Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
Good grief. An awful lot of nothing, delivered in the style of Lenin himself. And still those behind him got so cheesed off they couldn’t applaud or even look at him.
What a shower. That’s put me right off.
Sunak should use that clip to guarantee Tory majority “do you really want to put this lot into power? Seriously?”
Kinnock is an awful man, nonetheless I am not backing any of your racing tips if you read the tealeaves so poorly. Without that speech, New Labour would likely as not have never existed. I had forgotten how much I despised Eric Heffer and Degsy.
You've read the room wrong there Rabbit, anyone who gets Heffer to throw his toys out of the pram isn't all bad
I guess I never truly appreciated what alternatives were.
Hence the greater enthusiasm for nationalised industries among the young who never knew them than the old who did….
Privatised (non- competition, cartel model) utilities, remind me how well that all works.
Today's BT is infinitely better than the one I grew up with.
Not just in the U.K. - the model spread - when I moved to Brussels the first time the waiting list for a telephone line was 6 months “and count yourself lucky”. When I moved back for a second time 3 years later the privatised company was “I’m sorry, we won’t be able to get to you until this Wednesday at 10.45 - I hope that’s ok?”
Sky is due tomorrow at some point
I booked the appointment (for a device I don’t want and don’t need but which they insist I have to get the cheapest TV package) in early December…
Reading through the published SI on the Stormont brake, it’s actually fairly favourable to Unionists. It suggests that, for every decision that UK Govt makes at the Joint Cttee regarding adoption of new EU laws (i.e. 13(4) for the nerds), UK Govt…
will agree to a new rule only after there’s been an “applicability motion” – a vote in the Assembly – that is passed on a cross-community basis. This gives Unionists a de facto veto not only over replacement EU laws, but also new legislation flowing into the treaty. /2 There’re two conditions when UKG ministers may refuse – “exceptional circumstances” or where there wouldn’t be a new regulatory border (defined as either restrictions that may divert trade or impact the free flow of goods). But these conditions are fairly well defined. /3
In other words, the Stormont brake is actually *two brakes* – one for replacement EU laws and another for new EU laws. This is quite a win for all MLAs, but Unionists in particular. My view: take this offer and own it while it lasts. /Ends
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
I don't buy this mountain to climb in one go argument for Labour. The electorate isn't as sluggish and incremental these days where majorities have to be progressively chipped away at by modest swings. When sentiment goes it will go, en mass.
My argument isn't that. It's that I think large (current) Labour leads could haemorrhage just as easily into the high 30s and a stalemate if Starmer doesn't enthuse his base and retain floaters but Sunak does his.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Kinnock was good when talking quietly in a studio, like in the video below at 7 mins, but no so good when making conference speeches, except for that one occasion in 1985 when he took on Derek Hatton.
Kinnock was great at making speeches, or would have been except that television cameras would have him in tight close-up which made Kinnock moving his head around look like a madman. Considering Peter Mandelson was a television producer, you'd think he might have spotted the problem.
Recently I read in one of his (many) autobiographies, that Stephen Fry wrote lots of speeches for Kinnock. He didn't get on with Blair so well, so stopped doing it.
Interesting: I'd always wondered if the gay allusions were coincidence, and I guess the answer is no
Apparently Fry also considered becoming a Labour MP:
I do love Fry's sense of entitlement in that snippet of the letter. Also, as he was a massive cokehead at the time, he might have well fitted better on the Conservative benches...
This is rather enigmatic from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence.
The moon shines in the midst of the sky;the immeasurable vault of heaven seems to have expanded to infinity; the earth is bathed in silver light; the air is warm, voluptuous, and redolent of innumerable sweet scents. A divine night! A magical night! Mykola Hohol 📷@palchyk_online https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1637903081953439744
Edit: Looks very much like a V1 but with no doubt much improved accuracy.
That's from a video of a Ukrainian university project in February. Ukrainian Twitter shills are extremely gullible and will breathlessly retweet any old cobblers.
This is rather enigmatic from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence.
The moon shines in the midst of the sky;the immeasurable vault of heaven seems to have expanded to infinity; the earth is bathed in silver light; the air is warm, voluptuous, and redolent of innumerable sweet scents. A divine night! A magical night! Mykola Hohol 📷@palchyk_online https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1637903081953439744
Edit: Looks very much like a V1 but with no doubt much improved accuracy.
That's from a video of a Ukrainian university project in February. Ukrainian Twitter shills are extremely gullible and will breathlessly retweet any old cobblers.
Well, the important thing is that the Ukrainians have got *something* that managed to spread lots of good news to Russian forces in Crimea.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
Good grief. An awful lot of nothing, delivered in the style of Lenin himself. And still those behind him got so cheesed off they couldn’t applaud or even look at him.
What a shower. That’s put me right off.
Sunak should use that clip to guarantee Tory majority “do you really want to put this lot into power? Seriously?”
Kinnock is an awful man, nonetheless I am not backing any of your racing tips if you read the tealeaves so poorly. Without that speech, New Labour would likely as not have never existed. I had forgotten how much I despised Eric Heffer and Degsy.
You've read the room wrong there Rabbit, anyone who gets Heffer to throw his toys out of the pram isn't all bad
I guess I never truly appreciated what alternatives were.
Hence the greater enthusiasm for nationalised industries among the young who never knew them than the old who did….
Privatised (non- competition, cartel model) utilities, remind me how well that all works.
Today's BT is infinitely better than the one I grew up with.
....and that's not saying much. I left BT, I was lucky I could and would never go back to them unless there was no other option. Their Customer service was pants and they lied continuously to me. Awful Awful Awful....
Nicola Sturgeon said she would argue she was “not out of step” with the Scottish public around the issues of trans rights and the gender recognition act.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
Folk.will be receiving Council Tax bills. Just got mine. If you pay by direct debit, you won't have paid Feb1 or Mar1. Hundred quids plus if you're lucky out of disposable income next month. Quite frankly can't afford mine.
Same
Plus the energy bung stops about now for most (all?) of us. That's a few percent that will hit our bank balances, even if it doesn't show up in the stats.
Month vs. money... It's as simple as that.
I thought the energy bung was continuing another three months? And prices coming down?
A straw in the wind is that I had an email the other day from EDF touting for business. Not had that for a while.
Agree on the cap, and yes the energy market looks to be settling down.
But I think the "£400 off, no questions asked" scheme isn't being extended, unless someone knows different. That's been paying about a third of my DD over the winter.
Kinnock was good when talking quietly in a studio, like in the video below at 7 mins, but no so good when making conference speeches, except for that one occasion in 1985 when he took on Derek Hatton.
I don’t think Kinnock sounded that great there Andy, a bitter and ungracious acceptance of defeat.
Correct me where wrong. Wasn’t that the election it later understood an out gay man was beaten by in the closet gay man ans people voted angainst the gay man? And the weird bloke sat next to Kinnock revealed to have dodgy back story too?
Isn’t it funny viewing clips like that whilst knowing the truth later revealed.
That illustrates just what a basket case Labour was in the early 80's. The Liberals were utterly shameless in not being very liberal about Tatchell's homosexuality. But there were so many glorious cock-ups by everybody. Perhaps my favourite being
"Esmond Bevan intended to stand as an independent Labour candidate, but erroneously entered his occupation in the section on the nomination papers headed 'description', thus appearing on ballot papers as "Systems Designer".
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
Good grief. An awful lot of nothing, delivered in the style of Lenin himself. And still those behind him got so cheesed off they couldn’t applaud or even look at him.
What a shower. That’s put me right off.
Sunak should use that clip to guarantee Tory majority “do you really want to put this lot into power? Seriously?”
Kinnock is an awful man, nonetheless I am not backing any of your racing tips if you read the tealeaves so poorly. Without that speech, New Labour would likely as not have never existed. I had forgotten how much I despised Eric Heffer and Degsy.
You've read the room wrong there Rabbit, anyone who gets Heffer to throw his toys out of the pram isn't all bad
I guess I never truly appreciated what alternatives were.
Hence the greater enthusiasm for nationalised industries among the young who never knew them than the old who did….
Privatised (non- competition, cartel model) utilities, remind me how well that all works.
Today's BT is infinitely better than the one I grew up with.
....and that's not saying much. I left BT, I was lucky I could and would never go back to them unless there was no other option. Their Customer service was pants and they lied continuously to me. Awful Awful Awful....
In my case they kept sending letters in the wrong name to the wrong address. Despite being told six times what was happening.
Which became - interesting - when they failed to notify me of a price rise as a result.
I was doubly furious as I heard a rumour prices were rising and rang them to check, only to be assured they weren't.
About the only thing to say in their favour is they're not as useless as the Student Loan Company.
Kinnock was good when talking quietly in a studio, like in the video below at 7 mins, but no so good when making conference speeches, except for that one occasion in 1985 when he took on Derek Hatton.
I don’t think Kinnock sounded that great there Andy, a bitter and ungracious acceptance of defeat.
Correct me where wrong. Wasn’t that the election it later understood an out gay man was beaten by in the closet gay man ans people voted angainst the gay man? And the weird bloke sat next to Kinnock revealed to have dodgy back story too?
Isn’t it funny viewing clips like that whilst knowing the truth later revealed.
That illustrates just what a basket case Labour was in the early 80's. The Liberals were utterly shameless in not being very liberal about Tatchell's homosexuality. But there were so many glorious cock-ups by everybody. Perhaps my favourite being
"Esmond Bevan intended to stand as an independent Labour candidate, but erroneously entered his occupation in the section on the nomination papers headed 'description', thus appearing on ballot papers as "Systems Designer".
I thought it was the independent Real/Old/Corrupt Labour candidate that went big on active homophobia, and Hughes just slipstreamed him with a few snide remarks?
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Also his successes. Can anyone imagine Hattersley or Smith turning the party around sufficiently to win again by 1987 from 1983? One was a complete windbag and the other never had an original thought or any moral courage whatsoever.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Kinnock was great. His words inspired me. The way he took on the left and the Thatcherites was heroic. He laid the foundation for 13 years of Labour government. A shame he didn't make it himself.
Meanwhile, Starmer reminds me more of Smith. Smith was taken from us far too early.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Kinnock was great. His words inspired me. The way he took on the left and the Thatcherites was heroic. He laid the foundation for 13 years of Labour government. A shame he didn't make it himself.
Meanwhile, Starmer reminds me more of Smith. Taken from us too early.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Also his successes. Can anyone imagine Hattersley or Smith turning the party around sufficiently to win again by 1987 from 1983? One was a complete windbag and the other never had an original thought or any moral courage whatsoever.
Yes, that's fair.
He was the right guy to fix the Labour movement but not to win a general.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Kinnock was great. His words inspired me. The way he took on the left and the Thatcherites was heroic. He laid the foundation for 13 years of Labour government. A shame he didn't make it himself.
Meanwhile, Starmer reminds me more of Smith. Taken from us too early.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Also his successes. Can anyone imagine Hattersley or Smith turning the party around sufficiently to win again by 1987 from 1983? One was a complete windbag and the other never had an original thought or any moral courage whatsoever.
Yes, that's fair.
He was the right guy to fix the Labour movement but not to win a general.
Morning CR, hope life is feeling a bit better for you.
(By the way, I obviously meant 1997 not 1987. I seem to be channeling my inner Richard Burgon via fat finger typing.)
Reading through the published SI on the Stormont brake, it’s actually fairly favourable to Unionists. It suggests that, for every decision that UK Govt makes at the Joint Cttee regarding adoption of new EU laws (i.e. 13(4) for the nerds), UK Govt…
will agree to a new rule only after there’s been an “applicability motion” – a vote in the Assembly – that is passed on a cross-community basis. This gives Unionists a de facto veto not only over replacement EU laws, but also new legislation flowing into the treaty. /2 There’re two conditions when UKG ministers may refuse – “exceptional circumstances” or where there wouldn’t be a new regulatory border (defined as either restrictions that may divert trade or impact the free flow of goods). But these conditions are fairly well defined. /3
In other words, the Stormont brake is actually *two brakes* – one for replacement EU laws and another for new EU laws. This is quite a win for all MLAs, but Unionists in particular. My view: take this offer and own it while it lasts. /Ends
They are assuming there must be an EU conspiracy in them agreeing to this deal and, so, they have contrived one.
No, that's not the case. The DUP have said they can't vote for it on the information currently available, but that they're open to doing so if certain reassurances are given. That sounds reasonable to me.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Kinnock was great. His words inspired me. The way he took on the left and the Thatcherites was heroic. He laid the foundation for 13 years of Labour government. A shame he didn't make it himself.
Meanwhile, Starmer reminds me more of Smith. Smith was taken from us far too early.
Starmer has managed to both clean out the stables (Kinnock) and not scare the horses (Smith).
That's impressive, even if he has had a lot of help by both his opponents (Momentum and the Conservatives) being a bit rubbish.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Kinnock was great. His words inspired me. The way he took on the left and the Thatcherites was heroic. He laid the foundation for 13 years of Labour government. A shame he didn't make it himself.
Meanwhile, Starmer reminds me more of Smith. Taken from us too early.
Christ, is Starmer ok?
Oh dear. I guess that's what happens if you post before 8am.
Meanwhile my hope is that Starmer is about to show us what a Smith premiership might have been like.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Kinnock was great. His words inspired me. The way he took on the left and the Thatcherites was heroic. He laid the foundation for 13 years of Labour government. A shame he didn't make it himself.
Meanwhile, Starmer reminds me more of Smith. Smith was taken from us far too early.
Starmer is an uninspiring leader. A poor speaker, verbose, and an ideas vacuum. History doesn't repeat itself perfectly, and the huge polling leads that we have seen recently were never going to be sustainable, but Starmer needs more to his campaign than "Not the Tories".
The same polling company (Delta) has the Conservatives vote move from 31% to 27% to 35% all within one month. The 35% is more than 10 percentage points higher than another polling company canvassing at the same time.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
Good grief. An awful lot of nothing, delivered in the style of Lenin himself. And still those behind him got so cheesed off they couldn’t applaud or even look at him.
What a shower. That’s put me right off.
Sunak should use that clip to guarantee Tory majority “do you really want to put this lot into power? Seriously?”
Kinnock is an awful man, nonetheless I am not backing any of your racing tips if you read the tealeaves so poorly. Without that speech, New Labour would likely as not have never existed. I had forgotten how much I despised Eric Heffer and Degsy.
You've read the room wrong there Rabbit, anyone who gets Heffer to throw his toys out of the pram isn't all bad
I guess I never truly appreciated what alternatives were.
Hence the greater enthusiasm for nationalised industries among the young who never knew them than the old who did….
Privatised (non- competition, cartel model) utilities, remind me how well that all works.
Today's BT is infinitely better than the one I grew up with.
I have to disagree, as a BT customer. Openreach is a monopoly and if their cost benefit analysis deems decayed underground aluminium cable is not replaced because some time, way in the future it will all be replaced by fibre optic. When it rains I have intermittent broadband. It rains a lot in Wales. BT just fob the customer off and a poor service remains, they keep taking my money and telling me when they test the line it is fine. No point going to Sky or Talk talk my only other options as they use the same Openreach infrastructure.
Back in the GPO days a fault would be rectified within 24 or 48 hours at no expense spared.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
The same polling company (Delta) has the Conservatives vote move from 31% to 27% to 35% all within one month. The 35% is more than 10 percentage points higher than another polling company canvassing at the same time.
Something weird is going on.
Not really. Good polling should produce outliers - its when companies fiddletweak their methodologies and end up all consistently in the same space we should worry - herding is a bad sign.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
The other reading is that Met have long known about their bad apples - who are now "leaving in their droves" because of threats/incentives.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Kinnock was great. His words inspired me. The way he took on the left and the Thatcherites was heroic. He laid the foundation for 13 years of Labour government. A shame he didn't make it himself.
Meanwhile, Starmer reminds me more of Smith. Smith was taken from us far too early.
Starmer is an uninspiring leader. A poor speaker, verbose, and an ideas vacuum. History doesn't repeat itself perfectly, and the huge polling leads that we have seen recently were never going to be sustainable, but Starmer needs more to his campaign than "Not the Tories".
You're more inspired by the fizzing charisma and idea fountain of Ed Davey?
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
Speaking of which, it was the OFSTED judgment over safeguarding record keeping (the school was otherwise very good), which led to the recent suicide of the primary head.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
The other reading is that Met have long known about their bad apples - who are now "leaving in their droves" because of threats/incentives.
Possibly. Although my experience is when things get that toxic it's the good people leave first.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
The other reading is that Met have long known about their bad apples - who are now "leaving in their droves" because of threats/incentives.
Possibly. Although my experience is when things get that toxic it's the good people leave first.
There was an interview this morning with a woman officer, driven out of the force by bullying in 2019, who, having read the report last night, felt that the state of the Met is significantly worse than it was then.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
Talking of la Spielman, what do you make of this?
A headteacher plans to boycott an Ofsted inspection tomorrow – telling the watchdog this morning that she will refuse their inspectors entry to her school.
Flora Cooper, executive headteacher at John Rankin Infant and Nursery School in Berkshire, has now called on other headteachers who want Ofsted reform to join the protest.
It follows the death of Ruth Perry, headteacher of Caversham primary school, also in Berkshire.
Perry’s family said she took her own life in January before the publication of an inspection report rating the school ‘inadequate’.
Nicola Sturgeon said she would argue she was “not out of step” with the Scottish public around the issues of trans rights and the gender recognition act.
On which the clock is ticking. A Judicial review normally has to be lodged within 3 months of the decision complained of. The s35 order was, I think, 17th January so more than 2 months have now passed. I suspect if Forbes wins that is the end of the matter but Useless has committed himself to challenging it.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
The other reading is that Met have long known about their bad apples - who are now "leaving in their droves" because of threats/incentives.
Possibly. Although my experience is when things get that toxic it's the good people leave first.
It isn't just the odd bad apple, it's an orchard full of them.
Tony Blair cited the Police Federation as the strongest trade union in the country and we can now all see the result of that. They simply regard themselves as untouchable. It isn't just The Met. There are five Forces in special measures. There are none that you could quote as exemplarary.
What to do? It won't be an easy fix but we could start by implementing the recommendations of The Casey Report. Too many reports before have been disregarded.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
Speaking of which, it was the OFSTED judgment over safeguarding record keeping (the school was otherwise very good), which led to the recent suicide of the primary head.
Which as I noted before, is ironic given OFSTED has in itself no actual safeguarding procedures.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
The other reading is that Met have long known about their bad apples - who are now "leaving in their droves" because of threats/incentives.
Possibly. Although my experience is when things get that toxic it's the good people leave first.
In unrelated news, I gather you have left schoolmastering.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Kinnock was great. His words inspired me. The way he took on the left and the Thatcherites was heroic. He laid the foundation for 13 years of Labour government. A shame he didn't make it himself.
Meanwhile, Starmer reminds me more of Smith. Smith was taken from us far too early.
Starmer is an uninspiring leader. A poor speaker, verbose, and an ideas vacuum. History doesn't repeat itself perfectly, and the huge polling leads that we have seen recently were never going to be sustainable, but Starmer needs more to his campaign than "Not the Tories".
I think all he needs this time around is "not the Tories" and "don't scare the horses". And he won't, he is more likely to put them to sleep with his rhetoric. A safe alternative, something that Kinnock was deemed not to offer, will be enough. The Tories are tired, out of useful ideas and need a break to think about what they are for. And they will get it.
Kinnock’s main problem was that by 1987 a lot of people felt that the UK was heading in the right direction and could also clearly remember when it wasn’t. By 1992, things weren’t so great but the Tories did still have some credit in the bank and Kinnock was too associated with an old school Labour that a lot of voters felt was too much of a risk to back.
Why I am less convinced about 1992 parallels than many others is that even in that election the Tories had serious, discernible, palpable achievements to talk about. The country was in a better place than it had been in 1979. I just don’t see that similar narrative for the next election.
Put it this way, in 1992, did voters feel they were better off and living in a more successful UK than the one they had in 1979? Pretty much, yes. Ask the same questions about 2010 and 2024, and I doubt enough people will be equally as positive.
At the next election, the main Tory argument will essentially be: “It could be even worse if we aren’t in charge.” The Labour one will be: “It should be so much better than the way it is. Fundamentally, Labour will be right.
The challenge is that there are 650 individual elections. To get from where the party is now to a majority means winning in over 120 more of these than in 2019. And that means everything falling right in terms of vote distribution and turnout in very different parts of the country. It’s a very tough ask.
Much more likely, IMO, are big swings in places like Wales and the North West, alongside much lower swings in the East and North Midlands and the Black Country. That’s why I think Labour most seats but no majority is most likely. Scotland becoming a proper battleground may change that, though.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
Talking of la Spielman, what do you make of this?
A headteacher plans to boycott an Ofsted inspection tomorrow – telling the watchdog this morning that she will refuse their inspectors entry to her school.
Flora Cooper, executive headteacher at John Rankin Infant and Nursery School in Berkshire, has now called on other headteachers who want Ofsted reform to join the protest.
It follows the death of Ruth Perry, headteacher of Caversham primary school, also in Berkshire.
Perry’s family said she took her own life in January before the publication of an inspection report rating the school ‘inadequate’.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
Speaking of which, it was the OFSTED judgment over safeguarding record keeping (the school was otherwise very good), which led to the recent suicide of the primary head.
Which as I noted before, is ironic given OFSTED has in itself no actual safeguarding procedures.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Kinnock was great. His words inspired me. The way he took on the left and the Thatcherites was heroic. He laid the foundation for 13 years of Labour government. A shame he didn't make it himself.
Meanwhile, Starmer reminds me more of Smith. Smith was taken from us far too early.
Starmer is an uninspiring leader. A poor speaker, verbose, and an ideas vacuum. History doesn't repeat itself perfectly, and the huge polling leads that we have seen recently were never going to be sustainable, but Starmer needs more to his campaign than "Not the Tories".
You're more inspired by the fizzing charisma and idea fountain of Ed Davey?
One reason I'm more upbeat about Tory chances than others is that I just look at the Opposition and see there is no alternative government on offer. Other than some nebulous "we'll be better at it than the Tories". Well, Cameron thought he'd be quite good at the governing malarkey. *cough* Brexit Referendum *cough*....
On Covid, Labour wanted us to rush into signing PPE contracts that didn't stand up to scrutiny. And Starmer wanted to lock down the country for Christmas 2021. Other than that, they were pretty much in lock-step with the government. Well, apart from 20:20 hindsight. And there doesn't look to be anything on Ukraine that separates the opposition parties. As Truss/Kwarteng showed, there isn't the option to take a different path that involves borrowing masses of money from Mr. Market. Sunak/Hunt have already raised taxes to about the maximum before you start inflicting real damage on the economy.
Truss/Kwarteng demonstrated "there is no more money" is alive in the 2020's. Perhaps their biggest contribution to governing this country will be in crushing any realistic alternative approach that opposition parties might propose. "Tried that. Won't work...."
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
Speaking of which, it was the OFSTED judgment over safeguarding record keeping (the school was otherwise very good), which led to the recent suicide of the primary head.
Which as I noted before, is ironic given OFSTED has in itself no actual safeguarding procedures.
Its unfortunate in some ways but there are certain jobs and roles where it is necessary for others publicly to say or infer you are chit at your job. A prime example that we all do on here are politicians . Sports people are another where we all 'have a go' . ' If you say a film is crap you are effectively saying the producer is crap. If we stop judging in those areas where it is kinda necessary then we may as well say we cannot have sports punditry or political forums or film critics. To be in some roles you need to be able to take criticism
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Kinnock was great. His words inspired me. The way he took on the left and the Thatcherites was heroic. He laid the foundation for 13 years of Labour government. A shame he didn't make it himself.
Meanwhile, Starmer reminds me more of Smith. Smith was taken from us far too early.
Starmer is an uninspiring leader. A poor speaker, verbose, and an ideas vacuum. History doesn't repeat itself perfectly, and the huge polling leads that we have seen recently were never going to be sustainable, but Starmer needs more to his campaign than "Not the Tories".
You're more inspired by the fizzing charisma and idea fountain of Ed Davey?
One reason I'm more upbeat about Tory chances than others is that I just look at the Opposition and see there is no alternative government on offer. Other than some nebulous "we'll be better at it than the Tories". Well, Cameron thought he'd be quite good at the governing malarkey. *cough* Brexit Referendum *cough*....
On Covid, Labour wanted us to rush into signing PPE contracts that didn't stand up to scrutiny. And Starmer wanted to lock down the country for Christmas 2021. Other than that, they were pretty much in lock-step with the government. Well, apart from 20:20 hindsight. And there doesn't look to be anything on Ukraine that separates the opposition parties. As Truss/Kwarteng showed, there isn't the option to take a different path that involves borrowing masses of money from Mr. Market. Sunak/Hunt have already raised taxes to about the maximum before you start inflicting real damage on the economy.
Truss/Kwarteng demonstrated "there is no more money" is alive in the 2020's. Perhaps their biggest contribution to governing this country will be in crushing any realistic alternative approach that opposition parties might propose. "Tried that. Won't work...."
On covid, Starmer might have locked down earlier, saved many lives and got us back to normal sooner. He would not have done what Boris did, go around shaking hands and nearly kill himself. If the Tories want to run on their PPE contracts, go for it.
As for the gap between the parties, it’s been interesting to see Tories pick up Labour ideas. From energy to Ireland, the Tories are followers.
The same polling company (Delta) has the Conservatives vote move from 31% to 27% to 35% all within one month. The 35% is more than 10 percentage points higher than another polling company canvassing at the same time.
Something weird is going on.
Opinion polling is becoming more difficult because response rates are so low. This means the sample is closer to self-selecting than random, and that adds lots of bias and volatility into the poll regardless of the heroic efforts subsequently made with statistical weighting.
The local elections therefore have an added significance in providing an indication of where public opinion is at, although having the unique circumstances of 2019 as the comparator isn't ideal.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
Talking of la Spielman, what do you make of this?
A headteacher plans to boycott an Ofsted inspection tomorrow – telling the watchdog this morning that she will refuse their inspectors entry to her school.
Flora Cooper, executive headteacher at John Rankin Infant and Nursery School in Berkshire, has now called on other headteachers who want Ofsted reform to join the protest.
It follows the death of Ruth Perry, headteacher of Caversham primary school, also in Berkshire.
Perry’s family said she took her own life in January before the publication of an inspection report rating the school ‘inadequate’.
There's a strong safeguarding argument for refusing them access. Schools have a responsibility towards the safety of staff as well as pupils.
schools need inspecting like any other institution. This is an unfortunate case but there is a wider need of accountability in education standards . People in positions of authority in schools need to be able to take criticism. Maybe you think we shoudl close this forum down as politicians are widely castigated as being useless on here ? Or match of the day shuts because a footballer is castigated as being responsible for a goal.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
Good grief. An awful lot of nothing, delivered in the style of Lenin himself. And still those behind him got so cheesed off they couldn’t applaud or even look at him.
What a shower. That’s put me right off.
Sunak should use that clip to guarantee Tory majority “do you really want to put this lot into power? Seriously?”
Kinnock is an awful man, nonetheless I am not backing any of your racing tips if you read the tealeaves so poorly. Without that speech, New Labour would likely as not have never existed. I had forgotten how much I despised Eric Heffer and Degsy.
You've read the room wrong there Rabbit, anyone who gets Heffer to throw his toys out of the pram isn't all bad
I guess I never truly appreciated what alternatives were.
Hence the greater enthusiasm for nationalised industries among the young who never knew them than the old who did….
Privatised (non- competition, cartel model) utilities, remind me how well that all works.
Today's BT is infinitely better than the one I grew up with.
Not just in the U.K. - the model spread - when I moved to Brussels the first time the waiting list for a telephone line was 6 months “and count yourself lucky”. When I moved back for a second time 3 years later the privatised company was “I’m sorry, we won’t be able to get to you until this Wednesday at 10.45 - I hope that’s ok?”
Yup, we forget how dire things used to be in the BT days. Well, most of us do anyway, in many other countries the state-owned monopoly still exists, and you’ll be waiting weeks or months for a phone line.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Kinnock was great. His words inspired me. The way he took on the left and the Thatcherites was heroic. He laid the foundation for 13 years of Labour government. A shame he didn't make it himself.
Meanwhile, Starmer reminds me more of Smith. Smith was taken from us far too early.
Starmer is an uninspiring leader. A poor speaker, verbose, and an ideas vacuum. History doesn't repeat itself perfectly, and the huge polling leads that we have seen recently were never going to be sustainable, but Starmer needs more to his campaign than "Not the Tories".
You're more inspired by the fizzing charisma and idea fountain of Ed Davey?
Ed Davey was one of the most effective of the ministers in the 2010-15 Coalition. Perhaps the best energy Secretary of all time, ramping up renewable, and calling for an end to dependency on Russian gas. He also ended the compulsory retirement age. I like his long term thinking.
I suspect that Starmer is going to fritter away his lead.
A headteacher plans to boycott an Ofsted inspection tomorrow – telling the watchdog this morning that she will refuse their inspectors entry to her school.
Flora Cooper, executive headteacher at John Rankin Infant and Nursery School in Berkshire, has now called on other headteachers who want Ofsted reform to join the protest.
It follows the death of Ruth Perry, headteacher of Caversham primary school, also in Berkshire.
Perry’s family said she took her own life in January before the publication of an inspection report rating the school ‘inadequate’.
OFSTED has a number of problems. First, its remit is far too wide. It is trying to monitor about eight different, highly specialised fields. This is because statutory monitoring procedures have been piled Willy nilly onto the DfE and OFSTED is about the only enforcement arm it has. It's doing all of them rather badly. It would be better to break it up in to much smaller, more focused agencies with specialised remits.
Second, when we turn to schools it is run by people who don't have a clue what they're doing. The new curriculum framework was not drawn up by teachers and even many of the inspectors including an HMI here in the West Midlands admit they don't understand how it works. So that in itself raises rather serious questions about how much use it is.
Third, the ignorance of these people mean its processes are poor. Spielman's train crash tenure at OFQUAL is something I've discussed before. She was however promoted to OFSTED without an appointments process and over the objections of the Education Select Committee, who expressed alarm at her lack of understanding of what the role involved or the significant problems facing OFSTED. She has been an absolute joke. The reason they have - for example - no means of reporting safeguarding breaches by inspectors, or safeguarding training for them, or even simple precautions like DBS update checks, is because she literally doesn't know what safeguarding is. In fact, she once confused it with criminal prosecution. And she will not listen to advice, however we'll meant. Professionals are not encouraged to work with her apparently because she feels insecure around them. No wonder there are rumours that she was appointed by Morgan for purely - ahem - personal reasons.
On top of that, you have the toxic and adversarial nature of OFSTED, a legacy of Woodhead. Woodhead was actually driven out of teaching because he was a bad teacher, and his McCarthyite obsession with 'fifteen/eighteen/five hundred thousand' bad teachers was a legacy of this. On occasions, OFSTED has risen above this to become useful, but too often it seems to rely on whoever is in charge. While leadership is useful, it should not yaw around like this merely because of it. There seems to be no depth or consistency in its systems and as a result its reports compared across eras are again pretty much worthless.
In terms of what has happened here the current fad of OFSTED is to turn up with preconceived ideas and go through fitting the facts to those ideas. The issue in this case is they had clearly decided to fail it on safeguarding and therefore they changed a playground fight into 'peer on peer abuse.' They tried that in a school I was working in last year - claiming a teacher had hit a child - only to have to retract after video footage proved this was not true (that school fortunately had CCTV).
On the substantive point I do not see how the headteacher can refuse entry on those grounds, as it is a statutory requirement. And, unfortunately, OFSTED care no more for the safety of teachers than they do children.She would be on much stronger grounds - as would everyone else - refusing them entry on the grounds that they do not have sufficient safeguarding clearances. That might actually startle even the useless failure Spielman into finally doing something (preferably resigning).
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Kinnock was great. His words inspired me. The way he took on the left and the Thatcherites was heroic. He laid the foundation for 13 years of Labour government. A shame he didn't make it himself.
Meanwhile, Starmer reminds me more of Smith. Smith was taken from us far too early.
Starmer is an uninspiring leader. A poor speaker, verbose, and an ideas vacuum. History doesn't repeat itself perfectly, and the huge polling leads that we have seen recently were never going to be sustainable, but Starmer needs more to his campaign than "Not the Tories".
You're more inspired by the fizzing charisma and idea fountain of Ed Davey?
Ed Davey was one of the most effective of the ministers in the 2010-15 Coalition. Perhaps the best energy Secretary of all time, ramping up renewable, and calling for an end to dependency on Russian gas. He also ended the compulsory retirement age. I like his long term thinking.
I suspect that Starmer is going to fritter away his lead.
The lead was always going to narrow. They always do. If Ed Davey is so exciting, why is no-one excited?
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
Speaking of which, it was the OFSTED judgment over safeguarding record keeping (the school was otherwise very good), which led to the recent suicide of the primary head.
Which as I noted before, is ironic given OFSTED has in itself no actual safeguarding procedures.
Its unfortunate in some ways but there are certain jobs and roles where it is necessary for others publicly to say or infer you are chit at your job. A prime example that we all do on here are politicians . Sports people are another where we all 'have a go' . ' If you say a film is crap you are effectively saying the producer is crap. If we stop judging in those areas where it is kinda necessary then we may as well say we cannot have sports punditry or political forums or film critics. To be in some roles you need to be able to take criticism
Agreed.
The issue is OFSTED is breaking a number of laws, including its own safeguarding rules, because it is run by people who don't know what they're doing.
And that in itself makes their criticisms worthless.
Edit - also, it never accepts criticism of itself, even when it's bang to rights. Which is mildly ironic in the circumstances.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? In the case of OFSTED - nobody...
Kinnock’s main problem was that by 1987 a lot of people felt that the UK was heading in the right direction and could also clearly remember when it wasn’t. By 1992, things weren’t so great but the Tories did still have some credit in the bank and Kinnock was too associated with an old school Labour that a lot of voters felt was too much of a risk to back.
Why I am less convinced about 1992 parallels than many others is that even in that election the Tories had serious, discernible, palpable achievements to talk about. The country was in a better place than it had been in 1979. I just don’t see that similar narrative for the next election.
Put it this way, in 1992, did voters feel they were better off and living in a more successful UK than the one they had in 1979? Pretty much, yes. Ask the same questions about 2010 and 2024, and I doubt enough people will be equally as positive.
At the next election, the main Tory argument will essentially be: “It could be even worse if we aren’t in charge.” The Labour one will be: “It should be so much better than the way it is. Fundamentally, Labour will be right.
The challenge is that there are 650 individual elections. To get from where the party is now to a majority means winning in over 120 more of these than in 2019. And that means everything falling right in terms of vote distribution and turnout in very different parts of the country. It’s a very tough ask.
Much more likely, IMO, are big swings in places like Wales and the North West, alongside much lower swings in the East and North Midlands and the Black Country. That’s why I think Labour most seats but no majority is most likely. Scotland becoming a proper battleground may change that, though.
Don't you think that Scotland coming into play is a touch of hope over reality, based on some very recent local difficulties? A bit like the PB faithful polishing their vuvuzelas on the back of one Deltapoll. It may come to pass, but the evidence is so far limited.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
Those words will come back to bite him, when the next rapist with a warrant card is up before the beak. And it’s definitely when, not if.
What does the mayor have to say this morning, about such a damning report of his police force service?
The Met should be broken up, with the national parts and the diplomatic protection hived off, leaving a smaller force for police London.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
Speaking of which, it was the OFSTED judgment over safeguarding record keeping (the school was otherwise very good), which led to the recent suicide of the primary head.
Which as I noted before, is ironic given OFSTED has in itself no actual safeguarding procedures.
Its unfortunate in some ways but there are certain jobs and roles where it is necessary for others publicly to say or infer you are chit at your job. A prime example that we all do on here are politicians . Sports people are another where we all 'have a go' . ' If you say a film is crap you are effectively saying the producer is crap. If we stop judging in those areas where it is kinda necessary then we may as well say we cannot have sports punditry or political forums or film critics. To be in some roles you need to be able to take criticism
As @ydoethur described, OFSTED is simply failing in its role. No one is arguing schools don't need inspecting or to have judgments made of their performance.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
Good grief. An awful lot of nothing, delivered in the style of Lenin himself. And still those behind him got so cheesed off they couldn’t applaud or even look at him.
What a shower. That’s put me right off.
Sunak should use that clip to guarantee Tory majority “do you really want to put this lot into power? Seriously?”
Kinnock is an awful man, nonetheless I am not backing any of your racing tips if you read the tealeaves so poorly. Without that speech, New Labour would likely as not have never existed. I had forgotten how much I despised Eric Heffer and Degsy.
You've read the room wrong there Rabbit, anyone who gets Heffer to throw his toys out of the pram isn't all bad
Nonsense. That looked like a right shower a billion miles from government. Lenin as leader, his own team unable to applaud him.
That clip alone I have completely forgiven my dad for being Tory all his life in every election. I guess I never truly appreciated what alternatives were.
Kinnock had taken over from Michael Foot (a very decent academic, but hopeless politician- a sort of Corbyn with a brain figure) and the Longest Suicide Note in history. Labour were indeed utterly shambolic. Forget Kinnock's "boyo" nonsense and listen to the speech, particularly "a Labour Council, a Labour Council hiring taxis..." bit. That reference was to Liverpool City Council whose assistant idiot was Degsy, the young fellow at the back with the mullet. As a student of Labour Party political history (lapsed) I understand the importance of that moment.
But there was no importance to that moment was there?
Labour have gone into the last two elections with what you have called “Foot without a brain” as leader.
So why when it’s all said and done was it important? What’s that 85? So another 12 years without a Labour government? And then a Labour government to preside over the gulf war, “cartel mode utilities” as someone said, and the only NHS hospital to ever be privatised?
The only thing RCS link screams at us is here’s a party that just cannot win the next general election (where they got thrashed in 87?)
Arguably for good or for ill, without Kinnock there would have been no New Labour. Remember Eric Heffer had aspirations for leadership. The mind boggles as to the insanity of that notion. It's like thinking in 1985 that in 30 years time someone as reactionary as Dave Nellist or Jeremy Corbyn could be Labour Leader. Should that ever have come to pass it certainly wasn't Kinnock's fault.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
Speaking of which, it was the OFSTED judgment over safeguarding record keeping (the school was otherwise very good), which led to the recent suicide of the primary head.
Which as I noted before, is ironic given OFSTED has in itself no actual safeguarding procedures.
Its unfortunate in some ways but there are certain jobs and roles where it is necessary for others publicly to say or infer you are chit at your job. A prime example that we all do on here are politicians . Sports people are another where we all 'have a go' . ' If you say a film is crap you are effectively saying the producer is crap. If we stop judging in those areas where it is kinda necessary then we may as well say we cannot have sports punditry or political forums or film critics. To be in some roles you need to be able to take criticism
As @ydoethur described, OFSTED is simply failing in its role. No one is arguing schools don't need inspecting or to have judgments made of their performance.
but that is simply an opinion not a fact so schools shoudl not boycott OFSTED
Kinnock’s main problem was that by 1987 a lot of people felt that the UK was heading in the right direction and could also clearly remember when it wasn’t. By 1992, things weren’t so great but the Tories did still have some credit in the bank and Kinnock was too associated with an old school Labour that a lot of voters felt was too much of a risk to back.
Why I am less convinced about 1992 parallels than many others is that even in that election the Tories had serious, discernible, palpable achievements to talk about. The country was in a better place than it had been in 1979. I just don’t see that similar narrative for the next election.
Put it this way, in 1992, did voters feel they were better off and living in a more successful UK than the one they had in 1979? Pretty much, yes. Ask the same questions about 2010 and 2024, and I doubt enough people will be equally as positive.
At the next election, the main Tory argument will essentially be: “It could be even worse if we aren’t in charge.” The Labour one will be: “It should be so much better than the way it is. Fundamentally, Labour will be right.
The challenge is that there are 650 individual elections. To get from where the party is now to a majority means winning in over 120 more of these than in 2019. And that means everything falling right in terms of vote distribution and turnout in very different parts of the country. It’s a very tough ask.
Much more likely, IMO, are big swings in places like Wales and the North West, alongside much lower swings in the East and North Midlands and the Black Country. That’s why I think Labour most seats but no majority is most likely. Scotland becoming a proper battleground may change that, though.
In 1987 and 1992 swing voters also turned out to vote to keep Kinnock out as in 2017 and 2019 they turned out to keep Corbyn out.
Starmer does not have Blair's appeal and charisma but like Blair he does have the advantage swing voters don't fear him
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
Those words will come back to bite him, when the next rapist with a warrant card is up before the beak. And it’s definitely when, not if.
What does the mayor have to say this morning, about such a damning report of his police force service?
The Met should be broken up, with the national parts and the diplomatic protection hived off, leaving a smaller force for police London.
He was on R4 this morning, defending his scrutiny of the Met. It sounded pretty threadbare to me, but he has at least made some efforts, however inadequate. In contrast to a succession of Home Secretaries who have been largely complicit.
Kinnock’s main problem was that by 1987 a lot of people felt that the UK was heading in the right direction and could also clearly remember when it wasn’t. By 1992, things weren’t so great but the Tories did still have some credit in the bank and Kinnock was too associated with an old school Labour that a lot of voters felt was too much of a risk to back.
Why I am less convinced about 1992 parallels than many others is that even in that election the Tories had serious, discernible, palpable achievements to talk about. The country was in a better place than it had been in 1979. I just don’t see that similar narrative for the next election.
Put it this way, in 1992, did voters feel they were better off and living in a more successful UK than the one they had in 1979? Pretty much, yes. Ask the same questions about 2010 and 2024, and I doubt enough people will be equally as positive.
At the next election, the main Tory argument will essentially be: “It could be even worse if we aren’t in charge.” The Labour one will be: “It should be so much better than the way it is. Fundamentally, Labour will be right.
The challenge is that there are 650 individual elections. To get from where the party is now to a majority means winning in over 120 more of these than in 2019. And that means everything falling right in terms of vote distribution and turnout in very different parts of the country. It’s a very tough ask.
Much more likely, IMO, are big swings in places like Wales and the North West, alongside much lower swings in the East and North Midlands and the Black Country. That’s why I think Labour most seats but no majority is most likely. Scotland becoming a proper battleground may change that, though.
Don't you think that Scotland coming into play is a touch of hope over reality, based on some very recent local difficulties? A bit like the PB faithful polishing their vuvuzelas on the back of one Deltapoll. It may come to pass, but the evidence is so far limited.
Yep, I suspect the SNP vote is going to be pretty sticky. But a few percentage points either way could make a major difference. I think Labour could be in play in up to 30 seats and may end up with 10-12. But “could” and “may” are a long way from “will”.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Kinnock was great. His words inspired me. The way he took on the left and the Thatcherites was heroic. He laid the foundation for 13 years of Labour government. A shame he didn't make it himself.
Meanwhile, Starmer reminds me more of Smith. Smith was taken from us far too early.
Starmer is an uninspiring leader. A poor speaker, verbose, and an ideas vacuum. History doesn't repeat itself perfectly, and the huge polling leads that we have seen recently were never going to be sustainable, but Starmer needs more to his campaign than "Not the Tories".
You're more inspired by the fizzing charisma and idea fountain of Ed Davey?
One reason I'm more upbeat about Tory chances than others is that I just look at the Opposition and see there is no alternative government on offer. Other than some nebulous "we'll be better at it than the Tories". Well, Cameron thought he'd be quite good at the governing malarkey. *cough* Brexit Referendum *cough*....
On Covid, Labour wanted us to rush into signing PPE contracts that didn't stand up to scrutiny. And Starmer wanted to lock down the country for Christmas 2021. Other than that, they were pretty much in lock-step with the government. Well, apart from 20:20 hindsight. And there doesn't look to be anything on Ukraine that separates the opposition parties. As Truss/Kwarteng showed, there isn't the option to take a different path that involves borrowing masses of money from Mr. Market. Sunak/Hunt have already raised taxes to about the maximum before you start inflicting real damage on the economy.
Truss/Kwarteng demonstrated "there is no more money" is alive in the 2020's. Perhaps their biggest contribution to governing this country will be in crushing any realistic alternative approach that opposition parties might propose. "Tried that. Won't work...."
On covid, Starmer might have locked down earlier, saved many lives and got us back to normal sooner. He would not have done what Boris did, go around shaking hands and nearly kill himself. If the Tories want to run on their PPE contracts, go for it.
As for the gap between the parties, it’s been interesting to see Tories pick up Labour ideas. From energy to Ireland, the Tories are followers.
Boris was always a magpie, happy to thieve an idea here, a policy there. Sunak less so - or perhaps it is just there aren't the ideas coming out for him to nick?
Implementing ideas is the benefit of Government. There are precisely zero votes in whining to the voters "But that was OUR idea...." Especially if there are so few to make the point about.
Kinnock’s main problem was that by 1987 a lot of people felt that the UK was heading in the right direction and could also clearly remember when it wasn’t. By 1992, things weren’t so great but the Tories did still have some credit in the bank and Kinnock was too associated with an old school Labour that a lot of voters felt was too much of a risk to back.
Why I am less convinced about 1992 parallels than many others is that even in that election the Tories had serious, discernible, palpable achievements to talk about. The country was in a better place than it had been in 1979. I just don’t see that similar narrative for the next election.
Put it this way, in 1992, did voters feel they were better off and living in a more successful UK than the one they had in 1979? Pretty much, yes. Ask the same questions about 2010 and 2024, and I doubt enough people will be equally as positive.
At the next election, the main Tory argument will essentially be: “It could be even worse if we aren’t in charge.” The Labour one will be: “It should be so much better than the way it is. Fundamentally, Labour will be right.
The challenge is that there are 650 individual elections. To get from where the party is now to a majority means winning in over 120 more of these than in 2019. And that means everything falling right in terms of vote distribution and turnout in very different parts of the country. It’s a very tough ask.
Much more likely, IMO, are big swings in places like Wales and the North West, alongside much lower swings in the East and North Midlands and the Black Country. That’s why I think Labour most seats but no majority is most likely. Scotland becoming a proper battleground may change that, though.
Don't agree with all of this but this is a fair and intelligent analysis.
I think Starmer's problem is his problem is unenthused base (except by the prospect of winning) and floaters who are almost entirely with him out of a desire to see the end of the Tories.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Being told that “I wouldn’t go there, Minister” by their permanent officials.
Plebgate was the result of the police feeling that they weren’t automatically being defended by the government - see various enquiries.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
Speaking of which, it was the OFSTED judgment over safeguarding record keeping (the school was otherwise very good), which led to the recent suicide of the primary head.
Which as I noted before, is ironic given OFSTED has in itself no actual safeguarding procedures.
Its unfortunate in some ways but there are certain jobs and roles where it is necessary for others publicly to say or infer you are chit at your job. A prime example that we all do on here are politicians . Sports people are another where we all 'have a go' . ' If you say a film is crap you are effectively saying the producer is crap. If we stop judging in those areas where it is kinda necessary then we may as well say we cannot have sports punditry or political forums or film critics. To be in some roles you need to be able to take criticism
As @ydoethur described, OFSTED is simply failing in its role. No one is arguing schools don't need inspecting or to have judgments made of their performance.
but that is simply an opinion not a fact so schools shoudl not boycott OFSTED
How is it an opinion?
OFSTED does not do basic safeguarding procedures on its inspectors. OFSTED does not have a rigorous inspection framework OFSTED does not have a consistent approach to monitoring OFSTED refuses any feedback or to implement any changes even when their processes have caused disasters.
Sure, schools should not boycott OFSTED. But to put it at its most basic level it's worrying to think that they could quite legitimately refuse entry to inspectors on the grounds they do not have adequate clearance to work with children. That simply shouldn't be happening.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Also his successes. Can anyone imagine Hattersley or Smith turning the party around sufficiently to win again by 1987 from 1983? One was a complete windbag and the other never had an original thought or any moral courage whatsoever.
Starmer is helped by the time for change factor, 13 years into a Tory government is different from 8 years
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
Those words will come back to bite him, when the next rapist with a warrant card is up before the beak. And it’s definitely when, not if.
What does the mayor have to say this morning, about such a damning report of his police force service?
The Met should be broken up, with the national parts and the diplomatic protection hived off, leaving a smaller force for police London.
He was on R4 this morning, defending his scrutiny of the Met. It sounded pretty threadbare to me, but he has at least made some efforts, however inadequate. In contrast to a succession of Home Secretaries who have been largely complicit.
He is due credit for getting rid of Dame Cressida Dick, a genuinely bizarre appointment protected to the hilt by successive Home Secretaries as was that prat Blair until Boris got rid of him. I do think that the relationship between the Met and the Home Office is a serious part of the problem. It has been far too cosy and uncritical under governments of both stripes.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
He was up against the first female Conservative PM that was Margaret Thatcher who the Russians had dubbed the 'Iron Lady', and who clearly had bigger balls...
Kinnock had balls when taking on the Labour left, who had nowhere else to go, but was a gutless, unoriginal, unconvincing centrist in policy terms.
A generation later, little has changed with the current leader of the Party.
(Though Kinnock probably could have defined a woman).
Kinnock's problem was his lack of self-control and his personality.
Kinnock also had the entire Tory press against him, which in those days sold millions of copies a day.
Yes, but that's a standard scapegoat. Blair didn't have the same trouble.
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Kinnock was great. His words inspired me. The way he took on the left and the Thatcherites was heroic. He laid the foundation for 13 years of Labour government. A shame he didn't make it himself.
Meanwhile, Starmer reminds me more of Smith. Smith was taken from us far too early.
Starmer is an uninspiring leader. A poor speaker, verbose, and an ideas vacuum. History doesn't repeat itself perfectly, and the huge polling leads that we have seen recently were never going to be sustainable, but Starmer needs more to his campaign than "Not the Tories".
You're more inspired by the fizzing charisma and idea fountain of Ed Davey?
One reason I'm more upbeat about Tory chances than others is that I just look at the Opposition and see there is no alternative government on offer. Other than some nebulous "we'll be better at it than the Tories". Well, Cameron thought he'd be quite good at the governing malarkey. *cough* Brexit Referendum *cough*....
On Covid, Labour wanted us to rush into signing PPE contracts that didn't stand up to scrutiny. And Starmer wanted to lock down the country for Christmas 2021. Other than that, they were pretty much in lock-step with the government. Well, apart from 20:20 hindsight. And there doesn't look to be anything on Ukraine that separates the opposition parties. As Truss/Kwarteng showed, there isn't the option to take a different path that involves borrowing masses of money from Mr. Market. Sunak/Hunt have already raised taxes to about the maximum before you start inflicting real damage on the economy.
Truss/Kwarteng demonstrated "there is no more money" is alive in the 2020's. Perhaps their biggest contribution to governing this country will be in crushing any realistic alternative approach that opposition parties might propose. "Tried that. Won't work...."
On covid, Starmer might have locked down earlier, saved many lives and got us back to normal sooner. He would not have done what Boris did, go around shaking hands and nearly kill himself. If the Tories want to run on their PPE contracts, go for it.
As for the gap between the parties, it’s been interesting to see Tories pick up Labour ideas. From energy to Ireland, the Tories are followers.
Boris was always a magpie, happy to thieve an idea here, a policy there. Sunak less so - or perhaps it is just there aren't the ideas coming out for him to nick?
Implementing ideas is the benefit of Government. There are precisely zero votes in whining to the voters "But that was OUR idea...." Especially if there are so few to make the point about.
I think also that Boris, for whatever reason, had room to manoeuvre to steal some good Labour ideas. I don't think Sunak and Hunt are above that (they're seemingly less ideological than Truss, although more so than Boris) necessarily but the party is less in the mood.
I think Labour still need to tread carefully in terms of policy, but Sunak and Hunt are less of a threat in that regard.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
Bog standard 'criticise the police and you are attacking them, upsetting the officers'. Works every time.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
Speaking of which, it was the OFSTED judgment over safeguarding record keeping (the school was otherwise very good), which led to the recent suicide of the primary head.
Which as I noted before, is ironic given OFSTED has in itself no actual safeguarding procedures.
Its unfortunate in some ways but there are certain jobs and roles where it is necessary for others publicly to say or infer you are chit at your job. A prime example that we all do on here are politicians . Sports people are another where we all 'have a go' . ' If you say a film is crap you are effectively saying the producer is crap. If we stop judging in those areas where it is kinda necessary then we may as well say we cannot have sports punditry or political forums or film critics. To be in some roles you need to be able to take criticism
As @ydoethur described, OFSTED is simply failing in its role. No one is arguing schools don't need inspecting or to have judgments made of their performance.
but that is simply an opinion not a fact so schools should not boycott OFSTED
It is rather more than that. The primary school case is a good illustration. An otherwise good and popular school, where pupils were happy, and where teaching and learning are good, had a deficiency in its record keeping. An inspection doing what it ought to would have led to record keeping being improved, not the suicide of the Head.
It seems strange that the UK allows citizens from so many countries in for what is essentially an unlimited amount of time while also obsessing about illegal immigration. Why don’t we monitor and time limit entries from the EU/EEA, US, NZ, Australia etc, like they do to us?
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Being told that “I wouldn’t go there, Minister” by their permanent officials...
That's one comedy that hasn't really aged, despite being of its time.
It's still just as funny today as it was then.
Could it be argued that a couple of the ridiculous charges in that sketch have actually come to pass - "Coughing without due care and attention" and "looking at me in a funny way"?
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
Speaking of which, it was the OFSTED judgment over safeguarding record keeping (the school was otherwise very good), which led to the recent suicide of the primary head.
Which as I noted before, is ironic given OFSTED has in itself no actual safeguarding procedures.
Its unfortunate in some ways but there are certain jobs and roles where it is necessary for others publicly to say or infer you are chit at your job. A prime example that we all do on here are politicians . Sports people are another where we all 'have a go' . ' If you say a film is crap you are effectively saying the producer is crap. If we stop judging in those areas where it is kinda necessary then we may as well say we cannot have sports punditry or political forums or film critics. To be in some roles you need to be able to take criticism
As @ydoethur described, OFSTED is simply failing in its role. No one is arguing schools don't need inspecting or to have judgments made of their performance.
but that is simply an opinion not a fact so schools should not boycott OFSTED
It is rather more than that. The primary school case is a good illustration. An otherwise good and popular school, where pupils were happy, and where teaching and learning are good, had a deficiency in its record keeping. An inspection doing what it ought to would have led to record keeping being improved, not the suicide of the Head.
There is some doubt about whether there was a deficiency in its record keeping. There is more than a suggestion the inspector in question miscategorized the incident because they get told off if schools stay at the same grade after all these years.
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back. You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
Reorganising the Home Office? John Reid said it was not fit for purpose, so Justice was split off, and since then policing, border control and the courts have never been in better shape!
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
A failed organisation of that size - the Met accounts for over a quarter of all policing - and with multiple roles, is just too big to adequately reform. Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
It's come to something when of the last three Home Secretaries Michael Green, er, Grant Shapps stands out as a beacon of competence and integrity compared to the other two.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
The report has barely been published, and already the first bad faith argument from the leading police representative.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
What an idiot.
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
Speaking of which, it was the OFSTED judgment over safeguarding record keeping (the school was otherwise very good), which led to the recent suicide of the primary head.
Which as I noted before, is ironic given OFSTED has in itself no actual safeguarding procedures.
Its unfortunate in some ways but there are certain jobs and roles where it is necessary for others publicly to say or infer you are chit at your job. A prime example that we all do on here are politicians . Sports people are another where we all 'have a go' . ' If you say a film is crap you are effectively saying the producer is crap. If we stop judging in those areas where it is kinda necessary then we may as well say we cannot have sports punditry or political forums or film critics. To be in some roles you need to be able to take criticism
As @ydoethur described, OFSTED is simply failing in its role. No one is arguing schools don't need inspecting or to have judgments made of their performance.
but that is simply an opinion not a fact so schools should not boycott OFSTED
It is rather more than that. The primary school case is a good illustration. An otherwise good and popular school, where pupils were happy, and where teaching and learning are good, had a deficiency in its record keeping. An inspection doing what it ought to would have led to record keeping being improved, not the suicide of the Head.
There is some doubt about whether there was a deficiency in its record keeping. There is more than a suggestion the inspector in question miscategorized the incident because they get told off if schools stay at the same grade after all these years.
If so...
That's also possible. But even accepting the report at face value, it was a gross failure of judgment.
Mr. Owls, inflation's probably going to more than halve just by itself, so that's a sensible 'promise' to make. I'm personally promising the sun will rise tomorrow. Vote Morris Dancer for continued daylight and warmth!
It seems strange that the UK allows citizens from so many countries in for what is essentially an unlimited amount of time while also obsessing about illegal immigration. Why don’t we monitor and time limit entries from the EU/EEA, US, NZ, Australia etc, like they do to us?
I think we're comfortable with the idea of people from similar income countries going back home of their own accord, they have lives to live and jobs to do. It's a sensible approach and is one that other countries should adopt.
Hmm. I'm torn. Most of the time I think it will be 1997 on stilts; but then I think: doesn't this look just like 1992 all over again - A Labour party creeping from the shadow of far-left domination, and a Tory party led by a calm pragmatist determined to put all the tumultuous recent history behind him? Problem is: Starmer is no Blair but he's also no Kinnock, but then Rishi is no Major. Just dunno...
Why was Kinnock so hated at the time and apparently still hated? Whenever I see archive footage of him he comes across as moderate and conciliatory and a decent likeable sort, especially compared to the choice for PM at the last election.
Good grief. An awful lot of nothing, delivered in the style of Lenin himself. And still those behind him got so cheesed off they couldn’t applaud or even look at him.
What a shower. That’s put me right off.
Sunak should use that clip to guarantee Tory majority “do you really want to put this lot into power? Seriously?”
Kinnock is an awful man, nonetheless I am not backing any of your racing tips if you read the tealeaves so poorly. Without that speech, New Labour would likely as not have never existed. I had forgotten how much I despised Eric Heffer and Degsy.
You've read the room wrong there Rabbit, anyone who gets Heffer to throw his toys out of the pram isn't all bad
I guess I never truly appreciated what alternatives were.
Hence the greater enthusiasm for nationalised industries among the young who never knew them than the old who did….
Privatised (non- competition, cartel model) utilities, remind me how well that all works.
Today's BT is infinitely better than the one I grew up with.
I have to disagree, as a BT customer. Openreach is a monopoly and if their cost benefit analysis deems decayed underground aluminium cable is not replaced because some time, way in the future it will all be replaced by fibre optic. When it rains I have intermittent broadband. It rains a lot in Wales. BT just fob the customer off and a poor service remains, they keep taking my money and telling me when they test the line it is fine. No point going to Sky or Talk talk my only other options as they use the same Openreach infrastructure.
Back in the GPO days a fault would be rectified within 24 or 48 hours at no expense spared.
Don’t accept that line of argument
They paid me £8 a day for 5 months because of a fault on the line they couldn’t trace until they realised that one of the guys fiddling in the wiring box on the street had connected the wrong cable to the wrong port
Comments
I booked the appointment (for a device I don’t want and don’t need but which they insist I have to get the cheapest TV package) in early December…
My argument isn't that. It's that I think large (current) Labour leads could haemorrhage just as easily into the high 30s and a stalemate if Starmer doesn't enthuse his base and retain floaters but Sunak does his.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/21/louise-caseys-report-on-the-met-police-the-fall-of-a-british-institution
I note PB is debating the merits if a Labour leader from four decades back.
You might better be asking what on earth the Home Secretaries of the last two decades have been doing.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-49582231
I do love Fry's sense of entitlement in that snippet of the letter. Also, as he was a massive cokehead at the time, he might have well fitted better on the Conservative benches...
The space company Rcketlab have test-fired a rocket engine they recovered out of the sea:
https://twitter.com/RocketLab/status/1637908685812015104
NASA did this once with one of the ?Gemini? engines in the 1960s, but they never reflew one. Rocketlab are hoping to do so.
That's great - unless you're a pro-Russian shill.
That is why I am sceptical of "break up the Met" as a solution to anything. Change the cap badge and a couple of years of chaos will fix the immediate problem of saving politicians' necks until the general election. Never mind systems, procedures or personnel. After that it will be bring in a new Commissioner, as if that has never been tried before.
But I think the "£400 off, no questions asked" scheme isn't being extended, unless someone knows different. That's been paying about a third of my DD over the winter.
"Esmond Bevan intended to stand as an independent Labour candidate, but erroneously entered his occupation in the section on the nomination papers headed 'description', thus appearing on ballot papers as "Systems Designer".
Which became - interesting - when they failed to notify me of a price rise as a result.
I was doubly furious as I heard a rumour prices were rising and rang them to check, only to be assured they weren't.
About the only thing to say in their favour is they're not as useless as the Student Loan Company.
Not that I have any personal memories of it!
Kinnock's failings are his and his alone.
Breaking it up would give at least the chance that one ur two of the new forces actually improve.
As an aside, it's both absurd and contemptible that the man who presided over the Met as Mayor, and appointed one of the worst two Home Secretaries in modern times, is now attacking Parliamentary due process for investigating his behaviour.
Mind you, if he'd been given more than three days he might have found a way to cock things up again.
Meanwhile, Starmer reminds me more of Smith. Smith was taken from us far too early.
He was the right guy to fix the Labour movement but not to win a general.
(By the way, I obviously meant 1997 not 1987. I seem to be channeling my inner Richard Burgon via fat finger typing.)
That's impressive, even if he has had a lot of help by both his opponents (Momentum and the Conservatives) being a bit rubbish.
Meanwhile my hope is that Starmer is about to show us what a Smith premiership might have been like.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/21/met-police-damning-casey-report-campaigners-misogyny-racism-homophobia
...Ken Marsh, chairman of the Police Federation, said: “I think it is a bit disingenuous to say there could be another David Carrick or Wayne Couzens in the Met police.
“I don’t think we will see another person like that in the police.”
He added: “We absolutely accept the findings but we have to be a little bit careful here. Are we saying every Met police officer is racist and homophobic? That is quite dangerous.
“Met colleagues are on their knees. We have a broken force, they are just leaving in their droves.
“It is quite scary what we are creating here. The punishing of police just does not stop. The new commissioner has made a vow to change what is going on and is changing what is going on.”
'We won't see another person like that' when there have already been two is an epic logic fail.
I suppose he is to be congratulated on being the only person to know less about safeguarding than Amanda Spielman, but that's not a good thing.
Something weird is going on.
Back in the GPO days a fault would be rectified within 24 or 48 hours at no expense spared.
https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/rupert-murdoch-documentary-rise-of-dynasty-bbc-tony-blair/
https://youtu.be/BO8EpfyCG2Y
bullying in 2019, who, having read the report last night, felt that the state of the Met is significantly worse than it was then.
A headteacher plans to boycott an Ofsted inspection tomorrow – telling the watchdog this morning that she will refuse their inspectors entry to her school.
Flora Cooper, executive headteacher at John Rankin Infant and Nursery School in Berkshire, has now called on other headteachers who want Ofsted reform to join the protest.
It follows the death of Ruth Perry, headteacher of Caversham primary school, also in Berkshire.
Perry’s family said she took her own life in January before the publication of an inspection report rating the school ‘inadequate’.
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/head-plans-to-refuse-ofsted-inspectors-entry-following-ruth-perry-death/
I can't see it ending well.
Tony Blair cited the Police Federation as the strongest trade union in the country and we can now all see the result of that. They simply regard themselves as untouchable. It isn't just The Met. There are five Forces in special measures. There are none that you could quote as exemplarary.
What to do? It won't be an easy fix but we could start by implementing the recommendations of The Casey Report. Too many reports before have been disregarded.
And Ken Marsh can stfu.
Why I am less convinced about 1992 parallels than many others is that even in that election the Tories had serious, discernible, palpable achievements to talk about. The country was in a better place than it had been in 1979. I just don’t see that similar narrative for the next election.
Put it this way, in 1992, did voters feel they were better off and living in a more successful UK than the one they had in 1979? Pretty much, yes. Ask the same questions about 2010 and 2024, and I doubt enough people will be equally as positive.
At the next election, the main Tory argument will essentially be: “It could be even worse if we aren’t in charge.” The Labour one will be: “It should be so much better than the way it is. Fundamentally, Labour will be right.
The challenge is that there are 650 individual elections. To get from where the party is now to a majority means winning in over 120 more of these than in 2019. And that means everything falling right in terms of vote distribution and turnout in very different parts of the country. It’s a very tough ask.
Much more likely, IMO, are big swings in places like Wales and the North West, alongside much lower swings in the East and North Midlands and the Black Country. That’s why I think Labour most seats but no majority is most likely. Scotland becoming a proper battleground may change that, though.
Schools have a responsibility towards the safety of staff as well as pupils.
On Covid, Labour wanted us to rush into signing PPE contracts that didn't stand up to scrutiny. And Starmer wanted to lock down the country for Christmas 2021. Other than that, they were pretty much in lock-step with the government. Well, apart from 20:20 hindsight. And there doesn't look to be anything on Ukraine that separates the opposition parties. As Truss/Kwarteng showed, there isn't the option to take a different path that involves borrowing masses of money from Mr. Market. Sunak/Hunt have already raised taxes to about the maximum before you start inflicting real damage on the economy.
Truss/Kwarteng demonstrated "there is no more money" is alive in the 2020's. Perhaps their biggest contribution to governing this country will be in crushing any realistic alternative approach that opposition parties might propose. "Tried that. Won't work...."
If we stop judging in those areas where it is kinda necessary then we may as well say we cannot have sports punditry or political forums or film critics.
To be in some roles you need to be able to take criticism
Talk talk use Openreach cable to the exchange from your house, but they run independent hardware inside the exchange and different fibre backhaul.
I switched when my BT broadband was out for a week, but my neighbour's talk talk was fine
Brexit and Corbyn were massive confounders in both elections.
As for the gap between the parties, it’s been interesting to see Tories pick up Labour ideas. From energy to Ireland, the Tories are followers.
The local elections therefore have an added significance in providing an indication of where public opinion is at, although having the unique circumstances of 2019 as the comparator isn't ideal.
I suspect that Starmer is going to fritter away his lead.
OFSTED has a number of problems. First, its remit is far too wide. It is trying to monitor about eight different, highly specialised fields. This is because statutory monitoring procedures have been piled Willy nilly onto the DfE and OFSTED is about the only enforcement arm it has. It's doing all of them rather badly. It would be better to break it up in to much smaller, more focused agencies with specialised remits.
Second, when we turn to schools it is run by people who don't have a clue what they're doing. The new curriculum framework was not drawn up by teachers and even many of the inspectors including an HMI here in the West Midlands admit they don't understand how it works. So that in itself raises rather serious questions about how much use it is.
Third, the ignorance of these people mean its processes are poor. Spielman's train crash tenure at OFQUAL is something I've discussed before. She was however promoted to OFSTED without an appointments process and over the objections of the Education Select Committee, who expressed alarm at her lack of understanding of what the role involved or the significant problems facing OFSTED. She has been an absolute joke. The reason they have - for example - no means of reporting safeguarding breaches by inspectors, or safeguarding training for them, or even simple precautions like DBS update checks, is because she literally doesn't know what safeguarding is. In fact, she once confused it with criminal prosecution. And she will not listen to advice, however we'll meant. Professionals are not encouraged to work with her apparently because she feels insecure around them. No wonder there are rumours that she was appointed by Morgan for purely - ahem - personal reasons.
In terms of what has happened here the current fad of OFSTED is to turn up with preconceived ideas and go through fitting the facts to those ideas. The issue in this case is they had clearly decided to fail it on safeguarding and therefore they changed a playground fight into 'peer on peer abuse.' They tried that in a school I was working in last year - claiming a teacher had hit a child - only to have to retract after video footage proved this was not true (that school fortunately had CCTV).
On the substantive point I do not see how the headteacher can refuse entry on those grounds, as it is a statutory requirement. And, unfortunately, OFSTED care no more for the safety of teachers than they do children.She would be on much stronger grounds - as would everyone else - refusing them entry on the grounds that they do not have sufficient safeguarding clearances. That might actually startle even the useless failure Spielman into finally doing something (preferably resigning).
The issue is OFSTED is breaking a number of laws, including its own safeguarding rules, because it is run by people who don't know what they're doing.
And that in itself makes their criticisms worthless.
Edit - also, it never accepts criticism of itself, even when it's bang to rights. Which is mildly ironic in the circumstances.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? In the case of OFSTED - nobody...
It's still just as funny today as it was then.
What does the mayor have to say this morning, about such a damning report of his police force service?
The Met should be broken up, with the national parts and the diplomatic protection hived off, leaving a smaller force for police London.
No one is arguing schools don't need inspecting or to have judgments made of their performance.
Starmer does not have Blair's appeal and charisma but like Blair he does have the advantage swing voters don't fear him
It sounded pretty threadbare to me, but he has at least made some efforts, however inadequate. In contrast to a succession of Home Secretaries who have been largely complicit.
Implementing ideas is the benefit of Government. There are precisely zero votes in whining to the voters "But that was OUR idea...." Especially if there are so few to make the point about.
I think Starmer's problem is his problem is unenthused base (except by the prospect of winning) and floaters who are almost entirely with him out of a desire to see the end of the Tories.
That is not a very stable or deep coalition.
Plebgate was the result of the police feeling that they weren’t automatically being defended by the government - see various enquiries.
OFSTED does not do basic safeguarding procedures on its inspectors.
OFSTED does not have a rigorous inspection framework
OFSTED does not have a consistent approach to monitoring
OFSTED refuses any feedback or to implement any changes even when their processes have caused disasters.
Sure, schools should not boycott OFSTED. But to put it at its most basic level it's worrying to think that they could quite legitimately refuse entry to inspectors on the grounds they do not have adequate clearance to work with children. That simply shouldn't be happening.
I do think that the relationship between the Met and the Home Office is a serious part of the problem. It has been far too cosy and uncritical under governments of both stripes.
I think Labour still need to tread carefully in terms of policy, but Sunak and Hunt are less of a threat in that regard.
The primary school case is a good illustration. An otherwise good and popular school, where pupils were happy, and where teaching and learning are good, had a deficiency in its record keeping.
An inspection doing what it ought to would have led to record keeping being improved, not the suicide of the Head.
"I will halve inflation"
"I will bring down NHS waiting lists"
"I will make energy more affordable"
Make your targets achievable and you will fool some of the people
If so...
But even accepting the report at face value, it was a gross failure of judgment.
Mr. Owls, inflation's probably going to more than halve just by itself, so that's a sensible 'promise' to make. I'm personally promising the sun will rise tomorrow. Vote Morris Dancer for continued daylight and warmth!
NHS is told to target long waits at the cost of everything else so bound to achieve a fall in long waiters
Wholesale energy has plummeted .....
Sensible Politics but hardly a success compared to anytime except now
Please don't shout.
Too early.
They paid me £8 a day for 5 months because of a fault on the line they couldn’t trace until they realised that one of the guys fiddling in the wiring box on the street had connected the wrong cable to the wrong port
Lol Where's that quote taken from?