They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
Such old fashioned thinking @Foxy. Don't you know in modern education and training productivity is determined by the number of boxes you can tick, not whether those who are being trained or educated actually learn anything?
It's all over for this lot. The prospect of 18 months of blocking while they hope something turns up is deeply depressing. If we are talking Tory Bazball, here's an idea. How about a surprise declaration to have a few overs at them while the conditions are dire?
It's all over for this lot. The prospect of 18 months of blocking while they hope something turns up is deeply depressing. If we are talking Tory Bazball, here's an idea. How about a surprise declaration to have a few overs at them while the conditions are dire?
So what’s starmer going to do that’s materially different ?
Swapping Tweedle Dee for Tweedle Dum achieves nothing
He’ll take the advice of Liz Truss and lead the growth coalition.
Biggest guaranteed growth policy: Rejoin the Single Market.
Starmer is the heir to Thatcher.
Yes yes young Eagles a bit of ramping.
But here we are with the “grown ups” in charge and the lie of the land is the same as Truss but with no prospect of much growth.
THe EU can’t provide it as they’re not particularly charging ahead of the UK and are as deep in the mire as we are
Starmer in office will be five years of deciding how many penises a woman can have and bribing doctors to do their jobs. Add in yet another slew of pointless laws and the country will be seizing up.
So again what’s he going to do that’s different?
Run with competence and low expectations is the best we can expect.
The biggest difference between Sir K and Blair is that Blair was super good at the presentation of hope.
This may be circumstance led. Blair stood and won at a time when the government was hated but times were not actually too bad.
Sir K wants to run and lead in times when the government is hated and times are uniformly tough. Good luck.
Tories really have given up the fight, haven't they? All they're left with is: Starmer is a rubbish PM: he's going to bankrupt the country, close down private schools, and be really woke. Oh, and he's just continuity Sunak, so there'll be no change. Make your minds up.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
You sure? Some time back, an O level in French or German was a genuinely useful thing to have to complement one's A-levels when applying to uni or for a job. Same with the basic English and Maths qualifications.
Speaking German might or might not be useful in different circumstances. Having a GCSE German certificate, less so. Abolition would save money and free up more time for learning German.
I have been wondering about this. In theory my daughter passed her GCSE Spanish with the same grade as I got in German 40 years ago. Yet despite having had those 40 years to forget it all, I find this summer that more than 30 years since my last trip to Germany, I can still remember quite a lot. Whereas last summer in Spain my daughter knew nothing more than a few words.
I wonder if that's because modern teaching covers what's on the exam, and nothing more, whereas when I was at school we were taught to speak/understand the language? The syllabus doesn't appear to have changed much. Has how exams are set become much more tightly defined than back then?
I suppose it depends on when you got your grade C. I got Cs in French and German O Level in 77. My French is not bad still to be honest, but I credit the fact that we were started on French in my primary at age 7, purely spoken, very little written or grammar etc, whereas my German I started at age 14 and have virtually forgotten it all.
Grade B for me, but in fact I only took it for 2 years. It was just well taught, in retrospect. I was the same as you for French but didn't really find it that much easier at O Level, but carried on with it to A Level (and what I learned certainly has stuck).
Incidentally I reckon French is probably the only GCSE I could just sit down and pass today without having to relearn anything.
I passed my German O level with a B four decades ago, but managed quite well in Germany last summer, though a fair proportion spoke English back to me. My accent must be terrible.
Cathryn Ross, the new interim joint chief executive of Thames Water and a former head of watchdog Ofwat, is one of several ex-employees working for water companies in senior roles such as strategy, regulation and infrastructure...
The conflict with the public interest is utterly obvious. Privatisation of monopoly utilities, where the regulator is less than draconian, is indefensible. And who would want to buy into an industry with a draconian regulator ?
Before the FAA slipped, it was a draconian regulator, for decades. Airlines flourished and manufacturers *liked* strict regulation. If nothing else, it made the barrier to entry higher and higher.
Providing that regulation doesn’t create a disadvantage to foreign competitors, big companies actually like regulation. Big departments full of compliance people are just added to the customers bill.
Small companies find it hard to compete in such an environment, though.
Water supply is not an undertaking that provides any opportunity for new entrants.
Like other utilities it is madness to try to pretend there can be a market. Or competition.
The water industry is just another set of assets that we sold off because we wanted the cash and then used it for current spending. We frankly have a cheek complaining that people are now using the assets they bought from us in ways we don't like.
Clearly, they have obligations in terms of the supply of water and the treatment of sewage and they can rightly be held to account for those services but how they want to fund their business, whether by debt or additional capital is really a matter for them.
But proper regulation included financial security for companies we cannot afford to go bust. And this is where the regulators have failed. They have failed to risk test the balance sheets against what is, in historical terms, not a particularly large increase in interest rates. The fact this remarkable oversight occurred in an industry where the staff of the water companies and the regulator seem to be interchangeable is concerning.
Who is this "we"? Is there any evidence on the popularity of privatisation over time?
Certainly not DavidL, you or me. Scottish water industry isn't privatised.
No, but it is cash restrained by government as a result with significant adverse consequences for potential development as a result, reducing growth opportunities.
Certainly adverse consequences for potential development of shareholder returns and growth opportunities of bonuses for wannabe Scottish water magnates.
What’s the track record for development and growth during the last 30+ years of privatised English water?
It's all over for this lot. The prospect of 18 months of blocking while they hope something turns up is deeply depressing. If we are talking Tory Bazball, here's an idea. How about a surprise declaration to have a few overs at them while the conditions are dire?
It's all over for this lot. The prospect of 18 months of blocking while they hope something turns up is deeply depressing. If we are talking Tory Bazball, here's an idea. How about a surprise declaration to have a few overs at them while the conditions are dire?
So what’s starmer going to do that’s materially different ?
Swapping Tweedle Dee for Tweedle Dum achieves nothing
As others have mentioned. Not be scandal ridden. Lead a Party that isn't fighting amongst itself. Be a PM with the confidence that there isn't a constant background hum of "we should change the PM". Have a government that is excited and grateful to be in government, rather than treating it as some tiresome obligation. All of these are improvements.
The deck chairs are now in a nice tidy line
But the ships still sinking
"I'm sorry I didn't build you a stronger Tory Party, young Rose."
Hot off the press via a Norwegian fiord, the Sunday Rawnsley:
The Tory leader thinks of himself as a problem-solver and that’s how he’s been projected to the public since he arrived in Downing Street. Competence and delivery were supposed to be the motifs of his premiership.
Here’s the snag. If you are going to market yourself as someone who is good at fixing stuff, you had better be good at fixing stuff. You need to be especially successful at tackling the challenges that you personally identified as mission critical.
The scorecard currently reads five pledges made, zero pledges fulfilled. On the exam he set for himself, he’s a total fail.
The five pledges, originally conceived as a way for the Tories to regain some credibility and trust, have boomeranged on the prime minister. Pollsters report that fewer than one in 10 voters think the government is doing well on reducing inflation, cutting NHS waiting lists, bringing down the national debt or removing asylum seekers who cross the Channel. Mr Sunak’s personal approval ratings, which looked quite good in the circumstances when he took over at Number 10, have tumbled into deeply negative territory.
Having staked the reputation of his premiership on these vows, he has no choice but to pray that his score will be better than nil out of five by the time of the election. Yet even if he gets very lucky and somehow manages to claw his way to five out of five before he has to face the country, he shouldn’t expect to be congratulated. Millions will still be stuck on NHS waiting lists and millions more will have suffered a colossal crunch to their living standards.
At the beginning of the year, Mr Sunak promised he would bring people “peace of mind”. That’s another of Mr Fix-It’s pledges that have come completely unstuck.
It’s over for the Tories. Rawnsley is right and I think there’s no,way back for the Tories.
The only issue is will it be a labour majority or coalition.
What difference will that make ?
Starmer will be continuity Sunak with some tweaks. No ideas, no purpose and no money.
5 more wasted years
Clearly that is the question. When debt is over 100% of GDP, £134 bn has been borrowed in 22/23 and in the first two months of 23/24 you have borrowed £42 bn - £19 bn more than the year before - fiscal promises are worthless both for Rishi and Sir K.
All Sir K can do is under promise and slightly over deliver. And put in some degree of competence and integrity. Neither of those is all that hard. Good luck.
1. Increase taxation on the wealthy* to plug that gap. 2. Same as 1. 3. etc.
(*Yep, that includes me.)
Problem is there is very few places left to tax that isn't already creating Laffer curve issues (see people cutting back work as they hit £50,000 / £100,000)..
And if we are borrowing £21bn a month at the moment where is the money going because it really doesn't seem to be being spent well...
Where is the evidence that Sunak is “very intelligent”?
It all hinges on what you consider intelligence, but I don't doubt that he is far more academically intelligent than most MPs, and has a far stronger work ethic too.
I would class Starmer as undeniably intelligent and with a strong work ethic too.
Not that intelligence is the be all and end all of being a leader. Vision, rhetorical and people skills are lacked by both.
Cathryn Ross, the new interim joint chief executive of Thames Water and a former head of watchdog Ofwat, is one of several ex-employees working for water companies in senior roles such as strategy, regulation and infrastructure...
The conflict with the public interest is utterly obvious. Privatisation of monopoly utilities, where the regulator is less than draconian, is indefensible. And who would want to buy into an industry with a draconian regulator ?
Before the FAA slipped, it was a draconian regulator, for decades. Airlines flourished and manufacturers *liked* strict regulation. If nothing else, it made the barrier to entry higher and higher.
Providing that regulation doesn’t create a disadvantage to foreign competitors, big companies actually like regulation. Big departments full of compliance people are just added to the customers bill.
Small companies find it hard to compete in such an environment, though.
Water supply is not an undertaking that provides any opportunity for new entrants.
Like other utilities it is madness to try to pretend there can be a market. Or competition.
The water industry is just another set of assets that we sold off because we wanted the cash and then used it for current spending. We frankly have a cheek complaining that people are now using the assets they bought from us in ways we don't like.
Clearly, they have obligations in terms of the supply of water and the treatment of sewage and they can rightly be held to account for those services but how they want to fund their business, whether by debt or additional capital is really a matter for them.
But proper regulation included financial security for companies we cannot afford to go bust. And this is where the regulators have failed. They have failed to risk test the balance sheets against what is, in historical terms, not a particularly large increase in interest rates. The fact this remarkable oversight occurred in an industry where the staff of the water companies and the regulator seem to be interchangeable is concerning.
Who is this "we"? Is there any evidence on the popularity of privatisation over time?
The "we" is the people who elected governments who thought selling capital assets to fund short term spending was a good idea. I despair at the level of ignorance and incomprehension that clogs our political discourse and hides the real choices we face. Just as that recent poll in the thread header on here showed that more than half of the population failed to appreciate that a fall in inflation did not mean that prices did not continue to rise we have politics where things are supposedly "paid" for by taxing someone else without regard to the consequences.
So, we have VAT on private school fees without recognising that such a course will increase the cost of providing state education to more pupils by more than the money raised. We have the withdrawal of non Dom status without recognising that the money that won't be spent in this country as a consequence will cost more than the additional tax paid. We have windfall taxes without recognising the adverse consequences for investment in the UK will cost us more in lost employment, economic growth and even taxes paid which somehow "pays" for other indulgences. We have people who think that they "paid" for their pension whilst electing governments of all stripes who ran a ponzi scheme using those taxes for current spending.
But it is so much easier to pretend than to have serious politics and real hard choices.
You listed a load of policies on the left you disagree with. And I'm not going to argue against you, other than to point out that you could balance that list with one from the right where this government seems to write policies with Crayons.
I'm a capitalist - borrow, invest, deliver a return on investment. Its a fairly simple proposition. The problem is that we stopped being capitalists a while back - replaced it with bankism and now spivism. It started Brown gave an ocean of cash to the likes of Asda in the form of wage subsidies ("working families tax credits"). He was right that people were working flat out and couldn't pay their bills. But came up with a method which just burns cash.
So, a firm policy proposal. We have a low-productivity poorly trained workforce. So have businesses only able to benefit from low CTax rates if they invest in people and training. You need to invest to get the return on that investment - both in a happier more productive workforce, and in a tax cut. Not just "here is some money you spiv bastards" as we now do.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
You sure? Some time back, an O level in French or German was a genuinely useful thing to have to complement one's A-levels when applying to uni or for a job. Same with the basic English and Maths qualifications.
Speaking German might or might not be useful in different circumstances. Having a GCSE German certificate, less so. Abolition would save money and free up more time for learning German.
I have been wondering about this. In theory my daughter passed her GCSE Spanish with the same grade as I got in German 40 years ago. Yet despite having had those 40 years to forget it all, I find this summer that more than 30 years since my last trip to Germany, I can still remember quite a lot. Whereas last summer in Spain my daughter knew nothing more than a few words.
I wonder if that's because modern teaching covers what's on the exam, and nothing more, whereas when I was at school we were taught to speak/understand the language? The syllabus doesn't appear to have changed much. Has how exams are set become much more tightly defined than back then?
Before travelling abroad I leaarn what to say so that I can order coffee and beer. That's usually sufficient.
That time you got a cerveza with a shot of café solo though..
For various reasons I quit booze a few years ago, and have spent the last couple moaning that I can't try out the current crop of coffee infused stouts from craft brewers and even Guinness. But now...loads of non/lo alcohol brands have popped up and loads are vegan as well, so that espresso and beer combo is alive and kicking!
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
Surely GCSEs cover wider areas of study, and A-levels narrower? If you do nine GCSEs and three A-levels, then the GCSEs indicate your breadth of knowledge outside the A-levels you chose?
I'm not saying children should start school at 16, so the broad education can still take place. However, GCSEs as a qualification are no longer interesting or useful like they used to be when most people left school at 16.
Must be in England only, people still leave at 16 in Scotland and if going into further education in colleges need GCSE's.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
When they are Steve Austining me back together after my next motorcycle accident I really hope the Propofol is being administered by an "Anaesthesia Associate". An ex-Costa barista who's watched a Canva presentation on the subject.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
You sure? Some time back, an O level in French or German was a genuinely useful thing to have to complement one's A-levels when applying to uni or for a job. Same with the basic English and Maths qualifications.
Speaking German might or might not be useful in different circumstances. Having a GCSE German certificate, less so. Abolition would save money and free up more time for learning German.
I have been wondering about this. In theory my daughter passed her GCSE Spanish with the same grade as I got in German 40 years ago. Yet despite having had those 40 years to forget it all, I find this summer that more than 30 years since my last trip to Germany, I can still remember quite a lot. Whereas last summer in Spain my daughter knew nothing more than a few words.
I wonder if that's because modern teaching covers what's on the exam, and nothing more, whereas when I was at school we were taught to speak/understand the language? The syllabus doesn't appear to have changed much. Has how exams are set become much more tightly defined than back then?
I suppose it depends on when you got your grade C. I got Cs in French and German O Level in 77. My French is not bad still to be honest, but I credit the fact that we were started on French in my primary at age 7, purely spoken, very little written or grammar etc, whereas my German I started at age 14 and have virtually forgotten it all.
Grade B for me, but in fact I only took it for 2 years. It was just well taught, in retrospect. I was the same as you for French but didn't really find it that much easier at O Level, but carried on with it to A Level (and what I learned certainly has stuck).
Incidentally I reckon French is probably the only GCSE I could just sit down and pass today without having to relearn anything.
I passed my German O level with a B four decades ago, but managed quite well in Germany last summer, though a fair proportion spoke English back to me. My accent must be terrible.
[swaggering] Man, I got GCSE grade As in both French AND German!
Cathryn Ross, the new interim joint chief executive of Thames Water and a former head of watchdog Ofwat, is one of several ex-employees working for water companies in senior roles such as strategy, regulation and infrastructure...
The conflict with the public interest is utterly obvious. Privatisation of monopoly utilities, where the regulator is less than draconian, is indefensible. And who would want to buy into an industry with a draconian regulator ?
Before the FAA slipped, it was a draconian regulator, for decades. Airlines flourished and manufacturers *liked* strict regulation. If nothing else, it made the barrier to entry higher and higher.
Providing that regulation doesn’t create a disadvantage to foreign competitors, big companies actually like regulation. Big departments full of compliance people are just added to the customers bill.
Small companies find it hard to compete in such an environment, though.
Water supply is not an undertaking that provides any opportunity for new entrants.
Like other utilities it is madness to try to pretend there can be a market. Or competition.
But electricity, at least, HAS seen new entrants to the market.
Yes and they had similar models and we had to pay billions to bail them out as well.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
Surely GCSEs cover wider areas of study, and A-levels narrower? If you do nine GCSEs and three A-levels, then the GCSEs indicate your breadth of knowledge outside the A-levels you chose?
I'm not saying children should start school at 16, so the broad education can still take place. However, GCSEs as a qualification are no longer interesting or useful like they used to be when most people left school at 16.
Must be in England only, people still leave at 16 in Scotland and if going into further education in colleges need GCSE's.
Correct.
"If you turn 16 between 1 March and 30 September you can leave school after 31 May of that year.
If you turn 16 between 1 October and the end of February you can leave at the start of the Christmas holidays in that school year."
So, actually you can leave at 15 in certain circumstances.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
There are multiple reasons for why the poor don't cook but I main one is that the last time cooking was taught in school as an actual subject was in 1987. Since then it's been a home economics course that reduced cooking time to as little as possible to reduce costs.
So if you come from a family like mine where my mum didn't cook because she hadn't been taught to unless chances are no one else will have taught you.
One seemingly strange thing that Surestart did around here was to provide cookery lessons - which were well attended.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
You sure? Some time back, an O level in French or German was a genuinely useful thing to have to complement one's A-levels when applying to uni or for a job. Same with the basic English and Maths qualifications.
Speaking German might or might not be useful in different circumstances. Having a GCSE German certificate, less so. Abolition would save money and free up more time for learning German.
I have been wondering about this. In theory my daughter passed her GCSE Spanish with the same grade as I got in German 40 years ago. Yet despite having had those 40 years to forget it all, I find this summer that more than 30 years since my last trip to Germany, I can still remember quite a lot. Whereas last summer in Spain my daughter knew nothing more than a few words.
I wonder if that's because modern teaching covers what's on the exam, and nothing more, whereas when I was at school we were taught to speak/understand the language? The syllabus doesn't appear to have changed much. Has how exams are set become much more tightly defined than back then?
tbh I thought it was supposed to be the other way round, with language teaching now concentrating on actually speaking conversational French (or whatever) whereas in the bad old days it was more about learning lists of conjugations and declensions and translating written texts. The PBer to ask is @Dura_Ace who does it for a living, or possibly @NickPalmer. If I had to guess based on what you describe, perhaps school-level oral Spanish depends on getting the right cues from the native speakers, and your daughter didn't.
Could we combine 1 and 2 and send our pensioners to Rwanda? The state pension would stretch a lot further there - heating bills are zero - and we have already established that Rwanda is a land of unprecedented opportunities with an unblemished human rights record so nobody could possibly object to being sent there. I bet they've got trad toilets, too. It's a 3 in 1 policy with something for everybody, Tory victory nailed on.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
Fact they need degree to be a nurse now is ridiculous , fine for the high end roles etc but for the vast majority of the roles it has no need whatsoever to have a degree. Many of them do little to no nursing.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
When my girlfriend went into labour with my son she was admitted onto a ward and I was with her, there were three nurses at the ward central desk. Getting one of them to come check her was hard. I kept asking as she was in a lot of pain. They seemed more interested in one of the nurses holiday photo's. It actually got to the point that I went up to see them after trying to get her looked at for two hours politely that I basically had to get a bit stroppy. I got eye rolls but one did come over and then all hell let loose and she was wheeled off hurriedly as they suddenly realised she was about to give birth on the ward....yeah wasn't too impressed by the level of care
Cathryn Ross, the new interim joint chief executive of Thames Water and a former head of watchdog Ofwat, is one of several ex-employees working for water companies in senior roles such as strategy, regulation and infrastructure...
The conflict with the public interest is utterly obvious. Privatisation of monopoly utilities, where the regulator is less than draconian, is indefensible. And who would want to buy into an industry with a draconian regulator ?
Before the FAA slipped, it was a draconian regulator, for decades. Airlines flourished and manufacturers *liked* strict regulation. If nothing else, it made the barrier to entry higher and higher.
Providing that regulation doesn’t create a disadvantage to foreign competitors, big companies actually like regulation. Big departments full of compliance people are just added to the customers bill.
Small companies find it hard to compete in such an environment, though.
Water supply is not an undertaking that provides any opportunity for new entrants.
Like other utilities it is madness to try to pretend there can be a market. Or competition.
The water industry is just another set of assets that we sold off because we wanted the cash and then used it for current spending. We frankly have a cheek complaining that people are now using the assets they bought from us in ways we don't like.
Clearly, they have obligations in terms of the supply of water and the treatment of sewage and they can rightly be held to account for those services but how they want to fund their business, whether by debt or additional capital is really a matter for them.
But proper regulation included financial security for companies we cannot afford to go bust. And this is where the regulators have failed. They have failed to risk test the balance sheets against what is, in historical terms, not a particularly large increase in interest rates. The fact this remarkable oversight occurred in an industry where the staff of the water companies and the regulator seem to be interchangeable is concerning.
Who is this "we"? Is there any evidence on the popularity of privatisation over time?
The "we" is the people who elected governments who thought selling capital assets to fund short term spending was a good idea. I despair at the level of ignorance and incomprehension that clogs our political discourse and hides the real choices we face. Just as that recent poll in the thread header on here showed that more than half of the population failed to appreciate that a fall in inflation did not mean that prices did not continue to rise we have politics where things are supposedly "paid" for by taxing someone else without regard to the consequences.
So, we have VAT on private school fees without recognising that such a course will increase the cost of providing state education to more pupils by more than the money raised. We have the withdrawal of non Dom status without recognising that the money that won't be spent in this country as a consequence will cost more than the additional tax paid. We have windfall taxes without recognising the adverse consequences for investment in the UK will cost us more in lost employment, economic growth and even taxes paid which somehow "pays" for other indulgences. We have people who think that they "paid" for their pension whilst electing governments of all stripes who ran a ponzi scheme using those taxes for current spending.
But it is so much easier to pretend than to have serious politics and real hard choices.
You listed a load of policies on the left you disagree with. And I'm not going to argue against you, other than to point out that you could balance that list with one from the right where this government seems to write policies with Crayons.
I'm a capitalist - borrow, invest, deliver a return on investment. Its a fairly simple proposition. The problem is that we stopped being capitalists a while back - replaced it with bankism and now spivism. It started Brown gave an ocean of cash to the likes of Asda in the form of wage subsidies ("working families tax credits"). He was right that people were working flat out and couldn't pay their bills. But came up with a method which just burns cash.
So, a firm policy proposal. We have a low-productivity poorly trained workforce. So have businesses only able to benefit from low CTax rates if they invest in people and training. You need to invest to get the return on that investment - both in a happier more productive workforce, and in a tax cut. Not just "here is some money you spiv bastards" as we now do.
Oh I agree the current government is not any better. The Rwanda policy is a disgraceful waste of money as well as being deeply immoral. The deliberate antagonism of the Johnson government towards deals with the EU was self defeating and stupid. The penny wise pound foolish policies are by no means just a feature of the left. The focus on very comfortable elderly voters at the cost of those starting out is appalling. The housing polices have been a disaster.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
You sure? Some time back, an O level in French or German was a genuinely useful thing to have to complement one's A-levels when applying to uni or for a job. Same with the basic English and Maths qualifications.
Speaking German might or might not be useful in different circumstances. Having a GCSE German certificate, less so. Abolition would save money and free up more time for learning German.
I have been wondering about this. In theory my daughter passed her GCSE Spanish with the same grade as I got in German 40 years ago. Yet despite having had those 40 years to forget it all, I find this summer that more than 30 years since my last trip to Germany, I can still remember quite a lot. Whereas last summer in Spain my daughter knew nothing more than a few words.
I wonder if that's because modern teaching covers what's on the exam, and nothing more, whereas when I was at school we were taught to speak/understand the language? The syllabus doesn't appear to have changed much. Has how exams are set become much more tightly defined than back then?
tbh I thought it was supposed to be the other way round, with language teaching now concentrating on actually speaking conversational French (or whatever) whereas in the bad old days it was more about learning lists of conjugations and declensions and translating written texts. The PBer to ask is @Dura_Ace who does it for a living, or possibly @NickPalmer. If I had to guess based on what you describe, perhaps school-level oral Spanish depends on getting the right cues from the native speakers, and your daughter didn't.
Don't know anything about languages. But the rule for all GCSE's is this. You are taught to pass the GCSE exam.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
Let's shorten that to a couple of sentences. When I was in hospital I observed some staff not working in the way I thought they should be working - from that I'm extrapolating a whole set of points to justify an idea the Tory party came up with last week..
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
You sure? Some time back, an O level in French or German was a genuinely useful thing to have to complement one's A-levels when applying to uni or for a job. Same with the basic English and Maths qualifications.
Speaking German might or might not be useful in different circumstances. Having a GCSE German certificate, less so. Abolition would save money and free up more time for learning German.
I have been wondering about this. In theory my daughter passed her GCSE Spanish with the same grade as I got in German 40 years ago. Yet despite having had those 40 years to forget it all, I find this summer that more than 30 years since my last trip to Germany, I can still remember quite a lot. Whereas last summer in Spain my daughter knew nothing more than a few words.
I wonder if that's because modern teaching covers what's on the exam, and nothing more, whereas when I was at school we were taught to speak/understand the language? The syllabus doesn't appear to have changed much. Has how exams are set become much more tightly defined than back then?
I suppose it depends on when you got your grade C. I got Cs in French and German O Level in 77. My French is not bad still to be honest, but I credit the fact that we were started on French in my primary at age 7, purely spoken, very little written or grammar etc, whereas my German I started at age 14 and have virtually forgotten it all.
Grade B for me, but in fact I only took it for 2 years. It was just well taught, in retrospect. I was the same as you for French but didn't really find it that much easier at O Level, but carried on with it to A Level (and what I learned certainly has stuck).
Incidentally I reckon French is probably the only GCSE I could just sit down and pass today without having to relearn anything.
I passed my German O level with a B four decades ago, but managed quite well in Germany last summer, though a fair proportion spoke English back to me. My accent must be terrible.
[swaggering] Man, I got GCSE grade As in both French AND German!
Game recognise game and you're looking kinda unfamiliar right now.
O-Level French Grade A at age 14 A-Level French Grade A at age 16 (and O-Level German Grade A)
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
You sure? Some time back, an O level in French or German was a genuinely useful thing to have to complement one's A-levels when applying to uni or for a job. Same with the basic English and Maths qualifications.
Speaking German might or might not be useful in different circumstances. Having a GCSE German certificate, less so. Abolition would save money and free up more time for learning German.
I have been wondering about this. In theory my daughter passed her GCSE Spanish with the same grade as I got in German 40 years ago. Yet despite having had those 40 years to forget it all, I find this summer that more than 30 years since my last trip to Germany, I can still remember quite a lot. Whereas last summer in Spain my daughter knew nothing more than a few words.
I wonder if that's because modern teaching covers what's on the exam, and nothing more, whereas when I was at school we were taught to speak/understand the language? The syllabus doesn't appear to have changed much. Has how exams are set become much more tightly defined than back then?
I suppose it depends on when you got your grade C. I got Cs in French and German O Level in 77. My French is not bad still to be honest, but I credit the fact that we were started on French in my primary at age 7, purely spoken, very little written or grammar etc, whereas my German I started at age 14 and have virtually forgotten it all.
Grade B for me, but in fact I only took it for 2 years. It was just well taught, in retrospect. I was the same as you for French but didn't really find it that much easier at O Level, but carried on with it to A Level (and what I learned certainly has stuck).
Incidentally I reckon French is probably the only GCSE I could just sit down and pass today without having to relearn anything.
I passed my German O level with a B four decades ago, but managed quite well in Germany last summer, though a fair proportion spoke English back to me. My accent must be terrible.
[swaggering] Man, I got GCSE grade As in both French AND German!
I was taught French by a Welshman and it's possible I still speak it with a pronounced Welsh accent but my interlocutors are too polite to mention the fact.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
You sure? Some time back, an O level in French or German was a genuinely useful thing to have to complement one's A-levels when applying to uni or for a job. Same with the basic English and Maths qualifications.
Speaking German might or might not be useful in different circumstances. Having a GCSE German certificate, less so. Abolition would save money and free up more time for learning German.
I have been wondering about this. In theory my daughter passed her GCSE Spanish with the same grade as I got in German 40 years ago. Yet despite having had those 40 years to forget it all, I find this summer that more than 30 years since my last trip to Germany, I can still remember quite a lot. Whereas last summer in Spain my daughter knew nothing more than a few words.
I wonder if that's because modern teaching covers what's on the exam, and nothing more, whereas when I was at school we were taught to speak/understand the language? The syllabus doesn't appear to have changed much. Has how exams are set become much more tightly defined than back then?
tbh I thought it was supposed to be the other way round, with language teaching now concentrating on actually speaking conversational French (or whatever) whereas in the bad old days it was more about learning lists of conjugations and declensions and translating written texts. The PBer to ask is @Dura_Ace who does it for a living, or possibly @NickPalmer. If I had to guess based on what you describe, perhaps school-level oral Spanish depends on getting the right cues from the native speakers, and your daughter didn't.
Don't know anything about languages. But the rule for all GCSE's is this. You are taught to pass the GCSE exam.
Because the size of the GCSE syllabus is such that there is just about enough time in the 5 terms available to cover all the areas in just enough detail to be able to answer the question...
@ydoethur will no doubt be along later and confirm that point...
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Cathryn Ross, the new interim joint chief executive of Thames Water and a former head of watchdog Ofwat, is one of several ex-employees working for water companies in senior roles such as strategy, regulation and infrastructure...
The conflict with the public interest is utterly obvious. Privatisation of monopoly utilities, where the regulator is less than draconian, is indefensible. And who would want to buy into an industry with a draconian regulator ?
Before the FAA slipped, it was a draconian regulator, for decades. Airlines flourished and manufacturers *liked* strict regulation. If nothing else, it made the barrier to entry higher and higher.
Providing that regulation doesn’t create a disadvantage to foreign competitors, big companies actually like regulation. Big departments full of compliance people are just added to the customers bill.
Small companies find it hard to compete in such an environment, though.
Water supply is not an undertaking that provides any opportunity for new entrants.
Like other utilities it is madness to try to pretend there can be a market. Or competition.
The water industry is just another set of assets that we sold off because we wanted the cash and then used it for current spending. We frankly have a cheek complaining that people are now using the assets they bought from us in ways we don't like.
Clearly, they have obligations in terms of the supply of water and the treatment of sewage and they can rightly be held to account for those services but how they want to fund their business, whether by debt or additional capital is really a matter for them.
But proper regulation included financial security for companies we cannot afford to go bust. And this is where the regulators have failed. They have failed to risk test the balance sheets against what is, in historical terms, not a particularly large increase in interest rates. The fact this remarkable oversight occurred in an industry where the staff of the water companies and the regulator seem to be interchangeable is concerning.
Who is this "we"? Is there any evidence on the popularity of privatisation over time?
Certainly not DavidL, you or me. Scottish water industry isn't privatised.
No, but it is cash restrained by government as a result with significant adverse consequences for potential development as a result, reducing growth opportunities.
Certainly adverse consequences for potential development of shareholder returns and growth opportunities of bonuses for wannabe Scottish water magnates.
What’s the track record for development and growth during the last 30+ years of privatised English water?
Surprise surprise Scottish Water does not have £60B debt either, may not be perfect but a million miles better than the ponzi scheme at Westminster.
Stocky, I missed the second half of your question, sorry just re-read it. What makes me think a LP Government would satisfy me more?
Pretty much nothing to be honest. I do not trust Labour as far as I could throw them, and as far as extracting the efforts of those who are working and transferring it to those who are preferred interests then I think Labour could be every bit as bad as the Tories are. So I'm not exactly keen on Labour winning.
Though if my efforts are to be taxed and redistributed to others anyway, then I'd rather that redistribution goes to fund the less fortunate than fund those who want to ensure their inheritance is as big as possible. So Labour becomes the lesser of two evils.
And at least on housing, SKS is making the right noises. He's at least pretending he gets it. Whether he does or not, I don't know.
But I've always been an advocate of better the devil you don't know. If we know the Tories are going to be bad, then its time for a change.
Labour haven't yet won my vote though, but it is certainly open to them for the first time in decades.
IMO, and I feel I know you reasonably well and are not too far away from you ideologically on most things, it would be a big mistake to vote Labour. Disaffected Tories like you should surely stop off at at the LibDems??
Not if they are Leavers who want more housing in the greenbelt like Bart, the LDs were anti Brexit and are the most NIMBY of the 3 main parties too
I don't believe that the LDs are more "nimby" than the other parties - it's just a stance to win particular constituency elections. Environmentalists, who are sometimes accused of being nimby, actually do not want mass house-building in any green area of the UK. Not in anyone's back yard. As for the others, why is nimby a derogatory term anyway? I always think less of those that use it. Of course people want to look after their own area and, by extension, their country.
The principal objections to the development are (a) new residents would have to drive down pre-existing streets and (b) loss of dog-crapping space.
As a general point, political questions about new development come up early in almost every political career. Campaigning against new development is one thing that you need to do to get elected - it is in the same category as reporting potholes. Because it is something that matters to voters. I don't see how this will ever change. In many ways it is a necessary part of the process, because often it leads to improvements in developments and compromises being struck.
The problem with developments is that there is nothing like enough. We have a shortfall of 3 million homes, so people are compelled to live within crappy sublets of a house rather than having a home of their own.
It can change by a government having the cojones of removing the political process out of development. Liberalising the system, Japan style, so that politicians do not get a say in what people do with residential zoned land.
It should be no more up to politicians what someone does with their own land, so long as it's within regulations, than it is up to them what stock a supermarket sells subject to same caveat.
That's fine for one house. Scale it up to 5,000 houses and suddenly you face a shortage of doctors, dentists, shops, bus stops, schools and so on.
No, you really don't.
Houses don't need schools, children do. Houses don't need doctors, patients do. Houses don't need dentiss, bust stops, shops and so on - people do.
If 12 people are living in a single house because there's a housing shortage they need the same number of doctors, teachers etc as those 12 people living in three or four different houses.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
That's 100% activity fallacy. On those grounds you'd abolish 99% of prison warders. They do nowt but sit around. There's only a riot or an assault every so often.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
A lot of people have a fear of the unknown and cooking for them is an unknown - especially if you aren't confident in reading or maths..
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
On care from "associates" there is presumably already data, assuming patients are given the choice of whether their appendix is lopped off by an associate or a real surgeon (or more likely an FY1 trainee real surgeon, as I can't imagine consultants bothering with such simple procedures).
On shorter degrees, well, graduate-entry medicine courses are typically only four rather than five years long, so why not give everyone the shorter course? It's not as if they save a year on the 4-year course by leaving out the left leg.
Where is the evidence that Sunak is “very intelligent”?
He was head boy at Winchester, he got a first at Oxford, he was a Fulbright scholar, he got an MBA at Stanford, he had a very successful career in financial services, there is quite a lot of evidence of his intelligence. None of this necessarily makes him good at politics though.
Could we combine 1 and 2 and send our pensioners to Rwanda? The state pension would stretch a lot further there - heating bills are zero - and we have already established that Rwanda is a land of unprecedented opportunities with an unblemished human rights record so nobody could possibly object to being sent there. I bet they've got trad toilets, too. It's a 3 in 1 policy with something for everybody, Tory victory nailed on.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Simply put too many prefer to sit on their ass watching Jeremey kyle etc and tap a phone to order deliveroo. Then complain they can't afford to eat properly. How hard is it to make mashed potato, grill a few sausages and make some instant gravy......A meal that costs little compared to a big mac?
People need to help themselves a bit not just whinge that they need more money and its not their fault they don't eat healthily.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Its a luxury because people aren't going hungry, so there's no "need" to learn as much as people had to in the past.
That's not such a bad thing.
A bag of apples costs less than a bag of crisps but people like crisps so choose to buy them.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
A lot of people have a fear of the unknown and cooking for them is an unknown - especially if you aren't confident in reading or maths..
That is bollocks, learn to read and you don't need any maths , you read a recipe and use a measuring tool, spoon , jug etc. Anyone who wants to can do it even by trial and error. It is bone idleness as it is far easier to phone deliveroo or go into Burger King etc.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
That's 100% activity fallacy. On those grounds you'd abolish 99% of prison warders. They do nowt but sit around. There's only a riot or an assault every so often.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
Fact they need degree to be a nurse now is ridiculous , fine for the high end roles etc but for the vast majority of the roles it has no need whatsoever to have a degree. Many of them do little to no nursing.
It is a bit ridiculous but a nursing degree takes three years, and the old SRN (state-registered nurse) courses took three years so it's a wash. It is now they qualify by getting a degree in nursing rather than that they need a degree in history before they can start training to be a nurse, so it is more like medicine than law in that regard. (That said, there were other advantages to the old system, like no graduate debt for a start.)
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
That's 100% activity fallacy. On those grounds you'd abolish 99% of prison warders. They do nowt but sit around. There's only a riot or an assault every so often.
No, it is making good use of expensive resources. Which our current NHS management seem incapable of achieving.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
Let's shorten that to a couple of sentences. When I was in hospital I observed some staff not working in the way I thought they should be working - from that I'm extrapolating a whole set of points to justify an idea the Tory party came up with last week..
They didn't really come up with it, they pinched it from Labour. But that doesn't make it a bad idea.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
It is actually people like you that are the problem in my view. You would rather make excuses and enable them to act like infants that can't do anything than actually give them a slap round the head and say grow up. Are there people that couldn't learn sure there are and they deserve all the help we can give. We can't afford that though because people like you would much rather use poor people as a tool to attack the government about giving the poor too little than helping them become adults.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
High level medical care is one of the few professions where a medieval apprenticeship system continues to exist, so that yes - there are limits.
During my recent 3 weeks in hospital I had so many clinicians appearing that it was almost like Dwarves coming to the Hobbit's Tea Party, with the Big Doctor Thorin Oakenshield (presumably Dr Fox equivalent) standing at the back doing the talking or the supervising, and on several occasions medical students or trainee doctors were told off to interview me to then give a summary of my condition and clinical history to their senior Doctor as it was (I assume) an interesting case.
Essentially I had what were normally skin-surface bugs get in through my skin due to decreased resistance due to leukemia falling out of remission, causing multisite absysses, which could not be treated surgically (lance, drain, pack with gauze, dress and send home as a day case in a surgical unit would be normal) due to my slow healing habit (Type I Diabetes) which would take time to heal from surgery and delay re-application of the planned leukemia treatment by a couple of months.
So they treated it instead with a 2 week course of large amounts of Infused Antibiotics. Hate to think what it would cost in the USA, but there were well over 100 doses of infusion, plus 10 or more blood transfusions to boost one of the types of blood cells. Each infusion taking 1-3 hours at 6am, 2pm and 10pm.
One thing that was interesting was that Nursing staff were quite relaxed about me de-alarming infusion pumps at midnight *, whilst Heath Care Assistants, who do the more basic nursing care that was done by nurses up until required nursing degrees came in and are themselves basically banned from touching said syringe driver, occasionally got a touch stroppy about it. Health care is procedural and hierarchical, and that is to institutionalise avoidance of simple errors that hurt people.
A good example of a simple error is giving someone the wrong blood group in an infusion, which can be serious - though apparently I am the group that can take anything and can never be given to anyone else !
(*) Background is that an infusion pump goes off like a fire alarm every two minutes once it is within 15 minutes of finishing, and that is loud enough to wake up other patients. They have a button which stops the alarm sounding. Each level of the hierarchy is defensive of its privileges - usually for good reasons.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Can we have the recipe for the pomegranate and goats cheese mousse?
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
Fact they need degree to be a nurse now is ridiculous , fine for the high end roles etc but for the vast majority of the roles it has no need whatsoever to have a degree. Many of them do little to no nursing.
Yes, but there is no one else to do it Malcolm, that is the problem. As I said all chiefs and no Indians. Its not an unusual problem. We have clerks in my work who are highly trained and very well paid. They spend a lot of their time opening mail, binding up papers to return to agents, printing stuff off etc. But we don't have enough junior staff to do all that nonsense for them.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
Surely GCSEs cover wider areas of study, and A-levels narrower? If you do nine GCSEs and three A-levels, then the GCSEs indicate your breadth of knowledge outside the A-levels you chose?
I'm not saying children should start school at 16, so the broad education can still take place. However, GCSEs as a qualification are no longer interesting or useful like they used to be when most people left school at 16.
Must be in England only, people still leave at 16 in Scotland and if going into further education in colleges need GCSE's.
Correct.
"If you turn 16 between 1 March and 30 September you can leave school after 31 May of that year.
If you turn 16 between 1 October and the end of February you can leave at the start of the Christmas holidays in that school year."
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
That's 100% activity fallacy. On those grounds you'd abolish 99% of prison warders. They do nowt but sit around. There's only a riot or an assault every so often.
No, it is making good use of expensive resources. Which our current NHS management seem incapable of achieving.
OK. So you ensure every nurse is busy performing urgent care tasks appropriate to a qualified nurse 100% of the time. Who deals with a multiple pile up or a terrorist attack?
It’s not a blow to Sunak, but rather another example of our offshoring the benefits of U.K. research and development.
Free market, open investment, and zero effective industrial policy, together regularly mean we lose businesses overseas after they start up here. In a similar manner to that in which we’ve allowed much of the benefits of running privatised monopolies to go offshore.
Clearly the opposite if all this - statist policies - isn’t really the answer either. But the consensus Thatcher established has proven economically malign for much of the country. Those at the center of power have done fine out of it, so I’m not sure many of them are really even fully aware of the process - or they don’t give a damn.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Simply put too many prefer to sit on their ass watching Jeremey kyle etc and tap a phone to order deliveroo. Then complain they can't afford to eat properly. How hard is it to make mashed potato, grill a few sausages and make some instant gravy......A meal that costs little compared to a big mac?
People need to help themselves a bit not just whinge that they need more money and its not their fault they don't eat healthily.
You're just restating the point. I get it. People are lazy. Why are they lazy? Were they always this way or was there... how can I put this?... some golden age when you were younger when people were better?
There was indeed, back in the mists of time if you did not work you did not eat, there was no free money for gazillions of reasons, no free rents, council tax, tax credits , and the million other stupid ideas since. They are indulged to be lazy by free money.
It's all over for this lot. The prospect of 18 months of blocking while they hope something turns up is deeply depressing. If we are talking Tory Bazball, here's an idea. How about a surprise declaration to have a few overs at them while the conditions are dire?
It's all over for this lot. The prospect of 18 months of blocking while they hope something turns up is deeply depressing. If we are talking Tory Bazball, here's an idea. How about a surprise declaration to have a few overs at them while the conditions are dire?
So what’s starmer going to do that’s materially different ?
Swapping Tweedle Dee for Tweedle Dum achieves nothing
He’ll take the advice of Liz Truss and lead the growth coalition.
Biggest guaranteed growth policy: Rejoin the Single Market.
Starmer is the heir to Thatcher.
Yes yes young Eagles a bit of ramping.
But here we are with the “grown ups” in charge and the lie of the land is the same as Truss but with no prospect of much growth.
THe EU can’t provide it as they’re not particularly charging ahead of the UK and are as deep in the mire as we are
Starmer in office will be five years of deciding how many penises a woman can have and bribing doctors to do their jobs. Add in yet another slew of pointless laws and the country will be seizing up.
So again what’s he going to do that’s different?
The difference is we KNOW the Tories are clueless, we are living the reality. On the other hand we have PB Tories pontificating that Labour are going to hopeless.
We have CR telling us they are going to be really radical once the election is won and we have you telling us they will be no different to Sunak. In other words you don't really have a clue but are wishcasting according to your own prejudices.
The one group that will take a hit from Labour will be wealthy pensioners. Their unswerving support for the Tories means that they are the one group that Labour will we able to penalise without any electoral consequences for themselves. If Labour do nothing else it will be well overdue and I say that as one of them. Wealthy oldies are about to pay a heavy price.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
One of the harder aspects to train into people is attitude and expectations of supervision. An important part of selection too, and one that we are at risk of diluting.
I think the Nurse Apprentices are great, and in many ways a re-invention of the SEN grade that was wound up 30 years ago. Our Student Nurses on placement from the Uni are far less engaged and hands on.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
Surely GCSEs cover wider areas of study, and A-levels narrower? If you do nine GCSEs and three A-levels, then the GCSEs indicate your breadth of knowledge outside the A-levels you chose?
I'm not saying children should start school at 16, so the broad education can still take place. However, GCSEs as a qualification are no longer interesting or useful like they used to be when most people left school at 16.
Must be in England only, people still leave at 16 in Scotland and if going into further education in colleges need GCSE's.
Correct.
"If you turn 16 between 1 March and 30 September you can leave school after 31 May of that year.
If you turn 16 between 1 October and the end of February you can leave at the start of the Christmas holidays in that school year."
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
That's 100% activity fallacy. On those grounds you'd abolish 99% of prison warders. They do nowt but sit around. There's only a riot or an assault every so often.
No, it is making good use of expensive resources. Which our current NHS management seem incapable of achieving.
OK. So you ensure every nurse is busy performing urgent care tasks appropriate to a qualified nurse 100% of the time. Who deals with a multiple pile up or a terrorist attack?
You would never get to 100% but there are many tasks that could be done by sei skilled people rather than nurses. They could be funded by the gazillions they currently pay for agency staff who cannot possibly be productive turning up for a few days here or there.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Simply put too many prefer to sit on their ass watching Jeremey kyle etc and tap a phone to order deliveroo. Then complain they can't afford to eat properly. How hard is it to make mashed potato, grill a few sausages and make some instant gravy......A meal that costs little compared to a big mac?
People need to help themselves a bit not just whinge that they need more money and its not their fault they don't eat healthily.
You're just restating the point. I get it. People are lazy. Why are they lazy? Were they always this way or was there... how can I put this?... some golden age when you were younger when people were better?
It wasn't a golden age, it was however an age where if you whinged about it you got no where and had to learn to do stuff to make the money last.
You are from the give a man a fish school of thought I am from the teach a man to fish school of thought
When I grew up you had to learn to fish, since the mid 90's though society has seemed to pivot to the give a man a fish school. Nothing is anyones fault.....don't eat decently its because the government/your employer doesn't give you enough etc. No sorry totally and utterly their fault
It's all over for this lot. The prospect of 18 months of blocking while they hope something turns up is deeply depressing. If we are talking Tory Bazball, here's an idea. How about a surprise declaration to have a few overs at them while the conditions are dire?
It's all over for this lot. The prospect of 18 months of blocking while they hope something turns up is deeply depressing. If we are talking Tory Bazball, here's an idea. How about a surprise declaration to have a few overs at them while the conditions are dire?
So what’s starmer going to do that’s materially different ?
Swapping Tweedle Dee for Tweedle Dum achieves nothing
It's all over for this lot. The prospect of 18 months of blocking while they hope something turns up is deeply depressing. If we are talking Tory Bazball, here's an idea. How about a surprise declaration to have a few overs at them while the conditions are dire?
It's all over for this lot. The prospect of 18 months of blocking while they hope something turns up is deeply depressing. If we are talking Tory Bazball, here's an idea. How about a surprise declaration to have a few overs at them while the conditions are dire?
So what’s starmer going to do that’s materially different ?
Swapping Tweedle Dee for Tweedle Dum achieves nothing
He’ll take the advice of Liz Truss and lead the growth coalition.
Biggest guaranteed growth policy: Rejoin the Single Market.
Starmer is the heir to Thatcher.
Yes yes young Eagles a bit of ramping.
But here we are with the “grown ups” in charge and the lie of the land is the same as Truss but with no prospect of much growth.
THe EU can’t provide it as they’re not particularly charging ahead of the UK and are as deep in the mire as we are
Starmer in office will be five years of deciding how many penises a woman can have and bribing doctors to do their jobs. Add in yet another slew of pointless laws and the country will be seizing up.
So again what’s he going to do that’s different?
The difference is we KNOW the Tories are clueless, we are living the reality. On the other hand we have PB Tories pontificating that Labour are going to hopeless.
We have CR telling us they are going to be really radical once the election is won and we have you telling us they will be no different to Sunak. In other words you don't really have a clue but are wishcasting according to your own prejudices.
The one group that will take a hit from Labour will be wealthy pensioners. Their unswerving support for the Tories means that they are the one group that Labour will we able to penalise without any electoral consequences for themselves. If Labour do nothing else it will be well overdue and I say that as one of them. Wealthy oldies are about to pay a heavy price.
Agree with the first bit. But your final paragraph is your own wishcasting.
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
A lot of people have a fear of the unknown and cooking for them is an unknown - especially if you aren't confident in reading or maths..
Also, learning to cook takes time and effort that you might not have if you're working long badly-paid hours all the time. And cooking for 4 is the sweet spot for cost and time effectiveness -- cooking for just yourself is not so good.
But it any case, are the poor really worse at cooking than the better off? I found a study -- https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12966-015-0261-x -- which says "Of 509 respondents, almost two-thirds reported cooking a main meal at least five times per week. Around 90 % reported being able to cook convenience foods, a complete meal from ready-made ingredient, and a main dish from basic ingredients without help. Socio-demographic differences in all markers of cooking skills were scattered and inconsistent.".
So it looks like most people can in fact cook "a main dish from basic ingredients", and many do cook five nights a week (when you account for people living together, 2/3rds is a lot of people), and confidence in cooking is not biased to any particular social demographic.
It's all over for this lot. The prospect of 18 months of blocking while they hope something turns up is deeply depressing. If we are talking Tory Bazball, here's an idea. How about a surprise declaration to have a few overs at them while the conditions are dire?
It's all over for this lot. The prospect of 18 months of blocking while they hope something turns up is deeply depressing. If we are talking Tory Bazball, here's an idea. How about a surprise declaration to have a few overs at them while the conditions are dire?
So what’s starmer going to do that’s materially different ?
Swapping Tweedle Dee for Tweedle Dum achieves nothing
It keeps Tweedle Dum honest.
It allows Tweedle Dum the opportunity to look inwards and see how to improve.
It's all over for this lot. The prospect of 18 months of blocking while they hope something turns up is deeply depressing. If we are talking Tory Bazball, here's an idea. How about a surprise declaration to have a few overs at them while the conditions are dire?
It's all over for this lot. The prospect of 18 months of blocking while they hope something turns up is deeply depressing. If we are talking Tory Bazball, here's an idea. How about a surprise declaration to have a few overs at them while the conditions are dire?
So what’s starmer going to do that’s materially different ?
Swapping Tweedle Dee for Tweedle Dum achieves nothing
He’ll take the advice of Liz Truss and lead the growth coalition.
Biggest guaranteed growth policy: Rejoin the Single Market.
Starmer is the heir to Thatcher.
Yes yes young Eagles a bit of ramping.
But here we are with the “grown ups” in charge and the lie of the land is the same as Truss but with no prospect of much growth.
THe EU can’t provide it as they’re not particularly charging ahead of the UK and are as deep in the mire as we are
Starmer in office will be five years of deciding how many penises a woman can have and bribing doctors to do their jobs. Add in yet another slew of pointless laws and the country will be seizing up.
So again what’s he going to do that’s different?
The difference is we KNOW the Tories are clueless, we are living the reality. On the other hand we have PB Tories pontificating that Labour are going to hopeless.
We have CR telling us they are going to be really radical once the election is won and we have you telling us they will be no different to Sunak. In other words you don't really have a clue but are wishcasting according to your own prejudices.
The one group that will take a hit from Labour will be wealthy pensioners. Their unswerving support for the Tories means that they are the one group that Labour will we able to penalise without any electoral consequences for themselves. If Labour do nothing else it will be well overdue and I say that as one of them. Wealthy oldies are about to pay a heavy price.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
Fact they need degree to be a nurse now is ridiculous , fine for the high end roles etc but for the vast majority of the roles it has no need whatsoever to have a degree. Many of them do little to no nursing.
Yes, but there is no one else to do it Malcolm, that is the problem. As I said all chiefs and no Indians. Its not an unusual problem. We have clerks in my work who are highly trained and very well paid. They spend a lot of their time opening mail, binding up papers to return to agents, printing stuff off etc. But we don't have enough junior staff to do all that nonsense for them.
People get too much for doing nothing. If your house and council tax are paid and you get even the minimum allowances on top you will be better off than slogging at a minimum pay job , so it envcourgaes lots to just accept that as a way of life. Not for everybody but an easy life and no worries.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
That's 100% activity fallacy. On those grounds you'd abolish 99% of prison warders. They do nowt but sit around. There's only a riot or an assault every so often.
Sack the Fire Service, lazy bastards!
Quite right - productivity in the fire service is dreadful. Firefighters should be on zero-hours contracts, and can be called in when needed.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
On care from "associates" there is presumably already data, assuming patients are given the choice of whether their appendix is lopped off by an associate or a real surgeon (or more likely an FY1 trainee real surgeon, as I can't imagine consultants bothering with such simple procedures).
On shorter degrees, well, graduate-entry medicine courses are typically only four rather than five years long, so why not give everyone the shorter course? It's not as if they save a year on the 4-year course by leaving out the left leg.
FY1 trainees rarely go to theatre at all, let alone carry out solo procedures. Training in surgery and other practical procedures is very much under direct supervision, so very often appendicectomy is done under direct supervision by a Consultant, or by a senior Trainee within a year or two of becoming Consultant.
Indeed decline of hands on experience of Trainees is a major issue already.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Simply put too many prefer to sit on their ass watching Jeremey kyle etc and tap a phone to order deliveroo. Then complain they can't afford to eat properly. How hard is it to make mashed potato, grill a few sausages and make some instant gravy......A meal that costs little compared to a big mac?
People need to help themselves a bit not just whinge that they need more money and its not their fault they don't eat healthily.
You're just restating the point. I get it. People are lazy. Why are they lazy? Were they always this way or was there... how can I put this?... some golden age when you were younger when people were better?
There was indeed, back in the mists of time if you did not work you did not eat, there was no free money for gazillions of reasons, no free rents, council tax, tax credits , and the million other stupid ideas since. They are indulged to be lazy by free money.
There's some truth in that. Where are the hoards of younger people to replace the EU temporary and seasonal workers on the farms etc? Still in their beds playing play station or xbox or teenage ninja mutant turtles at their university halls....?
It's all over for this lot. The prospect of 18 months of blocking while they hope something turns up is deeply depressing. If we are talking Tory Bazball, here's an idea. How about a surprise declaration to have a few overs at them while the conditions are dire?
It's all over for this lot. The prospect of 18 months of blocking while they hope something turns up is deeply depressing. If we are talking Tory Bazball, here's an idea. How about a surprise declaration to have a few overs at them while the conditions are dire?
So what’s starmer going to do that’s materially different ?
Swapping Tweedle Dee for Tweedle Dum achieves nothing
He’ll take the advice of Liz Truss and lead the growth coalition.
Biggest guaranteed growth policy: Rejoin the Single Market.
Starmer is the heir to Thatcher.
Yes yes young Eagles a bit of ramping.
But here we are with the “grown ups” in charge and the lie of the land is the same as Truss but with no prospect of much growth.
THe EU can’t provide it as they’re not particularly charging ahead of the UK and are as deep in the mire as we are
Starmer in office will be five years of deciding how many penises a woman can have and bribing doctors to do their jobs. Add in yet another slew of pointless laws and the country will be seizing up.
So again what’s he going to do that’s different?
The difference is we KNOW the Tories are clueless, we are living the reality. On the other hand we have PB Tories pontificating that Labour are going to hopeless.
We have CR telling us they are going to be really radical once the election is won and we have you telling us they will be no different to Sunak. In other words you don't really have a clue but are wishcasting according to your own prejudices.
The one group that will take a hit from Labour will be wealthy pensioners. Their unswerving support for the Tories means that they are the one group that Labour will we able to penalise without any electoral consequences for themselves. If Labour do nothing else it will be well overdue and I say that as one of them. Wealthy oldies are about to pay a heavy price.
Agree with the first bit. But your final paragraph is your own wishcasting.
Yes it sounds like bollocks, any pensioner who is rich will be paying tax at the same rates as everyone else, even on the £9K state pension they get and being rich they will get hee haw else from the state.
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
A lot of people have a fear of the unknown and cooking for them is an unknown - especially if you aren't confident in reading or maths..
Also, learning to cook takes time and effort that you might not have if you're working long badly-paid hours all the time. And cooking for 4 is the sweet spot for cost and time effectiveness -- cooking for just yourself is not so good.
But it any case, are the poor really worse at cooking than the better off? I found a study -- https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12966-015-0261-x -- which says "Of 509 respondents, almost two-thirds reported cooking a main meal at least five times per week. Around 90 % reported being able to cook convenience foods, a complete meal from ready-made ingredient, and a main dish from basic ingredients without help. Socio-demographic differences in all markers of cooking skills were scattered and inconsistent.".
So it looks like most people can in fact cook "a main dish from basic ingredients", and many do cook five nights a week (when you account for people living together, 2/3rds is a lot of people), and confidence in cooking is not biased to any particular social demographic.
I mainly cook for 1, its only 4 the first sunday of every month. Sorry I don't believe that survey if 2/3 of the country are cooking 5 main meals a week why are we getting all the furore about the poor cant afford to cook decent meals and the proliferation of obese people due to ultra processed foods and take aways.
When reality does not square with survey results I suspect it's the survey results that are wrong not reality. Just like if I go to a doctor and he asks me how much do you drink.....I am not going to tell him a bottle of rum a day I am going to say I have the occasional glass of wine. Similarly no one is going to admit they live on ready meals and takeaways because they know it is bad
What think you of this? https://www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/other-ideologies-4-eurocommunism --------------- It's a good article and generally fair, though I disagree with some bits. He's spot on about the basic appeal - aim for society based on solidarity and partnership rather than dominated by corporate influence, while avoiding the oppression of dictatorial states. I used to read Marxism Today with enthusiasm, but he's right that it was aimed at a very intellectual market. I think he overstates the dependence on the Soviet Union - given that part of the raison d'etre was to reject the dictatorial approach. IMO the movement largely failed by being too intellectual and also too naive - there's a panoply of democratic left leaders from Gorbachev to Corbyn who largely rejected expulsions and suppression of dissent in favour of a belief that you could win in the end simply by persistent, tireless argument.
The basic concept retains its appeal for me and for many (I've never apologised for my sympathies for it or tried to cover them up, even when I was an MP in a marginal), and influences more mainstream thinking, because most people feel uneasy about a society effectively run by large companies and media billionaires. But Gorbachev eventually concluded after losing power that the Scandinavian model of private enterprise married to high taxes and great social services was the way to go, and it remains IMO the model that demonstrably works better than the alternatives.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
Surely GCSEs cover wider areas of study, and A-levels narrower? If you do nine GCSEs and three A-levels, then the GCSEs indicate your breadth of knowledge outside the A-levels you chose?
I'm not saying children should start school at 16, so the broad education can still take place. However, GCSEs as a qualification are no longer interesting or useful like they used to be when most people left school at 16.
Must be in England only, people still leave at 16 in Scotland and if going into further education in colleges need GCSE's.
Correct.
"If you turn 16 between 1 March and 30 September you can leave school after 31 May of that year.
If you turn 16 between 1 October and the end of February you can leave at the start of the Christmas holidays in that school year."
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
That's 100% activity fallacy. On those grounds you'd abolish 99% of prison warders. They do nowt but sit around. There's only a riot or an assault every so often.
No, it is making good use of expensive resources. Which our current NHS management seem incapable of achieving.
OK. So you ensure every nurse is busy performing urgent care tasks appropriate to a qualified nurse 100% of the time. Who deals with a multiple pile up or a terrorist attack?
This is a question of priorities or resource allocation. But the problem is not solved by this redundancy because when it is all hands to the pump who provides the basic admin that is still needed? I agree with @Foxy that we are recreating the old SEN grade that got wound up when nurses needed degrees so we could pay them more. This is a good thing and I am glad Labour thought of it.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Its a luxury because people aren't going hungry, so there's no "need" to learn as much as people had to in the past.
That's not such a bad thing.
A bag of apples costs less than a bag of crisps but people like crisps so choose to buy them.
Right, now we're getting somewhere. So people are driven to choices by things other than cost and effort. We also have preference on the table now, as well as the subtler point of convenience undermining the motivation to learn to do things the "hard" way. This is good work.
I'd say "Big Food" is the problem. A handful of transnational companies industrially manufacture all the edible products that supermarkets sell as food and advertise them as the perfect food for our lifestyle. It's chock full of cheap substitutes for natural ingredients that provide less nutrition than fresh cooked food and doesn't sate you as much. It's almost addictive as it hits the bliss point of salt, fat, and sweeteners to make you want more. And it's cheap, colourful and might even say the words "healthy" "low fat" "light" and "sugar free " on the labels. It's quick to prepare and eat, with little fibre in it and made to be soft so you eat quicker and want more. That's why poor people eat bad diets.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Simply put too many prefer to sit on their ass watching Jeremey kyle etc and tap a phone to order deliveroo. Then complain they can't afford to eat properly. How hard is it to make mashed potato, grill a few sausages and make some instant gravy......A meal that costs little compared to a big mac?
People need to help themselves a bit not just whinge that they need more money and its not their fault they don't eat healthily.
You're just restating the point. I get it. People are lazy. Why are they lazy? Were they always this way or was there... how can I put this?... some golden age when you were younger when people were better?
There was indeed, back in the mists of time if you did not work you did not eat, there was no free money for gazillions of reasons, no free rents, council tax, tax credits , and the million other stupid ideas since. They are indulged to be lazy by free money.
So would you say free money is morally corrosive? Is that where you're coming from?
Yes , if long term and not just a short term safety net.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
You sure? Some time back, an O level in French or German was a genuinely useful thing to have to complement one's A-levels when applying to uni or for a job. Same with the basic English and Maths qualifications.
Speaking German might or might not be useful in different circumstances. Having a GCSE German certificate, less so. Abolition would save money and free up more time for learning German.
I have been wondering about this. In theory my daughter passed her GCSE Spanish with the same grade as I got in German 40 years ago. Yet despite having had those 40 years to forget it all, I find this summer that more than 30 years since my last trip to Germany, I can still remember quite a lot. Whereas last summer in Spain my daughter knew nothing more than a few words.
I wonder if that's because modern teaching covers what's on the exam, and nothing more, whereas when I was at school we were taught to speak/understand the language? The syllabus doesn't appear to have changed much. Has how exams are set become much more tightly defined than back then?
I suppose it depends on when you got your grade C. I got Cs in French and German O Level in 77. My French is not bad still to be honest, but I credit the fact that we were started on French in my primary at age 7, purely spoken, very little written or grammar etc, whereas my German I started at age 14 and have virtually forgotten it all.
Grade B for me, but in fact I only took it for 2 years. It was just well taught, in retrospect. I was the same as you for French but didn't really find it that much easier at O Level, but carried on with it to A Level (and what I learned certainly has stuck).
Incidentally I reckon French is probably the only GCSE I could just sit down and pass today without having to relearn anything.
I passed my German O level with a B four decades ago, but managed quite well in Germany last summer, though a fair proportion spoke English back to me. My accent must be terrible.
[swaggering] Man, I got GCSE grade As in both French AND German!
Game recognise game and you're looking kinda unfamiliar right now.
O-Level French Grade A at age 14 A-Level French Grade A at age 16 (and O-Level German Grade A)
O-Level French, German and Latin Grade A, FWIW. Can still get by OK in the first two, but accent better than vocabulary recall.
I notice that although I live a long way from Selby, the emails from Labour are now ignoring Uxbridge and urging me to pitch into the "marginal" of Selby. I've yet to receive a request to go to Somerton and think that the party is concentrating entirely on winning the other two.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
You sure? Some time back, an O level in French or German was a genuinely useful thing to have to complement one's A-levels when applying to uni or for a job. Same with the basic English and Maths qualifications.
Speaking German might or might not be useful in different circumstances. Having a GCSE German certificate, less so. Abolition would save money and free up more time for learning German.
I have been wondering about this. In theory my daughter passed her GCSE Spanish with the same grade as I got in German 40 years ago. Yet despite having had those 40 years to forget it all, I find this summer that more than 30 years since my last trip to Germany, I can still remember quite a lot. Whereas last summer in Spain my daughter knew nothing more than a few words.
I wonder if that's because modern teaching covers what's on the exam, and nothing more, whereas when I was at school we were taught to speak/understand the language? The syllabus doesn't appear to have changed much. Has how exams are set become much more tightly defined than back then?
I suppose it depends on when you got your grade C. I got Cs in French and German O Level in 77. My French is not bad still to be honest, but I credit the fact that we were started on French in my primary at age 7, purely spoken, very little written or grammar etc, whereas my German I started at age 14 and have virtually forgotten it all.
Grade B for me, but in fact I only took it for 2 years. It was just well taught, in retrospect. I was the same as you for French but didn't really find it that much easier at O Level, but carried on with it to A Level (and what I learned certainly has stuck).
Incidentally I reckon French is probably the only GCSE I could just sit down and pass today without having to relearn anything.
I passed my German O level with a B four decades ago, but managed quite well in Germany last summer, though a fair proportion spoke English back to me. My accent must be terrible.
[swaggering] Man, I got GCSE grade As in both French AND German!
Game recognise game and you're looking kinda unfamiliar right now.
O-Level French Grade A at age 14 A-Level French Grade A at age 16 (and O-Level German Grade A)
O-Level French, German and Latin Grade A, FWIW. Can still get by OK in the first two, but accent better than vocabulary recall.
Can you say, "listen very carefully, I will say this only once" in a way that sounds sexy? That is the real test.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
You sure? Some time back, an O level in French or German was a genuinely useful thing to have to complement one's A-levels when applying to uni or for a job. Same with the basic English and Maths qualifications.
Speaking German might or might not be useful in different circumstances. Having a GCSE German certificate, less so. Abolition would save money and free up more time for learning German.
I have been wondering about this. In theory my daughter passed her GCSE Spanish with the same grade as I got in German 40 years ago. Yet despite having had those 40 years to forget it all, I find this summer that more than 30 years since my last trip to Germany, I can still remember quite a lot. Whereas last summer in Spain my daughter knew nothing more than a few words.
I wonder if that's because modern teaching covers what's on the exam, and nothing more, whereas when I was at school we were taught to speak/understand the language? The syllabus doesn't appear to have changed much. Has how exams are set become much more tightly defined than back then?
I suppose it depends on when you got your grade C. I got Cs in French and German O Level in 77. My French is not bad still to be honest, but I credit the fact that we were started on French in my primary at age 7, purely spoken, very little written or grammar etc, whereas my German I started at age 14 and have virtually forgotten it all.
Grade B for me, but in fact I only took it for 2 years. It was just well taught, in retrospect. I was the same as you for French but didn't really find it that much easier at O Level, but carried on with it to A Level (and what I learned certainly has stuck).
Incidentally I reckon French is probably the only GCSE I could just sit down and pass today without having to relearn anything.
I passed my German O level with a B four decades ago, but managed quite well in Germany last summer, though a fair proportion spoke English back to me. My accent must be terrible.
[swaggering] Man, I got GCSE grade As in both French AND German!
Game recognise game and you're looking kinda unfamiliar right now.
O-Level French Grade A at age 14 A-Level French Grade A at age 16 (and O-Level German Grade A)
O-Level French, German and Latin Grade A, FWIW. Can still get by OK in the first two, but accent better than vocabulary recall.
Can you say, "listen very carefully, I will say this only once" in a way that sounds sexy? That is the real test.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
You sure? Some time back, an O level in French or German was a genuinely useful thing to have to complement one's A-levels when applying to uni or for a job. Same with the basic English and Maths qualifications.
Speaking German might or might not be useful in different circumstances. Having a GCSE German certificate, less so. Abolition would save money and free up more time for learning German.
I have been wondering about this. In theory my daughter passed her GCSE Spanish with the same grade as I got in German 40 years ago. Yet despite having had those 40 years to forget it all, I find this summer that more than 30 years since my last trip to Germany, I can still remember quite a lot. Whereas last summer in Spain my daughter knew nothing more than a few words.
I wonder if that's because modern teaching covers what's on the exam, and nothing more, whereas when I was at school we were taught to speak/understand the language? The syllabus doesn't appear to have changed much. Has how exams are set become much more tightly defined than back then?
I suppose it depends on when you got your grade C. I got Cs in French and German O Level in 77. My French is not bad still to be honest, but I credit the fact that we were started on French in my primary at age 7, purely spoken, very little written or grammar etc, whereas my German I started at age 14 and have virtually forgotten it all.
Grade B for me, but in fact I only took it for 2 years. It was just well taught, in retrospect. I was the same as you for French but didn't really find it that much easier at O Level, but carried on with it to A Level (and what I learned certainly has stuck).
Incidentally I reckon French is probably the only GCSE I could just sit down and pass today without having to relearn anything.
I passed my German O level with a B four decades ago, but managed quite well in Germany last summer, though a fair proportion spoke English back to me. My accent must be terrible.
[swaggering] Man, I got GCSE grade As in both French AND German!
Game recognise game and you're looking kinda unfamiliar right now.
O-Level French Grade A at age 14 A-Level French Grade A at age 16 (and O-Level German Grade A)
O-Level French, German and Latin Grade A, FWIW. Can still get by OK in the first two, but accent better than vocabulary recall.
Can you say, "listen very carefully, I will say this only once" in a way that sounds sexy? That is the real test.
Mais bien sûr.
And actually I think the key to a decent accent starts with good caricature.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Simply put too many prefer to sit on their ass watching Jeremey kyle etc and tap a phone to order deliveroo. Then complain they can't afford to eat properly. How hard is it to make mashed potato, grill a few sausages and make some instant gravy......A meal that costs little compared to a big mac?
People need to help themselves a bit not just whinge that they need more money and its not their fault they don't eat healthily.
You're just restating the point. I get it. People are lazy. Why are they lazy? Were they always this way or was there... how can I put this?... some golden age when you were younger when people were better?
It wasn't a golden age, it was however an age where if you whinged about it you got no where and had to learn to do stuff to make the money last.
You are from the give a man a fish school of thought I am from the teach a man to fish school of thought
When I grew up you had to learn to fish, since the mid 90's though society has seemed to pivot to the give a man a fish school. Nothing is anyones fault.....don't eat decently its because the government/your employer doesn't give you enough etc. No sorry totally and utterly their fault
Give a man a fish, and he will eat for the day. Teach a man to fish, and he will… spend all day on a boat with his friends, drinking beer!
Joke aside, you make a good point about cooking skills. Enjoy your Sunday lunch.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
That's 100% activity fallacy. On those grounds you'd abolish 99% of prison warders. They do nowt but sit around. There's only a riot or an assault every so often.
Sack the Fire Service, lazy bastards!
Quite right - productivity in the fire service is dreadful. Firefighters should be on zero-hours contracts, and can be called in when needed.
Or volunteers, maybe? I've always wanted to slam through rush hour traffic at 90mph with absolute impunity.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
Surely GCSEs cover wider areas of study, and A-levels narrower? If you do nine GCSEs and three A-levels, then the GCSEs indicate your breadth of knowledge outside the A-levels you chose?
I'm not saying children should start school at 16, so the broad education can still take place. However, GCSEs as a qualification are no longer interesting or useful like they used to be when most people left school at 16.
Must be in England only, people still leave at 16 in Scotland and if going into further education in colleges need GCSE's.
Correct.
"If you turn 16 between 1 March and 30 September you can leave school after 31 May of that year.
If you turn 16 between 1 October and the end of February you can leave at the start of the Christmas holidays in that school year."
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
That's 100% activity fallacy. On those grounds you'd abolish 99% of prison warders. They do nowt but sit around. There's only a riot or an assault every so often.
No, it is making good use of expensive resources. Which our current NHS management seem incapable of achieving.
OK. So you ensure every nurse is busy performing urgent care tasks appropriate to a qualified nurse 100% of the time. Who deals with a multiple pile up or a terrorist attack?
This is a question of priorities or resource allocation. But the problem is not solved by this redundancy because when it is all hands to the pump who provides the basic admin that is still needed? I agree with @Foxy that we are recreating the old SEN grade that got wound up when nurses needed degrees so we could pay them more. This is a good thing and I am glad Labour thought of it.
It is so obvious a 5 year old could have thought it up. It is up there with , "let's get rid of junior Doctor's so we can pay Consultant's more.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Can we have the recipe for the pomegranate and goats cheese mousse?
1. Remove outer packaging and pierce film several times with a fork 2. Microwave on full power for 4.5 minutes (chilled) or 10 minutes (frozen), stirring half way 3. Leave to stand for 2 minute 4. Serve. Take care, food will be piping hot. Don't sue us if you scald yourself: you'd only spend the damages on salty microwave meals anyway you fat lug
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
You sure? Some time back, an O level in French or German was a genuinely useful thing to have to complement one's A-levels when applying to uni or for a job. Same with the basic English and Maths qualifications.
Speaking German might or might not be useful in different circumstances. Having a GCSE German certificate, less so. Abolition would save money and free up more time for learning German.
I have been wondering about this. In theory my daughter passed her GCSE Spanish with the same grade as I got in German 40 years ago. Yet despite having had those 40 years to forget it all, I find this summer that more than 30 years since my last trip to Germany, I can still remember quite a lot. Whereas last summer in Spain my daughter knew nothing more than a few words.
I wonder if that's because modern teaching covers what's on the exam, and nothing more, whereas when I was at school we were taught to speak/understand the language? The syllabus doesn't appear to have changed much. Has how exams are set become much more tightly defined than back then?
tbh I thought it was supposed to be the other way round, with language teaching now concentrating on actually speaking conversational French (or whatever) whereas in the bad old days it was more about learning lists of conjugations and declensions and translating written texts. The PBer to ask is @Dura_Ace who does it for a living, or possibly @NickPalmer. If I had to guess based on what you describe, perhaps school-level oral Spanish depends on getting the right cues from the native speakers, and your daughter didn't.
Interesting. If that's the intent, it didn't work that way!
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Its a luxury because people aren't going hungry, so there's no "need" to learn as much as people had to in the past.
That's not such a bad thing.
A bag of apples costs less than a bag of crisps but people like crisps so choose to buy them.
Right, now we're getting somewhere. So people are driven to choices by things other than cost and effort. We also have preference on the table now, as well as the subtler point of convenience undermining the motivation to learn to do things the "hard" way. This is good work.
I'd say "Big Food" is the problem. A handful of transnational companies industrially manufacture all the edible products that supermarkets sell as food and advertise them as the perfect food for our lifestyle. It's chock full of cheap substitutes for natural ingredients that provide less nutrition than fresh cooked food and doesn't sate you as much. It's almost addictive as it hits the bliss point of salt, fat, and sweeteners to make you want more. And it's cheap, colourful and might even say the words "healthy" "low fat" "light" and "sugar free " on the labels. It's quick to prepare and eat, with little fibre in it and made to be soft so you eat quicker and want more. That's why poor people eat bad diets.
No analysis of the problem of poor diet is complete without including what you've just said. Thank you.
I think too that we cannot ignore that a lot of people lead pretty bleak lives, of relentless grind to make ends nearly meet, and simple pleasures are desired at the end of the day. Much the same reason poor people also smoke more, are more often addicts, have worse mental health, more STDs and unplanned pregnancies etc.
Working class motivation for self improvement, and upward mobility still exists as it always has, but has never been universal.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Question - what is the cost of *not* paying to stop teachers quitting? I agree that spending the same money repeatedly is silly. But this is not a zero-sum transaction, where there is only cost on one side.
Where’s the research to show this would prevent quitting in any numbers to be cost effective. It’s just a headline grabbing initiative.
The cost of retaining these maths teachers through the policy is 32% lower than simply recruiting and training 104 additional teachers. Not only does this make the policy extremely cost-effective, it also means that there is an increase in the number of experienced maths teachers in the classroom.
As with much of the public sector we are well beyond the point at which reducing real terms pay saves any money, unless we are willing to reduce significanly the scope of what is covered. Otherwise we just end up with demotivated and stressed staff, increased time off sick, expensive "temporary" cover as an ongoing solution, and a lack of continuity and experience.
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
It is interesting to see that the NHS workforce plan envisions a system where a lot of healthcare is delivered by health care associates in order to free up time for experienced clinicians to train:
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
As a matter of interest, does it really bother people on the receiving end of NHS care that a lot of stuff is qoing to be delivered by non-professional associates, or that medical and other degrees are going to be shortened?
Some care is better than dying on a waiting list.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
That's 100% activity fallacy. On those grounds you'd abolish 99% of prison warders. They do nowt but sit around. There's only a riot or an assault every so often.
Sack the Fire Service, lazy bastards!
Quite right - productivity in the fire service is dreadful. Firefighters should be on zero-hours contracts, and can be called in when needed.
Or volunteers, maybe? I've always wanted to slam through rush hour traffic at 90mph with absolute impunity.
On call firefighters are subject to the same Highway code that you are. There ain't no slamming anywhere at 90mph when they attend a call.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Simply put too many prefer to sit on their ass watching Jeremey kyle etc and tap a phone to order deliveroo. Then complain they can't afford to eat properly. How hard is it to make mashed potato, grill a few sausages and make some instant gravy......A meal that costs little compared to a big mac?
People need to help themselves a bit not just whinge that they need more money and its not their fault they don't eat healthily.
You're just restating the point. I get it. People are lazy. Why are they lazy? Were they always this way or was there... how can I put this?... some golden age when you were younger when people were better?
It wasn't a golden age, it was however an age where if you whinged about it you got no where and had to learn to do stuff to make the money last.
You are from the give a man a fish school of thought I am from the teach a man to fish school of thought
When I grew up you had to learn to fish, since the mid 90's though society has seemed to pivot to the give a man a fish school. Nothing is anyones fault.....don't eat decently its because the government/your employer doesn't give you enough etc. No sorry totally and utterly their fault
Give a man a fish, and he will eat for the day. Teach a man to fish, and he will… spend all day on a boat with his friends, drinking beer!
Joke aside, you make a good point about cooking skills. Enjoy your Sunday lunch.
I think personally all councils should run free courses in basic cooking, budgeting , literacy and every day maths. That would be a better use of funds than many things the state spends money on
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Simply put too many prefer to sit on their ass watching Jeremey kyle etc and tap a phone to order deliveroo. Then complain they can't afford to eat properly. How hard is it to make mashed potato, grill a few sausages and make some instant gravy......A meal that costs little compared to a big mac?
People need to help themselves a bit not just whinge that they need more money and its not their fault they don't eat healthily.
You're just restating the point. I get it. People are lazy. Why are they lazy? Were they always this way or was there... how can I put this?... some golden age when you were younger when people were better?
There was indeed, back in the mists of time if you did not work you did not eat, there was no free money for gazillions of reasons, no free rents, council tax, tax credits , and the million other stupid ideas since. They are indulged to be lazy by free money.
So would you say free money is morally corrosive? Is that where you're coming from?
Yes , if long term and not just a short term safety net.
Does it matter whether the free money is from the state, or does the same apply to rent, interest, dividends, and capital gains?
That is not "Free money", you are putting up your own earned money and risking losing it, no clue on capital gains mind you as never made any. Have paid interest, lost money renting and on shares etc where dividends rarely cover loss of capital unless you are lucky.
Cathryn Ross, the new interim joint chief executive of Thames Water and a former head of watchdog Ofwat, is one of several ex-employees working for water companies in senior roles such as strategy, regulation and infrastructure...
The conflict with the public interest is utterly obvious. Privatisation of monopoly utilities, where the regulator is less than draconian, is indefensible. And who would want to buy into an industry with a draconian regulator ?
Before the FAA slipped, it was a draconian regulator, for decades. Airlines flourished and manufacturers *liked* strict regulation. If nothing else, it made the barrier to entry higher and higher.
Providing that regulation doesn’t create a disadvantage to foreign competitors, big companies actually like regulation. Big departments full of compliance people are just added to the customers bill.
Small companies find it hard to compete in such an environment, though.
Water supply is not an undertaking that provides any opportunity for new entrants.
Like other utilities it is madness to try to pretend there can be a market. Or competition.
The water industry is just another set of assets that we sold off because we wanted the cash and then used it for current spending. We frankly have a cheek complaining that people are now using the assets they bought from us in ways we don't like.
Clearly, they have obligations in terms of the supply of water and the treatment of sewage and they can rightly be held to account for those services but how they want to fund their business, whether by debt or additional capital is really a matter for them.
But proper regulation included financial security for companies we cannot afford to go bust. And this is where the regulators have failed. They have failed to risk test the balance sheets against what is, in historical terms, not a particularly large increase in interest rates. The fact this remarkable oversight occurred in an industry where the staff of the water companies and the regulator seem to be interchangeable is concerning.
Who is this "we"? Is there any evidence on the popularity of privatisation over time?
Certainly not DavidL, you or me. Scottish water industry isn't privatised.
No, but it is cash restrained by government as a result with significant adverse consequences for potential development as a result, reducing growth opportunities.
Certainly adverse consequences for potential development of shareholder returns and growth opportunities of bonuses for wannabe Scottish water magnates.
What’s the track record for development and growth during the last 30+ years of privatised English water?
Surprise surprise Scottish Water does not have £60B debt either, may not be perfect but a million miles better than the ponzi scheme at Westminster.
I believe that at various time SLab and SCons have made plaintive noises about privatising Scottish Water. A small mercy but at least we won’t hear any more of that guff for a very long time.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Simply put too many prefer to sit on their ass watching Jeremey kyle etc and tap a phone to order deliveroo. Then complain they can't afford to eat properly. How hard is it to make mashed potato, grill a few sausages and make some instant gravy......A meal that costs little compared to a big mac?
People need to help themselves a bit not just whinge that they need more money and its not their fault they don't eat healthily.
You're just restating the point. I get it. People are lazy. Why are they lazy? Were they always this way or was there... how can I put this?... some golden age when you were younger when people were better?
It wasn't a golden age, it was however an age where if you whinged about it you got no where and had to learn to do stuff to make the money last.
You are from the give a man a fish school of thought I am from the teach a man to fish school of thought
When I grew up you had to learn to fish, since the mid 90's though society has seemed to pivot to the give a man a fish school. Nothing is anyones fault.....don't eat decently its because the government/your employer doesn't give you enough etc. No sorry totally and utterly their fault
Give a man a fish, and he will eat for the day. Teach a man to fish, and he will… spend all day on a boat with his friends, drinking beer!
Joke aside, you make a good point about cooking skills. Enjoy your Sunday lunch.
I think personally all councils should run free courses in basic cooking, budgeting , literacy and every day maths. That would be a better use of funds than many things the state spends money on
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Simply put too many prefer to sit on their ass watching Jeremey kyle etc and tap a phone to order deliveroo. Then complain they can't afford to eat properly. How hard is it to make mashed potato, grill a few sausages and make some instant gravy......A meal that costs little compared to a big mac?
People need to help themselves a bit not just whinge that they need more money and its not their fault they don't eat healthily.
You're just restating the point. I get it. People are lazy. Why are they lazy? Were they always this way or was there... how can I put this?... some golden age when you were younger when people were better?
It wasn't a golden age, it was however an age where if you whinged about it you got no where and had to learn to do stuff to make the money last.
You are from the give a man a fish school of thought I am from the teach a man to fish school of thought
When I grew up you had to learn to fish, since the mid 90's though society has seemed to pivot to the give a man a fish school. Nothing is anyones fault.....don't eat decently its because the government/your employer doesn't give you enough etc. No sorry totally and utterly their fault
Give a man a fish, and he will eat for the day. Teach a man to fish, and he will… spend all day on a boat with his friends, drinking beer!
Joke aside, you make a good point about cooking skills. Enjoy your Sunday lunch.
Teach a man to fish nowadays and he’ll spend all his time on Twitter (Elon allowing) moaning about the befouled stage of the water.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Simply put too many prefer to sit on their ass watching Jeremey kyle etc and tap a phone to order deliveroo. Then complain they can't afford to eat properly. How hard is it to make mashed potato, grill a few sausages and make some instant gravy......A meal that costs little compared to a big mac?
People need to help themselves a bit not just whinge that they need more money and its not their fault they don't eat healthily.
You're just restating the point. I get it. People are lazy. Why are they lazy? Were they always this way or was there... how can I put this?... some golden age when you were younger when people were better?
There was indeed, back in the mists of time if you did not work you did not eat, there was no free money for gazillions of reasons, no free rents, council tax, tax credits , and the million other stupid ideas since. They are indulged to be lazy by free money.
So would you say free money is morally corrosive? Is that where you're coming from?
Yes , if long term and not just a short term safety net.
Does it matter whether the free money is from the state, or does the same apply to rent, interest, dividends, and capital gains?
That is not "Free money", you are putting up your own earned money and risking losing it, no clue on capital gains mind you as never made any. Have paid interest, lost money renting and on shares etc where dividends rarely cover loss of capital unless you are lucky.
No free money isn't morally corrosive. What I was trying to get across is continually making excuses for why people act the way they do is morally corrosive.
person A :I am obese because I live on take aways and ready meals
Farooq : Thats because you can't afford to buy ingredients, you dont have time to cook, you cant cook and can't be expected to learn.....take your pick of excuses as its definitely not your fault and you can't change it
person A: thanks Farooq now I feel better its not my fault I am fat its the governments and societies....heads off to mcDonalds
In my experience, a lot of 'nursing care' of work *is* done by associates (NHS England) in clinics and outpatient settings. We need to remember that there are now a vast range of nurse roles, up to Nurse Consultant earning nearly 100k.
I think we need to be clear how the NHS operates with different levels of staff, and how some of the roles are defined, which has changed hugely since say 2000.
Speaking for example wrt in-patients and NHS England, normally a patient has a named HCA and a named nurse responsible in each 12 hour period.
'Non-clinical' care for patients (including routine weighing, blood pressure tests, blood glucose measurements, and sometimes inserting cannulas, take blood samples, plus basics such as bed-pans etc) is not done by nurses in my experience - unless there was a specific need. These would be done by Health Care Assistants, who have the lower end part of the job nurse's did before Degree Nursing came in, whilst the nurse role has been extended upwards.
I don't think this is much different for day patients or clinics.
Nurses deal with medical treatment and liaison with Doctors, including dealing with administration of prescribed medication from the (locked) medicine trolley, supervision of infusions etc. HCAs. They can also give certain medications on their own authority, I think - but not many - paracetamol being an example. For anything else on patient request (eg a laxative) they would need to ask a Doctor, so one trick is to ask for various things you *may* need early so they get through the authorisation cycle and are available on the medical notes.
There are cross-cutting roles too - my recent hospital stay had central resources who could be called in if ward-staff were too busy, such as cannula experts. Nurses would just add it to the "task list" on the computer system.
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Well they do have people like Peter Mandelson advising them.
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
That would be a sensible idea for itself, but I'm not sure how much use it would be. People don't tend to work for abstract accounting principles. Teachers already quit even though the pension remains decent, for example.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
There is a lot to be said for abolishing GCSEs which serve no useful function now the school-leaving age has been raised. They are no longer needed for jobs or further study.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
You sure? Some time back, an O level in French or German was a genuinely useful thing to have to complement one's A-levels when applying to uni or for a job. Same with the basic English and Maths qualifications.
Speaking German might or might not be useful in different circumstances. Having a GCSE German certificate, less so. Abolition would save money and free up more time for learning German.
I have been wondering about this. In theory my daughter passed her GCSE Spanish with the same grade as I got in German 40 years ago. Yet despite having had those 40 years to forget it all, I find this summer that more than 30 years since my last trip to Germany, I can still remember quite a lot. Whereas last summer in Spain my daughter knew nothing more than a few words.
I wonder if that's because modern teaching covers what's on the exam, and nothing more, whereas when I was at school we were taught to speak/understand the language? The syllabus doesn't appear to have changed much. Has how exams are set become much more tightly defined than back then?
tbh I thought it was supposed to be the other way round, with language teaching now concentrating on actually speaking conversational French (or whatever) whereas in the bad old days it was more about learning lists of conjugations and declensions and translating written texts. The PBer to ask is @Dura_Ace who does it for a living, or possibly @NickPalmer. If I had to guess based on what you describe, perhaps school-level oral Spanish depends on getting the right cues from the native speakers, and your daughter didn't.
I've never taught GCSE or prepared students for he exam so I don't really know much about it. French GSCE does seem very light on grammar compared to when I did O-Level a million years ago. Eg the subjonctif is on the GCSE syllabus but never seems to be taught or examined. When I did O-level the candidate had to know every wrinkle of it - verbs which can't take the subjunctive when negated (eg douter), etc.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
Not everyone has the skills and confidence you do in the kitchen. And people make poor decisions when stressed and overworked.
And if I may say so, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it were so easy to eat well, why do you think so many do not? Your "analysis" seems to show that food is cheap enough, so what are the reasons?
Laziness. I left home at 16 unable to cook and this preinternet as it was 1983.
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Keep going. Where has this "laziness" come from?
Simply put too many prefer to sit on their ass watching Jeremey kyle etc and tap a phone to order deliveroo. Then complain they can't afford to eat properly. How hard is it to make mashed potato, grill a few sausages and make some instant gravy......A meal that costs little compared to a big mac?
People need to help themselves a bit not just whinge that they need more money and its not their fault they don't eat healthily.
You're just restating the point. I get it. People are lazy. Why are they lazy? Were they always this way or was there... how can I put this?... some golden age when you were younger when people were better?
It wasn't a golden age, it was however an age where if you whinged about it you got no where and had to learn to do stuff to make the money last.
You are from the give a man a fish school of thought I am from the teach a man to fish school of thought
When I grew up you had to learn to fish, since the mid 90's though society has seemed to pivot to the give a man a fish school. Nothing is anyones fault.....don't eat decently its because the government/your employer doesn't give you enough etc. No sorry totally and utterly their fault
Give a man a fish, and he will eat for the day. Teach a man to fish, and he will… spend all day on a boat with his friends, drinking beer!
Joke aside, you make a good point about cooking skills. Enjoy your Sunday lunch.
I think personally all councils should run free courses in basic cooking, budgeting , literacy and every day maths. That would be a better use of funds than many things the state spends money on
SureStart.
I have never said SureStart was necessarily a bad thing, I have asked for figures to show it works. If it works then all good. I don't mind governments spending where it actually does something. Sadly my suspicion (and many others) is a lot of state spending is on things that sound like a good idea but achieve the square root of fuck all. It is the latter I object to.
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The biggest difference between Sir K and Blair is that Blair was super good at the presentation of hope.
This may be circumstance led. Blair stood and won at a time when the government was hated but times were not actually too bad.
Sir K wants to run and lead in times when the government is hated and times are uniformly tough. Good luck.
Oh, and he's just continuity Sunak, so there'll be no change.
Make your minds up.
What’s the track record for development and growth during the last 30+ years of privatised English water?
Idi Amin
And if we are borrowing £21bn a month at the moment where is the money going because it really doesn't seem to be being spent well...
I would class Starmer as undeniably intelligent and with a strong work ethic too.
Not that intelligence is the be all and end all of being a leader. Vision, rhetorical and people skills are lacked by both.
I'm a capitalist - borrow, invest, deliver a return on investment. Its a fairly simple proposition. The problem is that we stopped being capitalists a while back - replaced it with bankism and now spivism. It started Brown gave an ocean of cash to the likes of Asda in the form of wage subsidies ("working families tax credits"). He was right that people were working flat out and couldn't pay their bills. But came up with a method which just burns cash.
So, a firm policy proposal. We have a low-productivity poorly trained workforce. So have businesses only able to benefit from low CTax rates if they invest in people and training. You need to invest to get the return on that investment - both in a happier more productive workforce, and in a tax cut. Not just "here is some money you spiv bastards" as we now do.
Completely off topic for now just something I was thinking about.
The first weekend of the month I normally have my father, his girlfriend and my ex stepbrother round on sunday for a meal. Out of curiousity because we keep getting told eating properly is too expensive for the poor I looked at my bill for the meal especially given the cost of living rise.
Ingredients cost me 40£ This will give 4 adults a 3 course meal today and all will take home enough left overs for a main meal tomorrow. That means 5£ a head for 2 days food.
If you take out the 3 course part the cost of ingredients according to my receipt is 25£. So for 4 adults to have a decent main meal for 2 days comes to £3.12
Prep time is about half an hour for the main meal and I think if you compare £3.12 to a big mac meal (£6.09) it comes out pretty decently. The claim the poor can't afford to eat well sorry doesn't stack up
1) Keep the triple lock.
2) Rwanda.
3) Abolish gender neutral toilets.
A lot of care on hospital wards could be done by people without the skills and training we currently give to nurses. We have created a system with far too many chiefs and not nearly enough Indians. If these "associates" fill the latter roles it could be a good thing.
I was at an out patients appointment recently. There were several nurses hanging around the desk looking for something to do, or frankly not that bothered. Every now and again one would wander off to weigh a patient or collect someone's papers to take into the consultant for that appointment whilst the consultant was working his arse off trying to get through long lists of complex appointments.
I've no doubt that there were other nurses running themselves ragged in the same hospital trying to cope but the inefficiency and waste of resources was painful to see. All the work of fetching and weighing could be done by associates and those nurses should have been on the ward or in the operating theatres, etc.
"If you turn 16 between 1 March and 30 September you can leave school after 31 May of that year.
If you turn 16 between 1 October and the end of February you can leave at the start of the Christmas holidays in that school year."
So, actually you can leave at 15 in certain circumstances.
So if you come from a family like mine where my mum didn't cook because she hadn't been taught to unless chances are no one else will have taught you.
One seemingly strange thing that Surestart did around here was to provide cookery lessons - which were well attended.
How am I doing? 😉
But the rule for all GCSE's is this.
You are taught to pass the GCSE exam.
You cannot get more very intelligent than that.
O-Level French Grade A at age 14
A-Level French Grade A at age 16 (and O-Level German Grade A)
@ydoethur will no doubt be along later and confirm that point...
Today I am serving up pomegranite and goats cheese mousse drizzled in balsamic glaze, traditional spaghetti bolognese and an orange chocolate cheesecake.
If I can teach myself to that level from scratch I think its fair to say anyone could learn to make basic meals if they can be bothered. My point is the problem for the poor is not the cost of eating decently it is the motivation to do so.
Houses don't need schools, children do. Houses don't need doctors, patients do. Houses don't need dentiss, bust stops, shops and so on - people do.
If 12 people are living in a single house because there's a housing shortage they need the same number of doctors, teachers etc as those 12 people living in three or four different houses.
On those grounds you'd abolish 99% of prison warders. They do nowt but sit around. There's only a riot or an assault every so often.
On shorter degrees, well, graduate-entry medicine courses are typically only four rather than five years long, so why not give everyone the shorter course? It's not as if they save a year on the 4-year course by leaving out the left leg.
People need to help themselves a bit not just whinge that they need more money and its not their fault they don't eat healthily.
That's not such a bad thing.
A bag of apples costs less than a bag of crisps but people like crisps so choose to buy them.
During my recent 3 weeks in hospital I had so many clinicians appearing that it was almost like Dwarves coming to the Hobbit's Tea Party, with the Big Doctor Thorin Oakenshield (presumably Dr Fox equivalent) standing at the back doing the talking or the supervising, and on several occasions medical students or trainee doctors were told off to interview me to then give a summary of my condition and clinical history to their senior Doctor as it was (I assume) an interesting case.
Essentially I had what were normally skin-surface bugs get in through my skin due to decreased resistance due to leukemia falling out of remission, causing multisite absysses, which could not be treated surgically (lance, drain, pack with gauze, dress and send home as a day case in a surgical unit would be normal) due to my slow healing habit (Type I Diabetes) which would take time to heal from surgery and delay re-application of the planned leukemia treatment by a couple of months.
So they treated it instead with a 2 week course of large amounts of Infused Antibiotics. Hate to think what it would cost in the USA, but there were well over 100 doses of infusion, plus 10 or more blood transfusions to boost one of the types of blood cells. Each infusion taking 1-3 hours at 6am, 2pm and 10pm.
One thing that was interesting was that Nursing staff were quite relaxed about me de-alarming infusion pumps at midnight *, whilst Heath Care Assistants, who do the more basic nursing care that was done by nurses up until required nursing degrees came in and are themselves basically banned from touching said syringe driver, occasionally got a touch stroppy about it. Health care is procedural and hierarchical, and that is to institutionalise avoidance of simple errors that hurt people.
A good example of a simple error is giving someone the wrong blood group in an infusion, which can be serious - though apparently I am the group that can take anything and can never be given to anyone else !
(*) Background is that an infusion pump goes off like a fire alarm every two minutes once it is within 15 minutes of finishing, and that is loud enough to wake up other patients. They have a button which stops the alarm sounding. Each level of the hierarchy is defensive of its privileges - usually for good reasons.
"If you turn 16 between 1 March and 30 September you can leave school after 31 May of that year.
If you turn 16 between 1 October and the end of February you can leave at the start of the Christmas holidays in that school year."
So, actually you can leave at 15 in cer OK.
So you ensure every nurse is busy performing urgent care tasks
appropriate to a qualified nurse 100% of the time.
Who deals with a multiple pile up or a terrorist attack?
Free market, open investment, and zero effective industrial policy, together regularly mean we lose businesses overseas after they start up here.
In a similar manner to that in which we’ve allowed much of the benefits of running privatised monopolies to go offshore.
Clearly the opposite if all this - statist policies - isn’t really the answer either. But the consensus Thatcher established has proven economically malign for much of the country.
Those at the center of power have done fine out of it, so I’m not sure many of them are really even fully aware of the process - or they don’t give a damn.
We have CR telling us they are going to be really radical once the election is won and we have you telling us they will be no different to Sunak. In other words you don't really have a clue but are wishcasting according to your own prejudices.
The one group that will take a hit from Labour will be wealthy pensioners. Their unswerving support for the Tories means that they are the one group that Labour will we able to penalise without any electoral consequences for themselves. If Labour do nothing else it will be well overdue and I say that as one of them. Wealthy oldies are about to pay a heavy price.
I think the Nurse Apprentices are great, and in many ways a re-invention of the SEN grade that was wound up 30 years ago. Our Student Nurses on placement from the Uni are far less engaged and hands on.
You are from the give a man a fish school of thought
I am from the teach a man to fish school of thought
When I grew up you had to learn to fish, since the mid 90's though society has seemed to pivot to the give a man a fish school. Nothing is anyones fault.....don't eat decently its because the government/your employer doesn't give you enough etc. No sorry totally and utterly their fault
And probably onshore wind - which Sunak has just U-turned on, again.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/02/sunak-u-turn-on-wind-farms-in-england-draws-wrath-of-green-tories
Whether there’s much beyond that is an open question.
But your final paragraph is your own wishcasting.
But it any case, are the poor really worse at cooking than the better off? I found a study -- https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12966-015-0261-x -- which says "Of 509 respondents, almost two-thirds reported cooking a main meal at least five times per week. Around 90 % reported being able to cook convenience foods, a complete meal from ready-made ingredient, and a main dish from basic ingredients without help. Socio-demographic differences in all markers of cooking skills were scattered and inconsistent.".
So it looks like most people can in fact cook "a main dish from basic ingredients", and many do cook five nights a week (when you account for people living together, 2/3rds is a lot of people), and confidence in cooking is not biased to any particular social demographic.
It allows Tweedle Dum the opportunity to look inwards and see how to improve.
Change now and then is good in its own right.
Indeed decline of hands on experience of Trainees is a major issue already.
When reality does not square with survey results I suspect it's the survey results that are wrong not reality. Just like if I go to a doctor and he asks me how much do you drink.....I am not going to tell him a bottle of rum a day I am going to say I have the occasional glass of wine. Similarly no one is going to admit they live on ready meals and takeaways because they know it is bad
viewcode said:
@NickPalmer
What think you of this? https://www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/other-ideologies-4-eurocommunism
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It's a good article and generally fair, though I disagree with some bits. He's spot on about the basic appeal - aim for society based on solidarity and partnership rather than dominated by corporate influence, while avoiding the oppression of dictatorial states. I used to read Marxism Today with enthusiasm, but he's right that it was aimed at a very intellectual market. I think he overstates the dependence on the Soviet Union - given that part of the raison d'etre was to reject the dictatorial approach. IMO the movement largely failed by being too intellectual and also too naive - there's a panoply of democratic left leaders from Gorbachev to Corbyn who largely rejected expulsions and suppression of dissent in favour of a belief that you could win in the end simply by persistent, tireless argument.
The basic concept retains its appeal for me and for many (I've never apologised for my sympathies for it or tried to cover them up, even when I was an MP in a marginal), and influences more mainstream thinking, because most people feel uneasy about a society effectively run by large companies and media billionaires. But Gorbachev eventually concluded after losing power that the Scandinavian model of private enterprise married to high taxes and great social services was the way to go, and it remains IMO the model that demonstrably works better than the alternatives.
It's quick to prepare and eat, with little fibre in it and made to be soft so you eat quicker and want more.
That's why poor people eat bad diets.
Can still get by OK in the first two, but accent better than vocabulary recall.
And actually I think the key to a decent accent starts with good caricature.
Teach a man to fish, and he will… spend all day on a boat with his friends, drinking beer!
Joke aside, you make a good point about cooking skills. Enjoy your Sunday lunch.
Working class motivation for self improvement, and upward mobility still exists as it always has, but has never been universal.
There are 4 pending by elections, and they've chosen to poll the one there isn't.
person A :I am obese because I live on take aways and ready meals
Farooq : Thats because you can't afford to buy ingredients, you dont have time to cook, you cant cook and can't be expected to learn.....take your pick of excuses as its definitely not your fault and you can't change it
person A: thanks Farooq now I feel better its not my fault I am fat its the governments and societies....heads off to mcDonalds
I think we need to be clear how the NHS operates with different levels of staff, and how some of the roles are defined, which has changed hugely since say 2000.
Speaking for example wrt in-patients and NHS England, normally a patient has a named HCA and a named nurse responsible in each 12 hour period.
'Non-clinical' care for patients (including routine weighing, blood pressure tests, blood glucose measurements, and sometimes inserting cannulas, take blood samples, plus basics such as bed-pans etc) is not done by nurses in my experience - unless there was a specific need. These would be done by Health Care Assistants, who have the lower end part of the job nurse's did before Degree Nursing came in, whilst the nurse role has been extended upwards.
I don't think this is much different for day patients or clinics.
Nurses deal with medical treatment and liaison with Doctors, including dealing with administration of prescribed medication from the (locked) medicine trolley, supervision of infusions etc. HCAs. They can also give certain medications on their own authority, I think - but not many - paracetamol being an example. For anything else on patient request (eg a laxative) they would need to ask a Doctor, so one trick is to ask for various things you *may* need early so they get through the authorisation cycle and are available on the medical notes.
There are cross-cutting roles too - my recent hospital stay had central resources who could be called in if ward-staff were too busy, such as cannula experts. Nurses would just add it to the "task list" on the computer system.