(Also, to what extent is not understanding spreadsheets a maths issue and to what extent an IT issue? Finally, who still uses Excel for major databases?)
LOTS of people use Excel as a database, even though they should not, but don't be dismissive of Excel, it is an exceptionally useful and powerful piece of software in the right hands.
I use it all the time professionally. It took over from Lotus 1-2-3, which was a far superior piece of software at the time, because of Microsoft's market power in operating systems. Despite being more than 20 years old, it still has lots of bugs (particularly in some of the more advanced commands like VLOOKUP). And because of Microsoft's market power, they don't need to correct them.
And another thing to bear in mind is that 90-95% of business spreadsheets have serious errors in them, because they are not properly written or tested, according to best practice. Sunak, I imagine, is not a specialist modeller - rather a classic MBA smatterer who doesn't really know what he is doing. So I'd look on any spreadsheets he writes very cautiously.
Besides, the real art of any spreadsheeting is what assumptions you make, what you include and what you ignore. Checking that sort of stuff isn't something a smatterer can do, and would be a complete waste of a PM's time. It's the basic reason we have SPADs.
But the SPADs are all innumerate PPE grads. Again, the buck stops with the PM, he should be checking their working to make sure the civil service aren't chatting shit.
Remind me... What did Sunak study at Oxford?
And SPADs are whoever the PM wants advising them, any system that has to admit D Cummings won't be able to stop Sunak having a harmless spoddy SPAD to advise him on quantitative matters.
Look, I'm all for numeracy, quantitatively-informed government and spreadsheets. I teach science, I train science and maths teachers, when they can be found. But constructing and checking spreadsheets is not how Rishi should be spending his time, unless it's a relaxing hobby. In which case, good on him.
Where Cummings was completely right, despite his many other failings, was the need for the very centre of government to have access to meaningful and timely data - not data that spends weeks being filtered through multiple layers of CS and the junior SpAds, before an edited version with numourous caveats reaches the decision-makers.
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
No this is not true. As a parent living in NRW I probably know a hell of a lot more about this than you do (which seems to be precisely nothing). Admission to gymnasiums in NRW and some other German states is entirely up to the parents.
Education in North Rhine Westphalia is NOT comprehensive. There are either academic gymnasiums or vocational schools
Look, this is typical of you. First you wrote "Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country."
I pointed out this is untrue. You doubled down and said "Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination"
This is also false. As a parent of child about to go into the secondary school system in NRW I can assure you there is nothing you can tell me about how the secondary school system works here, especially as you have already proven that you don't know anything.
Parents/guardians here have a right to send their child to a gymnasium, obviously something you weren't aware of. You could just thank me for telling you something that you might find interesting given your obsession with the subject instead of trying to move the goalposts in a silly attempt to try and pretend you didn't get something wrong.
Wrong. Germany has selection from the age of 11 so pupils either go to academic gymnasiums or vocational schools. NRW does not have comprehensives therefore. If it did have UK style comprehensives then all pupils would be at the same school from 11 to 16.
You also have not proved teachers have no say in whether pupils are recommended for gymnasiums or vocational schools
Your are being absurd. Kamski actually has a child at school in Germany. Why on earth would you think you know more about the German school system than he does?
Also, you don't seem to have read the link that you posted. One of the school options in NRW is indeed a comprehensive school. That's basically what a Gesamtschule is (I think - Kamski would know better).
Greg Hands announces the Conservatives will open applications to Conservative candidates on the approved list for the first 100 parliamentary seats where the incumbent Conservative MP has not been reelected or is not standing again or which are top Conservative target seats.
Candidates will be selected by the party conference in the autumn
Fucking Eurostar, fucking queues out into St Pancras main concourse, fucking two document checks, fucking stamps in your passport, fucking huge palaver now, fucking Brexit.
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
No this is not true. As a parent living in NRW I probably know a hell of a lot more about this than you do (which seems to be precisely nothing). Admission to gymnasiums in NRW and some other German states is entirely up to the parents.
Education in North Rhine Westphalia is NOT comprehensive. There are either academic gymnasiums or vocational schools
Look, this is typical of you. First you wrote "Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country."
I pointed out this is untrue. You doubled down and said "Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination"
This is also false. As a parent of child about to go into the secondary school system in NRW I can assure you there is nothing you can tell me about how the secondary school system works here, especially as you have already proven that you don't know anything.
Parents/guardians here have a right to send their child to a gymnasium, obviously something you weren't aware of. You could just thank me for telling you something that you might find interesting given your obsession with the subject instead of trying to move the goalposts in a silly attempt to try and pretend you didn't get something wrong.
Wrong. Germany has selection from the age of 11 so pupils either go to academic gymnasiums or vocational schools. NRW does not have comprehensives therefore. If it did have UK style comprehensives then all pupils would be at the same school from 11 to 16.
You also have not proved teachers have no say in whether pupils are recommended for gymnasiums or vocational schools
Your are being absurd. Kamski actually has a child at school in Germany. Why on earth would you think you know more about the German school system than he does?
Also, you don't seem to have read the link that you posted. One of the school options in NRW is indeed a comprehensive school. That's basically what a Gesamtschule is (I think - Kamski would know better).
It is simple fact that the education system in NRW is NOT comprehensive.
Pupils either go to academic gymnasiums or vocational schools from the age of 11. Even the Gesamatschule is not comprehensive for starters as the most academic in the area will be in the gymnasiums and also as it has more emphasis on vocational skills
In my experience, decision making by spreadsheet usually ends up doing a lot more harm than good.
I do commercial, so multiple repeats over the years of cash vs percentage arguments with financial colleagues. Yes, we want to take a higher percentage margin. But if we push for that the sales will be £0 and what is more% of £0?
Profit is critical of course, but sometime you need turnover and volume more than you need profit. And a spreadsheet is great at churning out computer says no on a very narrow measure without considering the wider context. Which at various times has been the immediate viability of the factory or can we make payroll this month?
I'd expected Man City and Arsenal to be evens at this point.
I guess that's because Arsenal still have to visit City and it's assumed they'll lose there. If City also win their game in hand, that will put them ahead.
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
Disagree. There's a lot of distillation of thought and contemplation when building a spreadsheet-based model. I'd be very happy to know that every PM did so. I can't see BoJo, and for sure Liz Truss, knowing where the "sum" function is.
I support Sunak on this, and commend his efforts, but the most likely reaction is that he's accused of being a nerd and a geek- together with some abuse on top - and people compete to wear with pride how crap they were at maths at school.
We are remarkably prejudiced against maths, engineering and science in this country.
We sneer at most intellectual, educational, or artistic achievement.
"Too clever by half" is one of the most damning putdowns an Englishman can use about another.
The French have always been keener on intellectuals than the English, the Germans and East Asians better at manufacturing and Maths. Our strengths are in finance and law. However we still have plenty of creative industry around London and intellectuals in our great universities and plenty of hi tech around Cambridge in particular
You almost seem embarrassed that the industrial revolution happened in this country.
Audrey fforbes-Hamilton vs Richard DeVere.
I'm sure I'm onto something here about the British mindset.
Isn't the 'happy ending' to the series when Richard loses his money and Audrey inherits a fortune, buys back the manor and asks him to marry her ?
If so that emphasises the business=bad, inheritance=good theme.
The coverage of the Brecon Beacons generally misses their most salient feature. They’re shite. Large tracts of bald, boggy, treeless steep hills, too swampy to hike, devoid of interesting history, too small to be impressive. Meh
They need to be replanted with trees, and rewilded with wolves, lynx, bear and aurochs. And maybe Beaker People
In my experience, decision making by spreadsheet usually ends up doing a lot more harm than good.
I do commercial, so multiple repeats over the years of cash vs percentage arguments with financial colleagues. Yes, we want to take a higher percentage margin. But if we push for that the sales will be £0 and what is more% of £0?
Profit is critical of course, but sometime you need turnover and volume more than you need profit. And a spreadsheet is great at churning out computer says no on a very narrow measure without considering the wider context. Which at various times has been the immediate viability of the factory or can we make payroll this month?
PEBKAC applies.
The problem isn't the spreadsheet there, its the user who has the wrong priorities and is looking at the wrong issues that is the problem.
Spreadsheets are great tools to allow you to be better informed and make better decisions, but knowing how to use them wisely is the key. Simply having a spreadsheet doesn't make you an expert any more than owning a hammer makes you a tradesman.
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
How will it make it worse? The money raised by putting VAT on private school fees will be used to increase funding for the schools that 93% of kids go to. Since those schools are starved of resources I would assume that each £1 spent there would have more incremental benefit on the overall quality of educational outcomes. At state schools the money would be spent on more teachers or new books, at private schools it would just be a new lighting system at the school theatre, more manicuring of the school's eighth rugby pitch or an extra school cricket trip to the Caribbean.
Because it won't raise any more money, and will indeed cost the taxpayer, as the children transfer to be educated at the State's expense and, indeed, some private schools actually close.
It's a remarkably stupid policy, driven by prejudice.
I remember going through the numbers and it looked like it would be revenue positive - you'd need an implausibly high amount of pupils switching to the state system for it not to be (and since I would prefer all pupils to be educated in the state system so that the rich can't escape the consequences of their voting decisions and to promote social cohesion I wouldn't be that bothered if that happened anyway).
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
No this is not true. As a parent living in NRW I probably know a hell of a lot more about this than you do (which seems to be precisely nothing). Admission to gymnasiums in NRW and some other German states is entirely up to the parents.
Education in North Rhine Westphalia is NOT comprehensive. There are either academic gymnasiums or vocational schools
Look, this is typical of you. First you wrote "Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country."
I pointed out this is untrue. You doubled down and said "Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination"
This is also false. As a parent of child about to go into the secondary school system in NRW I can assure you there is nothing you can tell me about how the secondary school system works here, especially as you have already proven that you don't know anything.
Parents/guardians here have a right to send their child to a gymnasium, obviously something you weren't aware of. You could just thank me for telling you something that you might find interesting given your obsession with the subject instead of trying to move the goalposts in a silly attempt to try and pretend you didn't get something wrong.
Wrong. Germany has selection from the age of 11 so pupils either go to academic gymnasiums or vocational schools. NRW does not have comprehensives therefore. If it did have UK style comprehensives then all pupils would be at the same school from 11 to 16.
You also have not proved teachers have no say in whether pupils are recommended for gymnasiums or vocational schools
What do you think I have written that is "wrong"?
What makes you think that I think all pupils in NRW go to "the same school from 11 to 16"?
Here's something in English (though it's from 2015 so probably well out of date - you'd need to look at the latest rules for every Bundesland):
"Admission procedures to secondary schools differ substantially across States (Länder). In some States, such as Bavaria and Saxony, grades from primary school are critical for entering Gymnasium. In other States, such as Berlin, Hamburg, Hesse, and North Rhine-Westfalia, the choice of a secondary school track (such as Gymnasium or Realschule) is a parental right: every child whose parents register the child for Gymnasium after primary school is guaranteed a space in some Gymnasium. This is the case of Hesse, for example, where Frankfurt is located (one of the three case studies below). Several States have recently moved from the grade-based admission regime to parental choice."
It's up to the parents in NRW. Primary schools can give recommendations, but parents often don't follow them. The recommendations have no say in whether a child gets a place at a gymnasium if the parents choose to send their child to one.
You also might be fascinated to learn that children in Germany usually start secondary school at 10, not 11 as you seem to think.
In my experience, decision making by spreadsheet usually ends up doing a lot more harm than good.
I do commercial, so multiple repeats over the years of cash vs percentage arguments with financial colleagues. Yes, we want to take a higher percentage margin. But if we push for that the sales will be £0 and what is more% of £0?
Profit is critical of course, but sometime you need turnover and volume more than you need profit. And a spreadsheet is great at churning out computer says no on a very narrow measure without considering the wider context. Which at various times has been the immediate viability of the factory or can we make payroll this month?
I suspect it's very different in different sectors - hence the "in my experience" bit. A lot of decisions our business would not have made if we'd allowed the spreadsheet to dictate them. I'm seeing that very clearly now that PE is in charge and I, very thankfully, am not! Inflexibility on salaries is one area, as is a clampdown on staff travel. Both are entirely self-defeating, spreadsheet-led, moves.
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
How will it make it worse? The money raised by putting VAT on private school fees will be used to increase funding for the schools that 93% of kids go to. Since those schools are starved of resources I would assume that each £1 spent there would have more incremental benefit on the overall quality of educational outcomes. At state schools the money would be spent on more teachers or new books, at private schools it would just be a new lighting system at the school theatre, more manicuring of the school's eighth rugby pitch or an extra school cricket trip to the Caribbean.
Because it won't raise any more money, and will indeed cost the taxpayer, as the children transfer to be educated at the State's expense and, indeed, some private schools actually close.
It's a remarkably stupid policy, driven by prejudice.
I remember going through the numbers and it looked like it would be revenue positive - you'd need an implausibly high amount of pupils switching to the state system for it not to be (and since I would prefer all pupils to be educated in the state system so that the rich can't escape the consequences of their voting decisions and to promote social cohesion I wouldn't be that bothered if that happened anyway).
The idea the rich would send their children to an inadequate school filled with pupils from a council estate rather than an outstanding state school filled with pupils from big houses in the wealthy suburbs even if there were no private schools is laughable.
The rest would go to private boarding schools abroad
I'd expected Man City and Arsenal to be evens at this point.
Obviously not an Arsenal fan as you would have come to know only too well that Arsenal are at their most vulnerable in a match if there's 75 mins gone and they are 2-1 up. As sure as eggs is eggs we get beaten or they get the draw.
In my experience, decision making by spreadsheet usually ends up doing a lot more harm than good.
Its like democracy, its the worst thing you can do - apart from all alternatives.
You can look up from a spreadsheet. It should be there to help inform decisions, not to make them.
Absolutely agreed.
But going based on 'gut' without getting informed by any spreadsheets is worse than looking at them and being informed by them.
Spreadsheets are a tool, no more, no less. My toolbox has many of the same tools as a plumber has, and I could fix minor leaks etc, but if there's a major problem or anything involving gas I'd pay a professional not think "I have the right tools, I'll do it myself".
If you don't know what you're doing with a spreadsheet, then simply having one is as useless as giving a wrench to someone and saying "go fix that".
(Also, to what extent is not understanding spreadsheets a maths issue and to what extent an IT issue? Finally, who still uses Excel for major databases?)
LOTS of people use Excel as a database, even though they should not, but don't be dismissive of Excel, it is an exceptionally useful and powerful piece of software in the right hands.
I use it all the time professionally. It took over from Lotus 1-2-3, which was a far superior piece of software at the time, because of Microsoft's market power in operating systems. Despite being more than 20 years old, it still has lots of bugs (particularly in some of the more advanced commands like VLOOKUP). And because of Microsoft's market power, they don't need to correct them.
And another thing to bear in mind is that 90-95% of business spreadsheets have serious errors in them, because they are not properly written or tested, according to best practice. Sunak, I imagine, is not a specialist modeller - rather a classic MBA smatterer who doesn't really know what he is doing. So I'd look on any spreadsheets he writes very cautiously.
Besides, the real art of any spreadsheeting is what assumptions you make, what you include and what you ignore. Checking that sort of stuff isn't something a smatterer can do, and would be a complete waste of a PM's time. It's the basic reason we have SPADs.
But the SPADs are all innumerate PPE grads. Again, the buck stops with the PM, he should be checking their working to make sure the civil service aren't chatting shit.
Remind me... What did Sunak study at Oxford?
And SPADs are whoever the PM wants advising them, any system that has to admit D Cummings won't be able to stop Sunak having a harmless spoddy SPAD to advise him on quantitative matters.
Look, I'm all for numeracy, quantitatively-informed government and spreadsheets. I teach science, I train science and maths teachers, when they can be found. But constructing and checking spreadsheets is not how Rishi should be spending his time, unless it's a relaxing hobby. In which case, good on him.
Where Cummings was completely right, despite his many other failings, was the need for the very centre of government to have access to meaningful and timely data - not data that spends weeks being filtered through multiple layers of CS and the junior SpAds, before an edited version with numourous caveats reaches the decision-makers.
You do get to be fair the same in the private sector, way back when I worked at ICI I remember an incident vividly where the report I wrote after going through my manager and her manager ended up saying exactly the opposite of what I wrote due to changes they made. How do I know....one was on holiday so the department head hadn't received the filtered report yet and needed it so he came to me and asked for it. I gave him a copy then a few days later he got the filtered copy.
If he had made decisions on the filtered copy the company would have signed a contract with disastrous results
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
No this is not true. As a parent living in NRW I probably know a hell of a lot more about this than you do (which seems to be precisely nothing). Admission to gymnasiums in NRW and some other German states is entirely up to the parents.
Education in North Rhine Westphalia is NOT comprehensive. There are either academic gymnasiums or vocational schools
Look, this is typical of you. First you wrote "Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country."
I pointed out this is untrue. You doubled down and said "Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination"
This is also false. As a parent of child about to go into the secondary school system in NRW I can assure you there is nothing you can tell me about how the secondary school system works here, especially as you have already proven that you don't know anything.
Parents/guardians here have a right to send their child to a gymnasium, obviously something you weren't aware of. You could just thank me for telling you something that you might find interesting given your obsession with the subject instead of trying to move the goalposts in a silly attempt to try and pretend you didn't get something wrong.
Wrong. Germany has selection from the age of 11 so pupils either go to academic gymnasiums or vocational schools. NRW does not have comprehensives therefore. If it did have UK style comprehensives then all pupils would be at the same school from 11 to 16.
You also have not proved teachers have no say in whether pupils are recommended for gymnasiums or vocational schools
What do you think I have written that is "wrong"?
What makes you think that I think all pupils in NRW go to "the same school from 11 to 16"?
Here's something in English (though it's from 2015 so probably well out of date - you'd need to look at the latest rules for every Bundesland):
"Admission procedures to secondary schools differ substantially across States (Länder). In some States, such as Bavaria and Saxony, grades from primary school are critical for entering Gymnasium. In other States, such as Berlin, Hamburg, Hesse, and North Rhine-Westfalia, the choice of a secondary school track (such as Gymnasium or Realschule) is a parental right: every child whose parents register the child for Gymnasium after primary school is guaranteed a space in some Gymnasium. This is the case of Hesse, for example, where Frankfurt is located (one of the three case studies below). Several States have recently moved from the grade-based admission regime to parental choice."
It's up to the parents in NRW. Primary schools can give recommendations, but parents often don't follow them. The recommendations have no say in whether a child gets a place at a gymnasium if the parents choose to send their child to one.
You also might be fascinated to learn that children in Germany usually start secondary school at 10, not 11 as you seem to think.
So in none of the states concerned are the schools fully comprehensive.
In Bavaria and Saxony there is full on academic selection based on grades.
In the rest the schools are either academic or vocational schools. Again not comprehensive
I'd expected Man City and Arsenal to be evens at this point.
Dropped points from 2-0 up twice in a row. Against Liverpool, even this season, that's understandable but yesterday was a title killer.
Their only hope now is winning at Eastlands.
Yes. Watched United vs Forest yesterday with my City-supporting nephew. I expect Citeh to win every game now, so their home game vs Arse decides the title.
I know that Arsenal are top and you don't get there by accident, and that I am a United fan. But City *deserve* the title this year as they are phenomenal. Sadly.
"Labour’s attack ad saw 17 per cent of those polled say they felt less favourable about the Tories with 12 per cent feeling less favourable towards Labour."
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
How will it make it worse? The money raised by putting VAT on private school fees will be used to increase funding for the schools that 93% of kids go to. Since those schools are starved of resources I would assume that each £1 spent there would have more incremental benefit on the overall quality of educational outcomes. At state schools the money would be spent on more teachers or new books, at private schools it would just be a new lighting system at the school theatre, more manicuring of the school's eighth rugby pitch or an extra school cricket trip to the Caribbean.
Because it won't raise any more money, and will indeed cost the taxpayer, as the children transfer to be educated at the State's expense and, indeed, some private schools actually close.
It's a remarkably stupid policy, driven by prejudice.
I remember going through the numbers and it looked like it would be revenue positive - you'd need an implausibly high amount of pupils switching to the state system for it not to be (and since I would prefer all pupils to be educated in the state system so that the rich can't escape the consequences of their voting decisions and to promote social cohesion I wouldn't be that bothered if that happened anyway).
The idea the rich would send their children to an inadequate school filled with pupils from a council estate rather than an outstanding state school filled with pupils from big houses in the wealthy suburbs even if there were no private schools is laughable.
The rest would go to private boarding schools abroad
The fact that you feel totally okay saying things like "filled with pupils from a council estate" just confirms my view that private schools are deeply toxic.
The coverage of the Brecon Beacons generally misses their most salient feature. They’re shite. Large tracts of bald, boggy, treeless steep hills, too swampy to hike, devoid of interesting history, too small to be impressive. Meh
They need to be replanted with trees, and rewilded with wolves, lynx, bear and aurochs. And maybe Beaker People
The Falklands War was won on them (cf Waterloo/Eton)
In my experience, decision making by spreadsheet usually ends up doing a lot more harm than good.
I do commercial, so multiple repeats over the years of cash vs percentage arguments with financial colleagues. Yes, we want to take a higher percentage margin. But if we push for that the sales will be £0 and what is more% of £0?
Profit is critical of course, but sometime you need turnover and volume more than you need profit. And a spreadsheet is great at churning out computer says no on a very narrow measure without considering the wider context. Which at various times has been the immediate viability of the factory or can we make payroll this month?
PEBKAC applies.
The problem isn't the spreadsheet there, its the user who has the wrong priorities and is looking at the wrong issues that is the problem.
Spreadsheets are great tools to allow you to be better informed and make better decisions, but knowing how to use them wisely is the key. Simply having a spreadsheet doesn't make you an expert any more than owning a hammer makes you a tradesman.
I entirely agree. The number is always correct, and I have grown bored of (and senior enough to now avoid) people trying to hide reality when they don't like what the spreadsheet is showing them.
But you can't be run by the thing - unless it is your accounts and shows you are about to go under of course (*cough* Hi @StuartDickson). For the rest of it, it is a tool to empower you to make good decisions. Not a decision in itself.
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
How will it make it worse? The money raised by putting VAT on private school fees will be used to increase funding for the schools that 93% of kids go to. Since those schools are starved of resources I would assume that each £1 spent there would have more incremental benefit on the overall quality of educational outcomes. At state schools the money would be spent on more teachers or new books, at private schools it would just be a new lighting system at the school theatre, more manicuring of the school's eighth rugby pitch or an extra school cricket trip to the Caribbean.
Because it won't raise any more money, and will indeed cost the taxpayer, as the children transfer to be educated at the State's expense and, indeed, some private schools actually close.
It's a remarkably stupid policy, driven by prejudice.
I remember going through the numbers and it looked like it would be revenue positive - you'd need an implausibly high amount of pupils switching to the state system for it not to be (and since I would prefer all pupils to be educated in the state system so that the rich can't escape the consequences of their voting decisions and to promote social cohesion I wouldn't be that bothered if that happened anyway).
If you wanted "to promote social cohesion" rigorously you'd have to abolish catchment areas, do away with kids going to schools they can walk to, and instead have something like bussing and random allocation with no choice as to what school people go to.
The fact that a good school's catchment area is a key determinant in house prices shows that there's more than just private schools etc that are in play here.
Parents who value their kids education are going to do what they can to get their kids into a good school, even within the state sector, and not be worried about "social cohesion" - and quite rightly too.
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
No this is not true. As a parent living in NRW I probably know a hell of a lot more about this than you do (which seems to be precisely nothing). Admission to gymnasiums in NRW and some other German states is entirely up to the parents.
Education in North Rhine Westphalia is NOT comprehensive. There are either academic gymnasiums or vocational schools
Look, this is typical of you. First you wrote "Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country."
I pointed out this is untrue. You doubled down and said "Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination"
This is also false. As a parent of child about to go into the secondary school system in NRW I can assure you there is nothing you can tell me about how the secondary school system works here, especially as you have already proven that you don't know anything.
Parents/guardians here have a right to send their child to a gymnasium, obviously something you weren't aware of. You could just thank me for telling you something that you might find interesting given your obsession with the subject instead of trying to move the goalposts in a silly attempt to try and pretend you didn't get something wrong.
Wrong. Germany has selection from the age of 11 so pupils either go to academic gymnasiums or vocational schools. NRW does not have comprehensives therefore. If it did have UK style comprehensives then all pupils would be at the same school from 11 to 16.
You also have not proved teachers have no say in whether pupils are recommended for gymnasiums or vocational schools
Your are being absurd. Kamski actually has a child at school in Germany. Why on earth would you think you know more about the German school system than he does?
Also, you don't seem to have read the link that you posted. One of the school options in NRW is indeed a comprehensive school. That's basically what a Gesamtschule is (I think - Kamski would know better).
It is simple fact that the education system in NRW is NOT comprehensive.
Pupils either go to academic gymnasiums or vocational schools from the age of 11. Even the Gesamatschule is not comprehensive for starters as the most academic in the area will be in the gymnasiums and also as it has more emphasis on vocational skills
The thing is that you claimed that pupils could only get a place at a gymnasium with a recommendation from the primary school, or by passing exams. You were simply mistaken.
It's also not necessarily true that the most "academic" in an area will be in the gymnasiums. The local gesamtschule where I live is heavily oversubscribed, and is the first choice for many "academic" children I know of. Indeed, while if you choose a gymnasium for your child you will get a place a gymnasium (though not necessarily your first choice), there is no guarantee of a place at a gesamtschule, due to shortage of places.
In my experience, decision making by spreadsheet usually ends up doing a lot more harm than good.
Again, this plays into the "too clever by half" idea.
What would you prefer, he consults Madame Zaza to see how his chakras are aligned?
I am reassured that our PM is logic-checking his assumptions and performing scenario analysis of his policies via the formal means of a spreadsheet.
I am not so sure. If he was doing that, he would be thinking a lot more creatively about public sector salaries, for example. The spreadsheet is telling him that significant increases are currently unaffordable. Meanwhile, in the real world recruitment and retention rates for healthcare and teaching staff are falling, while inadequate public services are costing the country a huge amount in lost productivity.
"Labour’s attack ad saw 17 per cent of those polled say they felt less favourable about the Tories with 12 per cent feeling less favourable towards Labour."
“A shadow cabinet source added: “We all had loads of emails. Our people didn’t like it. They thought it crossed the line.” Some of those who complained believed the ad had racist undertones.
While much of the criticism has come from supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, including the former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, it is by no means confined to that wing of the party.
Another frontbencher said the ad was a product of Starmer’s lack of clear political vision, combined with frustration at having to limit spending commitments to a bare minimum in the belief that doing so bolsters Labour’s economic credibility. “If we can’t say much on policy, the view is that we have to attack them more. That is the thinking.
“But do people believe it when we tear into Sunak personally, when he has only been there five minutes? It’s not the greatest look.””
@PickardJE the Liberal Democrats have this morning written to cabinet secretary Simon Case to report ministers for breaking election purdah rules over today's maths policy announcement
I'd expected Man City and Arsenal to be evens at this point.
Dropped points from 2-0 up twice in a row. Against Liverpool, even this season, that's understandable but yesterday was a title killer.
Their only hope now is winning at Eastlands.
Yes. Watched United vs Forest yesterday with my City-supporting nephew. I expect Citeh to win every game now, so their home game vs Arse decides the title.
I know that Arsenal are top and you don't get there by accident, and that I am a United fan. But City *deserve* the title this year as they are phenomenal. Sadly.
What they both do is give a very thick veneer of plausability to things, independent of how thin the underlying content is.
(Consider, or rather don't, the computer modelling that showed that we had probably nearly all had Covid by summer 2020, or that decisions the UK made 2016-19 would rapidly make us considerably richer.)
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
No this is not true. As a parent living in NRW I probably know a hell of a lot more about this than you do (which seems to be precisely nothing). Admission to gymnasiums in NRW and some other German states is entirely up to the parents.
Education in North Rhine Westphalia is NOT comprehensive. There are either academic gymnasiums or vocational schools
Look, this is typical of you. First you wrote "Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country."
I pointed out this is untrue. You doubled down and said "Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination"
This is also false. As a parent of child about to go into the secondary school system in NRW I can assure you there is nothing you can tell me about how the secondary school system works here, especially as you have already proven that you don't know anything.
Parents/guardians here have a right to send their child to a gymnasium, obviously something you weren't aware of. You could just thank me for telling you something that you might find interesting given your obsession with the subject instead of trying to move the goalposts in a silly attempt to try and pretend you didn't get something wrong.
Would you support a similar system in the UK where a non-binding recommendation is given over the comprehensive system?
I think you might be overstating it by saying parents have a 'right' to send their child to a gymnasium. They have a right to apply, but according to this, it depends on the school's capacity.
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
No this is not true. As a parent living in NRW I probably know a hell of a lot more about this than you do (which seems to be precisely nothing). Admission to gymnasiums in NRW and some other German states is entirely up to the parents.
Education in North Rhine Westphalia is NOT comprehensive. There are either academic gymnasiums or vocational schools
Look, this is typical of you. First you wrote "Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country."
I pointed out this is untrue. You doubled down and said "Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination"
This is also false. As a parent of child about to go into the secondary school system in NRW I can assure you there is nothing you can tell me about how the secondary school system works here, especially as you have already proven that you don't know anything.
Parents/guardians here have a right to send their child to a gymnasium, obviously something you weren't aware of. You could just thank me for telling you something that you might find interesting given your obsession with the subject instead of trying to move the goalposts in a silly attempt to try and pretend you didn't get something wrong.
Wrong. Germany has selection from the age of 11 so pupils either go to academic gymnasiums or vocational schools. NRW does not have comprehensives therefore. If it did have UK style comprehensives then all pupils would be at the same school from 11 to 16.
You also have not proved teachers have no say in whether pupils are recommended for gymnasiums or vocational schools
What do you think I have written that is "wrong"?
What makes you think that I think all pupils in NRW go to "the same school from 11 to 16"?
Here's something in English (though it's from 2015 so probably well out of date - you'd need to look at the latest rules for every Bundesland):
"Admission procedures to secondary schools differ substantially across States (Länder). In some States, such as Bavaria and Saxony, grades from primary school are critical for entering Gymnasium. In other States, such as Berlin, Hamburg, Hesse, and North Rhine-Westfalia, the choice of a secondary school track (such as Gymnasium or Realschule) is a parental right: every child whose parents register the child for Gymnasium after primary school is guaranteed a space in some Gymnasium. This is the case of Hesse, for example, where Frankfurt is located (one of the three case studies below). Several States have recently moved from the grade-based admission regime to parental choice."
It's up to the parents in NRW. Primary schools can give recommendations, but parents often don't follow them. The recommendations have no say in whether a child gets a place at a gymnasium if the parents choose to send their child to one.
You also might be fascinated to learn that children in Germany usually start secondary school at 10, not 11 as you seem to think.
So in none of the states concerned are the schools fully comprehensive.
In Bavaria and Saxony there is full on academic selection based on grades.
In the rest the schools are either academic or vocational schools. Again not comprehensive
Yes, you are right, there are different kinds of secondary schools. It's obviously impossible for you to find it at all interesting that in large parts of Germany the gymnasiums are NOT selective, as you believed, so let's drop this pointless discussion.
What they both do is give a very thick veneer of plausability to things, independent of how thin the underlying content is.
(Consider, or rather don't, the computer modelling that showed that we had probably nearly all had Covid by summer 2020, or that decisions the UK made 2016-19 would rapidly make us considerably richer.)
Or that if we voted to Leave the EU then we'd have an immediate recession and five million unemployed.
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
Disagree. There's a lot of distillation of thought and contemplation when building a spreadsheet-based model. I'd be very happy to know that every PM did so. I can't see BoJo, and for sure Liz Truss, knowing where the "sum" function is.
I support Sunak on this, and commend his efforts, but the most likely reaction is that he's accused of being a nerd and a geek- together with some abuse on top - and people compete to wear with pride how crap they were at maths at school.
We are remarkably prejudiced against maths, engineering and science in this country.
We sneer at most intellectual, educational, or artistic achievement.
"Too clever by half" is one of the most damning putdowns an Englishman can use about another.
The French have always been keener on intellectuals than the English, the Germans and East Asians better at manufacturing and Maths. Our strengths are in finance and law. However we still have plenty of creative industry around London and intellectuals in our great universities and plenty of hi tech around Cambridge in particular
You almost seem embarrassed that the industrial revolution happened in this country.
One of my students told me that one of the reasons that the industrial revolution happened in Britain before continental Europe was that Britain had no internal customs regimes and was a 'Single Market'...
He's also completely obsessed with PotionCraft so he may not be completely lucid.
The only thing worse is PowerPoint. With a 104 slide marketing presentation written by committee. With 7 different templates and every few slides in a different sodding format. With nothing uniform and images / text / fonts just thrown in at random. And the file is 95MB for added fun.
Worked on a top top level presentation deck last week which definitely gets me permanently fired as a marketeer. One template. Uniform positioning of stuff. Key takeaway from every slide clear and unambiguous. A narrative from end to end. Rule of three. Images cropped / compressed to still look good but not crash the machine trying to render 4 layers of now hidden high res graphics buried in the overlay.
(Also, to what extent is not understanding spreadsheets a maths issue and to what extent an IT issue? Finally, who still uses Excel for major databases?)
LOTS of people use Excel as a database, even though they should not, but don't be dismissive of Excel, it is an exceptionally useful and powerful piece of software in the right hands.
I use it all the time professionally. It took over from Lotus 1-2-3, which was a far superior piece of software at the time, because of Microsoft's market power in operating systems. Despite being more than 20 years old, it still has lots of bugs (particularly in some of the more advanced commands like VLOOKUP). And because of Microsoft's market power, they don't need to correct them.
And another thing to bear in mind is that 90-95% of business spreadsheets have serious errors in them, because they are not properly written or tested, according to best practice. Sunak, I imagine, is not a specialist modeller - rather a classic MBA smatterer who doesn't really know what he is doing. So I'd look on any spreadsheets he writes very cautiously.
Besides, the real art of any spreadsheeting is what assumptions you make, what you include and what you ignore. Checking that sort of stuff isn't something a smatterer can do, and would be a complete waste of a PM's time. It's the basic reason we have SPADs.
But the SPADs are all innumerate PPE grads. Again, the buck stops with the PM, he should be checking their working to make sure the civil service aren't chatting shit.
As someone who spends about half of their working day on Excel I have nothing against spreadsheets. But I don't think the PM should be regularly creating his own spreadsheets to check people's workings. It's simply not a good use of his limited and precious time and suggests either an inability to delegate or a failure to put in place the right people underneath him. I have already heard that he works extremely long hours - and while his commitment and attention to detail is a welcome change from the inumerate lazy bluster of Johnson I think there is a risk of burnout if he continues with this style of leadership.
"Labour’s attack ad saw 17 per cent of those polled say they felt less favourable about the Tories with 12 per cent feeling less favourable towards Labour."
“A shadow cabinet source added: “We all had loads of emails. Our people didn’t like it. They thought it crossed the line.” Some of those who complained believed the ad had racist undertones.
While much of the criticism has come from supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, including the former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, it is by no means confined to that wing of the party.
Another frontbencher said the ad was a product of Starmer’s lack of clear political vision, combined with frustration at having to limit spending commitments to a bare minimum in the belief that doing so bolsters Labour’s economic credibility. “If we can’t say much on policy, the view is that we have to attack them more. That is the thinking.
“But do people believe it when we tear into Sunak personally, when he has only been there five minutes? It’s not the greatest look.””
That's a different story to the one promised in the headline: "Labour attack ad backfires to dent own reputation, polling finds".
In my experience, decision making by spreadsheet usually ends up doing a lot more harm than good.
I'm afraid that's true. In my experience spreadsheets seems to conjure an air of objectivity overlaid over a range of underlying subjective assumptions.
The idea that anyone can boast that they create spreadsheets is bizarre.
What they both do is give a very thick veneer of plausability to things, independent of how thin the underlying content is.
(Consider, or rather don't, the computer modelling that showed that we had probably nearly all had Covid by summer 2020, or that decisions the UK made 2016-19 would rapidly make us considerably richer.)
Or that if we voted to Leave the EU then we'd have an immediate recession and five million unemployed.
Just as well the governor of the BoE stepped in to prevent this. Well done him.
The coverage of the Brecon Beacons generally misses their most salient feature. They’re shite. Large tracts of bald, boggy, treeless steep hills, too swampy to hike, devoid of interesting history, too small to be impressive. Meh
They need to be replanted with trees, and rewilded with wolves, lynx, bear and aurochs. And maybe Beaker People
The Falklands War was won on them (cf Waterloo/Eton)
Yeah, they’re good for training the SAS. Because they’re such rough wet tedious sapping terrain. Not so good for holidays
I mean, what does this photo say? Come here for an exciting, varied and beautiful hike? With an interesting pubby village on the way?
The revolution collapses under its internal contradictions:
The head of external engagement at the Good Law Project, and former Guardian journalist, Ellie Mae O'Hagan, is abandoning her plan to set up a group of 'cis women who support trans rights' after realising that it would therefore have to exclude 'trans women'
What they both do is give a very thick veneer of plausability to things, independent of how thin the underlying content is.
(Consider, or rather don't, the computer modelling that showed that we had probably nearly all had Covid by summer 2020, or that decisions the UK made 2016-19 would rapidly make us considerably richer.)
Or that if we voted to Leave the EU then we'd have an immediate recession and five million unemployed.
That as well, sure. Though the actions the Bank of England took in summer 2016 (interest rate cuts, extra liquidity...) saved us from a recession, though they would have been characterised as can-kicking by others. But that didn't appear in the models.
The coverage of the Brecon Beacons generally misses their most salient feature. They’re shite. Large tracts of bald, boggy, treeless steep hills, too swampy to hike, devoid of interesting history, too small to be impressive. Meh
They need to be replanted with trees, and rewilded with wolves, lynx, bear and aurochs. And maybe Beaker People
The Falklands War was won on them (cf Waterloo/Eton)
Yeah, they’re good for training the SAS. Because they’re such rough wet tedious sapping terrain. Not so good for holidays
I mean, what does this photo say? Come here for an exciting, varied and beautiful hike? With an interesting pubby village on the way?
I am peculiar. I like that landscape a lot. I remember a day's walking in the Brecon Beacons, tramping through the empty country, watching rain showers slowly approach across the big skies. It was pretty awesome. A great place for a day trip, but not a holiday, I agree.
Mr. Pioneers, you are categorically wrong on a factual basis.
"In simple reality though, it IS England not Britain or UK. NornIron and Scotland both voted to remain but get overruled by England. Even now, we have a settlement in Northern Ireland which the people there support, and the English politicians are still trying to overturn it... "
Every vote counted equally in the referendum. No constituent part (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland) voted as a bloc. There was no electoral college, and this was known about and not contested prior to the vote being held.
Your outrage at the 'overruling' of a minority by a majority in a referendum is absurd, and contrary to democracy and numeracy.
I apologise if that sounds harsh and I am trying to be polite, but while wailing and gnashing of teeth that the electorate voted one way is one thing, claiming somehow it was unfair for a majority vote in a referendum to count is just silly.
This is debate - don't worry about sounding harsh, you do not.
I take your point - this was a UK-wide referendum. And that is fine as long as you have the consent of the minority to do as the majority direct them.
The problem is that the minority did not give that consent. And we continue to suffer the political difficulties that arise from a minority having their strongly expressed opinion overruled.
I express no outrage. Merely analysis. Remember that I voted for Brexit, so I am not objecting against a result I voted for. I am highlighting a perception - backed up by an awful lot of evidence including the polls in the OP - that so many people in the majority - England - either do not care about the other home nations or would fling them off to save "Britain"/"the UK" even as they destroy it.
If people are unionists (and I am not) then care and maintenance of the union has to be a priority. We can't just impose the will of England over the others HUYFD-style. Not when part of the Union is now voting more for nationalist parties and has a legal right to a border poll in the peace treaty which binds it...
It certainly looks like Brexit has done more for Irish unification than years of IRA violence. The Brexit positions of Sinn Féin and the DUP are somewhat ironic.
Has it? In the 2015 general election in Northern Ireland before the EU referendum the DUP and UUP combined got 41% and SF and the SDLP combined got 38%.
In the 2019 general election after Leave won the EU referendum the DUP and UUP combined got 41% and SF and the SDLP combined got 38%.
So it has actually made sod all difference
The Good Friday Agreement was an exercise in ambiguity. If you wanted to be British you could imagine that hard border line separating you from the South. If you wanted to be Irish you could pretend the border didn't exist. Brexit has removed that ambiguity with the result that Irish identity is winning out over British.
Will Northern Ireland formally join Ireland? Not yet, but the trend towards being part of a more successful Ireland in practice is clear.
On the other topic, I'm in favour of execs managing their own spreadsheets. If they don't get them right, no-one else will.
The revolution collapses under its internal contradictions:
The head of external engagement at the Good Law Project, and former Guardian journalist, Ellie Mae O'Hagan, is abandoning her plan to set up a group of 'cis women who support trans rights' after realising that it would therefore have to exclude 'trans women'
Interestingly, City's next match in the EPL is the 26th. Home game, versus Arsenal.
Yes, I know. Massive.
On the other hand Arsenal has 4 home games left vs 3 away (Man City 4/4). And they are 4 points ahead at this point. Run ins look fairly similar. I'd have priced it evens so I've had a bet this morning on Arsenal at 3.
The coverage of the Brecon Beacons generally misses their most salient feature. They’re shite. Large tracts of bald, boggy, treeless steep hills, too swampy to hike, devoid of interesting history, too small to be impressive. Meh
They need to be replanted with trees, and rewilded with wolves, lynx, bear and aurochs. And maybe Beaker People
The Falklands War was won on them (cf Waterloo/Eton)
Yeah, they’re good for training the SAS. Because they’re such rough wet tedious sapping terrain. Not so good for holidays
I mean, what does this photo say? Come here for an exciting, varied and beautiful hike? With an interesting pubby village on the way?
I am peculiar. I like that landscape a lot. I remember a day's walking in the Brecon Beacons, tramping through the empty country, watching rain showers slowly approach across the big skies. It was pretty awesome. A great place for a day trip, but not a holiday, I agree.
I find them immensely boring and ugly. One of the ugliest places in rural Britain. And hiking is a pain because of the swampy, break-your-ankle tussocks and peatlands
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
No this is not true. As a parent living in NRW I probably know a hell of a lot more about this than you do (which seems to be precisely nothing). Admission to gymnasiums in NRW and some other German states is entirely up to the parents.
Education in North Rhine Westphalia is NOT comprehensive. There are either academic gymnasiums or vocational schools
Look, this is typical of you. First you wrote "Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country."
I pointed out this is untrue. You doubled down and said "Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination"
This is also false. As a parent of child about to go into the secondary school system in NRW I can assure you there is nothing you can tell me about how the secondary school system works here, especially as you have already proven that you don't know anything.
Parents/guardians here have a right to send their child to a gymnasium, obviously something you weren't aware of. You could just thank me for telling you something that you might find interesting given your obsession with the subject instead of trying to move the goalposts in a silly attempt to try and pretend you didn't get something wrong.
Wrong. Germany has selection from the age of 11 so pupils either go to academic gymnasiums or vocational schools. NRW does not have comprehensives therefore. If it did have UK style comprehensives then all pupils would be at the same school from 11 to 16.
You also have not proved teachers have no say in whether pupils are recommended for gymnasiums or vocational schools
What do you think I have written that is "wrong"?
What makes you think that I think all pupils in NRW go to "the same school from 11 to 16"?
Here's something in English (though it's from 2015 so probably well out of date - you'd need to look at the latest rules for every Bundesland):
"Admission procedures to secondary schools differ substantially across States (Länder). In some States, such as Bavaria and Saxony, grades from primary school are critical for entering Gymnasium. In other States, such as Berlin, Hamburg, Hesse, and North Rhine-Westfalia, the choice of a secondary school track (such as Gymnasium or Realschule) is a parental right: every child whose parents register the child for Gymnasium after primary school is guaranteed a space in some Gymnasium. This is the case of Hesse, for example, where Frankfurt is located (one of the three case studies below). Several States have recently moved from the grade-based admission regime to parental choice."
It's up to the parents in NRW. Primary schools can give recommendations, but parents often don't follow them. The recommendations have no say in whether a child gets a place at a gymnasium if the parents choose to send their child to one.
You also might be fascinated to learn that children in Germany usually start secondary school at 10, not 11 as you seem to think.
So in none of the states concerned are the schools fully comprehensive.
In Bavaria and Saxony there is full on academic selection based on grades.
In the rest the schools are either academic or vocational schools. Again not comprehensive
HYUFD you started this conversation with this statement:
'Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country.'
Now according to @kamski who really seems to know ( I personally have no idea) Germany does not have selective schools across the whole country. In fact far from it.
Why do you have to pretend you said something different when we can all see what you said 'selective' 'across the whole country'.
I never get this with you because you will look the bigger man by admitting you made a mistake. You don't have to change your view on the subject, which still stands.
The rest of us cock up regularly. In fact only a few days ago I was having a discussion with someone and @Sandpit was putting us both right for various mistake we had made in our discussion. We both put up posts that we stood corrected.
To be fair to the former P.M., B.Johnson, he did write two essays on his prospective attitude to EU rather than simply looking at a spreadsheet. That he reached the wrong conclusion doesn’t vitiate the method.
The coverage of the Brecon Beacons generally misses their most salient feature. They’re shite. Large tracts of bald, boggy, treeless steep hills, too swampy to hike, devoid of interesting history, too small to be impressive. Meh
They need to be replanted with trees, and rewilded with wolves, lynx, bear and aurochs. And maybe Beaker People
The Falklands War was won on them (cf Waterloo/Eton)
Yeah, they’re good for training the SAS. Because they’re such rough wet tedious sapping terrain. Not so good for holidays
I mean, what does this photo say? Come here for an exciting, varied and beautiful hike? With an interesting pubby village on the way?
I am peculiar. I like that landscape a lot. I remember a day's walking in the Brecon Beacons, tramping through the empty country, watching rain showers slowly approach across the big skies. It was pretty awesome. A great place for a day trip, but not a holiday, I agree.
I find them immensely boring and ugly. One of the ugliest places in rural Britain. And hiking is a pain because of the swampy, break-your-ankle tussocks and peatlands
The Black Mountains next door are vastly superior
I like the Black Mountains too. I struggle to find any genuinely rural landscape boring. There's always something there. Ugly can be fascinating.
The coverage of the Brecon Beacons generally misses their most salient feature. They’re shite. Large tracts of bald, boggy, treeless steep hills, too swampy to hike, devoid of interesting history, too small to be impressive. Meh
They need to be replanted with trees, and rewilded with wolves, lynx, bear and aurochs. And maybe Beaker People
The Falklands War was won on them (cf Waterloo/Eton)
Yeah, they’re good for training the SAS. Because they’re such rough wet tedious sapping terrain. Not so good for holidays
I mean, what does this photo say? Come here for an exciting, varied and beautiful hike? With an interesting pubby village on the way?
I am peculiar. I like that landscape a lot. I remember a day's walking in the Brecon Beacons, tramping through the empty country, watching rain showers slowly approach across the big skies. It was pretty awesome. A great place for a day trip, but not a holiday, I agree.
I find them immensely boring and ugly. One of the ugliest places in rural Britain. And hiking is a pain because of the swampy, break-your-ankle tussocks and peatlands
The coverage of the Brecon Beacons generally misses their most salient feature. They’re shite. Large tracts of bald, boggy, treeless steep hills, too swampy to hike, devoid of interesting history, too small to be impressive. Meh
They need to be replanted with trees, and rewilded with wolves, lynx, bear and aurochs. And maybe Beaker People
The Falklands War was won on them (cf Waterloo/Eton)
Yeah, they’re good for training the SAS. Because they’re such rough wet tedious sapping terrain. Not so good for holidays
I mean, what does this photo say? Come here for an exciting, varied and beautiful hike? With an interesting pubby village on the way?
Mr. Pioneers, you are categorically wrong on a factual basis.
"In simple reality though, it IS England not Britain or UK. NornIron and Scotland both voted to remain but get overruled by England. Even now, we have a settlement in Northern Ireland which the people there support, and the English politicians are still trying to overturn it... "
Every vote counted equally in the referendum. No constituent part (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland) voted as a bloc. There was no electoral college, and this was known about and not contested prior to the vote being held.
Your outrage at the 'overruling' of a minority by a majority in a referendum is absurd, and contrary to democracy and numeracy.
I apologise if that sounds harsh and I am trying to be polite, but while wailing and gnashing of teeth that the electorate voted one way is one thing, claiming somehow it was unfair for a majority vote in a referendum to count is just silly.
This is debate - don't worry about sounding harsh, you do not.
I take your point - this was a UK-wide referendum. And that is fine as long as you have the consent of the minority to do as the majority direct them.
The problem is that the minority did not give that consent. And we continue to suffer the political difficulties that arise from a minority having their strongly expressed opinion overruled.
I express no outrage. Merely analysis. Remember that I voted for Brexit, so I am not objecting against a result I voted for. I am highlighting a perception - backed up by an awful lot of evidence including the polls in the OP - that so many people in the majority - England - either do not care about the other home nations or would fling them off to save "Britain"/"the UK" even as they destroy it.
If people are unionists (and I am not) then care and maintenance of the union has to be a priority. We can't just impose the will of England over the others HUYFD-style. Not when part of the Union is now voting more for nationalist parties and has a legal right to a border poll in the peace treaty which binds it...
It certainly looks like Brexit has done more for Irish unification than years of IRA violence. The Brexit positions of Sinn Féin and the DUP are somewhat ironic.
Has it? In the 2015 general election in Northern Ireland before the EU referendum the DUP and UUP combined got 41% and SF and the SDLP combined got 38%.
In the 2019 general election after Leave won the EU referendum the DUP and UUP combined got 41% and SF and the SDLP combined got 38%.
So it has actually made sod all difference
The Good Friday Agreement was an exercise in ambiguity. If you wanted to be British you could imagine that hard border line separating you from the South. If you wanted to be Irish you could pretend the border didn't exist. Brexit has removed that ambiguity with the result that Irish identity is winning out over British.
Will Northern Ireland formally join Ireland? Not yet, but the trend towards being part of a more successful Ireland in practice is clear.
On the other topic, I'm in favour of execs managing their own spreadsheets. If they don't get them right, no-one else will.
Is it? If so then why is the combined SF and SDLP vote no higher post Brexit in Northern Ireland than it was before Brexit?
The GFA worked because it ensured Northern Irish people could effectively be both Irish and still in the UK. That remains the case now Rishi has effectively removed the Irish border. Despite DUP grumbles loyalist paramilitaries are not threatening customs guards again as they were after the initial Withdrawal Agreement and the IRA still has not returned to violence despite a few dissident 'Real IRA' dissenters
In my experience, decision making by spreadsheet usually ends up doing a lot more harm than good.
I'm afraid that's true. In my experience spreadsheets seems to conjure an air of objectivity overlaid over a range of underlying subjective assumptions.
The idea that anyone can boast that they create spreadsheets is bizarre.
They are an excellent tool for looking at how the output changes as you modify those assumptions.
The coverage of the Brecon Beacons generally misses their most salient feature. They’re shite. Large tracts of bald, boggy, treeless steep hills, too swampy to hike, devoid of interesting history, too small to be impressive. Meh
They need to be replanted with trees, and rewilded with wolves, lynx, bear and aurochs. And maybe Beaker People
The Falklands War was won on them (cf Waterloo/Eton)
Yeah, they’re good for training the SAS. Because they’re such rough wet tedious sapping terrain. Not so good for holidays
I mean, what does this photo say? Come here for an exciting, varied and beautiful hike? With an interesting pubby village on the way?
I believe that's Llyn y Fan Fach in the background. If so, then the ridgeline is quite a nice walk.
Worked on a top top level presentation deck last week which definitely gets me permanently fired as a marketeer. One template. Uniform positioning of stuff.
Fujitsu had a Powerpoint template.
Then they issued an edict not to print any decks, as all the printers ran out of red ink...
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
How will it make it worse? The money raised by putting VAT on private school fees will be used to increase funding for the schools that 93% of kids go to. Since those schools are starved of resources I would assume that each £1 spent there would have more incremental benefit on the overall quality of educational outcomes. At state schools the money would be spent on more teachers or new books, at private schools it would just be a new lighting system at the school theatre, more manicuring of the school's eighth rugby pitch or an extra school cricket trip to the Caribbean.
Because it won't raise any more money, and will indeed cost the taxpayer, as the children transfer to be educated at the State's expense and, indeed, some private schools actually close.
It's a remarkably stupid policy, driven by prejudice.
I remember going through the numbers and it looked like it would be revenue positive - you'd need an implausibly high amount of pupils switching to the state system for it not to be (and since I would prefer all pupils to be educated in the state system so that the rich can't escape the consequences of their voting decisions and to promote social cohesion I wouldn't be that bothered if that happened anyway).
The idea the rich would send their children to an inadequate school filled with pupils from a council estate rather than an outstanding state school filled with pupils from big houses in the wealthy suburbs even if there were no private schools is laughable.
The rest would go to private boarding schools abroad
The fact that you feel totally okay saying things like "filled with pupils from a council estate" just confirms my view that private schools are deeply toxic.
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
How will it make it worse? The money raised by putting VAT on private school fees will be used to increase funding for the schools that 93% of kids go to. Since those schools are starved of resources I would assume that each £1 spent there would have more incremental benefit on the overall quality of educational outcomes. At state schools the money would be spent on more teachers or new books, at private schools it would just be a new lighting system at the school theatre, more manicuring of the school's eighth rugby pitch or an extra school cricket trip to the Caribbean.
Because it won't raise any more money, and will indeed cost the taxpayer, as the children transfer to be educated at the State's expense and, indeed, some private schools actually close.
It's a remarkably stupid policy, driven by prejudice.
I remember going through the numbers and it looked like it would be revenue positive - you'd need an implausibly high amount of pupils switching to the state system for it not to be (and since I would prefer all pupils to be educated in the state system so that the rich can't escape the consequences of their voting decisions and to promote social cohesion I wouldn't be that bothered if that happened anyway).
If you wanted "to promote social cohesion" rigorously you'd have to abolish catchment areas, do away with kids going to schools they can walk to, and instead have something like bussing and random allocation with no choice as to what school people go to.
The fact that a good school's catchment area is a key determinant in house prices shows that there's more than just private schools etc that are in play here.
Parents who value their kids education are going to do what they can to get their kids into a good school, even within the state sector, and not be worried about "social cohesion" - and quite rightly too.
School catchment is certainly a factor in house prices but the causation also runs the other way and is likely more powerful - big houses in leafy suburbs attract middle class families whose kids attend their local school and get better exam results. For most children their closest school is their best option. I am certainly glad that our kids can attend their nearest comprehensive school (rated good - the median rating, above average number of kids on free school meals) and walk there, it is best for everyone.
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
Disagree. There's a lot of distillation of thought and contemplation when building a spreadsheet-based model. I'd be very happy to know that every PM did so. I can't see BoJo, and for sure Liz Truss, knowing where the "sum" function is.
Fair point. Though probably not fair to Truss, who was just as Maths-qualified as Sunak.
Namely, minimally qualified in maths, considering they both studied PPE at university.
I doubt it was then, and at that course, but today the maths required for any form of study of economics is formidable.
Well, the Oxford University website says that mathematics is not required for admission to the PPE course, only recommended. For all I know they may have studied maths at A level, but evidently we can't conclude even that from the fact that their degree course has 'Economics' in its name.
The coverage of the Brecon Beacons generally misses their most salient feature. They’re shite. Large tracts of bald, boggy, treeless steep hills, too swampy to hike, devoid of interesting history, too small to be impressive. Meh
They need to be replanted with trees, and rewilded with wolves, lynx, bear and aurochs. And maybe Beaker People
The Falklands War was won on them (cf Waterloo/Eton)
Yeah, they’re good for training the SAS. Because they’re such rough wet tedious sapping terrain. Not so good for holidays
I mean, what does this photo say? Come here for an exciting, varied and beautiful hike? With an interesting pubby village on the way?
I am peculiar. I like that landscape a lot. I remember a day's walking in the Brecon Beacons, tramping through the empty country, watching rain showers slowly approach across the big skies. It was pretty awesome. A great place for a day trip, but not a holiday, I agree.
I find them immensely boring and ugly. One of the ugliest places in rural Britain. And hiking is a pain because of the swampy, break-your-ankle tussocks and peatlands
The Black Mountains next door are vastly superior
They're both cool.
Many moons ago, I was doing a hike between Christmas and New Year from Brecon south. On the second day, I climbed up to the beallach between Fan-y-Big and Pen-y-Fan via Cribyn. At the bottom of Pen-y-Fan, I met a man in full army gear. By the time I reached the top of Pen-y-Fan, carrying my camping gear, he had gone up and down two or three times. With a heavier pack.
Worked on a top top level presentation deck last week which definitely gets me permanently fired as a marketeer. One template. Uniform positioning of stuff.
Fujitsu had a Powerpoint template.
Then they issued an edict not to print any decks, as all the printers ran out of red ink...
NEVER print out decks and hand copies to the people being presented to. They take control, flick to the bit where the numbers are and start sucking their teeth before you have said hello.
The coverage of the Brecon Beacons generally misses their most salient feature. They’re shite. Large tracts of bald, boggy, treeless steep hills, too swampy to hike, devoid of interesting history, too small to be impressive. Meh
They need to be replanted with trees, and rewilded with wolves, lynx, bear and aurochs. And maybe Beaker People
The Falklands War was won on them (cf Waterloo/Eton)
Yeah, they’re good for training the SAS. Because they’re such rough wet tedious sapping terrain. Not so good for holidays
I mean, what does this photo say? Come here for an exciting, varied and beautiful hike? With an interesting pubby village on the way?
I am peculiar. I like that landscape a lot. I remember a day's walking in the Brecon Beacons, tramping through the empty country, watching rain showers slowly approach across the big skies. It was pretty awesome. A great place for a day trip, but not a holiday, I agree.
I find them immensely boring and ugly. One of the ugliest places in rural Britain. And hiking is a pain because of the swampy, break-your-ankle tussocks and peatlands
The Black Mountains next door are vastly superior
I like the Black Mountains too. I struggle to find any genuinely rural landscape boring. There's always something there. Ugly can be fascinating.
Depends what you mean by “genuinely rural”. Industrialised farming landscapes - rural but heavily utilised - can be really dull to the point of ugliness. The prairies. Some of the French wine lands (around cognac). Forestry Commission plantations. Lincolnshire beet farms.
Wilderness can be ugly too. The foggy grey deserts of northern Peru (eg Sechura) are weirdly dismal
The coverage of the Brecon Beacons generally misses their most salient feature. They’re shite. Large tracts of bald, boggy, treeless steep hills, too swampy to hike, devoid of interesting history, too small to be impressive. Meh
They need to be replanted with trees, and rewilded with wolves, lynx, bear and aurochs. And maybe Beaker People
The Falklands War was won on them (cf Waterloo/Eton)
Yeah, they’re good for training the SAS. Because they’re such rough wet tedious sapping terrain. Not so good for holidays
I mean, what does this photo say? Come here for an exciting, varied and beautiful hike? With an interesting pubby village on the way?
I am peculiar. I like that landscape a lot. I remember a day's walking in the Brecon Beacons, tramping through the empty country, watching rain showers slowly approach across the big skies. It was pretty awesome. A great place for a day trip, but not a holiday, I agree.
I find them immensely boring and ugly. One of the ugliest places in rural Britain. And hiking is a pain because of the swampy, break-your-ankle tussocks and peatlands
The Black Mountains next door are vastly superior
They're both cool.
Many moons ago, I was doing a hike between Christmas and New Year from Brecon south. On the second day, I climbed up to the beallach between Fan-y-Big and Pen-y-Fan via Cribyn. At the bottom of Pen-y-Fan, I met a man in full army gear. By the time I reached the top of Pen-y-Fan, carrying my camping gear, he had gone up and down two or three times. With a heavier pack.
French foreign minister reaffirms commitment to security in Indo-Pacific https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=349135 French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Catherine Colonna emphasized France's commitment to security in the Indo-Pacific region during her visit to Korea.
"We are determined to deepen our commitment to preserving peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region as part of our Indo-Pacific strategy adopted in 2018 in collaboration with our strategic partners," Colonna said during a reception on board French frigate Prairial, docked at Incheon Port, Saturday...
Interestingly, City's next match in the EPL is the 26th. Home game, versus Arsenal.
Yes, I know. Massive.
On the other hand Arsenal has 4 home games left vs 3 away (Man City 4/4). And they are 4 points ahead at this point. Run ins look fairly similar. I'd have priced it evens so I've had a bet this morning on Arsenal at 3.
City have got form in the end of season run-in, sadly. Twice they have held Liverpool off by a single point where Liverpool were winning every game.
Unfortunately for Arsenal, I don't see them winning now. The 2 drawn games from winning positions has cost them. As a Liverpool fan I even had mixed feelings drawing with Arsenal, I think CL qualification is looking unlikely and I'd far rather Arsenal win the league than City and their billions.
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
How will it make it worse? The money raised by putting VAT on private school fees will be used to increase funding for the schools that 93% of kids go to. Since those schools are starved of resources I would assume that each £1 spent there would have more incremental benefit on the overall quality of educational outcomes. At state schools the money would be spent on more teachers or new books, at private schools it would just be a new lighting system at the school theatre, more manicuring of the school's eighth rugby pitch or an extra school cricket trip to the Caribbean.
Because it won't raise any more money, and will indeed cost the taxpayer, as the children transfer to be educated at the State's expense and, indeed, some private schools actually close.
It's a remarkably stupid policy, driven by prejudice.
I remember going through the numbers and it looked like it would be revenue positive - you'd need an implausibly high amount of pupils switching to the state system for it not to be (and since I would prefer all pupils to be educated in the state system so that the rich can't escape the consequences of their voting decisions and to promote social cohesion I wouldn't be that bothered if that happened anyway).
If you wanted "to promote social cohesion" rigorously you'd have to abolish catchment areas, do away with kids going to schools they can walk to, and instead have something like bussing and random allocation with no choice as to what school people go to.
The fact that a good school's catchment area is a key determinant in house prices shows that there's more than just private schools etc that are in play here.
Parents who value their kids education are going to do what they can to get their kids into a good school, even within the state sector, and not be worried about "social cohesion" - and quite rightly too.
School catchment is certainly a factor in house prices but the causation also runs the other way and is likely more powerful - big houses in leafy suburbs attract middle class families whose kids attend their local school and get better exam results. For most children their closest school is their best option. I am certainly glad that our kids can attend their nearest comprehensive school (rated good - the median rating, above average number of kids on free school meals) and walk there, it is best for everyone.
No, we want to maximise choice not restrict it as you leftwingers do. So a kid in Knowsley goes to his local comp and has nowhere near the life chances a kid in Surrey who goes to his local comp will do.
If that kid in Knowsley had a local grammar school or could get a scholarship to a private school his chances of getting on would be much better
The first, as evidenced in the previous thread, is the 'we have a huge number of silent respondents' trope. Oh for sure, sometimes there are people too shy or too inaccessible to tell you they are voting X rather than Y. But it's a sure sign of desperation when this is the peg on which you hang your hopes.
The second is the one which gets trotted out with monotonous regularity during an election campaign. It's the 'we have more of our voters stacked up where it matters most' trope.
Both signs of desperation have a characteristic in common: they ignore what the opinion polls are actually saying.
Mr. Pioneers, you are categorically wrong on a factual basis.
"In simple reality though, it IS England not Britain or UK. NornIron and Scotland both voted to remain but get overruled by England. Even now, we have a settlement in Northern Ireland which the people there support, and the English politicians are still trying to overturn it... "
Every vote counted equally in the referendum. No constituent part (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland) voted as a bloc. There was no electoral college, and this was known about and not contested prior to the vote being held.
Your outrage at the 'overruling' of a minority by a majority in a referendum is absurd, and contrary to democracy and numeracy.
I apologise if that sounds harsh and I am trying to be polite, but while wailing and gnashing of teeth that the electorate voted one way is one thing, claiming somehow it was unfair for a majority vote in a referendum to count is just silly.
This is debate - don't worry about sounding harsh, you do not.
I take your point - this was a UK-wide referendum. And that is fine as long as you have the consent of the minority to do as the majority direct them.
The problem is that the minority did not give that consent. And we continue to suffer the political difficulties that arise from a minority having their strongly expressed opinion overruled.
I express no outrage. Merely analysis. Remember that I voted for Brexit, so I am not objecting against a result I voted for. I am highlighting a perception - backed up by an awful lot of evidence including the polls in the OP - that so many people in the majority - England - either do not care about the other home nations or would fling them off to save "Britain"/"the UK" even as they destroy it.
If people are unionists (and I am not) then care and maintenance of the union has to be a priority. We can't just impose the will of England over the others HUYFD-style. Not when part of the Union is now voting more for nationalist parties and has a legal right to a border poll in the peace treaty which binds it...
It certainly looks like Brexit has done more for Irish unification than years of IRA violence. The Brexit positions of Sinn Féin and the DUP are somewhat ironic.
Has it? In the 2015 general election in Northern Ireland before the EU referendum the DUP and UUP combined got 41% and SF and the SDLP combined got 38%.
In the 2019 general election after Leave won the EU referendum the DUP and UUP combined got 41% and SF and the SDLP combined got 38%.
So it has actually made sod all difference
The Good Friday Agreement was an exercise in ambiguity. If you wanted to be British you could imagine that hard border line separating you from the South. If you wanted to be Irish you could pretend the border didn't exist. Brexit has removed that ambiguity with the result that Irish identity is winning out over British.
Will Northern Ireland formally join Ireland? Not yet, but the trend towards being part of a more successful Ireland in practice is clear.
On the other topic, I'm in favour of execs managing their own spreadsheets. If they don't get them right, no-one else will.
Is it? If so then why is the combined SF and SDLP vote no higher post Brexit in Northern Ireland than it was before Brexit?
The GFA worked because it ensured Northern Irish people could effectively be both Irish and still in the UK. That remains the case now Rishi has effectively removed the Irish border. Despite DUP grumbles loyalist paramilitaries are not threatening customs guards again as they were after the initial Withdrawal Agreement and the IRA still has not returned to violence despite a few dissident 'Real IRA' dissenters
Indeed, cross community cooperation has reached extraordinary…. Depths.
It seems the Continuity IRA, upset at interference with their drug dealing business, contracted the murder of a policeman out to unemployed Loyalist terrorists.
Both traditions coming together over a shared affection - drug money.
The coverage of the Brecon Beacons generally misses their most salient feature. They’re shite. Large tracts of bald, boggy, treeless steep hills, too swampy to hike, devoid of interesting history, too small to be impressive. Meh
They need to be replanted with trees, and rewilded with wolves, lynx, bear and aurochs. And maybe Beaker People
The Falklands War was won on them (cf Waterloo/Eton)
Yeah, they’re good for training the SAS. Because they’re such rough wet tedious sapping terrain. Not so good for holidays
I mean, what does this photo say? Come here for an exciting, varied and beautiful hike? With an interesting pubby village on the way?
I am peculiar. I like that landscape a lot. I remember a day's walking in the Brecon Beacons, tramping through the empty country, watching rain showers slowly approach across the big skies. It was pretty awesome. A great place for a day trip, but not a holiday, I agree.
I find them immensely boring and ugly. One of the ugliest places in rural Britain. And hiking is a pain because of the swampy, break-your-ankle tussocks and peatlands
The Black Mountains next door are vastly superior
I like the Black Mountains too. I struggle to find any genuinely rural landscape boring. There's always something there. Ugly can be fascinating.
Depends what you mean by “genuinely rural”. Industrialised farming landscapes - rural but heavily utilised - can be really dull to the point of ugliness. The prairies. Some of the French wine lands (around cognac). Forestry Commission plantations. Lincolnshire beet farms.
Wilderness can be ugly too. The foggy grey deserts of northern Peru (eg Sechura) are weirdly dismal
The A47 to King's Lynn is the most desolate, ugly, dull landscape on the planet.
I am off to Dartmoor next week for a one day hike. I only have that one day, so any recommendations for what the hike should be?
I know Dartmoor really well. Do the hike from Chagford up to the Scorhill standing stones, Teign springs past Gidleigh Park hotel. Time it right and you will come back via the hotel just in time for a Devonshire cream tea/jail ale right here with this view
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
Disagree. There's a lot of distillation of thought and contemplation when building a spreadsheet-based model. I'd be very happy to know that every PM did so. I can't see BoJo, and for sure Liz Truss, knowing where the "sum" function is.
Fair point. Though probably not fair to Truss, who was just as Maths-qualified as Sunak.
Namely, minimally qualified in maths, considering they both studied PPE at university.
I doubt it was then, and at that course, but today the maths required for any form of study of economics is formidable.
Well, the Oxford University website says that mathematics is not required for admission to the PPE course, only recommended. For all I know they may have studied maths at A level, but evidently we can't conclude even that from the fact that their degree course has 'Economics' in its name.
An A or A* in A-level maths is essential for studying Economics and Management at Oxford, so I guess that economics is studied more rigorously on that course than it is on the PPE course.
Mr. Pioneers, you are categorically wrong on a factual basis.
"In simple reality though, it IS England not Britain or UK. NornIron and Scotland both voted to remain but get overruled by England. Even now, we have a settlement in Northern Ireland which the people there support, and the English politicians are still trying to overturn it... "
Every vote counted equally in the referendum. No constituent part (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland) voted as a bloc. There was no electoral college, and this was known about and not contested prior to the vote being held.
Your outrage at the 'overruling' of a minority by a majority in a referendum is absurd, and contrary to democracy and numeracy.
I apologise if that sounds harsh and I am trying to be polite, but while wailing and gnashing of teeth that the electorate voted one way is one thing, claiming somehow it was unfair for a majority vote in a referendum to count is just silly.
This is debate - don't worry about sounding harsh, you do not.
I take your point - this was a UK-wide referendum. And that is fine as long as you have the consent of the minority to do as the majority direct them.
The problem is that the minority did not give that consent. And we continue to suffer the political difficulties that arise from a minority having their strongly expressed opinion overruled.
I express no outrage. Merely analysis. Remember that I voted for Brexit, so I am not objecting against a result I voted for. I am highlighting a perception - backed up by an awful lot of evidence including the polls in the OP - that so many people in the majority - England - either do not care about the other home nations or would fling them off to save "Britain"/"the UK" even as they destroy it.
If people are unionists (and I am not) then care and maintenance of the union has to be a priority. We can't just impose the will of England over the others HUYFD-style. Not when part of the Union is now voting more for nationalist parties and has a legal right to a border poll in the peace treaty which binds it...
It certainly looks like Brexit has done more for Irish unification than years of IRA violence. The Brexit positions of Sinn Féin and the DUP are somewhat ironic.
Has it? In the 2015 general election in Northern Ireland before the EU referendum the DUP and UUP combined got 41% and SF and the SDLP combined got 38%.
In the 2019 general election after Leave won the EU referendum the DUP and UUP combined got 41% and SF and the SDLP combined got 38%.
So it has actually made sod all difference
The Good Friday Agreement was an exercise in ambiguity. If you wanted to be British you could imagine that hard border line separating you from the South. If you wanted to be Irish you could pretend the border didn't exist. Brexit has removed that ambiguity with the result that Irish identity is winning out over British.
Will Northern Ireland formally join Ireland? Not yet, but the trend towards being part of a more successful Ireland in practice is clear.
On the other topic, I'm in favour of execs managing their own spreadsheets. If they don't get them right, no-one else will.
Is it? If so then why is the combined SF and SDLP vote no higher post Brexit in Northern Ireland than it was before Brexit?
The GFA worked because it ensured Northern Irish people could effectively be both Irish and still in the UK. That remains the case now Rishi has effectively removed the Irish border. Despite DUP grumbles loyalist paramilitaries are not threatening customs guards again as they were after the initial Withdrawal Agreement and the IRA still has not returned to violence despite a few dissident 'Real IRA' dissenters
I should have said if Northern Ireland does become more "Irish" through a gradual and generally accepted trend, that seems a good outcome to me. I wish them well.
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
How will it make it worse? The money raised by putting VAT on private school fees will be used to increase funding for the schools that 93% of kids go to. Since those schools are starved of resources I would assume that each £1 spent there would have more incremental benefit on the overall quality of educational outcomes. At state schools the money would be spent on more teachers or new books, at private schools it would just be a new lighting system at the school theatre, more manicuring of the school's eighth rugby pitch or an extra school cricket trip to the Caribbean.
Because it won't raise any more money, and will indeed cost the taxpayer, as the children transfer to be educated at the State's expense and, indeed, some private schools actually close.
It's a remarkably stupid policy, driven by prejudice.
I remember going through the numbers and it looked like it would be revenue positive - you'd need an implausibly high amount of pupils switching to the state system for it not to be (and since I would prefer all pupils to be educated in the state system so that the rich can't escape the consequences of their voting decisions and to promote social cohesion I wouldn't be that bothered if that happened anyway).
If you wanted "to promote social cohesion" rigorously you'd have to abolish catchment areas, do away with kids going to schools they can walk to, and instead have something like bussing and random allocation with no choice as to what school people go to.
The fact that a good school's catchment area is a key determinant in house prices shows that there's more than just private schools etc that are in play here.
Parents who value their kids education are going to do what they can to get their kids into a good school, even within the state sector, and not be worried about "social cohesion" - and quite rightly too.
School catchment is certainly a factor in house prices but the causation also runs the other way and is likely more powerful - big houses in leafy suburbs attract middle class families whose kids attend their local school and get better exam results. For most children their closest school is their best option. I am certainly glad that our kids can attend their nearest comprehensive school (rated good - the median rating, above average number of kids on free school meals) and walk there, it is best for everyone.
Wouldn't it be nice if your local school was nice?
In practice, everyone-goes-to-their-local-school leads to a large amount of coasting. Schools will get the kids and the funding anyway, so no need to try too hard. They can follow their own agenda, rather than one that parents might want them to.
In practice, if your kids are starting secondary school this September, there is next to no choice: you go where you're put. This cohort is so huge that there isn't the space to pick and choose.
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
No this is not true. As a parent living in NRW I probably know a hell of a lot more about this than you do (which seems to be precisely nothing). Admission to gymnasiums in NRW and some other German states is entirely up to the parents.
Education in North Rhine Westphalia is NOT comprehensive. There are either academic gymnasiums or vocational schools
Look, this is typical of you. First you wrote "Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country."
I pointed out this is untrue. You doubled down and said "Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination"
This is also false. As a parent of child about to go into the secondary school system in NRW I can assure you there is nothing you can tell me about how the secondary school system works here, especially as you have already proven that you don't know anything.
Parents/guardians here have a right to send their child to a gymnasium, obviously something you weren't aware of. You could just thank me for telling you something that you might find interesting given your obsession with the subject instead of trying to move the goalposts in a silly attempt to try and pretend you didn't get something wrong.
Would you support a similar system in the UK where a non-binding recommendation is given over the comprehensive system?
I think you might be overstating it by saying parents have a 'right' to send their child to a gymnasium. They have a right to apply, but according to this, it depends on the school's capacity.
Well, you don't have the right to a place at a particular school, but if you have applied for a place at a gymnasium and you don't get a place at your first or second choice, then you have to be offered a place at a gymnasium within a certain distance of where you live. If there are no places then places have to be created, for example, by another class being created at a gymnasium. If needed, temporary classrooms are built.
Oversubscribed schools give places by lottery after places have been given to siblings (they are also allowed to use things like gender ratio and distance from school, although they often don't because it can be problematic).
I think most parents (and children) want a school that is close and good enough, however that is achieved. I don't think a system which gives the children of rich parents even more of a headstart than they already have is good for society, or for most children.
tldr is that fertility rates in Africa are falling much faster than expected, and Africa's pattern of the next 60 years might be Asia's pattern of the last 60. And therefore peak world population could be sooner and lower than we are currently expecting.
The following few paragraphs are worth picking out:
"The un’s population projections are widely seen as the most authoritative. Its latest report, published last year, contained considerably lower estimates for sub-Saharan Africa than those of a decade ago. For Nigeria, which has Africa’s biggest population numbering about 213m people, the un has reduced its forecast for 2060 by more than 100m people (down to around 429m). By 2100 it expects the country to have about 550m people, more than 350m fewer than it reckoned a decade ago. Yet even the un’s latest projections may not be keeping pace with the rapid decline in fertility rates (the average number of children that women are expected to have) that some striking recent studies show. Most remarkable is Nigeria, where a un-backed survey in 2021 found the fertility rate had fallen to 4.6 from 5.8 just five years earlier. This figure seems to be broadly confirmed by another survey, this time backed by usaid, America’s aid agency, which found a fertility rate of 4.8 in 2021, down from 6.1 in 2010. “Something is happening,” muses Argentina Matavel of the un Population Fund. If these findings are correct they would suggest that birth rates are falling at a similar pace to those in some parts of Asia, when that region saw its own population growth rates slow sharply in a process often known as a demographic transition. A similar trend seems to be emerging in parts of the Sahel, which still has some of Africa’s highest fertility rates, and coastal west Africa. In Mali, for instance, the fertility rate fell from 6.3 to a still high 5.7 in six years. Senegal’s, at 3.9 in 2021, equates to one fewer baby per woman than little over a decade ago. So too in the Gambia, where the rate plunged from 5.6 in 2013 to 4.4 in 2020, and Ghana, where it fell from 4.2 to 3.8 in just three years. These declines bring west Africa closer to the lower fertility rates seen in much of southern Africa. "
(Also, to what extent is not understanding spreadsheets a maths issue and to what extent an IT issue? Finally, who still uses Excel for major databases?)
LOTS of people use Excel as a database, even though they should not, but don't be dismissive of Excel, it is an exceptionally useful and powerful piece of software in the right hands.
I use it all the time professionally. It took over from Lotus 1-2-3, which was a far superior piece of software at the time, because of Microsoft's market power in operating systems. Despite being more than 20 years old, it still has lots of bugs (particularly in some of the more advanced commands like VLOOKUP). And because of Microsoft's market power, they don't need to correct them.
And another thing to bear in mind is that 90-95% of business spreadsheets have serious errors in them, because they are not properly written or tested, according to best practice. Sunak, I imagine, is not a specialist modeller - rather a classic MBA smatterer who doesn't really know what he is doing. So I'd look on any spreadsheets he writes very cautiously.
Besides, the real art of any spreadsheeting is what assumptions you make, what you include and what you ignore. Checking that sort of stuff isn't something a smatterer can do, and would be a complete waste of a PM's time. It's the basic reason we have SPADs.
But the SPADs are all innumerate PPE grads. Again, the buck stops with the PM, he should be checking their working to make sure the civil service aren't chatting shit.
As someone who spends about half of their working day on Excel I have nothing against spreadsheets. But I don't think the PM should be regularly creating his own spreadsheets to check people's workings. It's simply not a good use of his limited and precious time and suggests either an inability to delegate or a failure to put in place the right people underneath him. I have already heard that he works extremely long hours - and while his commitment and attention to detail is a welcome change from the inumerate lazy bluster of Johnson I think there is a risk of burnout if he continues with this style of leadership.
If the PM is really so tied to his spreadsheet he has little time to look up and see the bigger picture its a problem that needs a solver. Yes, we need a PM who can count, but it would be a better match if they spent their time in way that could max their output.
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
For people to learn basic maths you need more maths teachers. Good luck with that!
We don't invest anything like as much as we need to in children's education.
Unfortunately, Labour's keystone policy of vindictiveness towards private schools will only make it worse.
Promoting those of underwhelming academic gift through to the highest positions in society because their parents could afford astronomical school fees or cramming for the 11 plus tuition to get their offspring into grammar school is at the core of the issue. It's nothing to do with "vindictiveness towards private education".
As far as I am concerned you can keep your private schools, just force them to provide a decent percentage of bursaries to the genuinely gifted but genuinely poor. Grammar schools on the other hand, be rid. I don't want my tax pounds paying for social climbers. If parents want what they consider to be an elite education they can pay for it themselves. I don't want to pay for them.
Fund world beating education provision for all, and we'd leave Germany standing.
Speculate to accumulate.
Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country. We don't even allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, only to shut existing ones
Not true.
Gymnasiums in NRW (the biggest German state by population), for example, are not allowed to select pupils by academic ability at the start of secondary school. Parents choose the type of school for their children.
Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination
No this is not true. As a parent living in NRW I probably know a hell of a lot more about this than you do (which seems to be precisely nothing). Admission to gymnasiums in NRW and some other German states is entirely up to the parents.
Education in North Rhine Westphalia is NOT comprehensive. There are either academic gymnasiums or vocational schools
Look, this is typical of you. First you wrote "Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country."
I pointed out this is untrue. You doubled down and said "Admission to gymnasiums is only by primary teacher recommendation if they are academic enough or by written examination"
This is also false. As a parent of child about to go into the secondary school system in NRW I can assure you there is nothing you can tell me about how the secondary school system works here, especially as you have already proven that you don't know anything.
Parents/guardians here have a right to send their child to a gymnasium, obviously something you weren't aware of. You could just thank me for telling you something that you might find interesting given your obsession with the subject instead of trying to move the goalposts in a silly attempt to try and pretend you didn't get something wrong.
Would you support a similar system in the UK where a non-binding recommendation is given over the comprehensive system?
I think you might be overstating it by saying parents have a 'right' to send their child to a gymnasium. They have a right to apply, but according to this, it depends on the school's capacity.
Well, you don't have the right to a place at a particular school, but if you have applied for a place at a gymnasium and you don't get a place at your first or second choice, then you have to be offered a place at a gymnasium within a certain distance of where you live. If there are no places then places have to be created, for example, by another class being created at a gymnasium. If needed, temporary classrooms are built.
Oversubscribed schools give places by lottery after places have been given to siblings (they are also allowed to use things like gender ratio and distance from school, although they often don't because it can be problematic).
I think most parents (and children) want a school that is close and good enough, however that is achieved. I don't think a system which gives the children of rich parents even more of a headstart than they already have is good for society, or for most children.
You didn't answer the question about whether you'd recommend that system for the UK. In an ideal world, do you think NRW should abolish different types of public schools altogether or do you think the system they have adopted to make it fairer is good enough?
From the Times's coverage of Sunak's maths speech. On balance, I'm pretty sure that devising their own spreadsheets is not a good use of (Prime) Ministerial time.
Sunak, a former investment banker who devises his own spreadsheets for use in government, will argue that poor maths skills are costing the British economy.
Disagree. There's a lot of distillation of thought and contemplation when building a spreadsheet-based model. I'd be very happy to know that every PM did so. I can't see BoJo, and for sure Liz Truss, knowing where the "sum" function is.
Fair point. Though probably not fair to Truss, who was just as Maths-qualified as Sunak.
Namely, minimally qualified in maths, considering they both studied PPE at university.
I doubt it was then, and at that course, but today the maths required for any form of study of economics is formidable.
Well, the Oxford University website says that mathematics is not required for admission to the PPE course, only recommended. For all I know they may have studied maths at A level, but evidently we can't conclude even that from the fact that their degree course has 'Economics' in its name.
An A or A* in A-level maths is essential for studying Economics and Management at Oxford, so I guess that economics is studied more rigorously on that course than it is on the PPE course.
Cambridge has always done pure economics, Oxford has only recently introduced it (with management). That is why future politicians tended to study PPE at Oxford but History or Law if they went to Cambridge
Comments
I'd expected Man City and Arsenal to be evens at this point.
Also, you don't seem to have read the link that you posted. One of the school options in NRW is indeed a comprehensive school. That's basically what a Gesamtschule is (I think - Kamski would know better).
parliamentary seats where the incumbent Conservative MP has not been reelected or is not standing again or which are top Conservative target seats.
Candidates will be selected by the party conference in the autumn
https://conservativehome.com/2023/04/17/greg-hands-the-plans-for-parliamentary-seat-selection-that-were-announcing-today/
Interestingly, City's next match in the EPL is the 26th. Home game, versus Arsenal.
Anyway.
Mustn't grumble.
Pupils either go to academic gymnasiums or vocational schools from the age of 11. Even the Gesamatschule is not comprehensive for starters as the most academic in the area will be in the gymnasiums and also as it has more emphasis on vocational skills
Profit is critical of course, but sometime you need turnover and volume more than you need profit. And a spreadsheet is great at churning out computer says no on a very narrow measure without considering the wider context. Which at various times has been the immediate viability of the factory or can we make payroll this month?
If so that emphasises the business=bad, inheritance=good theme.
Their only hope now is winning at Eastlands.
They need to be replanted with trees, and rewilded with wolves, lynx, bear and aurochs. And maybe Beaker People
What would you prefer, he consults Madame Zaza to see how his chakras are aligned?
I am reassured that our PM is logic-checking his assumptions and performing scenario analysis of his policies via the formal means of a spreadsheet.
The problem isn't the spreadsheet there, its the user who has the wrong priorities and is looking at the wrong issues that is the problem.
Spreadsheets are great tools to allow you to be better informed and make better decisions, but knowing how to use them wisely is the key. Simply having a spreadsheet doesn't make you an expert any more than owning a hammer makes you a tradesman.
What makes you think that I think all pupils in NRW go to "the same school from 11 to 16"?
Here's something in English (though it's from 2015 so probably well out of date - you'd need to look at the latest rules for every Bundesland):
https://www.matching-in-practice.eu/matching-practices-for-secondary-schools-germany/
"Admission procedures to secondary schools differ substantially across States (Länder). In some States, such as Bavaria and Saxony, grades from primary school are critical for entering Gymnasium. In other States, such as Berlin, Hamburg, Hesse, and North Rhine-Westfalia, the choice of a secondary school track (such as Gymnasium or Realschule) is a parental right: every child whose parents register the child for Gymnasium after primary school is guaranteed a space in some Gymnasium. This is the case of Hesse, for example, where Frankfurt is located (one of the three case studies below). Several States have recently moved from the grade-based admission regime to parental choice."
It's up to the parents in NRW. Primary schools can give recommendations, but parents often don't follow them. The recommendations have no say in whether a child gets a place at a gymnasium if the parents choose to send their child to one.
You also might be fascinated to learn that children in Germany usually start secondary school at 10, not 11 as you seem to think.
MONDAY 17 APRIL 2023 7:00 AM
Labour attack ad backfires to dent own reputation, polling finds
https://www.cityam.com/labour-attack-ad-backfires-to-dent-own-reputation-polling-finds/
The rest would go to private boarding schools abroad
PL-wise we are 2-1 up with 15 mins to go.
But going based on 'gut' without getting informed by any spreadsheets is worse than looking at them and being informed by them.
Spreadsheets are a tool, no more, no less. My toolbox has many of the same tools as a plumber has, and I could fix minor leaks etc, but if there's a major problem or anything involving gas I'd pay a professional not think "I have the right tools, I'll do it myself".
If you don't know what you're doing with a spreadsheet, then simply having one is as useless as giving a wrench to someone and saying "go fix that".
If he had made decisions on the filtered copy the company would have signed a contract with disastrous results
In Bavaria and Saxony there is full on academic selection based on grades.
In the rest the schools are either academic or vocational schools. Again not comprehensive
I know that Arsenal are top and you don't get there by accident, and that I am a United fan. But City *deserve* the title this year as they are phenomenal. Sadly.
https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint
But you can't be run by the thing - unless it is your accounts and shows you are about to go under of course (*cough* Hi @StuartDickson). For the rest of it, it is a tool to empower you to make good decisions. Not a decision in itself.
The fact that a good school's catchment area is a key determinant in house prices shows that there's more than just private schools etc that are in play here.
Parents who value their kids education are going to do what they can to get their kids into a good school, even within the state sector, and not be worried about "social cohesion" - and quite rightly too.
It's also not necessarily true that the most "academic" in an area will be in the gymnasiums. The local gesamtschule where I live is heavily oversubscribed, and is the first choice for many "academic" children I know of. Indeed, while if you choose a gymnasium for your child you will get a place a gymnasium (though not necessarily your first choice), there is no guarantee of a place at a gesamtschule, due to shortage of places.
https://twitter.com/GuidoFawkes/status/1647881995513372673?s=20
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2023/apr/17/rishi-sunak-gillian-keegan-teachers-maths-plans-keir-starmer-uk-politics-live
Put that in your spreadsheet.
While much of the criticism has come from supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, including the former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, it is by no means confined to that wing of the party.
Another frontbencher said the ad was a product of Starmer’s lack of clear political vision, combined with frustration at having to limit spending commitments to a bare minimum in the belief that doing so bolsters Labour’s economic credibility. “If we can’t say much on policy, the view is that we have to attack them more. That is the thinking.
“But do people believe it when we tear into Sunak personally, when he has only been there five minutes? It’s not the greatest look.””
the Liberal Democrats have this morning written to cabinet secretary Simon Case to report ministers for breaking election purdah rules over today's maths policy announcement
(Consider, or rather don't, the computer modelling that showed that we had probably nearly all had Covid by summer 2020, or that decisions the UK made 2016-19 would rapidly make us considerably richer.)
I think you might be overstating it by saying parents have a 'right' to send their child to a gymnasium. They have a right to apply, but according to this, it depends on the school's capacity.
https://www.schulministerium.nrw/grundschulempfehlung-und-uebergang-die-weiterfuehrenden-schulen
He's also completely obsessed with PotionCraft so he may not be completely lucid.
Worked on a top top level presentation deck last week which definitely gets me permanently fired as a marketeer. One template. Uniform positioning of stuff. Key takeaway from every slide clear and unambiguous. A narrative from end to end. Rule of three. Images cropped / compressed to still look good but not crash the machine trying to render 4 layers of now hidden high res graphics buried in the overlay.
The polling actually found a net win for Labour.
The idea that anyone can boast that they create spreadsheets is bizarre.
I mean, what does this photo say? Come here for an exciting, varied and beautiful hike? With an interesting pubby village on the way?
The head of external engagement at the Good Law Project, and former Guardian journalist, Ellie Mae O'Hagan, is abandoning her plan to set up a group of 'cis women who support trans rights' after realising that it would therefore have to exclude 'trans women'
https://twitter.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/1647879576452833282?s=20
Will Northern Ireland formally join Ireland? Not yet, but the trend towards being part of a more successful Ireland in practice is clear.
On the other topic, I'm in favour of execs managing their own spreadsheets. If they don't get them right, no-one else will.
On the other hand Arsenal has 4 home games left vs 3 away (Man City 4/4). And they are 4 points ahead at this point. Run ins look fairly similar. I'd have priced it evens so I've had a bet this morning on Arsenal at 3.
The Black Mountains next door are vastly superior
'Germany of course has grammar schools, selective gymnasiums, across the country.'
Now according to @kamski who really seems to know ( I personally have no idea) Germany does not have selective schools across the whole country. In fact far from it.
Why do you have to pretend you said something different when we can all see what you said 'selective' 'across the whole country'.
I never get this with you because you will look the bigger man by admitting you made a mistake. You don't have to change your view on the subject, which still stands.
The rest of us cock up regularly. In fact only a few days ago I was having a discussion with someone and @Sandpit was putting us both right for various mistake we had made in our discussion. We both put up posts that we stood corrected.
That he reached the wrong conclusion doesn’t vitiate the method.
However, if you don’t like them, I have others I can sell you at reasonable prices.
The GFA worked because it ensured Northern Irish people could effectively be both Irish and still in the UK. That remains the case now Rishi has effectively removed the Irish border. Despite DUP grumbles loyalist paramilitaries are not threatening customs guards again as they were after the initial Withdrawal Agreement and the IRA still has not returned to violence despite a few dissident 'Real IRA' dissenters
Then they issued an edict not to print any decks, as all the printers ran out of red ink...
Many moons ago, I was doing a hike between Christmas and New Year from Brecon south. On the second day, I climbed up to the beallach between Fan-y-Big and Pen-y-Fan via Cribyn. At the bottom of Pen-y-Fan, I met a man in full army gear. By the time I reached the top of Pen-y-Fan, carrying my camping gear, he had gone up and down two or three times. With a heavier pack.
Wilderness can be ugly too. The foggy grey deserts of northern Peru (eg Sechura) are weirdly dismal
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_Dance_(exercise)
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=349135
French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Catherine Colonna emphasized France's commitment to security in the Indo-Pacific region during her visit to Korea.
"We are determined to deepen our commitment to preserving peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region as part of our Indo-Pacific strategy adopted in 2018 in collaboration with our strategic partners," Colonna said during a reception on board French frigate Prairial, docked at Incheon Port, Saturday...
Unfortunately for Arsenal, I don't see them winning now. The 2 drawn games from winning positions has cost them. As a Liverpool fan I even had mixed feelings drawing with Arsenal, I think CL qualification is looking unlikely and I'd far rather Arsenal win the league than City and their billions.
If that kid in Knowsley had a local grammar school or could get a scholarship to a private school his chances of getting on would be much better
⚡️🇺🇸American BMP M2A2 Bradley ODS-SA in 🇺🇦Ukrainian camouflage
It is interesting to note the absence of guns that have not yet been installed back after transportation.
https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/status/1647903571617230854
The first, as evidenced in the previous thread, is the 'we have a huge number of silent respondents' trope. Oh for sure, sometimes there are people too shy or too inaccessible to tell you they are voting X rather than Y. But it's a sure sign of desperation when this is the peg on which you hang your hopes.
The second is the one which gets trotted out with monotonous regularity during an election campaign. It's the 'we have more of our voters stacked up where it matters most' trope.
Both signs of desperation have a characteristic in common: they ignore what the opinion polls are actually saying.
It's sophistry.
It seems the Continuity IRA, upset at interference with their drug dealing business, contracted the murder of a policeman out to unemployed Loyalist terrorists.
Both traditions coming together over a shared affection - drug money.
Warms the heart. To be sure, to be sure.
More info here
https://www.gidleigh.co.uk/hotel/gardens
Why GOP culture warriors lost big in school board races this month
“Don’t assume that a blanket message on critical race theory or transgender issues is going to claim every district,” one GOP activist said.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/17/gop-school-board-races-midwest-00092232
In practice, everyone-goes-to-their-local-school leads to a large amount of coasting. Schools will get the kids and the funding anyway, so no need to try too hard. They can follow their own agenda, rather than one that parents might want them to.
In practice, if your kids are starting secondary school this September, there is next to no choice: you go where you're put. This cohort is so huge that there isn't the space to pick and choose.
Oversubscribed schools give places by lottery after places have been given to siblings (they are also allowed to use things like gender ratio and distance from school, although they often don't because it can be problematic).
I think most parents (and children) want a school that is close and good enough, however that is achieved. I don't think a system which gives the children of rich parents even more of a headstart than they already have is good for society, or for most children.
A paywalled article in the Economist, but wort taking a look if you can:
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/04/05/the-worlds-peak-population-may-be-smaller-than-expected
tldr is that fertility rates in Africa are falling much faster than expected, and Africa's pattern of the next 60 years might be Asia's pattern of the last 60. And therefore peak world population could be sooner and lower than we are currently expecting.
The following few paragraphs are worth picking out:
"The un’s population projections are widely seen as the most authoritative. Its latest report, published last year, contained considerably lower estimates for sub-Saharan Africa than those of a decade ago. For Nigeria, which has Africa’s biggest population numbering about 213m people, the un has reduced its forecast for 2060 by more than 100m people (down to around 429m). By 2100 it expects the country to have about 550m people, more than 350m fewer than it reckoned a decade ago.
Yet even the un’s latest projections may not be keeping pace with the rapid decline in fertility rates (the average number of children that women are expected to have) that some striking recent studies show. Most remarkable is Nigeria, where a un-backed survey in 2021 found the fertility rate had fallen to 4.6 from 5.8 just five years earlier. This figure seems to be broadly confirmed by another survey, this time backed by usaid, America’s aid agency, which found a fertility rate of 4.8 in 2021, down from 6.1 in 2010. “Something is happening,” muses Argentina Matavel of the un Population Fund.
If these findings are correct they would suggest that birth rates are falling at a similar pace to those in some parts of Asia, when that region saw its own population growth rates slow sharply in a process often known as a demographic transition.
A similar trend seems to be emerging in parts of the Sahel, which still has some of Africa’s highest fertility rates, and coastal west Africa. In Mali, for instance, the fertility rate fell from 6.3 to a still high 5.7 in six years. Senegal’s, at 3.9 in 2021, equates to one fewer baby per woman than little over a decade ago. So too in the Gambia, where the rate plunged from 5.6 in 2013 to 4.4 in 2020, and Ghana, where it fell from 4.2 to 3.8 in just three years.
These declines bring west Africa closer to the lower fertility rates seen in much of southern Africa. "