Another mess Starmer and co will have to clear up: higher education.
David Maguire is vice-chancellor at the University of East Anglia:
"All the vice-chancellors I talk to (and it is quite a few) are nervous and some are forecasting real challenges in avoiding breaches of banking covenants and making payroll."
"In England, fees for domestic students have been capped at £9,250 since 2017 and are now worth only around £6,000 in 2012-13 prices. This means that funding per student is at its lowest level in more than 25 years."
That’s been obvious for the last 2/3 years and I’ve been talking about it on here for most of that time. The fact the vice- chancellors are only screaming now is because it’s only now finally started to dawn on them.
As for whether a single failure will trigger a domino effect - I expect that will be the case. No one wants to be first but after the first university goes and it becomes obvious what to look for a lot will follow very, very quickly
How a town like Lancaster picks up the pieces will be interesting to watch.
And it has a knock-on effect through the economy as the proportion of 18-21yos who moved to "education and training" from "unemployment" (in the 1990s) go back to "unemployment" (in the 2030s) if the university places aren't there any more.
True but at least they won’t have been sold a dream / pack of lies and won’t be £50,000+ in debt losing 9% of their income every month
Surely returning Higher Education to the elite 5% again suits the elite 5% running the current Government.
Of all the disappointing themes we have seen over the last 15 years the notion that only the wealthy are entitled to a top education is profoundly depressing, and it seems about to come in through the back door.
What’s your definition of a top education - the education (available at low cost online from a lot of places nowadays) or the certificate at the end of it.
It’s that certificate that is expensive
I believe the experience, the networking opportunities as well as the certificate are worth considering. I like the idea of degree apprenticeships, what I don't like are the tick box trade NVQs that those on the right want to foist on the hoi-poloi instead of a university experience.
Bring back grammar schools, restrict university degress to genuine academic subjects, and let the state fully fund it for domestic students.
Bring back grammar schools and bugger any late developer or someone who excels in some subjects and sucks in others.
People like that often benefit from the motivation of having a point to prove.
Bollocks. I am one of them, dumped in the Secondary school system. I was lucky to escape and get to the grammar school to do my A levels and then a maths degree in early 70s at one of the best Unis, but I saw so many thrown on the scrap heap who by the time they were 15 were more academic than the grammar school kids. I was fast streamed in the grammar school when I got there in the 6th form (Taking A levels after 1 year) but was in a stream expected to leave with no qualifications when I took my 11 plus.
Nobody who wants the grammar schools back ever says 'Bring back the secondary moderns' do they?
Because you don't have to bring back secondary moderns in order to have grammar schools and you don't need a rigid 11-plus system. Grammar schools could exist alongside comprehenisves with everyone having the opportunity to sit the same exams.
Germany manages to have separation between different types of schools without people being 'thrown on the scrap heap'.
Arguably Britain has a shortage of practical engineering types, and not bookish nerds. So perhaps the first step would be to establish some prestigious technical colleges, and then run some exacting aptitude tests for entry into the technical colleges, with the clumsy sods who fail those tests left to the scrapheap of academic learning leading to A-levels, etc.
Bright boys and girls in blue overalls and yellow helmets, up to their shoulder in nuclear submarines. Men in brown coats who can do things with a spanner. Grammar school types with pipes and slide-rules who can align an artillery piece to hit a sixpence 20miles away. The missing third of UK society, and the one we most need.
He does. @HYUFD has also changed his style considerably in my view. I used to get into big rows with him. That hasn't happened now for many, many years now and we have very pleasant debates and I like a lot of his posts. I decided to deliberately avoid getting into confrontations with him, but actually I think the greater reason it doesn't happen now is down to him. His style has mellowed considerably and consequently he is not baited into making more extreme posts by other PB members any more. He is a pleasure to debate with. I might avoid discussing grammar schools with him though just in case.
HYUFD is one of the finest posters here. Hear hear
I note that HYUFD has 'liked' this post. I'm not sure that's good form.
I’ve often wondered how it is possible to know who has liked a post.
The owner of a burger joint in Bradford was left needing stitches after Palestinian supporters attacked him outside his takeaway, FtLion has learned.
Owner of the popular Salah’s on Leeds Road, Salahudin Yusuf, was assaulted by members of a group comprising of 40-50 people, a close friend of the owner has said.
Mirban, who has known Salahudin since he arrived to the UK from abroad, told FtLion how a group of angry protestors gathered outside the shop to demand he boycott Coca-Cola.
Draped in Palestinian flags, Mirban revealed how the mob “were saying on loud speaker last night [that] ‘they sell coke from underneath the counter and we’ve warned them multiple times'”.
Mirban added how members from the rowdy crowd were “threatening them to stop selling certain products, example coke” despite Salah’s having “removed [the product] two months ago”.
Believing them to be “predominantly a Muslim crowd” whom employees at Salah’s did not recognise, he described how these “cowards… sent some women [from the group] forward [and] who started shouting abuse”.
It was at this point that the “men came forward and carried out an attack” like “the cowards that they were”.
He said: “He was defending his business. They’ve approached on to his business and carried out the assault outside the shop,” during which the “owner was hurt and suffered stitches to his lip”.
We need to crack down on the Unitarian Fundementalists, right away.
I do think the best comparison is QAnon. For all those who are legitimately troubled by events in Gaza and wanting to express that, the most visible and active on these protests are now those who want to cause wanton destruction based on conspiracy theories and absurd worldviews that put Gaza at the heart of antisemitic conspiracy theories about 'Zionist control' of a 'genocide' that somehow involves Coca-Cola and Costa Coffee.
It's not normal or acceptable to be abusing people in kebab or coffee shops. It's completely unhinged and should be viewed in the same way the far right's lunatic conspiracism is when they go after people thanks to their twisted beliefs.
There may be another factor, which is extremists establishing control of "their" community. It is Muslims and not Jews who have most to fear from Islamists Against Coca-Cola.
I don't know if there's an equivalent of Gresham's Law for religion but it seems to apply.
The worst and/or most extreme form tends to be pandered to as the only 'true' form.
I'm doubtful as to its premise but I suspect there's a lot of people who think they are underachieving and being economically 'oppressed'.
It is the same here. Unemployed and under-employed people are finding it very hard to get jobs, or even get responses from the companies they apply to.
He does. @HYUFD has also changed his style considerably in my view. I used to get into big rows with him. That hasn't happened now for many, many years now and we have very pleasant debates and I like a lot of his posts. I decided to deliberately avoid getting into confrontations with him, but actually I think the greater reason it doesn't happen now is down to him. His style has mellowed considerably and consequently he is not baited into making more extreme posts by other PB members any more. He is a pleasure to debate with. I might avoid discussing grammar schools with him though just in case.
HYUFD is one of the finest posters here. Hear hear
I note that HYUFD has 'liked' this post. I'm not sure that's good form.
I’ve often wondered how it is possible to know who has liked a post.
But I’m also not entirely sure I want to know.
Depending on your browser or device, either hover over or click the "like" and a pop-up will tell you.
The new Starmer biography looks fascinating. I was struck by this paragraph in the Rawnsley review:
The household bills were not always paid, the telephone was cut off and the family home became increasingly shabby. Katy remembers her brother kicking a football through the back window. “We never fixed the glass because that cost money. Dad just boarded it up.”
“The new Starmer biography looks fascinating.”
lol
If we tell you it was written by ChatGPT, would you take a look then?
It'll be more interesting than "ALIENS", "AI" on a repeat every hour...
Another mess Starmer and co will have to clear up: higher education.
David Maguire is vice-chancellor at the University of East Anglia:
"All the vice-chancellors I talk to (and it is quite a few) are nervous and some are forecasting real challenges in avoiding breaches of banking covenants and making payroll."
"In England, fees for domestic students have been capped at £9,250 since 2017 and are now worth only around £6,000 in 2012-13 prices. This means that funding per student is at its lowest level in more than 25 years."
That’s been obvious for the last 2/3 years and I’ve been talking about it on here for most of that time. The fact the vice- chancellors are only screaming now is because it’s only now finally started to dawn on them.
As for whether a single failure will trigger a domino effect - I expect that will be the case. No one wants to be first but after the first university goes and it becomes obvious what to look for a lot will follow very, very quickly
How a town like Lancaster picks up the pieces will be interesting to watch.
And it has a knock-on effect through the economy as the proportion of 18-21yos who moved to "education and training" from "unemployment" (in the 1990s) go back to "unemployment" (in the 2030s) if the university places aren't there any more.
True but at least they won’t have been sold a dream / pack of lies and won’t be £50,000+ in debt losing 9% of their income every month
Surely returning Higher Education to the elite 5% again suits the elite 5% running the current Government.
Of all the disappointing themes we have seen over the last 15 years the notion that only the wealthy are entitled to a top education is profoundly depressing, and it seems about to come in through the back door.
What’s your definition of a top education - the education (available at low cost online from a lot of places nowadays) or the certificate at the end of it.
It’s that certificate that is expensive
I believe the experience, the networking opportunities as well as the certificate are worth considering. I like the idea of degree apprenticeships, what I don't like are the tick box trade NVQs that those on the right want to foist on the hoi-poloi instead of a university experience.
Bring back grammar schools, restrict university degress to genuine academic subjects, and let the state fully fund it for domestic students.
Bring back grammar schools and bugger any late developer or someone who excels in some subjects and sucks in others.
People like that often benefit from the motivation of having a point to prove.
We have turned down the cul-de-sac of Grammar Schools and HYUFD is nowhere to be seen. How come?
I've got the bins to do for tomorrow's collection.
HYUFD posts a lot less than he used to. The juice is not worth the squeeze for even the most partisan of Tories.
He does. @HYUFD has also changed his style considerably in my view. I used to get into big rows with him. That hasn't happened now for many, many years now and we have very pleasant debates and I like a lot of his posts. I decided to deliberately avoid getting into confrontations with him, but actually I think the greater reason it doesn't happen now is down to him. His style has mellowed considerably and consequently he is not baited into making more extreme posts by other PB members any more. He is a pleasure to debate with. I might avoid discussing grammar schools with him though just in case.
Thank you for your and others comments, only comment I would make on grammars is parents should be at least allowed to petition to ballot to open new ones as well as close existing ones as now. Let parents decide what schools they want in their area
What the entire education system could do with is less talk of parental rights and more of children's rights. From my experience, most parents are entirely ignorant of how education works.
It's a good point. Rather too many parents don't push/allow/enable their children, sometimes for reasons well within their control, and sometimes for reasons outwith their control (e.g. the increasing closure of libraries). Yet it's the children who get the sharny end of the resulting stick.
Another mess Starmer and co will have to clear up: higher education.
David Maguire is vice-chancellor at the University of East Anglia:
"All the vice-chancellors I talk to (and it is quite a few) are nervous and some are forecasting real challenges in avoiding breaches of banking covenants and making payroll."
"In England, fees for domestic students have been capped at £9,250 since 2017 and are now worth only around £6,000 in 2012-13 prices. This means that funding per student is at its lowest level in more than 25 years."
That’s been obvious for the last 2/3 years and I’ve been talking about it on here for most of that time. The fact the vice- chancellors are only screaming now is because it’s only now finally started to dawn on them.
As for whether a single failure will trigger a domino effect - I expect that will be the case. No one wants to be first but after the first university goes and it becomes obvious what to look for a lot will follow very, very quickly
How a town like Lancaster picks up the pieces will be interesting to watch.
And it has a knock-on effect through the economy as the proportion of 18-21yos who moved to "education and training" from "unemployment" (in the 1990s) go back to "unemployment" (in the 2030s) if the university places aren't there any more.
True but at least they won’t have been sold a dream / pack of lies and won’t be £50,000+ in debt losing 9% of their income every month
Surely returning Higher Education to the elite 5% again suits the elite 5% running the current Government.
Of all the disappointing themes we have seen over the last 15 years the notion that only the wealthy are entitled to a top education is profoundly depressing, and it seems about to come in through the back door.
What’s your definition of a top education - the education (available at low cost online from a lot of places nowadays) or the certificate at the end of it.
It’s that certificate that is expensive
I believe the experience, the networking opportunities as well as the certificate are worth considering. I like the idea of degree apprenticeships, what I don't like are the tick box trade NVQs that those on the right want to foist on the hoi-poloi instead of a university experience.
Bring back grammar schools, restrict university degress to genuine academic subjects, and let the state fully fund it for domestic students.
Bring back grammar schools and bugger any late developer or someone who excels in some subjects and sucks in others.
People like that often benefit from the motivation of having a point to prove.
Bollocks. I am one of them, dumped in the Secondary school system. I was lucky to escape and get to the grammar school to do my A levels and then a maths degree in early 70s at one of the best Unis, but I saw so many thrown on the scrap heap who by the time they were 15 were more academic than the grammar school kids. I was fast streamed in the grammar school when I got there in the 6th form (Taking A levels after 1 year) but was in a stream expected to leave with no qualifications when I took my 11 plus.
Nobody who wants the grammar schools back ever says 'Bring back the secondary moderns' do they?
Because you don't have to bring back secondary moderns in order to have grammar schools and you don't need a rigid 11-plus system. Grammar schools could exist alongside comprehenisves with everyone having the opportunity to sit the same exams.
Germany manages to have separation between different types of schools without people being 'thrown on the scrap heap'.
It doesn't sound like you are talking about Grammar schools then. But why split people apart at 11. What is wrong with setting and streaming? By the nature of splitting you restrict the curriculum to what each group excels at and kids form friendship groups etc that you then split if you move them. Moving schools is a big thing for a child. My experiences were from the dark ages and I know this wouldn't exist now but I didn't have the opportunity to do languages or English literature, but I had to do woodwork, metalwork, gardening etc which I was useless at. Give all kids the chance to do everything. Find out what they are good at and let them excel in that.
What is the point of splitting them apart? Set and stream.
I should have been more precise about 'sitting the same exams'. I meant in the core subjects of Maths, English, etc, so it wouldn't be like in the secondary modern days when people were denied the chance to sit O Levels at all, but you could still have different curriculums and different expectations depending on the type of school.
We were never denied sitting O levels. Before the O level/CSE year in my school we all took an exam in each subject. You then choose what subjects you wished to study and were then set in each subject according to your result. Some classes were O level, the majority CSE and the rest either left or did no exams (can't remember now if they had to stay on).
The key thing was I was denied access to some subjects altogether as were kids in the Grammar school because we were all selected at 11. It is too early for that. When I went to the Secondary school I was in the 3rd class of 5 and this is after the brighter kids were creamed off for the Grammar school. So in the group expected to leave or take a couple of CSEs. However in the exams to select your subject I came top in every subject except English, Art and Metalwork/Woodwork. When I went to the Grammar school I was fast streamed with 4 other boys from a total of about 100. If I had been talented in Russian or English literature I would have been stuffed. Now I might have been extreme but there were many similar kids like me or others who peaked early and then struggled in the Grammar school.
I'm doubtful as to its premise but I suspect there's a lot of people who think they are underachieving and being economically 'oppressed'.
It is the same here. Unemployed and under-employed people are finding it very hard to get jobs, or even get responses from the companies they apply to.
While employers find it hard to fill job vacancies and when they do find that the new workers don't last long.
I don't know whether there's some huge mismatch of skills to jobs, of what people want to do to what they can do to what they need to do.
Or whether the employment process has become too overly complicated.
Hopefully good employers will recognises this and reward loyal employees suitably.
Personally I'd be training the next generation of software engineers, a field we can actually compete in and do.
You'd be hard-pressed to find a university without a Computer Science offering. For a start, it's cheap to run, unlike laboratory sciences.
The spin is that AI programming aids like Copilot and IBM's WatsonX will limit demand, and at the bottom end, a lot of self-employed web developers find their talents are no longer needed thanks to Wix or Squarespace and similar point-and-click web hosting platforms.
Hmm. Maybe we should ask AI to fix all the bugs in Imperial's Covid-modelling software!
Another mess Starmer and co will have to clear up: higher education.
David Maguire is vice-chancellor at the University of East Anglia:
"All the vice-chancellors I talk to (and it is quite a few) are nervous and some are forecasting real challenges in avoiding breaches of banking covenants and making payroll."
"In England, fees for domestic students have been capped at £9,250 since 2017 and are now worth only around £6,000 in 2012-13 prices. This means that funding per student is at its lowest level in more than 25 years."
That’s been obvious for the last 2/3 years and I’ve been talking about it on here for most of that time. The fact the vice- chancellors are only screaming now is because it’s only now finally started to dawn on them.
As for whether a single failure will trigger a domino effect - I expect that will be the case. No one wants to be first but after the first university goes and it becomes obvious what to look for a lot will follow very, very quickly
How a town like Lancaster picks up the pieces will be interesting to watch.
And it has a knock-on effect through the economy as the proportion of 18-21yos who moved to "education and training" from "unemployment" (in the 1990s) go back to "unemployment" (in the 2030s) if the university places aren't there any more.
True but at least they won’t have been sold a dream / pack of lies and won’t be £50,000+ in debt losing 9% of their income every month
Surely returning Higher Education to the elite 5% again suits the elite 5% running the current Government.
Of all the disappointing themes we have seen over the last 15 years the notion that only the wealthy are entitled to a top education is profoundly depressing, and it seems about to come in through the back door.
What’s your definition of a top education - the education (available at low cost online from a lot of places nowadays) or the certificate at the end of it.
It’s that certificate that is expensive
I believe the experience, the networking opportunities as well as the certificate are worth considering. I like the idea of degree apprenticeships, what I don't like are the tick box trade NVQs that those on the right want to foist on the hoi-poloi instead of a university experience.
Bring back grammar schools, restrict university degress to genuine academic subjects, and let the state fully fund it for domestic students.
Bring back grammar schools and bugger any late developer or someone who excels in some subjects and sucks in others.
People like that often benefit from the motivation of having a point to prove.
We have turned down the cul-de-sac of Grammar Schools and HYUFD is nowhere to be seen. How come?
I've got the bins to do for tomorrow's collection.
HYUFD posts a lot less than he used to. The juice is not worth the squeeze for even the most partisan of Tories.
He does. @HYUFD has also changed his style considerably in my view. I used to get into big rows with him. That hasn't happened now for many, many years now and we have very pleasant debates and I like a lot of his posts. I decided to deliberately avoid getting into confrontations with him, but actually I think the greater reason it doesn't happen now is down to him. His style has mellowed considerably and consequently he is not baited into making more extreme posts by other PB members any more. He is a pleasure to debate with. I might avoid discussing grammar schools with him though just in case.
Thank you for your and others comments, only comment I would make on grammars is parents should be at least allowed to petition to ballot to open new ones as well as close existing ones as now. Let parents decide what schools they want in their area
My pleasure and I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it. I'm glad we don't have those rows now (fingers crossed).
I agree with Leon, though, that this site is experiencing a marked fall-off in quality.
Like Britain itself, this board feels enervated and exhausted.
Interesting parallel. Probably for the same reason - the endless riot of defensive right wing bullshit poured out on any topic, ad nauseam, by the political/media complex.
I'm doubtful as to its premise but I suspect there's a lot of people who think they are underachieving and being economically 'oppressed'.
14m more Americans have jobs. 353k more Americans got jobs in January alone. That is a bizarre headline.
Like us, the increase in employment is having a disappointingly modest effect of output, although the US figures are better than ours. It is also true that real wages are only up in recent months and are broadly flat over Biden's Presidency. I suspect he will have a much better tale to tell in November on current trends but it is probably true that a lot of Americans don't feel better off personally because they aren't. On the other hand the fact that a lot of the new jobs are at the bottom end of the wage scale is probably resulting in "middle America's" real wage growth being underestimated.
What Biden has done, largely through Buttigieg, is significantly increase infrastructure spending but that seems very likely to boost future output. I wish our government was as focused on essential infrastructure spending rather than tax cuts but even if they were now the failure to boost infrastructure investment over the period since the end of Covid will have very negative impacts on our productivity.
If you look at the Lee Anderson case, no one has asked him to elaborate on his remarks or provide evidence for them. Instead there is outrage and the insistence that he must be cancelled immediately and any delay or hesitation in doing so implicates and condemns those doing the delaying.
It is quite a good example of why the 'far right' are getting more and more popular - the left don't like to engage with their opponents, they try instead to get them and their ideas removed them from the discourse - so then over time this enormous monster starts building up.
This can be observed even when the remarks themselves are incredibly stupid and can be easily rebuked. To people who believe this stuff, the reaction from the left just affirms their worldview.
Who is cancelling him? He has a show on GBeebies. The Tories have said that he can't remain a Tory MP as he said awful things with the crime of not being Braverman, that isn't the same as him being cancelled.
An absurd argument to make. I remember some moron on the anti-Iraq war march back in the day shouting "this is a fascist police state" - yeah mate, they let people protest march all the time in fascist police states. Same moronic argument here. "I have been cancelled, I can't say what I and millions of people think" says the presenter of "Lee Anderson's Real World" live every Friday from 7pm.
I think you are missing my point. The 'reaction' is the insistence that Anderson must be cancelled. But actually, the fact that the cancellation is unsuccessful is evidence that the left are losing their grip on politics and culture, and are at odds with popular opinion. The most interesting thing about all of this is that Farage saw it all coming. 8 years ago he was saying that you either work with me or you get something far worse next time around. Now you get politicians coming on to the scene, who lack the intelligence and sophistication of Farage, making evidence free, from the gut appeals which appeal to an aggrieved politicised minority.
Sorry, who is Farage? (I know of a Nigel Farage, but he's not somebody known for his intelligence and sophistication.)
I'm doubtful as to its premise but I suspect there's a lot of people who think they are underachieving and being economically 'oppressed'.
It is the same here. Unemployed and under-employed people are finding it very hard to get jobs, or even get responses from the companies they apply to.
There are currently 932k vacancies in the UK, down on the 1.3m in 2022 but still are extremely high number. Our economy is struggling with the supply of labour, not the demand. This is what is driving net immigration.
Another mess Starmer and co will have to clear up: higher education.
David Maguire is vice-chancellor at the University of East Anglia:
"All the vice-chancellors I talk to (and it is quite a few) are nervous and some are forecasting real challenges in avoiding breaches of banking covenants and making payroll."
"In England, fees for domestic students have been capped at £9,250 since 2017 and are now worth only around £6,000 in 2012-13 prices. This means that funding per student is at its lowest level in more than 25 years."
That’s been obvious for the last 2/3 years and I’ve been talking about it on here for most of that time. The fact the vice- chancellors are only screaming now is because it’s only now finally started to dawn on them.
As for whether a single failure will trigger a domino effect - I expect that will be the case. No one wants to be first but after the first university goes and it becomes obvious what to look for a lot will follow very, very quickly
How a town like Lancaster picks up the pieces will be interesting to watch.
And it has a knock-on effect through the economy as the proportion of 18-21yos who moved to "education and training" from "unemployment" (in the 1990s) go back to "unemployment" (in the 2030s) if the university places aren't there any more.
True but at least they won’t have been sold a dream / pack of lies and won’t be £50,000+ in debt losing 9% of their income every month
Surely returning Higher Education to the elite 5% again suits the elite 5% running the current Government.
Of all the disappointing themes we have seen over the last 15 years the notion that only the wealthy are entitled to a top education is profoundly depressing, and it seems about to come in through the back door.
What’s your definition of a top education - the education (available at low cost online from a lot of places nowadays) or the certificate at the end of it.
It’s that certificate that is expensive
I believe the experience, the networking opportunities as well as the certificate are worth considering. I like the idea of degree apprenticeships, what I don't like are the tick box trade NVQs that those on the right want to foist on the hoi-poloi instead of a university experience.
Bring back grammar schools, restrict university degress to genuine academic subjects, and let the state fully fund it for domestic students.
Bring back grammar schools and bugger any late developer or someone who excels in some subjects and sucks in others.
People like that often benefit from the motivation of having a point to prove.
Bollocks. I am one of them, dumped in the Secondary school system. I was lucky to escape and get to the grammar school to do my A levels and then a maths degree in early 70s at one of the best Unis, but I saw so many thrown on the scrap heap who by the time they were 15 were more academic than the grammar school kids. I was fast streamed in the grammar school when I got there in the 6th form (Taking A levels after 1 year) but was in a stream expected to leave with no qualifications when I took my 11 plus.
Nobody who wants the grammar schools back ever says 'Bring back the secondary moderns' do they?
At my Grammar School we had an "A" stream for the high flyers and a "B" stream for the "less able students". So everyone at Secondary Modern and half of the Grammar School were tossed asunder.
My last word on Grammar Schools today.
So you're against streaming too? That's how modern comprehensives work.
It's also how Netflix works. Do you want us to stop watching Netflix, Mexicanpete?!
He does. @HYUFD has also changed his style considerably in my view. I used to get into big rows with him. That hasn't happened now for many, many years now and we have very pleasant debates and I like a lot of his posts. I decided to deliberately avoid getting into confrontations with him, but actually I think the greater reason it doesn't happen now is down to him. His style has mellowed considerably and consequently he is not baited into making more extreme posts by other PB members any more. He is a pleasure to debate with. I might avoid discussing grammar schools with him though just in case.
HYUFD is one of the finest posters here. Hear hear
I note that HYUFD has 'liked' this post. I'm not sure that's good form.
I’ve often wondered how it is possible to know who has liked a post.
But I’m also not entirely sure I want to know.
I always do. You do get surprised sometimes and that normally gives you a pleasant feeling.
I agree with Leon, though, that this site is experiencing a marked fall-off in quality.
Like Britain itself, this board feels enervated and exhausted.
The right wing no longer believe that they can fix things and are taking refuge in luxury values. The left wing don't know either but think copying the right will work. All the upcoming elections, although interesting to me, do not capture the imagination of PB and the US/UK elections are either several months away or unscheduled. As @Foxy said, it's Phoney War time... ☹️
He does. @HYUFD has also changed his style considerably in my view. I used to get into big rows with him. That hasn't happened now for many, many years now and we have very pleasant debates and I like a lot of his posts. I decided to deliberately avoid getting into confrontations with him, but actually I think the greater reason it doesn't happen now is down to him. His style has mellowed considerably and consequently he is not baited into making more extreme posts by other PB members any more. He is a pleasure to debate with. I might avoid discussing grammar schools with him though just in case.
HYUFD is one of the finest posters here. Hear hear
I note that HYUFD has 'liked' this post. I'm not sure that's good form.
Why not? A sort of thank you for saying it in my view rather than the normal agreeing with the post.
I agree with Leon, though, that this site is experiencing a marked fall-off in quality.
Like Britain itself, this board feels enervated and exhausted.
Nah, we are just in the phoney war, hanging out our washing on the wire, waiting for the campaign.
It looks like a walkover on current polling, but that may well change. Everyone wants a competitive contest in parties and press.
And politics and the betting thereon isn't much fun at the moment.
The death of the Tory party, the death of the SNP, nothing on the LD front. Perhaps even more dismal in the US. I like betting on politics because I win both money and the argument - I see few opportunities at the moment.
I agree with Leon, though, that this site is experiencing a marked fall-off in quality.
Like Britain itself, this board feels enervated and exhausted.
Interesting parallel. Probably for the same reason - the endless riot of defensive right wing bullshit poured out on any topic, ad nauseam, by the political/media complex.
I feel like posters have run out of ideas. And that seems to reflect the wider “debate” in the UK.
Brexit has turned out to be a hoax. Centrist dad-ism doesn’t seem to work either. A lot of what my generation or older assumed were eternal British values seem to have dissolved under various pressures. Even the populist right seems oddly half-hearted, more a form of cosplay than borne of real conviction.
Another mess Starmer and co will have to clear up: higher education.
David Maguire is vice-chancellor at the University of East Anglia:
"All the vice-chancellors I talk to (and it is quite a few) are nervous and some are forecasting real challenges in avoiding breaches of banking covenants and making payroll."
"In England, fees for domestic students have been capped at £9,250 since 2017 and are now worth only around £6,000 in 2012-13 prices. This means that funding per student is at its lowest level in more than 25 years."
That’s been obvious for the last 2/3 years and I’ve been talking about it on here for most of that time. The fact the vice- chancellors are only screaming now is because it’s only now finally started to dawn on them.
As for whether a single failure will trigger a domino effect - I expect that will be the case. No one wants to be first but after the first university goes and it becomes obvious what to look for a lot will follow very, very quickly
How a town like Lancaster picks up the pieces will be interesting to watch.
And it has a knock-on effect through the economy as the proportion of 18-21yos who moved to "education and training" from "unemployment" (in the 1990s) go back to "unemployment" (in the 2030s) if the university places aren't there any more.
True but at least they won’t have been sold a dream / pack of lies and won’t be £50,000+ in debt losing 9% of their income every month
Surely returning Higher Education to the elite 5% again suits the elite 5% running the current Government.
Of all the disappointing themes we have seen over the last 15 years the notion that only the wealthy are entitled to a top education is profoundly depressing, and it seems about to come in through the back door.
What’s your definition of a top education - the education (available at low cost online from a lot of places nowadays) or the certificate at the end of it.
It’s that certificate that is expensive
I believe the experience, the networking opportunities as well as the certificate are worth considering. I like the idea of degree apprenticeships, what I don't like are the tick box trade NVQs that those on the right want to foist on the hoi-poloi instead of a university experience.
Bring back grammar schools, restrict university degress to genuine academic subjects, and let the state fully fund it for domestic students.
Bring back grammar schools and bugger any late developer or someone who excels in some subjects and sucks in others.
People like that often benefit from the motivation of having a point to prove.
We have turned down the cul-de-sac of Grammar Schools and HYUFD is nowhere to be seen. How come?
I've got the bins to do for tomorrow's collection.
HYUFD posts a lot less than he used to. The juice is not worth the squeeze for even the most partisan of Tories.
He does. @HYUFD has also changed his style considerably in my view. I used to get into big rows with him. That hasn't happened now for many, many years now and we have very pleasant debates and I like a lot of his posts. I decided to deliberately avoid getting into confrontations with him, but actually I think the greater reason it doesn't happen now is down to him. His style has mellowed considerably and consequently he is not baited into making more extreme posts by other PB members any more. He is a pleasure to debate with. I might avoid discussing grammar schools with him though just in case.
Thank you for your and others comments, only comment I would make on grammars is parents should be at least allowed to petition to ballot to open new ones as well as close existing ones as now. Let parents decide what schools they want in their area
What the entire education system could do with is less talk of parental rights and more of children's rights. From my experience, most parents are entirely ignorant of how education works.
Parents operate on a memory of their experiences, informed and influenced by the opinions of their social circle. Thus I look back 70+ years to my experience of being one of a ‘record year’ of 11+ successes at my primary school and discovering that, once at the grammar school of my parents choice, most of the rest of the year were from three or four schools in the west of the borough, whereas those of us allowed in from the County, across the Borough boundary were a small minority. Hence IF going to a grammar school were a matter of equality of opportunity I might be more sympathetic to the idea. However it certainly wasn’t where I grew up, and indeed by the time my children reached the time for the exam the discrimination was even greater. However by then, 40+ years ago, there were decent comprehensive school in the County, and an excellent VIth Form college.
I am deeply disturbed by the state of our politics, as are many others, with both main parties having islamaphobic and antisemitic problems, Sunak being unable to comprehensively reject Anderson's comments, and Starmer exerting pressure and compromising the Speaker to mask a rebellion in his party of upto 100 mps over Gaza
There is little, if any doubt, that Starmer will become PM later this year and the conservative party will be into opposition
Many say that this is a good thing but it rather depends if the conservative party can regain its one nation credentials, or more likely as @HYUFD predicts it will move right and merge with Reform, maybe with Farage, and on current polling that would see them in the 32-35% range in the polls
If Starmer fails on the economy, immigration or net zero then @HYUFD predictions may well come true with a right opposition, and worse, Trump could be POTUS
A wholly unedifying future may well be in front of us and for those of us who say a plague on all your houses, we just despair and long for the end to division from wherever it comes
I'm doubtful as to its premise but I suspect there's a lot of people who think they are underachieving and being economically 'oppressed'.
It is the same here. Unemployed and under-employed people are finding it very hard to get jobs, or even get responses from the companies they apply to.
There are currently 932k vacancies in the UK, down on the 1.3m in 2022 but still are extremely high number. Our economy is struggling with the supply of labour, not the demand. This is what is driving net immigration.
Yes but if employers want five years experience with ACME chainsaws, that does not help unemployed people with only four years or none. Elsewhere we have a shortage of dentists but that's no use to people signing on every fortnight.
I agree with Leon, though, that this site is experiencing a marked fall-off in quality.
Like Britain itself, this board feels enervated and exhausted.
Interesting parallel. Probably for the same reason - the endless riot of defensive right wing bullshit poured out on any topic, ad nauseam, by the political/media complex.
Even the populist right seems oddly half-hearted, more a form of cosplay than borne of real conviction.
They've been cut-and-pasting American populism, which doesn't work in the UK.
He does. @HYUFD has also changed his style considerably in my view. I used to get into big rows with him. That hasn't happened now for many, many years now and we have very pleasant debates and I like a lot of his posts. I decided to deliberately avoid getting into confrontations with him, but actually I think the greater reason it doesn't happen now is down to him. His style has mellowed considerably and consequently he is not baited into making more extreme posts by other PB members any more. He is a pleasure to debate with. I might avoid discussing grammar schools with him though just in case.
HYUFD is one of the finest posters here. Hear hear
I note that HYUFD has 'liked' this post. I'm not sure that's good form.
Why not? A sort of thank you for saying it in my view rather than the normal agreeing with the post.
I don't know about HYUFD but when I like a post it means I like it, I agree with it, or I don't but it is an interesting point, or thanks for the information, to express support for someone's struggles, or to acknowledge a reply to my post, or to say look, I've read your post, you're a flipping moron but I can't be bothered to argue right now.
I'm doubtful as to its premise but I suspect there's a lot of people who think they are underachieving and being economically 'oppressed'.
14m more Americans have jobs. 353k more Americans got jobs in January alone. That is a bizarre headline.
Like us, the increase in employment is having a disappointingly modest effect of output, although the US figures are better than ours. It is also true that real wages are only up in recent months and are broadly flat over Biden's Presidency. I suspect he will have a much better tale to tell in November on current trends but it is probably true that a lot of Americans don't feel better off personally because they aren't. On the other hand the fact that a lot of the new jobs are at the bottom end of the wage scale is probably resulting in "middle America's" real wage growth being underestimated.
What Biden has done, largely through Buttigieg, is significantly increase infrastructure spending but that seems very likely to boost future output. I wish our government was as focused on essential infrastructure spending rather than tax cuts but even if they were now the failure to boost infrastructure investment over the period since the end of Covid will have very negative impacts on our productivity.
Comparing employment now to that in covid hit 2020 is a false equivalence. 2019 is a better comparison:
I agree with Leon, though, that this site is experiencing a marked fall-off in quality.
Like Britain itself, this board feels enervated and exhausted.
Interesting parallel. Probably for the same reason - the endless riot of defensive right wing bullshit poured out on any topic, ad nauseam, by the political/media complex.
I feel like posters have run out of ideas. And that seems to reflect the wider “debate” in the UK.
Brexit has turned out to be a hoax. Centrist dad-ism doesn’t seem to work either. A lot of what my generation or older assumed were eternal British values seem to have dissolved under various pressures. Even the populist right seems oddly half-hearted, more a form of cosplay than borne of real conviction.
While the hard left (who believe Israel uniquely evil) and the hard right (who believe Muslims uniquely threatening) are making a lot of noise, the polls show much of the populace lining up behind Keir Starmer's Labour party, which seems fairly close to centrist dad-ism.
I agree with Leon, though, that this site is experiencing a marked fall-off in quality.
Like Britain itself, this board feels enervated and exhausted.
Interesting parallel. Probably for the same reason - the endless riot of defensive right wing bullshit poured out on any topic, ad nauseam, by the political/media complex.
I feel like posters have run out of ideas. And that seems to reflect the wider “debate” in the UK.
Brexit has turned out to be a hoax. Centrist dad-ism doesn’t seem to work either. A lot of what my generation or older assumed were eternal British values seem to have dissolved under various pressures. Even the populist right seems oddly half-hearted, more a form of cosplay than borne of real conviction.
An absent friend saying much the same:
We failed. 16 years on, we are still no closer to returning to the great moderation. We’re broke as a country and have no infrastructure projects to show for it. The younger generation are eating avocado on toast in exorbitantly priced rented accommodation.
That’s on us, Generation X. That was our generation’s task and we failed.
And I wish he was wrong (I'm half a generation below, tops), but it's not easy to say how.
Thing is, we all sort of know what needs to be done- consume less, invest and build more, pay more tax- it's just that none of us want to do it. And we've had at least forty five years of putting off the fateful day until the only furniture we've not put on the fire is the chairs we're sitting on.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter if we have no more ideas to get out of this; arithmetic works and stuff costs what it costs and the Trusstaphrophe should be a warning of what happens if we continue to blag.
And eventually it will be good, it's just going to be a slog to get there.
Hats off to Steven Flynn, he gets to spike Labour again. Proof, I would warrant if it were needed, that the initial motion had nothing to do with the people of Gaza and everything to do with embarrassing Starmer. The notion about MPs safety must be less important to Steven Flynn than one-upmanship.
If you look at the Lee Anderson case, no one has asked him to elaborate on his remarks or provide evidence for them. Instead there is outrage and the insistence that he must be cancelled immediately and any delay or hesitation in doing so implicates and condemns those doing the delaying.
It is quite a good example of why the 'far right' are getting more and more popular - the left don't like to engage with their opponents, they try instead to get them and their ideas removed them from the discourse - so then over time this enormous monster starts building up.
This can be observed even when the remarks themselves are incredibly stupid and can be easily rebuked. To people who believe this stuff, the reaction from the left just affirms their worldview.
Leon had a bash at providing some evidence that the Islamists control Khan and London yesterday, it was pitiful stuff but he tried, bless. No-one bothering to pretend the Islamists control Starmer because it is patent nonsense.
Yeah, no, that didn’t happen, did it?
I never excused Anderson’s fatuous, clumsy remarks, which were as ill-advised as they were idiotic
What I did do was adduce ample, undisputed evidence that Khan has extensive associations, over many years, with decidedly questionable, Islamist types, from mad clerics to actual terrorists. And these associations are of many varieties, from choosing to defend them in court to pleading their case in parliament to writing forewords for books to being legal hombre at the Muslim Council of Britain (a body now virtually proscribed by HMG)
I pointed out that if a Tory London mayor had all these links with far right neo Nazis, the left would certainly not ignore it. And again I am correct
I was exposing hypocrisy more than I was exposing Khan. Because, the fact is, the London voters were shown all this evidence of Khan’s dubious friends in 2016, yet they nonetheless elected him mayor and did so again in 2020. That’s democracy, and I accept it. He will win again in 2024, again I will accept it
Are there examples of ‘lefty lawyers’ who became senior Labour politicians taking cases defending people accused of racist crimes where non white people were the victims?
I’m not saying there aren’t, just that we only hear if Sir Keir defending the Muslim group that’s just been proscribed, and Khan representing Farrakhan etc
I am deeply disturbed by the state of our politics, as are many others, with both main parties having islamaphobic and antisemitic problems, Sunak being unable to comprehensively reject Anderson's comments, and Starmer exerting pressure and compromising the Speaker to mask a rebellion in his party of upto 100 mps over Gaza
There is little, if any doubt, that Starmer will become PM later this year and the conservative party will be into opposition
Many say that this is a good thing but it rather depends if the conservative party can regain its one nation credentials, or more likely as @HYUFD predicts it will move right and merge with Reform, maybe with Farage, and on current polling that would see them in the 32-35% range in the polls
If Starmer fails on the economy, immigration or net zero then @HYUFD predictions may well come true with a right opposition, and worse, Trump could be POTUS
A wholly unedifying future may well be in front of us and for those of us who say a plague on all your houses, we just despair and long for the end to division from wherever it comes
Totally agree with this sentiment, I think the election after next will be a worrying one for this country,
I am deeply disturbed by the state of our politics, as are many others, with both main parties having islamaphobic and antisemitic problems, Sunak being unable to comprehensively reject Anderson's comments, and Starmer exerting pressure and compromising the Speaker to mask a rebellion in his party of upto 100 mps over Gaza
There is little, if any doubt, that Starmer will become PM later this year and the conservative party will be into opposition
Many say that this is a good thing but it rather depends if the conservative party can regain its one nation credentials, or more likely as @HYUFD predicts it will move right and merge with Reform, maybe with Farage, and on current polling that would see them in the 32-35% range in the polls
If Starmer fails on the economy, immigration or net zero then @HYUFD predictions may well come true with a right opposition, and worse, Trump could be POTUS
A wholly unedifying future may well be in front of us and for those of us who say a plague on all your houses, we just despair and long for the end to division from wherever it comes
Totally agree with this sentiment, I think the election after next will be a worrying one for this country,
I had similar thoughts. We've endured Boris vs Corbyn though. This time it'll be better.
If you look at the Lee Anderson case, no one has asked him to elaborate on his remarks or provide evidence for them. Instead there is outrage and the insistence that he must be cancelled immediately and any delay or hesitation in doing so implicates and condemns those doing the delaying.
It is quite a good example of why the 'far right' are getting more and more popular - the left don't like to engage with their opponents, they try instead to get them and their ideas removed them from the discourse - so then over time this enormous monster starts building up.
This can be observed even when the remarks themselves are incredibly stupid and can be easily rebuked. To people who believe this stuff, the reaction from the left just affirms their worldview.
Leon had a bash at providing some evidence that the Islamists control Khan and London yesterday, it was pitiful stuff but he tried, bless. No-one bothering to pretend the Islamists control Starmer because it is patent nonsense.
Yeah, no, that didn’t happen, did it?
I never excused Anderson’s fatuous, clumsy remarks, which were as ill-advised as they were idiotic
What I did do was adduce ample, undisputed evidence that Khan has extensive associations, over many years, with decidedly questionable, Islamist types, from mad clerics to actual terrorists. And these associations are of many varieties, from choosing to defend them in court to pleading their case in parliament to writing forewords for books to being legal hombre at the Muslim Council of Britain (a body now virtually proscribed by HMG)
I pointed out that if a Tory London mayor had all these links with far right neo Nazis, the left would certainly not ignore it. And again I am correct
I was exposing hypocrisy more than I was exposing Khan. Because, the fact is, the London voters were shown all this evidence of Khan’s dubious friends in 2016, yet they nonetheless elected him mayor and did so again in 2020. That’s democracy, and I accept it. He will win again in 2024, again I will accept it
Are there examples of ‘lefty lawyers’ who became senior Labour politicians taking cases defending people accused of racist crimes where non white people were the victims?
I’m not saying there aren’t, just that we only hear if Sir Keir defending the Muslim group that’s just been proscribed, and Khan representing Farrakhan etc
Khan is a Solicitor and had a choice, Starmer is a Barrister and would have been allocated the bad guys on the taxi rank basis.
I have just seen the front page of the Daily Mail and whilst I do not agree with Angela Rayner politically, their attempt to smear her over the sale of her home is a complete non story
Listening to Andy Burnham suggesting the whip system should be discontinued is an interesting idea
The fascinating thing about the Heil's story isn't the story, its the rationale behind the story.
This isn't a scoop, a big expose which will drive the headlines. Its available information which having picked away at it they have decided to package and weaponise.
Well I say weaponise. "Weaponise" is more accurate. Their side is going to lose the election. Badly. Their leading strategy over the last few years has been to weaponise stupidity and ignorance, and with great success.
It must be very confusing for them to find that no matter how stupid the story, no matter how elegantly they package it to feed into the ignorance of readers, nobody is falling for it any more. Rayner is a Hypocrite! Why aren't people flocking to vote Conservative?
Sadly for the landed money who own right wing clickbait media outlets, their reach is now insignificant. I expect we will see an ever-increasing number of embarrassing (for them) "stories" put out in increasingly shrill tones of desperation, as the threat to their owner's bank balance gets bigger and bigger as that ELE election defeat gets closer and closer.
I think that saying council house sales are bad policy but people are entitled to do what they can for their families under current rules will be seen as normal by most people - like Healey saying he wanted short waiting lists for everyone, but when they were long he'd pay for his wife to go private if it prevented her being in pain.
However it does show the hypocrisy of politician's, they have more faces than the town clock and few principles. They talk big about what they would do but if they can make a quick buck then they are right in there. The Labour poundshop grifters are just cheaper versions of the Tories.
In what way has she been hypocritical?
She hasn’t been.
What she has done is benefit from a policy that she has said she doesn’t think is a good idea. But that’s not hypocrisy
If you look at the Lee Anderson case, no one has asked him to elaborate on his remarks or provide evidence for them. Instead there is outrage and the insistence that he must be cancelled immediately and any delay or hesitation in doing so implicates and condemns those doing the delaying.
It is quite a good example of why the 'far right' are getting more and more popular - the left don't like to engage with their opponents, they try instead to get them and their ideas removed them from the discourse - so then over time this enormous monster starts building up.
This can be observed even when the remarks themselves are incredibly stupid and can be easily rebuked. To people who believe this stuff, the reaction from the left just affirms their worldview.
Leon had a bash at providing some evidence that the Islamists control Khan and London yesterday, it was pitiful stuff but he tried, bless. No-one bothering to pretend the Islamists control Starmer because it is patent nonsense.
Yeah, no, that didn’t happen, did it?
I never excused Anderson’s fatuous, clumsy remarks, which were as ill-advised as they were idiotic
What I did do was adduce ample, undisputed evidence that Khan has extensive associations, over many years, with decidedly questionable, Islamist types, from mad clerics to actual terrorists. And these associations are of many varieties, from choosing to defend them in court to pleading their case in parliament to writing forewords for books to being legal hombre at the Muslim Council of Britain (a body now virtually proscribed by HMG)
I pointed out that if a Tory London mayor had all these links with far right neo Nazis, the left would certainly not ignore it. And again I am correct
I was exposing hypocrisy more than I was exposing Khan. Because, the fact is, the London voters were shown all this evidence of Khan’s dubious friends in 2016, yet they nonetheless elected him mayor and did so again in 2020. That’s democracy, and I accept it. He will win again in 2024, again I will accept it
Are there examples of ‘lefty lawyers’ who became senior Labour politicians taking cases defending people accused of racist crimes where non white people were the victims?
I’m not saying there aren’t, just that we only hear if Sir Keir defending the Muslim group that’s just been proscribed, and Khan representing Farrakhan etc
Khan is a Solicitor and had a choice, Starmer is a Barrister and would have been allocated the bad guys on the taxi rank basis.
Apparently, as the case was in Germany, Sir Keir wasn’t compelled to defend them, but chose to
If you look at the Lee Anderson case, no one has asked him to elaborate on his remarks or provide evidence for them. Instead there is outrage and the insistence that he must be cancelled immediately and any delay or hesitation in doing so implicates and condemns those doing the delaying.
It is quite a good example of why the 'far right' are getting more and more popular - the left don't like to engage with their opponents, they try instead to get them and their ideas removed them from the discourse - so then over time this enormous monster starts building up.
This can be observed even when the remarks themselves are incredibly stupid and can be easily rebuked. To people who believe this stuff, the reaction from the left just affirms their worldview.
Leon had a bash at providing some evidence that the Islamists control Khan and London yesterday, it was pitiful stuff but he tried, bless. No-one bothering to pretend the Islamists control Starmer because it is patent nonsense.
Yeah, no, that didn’t happen, did it?
I never excused Anderson’s fatuous, clumsy remarks, which were as ill-advised as they were idiotic
What I did do was adduce ample, undisputed evidence that Khan has extensive associations, over many years, with decidedly questionable, Islamist types, from mad clerics to actual terrorists. And these associations are of many varieties, from choosing to defend them in court to pleading their case in parliament to writing forewords for books to being legal hombre at the Muslim Council of Britain (a body now virtually proscribed by HMG)
I pointed out that if a Tory London mayor had all these links with far right neo Nazis, the left would certainly not ignore it. And again I am correct
I was exposing hypocrisy more than I was exposing Khan. Because, the fact is, the London voters were shown all this evidence of Khan’s dubious friends in 2016, yet they nonetheless elected him mayor and did so again in 2020. That’s democracy, and I accept it. He will win again in 2024, again I will accept it
Are there examples of ‘lefty lawyers’ who became senior Labour politicians taking cases defending people accused of racist crimes where non white people were the victims?
I’m not saying there aren’t, just that we only hear if Sir Keir defending the Muslim group that’s just been proscribed, and Khan representing Farrakhan etc
The following from Wikipedia show various decisions that would warm the cockles of the right-winger's heart:
"Starmer upheld the decision not to prosecute the police officers who had killed Jean Charles de Menezes in a UK High Court appeal lodged by the family." Many at the time suggested the police error was exacerbated by racism.
"In July 2010, Starmer announced the decision not to prosecute the police officer Simon Harwood in relation to the death of Ian Tomlinson[.]" More pro-police action.
"Starmer announced that Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Chris Huhne, and his former wife, Vicky Pryce, would be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice in R v Huhne." Starmer prosecuting a liberal.
"Starmer published a plan for the criminal justice system to better handle cases of female genital mutilation; at the time, the offence had never been successfully prosecuted."
If you look at the Lee Anderson case, no one has asked him to elaborate on his remarks or provide evidence for them. Instead there is outrage and the insistence that he must be cancelled immediately and any delay or hesitation in doing so implicates and condemns those doing the delaying.
It is quite a good example of why the 'far right' are getting more and more popular - the left don't like to engage with their opponents, they try instead to get them and their ideas removed them from the discourse - so then over time this enormous monster starts building up.
This can be observed even when the remarks themselves are incredibly stupid and can be easily rebuked. To people who believe this stuff, the reaction from the left just affirms their worldview.
Leon had a bash at providing some evidence that the Islamists control Khan and London yesterday, it was pitiful stuff but he tried, bless. No-one bothering to pretend the Islamists control Starmer because it is patent nonsense.
Yeah, no, that didn’t happen, did it?
I never excused Anderson’s fatuous, clumsy remarks, which were as ill-advised as they were idiotic
What I did do was adduce ample, undisputed evidence that Khan has extensive associations, over many years, with decidedly questionable, Islamist types, from mad clerics to actual terrorists. And these associations are of many varieties, from choosing to defend them in court to pleading their case in parliament to writing forewords for books to being legal hombre at the Muslim Council of Britain (a body now virtually proscribed by HMG)
I pointed out that if a Tory London mayor had all these links with far right neo Nazis, the left would certainly not ignore it. And again I am correct
I was exposing hypocrisy more than I was exposing Khan. Because, the fact is, the London voters were shown all this evidence of Khan’s dubious friends in 2016, yet they nonetheless elected him mayor and did so again in 2020. That’s democracy, and I accept it. He will win again in 2024, again I will accept it
Are there examples of ‘lefty lawyers’ who became senior Labour politicians taking cases defending people accused of racist crimes where non white people were the victims?
I’m not saying there aren’t, just that we only hear if Sir Keir defending the Muslim group that’s just been proscribed, and Khan representing Farrakhan etc
Khan is a Solicitor and had a choice, Starmer is a Barrister and would have been allocated the bad guys on the taxi rank basis.
Apparently, as the case was in Germany, Sir Keir wasn’t compelled to defend them, but chose to
If that is true you have me banged to rights. Proscribe the Labour Party.
I agree with Leon, though, that this site is experiencing a marked fall-off in quality.
Like Britain itself, this board feels enervated and exhausted.
Interesting parallel. Probably for the same reason - the endless riot of defensive right wing bullshit poured out on any topic, ad nauseam, by the political/media complex.
I feel like posters have run out of ideas. And that seems to reflect the wider “debate” in the UK.
Brexit has turned out to be a hoax. Centrist dad-ism doesn’t seem to work either. A lot of what my generation or older assumed were eternal British values seem to have dissolved under various pressures. Even the populist right seems oddly half-hearted, more a form of cosplay than borne of real conviction.
An absent friend saying much the same:
We failed. 16 years on, we are still no closer to returning to the great moderation. We’re broke as a country and have no infrastructure projects to show for it. The younger generation are eating avocado on toast in exorbitantly priced rented accommodation.
That’s on us, Generation X. That was our generation’s task and we failed.
And I wish he was wrong (I'm half a generation below, tops), but it's not easy to say how.
Thing is, we all sort of know what needs to be done- consume less, invest and build more, pay more tax- it's just that none of us want to do it. And we've had at least forty five years of putting off the fateful day until the only furniture we've not put on the fire is the chairs we're sitting on.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter if we have no more ideas to get out of this; arithmetic works and stuff costs what it costs and the Trusstaphrophe should be a warning of what happens if we continue to blag.
And eventually it will be good, it's just going to be a slog to get there.
More than a slog.
The spendthrift don't want to stop - if they did so it would be an acceptance of blame.
The frugal want to spend the money they've saved - frugality fatigue sets in eventually.
I agree with Leon, though, that this site is experiencing a marked fall-off in quality.
Like Britain itself, this board feels enervated and exhausted.
Interesting parallel. Probably for the same reason - the endless riot of defensive right wing bullshit poured out on any topic, ad nauseam, by the political/media complex.
I feel like posters have run out of ideas. And that seems to reflect the wider “debate” in the UK.
Brexit has turned out to be a hoax. Centrist dad-ism doesn’t seem to work either. A lot of what my generation or older assumed were eternal British values seem to have dissolved under various pressures. Even the populist right seems oddly half-hearted, more a form of cosplay than borne of real conviction.
Perhaps that's why some people seem to yearn for a kind of fakey international leftist solidarity, or cringy absement to right wing american self-victimisation.
It's more colourful and interesting to people, even though both are bullshit. People can bemoan politics (and political commentary) is exhausted and more dull, but it is what it is, inventing phony shit and whinging about it does nothing.
He does. @HYUFD has also changed his style considerably in my view. I used to get into big rows with him. That hasn't happened now for many, many years now and we have very pleasant debates and I like a lot of his posts. I decided to deliberately avoid getting into confrontations with him, but actually I think the greater reason it doesn't happen now is down to him. His style has mellowed considerably and consequently he is not baited into making more extreme posts by other PB members any more. He is a pleasure to debate with. I might avoid discussing grammar schools with him though just in case.
HYUFD is one of the finest posters here. Hear hear
I note that HYUFD has 'liked' this post. I'm not sure that's good form.
Why not? A sort of thank you for saying it in my view rather than the normal agreeing with the post.
I don't know about HYUFD but when I like a post it means I like it, I agree with it, or I don't but it is an interesting point, or thanks for the information, to express support for someone's struggles, or to acknowledge a reply to my post, or to say look, I've read your post, you're a flipping moron but I can't be bothered to argue right now.
I do all of those except the last which made me laugh, but also if someone said something nice about me I would also like I think, but would probably post a thank you as well.
I agree with Leon, though, that this site is experiencing a marked fall-off in quality.
Like Britain itself, this board feels enervated and exhausted.
Interesting parallel. Probably for the same reason - the endless riot of defensive right wing bullshit poured out on any topic, ad nauseam, by the political/media complex.
I feel like posters have run out of ideas. And that seems to reflect the wider “debate” in the UK.
Brexit has turned out to be a hoax. Centrist dad-ism doesn’t seem to work either. A lot of what my generation or older assumed were eternal British values seem to have dissolved under various pressures. Even the populist right seems oddly half-hearted, more a form of cosplay than borne of real conviction.
While the hard left (who believe Israel uniquely evil) and the hard right (who believe Muslims uniquely threatening) are making a lot of noise, the polls show much of the populace lining up behind Keir Starmer's Labour party, which seems fairly close to centrist dad-ism.
I agree with Leon, though, that this site is experiencing a marked fall-off in quality.
Like Britain itself, this board feels enervated and exhausted.
Interesting parallel. Probably for the same reason - the endless riot of defensive right wing bullshit poured out on any topic, ad nauseam, by the political/media complex.
I feel like posters have run out of ideas. And that seems to reflect the wider “debate” in the UK.
Brexit has turned out to be a hoax. Centrist dad-ism doesn’t seem to work either. A lot of what my generation or older assumed were eternal British values seem to have dissolved under various pressures. Even the populist right seems oddly half-hearted, more a form of cosplay than borne of real conviction.
An absent friend saying much the same:
We failed. 16 years on, we are still no closer to returning to the great moderation. We’re broke as a country and have no infrastructure projects to show for it. The younger generation are eating avocado on toast in exorbitantly priced rented accommodation.
That’s on us, Generation X. That was our generation’s task and we failed.
And I wish he was wrong (I'm half a generation below, tops), but it's not easy to say how.
Thing is, we all sort of know what needs to be done- consume less, invest and build more, pay more tax- it's just that none of us want to do it. And we've had at least forty five years of putting off the fateful day until the only furniture we've not put on the fire is the chairs we're sitting on.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter if we have no more ideas to get out of this; arithmetic works and stuff costs what it costs and the Trusstaphrophe should be a warning of what happens if we continue to blag.
And eventually it will be good, it's just going to be a slog to get there.
I don’t think it’s about consuming less, per se. Articulated thus, no wonder we’ve lost hope. And I’m not sure Gen X has “failed”.
OK, my daughter has offered to help me re-organise the library which seems like a pleasant way to while away the morning. I’m off.
Khan is a Solicitor and had a choice, Starmer is a Barrister and would have been allocated the bad guys on the taxi rank basis.
Not that it matters, either way. If one is a criminal defence solicitor or barrister, one winds up defending obnoxious, shitty, people, because that is what the job entails.
If you look at the Lee Anderson case, no one has asked him to elaborate on his remarks or provide evidence for them. Instead there is outrage and the insistence that he must be cancelled immediately and any delay or hesitation in doing so implicates and condemns those doing the delaying.
It is quite a good example of why the 'far right' are getting more and more popular - the left don't like to engage with their opponents, they try instead to get them and their ideas removed them from the discourse - so then over time this enormous monster starts building up.
This can be observed even when the remarks themselves are incredibly stupid and can be easily rebuked. To people who believe this stuff, the reaction from the left just affirms their worldview.
Leon had a bash at providing some evidence that the Islamists control Khan and London yesterday, it was pitiful stuff but he tried, bless. No-one bothering to pretend the Islamists control Starmer because it is patent nonsense.
Yeah, no, that didn’t happen, did it?
I never excused Anderson’s fatuous, clumsy remarks, which were as ill-advised as they were idiotic
What I did do was adduce ample, undisputed evidence that Khan has extensive associations, over many years, with decidedly questionable, Islamist types, from mad clerics to actual terrorists. And these associations are of many varieties, from choosing to defend them in court to pleading their case in parliament to writing forewords for books to being legal hombre at the Muslim Council of Britain (a body now virtually proscribed by HMG)
I pointed out that if a Tory London mayor had all these links with far right neo Nazis, the left would certainly not ignore it. And again I am correct
I was exposing hypocrisy more than I was exposing Khan. Because, the fact is, the London voters were shown all this evidence of Khan’s dubious friends in 2016, yet they nonetheless elected him mayor and did so again in 2020. That’s democracy, and I accept it. He will win again in 2024, again I will accept it
Are there examples of ‘lefty lawyers’ who became senior Labour politicians taking cases defending people accused of racist crimes where non white people were the victims?
I’m not saying there aren’t, just that we only hear if Sir Keir defending the Muslim group that’s just been proscribed, and Khan representing Farrakhan etc
The following from Wikipedia show various decisions that would warm the cockles of the right-winger's heart:
"Starmer upheld the decision not to prosecute the police officers who had killed Jean Charles de Menezes in a UK High Court appeal lodged by the family." Many at the time suggested the police error was exacerbated by racism.
"In July 2010, Starmer announced the decision not to prosecute the police officer Simon Harwood in relation to the death of Ian Tomlinson[.]" More pro-police action.
"Starmer announced that Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Chris Huhne, and his former wife, Vicky Pryce, would be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice in R v Huhne." Starmer prosecuting a liberal.
"Starmer published a plan for the criminal justice system to better handle cases of female genital mutilation; at the time, the offence had never been successfully prosecuted."
That’s not an answer to the question I asked though
I have just seen the front page of the Daily Mail and whilst I do not agree with Angela Rayner politically, their attempt to smear her over the sale of her home is a complete non story
Listening to Andy Burnham suggesting the whip system should be discontinued is an interesting idea
The fascinating thing about the Heil's story isn't the story, its the rationale behind the story.
This isn't a scoop, a big expose which will drive the headlines. Its available information which having picked away at it they have decided to package and weaponise.
Well I say weaponise. "Weaponise" is more accurate. Their side is going to lose the election. Badly. Their leading strategy over the last few years has been to weaponise stupidity and ignorance, and with great success.
It must be very confusing for them to find that no matter how stupid the story, no matter how elegantly they package it to feed into the ignorance of readers, nobody is falling for it any more. Rayner is a Hypocrite! Why aren't people flocking to vote Conservative?
Sadly for the landed money who own right wing clickbait media outlets, their reach is now insignificant. I expect we will see an ever-increasing number of embarrassing (for them) "stories" put out in increasingly shrill tones of desperation, as the threat to their owner's bank balance gets bigger and bigger as that ELE election defeat gets closer and closer.
I think that saying council house sales are bad policy but people are entitled to do what they can for their families under current rules will be seen as normal by most people - like Healey saying he wanted short waiting lists for everyone, but when they were long he'd pay for his wife to go private if it prevented her being in pain.
However it does show the hypocrisy of politician's, they have more faces than the town clock and few principles. They talk big about what they would do but if they can make a quick buck then they are right in there. The Labour poundshop grifters are just cheaper versions of the Tories.
In what way has she been hypocritical?
She hasn’t been.
What she has done is benefit from a policy that she has said she doesn’t think is a good idea. But that’s not hypocrisy
It's worth a note that when the Tories got back into power they increased the discount to 60% from the 25% she received.
The flame-haired heroine (!) is not the hypocrite here.
Hats off to Steven Flynn, he gets to spike Labour again. Proof, I would warrant if it were needed, that the initial motion had nothing to do with the people of Gaza and everything to do with embarrassing Starmer. The notion about MPs safety must be less important to Steven Flynn than one-upmanship.
Could he translate this defence announcement into English for me?
The new contract will provide a renewal of subject matter expert (SME) support across all aspects of the combat system acquisition and integration in Type 26 and Type 31 new build Frigate ship programmes. Building on the signing of the first joint Type 26 & Type 31 contract with Aurora EDP in early 2020, the Warship Combat System Support Service (WC3S) has been working alongside these new build Frigate ship programmes since 2014. The announcement comes as the ship build programmes progress through manufacture phases, with Royal Navy (RN) entry into service planned from 2026 onwards.
The provision of this SME expertise includes sourcing combat systems related Government Furnished Information (GFI) and supporting dockyard delivery of combat systems Government Furnished Equipment (GFE). Working closely with DE&S to ensure equipment meets current environmental, legal and shock specifications, Aurora EDP will also be responsible for liaising and managing the delivery of the GFE into Portsdown Technology Park. This will enable the de-risking of integration of combat systems equipment and in-service capability growth.
The service delivers recognised benefits to the customer, including flexibility to allow rapid re-prioritisation of outputs across the acquisition portfolio and significantly reduced cost through opportunity mapping across the two complex warship programmes. Furthermore, this enterprise approach sustains a dedicated allocation of scarce SQEP to manage delivery risk dynamically across outputs, as the platforms approach the technical hurdles of acceptance and service entry.
Capt Shaun Riordan RN, T26 Combat Systems Team Leader and WC3S Phase 3 lead said:
“The success of the programme to date is predicated on promoting the best outcome focussed behaviours. This is not a transactional programme; NSDG very much considers the Warship Combat System Support Service (WC3S) as part of the core MOD team critical to delivering these capable platforms into service with the Royal Navy. It is a significant achievement for DE&S to secure these QinetiQ-led combat systems expertise forged from the across the Enterprise for a further 4 years”.
I have just seen the front page of the Daily Mail and whilst I do not agree with Angela Rayner politically, their attempt to smear her over the sale of her home is a complete non story
Listening to Andy Burnham suggesting the whip system should be discontinued is an interesting idea
The fascinating thing about the Heil's story isn't the story, its the rationale behind the story.
This isn't a scoop, a big expose which will drive the headlines. Its available information which having picked away at it they have decided to package and weaponise.
Well I say weaponise. "Weaponise" is more accurate. Their side is going to lose the election. Badly. Their leading strategy over the last few years has been to weaponise stupidity and ignorance, and with great success.
It must be very confusing for them to find that no matter how stupid the story, no matter how elegantly they package it to feed into the ignorance of readers, nobody is falling for it any more. Rayner is a Hypocrite! Why aren't people flocking to vote Conservative?
Sadly for the landed money who own right wing clickbait media outlets, their reach is now insignificant. I expect we will see an ever-increasing number of embarrassing (for them) "stories" put out in increasingly shrill tones of desperation, as the threat to their owner's bank balance gets bigger and bigger as that ELE election defeat gets closer and closer.
I think that saying council house sales are bad policy but people are entitled to do what they can for their families under current rules will be seen as normal by most people - like Healey saying he wanted short waiting lists for everyone, but when they were long he'd pay for his wife to go private if it prevented her being in pain.
However it does show the hypocrisy of politician's, they have more faces than the town clock and few principles. They talk big about what they would do but if they can make a quick buck then they are right in there. The Labour poundshop grifters are just cheaper versions of the Tories.
In what way has she been hypocritical?
She hasn’t been.
What she has done is benefit from a policy that she has said she doesn’t think is a good idea. But that’s not hypocrisy
She supports the Right to Buy as far as I understand her view on it
Despite all this apparently "overwhelming" evidence that Khan is an Islamist, London hasn't really changed at all since he became Mayor. This idea it's now being overrun by Muslims is really for the birds.
Khan is a Solicitor and had a choice, Starmer is a Barrister and would have been allocated the bad guys on the taxi rank basis.
Not that it matters, either way. If one is a criminal defence solicitor or barrister, one winds up defending obnoxious, shitty, people, because that is what the job entails.
Hats off to Steven Flynn, he gets to spike Labour again. Proof, I would warrant if it were needed, that the initial motion had nothing to do with the people of Gaza and everything to do with embarrassing Starmer. The notion about MPs safety must be less important to Steven Flynn than one-upmanship.
You need to view this through the prism of Scottish politics and the real prospect of the SNP losing upto half their seats to labour..
Flynn and the SNP will take every opportunity to attack and embarrass Starmer right upto the election and he no doubt sees it, as I have said many times before, the SNP v English Labour and Westminster
The new Starmer biography looks fascinating. I was struck by this paragraph in the Rawnsley review:
The household bills were not always paid, the telephone was cut off and the family home became increasingly shabby. Katy remembers her brother kicking a football through the back window. “We never fixed the glass because that cost money. Dad just boarded it up.”
I think he'll make a surprisingly good PM, as long as he keeps the left in check.
Hats off to Steven Flynn, he gets to spike Labour again. Proof, I would warrant if it were needed, that the initial motion had nothing to do with the people of Gaza and everything to do with embarrassing Starmer. The notion about MPs safety must be less important to Steven Flynn than one-upmanship.
You need to view this through the prism of Scottish politics and the real prospect of the SNP losing upto half their seats to labour..
Flynn and the SNP will take every opportunity to attack and embarrass Starmer right upto the election and he no doubt sees it, as I have said many times before, the SNP v English Labour and Westminster
It's really annoyed to see the usual bash Britain brigade on the progressive left bemoan the self indulgence of Westminster thinking itself important over the Gaza issue when what it came down to was the SNP trying to embarrass Labour for their own reasons and the fears held by MPs over the small but very vocal number of people for whom the issue is huge.
Another mess Starmer and co will have to clear up: higher education.
David Maguire is vice-chancellor at the University of East Anglia:
"All the vice-chancellors I talk to (and it is quite a few) are nervous and some are forecasting real challenges in avoiding breaches of banking covenants and making payroll."
"In England, fees for domestic students have been capped at £9,250 since 2017 and are now worth only around £6,000 in 2012-13 prices. This means that funding per student is at its lowest level in more than 25 years."
That’s been obvious for the last 2/3 years and I’ve been talking about it on here for most of that time. The fact the vice- chancellors are only screaming now is because it’s only now finally started to dawn on them.
As for whether a single failure will trigger a domino effect - I expect that will be the case. No one wants to be first but after the first university goes and it becomes obvious what to look for a lot will follow very, very quickly
How a town like Lancaster picks up the pieces will be interesting to watch.
And it has a knock-on effect through the economy as the proportion of 18-21yos who moved to "education and training" from "unemployment" (in the 1990s) go back to "unemployment" (in the 2030s) if the university places aren't there any more.
True but at least they won’t have been sold a dream / pack of lies and won’t be £50,000+ in debt losing 9% of their income every month
Surely returning Higher Education to the elite 5% again suits the elite 5% running the current Government.
Of all the disappointing themes we have seen over the last 15 years the notion that only the wealthy are entitled to a top education is profoundly depressing, and it seems about to come in through the back door.
What’s your definition of a top education - the education (available at low cost online from a lot of places nowadays) or the certificate at the end of it.
It’s that certificate that is expensive
I believe the experience, the networking opportunities as well as the certificate are worth considering. I like the idea of degree apprenticeships, what I don't like are the tick box trade NVQs that those on the right want to foist on the hoi-poloi instead of a university experience.
Bring back grammar schools, restrict university degress to genuine academic subjects, and let the state fully fund it for domestic students.
Bring back grammar schools and bugger any late developer or someone who excels in some subjects and sucks in others.
People like that often benefit from the motivation of having a point to prove.
Bollocks. I am one of them, dumped in the Secondary school system. I was lucky to escape and get to the grammar school to do my A levels and then a maths degree in early 70s at one of the best Unis, but I saw so many thrown on the scrap heap who by the time they were 15 were more academic than the grammar school kids. I was fast streamed in the grammar school when I got there in the 6th form (Taking A levels after 1 year) but was in a stream expected to leave with no qualifications when I took my 11 plus.
Nobody who wants the grammar schools back ever says 'Bring back the secondary moderns' do they?
Because you don't have to bring back secondary moderns in order to have grammar schools and you don't need a rigid 11-plus system. Grammar schools could exist alongside comprehenisves with everyone having the opportunity to sit the same exams.
Germany manages to have separation between different types of schools without people being 'thrown on the scrap heap'.
Arguably Britain has a shortage of practical engineering types, and not bookish nerds. So perhaps the first step would be to establish some prestigious technical colleges, and then run some exacting aptitude tests for entry into the technical colleges, with the clumsy sods who fail those tests left to the scrapheap of academic learning leading to A-levels, etc.
Bright boys and girls in blue overalls and yellow helmets, up to their shoulder in nuclear submarines. Men in brown coats who can do things with a spanner. Grammar school types with pipes and slide-rules who can align an artillery piece to hit a sixpence 20miles away. The missing third of UK society, and the one we most need.
Yes I've always thought a sign we'll be on our way to Making Britain Great Again is when somebody's son or daughter announces they've got a place on Goldman's graduate scheme and the parents have to hide their disappointment, thinking but not saying, 'ah well, I guess not everbody can work in light manufacturing or pharmaceuticals'.
It is understandable -- and ironic -- that Biden gets little credit for low unemployment in the US, and declining inflation. "Mainstream" journalists (including Krugman) have been so negative on the US for so long that they continue to be so, even when the US economy improves.
At the same time, journalists like Krugman avoid unpleasant questions, like the way housing costs have soared in many areas, especially where leftists have controlled policies for years. These increases have hit young families especially hard. You might not think the economy is great if, for example, you earn 20 dollars an hour (before taxes) -- and the median house in your city sells for 750K.
(Also, Krugman and company avoid serious US problems, like those described in Eberstadt's "Men Without Work". For those unfamiliar with the book, here is brief summary: "In early 2022, more than 7 million prime-age men were neither working nor looking for work -- more than 11 percent of the prime-age manpower pool and more than three times the fraction in 1965." (p. 11, Post-Pandemic Edition)
Hats off to Steven Flynn, he gets to spike Labour again. Proof, I would warrant if it were needed, that the initial motion had nothing to do with the people of Gaza and everything to do with embarrassing Starmer. The notion about MPs safety must be less important to Steven Flynn than one-upmanship.
You need to view this through the prism of Scottish politics and the real prospect of the SNP losing upto half their seats to labour..
Flynn and the SNP will take every opportunity to attack and embarrass Starmer right upto the election and he no doubt sees it, as I have said many times before, the SNP v English Labour and Westminster
Another mess Starmer and co will have to clear up: higher education.
David Maguire is vice-chancellor at the University of East Anglia:
"All the vice-chancellors I talk to (and it is quite a few) are nervous and some are forecasting real challenges in avoiding breaches of banking covenants and making payroll."
"In England, fees for domestic students have been capped at £9,250 since 2017 and are now worth only around £6,000 in 2012-13 prices. This means that funding per student is at its lowest level in more than 25 years."
That’s been obvious for the last 2/3 years and I’ve been talking about it on here for most of that time. The fact the vice- chancellors are only screaming now is because it’s only now finally started to dawn on them.
As for whether a single failure will trigger a domino effect - I expect that will be the case. No one wants to be first but after the first university goes and it becomes obvious what to look for a lot will follow very, very quickly
How a town like Lancaster picks up the pieces will be interesting to watch.
And it has a knock-on effect through the economy as the proportion of 18-21yos who moved to "education and training" from "unemployment" (in the 1990s) go back to "unemployment" (in the 2030s) if the university places aren't there any more.
True but at least they won’t have been sold a dream / pack of lies and won’t be £50,000+ in debt losing 9% of their income every month
Surely returning Higher Education to the elite 5% again suits the elite 5% running the current Government.
Of all the disappointing themes we have seen over the last 15 years the notion that only the wealthy are entitled to a top education is profoundly depressing, and it seems about to come in through the back door.
What’s your definition of a top education - the education (available at low cost online from a lot of places nowadays) or the certificate at the end of it.
It’s that certificate that is expensive
I believe the experience, the networking opportunities as well as the certificate are worth considering. I like the idea of degree apprenticeships, what I don't like are the tick box trade NVQs that those on the right want to foist on the hoi-poloi instead of a university experience.
Bring back grammar schools, restrict university degress to genuine academic subjects, and let the state fully fund it for domestic students.
Bring back grammar schools and bugger any late developer or someone who excels in some subjects and sucks in others.
People like that often benefit from the motivation of having a point to prove.
Bollocks. I am one of them, dumped in the Secondary school system. I was lucky to escape and get to the grammar school to do my A levels and then a maths degree in early 70s at one of the best Unis, but I saw so many thrown on the scrap heap who by the time they were 15 were more academic than the grammar school kids. I was fast streamed in the grammar school when I got there in the 6th form (Taking A levels after 1 year) but was in a stream expected to leave with no qualifications when I took my 11 plus.
Nobody who wants the grammar schools back ever says 'Bring back the secondary moderns' do they?
Because you don't have to bring back secondary moderns in order to have grammar schools and you don't need a rigid 11-plus system. Grammar schools could exist alongside comprehenisves with everyone having the opportunity to sit the same exams.
Germany manages to have separation between different types of schools without people being 'thrown on the scrap heap'.
Arguably Britain has a shortage of practical engineering types, and not bookish nerds. So perhaps the first step would be to establish some prestigious technical colleges, and then run some exacting aptitude tests for entry into the technical colleges, with the clumsy sods who fail those tests left to the scrapheap of academic learning leading to A-levels, etc.
Bright boys and girls in blue overalls and yellow helmets, up to their shoulder in nuclear submarines. Men in brown coats who can do things with a spanner. Grammar school types with pipes and slide-rules who can align an artillery piece to hit a sixpence 20miles away. The missing third of UK society, and the one we most need.
Yes I've always thought a sign we'll be on our way to Making Britain Great Again is when somebody's son or daughter announces they've got a place on Goldman's graduate scheme and the parents have to hide their disappointment, thinking but not saying, 'ah well, I guess not everbody can work in light manufacturing or pharmaceuticals'.
Monty Python's Flying Circus - "Working Class Playwright"
The new Starmer biography looks fascinating. I was struck by this paragraph in the Rawnsley review:
The household bills were not always paid, the telephone was cut off and the family home became increasingly shabby. Katy remembers her brother kicking a football through the back window. “We never fixed the glass because that cost money. Dad just boarded it up.”
I think he'll make a surprisingly good PM, as long as he keeps the left in check.
It’s worth reading the review. I was surprised by a lot of it. Tempted to buy the book.
Comments
But I’m also not entirely sure I want to know.
The worst and/or most extreme form tends to be pandered to as the only 'true' form.
The key thing was I was denied access to some subjects altogether as were kids in the Grammar school because we were all selected at 11. It is too early for that. When I went to the Secondary school I was in the 3rd class of 5 and this is after the brighter kids were creamed off for the Grammar school. So in the group expected to leave or take a couple of CSEs. However in the exams to select your subject I came top in every subject except English, Art and Metalwork/Woodwork. When I went to the Grammar school I was fast streamed with 4 other boys from a total of about 100. If I had been talented in Russian or English literature I would have been stuffed. Now I might have been extreme but there were many similar kids like me or others who peaked early and then struggled in the Grammar school.
I don't know whether there's some huge mismatch of skills to jobs, of what people want to do to what they can do to what they need to do.
Or whether the employment process has become too overly complicated.
Hopefully good employers will recognises this and reward loyal employees suitably.
The spin is that AI programming aids like Copilot and IBM's WatsonX will limit demand, and at the bottom end, a lot of self-employed web developers find their talents are no longer needed thanks to Wix or Squarespace and similar point-and-click web hosting platforms.
Hmm. Maybe we should ask AI to fix all the bugs in Imperial's Covid-modelling software!
It looks like a walkover on current polling, but that may well change. Everyone wants a competitive contest in parties and press.
Like us, the increase in employment is having a disappointingly modest effect of output, although the US figures are better than ours. It is also true that real wages are only up in recent months and are broadly flat over Biden's Presidency. I suspect he will have a much better tale to tell in November on current trends but it is probably true that a lot of Americans don't feel better off personally because they aren't. On the other hand the fact that a lot of the new jobs are at the bottom end of the wage scale is probably resulting in "middle America's" real wage growth being underestimated.
What Biden has done, largely through Buttigieg, is significantly increase infrastructure spending but that seems very likely to boost future output. I wish our government was as focused on essential infrastructure spending rather than tax cuts but even if they were now the failure to boost infrastructure investment over the period since the end of Covid will have very negative impacts on our productivity.
The death of the Tory party, the death of the SNP, nothing on the LD front. Perhaps even more dismal in the US. I like betting on politics because I win both money and the argument - I see few opportunities at the moment.
And that seems to reflect the wider “debate” in the UK.
Brexit has turned out to be a hoax. Centrist dad-ism doesn’t seem to work either. A lot of what my generation or older assumed were eternal British values seem to have dissolved under various pressures. Even the populist right seems oddly half-hearted, more a form of cosplay than borne of real conviction.
Thus I look back 70+ years to my experience of being one of a ‘record year’ of 11+ successes at my primary school and discovering that, once at the grammar school of my parents choice, most of the rest of the year were from three or four schools in the west of the borough, whereas those of us allowed in from the County, across the Borough boundary were a small minority.
Hence IF going to a grammar school were a matter of equality of opportunity I might be more sympathetic to the idea. However it certainly wasn’t where I grew up, and indeed by the time my children reached the time for the exam the discrimination was even greater.
However by then, 40+ years ago, there were decent comprehensive school in the County, and an excellent VIth Form college.
I am deeply disturbed by the state of our politics, as are many others, with both main parties having islamaphobic and antisemitic problems, Sunak being unable to comprehensively reject Anderson's comments, and Starmer exerting pressure and compromising the Speaker to mask a rebellion in his party of upto 100 mps over Gaza
There is little, if any doubt, that Starmer will become PM later this year and the conservative party will be into opposition
Many say that this is a good thing but it rather depends if the conservative party can regain its one nation credentials, or more likely as @HYUFD predicts it will move right and merge with Reform, maybe with Farage, and on current polling that would see them in the 32-35% range in the polls
If Starmer fails on the economy, immigration or net zero then @HYUFD predictions may well come true with a right opposition, and worse, Trump could be POTUS
A wholly unedifying future may well be in front of us and for those of us who say a plague on all your houses, we just despair and long for the end to division from wherever it comes
2019 157.53m employment, 3.68% unemployment
2024 161.89m employment, 3.85% unemployment
https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the-united-states/
And if you want to compare pre-covid with what Trump started with:
2016 151.44m employment, 4.88% unemployment.
Trump would have been able to claim great employment numbers (albeit the trend had begun in 2011) if it wasn't for covid.
We failed. 16 years on, we are still no closer to returning to the great moderation. We’re broke as a country and have no infrastructure projects to show for it. The younger generation are eating avocado on toast in exorbitantly priced rented accommodation.
That’s on us, Generation X. That was our generation’s task and we failed.
https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/memento-mori-b0fa180eb101
And I wish he was wrong (I'm half a generation below, tops), but it's not easy to say how.
Thing is, we all sort of know what needs to be done- consume less, invest and build more, pay more tax- it's just that none of us want to do it. And we've had at least forty five years of putting off the fateful day until the only furniture we've not put on the fire is the chairs we're sitting on.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter if we have no more ideas to get out of this; arithmetic works and stuff costs what it costs and the Trusstaphrophe should be a warning of what happens if we continue to blag.
And eventually it will be good, it's just going to be a slog to get there.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/25/snp-to-push-for-another-commons-vote-on-ceasefire-in-gaza
I’m not saying there aren’t, just that we only hear if Sir Keir defending the Muslim group that’s just been proscribed, and Khan representing Farrakhan etc
"The warning signs are there" but are being ignored
What she has done is benefit from a policy that she has said she doesn’t think is a good idea. But that’s not hypocrisy
"Starmer upheld the decision not to prosecute the police officers who had killed Jean Charles de Menezes in a UK High Court appeal lodged by the family." Many at the time suggested the police error was exacerbated by racism.
"In July 2010, Starmer announced the decision not to prosecute the police officer Simon Harwood in relation to the death of Ian Tomlinson[.]" More pro-police action.
"Starmer announced that Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Chris Huhne, and his former wife, Vicky Pryce, would be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice in R v Huhne." Starmer prosecuting a liberal.
"Starmer published a plan for the criminal justice system to better handle cases of female genital mutilation; at the time, the offence had never been successfully prosecuted."
The spendthrift don't want to stop - if they did so it would be an acceptance of blame.
The frugal want to spend the money they've saved - frugality fatigue sets in eventually.
It's more colourful and interesting to people, even though both are bullshit. People can bemoan politics (and political commentary) is exhausted and more dull, but it is what it is, inventing phony shit and whinging about it does nothing.
Articulated thus, no wonder we’ve lost hope.
And I’m not sure Gen X has “failed”.
OK, my daughter has offered to help me re-organise the library which seems like a pleasant way to while away the morning. I’m off.
Possibly a metaphor in there somewhere.
Khan is a Solicitor and had a choice, Starmer is a Barrister and would have been allocated the bad guys on the taxi rank basis.
Not that it matters, either way. If one is a criminal defence solicitor or barrister, one winds up defending obnoxious, shitty, people, because that is what the job entails.
The flame-haired heroine (!) is not the hypocrite here.
Could he translate this defence announcement into English for me?
The new contract will provide a renewal of subject matter expert (SME) support across all aspects of the combat system acquisition and integration in Type 26 and Type 31 new build Frigate ship programmes. Building on the signing of the first joint Type 26 & Type 31 contract with Aurora EDP in early 2020, the Warship Combat System Support Service (WC3S) has been working alongside these new build Frigate ship programmes since 2014. The announcement comes as the ship build programmes progress through manufacture phases, with Royal Navy (RN) entry into service planned from 2026 onwards.
The provision of this SME expertise includes sourcing combat systems related Government Furnished Information (GFI) and supporting dockyard delivery of combat systems Government Furnished Equipment (GFE). Working closely with DE&S to ensure equipment meets current environmental, legal and shock specifications, Aurora EDP will also be responsible for liaising and managing the delivery of the GFE into Portsdown Technology Park. This will enable the de-risking of integration of combat systems equipment and in-service capability growth.
The service delivers recognised benefits to the customer, including flexibility to allow rapid re-prioritisation of outputs across the acquisition portfolio and significantly reduced cost through opportunity mapping across the two complex warship programmes. Furthermore, this enterprise approach sustains a dedicated allocation of scarce SQEP to manage delivery risk dynamically across outputs, as the platforms approach the technical hurdles of acceptance and service entry.
Capt Shaun Riordan RN, T26 Combat Systems Team Leader and WC3S Phase 3 lead said:
“The success of the programme to date is predicated on promoting the best outcome focussed behaviours. This is not a transactional programme; NSDG very much considers the Warship Combat System Support Service (WC3S) as part of the core MOD team critical to delivering these capable platforms into service with the Royal Navy. It is a significant achievement for DE&S to secure these QinetiQ-led combat systems expertise forged from the across the Enterprise for a further 4 years”.
Source: https://www.qinetiq.com/en-us/news/edp-13m-maritime-combat-12-feb
A bit like being a Tory prime minister.
Flynn and the SNP will take every opportunity to attack and embarrass Starmer right upto the election and he no doubt sees it, as I have said many times before, the SNP v English Labour and Westminster
At the same time, journalists like Krugman avoid unpleasant questions, like the way housing costs have soared in many areas, especially where leftists have controlled policies for years. These increases have hit young families especially hard. You might not think the economy is great if, for example, you earn 20 dollars an hour (before taxes) -- and the median house in your city sells for 750K.
(Also, Krugman and company avoid serious US problems, like those described in Eberstadt's "Men Without Work". For those unfamiliar with the book, here is brief summary: "In early 2022, more than 7 million prime-age men were neither working nor looking for work -- more than 11 percent of the prime-age manpower pool and more than three times the fraction in 1965." (p. 11, Post-Pandemic Edition)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQDeU6dHX-c