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There’s a lot for the Tories to worry about in latest R&W poll – politicalbetting.com

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  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541
    Pulpstar said:

    BBC News - BBC presenter sent abusive and menacing messages to second young person
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-66165766

    Ah, the classic drip feed...
    Our libel laws really are a nonces charter lol
    Yes. I'm sure you'd be totally chill if a paper called you a nonce. Free speech and all that.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,772
    felix said:

    ydoethur said:

    felix said:

    Sean_F said:

    TOPPING said:

    Sean_F said:

    Andy_JS said:

    New article in the Spectator.

    "America’s fierce guilt for slavery is understandable – we mustn’t import it
    Sean Thomas"

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/americas-fierce-guilt-for-slavery-is-understandable-we-mustnt-import-it/

    Yes thank God the existence of slavery in North America had nothing to with the British.
    It certainly had nothing to do with anyone born in Britain today, or do you believe in collective ethnic guilt?
    I don't think guilt is a useful response at all but equally I think it would be absurd to pretend that North American slavery had nothing to do with us, or indeed to pretend that people alive now haven't benefited materially from its legacy.
    My own view is that once a nation becomes independent, it becomes responsible for its own actions.
    So if I come over to your house and steal all of your assets then let you go that's on you is it? We're both equal?
    No. Why would anybody think that?

    Quite. some of the 'analogies' people try on here are totally stupid.
    Although my one about stale donkey excrement was at least inventive.
    Bullshit!
    No, that would not have been inventive.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,792
    Leon said:

    Sean_F said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    Let's hope it is true



    "Rumours circulating that President Biden is due to announce he won’t be contesting the 2024 Presidential election in a CNN interview this weekend. Newsom’s odds of being next President climbing on back of rumours."

    https://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1678745058642735106?s=20

    Let's hope the second part is definitely *not* true.
    Yes, I think Newsom could lose to Trump.
    But, if the Dems have the sense to drop Biden then the GOP might have the cullions to replace Trump. And finally America will get a duel between two not-mad, not octogenarian candidates
    I think Biden is vastly underrated, yet have also opined frequently on here that I think in the end neither he nor Trump will run.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,005

    ...

    Andy_JS said:

    "Anonymity might not be sustainable, former culture committee chair says

    Earlier this afternoon, a former chair of the Commons digital, culture, media and sport select committee said questions remained about how the BBC handled the initial complaint in May about the unnamed presenter.

    Conservative MP Damian Collins told BBC Radio 4: "There is a perception that not much was done... until it was reported in the press, and then there was a more active participation by BBC management.

    "Why wasn't more done sooner, when the allegations were made?"

    Collins said the BBC needed to look into what happens when a serious allegation comes in and how it's looked at.

    Collins added it might not be "sustainable" for the presenter to remain anonymous if the person in question is off-air for a long time and everybody in the industry knows who it is."

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-66159469

    Whatever happened to innocence until proof of guilt?
    That has only ever applied to the right people. Be poor and you are guilty till proved innocent mostly
  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,983

    ...

    Andy_JS said:

    "Anonymity might not be sustainable, former culture committee chair says

    Earlier this afternoon, a former chair of the Commons digital, culture, media and sport select committee said questions remained about how the BBC handled the initial complaint in May about the unnamed presenter.

    Conservative MP Damian Collins told BBC Radio 4: "There is a perception that not much was done... until it was reported in the press, and then there was a more active participation by BBC management.

    "Why wasn't more done sooner, when the allegations were made?"

    Collins said the BBC needed to look into what happens when a serious allegation comes in and how it's looked at.

    Collins added it might not be "sustainable" for the presenter to remain anonymous if the person in question is off-air for a long time and everybody in the industry knows who it is."

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-66159469

    Whatever happened to innocence until proof of guilt?
    Extraordinary isn't it? No self awareness at all
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,772
    edited July 2023

    Leon said:

    Sean_F said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    Let's hope it is true



    "Rumours circulating that President Biden is due to announce he won’t be contesting the 2024 Presidential election in a CNN interview this weekend. Newsom’s odds of being next President climbing on back of rumours."

    https://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1678745058642735106?s=20

    Let's hope the second part is definitely *not* true.
    Yes, I think Newsom could lose to Trump.
    But, if the Dems have the sense to drop Biden then the GOP might have the cullions to replace Trump. And finally America will get a duel between two not-mad, not octogenarian candidates
    I think Biden is vastly underrated, yet have also opined frequently on here that I think in the end neither he nor Trump will run.
    There were few who thought him a starter
    Many who thought themselves smarter.
    But he first was VP
    And then beat Trumpy
    And was POTUS despite all the laughter.

    With apologies to Earl Attlee KG CH OM.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 5,067
    edited July 2023
    If the alleged offender was Angela Rippon or Clive Mryie, would the young person ask for Angela or ask for Clive?
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 43,049
    Andy_JS said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Let's hope it is true

    "Rumours circulating that President Biden is due to announce he won’t be contesting the 2024 Presidential election in a CNN interview this weekend. Newsom’s odds of being next President climbing on back of rumours."

    https://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1678745058642735106?s=20

    It's starting to feel inevitable. Newsom is clearly running an undeclared campaign and already picking up momentum.
    I don't know about Newsom but there are even more vids popping up where Biden looks completely vacant, doddery, vague, and mentally incompetent, they are just SAD. No frigging way he should stand in 2024

    It would surely kill him in the first year, for a start
    Biden at 80 is still preferable to many of the other possible presidential candidates, from both parties.
    He looked pretty sprightly reviewing 1WG with HMK the other day.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,956

    I thought Heathener declared this story closed.


    Wasn't it Heathener who insisted that Russia would not invade Ukraine even when the US government was giving a likely date for the invasion?

    Roger has a rival.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,175
    Two new ElectoPanel polls today both show the PP lead growing after the 'cara a cara' debate last night.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2023_Spanish_general_election
  • glwglw Posts: 9,956

    Do you think BBC News waited until Tim Divie had done his media round and dug himself hole before dropping this?

    I would expect so, and things would look a bit iffy if they ran the story just before his appearance.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,175
    ydoethur said:

    felix said:

    ydoethur said:

    felix said:

    Sean_F said:

    TOPPING said:

    Sean_F said:

    Andy_JS said:

    New article in the Spectator.

    "America’s fierce guilt for slavery is understandable – we mustn’t import it
    Sean Thomas"

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/americas-fierce-guilt-for-slavery-is-understandable-we-mustnt-import-it/

    Yes thank God the existence of slavery in North America had nothing to with the British.
    It certainly had nothing to do with anyone born in Britain today, or do you believe in collective ethnic guilt?
    I don't think guilt is a useful response at all but equally I think it would be absurd to pretend that North American slavery had nothing to do with us, or indeed to pretend that people alive now haven't benefited materially from its legacy.
    My own view is that once a nation becomes independent, it becomes responsible for its own actions.
    So if I come over to your house and steal all of your assets then let you go that's on you is it? We're both equal?
    No. Why would anybody think that?

    Quite. some of the 'analogies' people try on here are totally stupid.
    Although my one about stale donkey excrement was at least inventive.
    Bullshit!
    No, that would not have been inventive.
    But much more in your line... :smiley:
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,685
    Scott_xP said:

    As a society we have moved away from being scandalised by sex outside marriage, and now divorce, blended families and so on is common. Yet Johnson, uniquely, seems to be held up for oprobium for this. I find it interesting.

    As ever with BoZo, the issue is not that he had an affair (although he did) or that he got an unknown number of women pregnant (although he did). The issue, again, and always, is that he lied about it. And lied about the lies.
    Who did he lie to about it?
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 28,437
    Leon said:

    Let's hope it is true



    "Rumours circulating that President Biden is due to announce he won’t be contesting the 2024 Presidential election in a CNN interview this weekend. Newsom’s odds of being next President climbing on back of rumours."

    https://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1678745058642735106?s=20

    Erm, is Toby Young well-placed to hear Washington rumours?
  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,983
    Pagan2 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Stocky said:

    Brother-in-law started new job for a design company with 200 or so employees this week.

    The company has a canteen where the lunches are free. But there is a catch.

    If an employee wants the free lunch their one hour lunch break reduces to 30 minutes. If they don't want the lunch they get their hour. No pressure either way is applied by management.

    No doubt I'm out of touch, but I've never heard of this before. Quite novel and brother-in-law says that most employees opt for the free lunch and reduced lunchbreak

    So in return for lunch they have to work an extra 30 minutes for no extra pay?

    Expensive sandwich.
    So eating their own sandwiches is a Benefit in Kind under HMRC rules?
    How are subsidised canteens treated tax wise? I've worked at a few places that had those.
    I'm so old I had a job where they gave out luncheon vouchers.

    I guess they are long gone.
    Very versatile as well as tax free - I recall reading that Mrs Payne the madam accepted them, so not just cafes and the like. Seriously, they could be used on family outings and the like if it wasn't convenient during the week.

    They still exist, but much reduced, and not tax free I assume.
    I used to give my Luncheon Vouchers to the homeless woman below our office building, as a near cash equivalent, and was not alone in that. Almost everywhere in the City took them.
    Weren't luncheon vouchers from memory party of a paid for sex scandal perpetrated by one mistress Payne who had brothels that accepted them as payment?
    Old Cyn? Never 'eard of her
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,792
    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Well if it does turn out that WH24 involves neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump, I really will be due some 'wtf that spooky kuntibula!' commentary on here. :blush:

    Several people have predicted the same. E.g. Yokes and rcs1000
    Er, and me. Repeatedly.

    But let's see.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541
    edited July 2023

    Scott_xP said:

    As a society we have moved away from being scandalised by sex outside marriage, and now divorce, blended families and so on is common. Yet Johnson, uniquely, seems to be held up for oprobium for this. I find it interesting.

    As ever with BoZo, the issue is not that he had an affair (although he did) or that he got an unknown number of women pregnant (although he did). The issue, again, and always, is that he lied about it. And lied about the lies.
    Who did he lie to about it?
    Michael Howard for a start

    https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2004/nov/14/uk.conservatives

    The episode brings an end to an unlikely but uniquely engaging political career. Johnson, 40, who is also editor of the Spectator magazine, became one of the few modern Tories able to capture the public imagination, even provoking speculation he could be a future leader.

    Heh
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,959
    Boris Johnson seems to be on a personal mission to prove the maxim that only the very rich can afford to have lots of children.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,546

    ...

    Andy_JS said:

    "Anonymity might not be sustainable, former culture committee chair says

    Earlier this afternoon, a former chair of the Commons digital, culture, media and sport select committee said questions remained about how the BBC handled the initial complaint in May about the unnamed presenter.

    Conservative MP Damian Collins told BBC Radio 4: "There is a perception that not much was done... until it was reported in the press, and then there was a more active participation by BBC management.

    "Why wasn't more done sooner, when the allegations were made?"

    Collins said the BBC needed to look into what happens when a serious allegation comes in and how it's looked at.

    Collins added it might not be "sustainable" for the presenter to remain anonymous if the person in question is off-air for a long time and everybody in the industry knows who it is."

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-66159469

    Whatever happened to innocence until proof of guilt?
    Did Magna Carta die in vain?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,772
    edited July 2023
    felix said:

    ydoethur said:

    felix said:

    ydoethur said:

    felix said:

    Sean_F said:

    TOPPING said:

    Sean_F said:

    Andy_JS said:

    New article in the Spectator.

    "America’s fierce guilt for slavery is understandable – we mustn’t import it
    Sean Thomas"

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/americas-fierce-guilt-for-slavery-is-understandable-we-mustnt-import-it/

    Yes thank God the existence of slavery in North America had nothing to with the British.
    It certainly had nothing to do with anyone born in Britain today, or do you believe in collective ethnic guilt?
    I don't think guilt is a useful response at all but equally I think it would be absurd to pretend that North American slavery had nothing to do with us, or indeed to pretend that people alive now haven't benefited materially from its legacy.
    My own view is that once a nation becomes independent, it becomes responsible for its own actions.
    So if I come over to your house and steal all of your assets then let you go that's on you is it? We're both equal?
    No. Why would anybody think that?

    Quite. some of the 'analogies' people try on here are totally stupid.
    Although my one about stale donkey excrement was at least inventive.
    Bullshit!
    No, that would not have been inventive.
    But much more in your line... :smiley:
    I was never any good at bullshit. Only at detecting it.

    It's why I would never have been a head or an acting head. Or indeed a civil servant.
  • PeckPeck Posts: 517
    edited July 2023
    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bbc-presenter-suspended-arrested-identity-latest-b2372906.html

    "BBC News confirmed they had seen a number of 'threatening messages' and confirmed it came from a phone number belonging to the presenter."

    Either the word "it" is an error or the number referred to was one.

    Curiously the word "arrested" appears in the URL but not the article.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 55,035
    Another Russian general, alleged to have been taken out by a Storm Shadow in Ukraine. That’s the 9th general so far.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/07/11/russia-ukraine-war-latest-news-nato-zelensky-putin/

    Hope we’ve got the factory making more of these, they do seem to be rather effective. Even more so when aimed at high-value military targets, rather than random residential buildings, hey Mr Putin.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,772
    Sandpit said:

    Another Russian general, alleged to have been taken out by a Storm Shadow in Ukraine. That’s the 9th general so far.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/07/11/russia-ukraine-war-latest-news-nato-zelensky-putin/

    Hope we’ve got the factory making more of these, they do seem to be rather effective. Even more so when aimed at high-value military targets, rather than random residential buildings, hey Mr Putin.

    Although given the quality of Russian generals, you wonder if killing them is actually a net benefit.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 55,035
    ydoethur said:

    Sandpit said:

    Another Russian general, alleged to have been taken out by a Storm Shadow in Ukraine. That’s the 9th general so far.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/07/11/russia-ukraine-war-latest-news-nato-zelensky-putin/

    Hope we’ve got the factory making more of these, they do seem to be rather effective. Even more so when aimed at high-value military targets, rather than random residential buildings, hey Mr Putin.

    Although given the quality of Russian generals, you wonder if killing them is actually a net benefit.
    A risk worth taking.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,903
    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    Paul Johnson
    @PJTheEconomist
    ·
    3h
    Private school fees have risen 20% in real terms since 2010 and 55% since 2003. Numbers privately educated have been pretty constant that whole time. Removing tax exemptions likely to have only small effects on numbers. Net benefit to public finances likely to be £1.3-1.5bn p.a.

    https://twitter.com/PJTheEconomist/status/1678687484992004096

    Paying an extra 20% tomorrow isn't quite the same as 20% more over 10 years. Also be interesting to know the shift in who is attending. Has it shifted to much more reliance on overseas students?
    Short answer: yes.

    Labour's proposed changes will have basically no effect on Eton and Harrow. It's the smaller, less selective private schools with specialisms (e.g. music or autism support) which are going to suffer. It's not really a very progressive policy at all.
    If I wanted to target Eton, Harrow, Clifton, Winchester, Westminster, Cheltenham etc my policy would be to disendow all schools registered as charities that charged fees.

    I think that would make a very substantial difference to their business models. Either lose your reserves, or pay business rates.

    I suspect those ones would also be able to compensate by whacking up the overseas fees, so it wouldn’t make much difference in practice to them.
    Requisition as accommodation for asylum seekers?
    Well, if Johnson went there I suppose it was a sort of asylum.

    Incidentally, its endowment fund went up every single year in the past decade, including during Covid. It was worth £568 million in August last year, and that's with the school running at a headline loss.

    https://www.etoncollege.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/21-22-ETON-COLLEGE-CONSOLIDATED-Signed.pdf

    Now, of course if you disendowed Eton etc that wouldn't be (like VAT) something you should use as income, unless you're Thatcher and Lawson. But it could very easily be used to rebuild a largeish chunk of our collapsing school structures, for example. Which, if a bunch of sane architects rather than the ones for BSF were involved, would not only dramatically improve the environment children are in, and make it safer, but also cut future running costs substantially.

    Plus Eton would then undoubtedly charge higher fees to cover all its costs, and as a result the rich would be paying more.

    Or alternatively, they become businesses, and account for their profits to the taxman. And pay up.

    Meanwhile the smaller private schools - e.g. those that take a largeish number of SEND that the local authority can't find places for in specialist schools because they've all been shut - can keep doing what they do, which is not without disadvantages but would cause more problems than it would solve if it stopped.
    Making some sense here. And I do like the suitably painful sound of 'disendow'. Brutal perhaps but hardly unprovoked imo.

    "Look, elitist British public schools, you've been fouling up the place for years, and we've had enough. Time to disendow you. Please prepare yourselves accordingly."
    We really need differential approaches to the elite public schools which have become another global luxury good, like central London property, and the private day schools that mess around in the middle class selective market alongside grammar schools and postcode-based social cleansing.

    Both have damaging impacts on British life but in very different ways. One gave us the likes of Boris and JRM but most of what it does is bring in export income. Perhaps we just ringfence the hyper-elite sector like we do Mayfair. Charge a luxury tax on it, a kind of poshness excise duty. The other is more of a serious market failing because its impact is more widespread.

    Somehow if we could blur the line between state and private at the mid level we might be able to widen access to the facilities and skills in the independent sector and reduce social gaps in attainment. But don’t ask me how. If the answer was easy we’d have done it already.
    The problem is not that the solution is difficult but that it is expensive.

    Cut all classes in the state sector to a maximum of twenty and offer private schools the chance to become state at the same time, and almost all private schools would become state schools overnight.

    Plus it would solve many other problems, including making behaviour management much easier.

    But - nobody has ever found a way to pay for it, and it would not be cheap.
    It would pay for itself over time by leading to improved educational outcomes and higher productivity. The fact we don't do it is another example of our aversion to investment in this country. Plus of course the fact that it would undermine the advantages that the rich and powerful are buying for their offspring.
    I entirely agree. But it will still never happen.
    Maybe, like with the idea of Brexit as shock therapy with a short term cost that would force us to adopt policies that paid off in the long term, we need to simply shut down all private schools and see what happens. It may be the only way to create a sufficiently powerful political constituency for adequately funded schools in the long run, even if in the short run it will make things worse.
    Can I just check - are you a Rejoiner?
    At some point I think we will rejoin because Brexit has made us poorer and because the people who found the EU most offensive are old and we all know what happens to old people. I would welcome us rejoining, but I'm not agitating for it if that's what you mean.
  • numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 6,927

    Leon said:

    Let's hope it is true



    "Rumours circulating that President Biden is due to announce he won’t be contesting the 2024 Presidential election in a CNN interview this weekend. Newsom’s odds of being next President climbing on back of rumours."

    https://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1678745058642735106?s=20

    Erm, is Toby Young well-placed to hear Washington rumours?
    I’m not sure I see it myself. If you’ve announced your running you have to have a very good reason to un-announce. For Biden I can only think of health reasons, and the question would then become (a) what has changed between starting your campaign and now that has changed your mind and (b) if it is so bad you can’t run, why are you not resigning now?


  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,679
    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Well if it does turn out that WH24 involves neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump, I really will be due some 'wtf that spooky kuntibula!' commentary on here. :blush:

    Several people have predicted the same. E.g. Yokes and rcs1000
    RCS? No, I don't think so.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559

    ...

    Andy_JS said:

    "Anonymity might not be sustainable, former culture committee chair says

    Earlier this afternoon, a former chair of the Commons digital, culture, media and sport select committee said questions remained about how the BBC handled the initial complaint in May about the unnamed presenter.

    Conservative MP Damian Collins told BBC Radio 4: "There is a perception that not much was done... until it was reported in the press, and then there was a more active participation by BBC management.

    "Why wasn't more done sooner, when the allegations were made?"

    Collins said the BBC needed to look into what happens when a serious allegation comes in and how it's looked at.

    Collins added it might not be "sustainable" for the presenter to remain anonymous if the person in question is off-air for a long time and everybody in the industry knows who it is."

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-66159469

    Whatever happened to innocence until proof of guilt?
    Sounds like a Tory, or more, is "telegraphing" (in more ways than one) they perhaps intend to "name names" (at least one) in the House of Commons?
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 3,069
    Ukrainian beats a Pole in the tennis, and after all the support they showed for their country. For shame... (I'm not being serious)
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,772
    edited July 2023
    Oh good grief. Just when you thought the Hundred couldn't get worse.

    Compare the Market have become sponsors and pledged to 'entertain the crowds with their characters.'

    Fuxsake, stupid wombat and meerkat memes that are already being heavily criticised are just what it needs

    https://www.thecricketer.com/Topics/thehundred/the_hundred_new_sponsor_compare_the_market_rescue.html
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,175
    ydoethur said:

    felix said:

    ydoethur said:

    felix said:

    ydoethur said:

    felix said:

    Sean_F said:

    TOPPING said:

    Sean_F said:

    Andy_JS said:

    New article in the Spectator.

    "America’s fierce guilt for slavery is understandable – we mustn’t import it
    Sean Thomas"

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/americas-fierce-guilt-for-slavery-is-understandable-we-mustnt-import-it/

    Yes thank God the existence of slavery in North America had nothing to with the British.
    It certainly had nothing to do with anyone born in Britain today, or do you believe in collective ethnic guilt?
    I don't think guilt is a useful response at all but equally I think it would be absurd to pretend that North American slavery had nothing to do with us, or indeed to pretend that people alive now haven't benefited materially from its legacy.
    My own view is that once a nation becomes independent, it becomes responsible for its own actions.
    So if I come over to your house and steal all of your assets then let you go that's on you is it? We're both equal?
    No. Why would anybody think that?

    Quite. some of the 'analogies' people try on here are totally stupid.
    Although my one about stale donkey excrement was at least inventive.
    Bullshit!
    No, that would not have been inventive.
    But much more in your line... :smiley:
    I was never any good at bullshit. Only at detecting it.

    It's why I would never have been a head or an acting head. Or indeed a civil servant.
    Of course I was an acting head so guilty as charged and I throw myself at the mercy of the court of PB opinion :smiley:
  • MiklosvarMiklosvar Posts: 1,855
    Peck said:

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bbc-presenter-suspended-arrested-identity-latest-b2372906.html

    "BBC News confirmed they had seen a number of 'threatening messages' and confirmed it came from a phone number belonging to the presenter."

    Either the word "it" is an error or the number referred to was one.

    Curiously the word "arrested" appears in the URL but not the article.

    Bbc itself

    The presenter reacted by sending a number of threatening messages.

    BBC News has been able to verify that the messages were sent from a phone number belonging to the presenter.

    Bit incautious of them, phone nos can be spoofed.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,533
    edited July 2023
    ydoethur said:

    Oh good grief. Just when you thought the Hundred couldn't get worse.

    Compare the Market have become sponsors and pledged to 'entertain the crowds with their characters.'

    Fuxsake, stupid wombat and meerkat memes that are already being heavily criticised are just what it needs

    https://www.thecricketer.com/Topics/thehundred/the_hundred_new_sponsor_compare_the_market_rescue.html

    Needs taking out the back and shooting...
  • PeckPeck Posts: 517

    Leon said:

    Let's hope it is true

    "Rumours circulating that President Biden is due to announce he won’t be contesting the 2024 Presidential election in a CNN interview this weekend. Newsom’s odds of being next President climbing on back of rumours."

    https://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1678745058642735106?s=20

    Erm, is Toby Young well-placed to hear Washington rumours?
    Oh no. I was pleased until I realised this came from TY.

    So if Trump wins the Rep nom the next occupant of the WH will be Hair Gel Gavin or Kamala Harris, assuming it's not RFKJr then.

    Does anybody know how well Biden and Newsom get along? If Biden wants to be succeeded by Harris, he should edge himself out gradually. Like this:

    1. Announce he won't be standing for re-election.
    2 (Some time later.) Get some health treatment that requires the VP to act as president for 3-4 days.
    3. (During those 3-4 days.) Spread rumours he's going to resign.
    4. Take the reins back over and say hey, whatcha all talking about, I'm going to serve out my term.
    5. (A little later.) Resign in apparent sorrow but hey, yall in great hands now.

    Say hello to President Harris who can then run as the incumbent.

    Full disclosure: I got on KH at 48.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 63,657
    David Banks, media law consultant has just said on Sky this has changed the story not least as the second complainant has gone direct to the BBC, and the BBC have seen the messages and there could be a public interest argument for the presenter to be named
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,175

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    Paul Johnson
    @PJTheEconomist
    ·
    3h
    Private school fees have risen 20% in real terms since 2010 and 55% since 2003. Numbers privately educated have been pretty constant that whole time. Removing tax exemptions likely to have only small effects on numbers. Net benefit to public finances likely to be £1.3-1.5bn p.a.

    https://twitter.com/PJTheEconomist/status/1678687484992004096

    Paying an extra 20% tomorrow isn't quite the same as 20% more over 10 years. Also be interesting to know the shift in who is attending. Has it shifted to much more reliance on overseas students?
    Short answer: yes.

    Labour's proposed changes will have basically no effect on Eton and Harrow. It's the smaller, less selective private schools with specialisms (e.g. music or autism support) which are going to suffer. It's not really a very progressive policy at all.
    If I wanted to target Eton, Harrow, Clifton, Winchester, Westminster, Cheltenham etc my policy would be to disendow all schools registered as charities that charged fees.

    I think that would make a very substantial difference to their business models. Either lose your reserves, or pay business rates.

    I suspect those ones would also be able to compensate by whacking up the overseas fees, so it wouldn’t make much difference in practice to them.
    Requisition as accommodation for asylum seekers?
    Well, if Johnson went there I suppose it was a sort of asylum.

    Incidentally, its endowment fund went up every single year in the past decade, including during Covid. It was worth £568 million in August last year, and that's with the school running at a headline loss.

    https://www.etoncollege.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/21-22-ETON-COLLEGE-CONSOLIDATED-Signed.pdf

    Now, of course if you disendowed Eton etc that wouldn't be (like VAT) something you should use as income, unless you're Thatcher and Lawson. But it could very easily be used to rebuild a largeish chunk of our collapsing school structures, for example. Which, if a bunch of sane architects rather than the ones for BSF were involved, would not only dramatically improve the environment children are in, and make it safer, but also cut future running costs substantially.

    Plus Eton would then undoubtedly charge higher fees to cover all its costs, and as a result the rich would be paying more.

    Or alternatively, they become businesses, and account for their profits to the taxman. And pay up.

    Meanwhile the smaller private schools - e.g. those that take a largeish number of SEND that the local authority can't find places for in specialist schools because they've all been shut - can keep doing what they do, which is not without disadvantages but would cause more problems than it would solve if it stopped.
    Making some sense here. And I do like the suitably painful sound of 'disendow'. Brutal perhaps but hardly unprovoked imo.

    "Look, elitist British public schools, you've been fouling up the place for years, and we've had enough. Time to disendow you. Please prepare yourselves accordingly."
    We really need differential approaches to the elite public schools which have become another global luxury good, like central London property, and the private day schools that mess around in the middle class selective market alongside grammar schools and postcode-based social cleansing.

    Both have damaging impacts on British life but in very different ways. One gave us the likes of Boris and JRM but most of what it does is bring in export income. Perhaps we just ringfence the hyper-elite sector like we do Mayfair. Charge a luxury tax on it, a kind of poshness excise duty. The other is more of a serious market failing because its impact is more widespread.

    Somehow if we could blur the line between state and private at the mid level we might be able to widen access to the facilities and skills in the independent sector and reduce social gaps in attainment. But don’t ask me how. If the answer was easy we’d have done it already.
    The problem is not that the solution is difficult but that it is expensive.

    Cut all classes in the state sector to a maximum of twenty and offer private schools the chance to become state at the same time, and almost all private schools would become state schools overnight.

    Plus it would solve many other problems, including making behaviour management much easier.

    But - nobody has ever found a way to pay for it, and it would not be cheap.
    It would pay for itself over time by leading to improved educational outcomes and higher productivity. The fact we don't do it is another example of our aversion to investment in this country. Plus of course the fact that it would undermine the advantages that the rich and powerful are buying for their offspring.
    I entirely agree. But it will still never happen.
    Maybe, like with the idea of Brexit as shock therapy with a short term cost that would force us to adopt policies that paid off in the long term, we need to simply shut down all private schools and see what happens. It may be the only way to create a sufficiently powerful political constituency for adequately funded schools in the long run, even if in the short run it will make things worse.
    Can I just check - are you a Rejoiner?
    At some point I think we will rejoin because Brexit has made us poorer and because the people who found the EU most offensive are old and we all know what happens to old people. I would welcome us rejoining, but I'm not agitating for it if that's what you mean.
    Historically the proportion of oldies in the UK is continuing to grow so your point may lack some of the force you intended.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,679

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Well if it does turn out that WH24 involves neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump, I really will be due some 'wtf that spooky kuntibula!' commentary on here. :blush:

    Several people have predicted the same. E.g. Yokes and rcs1000
    Er, and me. Repeatedly.

    But let's see.
    Yep. You, I recall. TBF - with me - I'm confident about No Trump but on Biden less so. I have him as about 50/50 to be the candidate.

    Trump v Biden: 10%
    Trump v DEM: 10%
    GOP v Biden: 40%
    GOP v DEM: 40%

    Something like that.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,772
    felix said:

    ydoethur said:

    felix said:

    ydoethur said:

    felix said:

    ydoethur said:

    felix said:

    Sean_F said:

    TOPPING said:

    Sean_F said:

    Andy_JS said:

    New article in the Spectator.

    "America’s fierce guilt for slavery is understandable – we mustn’t import it
    Sean Thomas"

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/americas-fierce-guilt-for-slavery-is-understandable-we-mustnt-import-it/

    Yes thank God the existence of slavery in North America had nothing to with the British.
    It certainly had nothing to do with anyone born in Britain today, or do you believe in collective ethnic guilt?
    I don't think guilt is a useful response at all but equally I think it would be absurd to pretend that North American slavery had nothing to do with us, or indeed to pretend that people alive now haven't benefited materially from its legacy.
    My own view is that once a nation becomes independent, it becomes responsible for its own actions.
    So if I come over to your house and steal all of your assets then let you go that's on you is it? We're both equal?
    No. Why would anybody think that?

    Quite. some of the 'analogies' people try on here are totally stupid.
    Although my one about stale donkey excrement was at least inventive.
    Bullshit!
    No, that would not have been inventive.
    But much more in your line... :smiley:
    I was never any good at bullshit. Only at detecting it.

    It's why I would never have been a head or an acting head. Or indeed a civil servant.
    Of course I was an acting head so guilty as charged and I throw myself at the mercy of the court of PB opinion :smiley:
    You could perhaps prove a famous saying by Sir Boyle Roche, the greatest maker of Irish Bulls.

    'They will kill us, and fling our bleeding heads on the table to stare us in the face.'
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 63,137

    David Banks, media law consultant has just said on Sky this has changed the story not least as the second complainant has gone direct to the BBC, and the BBC have seen the messages and there could be a public interest argument for the presenter to be named

    Where is the public interest?

  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,929

    BBC News - BBC presenter sent abusive and menacing messages to second young person
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-66165766

    As I said this morning it would be prudent to let this story take it's course and not to jump to conclusions
    To be fair this would suggest we finally have some actual evidence.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,175
    ydoethur said:

    felix said:

    ydoethur said:

    felix said:

    ydoethur said:

    felix said:

    ydoethur said:

    felix said:

    Sean_F said:

    TOPPING said:

    Sean_F said:

    Andy_JS said:

    New article in the Spectator.

    "America’s fierce guilt for slavery is understandable – we mustn’t import it
    Sean Thomas"

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/americas-fierce-guilt-for-slavery-is-understandable-we-mustnt-import-it/

    Yes thank God the existence of slavery in North America had nothing to with the British.
    It certainly had nothing to do with anyone born in Britain today, or do you believe in collective ethnic guilt?
    I don't think guilt is a useful response at all but equally I think it would be absurd to pretend that North American slavery had nothing to do with us, or indeed to pretend that people alive now haven't benefited materially from its legacy.
    My own view is that once a nation becomes independent, it becomes responsible for its own actions.
    So if I come over to your house and steal all of your assets then let you go that's on you is it? We're both equal?
    No. Why would anybody think that?

    Quite. some of the 'analogies' people try on here are totally stupid.
    Although my one about stale donkey excrement was at least inventive.
    Bullshit!
    No, that would not have been inventive.
    But much more in your line... :smiley:
    I was never any good at bullshit. Only at detecting it.

    It's why I would never have been a head or an acting head. Or indeed a civil servant.
    Of course I was an acting head so guilty as charged and I throw myself at the mercy of the court of PB opinion :smiley:
    You could perhaps prove a famous saying by Sir Boyle Roche, the greatest maker of Irish Bulls.

    'They will kill us, and fling our bleeding heads on the table to stare us in the face.'
    Yup sounds typical PB mercy to its victims.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,679
    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    Well if it does turn out that WH24 involves neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump, I really will be due some 'wtf that spooky kuntibula!' commentary on here. :blush:

    Several people have predicted the same. E.g. Yokes and rcs1000
    RCS? No, I don't think so.
    https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/3569136/#Comment_3569136
    Ok but that's written in Sept 2021. He's re-assessed since.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,959

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    Paul Johnson
    @PJTheEconomist
    ·
    3h
    Private school fees have risen 20% in real terms since 2010 and 55% since 2003. Numbers privately educated have been pretty constant that whole time. Removing tax exemptions likely to have only small effects on numbers. Net benefit to public finances likely to be £1.3-1.5bn p.a.

    https://twitter.com/PJTheEconomist/status/1678687484992004096

    Paying an extra 20% tomorrow isn't quite the same as 20% more over 10 years. Also be interesting to know the shift in who is attending. Has it shifted to much more reliance on overseas students?
    Short answer: yes.

    Labour's proposed changes will have basically no effect on Eton and Harrow. It's the smaller, less selective private schools with specialisms (e.g. music or autism support) which are going to suffer. It's not really a very progressive policy at all.
    If I wanted to target Eton, Harrow, Clifton, Winchester, Westminster, Cheltenham etc my policy would be to disendow all schools registered as charities that charged fees.

    I think that would make a very substantial difference to their business models. Either lose your reserves, or pay business rates.

    I suspect those ones would also be able to compensate by whacking up the overseas fees, so it wouldn’t make much difference in practice to them.
    Requisition as accommodation for asylum seekers?
    Well, if Johnson went there I suppose it was a sort of asylum.

    Incidentally, its endowment fund went up every single year in the past decade, including during Covid. It was worth £568 million in August last year, and that's with the school running at a headline loss.

    https://www.etoncollege.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/21-22-ETON-COLLEGE-CONSOLIDATED-Signed.pdf

    Now, of course if you disendowed Eton etc that wouldn't be (like VAT) something you should use as income, unless you're Thatcher and Lawson. But it could very easily be used to rebuild a largeish chunk of our collapsing school structures, for example. Which, if a bunch of sane architects rather than the ones for BSF were involved, would not only dramatically improve the environment children are in, and make it safer, but also cut future running costs substantially.

    Plus Eton would then undoubtedly charge higher fees to cover all its costs, and as a result the rich would be paying more.

    Or alternatively, they become businesses, and account for their profits to the taxman. And pay up.

    Meanwhile the smaller private schools - e.g. those that take a largeish number of SEND that the local authority can't find places for in specialist schools because they've all been shut - can keep doing what they do, which is not without disadvantages but would cause more problems than it would solve if it stopped.
    Making some sense here. And I do like the suitably painful sound of 'disendow'. Brutal perhaps but hardly unprovoked imo.

    "Look, elitist British public schools, you've been fouling up the place for years, and we've had enough. Time to disendow you. Please prepare yourselves accordingly."
    We really need differential approaches to the elite public schools which have become another global luxury good, like central London property, and the private day schools that mess around in the middle class selective market alongside grammar schools and postcode-based social cleansing.

    Both have damaging impacts on British life but in very different ways. One gave us the likes of Boris and JRM but most of what it does is bring in export income. Perhaps we just ringfence the hyper-elite sector like we do Mayfair. Charge a luxury tax on it, a kind of poshness excise duty. The other is more of a serious market failing because its impact is more widespread.

    Somehow if we could blur the line between state and private at the mid level we might be able to widen access to the facilities and skills in the independent sector and reduce social gaps in attainment. But don’t ask me how. If the answer was easy we’d have done it already.
    The problem is not that the solution is difficult but that it is expensive.

    Cut all classes in the state sector to a maximum of twenty and offer private schools the chance to become state at the same time, and almost all private schools would become state schools overnight.

    Plus it would solve many other problems, including making behaviour management much easier.

    But - nobody has ever found a way to pay for it, and it would not be cheap.
    It would pay for itself over time by leading to improved educational outcomes and higher productivity. The fact we don't do it is another example of our aversion to investment in this country. Plus of course the fact that it would undermine the advantages that the rich and powerful are buying for their offspring.
    I entirely agree. But it will still never happen.
    Maybe, like with the idea of Brexit as shock therapy with a short term cost that would force us to adopt policies that paid off in the long term, we need to simply shut down all private schools and see what happens. It may be the only way to create a sufficiently powerful political constituency for adequately funded schools in the long run, even if in the short run it will make things worse.
    Can I just check - are you a Rejoiner?
    At some point I think we will rejoin because Brexit has made us poorer and because the people who found the EU most offensive are old and we all know what happens to old people. I would welcome us rejoining, but I'm not agitating for it if that's what you mean.
    Brexit wasn't about being poorer or wealthier. Many African countries have become poorer since they became independent of colonial powers. Does that mean they should give up their independence?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,679

    Leon said:

    Let's hope it is true



    "Rumours circulating that President Biden is due to announce he won’t be contesting the 2024 Presidential election in a CNN interview this weekend. Newsom’s odds of being next President climbing on back of rumours."

    https://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1678745058642735106?s=20

    Erm, is Toby Young well-placed to hear Washington rumours?
    Tobes is massive in the States!
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 63,657

    David Banks, media law consultant has just said on Sky this has changed the story not least as the second complainant has gone direct to the BBC, and the BBC have seen the messages and there could be a public interest argument for the presenter to be named

    Where is the public interest?

    Not sure but probably to do with the innocent presenters and the vile nature of twitter
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 63,137
    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Let's hope it is true



    "Rumours circulating that President Biden is due to announce he won’t be contesting the 2024 Presidential election in a CNN interview this weekend. Newsom’s odds of being next President climbing on back of rumours."

    https://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1678745058642735106?s=20

    Erm, is Toby Young well-placed to hear Washington rumours?
    Tobes is massive in the States!
    LOL. He's simply spoken to someone who read the Bill Kristol tweet I posted a few days ago.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,263
    Peck said:

    Andy_JS said:

    New article in the Spectator.

    "America’s fierce guilt for slavery is understandable – we mustn’t import it
    Sean Thomas"

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/americas-fierce-guilt-for-slavery-is-understandable-we-mustnt-import-it/

    Wrong to call the slaves in the US "voters". They were taken account of in the three-fifths rule for purposes of the allocation of seats in the electoral college and the House, but (unsurprisingly) they weren't allowed to vote.

    Up until about the 1970s part of the reason some white supremacists detested the idea of black children becoming literate was that "if you can read, you can vote".

    Also a large proportion (a majority) of black women in the US in say the 1940s worked not in hospitality but as domestic servants, maids, "help".
    You bothered to read the article ?
    Even the title has an overfamiliar ring to it, somehow.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,415
    Miklosvar said:

    Peck said:

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bbc-presenter-suspended-arrested-identity-latest-b2372906.html

    "BBC News confirmed they had seen a number of 'threatening messages' and confirmed it came from a phone number belonging to the presenter."

    Either the word "it" is an error or the number referred to was one.

    Curiously the word "arrested" appears in the URL but not the article.

    Bbc itself

    The presenter reacted by sending a number of threatening messages.

    BBC News has been able to verify that the messages were sent from a phone number belonging to the presenter.

    Bit incautious of them, phone nos can be spoofed.
    How would a random person know *'s phone number ?
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,415

    David Banks, media law consultant has just said on Sky this has changed the story not least as the second complainant has gone direct to the BBC, and the BBC have seen the messages and there could be a public interest argument for the presenter to be named

    Where is the public interest?

    All over the shop now imo
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 3,069
    This thread has sold some pictures for drug money
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 11,491
    Pulpstar said:

    Miklosvar said:

    Peck said:

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bbc-presenter-suspended-arrested-identity-latest-b2372906.html

    "BBC News confirmed they had seen a number of 'threatening messages' and confirmed it came from a phone number belonging to the presenter."

    Either the word "it" is an error or the number referred to was one.

    Curiously the word "arrested" appears in the URL but not the article.

    Bbc itself

    The presenter reacted by sending a number of threatening messages.

    BBC News has been able to verify that the messages were sent from a phone number belonging to the presenter.

    Bit incautious of them, phone nos can be spoofed.
    How would a random person know *'s phone number ?
    What does a random person have to do with this? You don't think BBC News might be able to find out the telephone number of someone at the BBC?
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,558

    David Banks, media law consultant has just said on Sky this has changed the story not least as the second complainant has gone direct to the BBC, and the BBC have seen the messages and there could be a public interest argument for the presenter to be named

    Where is the public interest?

    I would imagine something along the lines of, and not saying this is the situation, if there appears to be a pattern of abusive behaviour that’s not acceptable legally or contractually then the Beeb might think it better that anyone else who has been abused by the same person (if of course there is anyone else or if it has happened in the first place) will feel safe to come forward with their evidence and complaint who might otherwise have been too scared or pressured into silence previously.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559
    CatMan said:

    Ukrainian beats a Pole in the tennis, and after all the support they showed for their country. For shame... (I'm not being serious)

    Speaking seriously, however, in Poland many are recalling this tragedy 80 years ago this summer:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia_and_Eastern_Galicia

    Story about this in today's NYT, among others interviewed was woman, a little girl back then, who survived (unlike most of her family) coordinated attacks by Ukrainian nationalists in 1943 aimed a ethnic cleansing, aka genocide at least in what is today western Ukraine.

    FYI (also BTW) she supports aiding today's Ukraine against Russia.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,263

    Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I is very enjoyable.

    Best car chase sequence ever.

    Tom cruise did the motorbike off the cliff for reals....6.....times.....
    Wasn't it a bit beaten up after the first go ?
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 42,167
    Farooq said:

    Andy_JS said:

    New article in the Spectator.

    "America’s fierce guilt for slavery is understandable – we mustn’t import it
    Sean Thomas"

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/americas-fierce-guilt-for-slavery-is-understandable-we-mustnt-import-it/

    Not today, Satan
    Guess what Satan's home is an anagram of?
  • MiklosvarMiklosvar Posts: 1,855
    Pulpstar said:

    Miklosvar said:

    Peck said:

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bbc-presenter-suspended-arrested-identity-latest-b2372906.html

    "BBC News confirmed they had seen a number of 'threatening messages' and confirmed it came from a phone number belonging to the presenter."

    Either the word "it" is an error or the number referred to was one.

    Curiously the word "arrested" appears in the URL but not the article.

    Bbc itself

    The presenter reacted by sending a number of threatening messages.

    BBC News has been able to verify that the messages were sent from a phone number belonging to the presenter.

    Bit incautious of them, phone nos can be spoofed.
    How would a random person know *'s phone number ?
    Who is a random person? BBC likely to know BBC bod's number

    Also NEW THREAD
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,468
    felix said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    Paul Johnson
    @PJTheEconomist
    ·
    3h
    Private school fees have risen 20% in real terms since 2010 and 55% since 2003. Numbers privately educated have been pretty constant that whole time. Removing tax exemptions likely to have only small effects on numbers. Net benefit to public finances likely to be £1.3-1.5bn p.a.

    https://twitter.com/PJTheEconomist/status/1678687484992004096

    Paying an extra 20% tomorrow isn't quite the same as 20% more over 10 years. Also be interesting to know the shift in who is attending. Has it shifted to much more reliance on overseas students?
    Short answer: yes.

    Labour's proposed changes will have basically no effect on Eton and Harrow. It's the smaller, less selective private schools with specialisms (e.g. music or autism support) which are going to suffer. It's not really a very progressive policy at all.
    If I wanted to target Eton, Harrow, Clifton, Winchester, Westminster, Cheltenham etc my policy would be to disendow all schools registered as charities that charged fees.

    I think that would make a very substantial difference to their business models. Either lose your reserves, or pay business rates.

    I suspect those ones would also be able to compensate by whacking up the overseas fees, so it wouldn’t make much difference in practice to them.
    Requisition as accommodation for asylum seekers?
    Well, if Johnson went there I suppose it was a sort of asylum.

    Incidentally, its endowment fund went up every single year in the past decade, including during Covid. It was worth £568 million in August last year, and that's with the school running at a headline loss.

    https://www.etoncollege.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/21-22-ETON-COLLEGE-CONSOLIDATED-Signed.pdf

    Now, of course if you disendowed Eton etc that wouldn't be (like VAT) something you should use as income, unless you're Thatcher and Lawson. But it could very easily be used to rebuild a largeish chunk of our collapsing school structures, for example. Which, if a bunch of sane architects rather than the ones for BSF were involved, would not only dramatically improve the environment children are in, and make it safer, but also cut future running costs substantially.

    Plus Eton would then undoubtedly charge higher fees to cover all its costs, and as a result the rich would be paying more.

    Or alternatively, they become businesses, and account for their profits to the taxman. And pay up.

    Meanwhile the smaller private schools - e.g. those that take a largeish number of SEND that the local authority can't find places for in specialist schools because they've all been shut - can keep doing what they do, which is not without disadvantages but would cause more problems than it would solve if it stopped.
    Making some sense here. And I do like the suitably painful sound of 'disendow'. Brutal perhaps but hardly unprovoked imo.

    "Look, elitist British public schools, you've been fouling up the place for years, and we've had enough. Time to disendow you. Please prepare yourselves accordingly."
    We really need differential approaches to the elite public schools which have become another global luxury good, like central London property, and the private day schools that mess around in the middle class selective market alongside grammar schools and postcode-based social cleansing.

    Both have damaging impacts on British life but in very different ways. One gave us the likes of Boris and JRM but most of what it does is bring in export income. Perhaps we just ringfence the hyper-elite sector like we do Mayfair. Charge a luxury tax on it, a kind of poshness excise duty. The other is more of a serious market failing because its impact is more widespread.

    Somehow if we could blur the line between state and private at the mid level we might be able to widen access to the facilities and skills in the independent sector and reduce social gaps in attainment. But don’t ask me how. If the answer was easy we’d have done it already.
    The problem is not that the solution is difficult but that it is expensive.

    Cut all classes in the state sector to a maximum of twenty and offer private schools the chance to become state at the same time, and almost all private schools would become state schools overnight.

    Plus it would solve many other problems, including making behaviour management much easier.

    But - nobody has ever found a way to pay for it, and it would not be cheap.
    It would pay for itself over time by leading to improved educational outcomes and higher productivity. The fact we don't do it is another example of our aversion to investment in this country. Plus of course the fact that it would undermine the advantages that the rich and powerful are buying for their offspring.
    I entirely agree. But it will still never happen.
    Maybe, like with the idea of Brexit as shock therapy with a short term cost that would force us to adopt policies that paid off in the long term, we need to simply shut down all private schools and see what happens. It may be the only way to create a sufficiently powerful political constituency for adequately funded schools in the long run, even if in the short run it will make things worse.
    Can I just check - are you a Rejoiner?
    At some point I think we will rejoin because Brexit has made us poorer and because the people who found the EU most offensive are old and we all know what happens to old people. I would welcome us rejoining, but I'm not agitating for it if that's what you mean.
    Historically the proportion of oldies in the UK is continuing to grow so your point may lack some of the force you intended.
    Brexit backers were a specific generation of old people. Those who grew up in the 50s and 60s who remembered their youth before the EEC and (to an extent) have always mourned its loss. (Fun fact: young people were the most hostile to the EEC in the 1975 referendum).

    Apply that same logic to the incoming generation of not-yet-old people. We grew up in the 70s and 80s; Brexit has taken a chunk of our youth away from us. We maybe fools for thinking that way, but foolishness is part of the human condition. Based on the precedent of the boomers above us, there's no particular reason to think we'll change our mind as we get older and grumpier.

    Imagine a graph of Brexit support against age. It's roughly a straight line bottom left to top right. The changes since 2016 are partly about that line moving down (Brexit seen as not a good idea) but also moving right (time doing its thing, and people carrying their prejudices with them as they age). Trouble is that, unless you track individuals, it's not easy to tell those two effects apart by looking at the graph.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,983
    Andy_JS said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    Paul Johnson
    @PJTheEconomist
    ·
    3h
    Private school fees have risen 20% in real terms since 2010 and 55% since 2003. Numbers privately educated have been pretty constant that whole time. Removing tax exemptions likely to have only small effects on numbers. Net benefit to public finances likely to be £1.3-1.5bn p.a.

    https://twitter.com/PJTheEconomist/status/1678687484992004096

    Paying an extra 20% tomorrow isn't quite the same as 20% more over 10 years. Also be interesting to know the shift in who is attending. Has it shifted to much more reliance on overseas students?
    Short answer: yes.

    Labour's proposed changes will have basically no effect on Eton and Harrow. It's the smaller, less selective private schools with specialisms (e.g. music or autism support) which are going to suffer. It's not really a very progressive policy at all.
    If I wanted to target Eton, Harrow, Clifton, Winchester, Westminster, Cheltenham etc my policy would be to disendow all schools registered as charities that charged fees.

    I think that would make a very substantial difference to their business models. Either lose your reserves, or pay business rates.

    I suspect those ones would also be able to compensate by whacking up the overseas fees, so it wouldn’t make much difference in practice to them.
    Requisition as accommodation for asylum seekers?
    Well, if Johnson went there I suppose it was a sort of asylum.

    Incidentally, its endowment fund went up every single year in the past decade, including during Covid. It was worth £568 million in August last year, and that's with the school running at a headline loss.

    https://www.etoncollege.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/21-22-ETON-COLLEGE-CONSOLIDATED-Signed.pdf

    Now, of course if you disendowed Eton etc that wouldn't be (like VAT) something you should use as income, unless you're Thatcher and Lawson. But it could very easily be used to rebuild a largeish chunk of our collapsing school structures, for example. Which, if a bunch of sane architects rather than the ones for BSF were involved, would not only dramatically improve the environment children are in, and make it safer, but also cut future running costs substantially.

    Plus Eton would then undoubtedly charge higher fees to cover all its costs, and as a result the rich would be paying more.

    Or alternatively, they become businesses, and account for their profits to the taxman. And pay up.

    Meanwhile the smaller private schools - e.g. those that take a largeish number of SEND that the local authority can't find places for in specialist schools because they've all been shut - can keep doing what they do, which is not without disadvantages but would cause more problems than it would solve if it stopped.
    Making some sense here. And I do like the suitably painful sound of 'disendow'. Brutal perhaps but hardly unprovoked imo.

    "Look, elitist British public schools, you've been fouling up the place for years, and we've had enough. Time to disendow you. Please prepare yourselves accordingly."
    We really need differential approaches to the elite public schools which have become another global luxury good, like central London property, and the private day schools that mess around in the middle class selective market alongside grammar schools and postcode-based social cleansing.

    Both have damaging impacts on British life but in very different ways. One gave us the likes of Boris and JRM but most of what it does is bring in export income. Perhaps we just ringfence the hyper-elite sector like we do Mayfair. Charge a luxury tax on it, a kind of poshness excise duty. The other is more of a serious market failing because its impact is more widespread.

    Somehow if we could blur the line between state and private at the mid level we might be able to widen access to the facilities and skills in the independent sector and reduce social gaps in attainment. But don’t ask me how. If the answer was easy we’d have done it already.
    The problem is not that the solution is difficult but that it is expensive.

    Cut all classes in the state sector to a maximum of twenty and offer private schools the chance to become state at the same time, and almost all private schools would become state schools overnight.

    Plus it would solve many other problems, including making behaviour management much easier.

    But - nobody has ever found a way to pay for it, and it would not be cheap.
    It would pay for itself over time by leading to improved educational outcomes and higher productivity. The fact we don't do it is another example of our aversion to investment in this country. Plus of course the fact that it would undermine the advantages that the rich and powerful are buying for their offspring.
    I entirely agree. But it will still never happen.
    Maybe, like with the idea of Brexit as shock therapy with a short term cost that would force us to adopt policies that paid off in the long term, we need to simply shut down all private schools and see what happens. It may be the only way to create a sufficiently powerful political constituency for adequately funded schools in the long run, even if in the short run it will make things worse.
    Can I just check - are you a Rejoiner?
    At some point I think we will rejoin because Brexit has made us poorer and because the people who found the EU most offensive are old and we all know what happens to old people. I would welcome us rejoining, but I'm not agitating for it if that's what you mean.
    Brexit wasn't about being poorer or wealthier. Many African countries have become poorer since they became independent of colonial powers. Does that mean they should give up their independence?
    I read someone bemoaning the paucity of decent analogies on PB earlier today.

    This one's a cracker!
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,679
    Andy_JS said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    Paul Johnson
    @PJTheEconomist
    ·
    3h
    Private school fees have risen 20% in real terms since 2010 and 55% since 2003. Numbers privately educated have been pretty constant that whole time. Removing tax exemptions likely to have only small effects on numbers. Net benefit to public finances likely to be £1.3-1.5bn p.a.

    https://twitter.com/PJTheEconomist/status/1678687484992004096

    Paying an extra 20% tomorrow isn't quite the same as 20% more over 10 years. Also be interesting to know the shift in who is attending. Has it shifted to much more reliance on overseas students?
    Short answer: yes.

    Labour's proposed changes will have basically no effect on Eton and Harrow. It's the smaller, less selective private schools with specialisms (e.g. music or autism support) which are going to suffer. It's not really a very progressive policy at all.
    If I wanted to target Eton, Harrow, Clifton, Winchester, Westminster, Cheltenham etc my policy would be to disendow all schools registered as charities that charged fees.

    I think that would make a very substantial difference to their business models. Either lose your reserves, or pay business rates.

    I suspect those ones would also be able to compensate by whacking up the overseas fees, so it wouldn’t make much difference in practice to them.
    Requisition as accommodation for asylum seekers?
    Well, if Johnson went there I suppose it was a sort of asylum.

    Incidentally, its endowment fund went up every single year in the past decade, including during Covid. It was worth £568 million in August last year, and that's with the school running at a headline loss.

    https://www.etoncollege.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/21-22-ETON-COLLEGE-CONSOLIDATED-Signed.pdf

    Now, of course if you disendowed Eton etc that wouldn't be (like VAT) something you should use as income, unless you're Thatcher and Lawson. But it could very easily be used to rebuild a largeish chunk of our collapsing school structures, for example. Which, if a bunch of sane architects rather than the ones for BSF were involved, would not only dramatically improve the environment children are in, and make it safer, but also cut future running costs substantially.

    Plus Eton would then undoubtedly charge higher fees to cover all its costs, and as a result the rich would be paying more.

    Or alternatively, they become businesses, and account for their profits to the taxman. And pay up.

    Meanwhile the smaller private schools - e.g. those that take a largeish number of SEND that the local authority can't find places for in specialist schools because they've all been shut - can keep doing what they do, which is not without disadvantages but would cause more problems than it would solve if it stopped.
    Making some sense here. And I do like the suitably painful sound of 'disendow'. Brutal perhaps but hardly unprovoked imo.

    "Look, elitist British public schools, you've been fouling up the place for years, and we've had enough. Time to disendow you. Please prepare yourselves accordingly."
    We really need differential approaches to the elite public schools which have become another global luxury good, like central London property, and the private day schools that mess around in the middle class selective market alongside grammar schools and postcode-based social cleansing.

    Both have damaging impacts on British life but in very different ways. One gave us the likes of Boris and JRM but most of what it does is bring in export income. Perhaps we just ringfence the hyper-elite sector like we do Mayfair. Charge a luxury tax on it, a kind of poshness excise duty. The other is more of a serious market failing because its impact is more widespread.

    Somehow if we could blur the line between state and private at the mid level we might be able to widen access to the facilities and skills in the independent sector and reduce social gaps in attainment. But don’t ask me how. If the answer was easy we’d have done it already.
    The problem is not that the solution is difficult but that it is expensive.

    Cut all classes in the state sector to a maximum of twenty and offer private schools the chance to become state at the same time, and almost all private schools would become state schools overnight.

    Plus it would solve many other problems, including making behaviour management much easier.

    But - nobody has ever found a way to pay for it, and it would not be cheap.
    It would pay for itself over time by leading to improved educational outcomes and higher productivity. The fact we don't do it is another example of our aversion to investment in this country. Plus of course the fact that it would undermine the advantages that the rich and powerful are buying for their offspring.
    I entirely agree. But it will still never happen.
    Maybe, like with the idea of Brexit as shock therapy with a short term cost that would force us to adopt policies that paid off in the long term, we need to simply shut down all private schools and see what happens. It may be the only way to create a sufficiently powerful political constituency for adequately funded schools in the long run, even if in the short run it will make things worse.
    Can I just check - are you a Rejoiner?
    At some point I think we will rejoin because Brexit has made us poorer and because the people who found the EU most offensive are old and we all know what happens to old people. I would welcome us rejoining, but I'm not agitating for it if that's what you mean.
    Brexit wasn't about being poorer or wealthier. Many African countries have become poorer since they became independent of colonial powers. Does that mean they should give up their independence?
    Ooo the EU as colonial oppressor. Strong beans.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,263

    Leon said:

    Let's hope it is true



    "Rumours circulating that President Biden is due to announce he won’t be contesting the 2024 Presidential election in a CNN interview this weekend. Newsom’s odds of being next President climbing on back of rumours."

    https://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1678745058642735106?s=20

    Erm, is Toby Young well-placed to hear Washington rumours?
    Yes, he has a Twitter account.
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 3,069

    CatMan said:

    Ukrainian beats a Pole in the tennis, and after all the support they showed for their country. For shame... (I'm not being serious)

    Speaking seriously, however, in Poland many are recalling this tragedy 80 years ago this summer:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia_and_Eastern_Galicia

    Story about this in today's NYT, among others interviewed was woman, a little girl back then, who survived (unlike most of her family) coordinated attacks by Ukrainian nationalists in 1943 aimed a ethnic cleansing, aka genocide at least in what is today western Ukraine.

    FYI (also BTW) she supports aiding today's Ukraine against Russia.
    TFT. IMHO my joke wasn't ROFL as INAE, so it's OK, but IDK if you're SMH. Anyway there's a new thread so FYI I've G2G. Maybe I can TTYL?
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 63,137
    Gretchen Whitmer is 100 to be Dem candidate.

  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,772
    This thread has

    disendowed Eton

  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,679
    ydoethur said:

    This thread has

    disendowed Eton

    Yay! Sounds a great thread. Let's meet up and buy it a pint.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,509
    Pagan2 said:

    ...

    Andy_JS said:

    "Anonymity might not be sustainable, former culture committee chair says

    Earlier this afternoon, a former chair of the Commons digital, culture, media and sport select committee said questions remained about how the BBC handled the initial complaint in May about the unnamed presenter.

    Conservative MP Damian Collins told BBC Radio 4: "There is a perception that not much was done... until it was reported in the press, and then there was a more active participation by BBC management.

    "Why wasn't more done sooner, when the allegations were made?"

    Collins said the BBC needed to look into what happens when a serious allegation comes in and how it's looked at.

    Collins added it might not be "sustainable" for the presenter to remain anonymous if the person in question is off-air for a long time and everybody in the industry knows who it is."

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-66159469

    Whatever happened to innocence until proof of guilt?
    That has only ever applied to the right people. Be poor and you are guilty till proved innocent mostly
    Mostly just guilty
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,416
    ydoethur said:

    viewcode said:

    Double Olympic 800m champion Caster Semenya was discriminated against by rules forcing her to lower her testosterone levels in order to compete, the European Court of Human Rights has found.

    https://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/66162083

    I actually feel really sorry for her. It is an impossible situation every which way. Born intersex, with testorone levels way around that of a biological woman, means a massive advantage, but they aren't cheating, they aren't claiming something they aren't, they aren't transitioning....in fact when they burst onto the scene, I don't think they were even aware of the special biological nature.

    Question unrelated to her genetics: She is a South African national. What is the jurisdiction of the European Court with respect to her? Was she suing the organisers of the European Championship or similar?

    World Athletics is based in Sweden.
    Thank you, @ydoethur
  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,983

    Roger said:

    So much been happening that cartoongate is rapidly disappearing over the horizon. No need to worry in any case as 'It is the correct decision these facilities have the requisite decoration befitting their purpose'.



    https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1678695244919984129?s=20

    Do we know the name or title of this minister? A photo of him might have done the trick
    Lord Williams.


    Doesn't look at all the sort of person to dribble out callous, pompous govspeak.
    looks like Dr Christian Szell without the Grecian 2000
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,005

    felix said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    Paul Johnson
    @PJTheEconomist
    ·
    3h
    Private school fees have risen 20% in real terms since 2010 and 55% since 2003. Numbers privately educated have been pretty constant that whole time. Removing tax exemptions likely to have only small effects on numbers. Net benefit to public finances likely to be £1.3-1.5bn p.a.

    https://twitter.com/PJTheEconomist/status/1678687484992004096

    Paying an extra 20% tomorrow isn't quite the same as 20% more over 10 years. Also be interesting to know the shift in who is attending. Has it shifted to much more reliance on overseas students?
    Short answer: yes.

    Labour's proposed changes will have basically no effect on Eton and Harrow. It's the smaller, less selective private schools with specialisms (e.g. music or autism support) which are going to suffer. It's not really a very progressive policy at all.
    If I wanted to target Eton, Harrow, Clifton, Winchester, Westminster, Cheltenham etc my policy would be to disendow all schools registered as charities that charged fees.

    I think that would make a very substantial difference to their business models. Either lose your reserves, or pay business rates.

    I suspect those ones would also be able to compensate by whacking up the overseas fees, so it wouldn’t make much difference in practice to them.
    Requisition as accommodation for asylum seekers?
    Well, if Johnson went there I suppose it was a sort of asylum.

    Incidentally, its endowment fund went up every single year in the past decade, including during Covid. It was worth £568 million in August last year, and that's with the school running at a headline loss.

    https://www.etoncollege.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/21-22-ETON-COLLEGE-CONSOLIDATED-Signed.pdf

    Now, of course if you disendowed Eton etc that wouldn't be (like VAT) something you should use as income, unless you're Thatcher and Lawson. But it could very easily be used to rebuild a largeish chunk of our collapsing school structures, for example. Which, if a bunch of sane architects rather than the ones for BSF were involved, would not only dramatically improve the environment children are in, and make it safer, but also cut future running costs substantially.

    Plus Eton would then undoubtedly charge higher fees to cover all its costs, and as a result the rich would be paying more.

    Or alternatively, they become businesses, and account for their profits to the taxman. And pay up.

    Meanwhile the smaller private schools - e.g. those that take a largeish number of SEND that the local authority can't find places for in specialist schools because they've all been shut - can keep doing what they do, which is not without disadvantages but would cause more problems than it would solve if it stopped.
    Making some sense here. And I do like the suitably painful sound of 'disendow'. Brutal perhaps but hardly unprovoked imo.

    "Look, elitist British public schools, you've been fouling up the place for years, and we've had enough. Time to disendow you. Please prepare yourselves accordingly."
    We really need differential approaches to the elite public schools which have become another global luxury good, like central London property, and the private day schools that mess around in the middle class selective market alongside grammar schools and postcode-based social cleansing.

    Both have damaging impacts on British life but in very different ways. One gave us the likes of Boris and JRM but most of what it does is bring in export income. Perhaps we just ringfence the hyper-elite sector like we do Mayfair. Charge a luxury tax on it, a kind of poshness excise duty. The other is more of a serious market failing because its impact is more widespread.

    Somehow if we could blur the line between state and private at the mid level we might be able to widen access to the facilities and skills in the independent sector and reduce social gaps in attainment. But don’t ask me how. If the answer was easy we’d have done it already.
    The problem is not that the solution is difficult but that it is expensive.

    Cut all classes in the state sector to a maximum of twenty and offer private schools the chance to become state at the same time, and almost all private schools would become state schools overnight.

    Plus it would solve many other problems, including making behaviour management much easier.

    But - nobody has ever found a way to pay for it, and it would not be cheap.
    It would pay for itself over time by leading to improved educational outcomes and higher productivity. The fact we don't do it is another example of our aversion to investment in this country. Plus of course the fact that it would undermine the advantages that the rich and powerful are buying for their offspring.
    I entirely agree. But it will still never happen.
    Maybe, like with the idea of Brexit as shock therapy with a short term cost that would force us to adopt policies that paid off in the long term, we need to simply shut down all private schools and see what happens. It may be the only way to create a sufficiently powerful political constituency for adequately funded schools in the long run, even if in the short run it will make things worse.
    Can I just check - are you a Rejoiner?
    At some point I think we will rejoin because Brexit has made us poorer and because the people who found the EU most offensive are old and we all know what happens to old people. I would welcome us rejoining, but I'm not agitating for it if that's what you mean.
    Historically the proportion of oldies in the UK is continuing to grow so your point may lack some of the force you intended.
    Brexit backers were a specific generation of old people. Those who grew up in the 50s and 60s who remembered their youth before the EEC and (to an extent) have always mourned its loss. (Fun fact: young people were the most hostile to the EEC in the 1975 referendum).

    Apply that same logic to the incoming generation of not-yet-old people. We grew up in the 70s and 80s; Brexit has taken a chunk of our youth away from us. We maybe fools for thinking that way, but foolishness is part of the human condition. Based on the precedent of the boomers above us, there's no particular reason to think we'll change our mind as we get older and grumpier.

    Imagine a graph of Brexit support against age. It's roughly a straight line bottom left to top right. The changes since 2016 are partly about that line moving down (Brexit seen as not a good idea) but also moving right (time doing its thing, and people carrying their prejudices with them as they age). Trouble is that, unless you track individuals, it's not easy to tell those two effects apart by looking at the graph.
    Correction brexit backers are the people who voted yes to stay in back in the 70's and after watching how it evolved over 50 odd years when yeah no thanks. People who never saw the alternative of pre eu went yes we want to stay in.

    The only demographic that had both experience told the eu to fuck off. Those that only knew one side stayed sucking at mummy eu's teat
This discussion has been closed.