Relevant because it includes the following two paragraphs, which are a pretty succinct argument in favour:
"The focus on speed in marketing HS2 has led it to be seen, wrongly, as a vanity project. In capacity terms, it is essential infrastructure. Its origins lay in early 2000s forecasts of rail needs that projected southern sections of the west coast London-Glasgow line would hit maximum capacity by the mid-2020s, and the east coast line to Edinburgh a few years later. Though the pandemic has altered travel patterns, those forecasts are broadly set to be met. Widening existing lines is itself expensive and disruptive. It was decided to build new high-speed routes to spread the load.
Since commuter and freight trains share the existing main lines, shifting inter-city services to dedicated tracks allows many more to run, at much higher speeds, while more local and goods trains can use the old lines. As HS2 will join the west coast line beyond the worst bottlenecks, faster and more frequent services can run through to northern England and Scotland. That makes less carbon-intensive rail travel a more alluring alternative to flying. And shifting freight from roads to rail is crucial to meet net zero targets, but impossible without space on the railways."
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
Good morning
It would be far better if they studied common sense
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
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.
Yep. From my notes, he was a Royal Marine from Southampton, training for the January selection. It snowed really heavily that night, and I was glad I was in a B&B rather than on the hill.
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
Good morning
It would be far better if they studied common sense
I believe that is available at the University of Life, or the School of Hard Knocks for those who don't want to pay tuition fees.
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.
You've highlighted one of the problems with school choice here. For it to work, you do need the system to carry a significant number of free places in each area. In general, we don't want to do that, because of the cost/inefficiency. So what often happens in practice is that all but one schools fill up to capacity and the school seen as worst becomes half-empty and enters a spiral of doom.
One of the theories was that good schools would want to expand to meet demand. That rarely happened- partly because of the constraints of school sites and partly because a lot of heads would rather keep a small school running well than risk the instability of expansion.
The dirty secret of school improvement is that, once you get beyond basic competence (and yes, there are schools where that doesn't happen reliably), it's not easy to make a school actually better (as opposed to looking better), and the easiest way to do it is to choose your intake shrewdly.
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.
I did both my SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Extract) training bouts on the Brecon Beacons. The first was utter misery enlivened only by the mock execution of a blindfolded and screaming navigator by the staff pretending to drive over his head with a Land Rover. On the second one I knew how to cheat and my mate's girlfriend picked us both up at a pre-arranged RV for a night spent in a Pub/B&B.
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.
Perhaps I have more faith in school leadership teams than you do! I have seen a bit of coasting but a lot more evidence of under-funding leading to problems with recruitment and retention. My only agenda is that the teachers are effective in transferring knowledge to my kids so that they do well in the exams they need to move on to the next stage of their education, plus enough other stuff to make them rounded individuals and not so much stress that it becomes counterproductive. As far as I can tell the teachers are on the same page.
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.
Back on topic, here's an idea for Northern Ireland, if we must keep it.
Instead of being integrated into the UK, it should be a Crown colony, like Bermuda is, or Hong Kong was in the old days, with its own assembly (which it has at the moment), a Governor, and no seats at Westminster. This is so that its sectarian and completely separate politics do not influence Westminster. It would avoid the situation that, whenever they have a close vote, Prime Ministers have to ask themselves how much they have to bribe the Northern Irish to win it.
Why shouldn't Northern Ireland have MPs? It is part of the UK not a colony.
Bribing Northern Ireland is no different to bribing Scotland via the SNP or Wales via Welsh Labour MPs if it is a hung parliament
Northern Ireland shouldn't have MPs for the same reason that Hong Kong didn't, or Bermuda doesn't - its are fundamentally different from the UK, and a destabilising influence on the rest of the country.
Yes, and I don't like those either. But just because we have to put up with them doesn't mean we have to put up with extortion from Northern Ireland as well. Also I think the Northern Irish are slightly more blatant about it than the Scottish and Welsh, though that's just my observation.
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.
I did both my SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Extract) training bouts on the Brecon Beacons. The first was utter misery enlivened only by the mock execution of a blindfolded and screaming navigator by the staff pretending to drive over his head with a Land Rover. On the second one I knew how to cheat and my mate's girlfriend picked us both up at a pre-arranged RV for a night spent in a Pub/B&B.
That second one was definitely a success at the “Survive” and “Extract” parts of the test!
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.
Even by the end of the 19th century manufacturing was stronger in Germany than the UK.
We have always had individual great industrialists like Brunel and Stevenson but our elite is more made up of lawyers and bankers, in Germany engineers have been on the same level however
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
One of things left unsaid in that article is there has been a subtle but unmistakable shift from the non-fruitcake part of the Democrats to not talking about support for CRT / trans issues so vocally. Youngkin's victory in Virginia showed parents didn't like it and the more sensible Democrats took the hint.
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.
You've highlighted one of the problems with school choice here. For it to work, you do need the system to carry a significant number of free places in each area. In general, we don't want to do that, because of the cost/inefficiency. So what often happens in practice is that all but one schools fill up to capacity and the school seen as worst becomes half-empty and enters a spiral of doom.
One of the theories was that good schools would want to expand to meet demand. That rarely happened- partly because of the constraints of school sites and partly because a lot of heads would rather keep a small school running well than risk the instability of expansion.
The dirty secret of school improvement is that, once you get beyond basic competence (and yes, there are schools where that doesn't happen reliably), it's not easy to make a school actually better (as opposed to looking better), and the easiest way to do it is to choose your intake shrewdly.
Running an organisation at 99% of capacity (which is how state schools are run) is a recipe for breakdowns, staff overwork, quality failures etc. Standard OR theory.
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
I want everyone to achieve the best they can in a system that is well resouced, not for the rich and a few bright kids to do well at the expense of everyone else - especially as it is precisely those less academic children who are currently under-achieving and being failed by the system. What choice did the 11 plus failures have? How much redundancy are you prepared to have in the state system to make parental choice meaningful?
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
I really like Dartmoor at either sunrise or sunset.
I would recommend the following walk, which I did last summer. Start at South Zeal. Walk up to Shilley Pool. If you are keen on such things, bring your swimming kit and do a spot of wild swimming. Not my cup of tea, but I see the attraction at this spot. Then head up to White Moor Stone. Ideally, if the weather's looking good, you should time it so you reach here about sunset-ish. Then head north up to the top of Cosdon Beacon - which is a little higher, prolonging the sunset a little longer. There is a pleasant descent from there back to the village of South Zeal which is easy enough to do in the gloaming. Do not do as I do and lose your wallet on the way down while getting overexcited taking photos (it was, miraculously, returned to me 12 hours later by a wild camper who found it and contacted me via my dentists, noting a card for a dental appointment in there. Leon will be pleased to hear I met the kind fella in a layby he identified using what three words.
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
An alternative in the south is around Burrator Reservoir, but that one is my absolute favourite. It’s get everything. Plus Chagford is a gorgeous and interesting village - and Gidleigh does great beer and scones
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.
Perhaps I have more faith in school leadership teams than you do! I have seen a bit of coasting but a lot more evidence of under-funding leading to problems with recruitment and retention. My only agenda is that the teachers are effective in transferring knowledge to my kids so that they do well in the exams they need to move on to the next stage of their education, plus enough other stuff to make them rounded individuals and not so much stress that it becomes counterproductive. As far as I can tell the teachers are on the same page.
I'll give that a 'like' because there's probably more to agree with than disagree with there. I think there's more to it than just resources - there are lots of examples of schools whose woes are not primarily due to resourcing. And I certainly think choice drives up standards. But I also agree that you can do a lot by simply providing (appropriately targeted) resources - e.g. via the success of the Greater London challenge.
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.
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.
You've highlighted one of the problems with school choice here. For it to work, you do need the system to carry a significant number of free places in each area. In general, we don't want to do that, because of the cost/inefficiency. So what often happens in practice is that all but one schools fill up to capacity and the school seen as worst becomes half-empty and enters a spiral of doom.
One of the theories was that good schools would want to expand to meet demand. That rarely happened- partly because of the constraints of school sites and partly because a lot of heads would rather keep a small school running well than risk the instability of expansion.
The dirty secret of school improvement is that, once you get beyond basic competence (and yes, there are schools where that doesn't happen reliably), it's not easy to make a school actually better (as opposed to looking better), and the easiest way to do it is to choose your intake shrewdly.
I strongly (though politely!) disagree with your last para. There's LOADS of ways of improving schools, and there are loads of examples of schools improving experiences and outcomes for pupils by changing the right things. (My wife works in schools improvement and is very interesting on the subject!)
And you do need slack in the system, as in any system. If you're running at capacity, you fall over when you're pushed that little bit more.
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?
For NRW to abolish different kinds of schools, or for the UK to adopt the German system, would both require a lot of work, so probably not a good idea in either case. Here there is a distinction that at a Gymnasium or Gesamtschule you can do the Abitur, which allows you to go to university. If you are at a Hauptschule or Realschule, then you need to switch schools to be able to do the Abitur - which many do at Secondary Level II at 14 ish. And clearly loads of parents agree with the teachers that their child wouldn't do well at a Gymnasium and send their children to the other schools, I'm not sure that would transfer so easily to England.
My "expertise" is limited to having once been at school myself, and seeing people (especially my child, but also relatives in the UK, and friends locally) going to school now. But I would probably be moving towards more comprehensive-style schools in NRW, so parents don't have to think about whether their child will go to university when the child is only 9! But just make sure that for most people the local school is one that they are happy for their child to go to.
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.
I did both my SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Extract) training bouts on the Brecon Beacons. The first was utter misery enlivened only by the mock execution of a blindfolded and screaming navigator by the staff pretending to drive over his head with a Land Rover. On the second one I knew how to cheat and my mate's girlfriend picked us both up at a pre-arranged RV for a night spent in a Pub/B&B.
That second one was definitely a success at the “Survive” and “Extract” parts of the test!
I also tried to cheat at the recovery at sea exercise but that blew up in my stupid face. At about 9am staff tossed us into the oggin off St Mawgan in dinghies that more or less simulated the wholly inadequate devices we'd rely on if we ever ejected over water. One could be floating around in the Atlantic for fucking hours becoming increasing freezing, wet and bored before the "rescue" launch fished one out. An old salt had told me that if a dinghy drifted outside of the exercise area they'd scramble a SAR flight to recover its occupant. So I cut off my sea anchor, issued a distress call and a stiff easterly started blowing me in the general direction of Newfoundland. I was anticipating a short ride in a Sea King followed by elevenses in the mess however I failed to account fully for the 5-10% technical availability of the SK HU5 fleet and no functional helicopter was available to rescue young Dura. It was past 4pm and pitch black when the chortling staff fished my violently shivering and thoroughly immiserated form out of the drink.
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
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.
I've done a few walks across the main summits of the Beacons, including a bit of stealth camping on the summit in some rubbish weather and a 20 mile one way traverse in a day.
They are OK for a bit of space when there is no alternative but none of them would be in my top 100 list of UK hills. Black Mountain (that's the western one) is probably the best of a grassy bunch as it has a few glacial features.
They need more woodland cover and less sheep grazing.
However, the limestone areas _are_ interesting and well worth a visit. The cave systems are very extensive and there are lots of interesting plants. There's also a number of nice waterfalls around Ystradfellte.
But Pen y Fan? Nah. Not even via the north face when frozen.
Back on topic, here's an idea for Northern Ireland, if we must keep it.
Instead of being integrated into the UK, it should be a Crown colony, like Bermuda is, or Hong Kong was in the old days, with its own assembly (which it has at the moment), a Governor, and no seats at Westminster. This is so that its sectarian and completely separate politics do not influence Westminster. It would avoid the situation that, whenever they have a close vote, Prime Ministers have to ask themselves how much they have to bribe the Northern Irish to win it.
Why shouldn't Northern Ireland have MPs? It is part of the UK not a colony.
Bribing Northern Ireland is no different to bribing Scotland via the SNP or Wales via Welsh Labour MPs if it is a hung parliament
Northern Ireland shouldn't have MPs for the same reason that Hong Kong didn't, or Bermuda doesn't - its are fundamentally different from the UK, and a destabilising influence on the rest of the country.
Yes, and I don't like those either. But just because we have to put up with them doesn't mean we have to put up with extortion from Northern Ireland as well. Also I think the Northern Irish are slightly more blatant about it than the Scottish and Welsh, though that's just my observation.
Governments don't relinquish parts of their national territory, unless they are defeated in war.
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.
I did both my SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Extract) training bouts on the Brecon Beacons. The first was utter misery enlivened only by the mock execution of a blindfolded and screaming navigator by the staff pretending to drive over his head with a Land Rover. On the second one I knew how to cheat and my mate's girlfriend picked us both up at a pre-arranged RV for a night spent in a Pub/B&B.
That would meet the survive and evade components, providing you weren't caught. Resistance too, I guess.
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.
I've done a few walks across the main summits of the Beacons, including a bit of stealth camping on the summit in some rubbish weather and a 20 mile one way traverse in a day.
They are OK for a bit of space when there is no alternative but none of them would be in my top 100 list of UK hills. Black Mountain (that's the western one) is probably the best of a grassy bunch as it has a few glacial features.
They need more woodland cover and less sheep grazing.
However, the limestone areas _are_ interesting and well worth a visit. The cave systems are very extensive and there are lots of interesting plants. There's also a number of nice waterfalls around Ystradfellte.
But Pen y Fan? Nah. Not even via the north face when frozen.
The Beacons are a degraded landscape. Deforested by man, and never replanted. A wet desert
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
A lovely couple of days away, I left wifey in the spa for an hour, as I sit on the balcony with another Mojito. Life is good.
Fujairah?
Very good! Yes, Radisson Blu Resort Dibba, Fujairah.
We stayed at Al Aqah Beach Resort years ago. I think Fujairah is much more built-up now. I remember the sand being incredibly hot to walk on. Saw a turtle while snorkelling.
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
A lovely couple of days away, I left wifey in the spa for an hour, as I sit on the balcony with another Mojito. Life is good.
Fujairah?
Very good! Yes, Radisson Blu Resort Dibba, Fujairah.
We stayed at Al Aqah Beach Resort years ago. I think Fujairah is much more built-up now. I remember the sand being incredibly hot to walk on. Saw a turtle while snorkelling.
Ah yes, stayed there too, a couple of years back. There’s a load of old resorts on the road still, alongside a few new ones. Not particularly built up compared to Dubai, still lots of villages around, although Fujairah City has grown quite a bit. The old resorts are getting a little tired though, and have been forced to cut prices to compete with the new ones. We paid around £200 for the night, on an all-inclusive basis. We’d have spent half of that just on the drinks. For some reason, the missus offered that if I drove there yesterday, she’d drive back two hours to Dubai today. Not complaining, time for one more drink before we hit the road! 🥂
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.
I did both my SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Extract) training bouts on the Brecon Beacons. The first was utter misery enlivened only by the mock execution of a blindfolded and screaming navigator by the staff pretending to drive over his head with a Land Rover. On the second one I knew how to cheat and my mate's girlfriend picked us both up at a pre-arranged RV for a night spent in a Pub/B&B.
That would meet the survive and evade components, providing you weren't caught. Resistance too, I guess.
They are funny exercises (ours were called E&E - escape and evasion). On the one hand you knew it was all a game and a bloke (or bird, which worked more sometimes especially if you were lavatorially deprived) screaming at you and being in the stress position was manageable; and on the other it was an "interestingly real" experience also.
Of course I never had to put it into practice and much more important for eg aircrew and SF where I'm sure the note-taking was more rigorous than ours.
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.
I did both my SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Extract) training bouts on the Brecon Beacons. The first was utter misery enlivened only by the mock execution of a blindfolded and screaming navigator by the staff pretending to drive over his head with a Land Rover. On the second one I knew how to cheat and my mate's girlfriend picked us both up at a pre-arranged RV for a night spent in a Pub/B&B.
That would meet the survive and evade components, providing you weren't caught. Resistance too, I guess.
They are funny exercises (ours were called E&E - escape and evasion). On the one hand you knew it was all a game and a bloke (or bird, which worked more sometimes especially if you were lavatorially deprived) screaming at you and being in the stress position was manageable; and on the other it was an "interestingly real" experience also.
Of course I never had to put it into practice and much more important for eg aircrew and SF where I'm sure the note-taking was more rigorous than ours.
My mate did the Russian Air Force equivalent in the 90s and the Cossack Naval Infantry who caught him properly beat the fucking shit out of him - hospital job. He always maintained that he'd rather eject over NATO territory than Russia after that.
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.
I did both my SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Extract) training bouts on the Brecon Beacons. The first was utter misery enlivened only by the mock execution of a blindfolded and screaming navigator by the staff pretending to drive over his head with a Land Rover. On the second one I knew how to cheat and my mate's girlfriend picked us both up at a pre-arranged RV for a night spent in a Pub/B&B.
That would meet the survive and evade components, providing you weren't caught. Resistance too, I guess.
They are funny exercises (ours were called E&E - escape and evasion). On the one hand you knew it was all a game and a bloke (or bird, which worked more sometimes especially if you were lavatorially deprived) screaming at you and being in the stress position was manageable; and on the other it was an "interestingly real" experience also.
Of course I never had to put it into practice and much more important for eg aircrew and SF where I'm sure the note-taking was more rigorous than ours.
My mate did the Russian Air Force equivalent in the 90s and the Cossack Naval Infantry who caught him properly beat the fucking shit out of him - hospital job. He always maintained that he'd rather eject over NATO territory than Russia after that.
So the Russian military were a bunch of sociopathic sadists? Some things don’t appear to have changed in 30 years.
Quite the opposite. You need a degree of intelligent cunning to get the best out of it, and avoid the guardrails. Then it is fun
It also gave me an idea the other day, for my job, that was superb. A simple idea, but also brilliant (partly because it was so simple) yet it hadn't occurred to me at all
For the next ten years we may be in a sweet spot when AI is just a fantastic and ever improving assistant and collaborator Then GPT8 will kill everyone, natch
The French cafe staff on the Eurostar, it has to be said, also tend to be a bit more beautiful and amenable.
St Pancras is infinitely nicer than Gare du Nord, however
And King's X as an area is way more interesting than the boring stuff around the French terminal. Gare du Nord can be really sketchy, as well
Yes, the Gare Du Nord area I've sometimes found to be a little on the dodgy side, like the Gare de Lyon when changing for Italy. A little like the old-style King's Cross, as you say.
Those charming mademoiselles a few years back, though.. ;,)
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.
You've highlighted one of the problems with school choice here. For it to work, you do need the system to carry a significant number of free places in each area. In general, we don't want to do that, because of the cost/inefficiency. So what often happens in practice is that all but one schools fill up to capacity and the school seen as worst becomes half-empty and enters a spiral of doom.
One of the theories was that good schools would want to expand to meet demand. That rarely happened- partly because of the constraints of school sites and partly because a lot of heads would rather keep a small school running well than risk the instability of expansion.
The dirty secret of school improvement is that, once you get beyond basic competence (and yes, there are schools where that doesn't happen reliably), it's not easy to make a school actually better (as opposed to looking better), and the easiest way to do it is to choose your intake shrewdly.
I strongly (though politely!) disagree with your last para. There's LOADS of ways of improving schools, and there are loads of examples of schools improving experiences and outcomes for pupils by changing the right things. (My wife works in schools improvement and is very interesting on the subject!)
And you do need slack in the system, as in any system. If you're running at capacity, you fall over when you're pushed that little bit more.
Curious what you consider are the easiest wins in terms of ways of improving schools?
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.
I did both my SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Extract) training bouts on the Brecon Beacons. The first was utter misery enlivened only by the mock execution of a blindfolded and screaming navigator by the staff pretending to drive over his head with a Land Rover. On the second one I knew how to cheat and my mate's girlfriend picked us both up at a pre-arranged RV for a night spent in a Pub/B&B.
That would meet the survive and evade components, providing you weren't caught. Resistance too, I guess.
They are funny exercises (ours were called E&E - escape and evasion). On the one hand you knew it was all a game and a bloke (or bird, which worked more sometimes especially if you were lavatorially deprived) screaming at you and being in the stress position was manageable; and on the other it was an "interestingly real" experience also.
Of course I never had to put it into practice and much more important for eg aircrew and SF where I'm sure the note-taking was more rigorous than ours.
My mate did the Russian Air Force equivalent in the 90s and the Cossack Naval Infantry who caught him properly beat the fucking shit out of him - hospital job. He always maintained that he'd rather eject over NATO territory than Russia after that.
So the Russian military were a bunch of sociopathic sadists? Some things don’t appear to have changed in 30 years.
He claimed the SAS training broke him psychologically and in a way he never recovered (even though he passed). I didn't believe him, but then he went and topped himself, so maybe there was something in it. Of course the SAS attracts weird people anyway. Growing up in Hereford I met many of them
The French cafe staff on the Eurostar, it has to be said, also tend to be a bit more beautiful and amenable.
St Pancras is infinitely nicer than Gare du Nord, however
And King's X as an area is way more interesting than the boring stuff around the French terminal. Gare du Nord can be really sketchy, as well
Yes, the Gare Du Nord area I've sometimes found to be a little on the dodgy side, like the Gare de Lyon when changing for Italy. A little like the old-style King's Cross as you say.
Those charming mademoiselles a few years back, though.. ;,)
Sadly, Paris overall feels much edgier than it did 20-30 years ago. I'm not sure if that is borne out in actual crime stats, but the vibe is definitely a lot worse. Hassly. Nervy
Since we are on Ireland today, I thought some quotations from the great Conservative (and Unionist) Prime Minister Lord Salisbury might be appropriate:
"Possession of Ireland is our peculiar punishment, our unique affliction, among the family of nations. What crime have we committed, with what particular vice is our national character chargeable, that this chastisement should have befallen us?"
"England knows Ireland as well as a man knows the corn that has afflicted his spirit from early youth"
"The sooner they are gone the better"
"An Orangeman values his religion chiefly for ... making his enemies uncomfortable"
I've noticed this too. The metro between the Gare de Lyon and Gare du Nord always feels way more tense than the equivalent areas of inner or South London, for instance.
France is in many ways more progressed than post-Thatcherite Britain, but its inter-ethnic atmosphere most definitely is not.
I've noticed this too. The metro between the Gare de Lyon and Gare du Nord always feels way more tense than inner or South London.
My guess is it's something to do with the way Paris is so divided socio-geographically. Rich white people live in the middle, poorer ethnic people live beyond the Peripherique - and come into town to work play or "have fun", if they are bored youngsters
So there is an intrinsic edginess which you don't get in London, which is racially mixed almost everywhere
That said, London has got dodgier too in recent years: bike and phone thefts are off the dial
I've noticed this too. The metro between the Gare de Lyon and Gare du Nord always feels way more tense than inner or South London.
My guess is it's something to do with the way Paris is so divided socio-geographically. Rich white people live in the middle, poorer ethnic people live beyond the Peripherique - and come into town to work play or "have fun", if they are bored youngsters
So there is an intrinsic edginess which you don't get in London, which is racially mixed almost everywhere
That said, London has got dodgier too in recent years: bike and phone thefts are off the dial
I think that's right. Cities like London and Manchester have central areas full of both the middle classes and minorities.
There's something else. In the Gare De Lyon a few years ago I witnessed a couple of paramilitary-style policemen with boots and dogs, smiling menacingly, suddenly appear and bark at a group of fairly obviously random minority youths ; the real culprit and kerfuffle had been about 10 minutes before.
There's something wrong with the inter-ethnic atmosphere in France.
I've noticed this too. The metro between the Gare de Lyon and Gare du Nord always feels way more tense than inner or South London.
My guess is it's something to do with the way Paris is so divided socio-geographically. Rich white people live in the middle, poorer ethnic people live beyond the Peripherique - and come into town to work play or "have fun", if they are bored youngsters
So there is an intrinsic edginess which you don't get in London, which is racially mixed almost everywhere
That said, London has got dodgier too in recent years: bike and phone thefts are off the dial
I think that's right. Cities like London and Manchester have central areas full of both the middle classes and minorities.
There's something else. In the Gare De Lyon a few years ago I witnessed a couple of paramilitary-style policemen with boots and dogs, smiling menacingly, suddenly appear and bark at a group of fairly obviously random minority youths ; the real culprit and kerfuffle had been about 10 minutes before.
There's something wrong with the inter-ethnic atmosphere in France.
As was seen at the Stade de France Real-Liverpool final. Police lost all control of "locals"
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
I want everyone to achieve the best they can in a system that is well resouced, not for the rich and a few bright kids to do well at the expense of everyone else - especially as it is precisely those less academic children who are currently under-achieving and being failed by the system. What choice did the 11 plus failures have? How much redundancy are you prepared to have in the state system to make parental choice meaningful?
The selective approach requires fluidity after age 11. I went to GS at age 11. My elder brother failed but worked hard at his SM and took a test at 13 before going to a GS. I taught many years At Dartford GS which took bright children locally and others from London Boroughs. Agasin we regularly took additional students after age 11 largely on recommendation from their Secondary school. It is inaccurate to say 11+ fauilures had no choices. Some flourished in their SM and others did transfer to GS. Perhaps the biggest mistake in education has been to try and create a one size fits all Comprehensive model with full mixed ability teaching for all. Driven by a dogma which demanded equality of input and blighted many students' education.
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.
You've highlighted one of the problems with school choice here. For it to work, you do need the system to carry a significant number of free places in each area. In general, we don't want to do that, because of the cost/inefficiency. So what often happens in practice is that all but one schools fill up to capacity and the school seen as worst becomes half-empty and enters a spiral of doom.
One of the theories was that good schools would want to expand to meet demand. That rarely happened- partly because of the constraints of school sites and partly because a lot of heads would rather keep a small school running well than risk the instability of expansion.
The dirty secret of school improvement is that, once you get beyond basic competence (and yes, there are schools where that doesn't happen reliably), it's not easy to make a school actually better (as opposed to looking better), and the easiest way to do it is to choose your intake shrewdly.
I strongly (though politely!) disagree with your last para. There's LOADS of ways of improving schools, and there are loads of examples of schools improving experiences and outcomes for pupils by changing the right things. (My wife works in schools improvement and is very interesting on the subject!)
And you do need slack in the system, as in any system. If you're running at capacity, you fall over when you're pushed that little bit more.
Curious what you consider are the easiest wins in terms of ways of improving schools?
Number 1 has to be the leadership team as it sets the tone for everything else.
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.
I did both my SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Extract) training bouts on the Brecon Beacons. The first was utter misery enlivened only by the mock execution of a blindfolded and screaming navigator by the staff pretending to drive over his head with a Land Rover. On the second one I knew how to cheat and my mate's girlfriend picked us both up at a pre-arranged RV for a night spent in a Pub/B&B.
That would meet the survive and evade components, providing you weren't caught. Resistance too, I guess.
They are funny exercises (ours were called E&E - escape and evasion). On the one hand you knew it was all a game and a bloke (or bird, which worked more sometimes especially if you were lavatorially deprived) screaming at you and being in the stress position was manageable; and on the other it was an "interestingly real" experience also.
Of course I never had to put it into practice and much more important for eg aircrew and SF where I'm sure the note-taking was more rigorous than ours.
My mate did the Russian Air Force equivalent in the 90s and the Cossack Naval Infantry who caught him properly beat the fucking shit out of him - hospital job. He always maintained that he'd rather eject over NATO territory than Russia after that.
So the Russian military were a bunch of sociopathic sadists? Some things don’t appear to have changed in 30 years.
He claimed the SAS training broke him psychologically and in a way he never recovered (even though he passed). I didn't believe him, but then he went and topped himself, so maybe there was something in it. Of course the SAS attracts weird people anyway. Growing up in Hereford I met many of them
I can give you an on the spot update on Paris. So far so good stepped out of GdN straight into an Uber. Which smells faintly of pee. Perhaps it's evening primrose.
And yes it's pretty grim, or "vibrant" around the GdN.
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.
I did both my SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Extract) training bouts on the Brecon Beacons. The first was utter misery enlivened only by the mock execution of a blindfolded and screaming navigator by the staff pretending to drive over his head with a Land Rover. On the second one I knew how to cheat and my mate's girlfriend picked us both up at a pre-arranged RV for a night spent in a Pub/B&B.
That would meet the survive and evade components, providing you weren't caught. Resistance too, I guess.
They are funny exercises (ours were called E&E - escape and evasion). On the one hand you knew it was all a game and a bloke (or bird, which worked more sometimes especially if you were lavatorially deprived) screaming at you and being in the stress position was manageable; and on the other it was an "interestingly real" experience also.
Of course I never had to put it into practice and much more important for eg aircrew and SF where I'm sure the note-taking was more rigorous than ours.
My mate did the Russian Air Force equivalent in the 90s and the Cossack Naval Infantry who caught him properly beat the fucking shit out of him - hospital job. He always maintained that he'd rather eject over NATO territory than Russia after that.
So the Russian military were a bunch of sociopathic sadists? Some things don’t appear to have changed in 30 years.
He claimed the SAS training broke him psychologically and in a way he never recovered (even though he passed). I didn't believe him, but then he went and topped himself, so maybe there was something in it. Of course the SAS attracts weird people anyway. Growing up in Hereford I met many of them
What colour is the boat house at Hereford?
Fuck knows. What boat house?! I used to live right by the river, there were quite a few
I can give you an on the spot update on Paris. So far so good stepped out of GdN straight into an Uber. Which smells faintly of pee. Perhaps it's evening primrose.
And yes it's pretty grim, or "vibrant" around the GdN.
"A hotbed of emerging culture" I think you'll find.
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.
I did both my SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Extract) training bouts on the Brecon Beacons. The first was utter misery enlivened only by the mock execution of a blindfolded and screaming navigator by the staff pretending to drive over his head with a Land Rover. On the second one I knew how to cheat and my mate's girlfriend picked us both up at a pre-arranged RV for a night spent in a Pub/B&B.
That would meet the survive and evade components, providing you weren't caught. Resistance too, I guess.
They are funny exercises (ours were called E&E - escape and evasion). On the one hand you knew it was all a game and a bloke (or bird, which worked more sometimes especially if you were lavatorially deprived) screaming at you and being in the stress position was manageable; and on the other it was an "interestingly real" experience also.
Of course I never had to put it into practice and much more important for eg aircrew and SF where I'm sure the note-taking was more rigorous than ours.
My mate did the Russian Air Force equivalent in the 90s and the Cossack Naval Infantry who caught him properly beat the fucking shit out of him - hospital job. He always maintained that he'd rather eject over NATO territory than Russia after that.
So the Russian military were a bunch of sociopathic sadists? Some things don’t appear to have changed in 30 years.
He claimed the SAS training broke him psychologically and in a way he never recovered (even though he passed). I didn't believe him, but then he went and topped himself, so maybe there was something in it. Of course the SAS attracts weird people anyway. Growing up in Hereford I met many of them
What colour is the boat house at Hereford?
Fuck knows. What boat house?! I used to live right by the river, there were quite a few
The main boathouse is sort of white and woody-brown with a glass front. Is that good enough for you Mr DeNiro?
I love Paris. Not sure I’d want to live there these days. If it’s gone downhill, it’s due to the globalisation and gentrification of the inner quarters.
I liked it best as I discovered it. Still a bit seedy in the second, third and fourth.
Is it? Rome is magnificent. Paris is good in parts and dire in others.
Paris IS magnificent - certainly in the central bits - but more boring than London. Rome is more grandly romantic than either, but I wouldn't call Rome "magnificent" - too many ruins (however fascinating)
On the Eurostar. IS IT A COINCIDENCE that the wifi en France is a zillion times better than the wifi in the UK.
All pretty shit, that said, for an international passenger service, but notable nonetheless.
IIRC in the UK trackside access for things like mobile masts is incredibly difficult as it is jealously guarded by Network Rail. Presumably in France some bigwig can simply order SNCF to let the networks put up masts in sensible places along the route. So the on-train Wi-Fi can easily connect to trackside masts in France whereas in the UK it is lobbing the data over the embankment and hoping a mast in a nearby town can grab it.
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.
I did both my SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Extract) training bouts on the Brecon Beacons. The first was utter misery enlivened only by the mock execution of a blindfolded and screaming navigator by the staff pretending to drive over his head with a Land Rover. On the second one I knew how to cheat and my mate's girlfriend picked us both up at a pre-arranged RV for a night spent in a Pub/B&B.
That would meet the survive and evade components, providing you weren't caught. Resistance too, I guess.
They are funny exercises (ours were called E&E - escape and evasion). On the one hand you knew it was all a game and a bloke (or bird, which worked more sometimes especially if you were lavatorially deprived) screaming at you and being in the stress position was manageable; and on the other it was an "interestingly real" experience also.
Of course I never had to put it into practice and much more important for eg aircrew and SF where I'm sure the note-taking was more rigorous than ours.
My mate did the Russian Air Force equivalent in the 90s and the Cossack Naval Infantry who caught him properly beat the fucking shit out of him - hospital job. He always maintained that he'd rather eject over NATO territory than Russia after that.
So the Russian military were a bunch of sociopathic sadists? Some things don’t appear to have changed in 30 years.
He claimed the SAS training broke him psychologically and in a way he never recovered (even though he passed). I didn't believe him, but then he went and topped himself, so maybe there was something in it. Of course the SAS attracts weird people anyway. Growing up in Hereford I met many of them
What colour is the boat house at Hereford?
Fuck knows. What boat house?! I used to live right by the river, there were quite a few
The main boathouse is sort of white and woody-brown with a glass front. Is that good enough for you Mr DeNiro?
If Sean Bean had been thinking on his feet he’d have replied, “Which one, and how do you pronounce Hereford?”
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.
You've highlighted one of the problems with school choice here. For it to work, you do need the system to carry a significant number of free places in each area. In general, we don't want to do that, because of the cost/inefficiency. So what often happens in practice is that all but one schools fill up to capacity and the school seen as worst becomes half-empty and enters a spiral of doom.
One of the theories was that good schools would want to expand to meet demand. That rarely happened- partly because of the constraints of school sites and partly because a lot of heads would rather keep a small school running well than risk the instability of expansion.
The dirty secret of school improvement is that, once you get beyond basic competence (and yes, there are schools where that doesn't happen reliably), it's not easy to make a school actually better (as opposed to looking better), and the easiest way to do it is to choose your intake shrewdly.
I strongly (though politely!) disagree with your last para. There's LOADS of ways of improving schools, and there are loads of examples of schools improving experiences and outcomes for pupils by changing the right things. (My wife works in schools improvement and is very interesting on the subject!)
And you do need slack in the system, as in any system. If you're running at capacity, you fall over when you're pushed that little bit more.
Curious what you consider are the easiest wins in terms of ways of improving schools?
Number 1 has to be the leadership team as it sets the tone for everything else.
But where to find 25,000 Katherine Birbalsinghs?
IMHO the easiest ‘win’ in education, is the ‘reverse grammar’ school - that is, to remove the bottom 10% and educate them separately. They currently take up a massively disproportionate amount of teacher time in the classroom.
If we are making comparisons to Germany, we also need to look at their excellent technical colleges, which don’t think everyone should do a three-year degree, and see trades and skilled production workers as a national asset.
On the Eurostar. IS IT A COINCIDENCE that the wifi en France is a zillion times better than the wifi in the UK.
All pretty shit, that said, for an international passenger service, but notable nonetheless.
IIRC in the UK trackside access for things like mobile masts is incredibly difficult as it is jealously guarded by Network Rail. Presumably in France some bigwig can simply order SNCF to let the networks put up masts in sensible places along the route. So the on-train Wi-Fi can easily connect to trackside masts in France whereas in the UK it is lobbing the data over the embankment and hoping a mast in a nearby town can grab it.
What's the issue with Rishi's wife having shares in a childcare company ? I'd have thought as the PM's brief is the entire British economy then shares in almost anything could be a potential conflict of interest with his work ? Maybe the PM and his wife should transfer to hold blind trusts for the entirity of their equity portfolio for anything UK related; the transfer starting the day they get the gig. Looks the only way out of it to me, you can probably include the Chancellor too.
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.
I did both my SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Extract) training bouts on the Brecon Beacons. The first was utter misery enlivened only by the mock execution of a blindfolded and screaming navigator by the staff pretending to drive over his head with a Land Rover. On the second one I knew how to cheat and my mate's girlfriend picked us both up at a pre-arranged RV for a night spent in a Pub/B&B.
That would meet the survive and evade components, providing you weren't caught. Resistance too, I guess.
They are funny exercises (ours were called E&E - escape and evasion). On the one hand you knew it was all a game and a bloke (or bird, which worked more sometimes especially if you were lavatorially deprived) screaming at you and being in the stress position was manageable; and on the other it was an "interestingly real" experience also.
Of course I never had to put it into practice and much more important for eg aircrew and SF where I'm sure the note-taking was more rigorous than ours.
My mate did the Russian Air Force equivalent in the 90s and the Cossack Naval Infantry who caught him properly beat the fucking shit out of him - hospital job. He always maintained that he'd rather eject over NATO territory than Russia after that.
So the Russian military were a bunch of sociopathic sadists? Some things don’t appear to have changed in 30 years.
He claimed the SAS training broke him psychologically and in a way he never recovered (even though he passed). I didn't believe him, but then he went and topped himself, so maybe there was something in it. Of course the SAS attracts weird people anyway. Growing up in Hereford I met many of them
What colour is the boat house at Hereford?
Fuck knows. What boat house?! I used to live right by the river, there were quite a few
The main boathouse is sort of white and woody-brown with a glass front. Is that good enough for you Mr DeNiro?
If Sean Bean had been thinking on his feet he’d have replied, “Which one, and how do you pronounce Hereford?”
I love Paris. Not sure I’d want to live there these days. If it’s gone downhill, it’s due to the globalisation and gentrification of the inner quarters.
I liked it best as I discovered it. Still a bit seedy in the second, third and fourth.
Every major city in the west has gone downhill, I am sad to say. I've been to about forty of them in the last few years (many in the last two years). I cannot name one which is obviously improving, they are nearly all in decline. A few are managing to tread water
Swiss cities are doing OK but they are small and intensely rich
Comments
An opinion piece in the FT on HS2:
https://www.ft.com/content/0c41cc67-1f72-4545-84e1-26952c073e69
tldr: Build it!
Relevant because it includes the following two paragraphs, which are a pretty succinct argument in favour:
"The focus on speed in marketing HS2 has led it to be seen, wrongly, as a vanity
project. In capacity terms, it is essential infrastructure. Its origins lay in early 2000s forecasts of rail needs that projected southern sections of the west coast London-Glasgow line would hit maximum capacity by the mid-2020s, and the east coast line to Edinburgh a few years later. Though the pandemic has altered travel
patterns, those forecasts are broadly set to be met. Widening existing lines is itself
expensive and disruptive. It was decided to build new high-speed routes to spread
the load.
Since commuter and freight trains share the existing main lines, shifting inter-city
services to dedicated tracks allows many more to run, at much higher speeds, while
more local and goods trains can use the old lines. As HS2 will join the west coast
line beyond the worst bottlenecks, faster and more frequent services can run
through to northern England and Scotland. That makes less carbon-intensive rail
travel a more alluring alternative to flying. And shifting freight from roads to rail is
crucial to meet net zero targets, but impossible without space on the railways."
It would be far better if they studied common sense
A lovely couple of days away, I left wifey in the spa for an hour, as I sit on the balcony with another Mojito. Life is good.
Amazing folks.
One of the theories was that good schools would want to expand to meet demand. That rarely happened- partly because of the constraints of school sites and partly because a lot of heads would rather keep a small school running well than risk the instability of expansion.
The dirty secret of school improvement is that, once you get beyond basic competence (and yes, there are schools where that doesn't happen reliably), it's not easy to make a school actually better (as opposed to looking better), and the easiest way to do it is to choose your intake shrewdly.
Yes, and I don't like those either. But just because we have to put up with them doesn't mean we have to put up with extortion from Northern Ireland as well. Also I think the Northern Irish are slightly more blatant about it than the Scottish and Welsh, though that's just my observation.
Strangely, in real life, in the schools…
I really like Dartmoor at either sunrise or sunset.
I would recommend the following walk, which I did last summer.
Start at South Zeal.
Walk up to Shilley Pool. If you are keen on such things, bring your swimming kit and do a spot of wild swimming. Not my cup of tea, but I see the attraction at this spot. Then head up to White Moor Stone. Ideally, if the weather's looking good, you should time it so you reach here about sunset-ish. Then head north up to the top of Cosdon Beacon - which is a little higher, prolonging the sunset a little longer. There is a pleasant descent from there back to the village of South Zeal which is easy enough to do in the gloaming. Do not do as I do and lose your wallet on the way down while getting overexcited taking photos (it was, miraculously, returned to me 12 hours later by a wild camper who found it and contacted me via my dentists, noting a card for a dental appointment in there. Leon will be pleased to hear I met the kind fella in a layby he identified using what three words.
And you do need slack in the system, as in any system. If you're running at capacity, you fall over when you're pushed that little bit more.
My "expertise" is limited to having once been at school myself, and seeing people (especially my child, but also relatives in the UK, and friends locally) going to school now. But I would probably be moving towards more comprehensive-style schools in NRW, so parents don't have to think about whether their child will go to university when the child is only 9! But just make sure that for most people the local school is one that they are happy for their child to go to.
They are OK for a bit of space when there is no alternative but none of them would be in my top 100 list of UK hills. Black Mountain (that's the western one) is probably the best of a grassy bunch as it has a few glacial features.
They need more woodland cover and less sheep grazing.
However, the limestone areas _are_ interesting and well worth a visit. The cave systems are very extensive and there are lots of interesting plants. There's also a number of nice waterfalls around Ystradfellte.
But Pen y Fan? Nah. Not even via the north face when frozen.
Resistance too, I guess.
Of course I never had to put it into practice and much more important for eg aircrew and SF where I'm sure the note-taking was more rigorous than ours.
All pretty shit, that said, for an international passenger service, but notable nonetheless.
And King's X as an area is way more interesting than the boring stuff around the French terminal. Gare du Nord can be really sketchy, as well
It also gave me an idea the other day, for my job, that was superb. A simple idea, but also brilliant (partly because it was so simple) yet it hadn't occurred to me at all
For the next ten years we may be in a sweet spot when AI is just a fantastic and ever improving assistant and collaborator Then GPT8 will kill everyone, natch
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-65297070
Those charming mademoiselles a few years back, though.. ;,)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Collins_(British_Army_soldier)
He claimed the SAS training broke him psychologically and in a way he never recovered (even though he passed). I didn't believe him, but then he went and topped himself, so maybe there was something in it. Of course the SAS attracts weird people anyway. Growing up in Hereford I met many of them
This suggests I might be right:
https://www.euronews.com/2023/01/15/crime-in-paris-falls-but-still-not-a-positive-situation-say-police
"Possession of Ireland is our peculiar punishment, our unique affliction, among the family of nations. What crime have we committed, with what particular vice is our national character chargeable, that this chastisement should have befallen us?"
"England knows Ireland as well as a man knows the corn that has afflicted his spirit from early youth"
"The sooner they are gone the better"
"An Orangeman values his religion chiefly for ... making his enemies uncomfortable"
France is in many ways more progressed than post-Thatcherite Britain, but its inter-ethnic atmosphere most definitely is not.
So there is an intrinsic edginess which you don't get in London, which is racially mixed almost everywhere
That said, London has got dodgier too in recent years: bike and phone thefts are off the dial
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65301099
There's something else. In the Gare De Lyon a few years ago I witnessed a couple of paramilitary-style policemen with boots and dogs, smiling menacingly, suddenly appear and bark at a group of fairly obviously random minority youths ; the real culprit and kerfuffle had been about 10 minutes before.
There's something wrong with the inter-ethnic atmosphere in France.
(I don't disapprove of that policy, by the way)
And yes it's pretty grim, or "vibrant" around the GdN.
Locals pronounce it Harafurd.
Shit hole, as I experienced last May and the French police proved to be tossers once again.
Ronin
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/dover/news/huge-whale-filmed-off-kent-coast-285499/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-65300268
Not sure I’d want to live there these days.
If it’s gone downhill, it’s due to the globalisation and gentrification of the inner quarters.
I liked it best as I discovered it. Still a bit seedy in the second, third and fourth.
IMHO the easiest ‘win’ in education, is the ‘reverse grammar’ school - that is, to remove the bottom 10% and educate them separately. They currently take up a massively disproportionate amount of teacher time in the classroom.
If we are making comparisons to Germany, we also need to look at their excellent technical colleges, which don’t think everyone should do a three-year degree, and see trades and skilled production workers as a national asset.
Maybe the PM and his wife should transfer to hold blind trusts for the entirity of their equity portfolio for anything UK related; the transfer starting the day they get the gig. Looks the only way out of it to me, you can probably include the Chancellor too.
Swiss cities are doing OK but they are small and intensely rich