that a bipartisan regulatory rollback signed into law by former President Donald Trump in 2018 had anything to do with it, even if it was driven by a desire to ease regulation of mid-size and regional banks like his own.
“I don’t think that had any impact,” Frank said in an interview. “They hadn’t stopped examining banks.”
But Warren, a fellow Massachusetts Democrat who designed landmark consumer safeguards that ended up in Frank’s 2010 banking law, is placing the blame firmly on the Trump-era changes that relaxed oversight of some banks and says Signature is a prime example of the fallout.
“Had Congress and the Federal Reserve not rolled back the stricter oversight, SVB and Signature would have been subject to stronger liquidity and capital requirements to withstand financial shocks,” Warren wrote Monday in a New York Times op-ed.
The rift between Frank and Warren is just a preview of what’s to come as Democrats sort out positions on how to respond to the latest banking crisis, which led to a weekend bailout of depositors at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature. Some like Warren want Washington restore the tougher regulations that were rolled back in 2018. Some Democrats, like Frank, say the 2018 law isn’t the problem. A number of moderate Democrats still in Congress helped write the 2018 legislation, including those facing reelection in 2024. . . .
SSI - Not qualified to judge between the two schools of thought, represented here by two players with high levels of experience.
Will say this: Barney Frank's status as as expert on banking policy and regulation look a tad less impressive, the day (or so) after his bank has tanked.
However, seems certain that collapse of Silicon Valley Bank will only add to what is already a colossal fiscal-politico (and fully bi-partisan) feck-up with respect to Crypto.
Braverman now trying to suggest civil unrest if the boats aren’t stopped . Or hoping for it ! She’s now employing straw man arguments to address perfectly valid concerns .
Today's Yougov/Sky SNP leadership poll finds all the SNP leadership candidates with a net unfavourable rating.
Yousaf had 22% saying he would be a good FM, 44% bad. Forbes had 27% saying she would be a good FM and 36% bad. Regan had 14% saying she would be a good FM and 39% bad.
So wanting to show some humanity is now classed by Braverman as being a naive do-gooder ! What a wretched human being.
And questioning Braverman's comments makes you a smug metropolitan naive do-gooder who will get their comeuppance at the next election. Or at the pub or something.
Incidentally, RIshi has got a reasonable excuse not to be in London today, but it's convenient timing for something that a calm technocrat must know is going to create more problems than it will solve.
I'm not sure that the government's strategy of creating 'enemies within' is going to be successful - it's all just too divisive, and doesn't appeal enough outside the right-wing vote.
And it's not just Braverman - Sunak is guilty too. Listen to him at PMQs. Last week he was accusing Starmer of being a 'lefty lawyer' who wants 'open borders', and has played the 'North London metropolitan elite' card frequently. I hope he gets his swimming pool sorted, though, as a man of the people.
Today's Yougov/Sky SNP leadership poll finds all the SNP leadership candidates with a net unfavourable rating.
Yousaf had 22% saying he would be a good FM, 44% bad. Forbes had 27% saying she would be a good FM and 36% bad. Regan had 14% saying she would be a good FM and 39% bad.
Today's Yougov/Sky SNP leadership poll finds all the SNP leadership candidates with a net unfavourable rating.
Yousaf had 22% saying he would be a good FM, 44% bad. Forbes had 27% saying she would be a good FM and 36% bad. Regan had 14% saying she would be a good FM and 39% bad.
So wanting to show some humanity is now classed by Braverman as being a naive do-gooder ! What a wretched human being.
And questioning Braverman's comments makes you a smug metropolitan naive do-gooder who will get their comeuppance at the next election. Or at the pub or something.
Incidentally, RIshi has got a reasonable excuse not to be in London today, but it's convenient timing for something that a calm technocrat must know is going to create more problems than it will solve.
The polling does somewhat support that however.
Yougov has 52% of Southern voters, 52% of Northern voters and 50% of voters in the Midlands and Wales supporting banning migrants in small boats from re entering the UK and being able to settle in the UK and receive citizenship. Scots also support banning migrants from getting citizenship by 46% to 39%.
47% of Londoners by contrast think migrants who arrive in the UK in small boats should be able to re enter the UK and settle with citizenship compared to just 42% opposed. Gary Lineker a Londoner of course and resident of Richmond and Barnes https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/03/06/9e23f/2
I'm not sure that the government's strategy of creating 'enemies within' is going to be successful - it's all just too divisive, and doesn't appeal enough outside the right-wing vote.
And it's not just Braverman - Sunak is guilty too. Listen to him at PMQs. Last week he was accusing Starmer of being a 'lefty lawyer' who wants 'open borders', and has played the 'North London metropolitan elite' card frequently. I hope he gets his swimming pool sorted, though, as a man of the people.
The objective is to do enough to keep Sunak in the top seat til the next election, not to win the GE.
I'm not sure that the government's strategy of creating 'enemies within' is going to be successful - it's all just too divisive, and doesn't appeal enough outside the right-wing vote.
And it's not just Braverman - Sunak is guilty too. Listen to him at PMQs. Last week he was accusing Starmer of being a 'lefty lawyer' who wants 'open borders', and has played the 'North London metropolitan elite' card frequently. I hope he gets his swimming pool sorted, though, as a man of the people.
Shoring up the core vote, especially in conspicuously unlevelled up Northern parts where, IIRC, some polling suggests Boris Johnson remains disturbingly popular.
It's obviously not enough in and of itself, but when you are doing as poorly as the Government is then every little helps.
Today's Yougov/Sky SNP leadership poll finds all the SNP leadership candidates with a net unfavourable rating.
Yousaf had 22% saying he would be a good FM, 44% bad. Forbes had 27% saying she would be a good FM and 36% bad. Regan had 14% saying she would be a good FM and 39% bad.
So wanting to show some humanity is now classed by Braverman as being a naive do-gooder ! What a wretched human being.
You never answer the question of why people are trying to migrate here from a safe country, France.
Hundreds of times its been answered. Try listening!
1. Language 2. Familiarity from culture, film, books, music and sport 3. Diverse and tolerant cities with good opportunities in work and education 4. Relatives already here
And we as a country have signed up by treaty to give them this choice, it is not something they are taking against our agreement.
If we are not happy as a country about this, and I fully accept many if not most are not, then our options are to leave the refugee convention and take away the right to travel through safe countries or to improve what we can do within that framework.
I'm not sure that the government's strategy of creating 'enemies within' is going to be successful - it's all just too divisive, and doesn't appeal enough outside the right-wing vote.
And it's not just Braverman - Sunak is guilty too. Listen to him at PMQs. Last week he was accusing Starmer of being a 'lefty lawyer' who wants 'open borders', and has played the 'North London metropolitan elite' card frequently. I hope he gets his swimming pool sorted, though, as a man of the people.
Which reminds me. Have they started going on about the Enemies of the People yet?
So wanting to show some humanity is now classed by Braverman as being a naive do-gooder ! What a wretched human being.
You never answer the question of why people are trying to migrate here from a safe country, France.
Because they speak English/have family in England. If they've suffered persecution why shouldn't they be allowed to have a say over where they get refuge?
So wanting to show some humanity is now classed by Braverman as being a naive do-gooder ! What a wretched human being.
And questioning Braverman's comments makes you a smug metropolitan naive do-gooder who will get their comeuppance at the next election. Or at the pub or something.
Incidentally, RIshi has got a reasonable excuse not to be in London today, but it's convenient timing for something that a calm technocrat must know is going to create more problems than it will solve.
The polling does somewhat support that however.
Yougov has 52% of Southern voters, 52% of Northern voters and 50% of voters in the Midlands and Wales supporting banning migrants in small boats from re entering the UK and being able to settle in the UK and receive citizenship. Scots also support that by 46% to 39%.
47% of Londoners by contrast think migrants who arrive in the UK in small boats should be able to re enter the UK and settle with citizenship compared to just 42% opposed. Gary Lineker a Londoner of course and resident of Richmond and Barnes https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/03/06/9e23f/2
It’s an issue on which it would be good to have some more detailed polling, and it’s likely something that’s been through a lot of focus groups. The precise questions asked will be very important though, with large swings on similar questions but phrased differently.
I suspect that, outside the middle-class metropolis, most people simply don’t see why people arriving irregularly on a boat are not taken directly to Dover, to be put on the next ferry back to France.
Comments
The reality is that the public are broadly okay with current immigration levels even though they are at record high levels.
Exhibit 1: Following his discussions with Davie, on Thursday night there were confident news stories doing the rounds from "BBC sources" to the effect that Lineker had avoided any sanctions for his actions. At that point the Telegraph and right wing commentators collectively blew a fuse. Then on Friday news broke that Lineker had been suspended.
Exhibit 2: The bit of Lineker's statement that hasn't been widely quoted: "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."
It was unusual that the reporting on Thursday was so wide of the mark, despite being so confidently put. Why was that? I wonder if, following his meeting with Lineker, Davie was prepared to draw a line under the matter and move on, that apparent outcome leaked, but subsequently Sharp was not prepared to go along with it in the face of the fuious reaction from the right, so on Friday Lineker found to his surprise that he'd been suspended. And that also explains Lineker's reference in his statement to the "impossible job" faced by Davie, which could be a reference to Davie's inability to act independently of a politically appointed BBC Chairman.
Anyway, the really good thing to come out of all this is that the furore over Sharp's appointment has been given a new lease of life, defying efforts to sweep it under the carpet.
That is passing its Illegal Immigration Bill tonight while Labour and LD MPs voted against it. So in that sense Lineker back in his place ensures there is no distraction from that
When I made my original comments I was probably thinking more towards the government facilitating more independently conceived community projects and initiatives, as opposed to top-down schemes like SureStart (though I can see the benefit in those too). That just comes from personal philosophy, I think.
I would like to see more facilities being returned to local communities. I think a lot of what divides us as a society is emphasised when we exist in bubbles.
Well so far we have established 6% of the funding as a benefit. Still waiting for figures showing as a whole it was a worthwhile investment. Which is sort of my whole point that politicians don't like their schemes being measurable
Anyway, sorry to duck out of this and other conversations, crying baby on my lap!
Ever tried applying for public money? *Everything* has to be measurable, e.g. university academics [edit] even have to give the number of tweets which will talk about their work or stuff like that. A colleague of mine was overjoyed when he hit the Twatter jackpot for people talking about his research (by the standards of our field) some time back as it was great for his stats reports.
Latest polling from Mortimer's Drinking Mates:
"Do you think the BBC are right or wrong to reinstate Gary Lineker as presenter of Match of the Day and other sports shows on the BBC?"
Yes 10%, No 90%
Meanwhile, on YouGov it's 57% Yes, 23% No.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/international/survey-results/daily/2023/03/13/58cc5/1
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64943603
For example, public opinion polling. And election results. Also legislative roll calls, attendance records and the like.
How much politicos LIKE it is debatable, and differs from person to person, situation to situation.
In my experience, they are eager to find out what the numbers are, and look for them about as often as sports fans seek out scores (on & off field).
Whether or not they appreciate what the numbers ARE, well, that's rather . . . subjective.
Part of my thesis re: politicians, is that they are a diverse lot, to put it mildly. With some common tendencies (above-average egos for example) but multitude of different motivations - often within same politico.
Would agree, one common fault, is to establish rules for others that they are disinclined to impose (at least with equal rigor) upon themselves.
But that's the human condition writ large, which is in case of politicos highlighted by their public status AND power access.
https://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/2249/1/finalreportsurestart.pdf
This is also quite promising (ignore the vbox that asks you to join, the download or read buttons are top right)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264857750_Sure_Start_Plus_National_Evaluation_Final_Report
Some bold spin from Humza Yousaf today
"I've managed to quadruple support amongst the public since the first polls came out"
Sounds impressive..
But if he's using the figures I think he is, he means he's gone from 6% (in field of 9+ poss candidates) to 24% (from 3 candidates)
https://twitter.com/chrismusson/status/1635309375190634496
On that comparison Kate Forbes has gone from 7% to 33% - nearly “quintuple”……So Kate has support of “a third” of the electorate and Humzah “under a quarter”….
Hopefully things will settle down & everybody will just move on though.
As to particulars of Biden's proposal, don't know enough to comment. Except to say that, it's a balancing act, especially in the context of the Ukraine War and Russian efforts at weaponizing energy.
Am more comfortable with Biden Administration presiding over whatever goes down (literally) and comes up (ditto) than, say, the Trump or DeSantis Interior & Energy depts.
Not intervening would have been utterly mad. As it is, it's cost government absolutely nothing, and saved a huge amount of disruption to the bit of the UK economy which might actually provide some growth.
https://twitter.com/isource_news/status/1634413085787316225?t=nPG0Tsv9AQpUhmrIIQZP8w&s=19
To suggest that Trump bears no responsibility is just being silly.
We shall see ow it ends. How you think it went depends on you political leaning.
And one of the bad things during Trump's term of office was his action to deregulate banks. Which I'm now giving him appropriate credit for.
But at the end of the day the sitting president gets the credit for good things that happen that started before his time in office, and similarly the blame for bad things. Unless you're wildly partisan (like, to be fair, Nigelb and about 90% of the American electorate as far as I can tell).
He warned difficult days lie ahead for US
Also Biden approves oil drilling in Alaska
I fear some governement schemes however fall far short of showing any return and its largely money pissed up the wall for someones pet idea that could be better spent elsewhere. It really is only the latter I want to eliminate
AND one of the key reasons why he was chief sponsor of proposed US constitutional amendment (not enacted obviously) requiring balanced budgets, with provision for super-majority congressional votes to temporarily override in case of national crisis (such as war, depression, whatever).
Unlike you (I think) Paul Simon was a New Deal liberal, who supported using the fiscal power of the federal government when need be, but also reigning it in, for the fiscal health of the nation AND the benefit of future generations.
But this is one area where (perhap) you & he'd agree - with me!
https://slate.com/technology/2023/03/silicon-valley-bank-rescue-venture-capital-calacanis-sacks-ackman-tantrum.html
...And yet you still saw famous venture capitalists like PayPal co-founder and Elon Musk buddy David Sacks begging the Federal Reserve to force a merger or a bailout, then insisting he was not asking for a bailout while again asking for a bailout. This may have seemed a bit strange considering Sacks’ previous disparaging of handouts (specifically to Ukraine) and reactionary vitriol for liberalism itself. But then again, Sacks is a longtime associate of investor Peter Thiel, who believes in free markets but not in competition—in capitalism so long as the rules are attuned to satisfy his own interests first and foremost. It was Thiel’s Founders Fund, by the way, that helped kick off the bank run that sank SVB in the first place...
While the the article makes some fair criticisms of the venture capital system, there really is no good reason for the government to have acquiesced in the deposits of small startup companies being lost to them as a result of the bank's collapse.
And there are very good reasons indeed to intervene to prevent further runs on banks.
"Matt Goodwin
@GoodwinMJ
New Substack. Rishi Sunak 1 Gary Lineker 0. Look past the debate this week to explore the data and you'll find some important changes are starting to take place"
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1635300710005997568?cxt=HHwWgIDQjZzV4LEtAAAA
I asked the PM if he would try to persuade Tory members of the privileges committee not to impose a sanction on Boris Johnson that could trigger a by-election for the ex PM. Rishi Sunak said “this is a matter for parliament…It’s not right for the government to get involved
https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1635325826328850433
If that sticks (and it will look terrible if whips try to apply pressure after saying this), Bozza is toast, is he not? All the opposition + some Conservatives and he's out? The Mail will be furious but the last week has shown that that is less important than we thought.
All Rishi needs to do now is make sure he is out of town on the day of the vote.
The shareholders are like one of TSE’s stepmoms.
What a horrible woman .
It didn't survive the reality of if this bank goes so do a lot of others and that is going to be a BIG problem,
Frank, who chaired the House Financial Services Committee in the wake of the global financial crisis and wrote sweeping new rules enacted in 2010, most recently served on the board of New York’s Signature Bank, which regulators shut down Sunday.
From his front-row seat, he blames Signature’s failure on a panic that began with last year’s cryptocurrency collapse — his bank was one of few that served the industry — compounded by a run triggered by the failure of tech-focused Silicon Valley Bank late last week. Frank disputes that a bipartisan regulatory rollback signed into law by former President Donald Trump in 2018 had anything to do with it, even if it was driven by a desire to ease regulation of mid-size and regional banks like his own.
“I don’t think that had any impact,” Frank said in an interview. “They hadn’t stopped examining banks.”
But Warren, a fellow Massachusetts Democrat who designed landmark consumer safeguards that ended up in Frank’s 2010 banking law, is placing the blame firmly on the Trump-era changes that relaxed oversight of some banks and says Signature is a prime example of the fallout.
“Had Congress and the Federal Reserve not rolled back the stricter oversight, SVB and Signature would have been subject to stronger liquidity and capital requirements to withstand financial shocks,” Warren wrote Monday in a New York Times op-ed.
The rift between Frank and Warren is just a preview of what’s to come as Democrats sort out positions on how to respond to the latest banking crisis, which led to a weekend bailout of depositors at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature. Some like Warren want Washington restore the tougher regulations that were rolled back in 2018. Some Democrats, like Frank, say the 2018 law isn’t the problem. A number of moderate Democrats still in Congress helped write the 2018 legislation, including those facing reelection in 2024. . . .
tps://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/13/barney-frank-signature-bank-collapse-warren-trump-00086765
SSI - Not qualified to judge between the two schools of thought, represented here by two players with high levels of experience.
Will say this: Barney Frank's status as as expert on banking policy and regulation look a tad less impressive, the day (or so) after his bank has tanked.
However, seems certain that collapse of Silicon Valley Bank will only add to what is already a colossal fiscal-politico (and fully bi-partisan) feck-up with respect to Crypto.
Who'da thunk it?
Yousaf had 22% saying he would be a good FM, 44% bad. Forbes had 27% saying she would be a good FM and 36% bad. Regan had 14% saying she would be a good FM and 39% bad.
Just 8% thought Yousaf would be better than Sturgeon, 6% thought Regan would be better and 17% Forbes an improvement on the current FM
https://news.sky.com/story/snp-leadership-scottish-independence-support-at-just-39-poll-says-12832783
Incidentally, RIshi has got a reasonable excuse not to be in London today, but it's convenient timing for something that a calm technocrat must know is going to create more problems than it will solve.
And it's not just Braverman - Sunak is guilty too. Listen to him at PMQs. Last week he was accusing Starmer of being a 'lefty lawyer' who wants 'open borders', and has played the 'North London metropolitan elite' card frequently.
I hope he gets his swimming pool sorted, though, as a man of the people.
Enough time for SNP supporters to hide !!!!
Yougov has 52% of Southern voters, 52% of Northern voters and 50% of voters in the Midlands and Wales supporting banning migrants in small boats from re entering the UK and being able to settle in the UK and receive citizenship. Scots also support banning migrants from getting citizenship by 46% to 39%.
47% of Londoners by contrast think migrants who arrive in the UK in small boats should be able to re enter the UK and settle with citizenship compared to just 42% opposed. Gary Lineker a Londoner of course and resident of Richmond and Barnes
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/03/06/9e23f/2
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
I'd advise StuartDickson and Malc not to look at the Scottish subsample.
It's obviously not enough in and of itself, but when you are doing as poorly as the Government is then every little helps.
1. Language
2. Familiarity from culture, film, books, music and sport
3. Diverse and tolerant cities with good opportunities in work and education
4. Relatives already here
And we as a country have signed up by treaty to give them this choice, it is not something they are taking against our agreement.
If we are not happy as a country about this, and I fully accept many if not most are not, then our options are to leave the refugee convention and take away the right to travel through safe countries or to improve what we can do within that framework.
In many cases because English is their second language and they already have friends and family here.
Why do so many more go to eg France and Germany d’ye think?
I suspect that, outside the middle-class metropolis, most people simply don’t see why people arriving irregularly on a boat are not taken directly to Dover, to be put on the next ferry back to France.