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The Day Today government – politicalbetting.com
The Day Today government – politicalbetting.com
Secretary of State not available for interviews on the biggest story of the weekend.Instead they’ve done this ?? to bizarre dance music in the background, perhaps to sooth frayed nerves? Doesn’t scream that No10 trust the Education Secretary…https://t.co/7bavBYN0FO
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Thank you @TSE for this thread and I totally agree.
Meanwhile Adam Boulton on Sky is on fine form:
'MPs are returning to Westminster on Monday for the rapidly accelerating downhill run to the next general election.
Thanks to Boris Johnson's success in repealing the Fixed Term Parliament Act there is no precise guidance as to when that date with political destiny will be.
The next general election could even take place the year after next.
If this parliament runs right up to the constitutional buffers, the Commons would be dissolved on 17 December 2024, with the general election taking place no later than 28 January 2025.
Would the Conservatives be wise to campaign for last-gasp re-election through Christmas and the traditional January blues?
Probably not.
The general assumption is that the prime minister will have to screw up his courage and ask the King to call the general election during 2024.
The nation faces months of torrid electioneering until then.
A Sunak win would go against the pattern of history
It is difficult to boast of any significant achievements by UK plc in that time.
Broken Britain and the Cost Of Living Crisis dominate the public conversation.'
https://news.sky.com/story/adam-boulton-mps-are-heading-back-to-westminster-but-are-they-all-keeping-an-eye-on-a-looming-election-12952183
Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, says parents will be contacted if RAAC dictates a change to their children's schooling. It might have been better to have all parents contacted, the vast majority to be reassured their schools are safe. With most school years starting in the next couple of days, they might have left it too late.
To be eligible for cabinet departmental roles an MP should need a minimum of 3 years experience as a minister, shadow minister or the relevant select committee.
This is a simple change that would significantly improve our governance at no cost.
The news would expose it to a wider audience.
If they don't want people to see it, why make it in the first place?
Betting PostGood morning, everyone.
F1: backed Zhou Guanyu to win group 4 at 4.6. That's just him and the Alpines. He starts immediately ahead of them.
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2023/09/monza-pre-race-2023.html
He's useless.
If one of these schools collapses you're looking at another Aberfan. Incredible that they seem willing to risk that. Other people's kids.
I have no doubt funding will be made available, quickly, to make any school to make it safe - but I expect a lot of temporary building closures simply because we won't have enough structural engineers to remediate them all at once.
The Government's handling of this has been dreadful. The silence about which school are affected has caused parental anxiety, and "we wanted to let school leaders tell parents first" doesn't work when some schools don't have the staff back till Monday 4th September. It's also inconsistent with how other announcements are made (eg when money is doled out for significant capital work, often a national announcement is made and the list of successful school bids is included in a spreadsheet on a website: the DfE seem happy to announce good news themselves, but seem to want to leave it to schools to announce bad news...).
The dance music video is just bizarre.
But the bigger picture is, I'm afraid, one of political cowardice. Our public services generally are greatly underfunded. I've seen that first-hand where I've worked. If we want school buildings that aren't prone to collapsing, or a health system where you can get to see someone (anyone) without unreasonable delay, or efficient courts, or... sorry, but we have to fund said public services appropriately.
Maybe, given the dire state things are in, voters will vote accordingly in the next 16 months.
The government asks the minister a set of questions, and puts it online as if it were a proper interview.
The damnable, North Korean, sauce of it.
https://youtu.be/UOUeauLWEaE
Are you actually aware of the circumstances around that tragedy?
RAAC was a perfectly reasonable material to use to build for a 30 year lifespan. What is inexcusable is to fail to plan replace those schools, hospitals and other buildings after those 30 years were up.
At least here they have had the moral courage to admit they were wrong. Far too late, and with a strong dash of headless chicken thrown in, but they have done it.
When it comes to OFSTED failing basic safeguarding tests, or the exams proving a fiasco, or academy chains costing the earth and repeatedly failing in expensive and disruptive fashion, they continue to display tendencies that would embarrass a particularly shy ostrich.
Moreover even if the PFI schools built under NL don't have RAAC they are still so badly built many of them are already falling down.
The mismanagement of this crisis can be laid on several groups. The Tories will take most blame as they were in office at the time, as Brown did for the GFC and the Tories for the ERM. That's the nature of the beast. But we need to ask ourselves many much more searching questions about the way we do things in this country and that applies to all parties, the civil service and indeed the media.
They do it to attempt to kill the story by preventing "balance" as the BBC and other media cannot just put up opposition spokespeople.
He could also then explain why a man who was caught lying to parliament, who either uses false identities or insecure passwords, who has been accused of fraud and has never in his life done a good job in an administrative department is fit to be heading the Security Service.
It's not a point to try to make political capital from. It reflects more on poor application of building control standards by building control officers (finally being tightened after Grenfell) and potential conflicts of interest. The lack of fire exits in the science labs was approved by the local educational authority's own building control department.
(Sam Freedman, who is on the culpable list, makes the point that Treasury models have a downer on capital spends that don't generate a return but need to be done anyway.)
Not just schools either. This is King's Lynn Hospital
BBC News - Props holding up King's Lynn hospital roof rises to 2,400
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-63137642
My favourite one was the L-shaped classrooms, but that's way worse.
And the one I worked in which didn't have functioning sockets in most of the Humanities rooms because the PFI contractor wouldn't pay for cabling.
I call out Starmer incompetence, I call out Corbynista insanity and the antisemitism of Labour Party members. I have been highly critical of historic Labour Party corruption. I frequently mention the late T. Dan Smith and the late Graham Jenkins who are just two of the Labour figures you could probably pin the aerated concrete scandal upon. Granted these brown envelope planning issues are small potatoes when compared to something as egregious as the PPE scandal. And I state, I believe through our quirky election system Sunak will jog home with a majority of 20. Yet I am the Labour herd.
As to your Aberfan comment, that is truly awful. Educate yourself you clown. Anyway I have better things to do than justify myself to an unpleasant fool.
*no pun intended...
(It's a serious error in any event tbh.)
Now they say they will pay for portacabins. I assume some Tory contractors are lined up to like their pockets. But portacabins are terrible for learning in (I know) and cost a bomb.
As usual we get the worst of both worlds. Crumbling Britain falls apart and we spend more than we needed to for appalling outcomes. But the right people's kids don't go to RAAC schools, and there's a profit to me made for our mates, so fuck you.
Sorry if that description of your party upsets you. But it's self evident.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHnEiPGxsB8
Now, I’m not claiming that there’s no problem, and that it shouldn’t have been dealt with earlier. But it’s just scaremongering to say a single incident would kill hundreds.
See here - https://www.cyclefree.co.uk/the-price-of-indifference/
That will always be the case - the larger an organisation is, the more bloat and waste there is. Bloated European governments test that theory to destruction.
This was always the point about the PFI projects. An ocean of cash was needed to replace broken facilities left to crumble by the Tories. But politically they had made it difficult to borrow those vast sums - hence the expansion of the Tory PFI policy.
That Osbrown further extended PFI misses them completely when they call it "Labours PFI". But it didn't extend to building new school and hospital facilities. Once again a decade and more into Tory rule we have an ocean of cash needed to play catch-up with replacing crumbling schools and hospitals.
You can't just refuse to build them. That costs more money. Idiots. But Tories don't use schools and hospitals in the public sector so why care about them?
So they are concerned about these things happening. It isn't hyperbolic at all
Which comes with its own set of problems, not least the convoluted rules. This adds lots of consultant costs to the process, which funnily enough was mostly designed by the industry consultants themselves...
But 1-10 deaths would still be huge politically, quite apart from anything else.
One important factor is that Aberfan came out of the blue media wise, IIRC. Another is that only a few schools had bings uphill of them. RAAC is different. It's not as if the newspapers hadn't been full of stories about dangerous bings on and offfor months and years beforehand. And it's all over the place.
https://twitter.com/WorthValley/status/1697938556629499927?t=233QozxEjvbiMOFZCpkxgg&s=19
What is the increase in the schools budget
Einer Trenter Percenter.
I didn't make the Aberfan comment, your fellow rider @OnlyLivingBoy did - suggesting the Tories didn't care about the lives of state school kids - and you liked it. I just pointed out how utterly absurd this was by highlighting that event took place under a Labour government.
You need to educate yourself, you clown; the very fact you couldn't see the irony of my post shows you to be the unpleasant fool, not me.
It would be interesting to know the total government spend on management consultants but I expect (hope) it is an insignificant proportion of the total spend.
We have some quite decent prefab wards in Leicester Royal Infirmary, and 5 prefab operating theatres in Leicester General which are now 10 years old but perfectly OK. Nothing new here in that in 1992 I worked on a ward built as a temporary ward in 1938 for war casualties.
Sometimes the quality isn't there in that the modular prefab operating theatre we have at Glenfield is both very pokey and
Gorgeous? Look at that all pollution spewing out of the exhaust.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/
Lots of businesses, firms, third sector enterprises and major public sector bodies experience major strategic and transformation challenges - increasingly often, in today's world - where it would not be efficient or cost effective for them to retain a team of 20+ full time employees in-house as and when they arise every 5-7 years. Nor would they necessarily know the latest market innovations. So there's a definitely a place for those who do that sort of thing, and specialise in it, and rotate around industry helping clients perform one such change after another; they get experienced in it, and bring a good understanding of market trends and the latest best practice to their clients.
Unfortunately, it can also be a feast for blue-sky thinkers and bullshitters who charge an awful lot of money but don't deliver very much, expect playing back the problem statement and some platitudes to their clients (bad consultancy) but for those who really get to know their clients and listen to them, immersing themselves in the challenge, applying themselves to the solution, and helping them co-own a change that works, it can be hugely valuable (good consultancy).
I like to think the latter is what I do in infrastructure.
The trouble is that the business model is hugely predicated on revenue and margin and that drives a 'land and expand' mindset and, from a career perspective, rewards those who deliver the biggest numbers, so the two get mixed up together far more often than they should.
I agree with you, and as a someone who became a parent for the first time 8 days after Aberfan in October 1966 the memory is seared in our mind as we held our new born son close and grieved with our fellow Welsh parents suffering such a terrible loss of their child and in some cases children
It is not appropriate to politicise it
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/06/ministers-quietly-scrap-limits-on-whitehall-spending-on-consultants
https://www.mi5.gov.uk/people-and-organisation
what precisely is the UK’s foreign and security policy? Inconsistent is the politest description of the approach to the world pursued over 13 years of Conservative government.
Both the soft power and the hard power of the UK have been diminished on the Tories’ watch.
While Mr Sunak is regarded as a more reliable performer on the world stage than his immediate predecessors, he suffers from the widespread expectation that he will be booted off the cast list within a year or so.
The appointment of Grant Shapps as the new defence secretary, his fifth cabinet post in 12 months, has angered some Conservative MPs and caused consternation among military figures because he has no expertise in the area. His loyalty to Mr Sunak and pedigree as a political attack-dog are the main reasons Mr Shapps landed the role.
As a cash-strapped, midsized power in a dangerously unpredictable and unstable world, the UK needs to be smart at making and keeping friends, especially with other liberal democracies with similar values. Brexit has made Britain less relevant to the EU, and to all the other significant players of the world. There’s no escaping that bitter truth, however many air miles Mr Sunak clocks up.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/sep/03/special-educational-needs-provision-crisis-england-record-complaints
(Many years ago, not long after Mrs P. and I got together, we were driving past a Portakabin and she asked: 'Why are they called Por-Take-a-Bins?')
But a lot of so-called management consultants know fuck all about anything, have done even less and charge enormous fees for bugger all.
Anyway must be off - busy day ahead.
@OnlyLivingBoy politicised it upthread. I then turned a mirror right back on it (to make that very point) and then @Mexicanpete cried blue murder.
It just shows how lacking in self-awareness and objectivity he is.
What is Rawnsley going to do when SKS is faced with the same set of issues and has even less ability to do anything ? Whacko Blairites claiming they have "influence" is simply a way of pretending they can do things they cant.
I am one too but my career is significantly behind because I don't deliver the big numbers because, and I quote, I am "totally committed to the client".
Well, umm, err, shouldn't we all be?
It works for me at the moment, and I think I make a difference. We'll see how it goes longer-term.
I need to head off with the kids myself now too.
Fortunately, the Worth Valley is outside of the Bradford ULEZ.
You should have seen what was being emitting by the steam loco.
If you don't believe me read this - https://www.cyclefree.co.uk/the-price-of-indifference/.
A neighbour painted a huge mural depicting each child, taken from photographs supplied by the parents, ascending into the arms of Christ
It was very moving