Is Donald Trump planning to refuse to testify to the grand jury investigating him for the 6 January violence? Or is he whingeing that when he goes along to testify he'll be arrested? I couldn't work it out from his enraged messages which it is.
I see his niece Mary Trump is keeping up her good work. Prediction: when he begins his plummet, she'll be there. In respect of the indictments and possible indictments, she has called him a "frightened little boy" who is terrified of being humiliated. Ouch. She's like an anti him - highly committed to telling the truth and being sane.
The general tenor of his rants do appear to be more fearful than they used to be. They come across as stunned that being an announced candidate, and the leading GOP candidate to boot, did not put a stop to the various indictment processes.
I cannot imagine he actually thought they would just stop, but it is interesting that his second biggest narrative from all this is an open admission that he and the party think people in his situation, ie running for office, should be above the law (his first narrative is naturally that it is all nonsense and that its to punish his supporters etc, which makes more sense).
Feels like it all needed to kick off about 6 months earlier than it did, but that's justice for you, painfully slow too much of the time.
The Donald has ALWAYS believed HE is above the law. And always will.
Just like Bojo and Mad Vlad to name but two.
There is a difference between thinking you are above the law and thinking that you are the law.
You know anything about Trump's "business" dealings pre-2016?
He certainly wasn't nuts enough back then to think he WAS the law. And equally certainly believed he was ABOVE the law, that it was just some kind of petty annoyance that he could buy his way out of.
Just like his scumbag daddy and granddaddy Trumps before him.
I'm just trying to find a conceptual framework that will allow you to differentiate between BoJo on the one hand and Putin on the other. For the sake of argument we can say that the jury is out on which category Trump belongs in but I would lean towards the former.
Conceptualize all you want, just keep me the fuck out of it.
Kindly take your "that will allow you to" crap and shove it where the sun don't shine.
I prefer Musk because I think he’s a proper genius who has made incredible engineering advances that have made the world better. He’s weird. And very flawed. But he’s a force for good on the whole
Zuck, I sense, is a bright guy who got lucky with that one idea at Harvard. I see no evidence that he’s done anything else or is likely to. He steals and buys - and controls
We probably all have our favourite villains in the tech Debrett’s
Steve Jobs, a bit of an arse but he certainly changed the world.
3 Apples have changed/shaped humanity.
1) The apple that Adam & Eve ate.
2) The apple that landed on Sir Isaac Newton's head
3) The company Steve Jobs created.
Coincidentally, Newton was also a bit of an arse who changed the world.
I can't really comment on Adam.
Yes. Newton was famously awkward, antisocial, remote, and given to saying strange or offensive things
But he was, also, Isaac bloody Newton
More importantly, he was a Cambridge man.
And an MP almost as useless as Mad Nad. His only recorded contribution to debate is said to be a request to close a window.
Daniel Gooch didn't actually speak a word in 20 years as the MP for Cricklade (before it became a county seat in 1885).
He commented on retirement 'The House has been a pleasant club. I take no part in debates and am a silent member. It would be a great advantage to business if more members followed my example.'
The GWR engineer? He didn't have anything to prove, in life.
I've got a book that details Gooch's diaries on his transatlantic cable-laying endeavours. A side to the man I never knew.
Brunel, as it happens, was an *awful* mechanical engineer. He learnt that, and left it to others, such as Gooch. That's why I'd put him slightly below George Stephenson in a list of 'great' engineers - GS was a true all-rounder, from civils to mechanicals. His surveying wasn't too great at first though...
George Stephenson was a rotten civil engineer. He was actually fired from the Grand Junction Railway for incompetence and Telford threatened to halt work on the Manchester and Liverpool unless Stephenson made drastic changes.
Robert Stephenson would be a more plausible all rounder, but even he had his disasters - the Dee Bridge disaster springs to mind.
I *suppose* that's a view, but it's an odd one. Calling the man who engineered the Liverpool and Manchester, the Derby to Leeds, the Normanton to York, Manchester to Leeds, and many others a "rotten civil engineer" is strange - especially as many of his routes and structures are still in use.
Yes, George Stephenson was totally self-taught, and had none of the advantages of (say) Brunel. That gives his achievements extra weight, not less.
I prefer Musk because I think he’s a proper genius who has made incredible engineering advances that have made the world better. He’s weird. And very flawed. But he’s a force for good on the whole
Zuck, I sense, is a bright guy who got lucky with that one idea at Harvard. I see no evidence that he’s done anything else or is likely to. He steals and buys - and controls
We probably all have our favourite villains in the tech Debrett’s
My own unfair take is that Zuckerberg's companies don't produce or run anything that I personally get any enjoyment or see the value of, since I don't use Facebook or Instagram (Ok, I do use WhatsApp). So even if it clearly provides services that a great many people find useful (and I probably do use some of his stuff without realising it), it just doesn't fee; like it to me.
(Snip)
The thing about Zuckerberg is that he literally started off by stealing data from his college. He apologised, then started getting data in massive amounts. Zuck's entire ethos is that he can grab as much data as he likes; privacy be damned.
IMV successful people continue very much with the attitude that first gives them their success.
Which is another reason I'll never 'trust' Branson, either.
Is Donald Trump planning to refuse to testify to the grand jury investigating him for the 6 January violence? Or is he whingeing that when he goes along to testify he'll be arrested? I couldn't work it out from his enraged messages which it is.
I see his niece Mary Trump is keeping up her good work. Prediction: when he begins his plummet, she'll be there. In respect of the indictments and possible indictments, she has called him a "frightened little boy" who is terrified of being humiliated. Ouch. She's like an anti him - highly committed to telling the truth and being sane.
The general tenor of his rants do appear to be more fearful than they used to be. They come across as stunned that being an announced candidate, and the leading GOP candidate to boot, did not put a stop to the various indictment processes.
I cannot imagine he actually thought they would just stop, but it is interesting that his second biggest narrative from all this is an open admission that he and the party think people in his situation, ie running for office, should be above the law (his first narrative is naturally that it is all nonsense and that its to punish his supporters etc, which makes more sense).
Feels like it all needed to kick off about 6 months earlier than it did, but that's justice for you, painfully slow too much of the time.
The Donald has ALWAYS believed HE is above the law. And always will.
Just like Bojo and Mad Vlad to name but two.
There is a difference between thinking you are above the law and thinking that you are the law.
You know anything about Trump's "business" dealings pre-2016?
He certainly wasn't nuts enough back then to think he WAS the law. And equally certainly believed he was ABOVE the law, that it was just some kind of petty annoyance that he could buy his way out of.
Just like his scumbag daddy and granddaddy Trumps before him.
Back then he was involved in only civil suits , and got used to the idea if the las as a weapon he could wield against those with fewer resources. And if he ever lost, it was just a business expense.
Boot is on the other foot, for now.
MORE from courthouse in Ft Pierce, Florida.. where there was a hearing today in Trump federal case
Is Donald Trump planning to refuse to testify to the grand jury investigating him for the 6 January violence? Or is he whingeing that when he goes along to testify he'll be arrested? I couldn't work it out from his enraged messages which it is.
I see his niece Mary Trump is keeping up her good work. Prediction: when he begins his plummet, she'll be there. In respect of the indictments and possible indictments, she has called him a "frightened little boy" who is terrified of being humiliated. Ouch. She's like an anti him - highly committed to telling the truth and being sane.
The general tenor of his rants do appear to be more fearful than they used to be. They come across as stunned that being an announced candidate, and the leading GOP candidate to boot, did not put a stop to the various indictment processes.
I cannot imagine he actually thought they would just stop, but it is interesting that his second biggest narrative from all this is an open admission that he and the party think people in his situation, ie running for office, should be above the law (his first narrative is naturally that it is all nonsense and that its to punish his supporters etc, which makes more sense).
Feels like it all needed to kick off about 6 months earlier than it did, but that's justice for you, painfully slow too much of the time.
The Donald has ALWAYS believed HE is above the law. And always will.
Just like Bojo and Mad Vlad to name but two.
There is a difference between thinking you are above the law and thinking that you are the law.
You know anything about Trump's "business" dealings pre-2016?
He certainly wasn't nuts enough back then to think he WAS the law. And equally certainly believed he was ABOVE the law, that it was just some kind of petty annoyance that he could buy his way out of.
Just like his scumbag daddy and granddaddy Trumps before him.
I'm just trying to find a conceptual framework that will allow you to differentiate between BoJo on the one hand and Putin on the other. For the sake of argument we can say that the jury is out on which category Trump belongs in but I would lean towards the former.
I'm not at all sure I would . Have you seen his plans for presidential power should he get re-elected ?
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
With the exception of very small schools, isn't that true if basically all secondary education today?
Most but not all. There are a lot of advocates for mixed ability teaching in secondary schools - high profile studies by research teams seem to indicate it can be better for attainment but I don't understand that personally.
I’ve worked closely with many of those advocating mixed ability maths teaching over the past five years, and have been into several maths departments where it is being tried.
In my view it is an ideological fad, well intentioned but (in my experience) never done sufficiently well to meet the needs of the highest or lowest attainers. My only experience is at secondary - it might be a different story at primary.
By contrast in our school we put our best maths teachers in charge of our lowest sets, make them as small as we can make them, and meet them at their level regardless of what any scheme of work says. It doesn’t always work, but in my view gives the best shot at meeting the needs of those who struggle with maths.
ETA I’m also only talking about maths - no idea if it works better in other subjects.
Is Donald Trump planning to refuse to testify to the grand jury investigating him for the 6 January violence? Or is he whingeing that when he goes along to testify he'll be arrested? I couldn't work it out from his enraged messages which it is.
I see his niece Mary Trump is keeping up her good work. Prediction: when he begins his plummet, she'll be there. In respect of the indictments and possible indictments, she has called him a "frightened little boy" who is terrified of being humiliated. Ouch. She's like an anti him - highly committed to telling the truth and being sane.
The general tenor of his rants do appear to be more fearful than they used to be. They come across as stunned that being an announced candidate, and the leading GOP candidate to boot, did not put a stop to the various indictment processes.
I cannot imagine he actually thought they would just stop, but it is interesting that his second biggest narrative from all this is an open admission that he and the party think people in his situation, ie running for office, should be above the law (his first narrative is naturally that it is all nonsense and that its to punish his supporters etc, which makes more sense).
Feels like it all needed to kick off about 6 months earlier than it did, but that's justice for you, painfully slow too much of the time.
The Donald has ALWAYS believed HE is above the law. And always will.
Just like Bojo and Mad Vlad to name but two.
There is a difference between thinking you are above the law and thinking that you are the law.
You know anything about Trump's "business" dealings pre-2016?
He certainly wasn't nuts enough back then to think he WAS the law. And equally certainly believed he was ABOVE the law, that it was just some kind of petty annoyance that he could buy his way out of.
Just like his scumbag daddy and granddaddy Trumps before him.
Back then he was involved in only civil suits , and got used to the idea if the las as a weapon he could wield against those with fewer resources. And if he ever lost, it was just a business expense.
Boot is on the other foot, for now.
MORE from courthouse in Ft Pierce, Florida.. where there was a hearing today in Trump federal case
Pretty lightweight these days, life generates documents and litigation makes lists of them. Which highlights the absurdity of the Post Office CEO bragging that they have looked at 500,000 in the computer inquiry.
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
With the exception of very small schools, isn't that true if basically all secondary education today?
Most but not all. There are a lot of advocates for mixed ability teaching in secondary schools - high profile studies by research teams seem to indicate it can be better for attainment but I don't understand that personally.
I would guess that streaming is better for high ability kids and worse for low ability kids. In theory streaming lets the teachers focus on everyone's needs through teaching tailored to ability, but in practice a significant minority of the kids in the low ability class would act up and nobody would learn anything in those classes. With mixed ability classes those kids would be distributed more evenly, causing some disruption for everyone but not a huge amount for anyone. I believe that academic research does demonstrate that mixed ability classes deliver better results overall - this is what I have been told anyway. At my kids' secondary they stream for maths but not for other subjects. This is similar to my own school experience, where they streamed for maths and languages. I suspect there is some de facto streaming for languages at my kids' school actually - my son's German class seems to all be people who are good at it, but that might be a coincidence.
Is Donald Trump planning to refuse to testify to the grand jury investigating him for the 6 January violence? Or is he whingeing that when he goes along to testify he'll be arrested? I couldn't work it out from his enraged messages which it is.
I see his niece Mary Trump is keeping up her good work. Prediction: when he begins his plummet, she'll be there. In respect of the indictments and possible indictments, she has called him a "frightened little boy" who is terrified of being humiliated. Ouch. She's like an anti him - highly committed to telling the truth and being sane.
The general tenor of his rants do appear to be more fearful than they used to be. They come across as stunned that being an announced candidate, and the leading GOP candidate to boot, did not put a stop to the various indictment processes.
I cannot imagine he actually thought they would just stop, but it is interesting that his second biggest narrative from all this is an open admission that he and the party think people in his situation, ie running for office, should be above the law (his first narrative is naturally that it is all nonsense and that its to punish his supporters etc, which makes more sense).
Feels like it all needed to kick off about 6 months earlier than it did, but that's justice for you, painfully slow too much of the time.
The Donald has ALWAYS believed HE is above the law. And always will.
Just like Bojo and Mad Vlad to name but two.
There is a difference between thinking you are above the law and thinking that you are the law.
You know anything about Trump's "business" dealings pre-2016?
He certainly wasn't nuts enough back then to think he WAS the law. And equally certainly believed he was ABOVE the law, that it was just some kind of petty annoyance that he could buy his way out of.
Just like his scumbag daddy and granddaddy Trumps before him.
Back then he was involved in only civil suits , and got used to the idea if the las as a weapon he could wield against those with fewer resources. And if he ever lost, it was just a business expense.
Boot is on the other foot, for now.
MORE from courthouse in Ft Pierce, Florida.. where there was a hearing today in Trump federal case
But why was it only civil cases back then? Weren't there any cases of, eg, fraud that were worth a criminal prosecution?
Because at first glance it looks like he got away with all kinds of shit as a well-connected billionaire before he upset too many of the wrong people by becoming president
Producer price inflation is now down to 0.1%, and Producer inputs to -2.7%. Consumer price inflation will therefore drop very sharply for the rest of the year.
Its a decent fall but we are still falling behind a lot of other countries in the rate of fall. Inflation is once again the British disease and, once again, getting rid of it is going to be painful. My belief is that the current government, and very likely their replacement, will live with slightly higher inflation to avoid a recession which we really should have learned over the last 50 years, is short term thinking.
The Biden administration formally halted the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s access to US funding, citing unanswered safety and security questions for the facility at the center of the Covid lab leak theory.
Its a decent fall but we are still falling behind a lot of other countries in the rate of fall. Inflation is once again the British disease and, once again, getting rid of it is going to be painful. My belief is that the current government, and very likely their replacement, will live with slightly higher inflation to avoid a recession which we really should have learned over the last 50 years, is short term thinking.
Looking at the Producer numbers, I think there will be some months where there are actual falls in prices. At year end, I expect CPI will be 3-4%.
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
With the exception of very small schools, isn't that true if basically all secondary education today?
Is Donald Trump planning to refuse to testify to the grand jury investigating him for the 6 January violence? Or is he whingeing that when he goes along to testify he'll be arrested? I couldn't work it out from his enraged messages which it is.
I see his niece Mary Trump is keeping up her good work. Prediction: when he begins his plummet, she'll be there. In respect of the indictments and possible indictments, she has called him a "frightened little boy" who is terrified of being humiliated. Ouch. She's like an anti him - highly committed to telling the truth and being sane.
The general tenor of his rants do appear to be more fearful than they used to be. They come across as stunned that being an announced candidate, and the leading GOP candidate to boot, did not put a stop to the various indictment processes.
I cannot imagine he actually thought they would just stop, but it is interesting that his second biggest narrative from all this is an open admission that he and the party think people in his situation, ie running for office, should be above the law (his first narrative is naturally that it is all nonsense and that its to punish his supporters etc, which makes more sense).
Feels like it all needed to kick off about 6 months earlier than it did, but that's justice for you, painfully slow too much of the time.
The Donald has ALWAYS believed HE is above the law. And always will.
Just like Bojo and Mad Vlad to name but two.
There is a difference between thinking you are above the law and thinking that you are the law.
You know anything about Trump's "business" dealings pre-2016?
He certainly wasn't nuts enough back then to think he WAS the law. And equally certainly believed he was ABOVE the law, that it was just some kind of petty annoyance that he could buy his way out of.
Just like his scumbag daddy and granddaddy Trumps before him.
Back then he was involved in only civil suits , and got used to the idea if the las as a weapon he could wield against those with fewer resources. And if he ever lost, it was just a business expense.
Boot is on the other foot, for now.
MORE from courthouse in Ft Pierce, Florida.. where there was a hearing today in Trump federal case
But why was it only civil cases back then? Weren't there any cases of, eg, fraud that were worth a criminal prosecution?
Because at first glance it looks like he got away with all kinds of shit as a well-connected billionaire before he upset too many of the wrong people by becoming president
Because not paying a supplier's bill is a Civil case, but stealing top secret documents is a Criminal offence. So, why are you trying to say he is only being prosecuted because he upset the 'wrong people'?
The mortgage "time bomb" does not seem to be having the devastating effect many forecasters promised. Indeed, for many householders in the private sector the squeeze on real wages might be over with wage rises matching CPIH. Not sure the government will be getting much thanks for it though.
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
With the exception of very small schools, isn't that true if basically all secondary education today?
Most but not all. There are a lot of advocates for mixed ability teaching in secondary schools - high profile studies by research teams seem to indicate it can be better for attainment but I don't understand that personally.
I would guess that streaming is better for high ability kids and worse for low ability kids. In theory streaming lets the teachers focus on everyone's needs through teaching tailored to ability, but in practice a significant minority of the kids in the low ability class would act up and nobody would learn anything in those classes. With mixed ability classes those kids would be distributed more evenly, causing some disruption for everyone but not a huge amount for anyone. I believe that academic research does demonstrate that mixed ability classes deliver better results overall - this is what I have been told anyway. At my kids' secondary they stream for maths but not for other subjects. This is similar to my own school experience, where they streamed for maths and languages. I suspect there is some de facto streaming for languages at my kids' school actually - my son's German class seems to all be people who are good at it, but that might be a coincidence.
I’m the timetabler at my school, and for a few years I got away with insisting that, in Year 9, maths and French could be setter by ability, but they had to be the same sets. it would have worked better if they had followed my full suggestion and taught maths in French, but sadly after about three years the experiment was ditched.
Setting by ability by subject, rather than just streaming whole classes, comes at a huge cost in the flexibility of the timetable. We still do it for maths but I have to write their timetable first and even then I often have to go back to the head of department and explain that the combinations of teachers he wants cannot work. Any attempt to do the same across the rest of the subjects would be virtually impossible.
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
With the exception of very small schools, isn't that true if basically all secondary education today?
Most but not all. There are a lot of advocates for mixed ability teaching in secondary schools - high profile studies by research teams seem to indicate it can be better for attainment but I don't understand that personally.
I would guess that streaming is better for high ability kids and worse for low ability kids. In theory streaming lets the teachers focus on everyone's needs through teaching tailored to ability, but in practice a significant minority of the kids in the low ability class would act up and nobody would learn anything in those classes. With mixed ability classes those kids would be distributed more evenly, causing some disruption for everyone but not a huge amount for anyone. I believe that academic research does demonstrate that mixed ability classes deliver better results overall - this is what I have been told anyway. At my kids' secondary they stream for maths but not for other subjects. This is similar to my own school experience, where they streamed for maths and languages. I suspect there is some de facto streaming for languages at my kids' school actually - my son's German class seems to all be people who are good at it, but that might be a coincidence.
Pretty much. Though even if a school has behaviour utterly nailed, the psychology of "we're the bottom set, we can't do it" is really hard to break. Not impossible, but requiring time and effort that can be better used on other things. You even get it in super selective schools. ("We're just the Hufflepuff class" as I heard on the train one day.)
(At this point, you.may be thinking to yourself "Pah. I would want to show them how wrong they were and double my efforts just to show them. Perhaps, but in that case you are not normal. We shouldn't design the system for you.)
In most subjects, a teacher can talk to a class with an ability spread about something new- a new book, battle, or chemical reaction- and everyone will get something useful from it. Maths is different- nobody has worked out how to be interesting at the top and intelligible at the bottom at once. So you hardly ever get maths shows on TV. So for maths, you probably do have to set.
But otherwise, MA does seem to improve things at the bottom without doing measurable harm at the top. Which is probably what the English system needs. And probably saves money by making timetabling more flexible.
But changing things because evidence conflicts with common sense? Not the English way.
Which is one reason England is in a bit of a mess.
Its a decent fall but we are still falling behind a lot of other countries in the rate of fall. Inflation is once again the British disease and, once again, getting rid of it is going to be painful. My belief is that the current government, and very likely their replacement, will live with slightly higher inflation to avoid a recession which we really should have learned over the last 50 years, is short term thinking.
Looking at the Producer numbers, I think there will be some months where there are actual falls in prices. At year end, I expect CPI will be 3-4%.
My guess is that it will be higher as inflation has consistently shown itself to be sticky downwards and there will be attempts to restore margins. The prospects of Sunak making his target of halving the rate of inflation have improved however.
This is a particularly egregious case but I'm slightly uneasy that damages should be paid to the relatives of crime victims in unsolved cases. Many crimes are unsolved, and many more unsolved in time to prevent further offences.
The mortgage "time bomb" does not seem to be having the devastating effect many forecasters promised. Indeed, for many householders in the private sector the squeeze on real wages might be over with wage rises matching CPIH. Not sure the government will be getting much thanks for it though.
Isn't the point about the mortgage effect that it's very spotty? Unless you fall off a fix, you don't it at all.
That "no devastation" is the average of some people carrying on as if nothing has happened and some being in deep deep trouble.
Its a decent fall but we are still falling behind a lot of other countries in the rate of fall. Inflation is once again the British disease and, once again, getting rid of it is going to be painful. My belief is that the current government, and very likely their replacement, will live with slightly higher inflation to avoid a recession which we really should have learned over the last 50 years, is short term thinking.
Looking at the Producer numbers, I think there will be some months where there are actual falls in prices. At year end, I expect CPI will be 3-4%.
It is Good News that inflation is lower. We've all suffered too much for too long, so the hope that we are now over the top and seeing the rate of increase start to drop is real and genuine.
But - and its a very big but - I'm not convinced we will start to see "actual falls in prices". Profit margins have been brutalised for everyone involved - producers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers. However bad the price rises have been for consumers, not all of the cost rises have been passed on.
What I expect is a period of retrenchment. Everyone will want to restore profitability for a period, and it will only be one of the retailers making a break on prices that starts any price reductions. Remember that anecdotage about "the price of x has dropped" is not indicative of the whole basket of prices doing the same. They drop x, they increase y. You may buy x and not y so claim "prices are falling". Not necessarily true.
Is Donald Trump planning to refuse to testify to the grand jury investigating him for the 6 January violence? Or is he whingeing that when he goes along to testify he'll be arrested? I couldn't work it out from his enraged messages which it is.
I see his niece Mary Trump is keeping up her good work. Prediction: when he begins his plummet, she'll be there. In respect of the indictments and possible indictments, she has called him a "frightened little boy" who is terrified of being humiliated. Ouch. She's like an anti him - highly committed to telling the truth and being sane.
The general tenor of his rants do appear to be more fearful than they used to be. They come across as stunned that being an announced candidate, and the leading GOP candidate to boot, did not put a stop to the various indictment processes.
I cannot imagine he actually thought they would just stop, but it is interesting that his second biggest narrative from all this is an open admission that he and the party think people in his situation, ie running for office, should be above the law (his first narrative is naturally that it is all nonsense and that its to punish his supporters etc, which makes more sense).
Feels like it all needed to kick off about 6 months earlier than it did, but that's justice for you, painfully slow too much of the time.
The Donald has ALWAYS believed HE is above the law. And always will.
Just like Bojo and Mad Vlad to name but two.
It's partly "positive thinking" informed by Norman Vincent Peale.
Donald Trump doesn't seem strong at all when the heat's on. He should have realised after the church walk when he held up the bible that if El Presidente can't rely on the army following his security orders in the vicinity of the presidential palace, then El Presidente is finished. He was nuts to incite the 6 January violence after that. Successfully murdering Mike Pence was extremely unlikely for obvious reasons, but even if he'd achieved an armed standoff in or around the building he wouldn't have won it. Standing for the Republican nomination again is crazy. He should be looking for an off-ramp. He can still go a lot crazier and that seems to be the way he's headed. Not pleasant to watch at all.
The rioters chanting 'Hang Mike Pence' got very close to him during the insurrection. Just supposing Pence or Pelosi had been killed, would that have been sufficient for the President to have declared martial law?
Ultimately there should be a fundamentally new model that allows local government to tax people, run services and build things, and then be accountable for them. Ideally with deregulation that makes it cheaper and quicker to do things, along with grants for poor areas. If you look at areas with good services, like in Northern Europe, then there is a lot more autonomy and local legitimacy for what municipalities are doing. Ultimately there is a lingering pathological hatred of local government which is a legacy of the 1980s but it is gradually dying out with the people that remember voting for it. Let the people decide what they want. If they want to live in a mess and pay no tax then let them vote for it and do it but that shouldn't hold back other places trying to do something better.
The mortgage "time bomb" does not seem to be having the devastating effect many forecasters promised. Indeed, for many householders in the private sector the squeeze on real wages might be over with wage rises matching CPIH. Not sure the government will be getting much thanks for it though.
The mortgage time bomb doesn't kick in for most people until late this year early next year. That has always been the window that market experts have been talking about when most fixed rate deals (my own included) expire.
Could be more interesting tomorrow although much depends on whether the postal votes which are already in have given the Tories too much to do .
As if people vote on the basis of small shifts in inflation. People vote on the basis of conviction/habit (probably 50%) or mood (probably 30-40%). In my experience mood is stochastic. It takes a lot to shift it but once its shifted it doesn’t come back quickly.
The challenge for Labour is that whilst the national mood has turned on the Tories, it’s not behind Starmer with any enthusiasm at all.
I reckon a bet on the Tories on all three is value at those odds. (Singles, not a treble!). I'd be surprised if they lost all three.
I have done this, very modestly, except for Somerton - which I think is impossible. Uxbridge and Selby are in the realm of arguable. Though I expect probably to lose.
I think there’s a better-than-the-odds chance they’ll hold Selby.
The BBC and LBC have been bigging up the ULEZ issue today. If they and HY are right it is a game changer. Starmer has also had a shocking week whereas Rishi has had a good run out with his university pitch, he and Suella have had great media coverage for the boats and tomorrow he will get some great inflation results.
Harold Wilson was right. A week is a long time in politics. A week where Rishi has knocked it out of the park.
WIth no disrespect meant, I genuinely don't know how far into your cheek your tongue is with these posts.
By Friday morning we shall see.
You can't deny that the Conservatives have had some excellent copy this week whilst Starmer-Labour have tied themselves in knots. Kuennsberg set a trap and he fell into it. Sir Kid Starver is a fantastic slur that Rishi is going to beat him around the head with tomorrow at PMQs. It doesn't matter that the two child policy is Osborne's invention, Starmer now owns it and the nation hates him for it. ULEZ according to HY and the BBC is a real vote loser for Uxbridge. FWIW I don't believe it will feature in the GE.
The idea that the 2 child policy is now owned by Starmer and “the nation hates him for it” does not seem to accord with reality. Do you have any polling to support this view?
Producer price inflation is now down to 0.1%, and Producer inputs to -2.7%. Consumer price inflation will therefore drop very sharply for the rest of the year.
So interest rates have peaked, so buy your foreign currency and put your savings into long-duration fixed rate accounts, while you have the chance…
The mortgage "time bomb" does not seem to be having the devastating effect many forecasters promised. Indeed, for many householders in the private sector the squeeze on real wages might be over with wage rises matching CPIH. Not sure the government will be getting much thanks for it though.
But the idea of a time bomb is that it takes some time to go off?
Its a decent fall but we are still falling behind a lot of other countries in the rate of fall. Inflation is once again the British disease and, once again, getting rid of it is going to be painful. My belief is that the current government, and very likely their replacement, will live with slightly higher inflation to avoid a recession which we really should have learned over the last 50 years, is short term thinking.
Looking at the Producer numbers, I think there will be some months where there are actual falls in prices. At year end, I expect CPI will be 3-4%.
We have had 3.4% inflation over 2023 year-to-date, so it would take consistently very low figures for the last 6 months of the year to stay below 4%.
Could be more interesting tomorrow although much depends on whether the postal votes which are already in have given the Tories too much to do .
As if people vote on the basis of small shifts in inflation. People vote on the basis of conviction/habit (probably 50%) or mood (probably 30-40%). In my experience mood is stochastic. It takes a lot to shift it but once its shifted it doesn’t come back quickly.
The challenge for Labour is that whilst the national mood has turned on the Tories, it’s not behind Starmer with any enthusiasm at all.
It could be good news when the GE comes, but you’re right that it makes sod all difference to tomorrows eagerly awaited Tory bloodbath.
Meanwhile here are some old warehouses in Trondheim (dog for scale):
The mortgage "time bomb" does not seem to be having the devastating effect many forecasters promised. Indeed, for many householders in the private sector the squeeze on real wages might be over with wage rises matching CPIH. Not sure the government will be getting much thanks for it though.
Very complacent. The mortgage time bomb is a slow release, not a big bang. It will accumulate as people come off fixed rates. Of course this isn’t great for a pre-GE feelgood because whilst rates may peak and even begin to fall, they’re still going to be high relative to the rates people are remortgaging from.
There’s plenty of evidence locally of 5 bedroom new builds going back onto the market as people are realising they can’t afford the new rates.
Its a decent fall but we are still falling behind a lot of other countries in the rate of fall. Inflation is once again the British disease and, once again, getting rid of it is going to be painful. My belief is that the current government, and very likely their replacement, will live with slightly higher inflation to avoid a recession which we really should have learned over the last 50 years, is short term thinking.
Looking at the Producer numbers, I think there will be some months where there are actual falls in prices. At year end, I expect CPI will be 3-4%.
We have had 3.4% inflation over 2023 year-to-date, so it would take consistently very low figures for the last 6 months of the year to stay below 4%.
Some MoM figures coming up will be negative, just because food prices are dropping and fuel prices too. CPI was 0.1% this month on the MoM measure and input prices are well below zero, it's not out of the realms of possibility that over the next three months we see some level of deflation which brings the annual rise down pretty quickly.
FPT - I feel so strongly about this that I've taken the liberty to re-post it here from the end of the last thread. Apologies for repetition.
I've followed today's education debate with interest, and can't help but observe that the amount of actual evidence used to point to the superiority of a private education has been absolutely minimal. The data is actually quite complex, but there's a strong argument to suggest that for most kids, especially the middle classes, the advantages of a private education are, by the age of 18, either minimal or non-existent. The snobbery on here is manifest, though - particularly the not infrequent, and manifestly absurd, references to 'stabbings' in comprehensives - an extremely rare event in any schools. Indeed, criminal activity, whether it be drug use or sexual abuse, is probably more widespread in the private school sector.
Nevertheless, I fully understand the desire of those who use private schools to assert that they are much better. They'd feel pretty stupid if they were wasting their money, after all.
Private schools dominate the top of the A levels tables rankings, get high entry to top universities here and in the US, provide excellent extra curricular sports and cultural activity and attract pupils from all over the world.
Of course chippy socialists like you hate them but so what
Certainly no snobbery on display here anyway.
Certainly plenty of the inverted variety. Very sad.
I reckon a bet on the Tories on all three is value at those odds. (Singles, not a treble!). I'd be surprised if they lost all three.
I have done this, very modestly, except for Somerton - which I think is impossible. Uxbridge and Selby are in the realm of arguable. Though I expect probably to lose.
I think there’s a better-than-the-odds chance they’ll hold Selby.
The BBC and LBC have been bigging up the ULEZ issue today. If they and HY are right it is a game changer. Starmer has also had a shocking week whereas Rishi has had a good run out with his university pitch, he and Suella have had great media coverage for the boats and tomorrow he will get some great inflation results.
Harold Wilson was right. A week is a long time in politics. A week where Rishi has knocked it out of the park.
WIth no disrespect meant, I genuinely don't know how far into your cheek your tongue is with these posts.
By Friday morning we shall see.
You can't deny that the Conservatives have had some excellent copy this week whilst Starmer-Labour have tied themselves in knots. Kuennsberg set a trap and he fell into it. Sir Kid Starver is a fantastic slur that Rishi is going to beat him around the head with tomorrow at PMQs. It doesn't matter that the two child policy is Osborne's invention, Starmer now owns it and the nation hates him for it. ULEZ according to HY and the BBC is a real vote loser for Uxbridge. FWIW I don't believe it will feature in the GE.
The idea that the 2 child policy is now owned by Starmer and “the nation hates him for it” does not seem to accord with reality. Do you have any polling to support this view?
BJO says so. Which means all of the left think the government's policy was Starmer's doing. Which means the Tories will win a majority of 704.
Its a decent fall but we are still falling behind a lot of other countries in the rate of fall. Inflation is once again the British disease and, once again, getting rid of it is going to be painful. My belief is that the current government, and very likely their replacement, will live with slightly higher inflation to avoid a recession which we really should have learned over the last 50 years, is short term thinking.
Looking at the Producer numbers, I think there will be some months where there are actual falls in prices. At year end, I expect CPI will be 3-4%.
It is Good News that inflation is lower. We've all suffered too much for too long, so the hope that we are now over the top and seeing the rate of increase start to drop is real and genuine.
But - and its a very big but - I'm not convinced we will start to see "actual falls in prices". Profit margins have been brutalised for everyone involved - producers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers. However bad the price rises have been for consumers, not all of the cost rises have been passed on.
What I expect is a period of retrenchment. Everyone will want to restore profitability for a period, and it will only be one of the retailers making a break on prices that starts any price reductions. Remember that anecdotage about "the price of x has dropped" is not indicative of the whole basket of prices doing the same. They drop x, they increase y. You may buy x and not y so claim "prices are falling". Not necessarily true.
We have also seen a degree of worsening quality in some goods; I'm not sure what the term is, not quite shrinkflation.
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
With the exception of very small schools, isn't that true if basically all secondary education today?
Most but not all. There are a lot of advocates for mixed ability teaching in secondary schools - high profile studies by research teams seem to indicate it can be better for attainment but I don't understand that personally.
I would guess that streaming is better for high ability kids and worse for low ability kids. In theory streaming lets the teachers focus on everyone's needs through teaching tailored to ability, but in practice a significant minority of the kids in the low ability class would act up and nobody would learn anything in those classes. With mixed ability classes those kids would be distributed more evenly, causing some disruption for everyone but not a huge amount for anyone. I believe that academic research does demonstrate that mixed ability classes deliver better results overall - this is what I have been told anyway. At my kids' secondary they stream for maths but not for other subjects. This is similar to my own school experience, where they streamed for maths and languages. I suspect there is some de facto streaming for languages at my kids' school actually - my son's German class seems to all be people who are good at it, but that might be a coincidence.
Pretty much. Though even if a school has behaviour utterly nailed, the psychology of "we're the bottom set, we can't do it" is really hard to break. Not impossible, but requiring time and effort that can be better used on other things. You even get it in super selective schools. ("We're just the Hufflepuff class" as I heard on the train one day.)
(At this point, you.may be thinking to yourself "Pah. I would want to show them how wrong they were and double my efforts just to show them. Perhaps, but in that case you are not normal. We shouldn't design the system for you.)
In most subjects, a teacher can talk to a class with an ability spread about something new- a new book, battle, or chemical reaction- and everyone will get something useful from it. Maths is different- nobody has worked out how to be interesting at the top and intelligible at the bottom at once. So you hardly ever get maths shows on TV. So for maths, you probably do have to set.
But otherwise, MA does seem to improve things at the bottom without doing measurable harm at the top. Which is probably what the English system needs. And probably saves money by making timetabling more flexible.
But changing things because evidence conflicts with common sense? Not the English way.
Which is one reason England is in a bit of a mess.
As usual, what you say makes a lot of sense and I would acknowledge that what I’m about to say fits squarely into your bracketed paragraph but…
I would argue that the only way to properly serve those who struggle with maths at secondary (often closely correlated with those with SEN or mental health needs which is where dixiedean started this discussion) is by setting, by reducing the size of the lowest set, and by putting teachers in charge of that set, for multiple years at a time, who are able to both manage behaviour and teach the underlying structures of primary maths sufficiently well that you undo some of the misconceptions these kids have in their heads from primary school.
How many maths teachers in the country can do this? Not sure, definitely not enough at the moment. But its what we should be aiming for if we are serious about avoiding all the problems that come with putting kids into a classroom for five years where they don’t understand what is going on and relentlessly fail at something that they know is crucial for their life chances.
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
With the exception of very small schools, isn't that true if basically all secondary education today?
Most but not all. There are a lot of advocates for mixed ability teaching in secondary schools - high profile studies by research teams seem to indicate it can be better for attainment but I don't understand that personally.
I would guess that streaming is better for high ability kids and worse for low ability kids. In theory streaming lets the teachers focus on everyone's needs through teaching tailored to ability, but in practice a significant minority of the kids in the low ability class would act up and nobody would learn anything in those classes. With mixed ability classes those kids would be distributed more evenly, causing some disruption for everyone but not a huge amount for anyone. I believe that academic research does demonstrate that mixed ability classes deliver better results overall - this is what I have been told anyway. At my kids' secondary they stream for maths but not for other subjects. This is similar to my own school experience, where they streamed for maths and languages. I suspect there is some de facto streaming for languages at my kids' school actually - my son's German class seems to all be people who are good at it, but that might be a coincidence.
Pretty much. Though even if a school has behaviour utterly nailed, the psychology of "we're the bottom set, we can't do it" is really hard to break. Not impossible, but requiring time and effort that can be better used on other things. You even get it in super selective schools. ("We're just the Hufflepuff class" as I heard on the train one day.)
(At this point, you.may be thinking to yourself "Pah. I would want to show them how wrong they were and double my efforts just to show them. Perhaps, but in that case you are not normal. We shouldn't design the system for you.)
In most subjects, a teacher can talk to a class with an ability spread about something new- a new book, battle, or chemical reaction- and everyone will get something useful from it. Maths is different- nobody has worked out how to be interesting at the top and intelligible at the bottom at once. So you hardly ever get maths shows on TV. So for maths, you probably do have to set.
But otherwise, MA does seem to improve things at the bottom without doing measurable harm at the top. Which is probably what the English system needs. And probably saves money by making timetabling more flexible.
But changing things because evidence conflicts with common sense? Not the English way.
Which is one reason England is in a bit of a mess.
As usual, what you say makes a lot of sense and I would acknowledge that what I’m about to say fits squarely into your bracketed paragraph but…
I would argue that the only way to properly serve those who struggle with maths at secondary (often closely correlated with those with SEN or mental health needs which is where dixiedean started this discussion) is by setting, by reducing the size of the lowest set, and by putting teachers in charge of that set, for multiple years at a time, who are able to both manage behaviour and teach the underlying structures of primary maths sufficiently well that you undo some of the misconceptions these kids have in their heads from primary school.
How many maths teachers in the country can do this? Not sure, definitely not enough at the moment. But its what we should be aiming for if we are serious about avoiding all the problems that come with putting kids into a classroom for five years where they don’t understand what is going on and relentlessly fail at something that they know is crucial for their life chances.
Some good news for the country and, therefore, the Tories. This is why I’ve always thought Labour winning most seats in a hung Parliament is the most likely GE result. Things will be better next October than they are now. This will be especially so in the more prosperous, traditionally Tory parts of the country. That will win them seats in the Blue Wall and beyond that they don’t look like holding now. Not enough to stay in power, but well above 200.
I reckon a bet on the Tories on all three is value at those odds. (Singles, not a treble!). I'd be surprised if they lost all three.
I have done this, very modestly, except for Somerton - which I think is impossible. Uxbridge and Selby are in the realm of arguable. Though I expect probably to lose.
I think there’s a better-than-the-odds chance they’ll hold Selby.
The BBC and LBC have been bigging up the ULEZ issue today. If they and HY are right it is a game changer. Starmer has also had a shocking week whereas Rishi has had a good run out with his university pitch, he and Suella have had great media coverage for the boats and tomorrow he will get some great inflation results.
Harold Wilson was right. A week is a long time in politics. A week where Rishi has knocked it out of the park.
WIth no disrespect meant, I genuinely don't know how far into your cheek your tongue is with these posts.
By Friday morning we shall see.
You can't deny that the Conservatives have had some excellent copy this week whilst Starmer-Labour have tied themselves in knots. Kuennsberg set a trap and he fell into it. Sir Kid Starver is a fantastic slur that Rishi is going to beat him around the head with tomorrow at PMQs. It doesn't matter that the two child policy is Osborne's invention, Starmer now owns it and the nation hates him for it. ULEZ according to HY and the BBC is a real vote loser for Uxbridge. FWIW I don't believe it will feature in the GE.
The idea that the 2 child policy is now owned by Starmer and “the nation hates him for it” does not seem to accord with reality. Do you have any polling to support this view?
Is Donald Trump planning to refuse to testify to the grand jury investigating him for the 6 January violence? Or is he whingeing that when he goes along to testify he'll be arrested? I couldn't work it out from his enraged messages which it is.
I see his niece Mary Trump is keeping up her good work. Prediction: when he begins his plummet, she'll be there. In respect of the indictments and possible indictments, she has called him a "frightened little boy" who is terrified of being humiliated. Ouch. She's like an anti him - highly committed to telling the truth and being sane.
Is it not likelier that in that great tradition of Trumps, she's making good money out of her schtick?
And he was probably correct to do so. Japan was in no mood to surrender before the bombs were used, and the planned invasion of the home islands would have cost far more lives than the bombs took. Sadly, the use of the bomb was the lesser of two evils.
I'm far from convinced that letting the Japanese know we had a massively unprecedented bomb would in any way have been convincing to the Japanese leadership, either.
Just look at the devastation conventional firebombings caused in Japan. 88,000 people died in one raid, and a million made homeless. A continuation of the war would have seen that replicated many, many times. That also leaves out the Allied casualties: the US made over a million and a half purple hearts in WW2, ready for the invasion of Japan. In all the conflicts since - Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc, they are still using those medals.
Whether that was Oppenheimer's thinking is a different matter, though ...
I reckon a bet on the Tories on all three is value at those odds. (Singles, not a treble!). I'd be surprised if they lost all three.
I have done this, very modestly, except for Somerton - which I think is impossible. Uxbridge and Selby are in the realm of arguable. Though I expect probably to lose.
I think there’s a better-than-the-odds chance they’ll hold Selby.
The BBC and LBC have been bigging up the ULEZ issue today. If they and HY are right it is a game changer. Starmer has also had a shocking week whereas Rishi has had a good run out with his university pitch, he and Suella have had great media coverage for the boats and tomorrow he will get some great inflation results.
Harold Wilson was right. A week is a long time in politics. A week where Rishi has knocked it out of the park.
WIth no disrespect meant, I genuinely don't know how far into your cheek your tongue is with these posts.
By Friday morning we shall see.
You can't deny that the Conservatives have had some excellent copy this week whilst Starmer-Labour have tied themselves in knots. Kuennsberg set a trap and he fell into it. Sir Kid Starver is a fantastic slur that Rishi is going to beat him around the head with tomorrow at PMQs. It doesn't matter that the two child policy is Osborne's invention, Starmer now owns it and the nation hates him for it. ULEZ according to HY and the BBC is a real vote loser for Uxbridge. FWIW I don't believe it will feature in the GE.
The idea that the 2 child policy is now owned by Starmer and “the nation hates him for it” does not seem to accord with reality. Do you have any polling to support this view?
BJO says so. Which means all of the left think the government's policy was Starmer's doing. Which means the Tories will win a majority of 704.
BJO might have a point though. Remember Axelrod's jibe at Ed Miliband's failure to define the 2015 campaign: vote Labour and win a microwave. In 18 months' time, why vote Labour?
Is Donald Trump planning to refuse to testify to the grand jury investigating him for the 6 January violence? Or is he whingeing that when he goes along to testify he'll be arrested? I couldn't work it out from his enraged messages which it is.
I see his niece Mary Trump is keeping up her good work. Prediction: when he begins his plummet, she'll be there. In respect of the indictments and possible indictments, she has called him a "frightened little boy" who is terrified of being humiliated. Ouch. She's like an anti him - highly committed to telling the truth and being sane.
The general tenor of his rants do appear to be more fearful than they used to be. They come across as stunned that being an announced candidate, and the leading GOP candidate to boot, did not put a stop to the various indictment processes.
I cannot imagine he actually thought they would just stop, but it is interesting that his second biggest narrative from all this is an open admission that he and the party think people in his situation, ie running for office, should be above the law (his first narrative is naturally that it is all nonsense and that its to punish his supporters etc, which makes more sense).
Feels like it all needed to kick off about 6 months earlier than it did, but that's justice for you, painfully slow too much of the time.
The Donald has ALWAYS believed HE is above the law. And always will.
Just like Bojo and Mad Vlad to name but two.
There is a difference between thinking you are above the law and thinking that you are the law.
You know anything about Trump's "business" dealings pre-2016?
He certainly wasn't nuts enough back then to think he WAS the law. And equally certainly believed he was ABOVE the law, that it was just some kind of petty annoyance that he could buy his way out of.
Just like his scumbag daddy and granddaddy Trumps before him.
I'm just trying to find a conceptual framework that will allow you to differentiate between BoJo on the one hand and Putin on the other. For the sake of argument we can say that the jury is out on which category Trump belongs in but I would lean towards the former.
Conceptualize all you want, just keep me the fuck out of it.
Kindly take your "that will allow you to" crap and shove it where the sun don't shine.
Its a decent fall but we are still falling behind a lot of other countries in the rate of fall. Inflation is once again the British disease and, once again, getting rid of it is going to be painful. My belief is that the current government, and very likely their replacement, will live with slightly higher inflation to avoid a recession which we really should have learned over the last 50 years, is short term thinking.
Looking at the Producer numbers, I think there will be some months where there are actual falls in prices. At year end, I expect CPI will be 3-4%.
We have had 3.4% inflation over 2023 year-to-date, so it would take consistently very low figures for the last 6 months of the year to stay below 4%.
As Max says, some monthly figures will be negative, and there’s a huge rise in October last year (2% M o M) that won’t be repeated.
This is a particularly egregious case but I'm slightly uneasy that damages should be paid to the relatives of crime victims in unsolved cases. Many crimes are unsolved, and many more unsolved in time to prevent further offences.
I'm uneasy for very different reasons. The compensation for the family is deserved - active police corruption*consistently obstructed investigation of the murder, and the effects on the family have been devastating.
But the payment is effectively to make the problem go away.
*That is not my spin - it is the conclusion of an official enquiry.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Daniel_Morgan The report was finally published on 15 June 2021. The report found that the Metropolitan Police were "institutionally corrupt" in its handling of the investigation into the murder of Daniel Morgan and that the force had placed protecting its reputation above the investigation...
Its a decent fall but we are still falling behind a lot of other countries in the rate of fall. Inflation is once again the British disease and, once again, getting rid of it is going to be painful. My belief is that the current government, and very likely their replacement, will live with slightly higher inflation to avoid a recession which we really should have learned over the last 50 years, is short term thinking.
Looking at the Producer numbers, I think there will be some months where there are actual falls in prices. At year end, I expect CPI will be 3-4%.
It is Good News that inflation is lower. We've all suffered too much for too long, so the hope that we are now over the top and seeing the rate of increase start to drop is real and genuine.
But - and its a very big but - I'm not convinced we will start to see "actual falls in prices". Profit margins have been brutalised for everyone involved - producers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers. However bad the price rises have been for consumers, not all of the cost rises have been passed on.
What I expect is a period of retrenchment. Everyone will want to restore profitability for a period, and it will only be one of the retailers making a break on prices that starts any price reductions. Remember that anecdotage about "the price of x has dropped" is not indicative of the whole basket of prices doing the same. They drop x, they increase y. You may buy x and not y so claim "prices are falling". Not necessarily true.
We have also seen a degree of worsening quality in some goods; I'm not sure what the term is, not quite shrinkflation.
The term is "shitflation". Seen quite a few examples of it recently, especially in supposedly premium brand restaurant chains where the accountants have elbowed the development chefs out of the way.
I reckon a bet on the Tories on all three is value at those odds. (Singles, not a treble!). I'd be surprised if they lost all three.
I have done this, very modestly, except for Somerton - which I think is impossible. Uxbridge and Selby are in the realm of arguable. Though I expect probably to lose.
I think there’s a better-than-the-odds chance they’ll hold Selby.
The BBC and LBC have been bigging up the ULEZ issue today. If they and HY are right it is a game changer. Starmer has also had a shocking week whereas Rishi has had a good run out with his university pitch, he and Suella have had great media coverage for the boats and tomorrow he will get some great inflation results.
Harold Wilson was right. A week is a long time in politics. A week where Rishi has knocked it out of the park.
WIth no disrespect meant, I genuinely don't know how far into your cheek your tongue is with these posts.
By Friday morning we shall see.
You can't deny that the Conservatives have had some excellent copy this week whilst Starmer-Labour have tied themselves in knots. Kuennsberg set a trap and he fell into it. Sir Kid Starver is a fantastic slur that Rishi is going to beat him around the head with tomorrow at PMQs. It doesn't matter that the two child policy is Osborne's invention, Starmer now owns it and the nation hates him for it. ULEZ according to HY and the BBC is a real vote loser for Uxbridge. FWIW I don't believe it will feature in the GE.
The idea that the 2 child policy is now owned by Starmer and “the nation hates him for it” does not seem to accord with reality. Do you have any polling to support this view?
BJO says so. Which means all of the left think the government's policy was Starmer's doing. Which means the Tories will win a majority of 704.
BJO might have a point though. Remember Axelrod's jibe at Ed Miliband's failure to define the 2015 campaign: vote Labour and win a microwave. In 18 months' time, why vote Labour?
Because they haven't recently proved themselves to be fools/knaves/crooks/worse?
Some good news for the country and, therefore, the Tories. This is why I’ve always thought Labour winning most seats in a hung Parliament is the most likely GE result. Things will be better next October than they are now. This will be especially so in the more prosperous, traditionally Tory parts of the country. That will win them seats in the Blue Wall and beyond that they don’t look like holding now. Not enough to stay in power, but well above 200.
I admit that I get annoyed by overuse of historical comparisons but while Starmer is no Blair neither is the economy going to be anything close to what it was in 1997.
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
With the exception of very small schools, isn't that true if basically all secondary education today?
Most but not all. There are a lot of advocates for mixed ability teaching in secondary schools - high profile studies by research teams seem to indicate it can be better for attainment but I don't understand that personally.
I would guess that streaming is better for high ability kids and worse for low ability kids. In theory streaming lets the teachers focus on everyone's needs through teaching tailored to ability, but in practice a significant minority of the kids in the low ability class would act up and nobody would learn anything in those classes. With mixed ability classes those kids would be distributed more evenly, causing some disruption for everyone but not a huge amount for anyone. I believe that academic research does demonstrate that mixed ability classes deliver better results overall - this is what I have been told anyway. At my kids' secondary they stream for maths but not for other subjects. This is similar to my own school experience, where they streamed for maths and languages. I suspect there is some de facto streaming for languages at my kids' school actually - my son's German class seems to all be people who are good at it, but that might be a coincidence.
Pretty much. Though even if a school has behaviour utterly nailed, the psychology of "we're the bottom set, we can't do it" is really hard to break. Not impossible, but requiring time and effort that can be better used on other things. You even get it in super selective schools. ("We're just the Hufflepuff class" as I heard on the train one day.)
(At this point, you.may be thinking to yourself "Pah. I would want to show them how wrong they were and double my efforts just to show them. Perhaps, but in that case you are not normal. We shouldn't design the system for you.)
In most subjects, a teacher can talk to a class with an ability spread about something new- a new book, battle, or chemical reaction- and everyone will get something useful from it. Maths is different- nobody has worked out how to be interesting at the top and intelligible at the bottom at once. So you hardly ever get maths shows on TV. So for maths, you probably do have to set.
But otherwise, MA does seem to improve things at the bottom without doing measurable harm at the top. Which is probably what the English system needs. And probably saves money by making timetabling more flexible.
But changing things because evidence conflicts with common sense? Not the English way.
Which is one reason England is in a bit of a mess.
As usual, what you say makes a lot of sense and I would acknowledge that what I’m about to say fits squarely into your bracketed paragraph but…
I would argue that the only way to properly serve those who struggle with maths at secondary (often closely correlated with those with SEN or mental health needs which is where dixiedean started this discussion) is by setting, by reducing the size of the lowest set, and by putting teachers in charge of that set, for multiple years at a time, who are able to both manage behaviour and teach the underlying structures of primary maths sufficiently well that you undo some of the misconceptions these kids have in their heads from primary school...
It would be better - and possibly less costly - to address that problem in primary school.
And he was probably correct to do so. Japan was in no mood to surrender before the bombs were used, and the planned invasion of the home islands would have cost far more lives than the bombs took. Sadly, the use of the bomb was the lesser of two evils.
I'm far from convinced that letting the Japanese know we had a massively unprecedented bomb would in any way have been convincing to the Japanese leadership, either.
Just look at the devastation conventional firebombings caused in Japan. 88,000 people died in one raid, and a million made homeless. A continuation of the war would have seen that replicated many, many times. That also leaves out the Allied casualties: the US made over a million and a half purple hearts in WW2, ready for the invasion of Japan. In all the conflicts since - Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc, they are still using those medals.
Whether that was Oppenheimer's thinking is a different matter, though ...
Curtis Le May objected to the use of the atomic bomb, for a time, only because he thought his Superfortresses could Burn a Nation.
IMHO, the use of the atomic bombs is pretty straightforward to defend, at an ethical level.
They settled matters, swiftly and decisively. Every day the war continued meant civilians and POW’s dying.
I reckon a bet on the Tories on all three is value at those odds. (Singles, not a treble!). I'd be surprised if they lost all three.
I have done this, very modestly, except for Somerton - which I think is impossible. Uxbridge and Selby are in the realm of arguable. Though I expect probably to lose.
I think there’s a better-than-the-odds chance they’ll hold Selby.
The BBC and LBC have been bigging up the ULEZ issue today. If they and HY are right it is a game changer. Starmer has also had a shocking week whereas Rishi has had a good run out with his university pitch, he and Suella have had great media coverage for the boats and tomorrow he will get some great inflation results.
Harold Wilson was right. A week is a long time in politics. A week where Rishi has knocked it out of the park.
WIth no disrespect meant, I genuinely don't know how far into your cheek your tongue is with these posts.
By Friday morning we shall see.
You can't deny that the Conservatives have had some excellent copy this week whilst Starmer-Labour have tied themselves in knots. Kuennsberg set a trap and he fell into it. Sir Kid Starver is a fantastic slur that Rishi is going to beat him around the head with tomorrow at PMQs. It doesn't matter that the two child policy is Osborne's invention, Starmer now owns it and the nation hates him for it. ULEZ according to HY and the BBC is a real vote loser for Uxbridge. FWIW I don't believe it will feature in the GE.
The idea that the 2 child policy is now owned by Starmer and “the nation hates him for it” does not seem to accord with reality. Do you have any polling to support this view?
BJO says so. Which means all of the left think the government's policy was Starmer's doing. Which means the Tories will win a majority of 704.
BJO might have a point though. Remember Axelrod's jibe at Ed Miliband's failure to define the 2015 campaign: vote Labour and win a microwave. In 18 months' time, why vote Labour?
I will not be voting Labour, lets just put that on the table before I go any further. But do you think Starmer is as inept as Ed was? He has already set out priorities, and we will get a lot more flesh added to that skeleton. The "you're just Tories" jibe is nonsense and if BJO every stopped using STARMER as the sweariest of expletives for 5 minutes and actually thought like a mainstream voter, even he would see that.
I do not like the 2 child policy one bit. But it is a Tory policy, not a Labour one. Incoming governments do not have infinite parliamentary time or cash to instantly reverse everything they inherited which is damaging, immoral, stupid or likely all three. I have no doubt they will reform the welfare system in a more substantial way than just changing that specific bit. But it will take time.
Its a decent fall but we are still falling behind a lot of other countries in the rate of fall. Inflation is once again the British disease and, once again, getting rid of it is going to be painful. My belief is that the current government, and very likely their replacement, will live with slightly higher inflation to avoid a recession which we really should have learned over the last 50 years, is short term thinking.
Looking at the Producer numbers, I think there will be some months where there are actual falls in prices. At year end, I expect CPI will be 3-4%.
It is Good News that inflation is lower. We've all suffered too much for too long, so the hope that we are now over the top and seeing the rate of increase start to drop is real and genuine.
But - and its a very big but - I'm not convinced we will start to see "actual falls in prices". Profit margins have been brutalised for everyone involved - producers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers. However bad the price rises have been for consumers, not all of the cost rises have been passed on.
What I expect is a period of retrenchment. Everyone will want to restore profitability for a period, and it will only be one of the retailers making a break on prices that starts any price reductions. Remember that anecdotage about "the price of x has dropped" is not indicative of the whole basket of prices doing the same. They drop x, they increase y. You may buy x and not y so claim "prices are falling". Not necessarily true.
We have also seen a degree of worsening quality in some goods; I'm not sure what the term is, not quite shrinkflation.
The term is "shitflation". Seen quite a few examples of it recently, especially in supposedly premium brand restaurant chains where the accountants have elbowed the development chefs out of the way.
I’ve noticed it in more than one restaurant, where the portions have been cut.
I reckon a bet on the Tories on all three is value at those odds. (Singles, not a treble!). I'd beg surprised if they lost all three.
I have done this, very modestly, except for Somerton - which I think is impossible. Uxbridge and Selby are in the realm of arguable. Though I expect probably to lose.
I think there’s a better-than-the-odds chance they’ll hold Selby.
The BBC and LBC have been bigging up the ULEZ issue today. If they and HY are right it is a game changer. Starmer has also had a shocking week whereas Rishi has had a good run out with his university pitch, he and Suella have had great media coverage for the boats and tomorrow he will get some great inflation results.
Harold Wilson was right. A week is a long time in politics. A week where Rishi has knocked it out of the park.
WIth no disrespect meant, I genuinely don't know how far into your cheek your tongue is with these posts.
By Friday morning we shall see.
You can't deny that the Conservatives have had some excellent copy this week whilst Starmer-Labour have tied themselves in knots. Kuennsberg set a trap and he fell into it. Sir Kid Starver is a fantastic slur that Rishi is going to beat him around the head with tomorrow at PMQs. It doesn't matter that the two child policy is Osborne's invention, Starmer now owns it and the nation hates him for it. ULEZ according to HY and the BBC is a real vote loser for Uxbridge. FWIW I don't believe it will feature in the GE.
The idea that the 2 child policy is now owned by Starmer and “the nation hates him for it” does not seem to accord with reality. Do you have any polling to support this view?
I don’t see any sign that it’s hurt Starmer.
Good morning
I posted the polling on this yesterday which shows 60% support for the policy and majority across parties
I reckon a bet on the Tories on all three is value at those odds. (Singles, not a treble!). I'd beg surprised if they lost all three.
I have done this, very modestly, except for Somerton - which I think is impossible. Uxbridge and Selby are in the realm of arguable. Though I expect probably to lose.
I think there’s a better-than-the-odds chance they’ll hold Selby.
The BBC and LBC have been bigging up the ULEZ issue today. If they and HY are right it is a game changer. Starmer has also had a shocking week whereas Rishi has had a good run out with his university pitch, he and Suella have had great media coverage for the boats and tomorrow he will get some great inflation results.
Harold Wilson was right. A week is a long time in politics. A week where Rishi has knocked it out of the park.
WIth no disrespect meant, I genuinely don't know how far into your cheek your tongue is with these posts.
By Friday morning we shall see.
You can't deny that the Conservatives have had some excellent copy this week whilst Starmer-Labour have tied themselves in knots. Kuennsberg set a trap and he fell into it. Sir Kid Starver is a fantastic slur that Rishi is going to beat him around the head with tomorrow at PMQs. It doesn't matter that the two child policy is Osborne's invention, Starmer now owns it and the nation hates him for it. ULEZ according to HY and the BBC is a real vote loser for Uxbridge. FWIW I don't believe it will feature in the GE.
The idea that the 2 child policy is now owned by Starmer and “the nation hates him for it” does not seem to accord with reality. Do you have any polling to support this view?
I don’t see any sign that it’s hurt Starmer.
Good morning
I posted the polling on this yesterday which shows 60% support for the policy and majority across parties
Dismal figures, reflecting two dismal facts: pluralities generally support making life harder for those they don't know and care about; our birth rates are so awful that most people hardly know anyone with 3 or more children and are not wealthy.
And he was probably correct to do so. Japan was in no mood to surrender before the bombs were used, and the planned invasion of the home islands would have cost far more lives than the bombs took. Sadly, the use of the bomb was the lesser of two evils.
I'm far from convinced that letting the Japanese know we had a massively unprecedented bomb would in any way have been convincing to the Japanese leadership, either.
Just look at the devastation conventional firebombings caused in Japan. 88,000 people died in one raid, and a million made homeless. A continuation of the war would have seen that replicated many, many times. That also leaves out the Allied casualties: the US made over a million and a half purple hearts in WW2, ready for the invasion of Japan. In all the conflicts since - Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc, they are still using those medals.
Whether that was Oppenheimer's thinking is a different matter, though ...
I think there's a pretty clear case for the first bomb. The second is more controversial - announcing publicly that it would be dropped in one week might have been enough to convince the Japanese, once they'd had time to absorb the effects of the first.
I reckon a bet on the Tories on all three is value at those odds. (Singles, not a treble!). I'd be surprised if they lost all three.
I have done this, very modestly, except for Somerton - which I think is impossible. Uxbridge and Selby are in the realm of arguable. Though I expect probably to lose.
I think there’s a better-than-the-odds chance they’ll hold Selby.
The BBC and LBC have been bigging up the ULEZ issue today. If they and HY are right it is a game changer. Starmer has also had a shocking week whereas Rishi has had a good run out with his university pitch, he and Suella have had great media coverage for the boats and tomorrow he will get some great inflation results.
Harold Wilson was right. A week is a long time in politics. A week where Rishi has knocked it out of the park.
WIth no disrespect meant, I genuinely don't know how far into your cheek your tongue is with these posts.
By Friday morning we shall see.
You can't deny that the Conservatives have had some excellent copy this week whilst Starmer-Labour have tied themselves in knots. Kuennsberg set a trap and he fell into it. Sir Kid Starver is a fantastic slur that Rishi is going to beat him around the head with tomorrow at PMQs. It doesn't matter that the two child policy is Osborne's invention, Starmer now owns it and the nation hates him for it. ULEZ according to HY and the BBC is a real vote loser for Uxbridge. FWIW I don't believe it will feature in the GE.
The idea that the 2 child policy is now owned by Starmer and “the nation hates him for it” does not seem to accord with reality. Do you have any polling to support this view?
Not quite. This was Yougov the other day. Most people support the limit. Presumably on the general principle that folk generally want other people to be taxed, but not for other people to get benefits.
I reckon a bet on the Tories on all three is value at those odds. (Singles, not a treble!). I'd beg surprised if they lost all three.
I have done this, very modestly, except for Somerton - which I think is impossible. Uxbridge and Selby are in the realm of arguable. Though I expect probably to lose.
I think there’s a better-than-the-odds chance they’ll hold Selby.
The BBC and LBC have been bigging up the ULEZ issue today. If they and HY are right it is a game changer. Starmer has also had a shocking week whereas Rishi has had a good run out with his university pitch, he and Suella have had great media coverage for the boats and tomorrow he will get some great inflation results.
Harold Wilson was right. A week is a long time in politics. A week where Rishi has knocked it out of the park.
WIth no disrespect meant, I genuinely don't know how far into your cheek your tongue is with these posts.
By Friday morning we shall see.
You can't deny that the Conservatives have had some excellent copy this week whilst Starmer-Labour have tied themselves in knots. Kuennsberg set a trap and he fell into it. Sir Kid Starver is a fantastic slur that Rishi is going to beat him around the head with tomorrow at PMQs. It doesn't matter that the two child policy is Osborne's invention, Starmer now owns it and the nation hates him for it. ULEZ according to HY and the BBC is a real vote loser for Uxbridge. FWIW I don't believe it will feature in the GE.
The idea that the 2 child policy is now owned by Starmer and “the nation hates him for it” does not seem to accord with reality. Do you have any polling to support this view?
I don’t see any sign that it’s hurt Starmer.
Good morning
I posted the polling on this yesterday which shows 60% support for the policy and majority across parties
Dismal figures, reflecting two dismal facts: pluralities generally support making life harder for those they don't know and care about; our birth rates are so awful that most people hardly know anyone with 3 or more children and are not wealthy.
My son and daughter in law have 3 children and are not wealthy
Producer price inflation is now down to 0.1%, and Producer inputs to -2.7%. Consumer price inflation will therefore drop very sharply for the rest of the year.
Money supply has fallen too and China is back to exporting deflation, China Producer deflation is often overlooked.
Its a decent fall but we are still falling behind a lot of other countries in the rate of fall. Inflation is once again the British disease and, once again, getting rid of it is going to be painful. My belief is that the current government, and very likely their replacement, will live with slightly higher inflation to avoid a recession which we really should have learned over the last 50 years, is short term thinking.
Looking at the Producer numbers, I think there will be some months where there are actual falls in prices. At year end, I expect CPI will be 3-4%.
It is Good News that inflation is lower. We've all suffered too much for too long, so the hope that we are now over the top and seeing the rate of increase start to drop is real and genuine.
But - and its a very big but - I'm not convinced we will start to see "actual falls in prices". Profit margins have been brutalised for everyone involved - producers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers. However bad the price rises have been for consumers, not all of the cost rises have been passed on.
What I expect is a period of retrenchment. Everyone will want to restore profitability for a period, and it will only be one of the retailers making a break on prices that starts any price reductions. Remember that anecdotage about "the price of x has dropped" is not indicative of the whole basket of prices doing the same. They drop x, they increase y. You may buy x and not y so claim "prices are falling". Not necessarily true.
We have also seen a degree of worsening quality in some goods; I'm not sure what the term is, not quite shrinkflation.
The term is "shitflation". Seen quite a few examples of it recently, especially in supposedly premium brand restaurant chains where the accountants have elbowed the development chefs out of the way.
I’ve noticed it in more than one restaurant, where the portions have been cut.
Portion size reduced: Shrinkflation. Pay more for less food. Quality of the food reduced: Shitflation. Pay more for shit food.
Big boost for Sunak and Hunt this morning as inflation falls below 8 percent
They’ve still got till December to get it 5% I guess, though of course it’s actually mostly out of their control (and therefore the only one of the ludicrous five pledges they have a hope of achieving*).
*I guess the second is so vague that he can jiggery-pokery up some rationale for it being achieved, but still.
I reckon a bet on the Tories on all three is value at those odds. (Singles, not a treble!). I'd be surprised if they lost all three.
I have done this, very modestly, except for Somerton - which I think is impossible. Uxbridge and Selby are in the realm of arguable. Though I expect probably to lose.
I think there’s a better-than-the-odds chance they’ll hold Selby.
The BBC and LBC have been bigging up the ULEZ issue today. If they and HY are right it is a game changer. Starmer has also had a shocking week whereas Rishi has had a good run out with his university pitch, he and Suella have had great media coverage for the boats and tomorrow he will get some great inflation results.
Harold Wilson was right. A week is a long time in politics. A week where Rishi has knocked it out of the park.
WIth no disrespect meant, I genuinely don't know how far into your cheek your tongue is with these posts.
By Friday morning we shall see.
You can't deny that the Conservatives have had some excellent copy this week whilst Starmer-Labour have tied themselves in knots. Kuennsberg set a trap and he fell into it. Sir Kid Starver is a fantastic slur that Rishi is going to beat him around the head with tomorrow at PMQs. It doesn't matter that the two child policy is Osborne's invention, Starmer now owns it and the nation hates him for it. ULEZ according to HY and the BBC is a real vote loser for Uxbridge. FWIW I don't believe it will feature in the GE.
The idea that the 2 child policy is now owned by Starmer and “the nation hates him for it” does not seem to accord with reality. Do you have any polling to support this view?
BJO says so. Which means all of the left think the government's policy was Starmer's doing. Which means the Tories will win a majority of 704.
BJO might have a point though. Remember Axelrod's jibe at Ed Miliband's failure to define the 2015 campaign: vote Labour and win a microwave. In 18 months' time, why vote Labour?
I will not be voting Labour, lets just put that on the table before I go any further. But do you think Starmer is as inept as Ed was? He has already set out priorities, and we will get a lot more flesh added to that skeleton. The "you're just Tories" jibe is nonsense and if BJO every stopped using STARMER as the sweariest of expletives for 5 minutes and actually thought like a mainstream voter, even he would see that.
I do not like the 2 child policy one bit. But it is a Tory policy, not a Labour one. Incoming governments do not have infinite parliamentary time or cash to instantly reverse everything they inherited which is damaging, immoral, stupid or likely all three. I have no doubt they will reform the welfare system in a more substantial way than just changing that specific bit. But it will take time.
I reckon a bet on the Tories on all three is value at those odds. (Singles, not a treble!). I'd be surprised if they lost all three.
I have done this, very modestly, except for Somerton - which I think is impossible. Uxbridge and Selby are in the realm of arguable. Though I expect probably to lose.
I think there’s a better-than-the-odds chance they’ll hold Selby.
The BBC and LBC have been bigging up the ULEZ issue today. If they and HY are right it is a game changer. Starmer has also had a shocking week whereas Rishi has had a good run out with his university pitch, he and Suella have had great media coverage for the boats and tomorrow he will get some great inflation results.
Harold Wilson was right. A week is a long time in politics. A week where Rishi has knocked it out of the park.
WIth no disrespect meant, I genuinely don't know how far into your cheek your tongue is with these posts.
By Friday morning we shall see.
You can't deny that the Conservatives have had some excellent copy this week whilst Starmer-Labour have tied themselves in knots. Kuennsberg set a trap and he fell into it. Sir Kid Starver is a fantastic slur that Rishi is going to beat him around the head with tomorrow at PMQs. It doesn't matter that the two child policy is Osborne's invention, Starmer now owns it and the nation hates him for it. ULEZ according to HY and the BBC is a real vote loser for Uxbridge. FWIW I don't believe it will feature in the GE.
The idea that the 2 child policy is now owned by Starmer and “the nation hates him for it” does not seem to accord with reality. Do you have any polling to support this view?
BJO says so. Which means all of the left think the government's policy was Starmer's doing. Which means the Tories will win a majority of 704.
BJO might have a point though. Remember Axelrod's jibe at Ed Miliband's failure to define the 2015 campaign: vote Labour and win a microwave. In 18 months' time, why vote Labour?
I will not be voting Labour, lets just put that on the table before I go any further. But do you think Starmer is as inept as Ed was? He has already set out priorities, and we will get a lot more flesh added to that skeleton. The "you're just Tories" jibe is nonsense and if BJO every stopped using STARMER as the sweariest of expletives for 5 minutes and actually thought like a mainstream voter, even he would see that.
I do not like the 2 child policy one bit. But it is a Tory policy, not a Labour one. Incoming governments do not have infinite parliamentary time or cash to instantly reverse everything they inherited which is damaging, immoral, stupid or likely all three. I have no doubt they will reform the welfare system in a more substantial way than just changing that specific bit. But it will take time.
I agree the limit should be scrapped. We face a baby bust, not a baby boom.
Having a look at what is going to drop out of the calculation vs expectations on what's coming in based on current input prices we could be at ~6% CPI for September's numbers ~4.5-5% by the October data which we get in November.
I reckon a bet on the Tories on all three is value at those odds. (Singles, not a treble!). I'd beg surprised if they lost all three.
I have done this, very modestly, except for Somerton - which I think is impossible. Uxbridge and Selby are in the realm of arguable. Though I expect probably to lose.
I think there’s a better-than-the-odds chance they’ll hold Selby.
The BBC and LBC have been bigging up the ULEZ issue today. If they and HY are right it is a game changer. Starmer has also had a shocking week whereas Rishi has had a good run out with his university pitch, he and Suella have had great media coverage for the boats and tomorrow he will get some great inflation results.
Harold Wilson was right. A week is a long time in politics. A week where Rishi has knocked it out of the park.
WIth no disrespect meant, I genuinely don't know how far into your cheek your tongue is with these posts.
By Friday morning we shall see.
You can't deny that the Conservatives have had some excellent copy this week whilst Starmer-Labour have tied themselves in knots. Kuennsberg set a trap and he fell into it. Sir Kid Starver is a fantastic slur that Rishi is going to beat him around the head with tomorrow at PMQs. It doesn't matter that the two child policy is Osborne's invention, Starmer now owns it and the nation hates him for it. ULEZ according to HY and the BBC is a real vote loser for Uxbridge. FWIW I don't believe it will feature in the GE.
The idea that the 2 child policy is now owned by Starmer and “the nation hates him for it” does not seem to accord with reality. Do you have any polling to support this view?
I don’t see any sign that it’s hurt Starmer.
Good morning
I posted the polling on this yesterday which shows 60% support for the policy and majority across parties
Dismal figures, reflecting two dismal facts: pluralities generally support making life harder for those they don't know and care about; our birth rates are so awful that most people hardly know anyone with 3 or more children and are not wealthy.
My son and daughter in law have 3 children and are not wealthy
It's time the Labour party stood up for them. I known quite a few in this WWC community; but the average being 1.6 and falling the future looks sub optimal.
I reckon a bet on the Tories on all three is value at those odds. (Singles, not a treble!). I'd be surprised if they lost all three.
I have done this, very modestly, except for Somerton - which I think is impossible. Uxbridge and Selby are in the realm of arguable. Though I expect probably to lose.
I think there’s a better-than-the-odds chance they’ll hold Selby.
The BBC and LBC have been bigging up the ULEZ issue today. If they and HY are right it is a game changer. Starmer has also had a shocking week whereas Rishi has had a good run out with his university pitch, he and Suella have had great media coverage for the boats and tomorrow he will get some great inflation results.
Harold Wilson was right. A week is a long time in politics. A week where Rishi has knocked it out of the park.
WIth no disrespect meant, I genuinely don't know how far into your cheek your tongue is with these posts.
By Friday morning we shall see.
You can't deny that the Conservatives have had some excellent copy this week whilst Starmer-Labour have tied themselves in knots. Kuennsberg set a trap and he fell into it. Sir Kid Starver is a fantastic slur that Rishi is going to beat him around the head with tomorrow at PMQs. It doesn't matter that the two child policy is Osborne's invention, Starmer now owns it and the nation hates him for it. ULEZ according to HY and the BBC is a real vote loser for Uxbridge. FWIW I don't believe it will feature in the GE.
The idea that the 2 child policy is now owned by Starmer and “the nation hates him for it” does not seem to accord with reality. Do you have any polling to support this view?
Not quite. This was Yougov the other day. Most people support the limit. Presumably on the general principle that folk generally want other people to be taxed, but not for other people to get benefits.
They also want less immigration and we have a falling birth rate alongside an ageing population. It was only a few weeks ago that the NatCons were telling us people should be incentivised to have more kids.
Then there’s the fact thatvreducing poverty boosts growth and relieves pressure on overstretched public services.
Is Donald Trump planning to refuse to testify to the grand jury investigating him for the 6 January violence? Or is he whingeing that when he goes along to testify he'll be arrested? I couldn't work it out from his enraged messages which it is.
I see his niece Mary Trump is keeping up her good work. Prediction: when he begins his plummet, she'll be there. In respect of the indictments and possible indictments, she has called him a "frightened little boy" who is terrified of being humiliated. Ouch. She's like an anti him - highly committed to telling the truth and being sane.
The general tenor of his rants do appear to be more fearful than they used to be. They come across as stunned that being an announced candidate, and the leading GOP candidate to boot, did not put a stop to the various indictment processes.
I cannot imagine he actually thought they would just stop, but it is interesting that his second biggest narrative from all this is an open admission that he and the party think people in his situation, ie running for office, should be above the law (his first narrative is naturally that it is all nonsense and that its to punish his supporters etc, which makes more sense).
Feels like it all needed to kick off about 6 months earlier than it did, but that's justice for you, painfully slow too much of the time.
The Donald has ALWAYS believed HE is above the law. And always will.
Just like Bojo and Mad Vlad to name but two.
There is a difference between thinking you are above the law and thinking that you are the law.
You know anything about Trump's "business" dealings pre-2016?
He certainly wasn't nuts enough back then to think he WAS the law. And equally certainly believed he was ABOVE the law, that it was just some kind of petty annoyance that he could buy his way out of.
Just like his scumbag daddy and granddaddy Trumps before him.
Back then he was involved in only civil suits , and got used to the idea if the las as a weapon he could wield against those with fewer resources. And if he ever lost, it was just a business expense.
Boot is on the other foot, for now.
MORE from courthouse in Ft Pierce, Florida.. where there was a hearing today in Trump federal case
But why was it only civil cases back then? Weren't there any cases of, eg, fraud that were worth a criminal prosecution?
Because at first glance it looks like he got away with all kinds of shit as a well-connected billionaire before he upset too many of the wrong people by becoming president
Because not paying a supplier's bill is a Civil case, but stealing top secret documents is a Criminal offence. So, why are you trying to say he is only being prosecuted because he upset the 'wrong people'?
Obviously I'm not saying that all the previous civil cases should have been criminal cases, nor am I "trying to say he is only being prosecuted because he upset the 'wrong people'".
It just seems - like I say at first glance and maybe you have really looked into it - that there is more effort being made to prosecute him for things now than in all the years when he was just a corrupt rich guy.
Eg here's a NYT article from 2018 alleging criminal fraud by Trump in the 1990s
And he was probably correct to do so. Japan was in no mood to surrender before the bombs were used, and the planned invasion of the home islands would have cost far more lives than the bombs took. Sadly, the use of the bomb was the lesser of two evils.
I'm far from convinced that letting the Japanese know we had a massively unprecedented bomb would in any way have been convincing to the Japanese leadership, either.
Just look at the devastation conventional firebombings caused in Japan. 88,000 people died in one raid, and a million made homeless. A continuation of the war would have seen that replicated many, many times. That also leaves out the Allied casualties: the US made over a million and a half purple hearts in WW2, ready for the invasion of Japan. In all the conflicts since - Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc, they are still using those medals.
Whether that was Oppenheimer's thinking is a different matter, though ...
Perhaps; I'm not going to rehearse those arguments again. But that was Truman's decision, not Oppenheimer's. And if it was so ethically clearcut, why was the document suppressed for another decade and a half ?
Some good news for the country and, therefore, the Tories. This is why I’ve always thought Labour winning most seats in a hung Parliament is the most likely GE result. Things will be better next October than they are now. This will be especially so in the more prosperous, traditionally Tory parts of the country. That will win them seats in the Blue Wall and beyond that they don’t look like holding now. Not enough to stay in power, but well above 200.
I admit that I get annoyed by overuse of historical comparisons but while Starmer is no Blair neither is the economy going to be anything close to what it was in 1997.
The economy being better than it is now is what will matter. It gives the government a story to tell and a sell to make - don’t risk the recovery by voting Labour. That will sway votes, especially among the more comfortably off.
Its a decent fall but we are still falling behind a lot of other countries in the rate of fall. Inflation is once again the British disease and, once again, getting rid of it is going to be painful. My belief is that the current government, and very likely their replacement, will live with slightly higher inflation to avoid a recession which we really should have learned over the last 50 years, is short term thinking.
Looking at the Producer numbers, I think there will be some months where there are actual falls in prices. At year end, I expect CPI will be 3-4%.
It is Good News that inflation is lower. We've all suffered too much for too long, so the hope that we are now over the top and seeing the rate of increase start to drop is real and genuine.
But - and its a very big but - I'm not convinced we will start to see "actual falls in prices". Profit margins have been brutalised for everyone involved - producers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers. However bad the price rises have been for consumers, not all of the cost rises have been passed on.
What I expect is a period of retrenchment. Everyone will want to restore profitability for a period, and it will only be one of the retailers making a break on prices that starts any price reductions. Remember that anecdotage about "the price of x has dropped" is not indicative of the whole basket of prices doing the same. They drop x, they increase y. You may buy x and not y so claim "prices are falling". Not necessarily true.
We have also seen a degree of worsening quality in some goods; I'm not sure what the term is, not quite shrinkflation.
The term is "shitflation". Seen quite a few examples of it recently, especially in supposedly premium brand restaurant chains where the accountants have elbowed the development chefs out of the way.
I’ve noticed it in more than one restaurant, where the portions have been cut.
Given the food wastage and obesity problems this country has that's not a bad thing.
I reckon a bet on the Tories on all three is value at those odds. (Singles, not a treble!). I'd be surprised if they lost all three.
I have done this, very modestly, except for Somerton - which I think is impossible. Uxbridge and Selby are in the realm of arguable. Though I expect probably to lose.
I think there’s a better-than-the-odds chance they’ll hold Selby.
The BBC and LBC have been bigging up the ULEZ issue today. If they and HY are right it is a game changer. Starmer has also had a shocking week whereas Rishi has had a good run out with his university pitch, he and Suella have had great media coverage for the boats and tomorrow he will get some great inflation results.
Harold Wilson was right. A week is a long time in politics. A week where Rishi has knocked it out of the park.
WIth no disrespect meant, I genuinely don't know how far into your cheek your tongue is with these posts.
By Friday morning we shall see.
You can't deny that the Conservatives have had some excellent copy this week whilst Starmer-Labour have tied themselves in knots. Kuennsberg set a trap and he fell into it. Sir Kid Starver is a fantastic slur that Rishi is going to beat him around the head with tomorrow at PMQs. It doesn't matter that the two child policy is Osborne's invention, Starmer now owns it and the nation hates him for it. ULEZ according to HY and the BBC is a real vote loser for Uxbridge. FWIW I don't believe it will feature in the GE.
The idea that the 2 child policy is now owned by Starmer and “the nation hates him for it” does not seem to accord with reality. Do you have any polling to support this view?
BJO says so. Which means all of the left think the government's policy was Starmer's doing. Which means the Tories will win a majority of 704.
BJO might have a point though. Remember Axelrod's jibe at Ed Miliband's failure to define the 2015 campaign: vote Labour and win a microwave. In 18 months' time, why vote Labour?
I will not be voting Labour, lets just put that on the table before I go any further. But do you think Starmer is as inept as Ed was? He has already set out priorities, and we will get a lot more flesh added to that skeleton. The "you're just Tories" jibe is nonsense and if BJO every stopped using STARMER as the sweariest of expletives for 5 minutes and actually thought like a mainstream voter, even he would see that.
I do not like the 2 child policy one bit. But it is a Tory policy, not a Labour one. Incoming governments do not have infinite parliamentary time or cash to instantly reverse everything they inherited which is damaging, immoral, stupid or likely all three. I have no doubt they will reform the welfare system in a more substantial way than just changing that specific bit. But it will take time.
I reckon a bet on the Tories on all three is value at those odds. (Singles, not a treble!). I'd be surprised if they lost all three.
I have done this, very modestly, except for Somerton - which I think is impossible. Uxbridge and Selby are in the realm of arguable. Though I expect probably to lose.
I think there’s a better-than-the-odds chance they’ll hold Selby.
The BBC and LBC have been bigging up the ULEZ issue today. If they and HY are right it is a game changer. Starmer has also had a shocking week whereas Rishi has had a good run out with his university pitch, he and Suella have had great media coverage for the boats and tomorrow he will get some great inflation results.
Harold Wilson was right. A week is a long time in politics. A week where Rishi has knocked it out of the park.
WIth no disrespect meant, I genuinely don't know how far into your cheek your tongue is with these posts.
By Friday morning we shall see.
You can't deny that the Conservatives have had some excellent copy this week whilst Starmer-Labour have tied themselves in knots. Kuennsberg set a trap and he fell into it. Sir Kid Starver is a fantastic slur that Rishi is going to beat him around the head with tomorrow at PMQs. It doesn't matter that the two child policy is Osborne's invention, Starmer now owns it and the nation hates him for it. ULEZ according to HY and the BBC is a real vote loser for Uxbridge. FWIW I don't believe it will feature in the GE.
The idea that the 2 child policy is now owned by Starmer and “the nation hates him for it” does not seem to accord with reality. Do you have any polling to support this view?
BJO says so. Which means all of the left think the government's policy was Starmer's doing. Which means the Tories will win a majority of 704.
BJO might have a point though. Remember Axelrod's jibe at Ed Miliband's failure to define the 2015 campaign: vote Labour and win a microwave. In 18 months' time, why vote Labour?
I will not be voting Labour, lets just put that on the table before I go any further. But do you think Starmer is as inept as Ed was? He has already set out priorities, and we will get a lot more flesh added to that skeleton. The "you're just Tories" jibe is nonsense and if BJO every stopped using STARMER as the sweariest of expletives for 5 minutes and actually thought like a mainstream voter, even he would see that.
I do not like the 2 child policy one bit. But it is a Tory policy, not a Labour one. Incoming governments do not have infinite parliamentary time or cash to instantly reverse everything they inherited which is damaging, immoral, stupid or likely all three. I have no doubt they will reform the welfare system in a more substantial way than just changing that specific bit. But it will take time.
I agree the limit should be scrapped. We face a baby bust, not a baby boom.
More competition for the children of the rich and posh, though, and the Hyacinth Buckets of the Tory Party and their fantasies, vide HYUFD and his grammar schools.
Some good news for the country and, therefore, the Tories. This is why I’ve always thought Labour winning most seats in a hung Parliament is the most likely GE result. Things will be better next October than they are now. This will be especially so in the more prosperous, traditionally Tory parts of the country. That will win them seats in the Blue Wall and beyond that they don’t look like holding now. Not enough to stay in power, but well above 200.
It'll be interesting to see if the by-elections show Labour doing less well than expected, after this and a week of controversy over Starmer's cautious approach. My guess is "yes, a bit", but probably not enough for the Tories to hold the seats.
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
With the exception of very small schools, isn't that true if basically all secondary education today?
Most but not all. There are a lot of advocates for mixed ability teaching in secondary schools - high profile studies by research teams seem to indicate it can be better for attainment but I don't understand that personally.
I would guess that streaming is better for high ability kids and worse for low ability kids. In theory streaming lets the teachers focus on everyone's needs through teaching tailored to ability, but in practice a significant minority of the kids in the low ability class would act up and nobody would learn anything in those classes. With mixed ability classes those kids would be distributed more evenly, causing some disruption for everyone but not a huge amount for anyone. I believe that academic research does demonstrate that mixed ability classes deliver better results overall - this is what I have been told anyway. At my kids' secondary they stream for maths but not for other subjects. This is similar to my own school experience, where they streamed for maths and languages. I suspect there is some de facto streaming for languages at my kids' school actually - my son's German class seems to all be people who are good at it, but that might be a coincidence.
Pretty much. Though even if a school has behaviour utterly nailed, the psychology of "we're the bottom set, we can't do it" is really hard to break. Not impossible, but requiring time and effort that can be better used on other things. You even get it in super selective schools. ("We're just the Hufflepuff class" as I heard on the train one day.)
(At this point, you.may be thinking to yourself "Pah. I would want to show them how wrong they were and double my efforts just to show them. Perhaps, but in that case you are not normal. We shouldn't design the system for you.)
In most subjects, a teacher can talk to a class with an ability spread about something new- a new book, battle, or chemical reaction- and everyone will get something useful from it. Maths is different- nobody has worked out how to be interesting at the top and intelligible at the bottom at once. So you hardly ever get maths shows on TV. So for maths, you probably do have to set.
But otherwise, MA does seem to improve things at the bottom without doing measurable harm at the top. Which is probably what the English system needs. And probably saves money by making timetabling more flexible.
But changing things because evidence conflicts with common sense? Not the English way.
Which is one reason England is in a bit of a mess.
As usual, what you say makes a lot of sense and I would acknowledge that what I’m about to say fits squarely into your bracketed paragraph but…
I would argue that the only way to properly serve those who struggle with maths at secondary (often closely correlated with those with SEN or mental health needs which is where dixiedean started this discussion) is by setting, by reducing the size of the lowest set, and by putting teachers in charge of that set, for multiple years at a time, who are able to both manage behaviour and teach the underlying structures of primary maths sufficiently well that you undo some of the misconceptions these kids have in their heads from primary school...
It would be better - and possibly less costly - to address that problem in primary school.
V good point Nigel. I know much less about primary so this post will be even more pie in the sky than the last one (and apols for double posting).
If it were possible to put maths specialists (in combination with AI to reduce costs and to personalise) in front of every primary class to properly introduce the fundamentals at a pace that is suitable for each child, we’d solve many of the apparently intractable challenges in maths education in this country.
In the meantime, for anyone with primary age kids, I cannot recommend numberblocks on iPlayer highly enough. I can’t think of a better justification for the licence fee.
I reckon a bet on the Tories on all three is value at those odds. (Singles, not a treble!). I'd be surprised if they lost all three.
I have done this, very modestly, except for Somerton - which I think is impossible. Uxbridge and Selby are in the realm of arguable. Though I expect probably to lose.
I think there’s a better-than-the-odds chance they’ll hold Selby.
The BBC and LBC have been bigging up the ULEZ issue today. If they and HY are right it is a game changer. Starmer has also had a shocking week whereas Rishi has had a good run out with his university pitch, he and Suella have had great media coverage for the boats and tomorrow he will get some great inflation results.
Harold Wilson was right. A week is a long time in politics. A week where Rishi has knocked it out of the park.
WIth no disrespect meant, I genuinely don't know how far into your cheek your tongue is with these posts.
By Friday morning we shall see.
You can't deny that the Conservatives have had some excellent copy this week whilst Starmer-Labour have tied themselves in knots. Kuennsberg set a trap and he fell into it. Sir Kid Starver is a fantastic slur that Rishi is going to beat him around the head with tomorrow at PMQs. It doesn't matter that the two child policy is Osborne's invention, Starmer now owns it and the nation hates him for it. ULEZ according to HY and the BBC is a real vote loser for Uxbridge. FWIW I don't believe it will feature in the GE.
The idea that the 2 child policy is now owned by Starmer and “the nation hates him for it” does not seem to accord with reality. Do you have any polling to support this view?
Not quite. This was Yougov the other day. Most people support the limit. Presumably on the general principle that folk generally want other people to be taxed, but not for other people to get benefits.
They also want less immigration and we have a falling birth rate alongside an ageing population. It was only a few weeks ago that the NatCons were telling us people should be incentivised to have more kids.
Then there’s the fact thatvreducing poverty boosts growth and relieves pressure on overstretched public services.
We don’t do joined up thinking in this country.
On the other hand, the Tories do have a clear rationale. They don't want competition for their children if it's coming from proles and being supported out of their taxes. And bugger the public good/economy/country.
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
With the exception of very small schools, isn't that true if basically all secondary education today?
Most but not all. There are a lot of advocates for mixed ability teaching in secondary schools - high profile studies by research teams seem to indicate it can be better for attainment but I don't understand that personally.
I would guess that streaming is better for high ability kids and worse for low ability kids. In theory streaming lets the teachers focus on everyone's needs through teaching tailored to ability, but in practice a significant minority of the kids in the low ability class would act up and nobody would learn anything in those classes. With mixed ability classes those kids would be distributed more evenly, causing some disruption for everyone but not a huge amount for anyone. I believe that academic research does demonstrate that mixed ability classes deliver better results overall - this is what I have been told anyway. At my kids' secondary they stream for maths but not for other subjects. This is similar to my own school experience, where they streamed for maths and languages. I suspect there is some de facto streaming for languages at my kids' school actually - my son's German class seems to all be people who are good at it, but that might be a coincidence.
Pretty much. Though even if a school has behaviour utterly nailed, the psychology of "we're the bottom set, we can't do it" is really hard to break. Not impossible, but requiring time and effort that can be better used on other things. You even get it in super selective schools. ("We're just the Hufflepuff class" as I heard on the train one day.)
(At this point, you.may be thinking to yourself "Pah. I would want to show them how wrong they were and double my efforts just to show them. Perhaps, but in that case you are not normal. We shouldn't design the system for you.)
In most subjects, a teacher can talk to a class with an ability spread about something new- a new book, battle, or chemical reaction- and everyone will get something useful from it. Maths is different- nobody has worked out how to be interesting at the top and intelligible at the bottom at once. So you hardly ever get maths shows on TV. So for maths, you probably do have to set.
But otherwise, MA does seem to improve things at the bottom without doing measurable harm at the top. Which is probably what the English system needs. And probably saves money by making timetabling more flexible.
But changing things because evidence conflicts with common sense? Not the English way.
Which is one reason England is in a bit of a mess.
As usual, what you say makes a lot of sense and I would acknowledge that what I’m about to say fits squarely into your bracketed paragraph but…
I would argue that the only way to properly serve those who struggle with maths at secondary (often closely correlated with those with SEN or mental health needs which is where dixiedean started this discussion) is by setting, by reducing the size of the lowest set, and by putting teachers in charge of that set, for multiple years at a time, who are able to both manage behaviour and teach the underlying structures of primary maths sufficiently well that you undo some of the misconceptions these kids have in their heads from primary school...
It would be better - and possibly less costly - to address that problem in primary school.
V good point Nigel. I know much less about primary so this post will be even more pie in the sky than the last one (and apols for double posting).
If it were possible to put maths specialists (in combination with AI to reduce costs and to personalise) in front of every primary class to properly introduce the fundamentals at a pace that is suitable for each child, we’d solve many of the apparently intractable challenges in maths education in this country.
In the meantime, for anyone with primary age kids, I cannot recommend numberblocks on iPlayer highly enough. I can’t think of a better justification for the licence fee.
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
With the exception of very small schools, isn't that true if basically all secondary education today?
Most but not all. There are a lot of advocates for mixed ability teaching in secondary schools - high profile studies by research teams seem to indicate it can be better for attainment but I don't understand that personally.
I would guess that streaming is better for high ability kids and worse for low ability kids. In theory streaming lets the teachers focus on everyone's needs through teaching tailored to ability, but in practice a significant minority of the kids in the low ability class would act up and nobody would learn anything in those classes. With mixed ability classes those kids would be distributed more evenly, causing some disruption for everyone but not a huge amount for anyone. I believe that academic research does demonstrate that mixed ability classes deliver better results overall - this is what I have been told anyway. At my kids' secondary they stream for maths but not for other subjects. This is similar to my own school experience, where they streamed for maths and languages. I suspect there is some de facto streaming for languages at my kids' school actually - my son's German class seems to all be people who are good at it, but that might be a coincidence.
Pretty much. Though even if a school has behaviour utterly nailed, the psychology of "we're the bottom set, we can't do it" is really hard to break. Not impossible, but requiring time and effort that can be better used on other things. You even get it in super selective schools. ("We're just the Hufflepuff class" as I heard on the train one day.)
(At this point, you.may be thinking to yourself "Pah. I would want to show them how wrong they were and double my efforts just to show them. Perhaps, but in that case you are not normal. We shouldn't design the system for you.)
In most subjects, a teacher can talk to a class with an ability spread about something new- a new book, battle, or chemical reaction- and everyone will get something useful from it. Maths is different- nobody has worked out how to be interesting at the top and intelligible at the bottom at once. So you hardly ever get maths shows on TV. So for maths, you probably do have to set.
But otherwise, MA does seem to improve things at the bottom without doing measurable harm at the top. Which is probably what the English system needs. And probably saves money by making timetabling more flexible.
But changing things because evidence conflicts with common sense? Not the English way.
Which is one reason England is in a bit of a mess.
As usual, what you say makes a lot of sense and I would acknowledge that what I’m about to say fits squarely into your bracketed paragraph but…
I would argue that the only way to properly serve those who struggle with maths at secondary (often closely correlated with those with SEN or mental health needs which is where dixiedean started this discussion) is by setting, by reducing the size of the lowest set, and by putting teachers in charge of that set, for multiple years at a time, who are able to both manage behaviour and teach the underlying structures of primary maths sufficiently well that you undo some of the misconceptions these kids have in their heads from primary school...
It would be better - and possibly less costly - to address that problem in primary school.
V good point Nigel. I know much less about primary so this post will be even more pie in the sky than the last one (and apols for double posting).
If it were possible to put maths specialists (in combination with AI to reduce costs and to personalise) in front of every primary class to properly introduce the fundamentals at a pace that is suitable for each child, we’d solve many of the apparently intractable challenges in maths education in this country.
In the meantime, for anyone with primary age kids, I cannot recommend numberblocks on iPlayer highly enough. I can’t think of a better justification for the licence fee.
I learnt with Cuisenaire rods!
Me too - although we just called them 'rods'. My mum had literally no idea what I was talking about when I came home from school the first day; it was the first time I realised she didn't know everything.
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
With the exception of very small schools, isn't that true if basically all secondary education today?
Most but not all. There are a lot of advocates for mixed ability teaching in secondary schools - high profile studies by research teams seem to indicate it can be better for attainment but I don't understand that personally.
I would guess that streaming is better for high ability kids and worse for low ability kids. In theory streaming lets the teachers focus on everyone's needs through teaching tailored to ability, but in practice a significant minority of the kids in the low ability class would act up and nobody would learn anything in those classes. With mixed ability classes those kids would be distributed more evenly, causing some disruption for everyone but not a huge amount for anyone. I believe that academic research does demonstrate that mixed ability classes deliver better results overall - this is what I have been told anyway. At my kids' secondary they stream for maths but not for other subjects. This is similar to my own school experience, where they streamed for maths and languages. I suspect there is some de facto streaming for languages at my kids' school actually - my son's German class seems to all be people who are good at it, but that might be a coincidence.
Pretty much. Though even if a school has behaviour utterly nailed, the psychology of "we're the bottom set, we can't do it" is really hard to break. Not impossible, but requiring time and effort that can be better used on other things. You even get it in super selective schools. ("We're just the Hufflepuff class" as I heard on the train one day.)
(At this point, you.may be thinking to yourself "Pah. I would want to show them how wrong they were and double my efforts just to show them. Perhaps, but in that case you are not normal. We shouldn't design the system for you.)
In most subjects, a teacher can talk to a class with an ability spread about something new- a new book, battle, or chemical reaction- and everyone will get something useful from it. Maths is different- nobody has worked out how to be interesting at the top and intelligible at the bottom at once. So you hardly ever get maths shows on TV. So for maths, you probably do have to set.
But otherwise, MA does seem to improve things at the bottom without doing measurable harm at the top. Which is probably what the English system needs. And probably saves money by making timetabling more flexible.
But changing things because evidence conflicts with common sense? Not the English way.
Which is one reason England is in a bit of a mess.
As usual, what you say makes a lot of sense and I would acknowledge that what I’m about to say fits squarely into your bracketed paragraph but…
I would argue that the only way to properly serve those who struggle with maths at secondary (often closely correlated with those with SEN or mental health needs which is where dixiedean started this discussion) is by setting, by reducing the size of the lowest set, and by putting teachers in charge of that set, for multiple years at a time, who are able to both manage behaviour and teach the underlying structures of primary maths sufficiently well that you undo some of the misconceptions these kids have in their heads from primary school...
It would be better - and possibly less costly - to address that problem in primary school.
V good point Nigel. I know much less about primary so this post will be even more pie in the sky than the last one (and apols for double posting).
If it were possible to put maths specialists (in combination with AI to reduce costs and to personalise) in front of every primary class to properly introduce the fundamentals at a pace that is suitable for each child, we’d solve many of the apparently intractable challenges in maths education in this country.
In the meantime, for anyone with primary age kids, I cannot recommend numberblocks on iPlayer highly enough. I can’t think of a better justification for the licence fee.
I learnt with Cuisenaire rods!
Just looked those up Just starting to introduce the concept of "one" to my little one !
How old are kids before they can start to count generally (One, two say) btw ?
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
With the exception of very small schools, isn't that true if basically all secondary education today?
Most but not all. There are a lot of advocates for mixed ability teaching in secondary schools - high profile studies by research teams seem to indicate it can be better for attainment but I don't understand that personally.
I would guess that streaming is better for high ability kids and worse for low ability kids. In theory streaming lets the teachers focus on everyone's needs through teaching tailored to ability, but in practice a significant minority of the kids in the low ability class would act up and nobody would learn anything in those classes. With mixed ability classes those kids would be distributed more evenly, causing some disruption for everyone but not a huge amount for anyone. I believe that academic research does demonstrate that mixed ability classes deliver better results overall - this is what I have been told anyway. At my kids' secondary they stream for maths but not for other subjects. This is similar to my own school experience, where they streamed for maths and languages. I suspect there is some de facto streaming for languages at my kids' school actually - my son's German class seems to all be people who are good at it, but that might be a coincidence.
Pretty much. Though even if a school has behaviour utterly nailed, the psychology of "we're the bottom set, we can't do it" is really hard to break. Not impossible, but requiring time and effort that can be better used on other things. You even get it in super selective schools. ("We're just the Hufflepuff class" as I heard on the train one day.)
(At this point, you.may be thinking to yourself "Pah. I would want to show them how wrong they were and double my efforts just to show them. Perhaps, but in that case you are not normal. We shouldn't design the system for you.)
In most subjects, a teacher can talk to a class with an ability spread about something new- a new book, battle, or chemical reaction- and everyone will get something useful from it. Maths is different- nobody has worked out how to be interesting at the top and intelligible at the bottom at once. So you hardly ever get maths shows on TV. So for maths, you probably do have to set.
But otherwise, MA does seem to improve things at the bottom without doing measurable harm at the top. Which is probably what the English system needs. And probably saves money by making timetabling more flexible.
But changing things because evidence conflicts with common sense? Not the English way.
Which is one reason England is in a bit of a mess.
As usual, what you say makes a lot of sense and I would acknowledge that what I’m about to say fits squarely into your bracketed paragraph but…
I would argue that the only way to properly serve those who struggle with maths at secondary (often closely correlated with those with SEN or mental health needs which is where dixiedean started this discussion) is by setting, by reducing the size of the lowest set, and by putting teachers in charge of that set, for multiple years at a time, who are able to both manage behaviour and teach the underlying structures of primary maths sufficiently well that you undo some of the misconceptions these kids have in their heads from primary school...
It would be better - and possibly less costly - to address that problem in primary school.
V good point Nigel. I know much less about primary so this post will be even more pie in the sky than the last one (and apols for double posting).
If it were possible to put maths specialists (in combination with AI to reduce costs and to personalise) in front of every primary class to properly introduce the fundamentals at a pace that is suitable for each child, we’d solve many of the apparently intractable challenges in maths education in this country.
In the meantime, for anyone with primary age kids, I cannot recommend numberblocks on iPlayer highly enough. I can’t think of a better justification for the licence fee.
That tends to be the case. Whenever any of us discuss education, primary education tends to get the least thought. It's probably the sector where the last decade or so of 'reforms' have done the most damage.
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
There's a not-unreasonable argument that grammar schools should take the top 80%. It strikes me that the needs of the middle 60% are more similar to the needs of the top 20% than to the needs of the bottom 20%. Note that I am certainly not arguing for letting the bottom 20% fend for themselves: more that the needs of the bottom 20% probably need more constructive thinking (and resources) than the needs of the top 20%.
On setting: I do remember in the 1980s there was quite a lot of ideological opposition to setting; some schools refused to do it because it was elitist, and at least one parent I knew of refused to send their children to a school were setting happened for the same reason. Said (very bright) children ended up at something of a sink school. Did ok, but was always going to. Don't think she enjoyed school very much though.
What I am suggesting is sometimes referred to as "A Grammar School in every school" - the children can switch forms at any point. Rather than the bizarre idea of your future being decided by a single exam at age 11.
In my school, the job of the teacher of the C stream for any subject was to get as many kids as possible into B for next year and so on. It was the reverse of abandonment.
The opposition to this is interesting and appears very ideological. It would interesting to hear the thoughts of the teachers here on this.
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
With the exception of very small schools, isn't that true if basically all secondary education today?
Most but not all. There are a lot of advocates for mixed ability teaching in secondary schools - high profile studies by research teams seem to indicate it can be better for attainment but I don't understand that personally.
I would guess that streaming is better for high ability kids and worse for low ability kids. In theory streaming lets the teachers focus on everyone's needs through teaching tailored to ability, but in practice a significant minority of the kids in the low ability class would act up and nobody would learn anything in those classes. With mixed ability classes those kids would be distributed more evenly, causing some disruption for everyone but not a huge amount for anyone. I believe that academic research does demonstrate that mixed ability classes deliver better results overall - this is what I have been told anyway. At my kids' secondary they stream for maths but not for other subjects. This is similar to my own school experience, where they streamed for maths and languages. I suspect there is some de facto streaming for languages at my kids' school actually - my son's German class seems to all be people who are good at it, but that might be a coincidence.
Pretty much. Though even if a school has behaviour utterly nailed, the psychology of "we're the bottom set, we can't do it" is really hard to break. Not impossible, but requiring time and effort that can be better used on other things. You even get it in super selective schools. ("We're just the Hufflepuff class" as I heard on the train one day.)
(At this point, you.may be thinking to yourself "Pah. I would want to show them how wrong they were and double my efforts just to show them. Perhaps, but in that case you are not normal. We shouldn't design the system for you.)
In most subjects, a teacher can talk to a class with an ability spread about something new- a new book, battle, or chemical reaction- and everyone will get something useful from it. Maths is different- nobody has worked out how to be interesting at the top and intelligible at the bottom at once. So you hardly ever get maths shows on TV. So for maths, you probably do have to set.
But otherwise, MA does seem to improve things at the bottom without doing measurable harm at the top. Which is probably what the English system needs. And probably saves money by making timetabling more flexible.
But changing things because evidence conflicts with common sense? Not the English way.
Which is one reason England is in a bit of a mess.
As usual, what you say makes a lot of sense and I would acknowledge that what I’m about to say fits squarely into your bracketed paragraph but…
I would argue that the only way to properly serve those who struggle with maths at secondary (often closely correlated with those with SEN or mental health needs which is where dixiedean started this discussion) is by setting, by reducing the size of the lowest set, and by putting teachers in charge of that set, for multiple years at a time, who are able to both manage behaviour and teach the underlying structures of primary maths sufficiently well that you undo some of the misconceptions these kids have in their heads from primary school...
It would be better - and possibly less costly - to address that problem in primary school.
V good point Nigel. I know much less about primary so this post will be even more pie in the sky than the last one (and apols for double posting).
If it were possible to put maths specialists (in combination with AI to reduce costs and to personalise) in front of every primary class to properly introduce the fundamentals at a pace that is suitable for each child, we’d solve many of the apparently intractable challenges in maths education in this country.
In the meantime, for anyone with primary age kids, I cannot recommend numberblocks on iPlayer highly enough. I can’t think of a better justification for the licence fee.
I learnt with Cuisenaire rods!
Dienes blocks are great too.
But as with all of these things, you need to know how to use them.
I’m not having a go at primary teachers by the way. Most are hugely skilled generalists. I just think the real fundamentals of maths are hard to teach well, not least because almost by definition if you have got the qualifications to teach these fundamentals then you probably picked them up intuitively rather than needing things like cuisenaire rods or dienes blocks to make sense of them.
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
With the exception of very small schools, isn't that true if basically all secondary education today?
Most but not all. There are a lot of advocates for mixed ability teaching in secondary schools - high profile studies by research teams seem to indicate it can be better for attainment but I don't understand that personally.
I would guess that streaming is better for high ability kids and worse for low ability kids. In theory streaming lets the teachers focus on everyone's needs through teaching tailored to ability, but in practice a significant minority of the kids in the low ability class would act up and nobody would learn anything in those classes. With mixed ability classes those kids would be distributed more evenly, causing some disruption for everyone but not a huge amount for anyone. I believe that academic research does demonstrate that mixed ability classes deliver better results overall - this is what I have been told anyway. At my kids' secondary they stream for maths but not for other subjects. This is similar to my own school experience, where they streamed for maths and languages. I suspect there is some de facto streaming for languages at my kids' school actually - my son's German class seems to all be people who are good at it, but that might be a coincidence.
Pretty much. Though even if a school has behaviour utterly nailed, the psychology of "we're the bottom set, we can't do it" is really hard to break. Not impossible, but requiring time and effort that can be better used on other things. You even get it in super selective schools. ("We're just the Hufflepuff class" as I heard on the train one day.)
(At this point, you.may be thinking to yourself "Pah. I would want to show them how wrong they were and double my efforts just to show them. Perhaps, but in that case you are not normal. We shouldn't design the system for you.)
In most subjects, a teacher can talk to a class with an ability spread about something new- a new book, battle, or chemical reaction- and everyone will get something useful from it. Maths is different- nobody has worked out how to be interesting at the top and intelligible at the bottom at once. So you hardly ever get maths shows on TV. So for maths, you probably do have to set.
But otherwise, MA does seem to improve things at the bottom without doing measurable harm at the top. Which is probably what the English system needs. And probably saves money by making timetabling more flexible.
But changing things because evidence conflicts with common sense? Not the English way.
Which is one reason England is in a bit of a mess.
As usual, what you say makes a lot of sense and I would acknowledge that what I’m about to say fits squarely into your bracketed paragraph but…
I would argue that the only way to properly serve those who struggle with maths at secondary (often closely correlated with those with SEN or mental health needs which is where dixiedean started this discussion) is by setting, by reducing the size of the lowest set, and by putting teachers in charge of that set, for multiple years at a time, who are able to both manage behaviour and teach the underlying structures of primary maths sufficiently well that you undo some of the misconceptions these kids have in their heads from primary school...
It would be better - and possibly less costly - to address that problem in primary school.
V good point Nigel. I know much less about primary so this post will be even more pie in the sky than the last one (and apols for double posting).
If it were possible to put maths specialists (in combination with AI to reduce costs and to personalise) in front of every primary class to properly introduce the fundamentals at a pace that is suitable for each child, we’d solve many of the apparently intractable challenges in maths education in this country.
In the meantime, for anyone with primary age kids, I cannot recommend numberblocks on iPlayer highly enough. I can’t think of a better justification for the licence fee.
I learnt with Cuisenaire rods!
Just looked those up Just starting to introduce the concept of "one" to my little one !
How old are kids before they can start to count generally (One, two say) btw ?
Amazingly the concept of zero had to be discovered by the Babylonians afaict. Whereas our son at age one had the concept of "empty" - his first word.
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
With the exception of very small schools, isn't that true if basically all secondary education today?
Most but not all. There are a lot of advocates for mixed ability teaching in secondary schools - high profile studies by research teams seem to indicate it can be better for attainment but I don't understand that personally.
I would guess that streaming is better for high ability kids and worse for low ability kids. In theory streaming lets the teachers focus on everyone's needs through teaching tailored to ability, but in practice a significant minority of the kids in the low ability class would act up and nobody would learn anything in those classes. With mixed ability classes those kids would be distributed more evenly, causing some disruption for everyone but not a huge amount for anyone. I believe that academic research does demonstrate that mixed ability classes deliver better results overall - this is what I have been told anyway. At my kids' secondary they stream for maths but not for other subjects. This is similar to my own school experience, where they streamed for maths and languages. I suspect there is some de facto streaming for languages at my kids' school actually - my son's German class seems to all be people who are good at it, but that might be a coincidence.
Pretty much. Though even if a school has behaviour utterly nailed, the psychology of "we're the bottom set, we can't do it" is really hard to break. Not impossible, but requiring time and effort that can be better used on other things. You even get it in super selective schools. ("We're just the Hufflepuff class" as I heard on the train one day.)
(At this point, you.may be thinking to yourself "Pah. I would want to show them how wrong they were and double my efforts just to show them. Perhaps, but in that case you are not normal. We shouldn't design the system for you.)
In most subjects, a teacher can talk to a class with an ability spread about something new- a new book, battle, or chemical reaction- and everyone will get something useful from it. Maths is different- nobody has worked out how to be interesting at the top and intelligible at the bottom at once. So you hardly ever get maths shows on TV. So for maths, you probably do have to set.
But otherwise, MA does seem to improve things at the bottom without doing measurable harm at the top. Which is probably what the English system needs. And probably saves money by making timetabling more flexible.
But changing things because evidence conflicts with common sense? Not the English way.
Which is one reason England is in a bit of a mess.
As usual, what you say makes a lot of sense and I would acknowledge that what I’m about to say fits squarely into your bracketed paragraph but…
I would argue that the only way to properly serve those who struggle with maths at secondary (often closely correlated with those with SEN or mental health needs which is where dixiedean started this discussion) is by setting, by reducing the size of the lowest set, and by putting teachers in charge of that set, for multiple years at a time, who are able to both manage behaviour and teach the underlying structures of primary maths sufficiently well that you undo some of the misconceptions these kids have in their heads from primary school...
It would be better - and possibly less costly - to address that problem in primary school.
V good point Nigel. I know much less about primary so this post will be even more pie in the sky than the last one (and apols for double posting).
If it were possible to put maths specialists (in combination with AI to reduce costs and to personalise) in front of every primary class to properly introduce the fundamentals at a pace that is suitable for each child, we’d solve many of the apparently intractable challenges in maths education in this country.
In the meantime, for anyone with primary age kids, I cannot recommend numberblocks on iPlayer highly enough. I can’t think of a better justification for the licence fee.
I learnt with Cuisenaire rods!
Just looked those up Just starting to introduce the concept of "one" to my little one !
How old are kids before they can start to count generally (One, two say) btw ?
It varies in my experience, but usually about 2 to 2 1/2. Key thing with counting is to link it to physical objects, and emphasise one number for each physical thing.
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
With the exception of very small schools, isn't that true if basically all secondary education today?
Most but not all. There are a lot of advocates for mixed ability teaching in secondary schools - high profile studies by research teams seem to indicate it can be better for attainment but I don't understand that personally.
I would guess that streaming is better for high ability kids and worse for low ability kids. In theory streaming lets the teachers focus on everyone's needs through teaching tailored to ability, but in practice a significant minority of the kids in the low ability class would act up and nobody would learn anything in those classes. With mixed ability classes those kids would be distributed more evenly, causing some disruption for everyone but not a huge amount for anyone. I believe that academic research does demonstrate that mixed ability classes deliver better results overall - this is what I have been told anyway. At my kids' secondary they stream for maths but not for other subjects. This is similar to my own school experience, where they streamed for maths and languages. I suspect there is some de facto streaming for languages at my kids' school actually - my son's German class seems to all be people who are good at it, but that might be a coincidence.
Pretty much. Though even if a school has behaviour utterly nailed, the psychology of "we're the bottom set, we can't do it" is really hard to break. Not impossible, but requiring time and effort that can be better used on other things. You even get it in super selective schools. ("We're just the Hufflepuff class" as I heard on the train one day.)
(At this point, you.may be thinking to yourself "Pah. I would want to show them how wrong they were and double my efforts just to show them. Perhaps, but in that case you are not normal. We shouldn't design the system for you.)
In most subjects, a teacher can talk to a class with an ability spread about something new- a new book, battle, or chemical reaction- and everyone will get something useful from it. Maths is different- nobody has worked out how to be interesting at the top and intelligible at the bottom at once. So you hardly ever get maths shows on TV. So for maths, you probably do have to set.
But otherwise, MA does seem to improve things at the bottom without doing measurable harm at the top. Which is probably what the English system needs. And probably saves money by making timetabling more flexible.
But changing things because evidence conflicts with common sense? Not the English way.
Which is one reason England is in a bit of a mess.
As usual, what you say makes a lot of sense and I would acknowledge that what I’m about to say fits squarely into your bracketed paragraph but…
I would argue that the only way to properly serve those who struggle with maths at secondary (often closely correlated with those with SEN or mental health needs which is where dixiedean started this discussion) is by setting, by reducing the size of the lowest set, and by putting teachers in charge of that set, for multiple years at a time, who are able to both manage behaviour and teach the underlying structures of primary maths sufficiently well that you undo some of the misconceptions these kids have in their heads from primary school...
It would be better - and possibly less costly - to address that problem in primary school.
V good point Nigel. I know much less about primary so this post will be even more pie in the sky than the last one (and apols for double posting).
If it were possible to put maths specialists (in combination with AI to reduce costs and to personalise) in front of every primary class to properly introduce the fundamentals at a pace that is suitable for each child, we’d solve many of the apparently intractable challenges in maths education in this country.
In the meantime, for anyone with primary age kids, I cannot recommend numberblocks on iPlayer highly enough. I can’t think of a better justification for the licence fee.
I learnt with Cuisenaire rods!
Just looked those up Just starting to introduce the concept of "one" to my little one !
How old are kids before they can start to count generally (One, two say) btw ?
No idea: wouldn't presume to comment on a subject I know nothing about.
I’m not having a go at primary teachers by the way. Most are hugely skilled generalists. I just think the real fundamentals of maths are hard to teach well, not least because almost by definition if you have got the qualifications to teach these fundamentals then you probably picked them up intuitively rather than needing things like cuisenaire rods or dienes blocks to make sense of them.
From the Wiki article
The teacher is not the person who teaches him what he does not know. He is the one who reveals the child to himself by making him more conscious of, and more creative with his own mind. The parents of a little girl of six who was using the Cuisenaire rods at school marveled at her knowledge and asked her: 'Tell us how the teacher teaches you all this', to which the little girl replied: 'The teacher teaches us nothing. We find everything out for ourselves.'[7]
Re. Education. A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University. They'll do OK whatever. SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis. And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
The biggest failings of our education system are at the lower end. Not just in lost economic opportunity and unfulfilled lives, but the costs of crime, mental health, addiction and social problems. We can never eliminate these things completely, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
From January:
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
HY's notion of elite education for the few seems to have some traction in Government. I have no doubt that the ultimate goal for the current iteration of Conservatism is to make education for the few not the many. There is a desperate enthusiasm for extending Grammar schools. I believe Sunak let the cat out of the bag over University Courses yesterday (another pitch from the HY manifesto) and the aim in the next or next but one Parliament is to reduce university entry back to the top 10%. This is probably not as offensive policy as I would make it out to be, but I do feel that within the 10% we will have Sunak, Braverman, Dowden, Hunt and Jenrick's children, but not mine! Mine can get apprenticeships to stack shelves at Aldi!
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
Plenty of grammar schools took the top 25 per cent, not just the top 10 per cent
I wouldn't be against grammar schools if they took the top 100%.
The sane option would be to stream by subject, in all schools. In my old school you could move from C to B to A in any year - up to, then, O levels starting.
With the exception of very small schools, isn't that true if basically all secondary education today?
Most but not all. There are a lot of advocates for mixed ability teaching in secondary schools - high profile studies by research teams seem to indicate it can be better for attainment but I don't understand that personally.
I would guess that streaming is better for high ability kids and worse for low ability kids. In theory streaming lets the teachers focus on everyone's needs through teaching tailored to ability, but in practice a significant minority of the kids in the low ability class would act up and nobody would learn anything in those classes. With mixed ability classes those kids would be distributed more evenly, causing some disruption for everyone but not a huge amount for anyone. I believe that academic research does demonstrate that mixed ability classes deliver better results overall - this is what I have been told anyway. At my kids' secondary they stream for maths but not for other subjects. This is similar to my own school experience, where they streamed for maths and languages. I suspect there is some de facto streaming for languages at my kids' school actually - my son's German class seems to all be people who are good at it, but that might be a coincidence.
Pretty much. Though even if a school has behaviour utterly nailed, the psychology of "we're the bottom set, we can't do it" is really hard to break. Not impossible, but requiring time and effort that can be better used on other things. You even get it in super selective schools. ("We're just the Hufflepuff class" as I heard on the train one day.)
(At this point, you.may be thinking to yourself "Pah. I would want to show them how wrong they were and double my efforts just to show them. Perhaps, but in that case you are not normal. We shouldn't design the system for you.)
In most subjects, a teacher can talk to a class with an ability spread about something new- a new book, battle, or chemical reaction- and everyone will get something useful from it. Maths is different- nobody has worked out how to be interesting at the top and intelligible at the bottom at once. So you hardly ever get maths shows on TV. So for maths, you probably do have to set.
But otherwise, MA does seem to improve things at the bottom without doing measurable harm at the top. Which is probably what the English system needs. And probably saves money by making timetabling more flexible.
But changing things because evidence conflicts with common sense? Not the English way.
Which is one reason England is in a bit of a mess.
As usual, what you say makes a lot of sense and I would acknowledge that what I’m about to say fits squarely into your bracketed paragraph but…
I would argue that the only way to properly serve those who struggle with maths at secondary (often closely correlated with those with SEN or mental health needs which is where dixiedean started this discussion) is by setting, by reducing the size of the lowest set, and by putting teachers in charge of that set, for multiple years at a time, who are able to both manage behaviour and teach the underlying structures of primary maths sufficiently well that you undo some of the misconceptions these kids have in their heads from primary school...
It would be better - and possibly less costly - to address that problem in primary school.
V good point Nigel. I know much less about primary so this post will be even more pie in the sky than the last one (and apols for double posting).
If it were possible to put maths specialists (in combination with AI to reduce costs and to personalise) in front of every primary class to properly introduce the fundamentals at a pace that is suitable for each child, we’d solve many of the apparently intractable challenges in maths education in this country.
In the meantime, for anyone with primary age kids, I cannot recommend numberblocks on iPlayer highly enough. I can’t think of a better justification for the licence fee.
I learnt with Cuisenaire rods!
Just looked those up Just starting to introduce the concept of "one" to my little one !
How old are kids before they can start to count generally (One, two say) btw ?
No idea: wouldn't presume to comment on a subject I know nothing about.
Comments
Kindly take your "that will allow you to" crap and shove it where the sun don't shine.
Yes, George Stephenson was totally self-taught, and had none of the advantages of (say) Brunel. That gives his achievements extra weight, not less.
IMV successful people continue very much with the attitude that first gives them their success.
Which is another reason I'll never 'trust' Branson, either.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jul/19/rural-bus-services-hit-new-low-after-losing-out-on-post-covid-funding
Boot is on the other foot, for now.
MORE from courthouse in Ft Pierce, Florida.. where there was a hearing today in Trump federal case
Per my teammate Jack Renaud, DOJ said they have more than 1,000,000 pages of discovery, including 1545 pages of classified documents & hours of closed-circuit video from Mar A Lago
https://twitter.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/1681418818315329537
A million pages ?
.
Have you seen his plans for presidential power should he get re-elected ?
Did it mention this ?
Oppenheimer stifled a petition by 70 scientists beseeching President Truman not to use the atomic bomb. Read it here.
https://www.businessinsider.com/oppenheimer-los-alamos-manhattan-project-scientists-atomic-bomb-petition-2023-7
In my view it is an ideological fad, well intentioned but (in my experience) never done sufficiently well to meet the needs of the highest or lowest attainers. My only experience is at secondary - it might be a different story at primary.
By contrast in our school we put our best maths teachers in charge of our lowest sets, make them as small as we can make them, and meet them at their level regardless of what any scheme of work says. It doesn’t always work, but in my view gives the best shot at meeting the needs of those who struggle with maths.
ETA I’m also only talking about maths - no idea if it works better in other subjects.
At my kids' secondary they stream for maths but not for other subjects. This is similar to my own school experience, where they streamed for maths and languages. I suspect there is some de facto streaming for languages at my kids' school actually - my son's German class seems to all be people who are good at it, but that might be a coincidence.
Good to see a decent sized fall.
Could be more interesting tomorrow although much depends on whether the postal votes which are already in have given the Tories too much to do .
Because at first glance it looks like he got away with all kinds of shit as a well-connected billionaire before he upset too many of the wrong people by becoming president
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12312429/Keir-Starmers-Labour-MPs-defy-nearly-dozen-picket-lines-striking-doctors.html
The Biden administration formally halted the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s access to US funding, citing unanswered safety and security questions for the facility at the center of the Covid lab leak theory.
So, why are you trying to say he is only being prosecuted because he upset the 'wrong people'?
They've spent over £50 million failing properly to investigate this case.
Daniel Morgan murder: Met admits failings and pays damages in settlement with family
Force had faced being sued in court over 1987 axe killing, with police corruption and errors blamed for perpetrators never being convicted
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jul/19/daniel-morgan-met-admits-failings-and-pays-damages-in-settlement-with-family?CMP=share_btn_tw
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/consumerpriceinflation/latest
The mortgage "time bomb" does not seem to be having the devastating effect many forecasters promised. Indeed, for many householders in the private sector the squeeze on real wages might be over with wage rises matching CPIH. Not sure the government will be getting much thanks for it though.
it would have worked better if they had followed my full suggestion and taught maths in French, but sadly after about three years the experiment was ditched.
Setting by ability by subject, rather than just streaming whole classes, comes at a huge cost in the flexibility of the timetable. We still do it for maths but I have to write their timetable first and even then I often have to go back to the head of department and explain that the combinations of teachers he wants cannot work. Any attempt to do the same across the rest of the subjects would be virtually impossible.
(At this point, you.may be thinking to yourself "Pah. I would want to show them how wrong they were and double my efforts just to show them. Perhaps, but in that case you are not normal. We shouldn't design the system for you.)
In most subjects, a teacher can talk to a class with an ability spread about something new- a new book, battle, or chemical reaction- and everyone will get something useful from it. Maths is different- nobody has worked out how to be interesting at the top and intelligible at the bottom at once. So you hardly ever get maths shows on TV. So for maths, you probably do have to set.
But otherwise, MA does seem to improve things at the bottom without doing measurable harm at the top. Which is probably what the English system needs. And probably saves money by making timetabling more flexible.
But changing things because evidence conflicts with common sense? Not the English way.
Which is one reason England is in a bit of a mess.
That "no devastation" is the average of some people carrying on as if nothing has happened and some being in deep deep trouble.
But - and its a very big but - I'm not convinced we will start to see "actual falls in prices". Profit margins have been brutalised for everyone involved - producers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers. However bad the price rises have been for consumers, not all of the cost rises have been passed on.
What I expect is a period of retrenchment. Everyone will want to restore profitability for a period, and it will only be one of the retailers making a break on prices that starts any price reductions. Remember that anecdotage about "the price of x has dropped" is not indicative of the whole basket of prices doing the same. They drop x, they increase y. You may buy x and not y so claim "prices are falling". Not necessarily true.
Just supposing Pence or Pelosi had been killed, would that have been sufficient for the President to have declared martial law?
The challenge for Labour is that whilst the national mood has turned on the Tories, it’s not behind Starmer with any enthusiasm at all.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/18/michigan-ag-charges-16-gop-activists-who-falsely-claimed-to-be-electors-in-bid-to-aid-trump-00106928
Meanwhile here are some old warehouses in Trondheim (dog for scale):
There’s plenty of evidence locally of 5 bedroom new builds going back onto the market as people are realising they can’t afford the new rates.
CNN's @jaketapper points out how "wokeness" is not a real problem listed by military recruits.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL): "Not everyone really knows what wokeness is. I've defined it, but a lot of people who rail against wokeness can't even define it."
https://newrepublic.com/post/174422/desantis-unironically-says-people-attack-wokeness-dont-know-means
I would argue that the only way to properly serve those who struggle with maths at secondary (often closely correlated with those with SEN or mental health needs which is where dixiedean started this discussion) is by setting, by reducing the size of the lowest set, and by putting teachers in charge of that set, for multiple years at a time, who are able to both manage behaviour and teach the underlying structures of primary maths sufficiently well that you undo some of the misconceptions these kids have in their heads from primary school.
How many maths teachers in the country can do this? Not sure, definitely not enough at the moment. But its what we should be aiming for if we are serious about avoiding all the problems that come with putting kids into a classroom for five years where they don’t understand what is going on and relentlessly fail at something that they know is crucial for their life chances.
I would argue that the only way to properly serve those who struggle with maths at secondary (often closely correlated with those with SEN or mental health needs which is where dixiedean started this discussion) is by setting, by reducing the size of the lowest set, and by putting teachers in charge of that set, for multiple years at a time, who are able to both manage behaviour and teach the underlying structures of primary maths sufficiently well that you undo some of the misconceptions these kids have in their heads from primary school.
How many maths teachers in the country can do this? Not sure, definitely not enough at the moment. But its what we should be aiming for if we are serious about avoiding all the problems that come with putting kids into a classroom for five years where they don’t understand what is going on and relentlessly fail at something that they know is crucial for their life chances.
I'm far from convinced that letting the Japanese know we had a massively unprecedented bomb would in any way have been convincing to the Japanese leadership, either.
Just look at the devastation conventional firebombings caused in Japan. 88,000 people died in one raid, and a million made homeless. A continuation of the war would have seen that replicated many, many times. That also leaves out the Allied casualties: the US made over a million and a half purple hearts in WW2, ready for the invasion of Japan. In all the conflicts since - Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc, they are still using those medals.
Whether that was Oppenheimer's thinking is a different matter, though ...
The compensation for the family is deserved - active police corruption*consistently obstructed investigation of the murder, and the effects on the family have been devastating.
But the payment is effectively to make the problem go away.
*That is not my spin - it is the conclusion of an official enquiry.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Daniel_Morgan
The report was finally published on 15 June 2021. The report found that the Metropolitan Police were "institutionally corrupt" in its handling of the investigation into the murder of Daniel Morgan and that the force had placed protecting its reputation above the investigation...
IMHO, the use of the atomic bombs is pretty straightforward to defend, at an ethical level.
They settled matters, swiftly and decisively. Every day the war continued meant civilians and POW’s dying.
I do not like the 2 child policy one bit. But it is a Tory policy, not a Labour one. Incoming governments do not have infinite parliamentary time or cash to instantly reverse everything they inherited which is damaging, immoral, stupid or likely all three. I have no doubt they will reform the welfare system in a more substantial way than just changing that specific bit. But it will take time.
I posted the polling on this yesterday which shows 60% support for the policy and majority across parties
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1680541973231304707?t=NyxmErvtgElK0xWvLqsn5A&s=19
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/07/11/fa421/1
I think you are right in your expectation.
Quality of the food reduced: Shitflation. Pay more for shit food.
*I guess the second is so vague that he can jiggery-pokery up some rationale for it being achieved, but still.
Then there’s the fact thatvreducing poverty boosts growth and relieves pressure on overstretched public services.
We don’t do joined up thinking in this country.
Aren't we continually told we need a 'sugar tax' ?
It just seems - like I say at first glance and maybe you have really looked into it - that there is more effort being made to prosecute him for things now than in all the years when he was just a corrupt rich guy.
Eg here's a NYT article from 2018 alleging criminal fraud by Trump in the 1990s
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-tax-schemes-fred-trump.html
But that was Truman's decision, not Oppenheimer's. And if it was so ethically clearcut, why was the document suppressed for another decade and a half ?
If it were possible to put maths specialists (in combination with AI to reduce costs and to personalise) in front of every primary class to properly introduce the fundamentals at a pace that is suitable for each child, we’d solve many of the apparently intractable challenges in maths education in this country.
In the meantime, for anyone with primary age kids, I cannot recommend numberblocks on iPlayer highly enough. I can’t think of a better justification for the licence fee.
How old are kids before they can start to count generally (One, two say) btw ?
Whenever any of us discuss education, primary education tends to get the least thought. It's probably the sector where the last decade or so of 'reforms' have done the most damage.
Note that I am certainly not arguing for letting the bottom 20% fend for themselves: more that the needs of the bottom 20% probably need more constructive thinking (and resources) than the needs of the top 20%.
On setting: I do remember in the 1980s there was quite a lot of ideological opposition to setting; some schools refused to do it because it was elitist, and at least one parent I knew of refused to send their children to a school were setting happened for the same reason. Said (very bright) children ended up at something of a sink school. Did ok, but was always going to. Don't think she enjoyed school very much though.
What I am suggesting is sometimes referred to as "A Grammar School in every school" - the children can switch forms at any point. Rather than the bizarre idea of your future being decided by a single exam at age 11.
In my school, the job of the teacher of the C stream for any subject was to get as many kids as possible into B for next year and so on. It was the reverse of abandonment.
The opposition to this is interesting and appears very ideological. It would interesting to hear the thoughts of the teachers here on this.
But as with all of these things, you need to know how to use them.
I’m not having a go at primary teachers by the way. Most are hugely skilled generalists. I just think the real fundamentals of maths are hard to teach well, not least because almost by definition if you have got the qualifications to teach these fundamentals then you probably picked them up intuitively rather than needing things like cuisenaire rods or dienes blocks to make sense of them.
The teacher is not the person who teaches him what he does not know. He is the one who reveals the child to himself by making him more conscious of, and more creative with his own mind. The parents of a little girl of six who was using the Cuisenaire rods at school marveled at her knowledge and asked her: 'Tell us how the teacher teaches you all this', to which the little girl replied: 'The teacher teaches us nothing. We find everything out for ourselves.'[7]