What are the chances of Biden getting any credit for this in Texas ?
Incredible: 50 cranes at work on Samsung's $17 billion Texas chip plant. One building alone is 11 football fields long and needs 5,000 construction workers. The plant will do cutting-edge chips and advanced packaging for HBM.
Started early 2022. Expected to open in 2024 or 2025.
To the credit of the Chips Act team, they didn't just give all the funding to Intel as the leading US chipmaker. They wisely spread out their bet across all the top foreign chipmakers... https://twitter.com/kyleichan/status/1789262557716299802
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
You don’t need to subsidise them because the people who pay private school fees aren’t whinging shits who want free stuff - exemplified by the fact that they pay for something they can get for free.
The assisted places scheme needs to come back in some form. Maybe a national fund for scholarships for the brightest x thousand and the public schools have to set aside places for these pupils - maybe 20% as it would have a good effect on social mobility and opportunities.
But punishing private schools for success is just stupid. Like windfall taxes on successful businesses- punishing people for taking risks and investing where the state won’t or can’t because some people have an envious chip.
So, people who don’t send their kids to private school are “whinging shits”? I don’t think you are helping your case.
Um, no, I’m saying that the people who are sending their kids to private school aren’t - it doesn’t follow that because one group are not whinging shits that the other group are.
You have demonstrated the benefits of improving education though in the reading comprehension and reasoning areas.
Peripherally on education: the Times today has its list of the top 500 primary schools. Obviously the article is paywalled, so I considered buying a copy. It's £3.50 for a copy of the Times now! I was flabbergasted. Like some sort of millenial, I then went and spent twice that on a coffee and a bun, which I consumed sitting in the sun, a very pleasant experience which lasted 15 minutes, rathet thanthe couple of hours of so that a newspaper would have given me. But I have been conditioned to expect content for free and I'm not sure there is any going back now. Anyway - my mother in law, who has a subscription, read the article and told me the detail I was interested in*. I'm not sure what, if anything, this anecdote illustrates about the nature of news in the current age.
*which was that of the top 500 primary schools, by whatever methodology the Times applies, 8 are in my home town of Sale. Which given that roughly 1 in 1000 Brits live in Sale is something like 15 times more than one would expect by random chance. More, if you also think that as an urban area we have larger schools and therefore fewer per capita.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
I don't see why not. Presumably there is a sweet spot somewhere on the spectrum from taxatiom to subsidy. I instinctively don't think it's in the direction of more taxation, and it seems unlikely that the sweet spot is neither taxation nor subsidy.
So, you would be OK with the state spending taxpayers’ money preferentially on the rich (i.e. those who can afford private school fees)?
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
Yes. It works on multiple levels. If it doesn't lead to a drop in private school numbers, good because it raises money to channel to the underfunded state sector. If it does lead to a drop, also good because it's about discouraging the affluent from forming their own educational 'gated community' outside of the mainstream. Either which way it can be presented with a straight face as a win.
In addition it's a policy that: (i) Pleases the left. (ii) Polls well amongst target voters in target seats, esp the Red Wall. (iii) Is both eyecatching and affordable.
Policies that tick all those boxes are very very hard to come up with. This one does it. It's a star.
The real affluent however won’t be affected and will still have their enclaves. The people who are affected by this are the aspirational middle classes - you might think they are being deluded paying school fees - but the movers and shakers will still be sending their kids to exclusive schools.
As I said before it would be more effective to mandate a big percentage of places to pupils who the gov pay for so giving a leg up to those who could never afford it otherwise. Bit that would mean accepting that there is an element of private education that’s better than state education which is uncomfortable to deal with.
More Scots say they broadly agree with JK Rowling over transgender issues than disagree, a new poll for The Scotsman has found.
The poll by Savanta found 41 per cent of respondents said they tended to agree with the author's views more than they disagreed, while 23 per cent said the opposite.
It's bullshit to talk of the schooling provided by private schools as being a charitable activity that comes under the heading of "services to education".
Charity is given for free.
If Oxfam give free food to the starving, that is a charitable act. If I give an item to Oxfam, that is a charitable act too. If Oxfam sell that item, that is an act of raising money so they can spend the money on charitable acts. But it is not a charitable act in itself.
At the private schools I went to (which include a school that keeps getting mentioned on this site) I never once heard a single person express the view that the schooling there was "superior" to any other schooling. That's not why parents send their children to private school. It's about exclusivity (they think the poor smell) and making contacts that will be useful in later life, as is constantly acknowledged. The parents mostly couldn't care a tinker's cuss for "education".
The reason that most parents send their children to private schools are
1) much smaller class sizes 2) better support for SEND 3) better sports and non-academic facilities
The number of private schools that actually offer any social exclusivity is a tiny percentage of the whole.
And the ones that are going to be unaffected by VAT on private school fees...
Yup
I wonder what will happen in the case of the specialist SEND schools that, among other things, have state funded children sent to them?
It's bullshit to talk of the schooling provided by private schools as being a charitable activity that comes under the heading of "services to education".
Charity is given for free.
If Oxfam give free food to the starving, that is a charitable act. If I give an item to Oxfam, that is a charitable act too. If Oxfam sell that item, that is an act of raising money so they can spend the money on charitable acts. But it is not a charitable act in itself.
At the private schools I went to (which include a school that keeps getting mentioned on this site) I never once heard a single person express the view that the schooling there was "superior" to any other schooling. That's not why parents send their children to private school. It's about exclusivity (they think the poor smell) and making contacts that will be useful in later life, as is constantly acknowledged. The parents mostly couldn't care a tinker's cuss for "education".
The reason that most parents send their children to private schools are
1) much smaller class sizes 2) better support for SEND 3) better sports and non-academic facilities
The number of private schools that actually offer any social exclusivity is a tiny percentage of the whole.
And the ones that are going to be unaffected by VAT on private school fees...
Yup
I wonder what will happen in the case of the specialist SEND schools that, among other things, have state funded children sent to them?
“Specialist provision would remain exempt from VAT, in particular fees for pupils with education, health, and care plans.”
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
Yes. It works on multiple levels. If it doesn't lead to a drop in private school numbers, good because it raises money to channel to the underfunded state sector. If it does lead to a drop, also good because it's about discouraging the affluent from forming their own educational 'gated community' outside of the mainstream. Either which way it can be presented with a straight face as a win.
In addition it's a policy that: (i) Pleases the left. (ii) Polls well amongst target voters in target seats, esp the Red Wall. (iii) Is both eyecatching and affordable.
Policies that tick all those boxes are very very hard to come up with. This one does it. It's a star.
The real affluent however won’t be affected and will still have their enclaves. The people who are affected by this are the aspirational middle classes - you might think they are being deluded paying school fees - but the movers and shakers will still be sending their kids to exclusive schools.
As I said before it would be more effective to mandate a big percentage of places to pupils who the gov pay for so giving a leg up to those who could never afford it otherwise. Bit that would mean accepting that there is an element of private education that’s better than state education which is uncomfortable to deal with.
Given what school fees are like today, I think you have to be pretty high up the social ladder already before they’re an option.
The fact that, at other times and in other places, Oxfam has occasionally had problems with sex scandals seems like a massive case of whataboutery. What does that have to do with their reporting of the situation in Gaza?
It says that they’re an utterly untrustworthy organisation, more interested in what’s in it for their own organisation and personnel, than those they purport to help. “Big Charity” is a thing, and their public records on what they spend on their own administration and fundraising vs what they spend on their actual charitable aims are well documented.
I think a few people are getting confused, partly because of StillWaters setting up a false dichotomy (and then getting rather agitated about it).
A charitable asset is NOT a private asset. It is designated for a particular purpose and legally must be managed by trustees and used for that purpose. If it is used for anything else, or transferred to another charity, a process must be gone through and it can be blocked. Using it for another purpose is a crime, punishable by a very heavy fine.
A business, or a person, can by contrast use their assets for any purpose it/he/she wishes. There are comparatively limited restrictions on doing so.
Now, we come to a grey area. Most private schools with large endowments were historically given those endowments for the purposes of providing an education for free. Not all such endowments - others were for building projects or for particular specific purposes. But most of them.
It is hard to argue those endowments are being used for such a purpose by these schools at present. For example Eton uses its endowments only for the maintenance of its buildings. All day to day running costs - including bursaries - are met from fees.
There is therefore a legitimate argument that the endowments can and should be redirected to other educational purposes by (checks notes) disendowing charitable schools that charge fees.*
Which is where we started.
If, of course, they wished to become businesses and keep their endowments while paying taxes, let them do so.
Either way, VAT on school fees is a silly red herring.
VAT is also a very bad tax in every other imaginable way and should be abolished altogether. But that's really not going to happen given how much it brings in.
*Incidentally the logic of disendowing the Church in Wales on a partial basis was that prior to 1660 gifts to the church were gifts to the nation rather than the church.
It’s not a false dichotomy.
The Third Sector is called that for a reason.
Charitable trusts are established for a purpose. They have Trustees with an obligation to oversee the use of those funds and ensure they are used for the purpose determined by the original settlor.
They are not an arm of the state and for the state to seize those assets would be expropriation of private assets.
(Not are they wholly private assets because there are regulations that govern how they can be used because the beneficiaries do not necessarily have the ability to speak for themselves).
But I have seen you have moved from disendowment being obviously legal to “there is an argument”. So that is progress of a sorts.
Your argument that Eton uses its endowment to maintain the buildings is utterly untrue - I would go so far as to say a lie. Eton spent £23m in 2023 on its premises (before capital expenditure). The endowment contributed £15m. However money is fungible - if the endowment were to contribute nothing they would still have to spend on maintaining their medieval buildings so the loss of income would have to be met through reductions in bursaries (£9m) partnerships (£3m) and teaching (£31m) not through ignoring their legal obligations to maintain their Grade 1 listed estate.
FWIW I didn’t get agitated about you having a different view. I *did* object to you calling me ignorant and intellectually incurious. That displays an arrogance and a lack of confidence in your own assertions. Over the years I have been a trustee of charities and a private trust as well as a member of a GCC. So I have a good sense of the obligations of a trustee…
The fact that, at other times and in other places, Oxfam has occasionally had problems with sex scandals seems like a massive case of whataboutery. What does that have to do with their reporting of the situation in Gaza?
It says that they’re an utterly untrustworthy organisation, more interested in what’s in it for their own organisation and personnel, than those they purport to help. “Big Charity” is a thing, and their public records on what they spend on their own administration and fundraising vs what they spend on their actual charitable aims are well documented.
Beyond the fact VAT may or may not destroy private schools, why should you not pay VAT on it? I am slightly baffled at the logic.
My view is that we should be making state education so good private schools are irrelevant.
Indeed, Starmer’s priority in education should be levelling up, rather than levelling down by attacking private schools.
You have to do both. That's how see-saws work.
Why do you need to do both?
I rarely agree with @CorrectHorseBattery but on this occasion he suggested making private schools irrelevant by improving the quality of state schools. Let the private sector wither as parents make their own choices.
That’s absolutely the right approach.
Making private schools worse (“attacking them”) should have no role to play.
It's a platitude unless it comes with support for equalising the funding per pupil.
In the conversation I had, Eton told me that they will donate about £4k per pupil to the Eton STAR Academy schools. Together with the standard subvention and the pupil premium they reckoned this would be enough to give the kids an education of the quality that they would get at Eton.
The fact that, at other times and in other places, Oxfam has occasionally had problems with sex scandals seems like a massive case of whataboutery. What does that have to do with their reporting of the situation in Gaza?
It says that they’re an utterly untrustworthy organisation, more interested in what’s in it for their own organisation and personnel, than those they purport to help. “Big Charity” is a thing, and their public records on what they spend on their own administration and fundraising vs what they spend on their actual charitable aims are well documented.
Oxfam is a very large organisation and they’re certainly not perfect, but I think you’re throwing the baby out with the bath water. Nor does any of this seem to cast serious doubt on their reporting of the situation in Gaza, reporting which corroborates and is corroborated by many other organisations.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
Yes. It works on multiple levels. If it doesn't lead to a drop in private school numbers, good because it raises money to channel to the underfunded state sector. If it does lead to a drop, also good because it's about discouraging the affluent from forming their own educational 'gated community' outside of the mainstream. Either which way it can be presented with a straight face as a win.
In addition it's a policy that: (i) Pleases the left. (ii) Polls well amongst target voters in target seats, esp the Red Wall. (iii) Is both eyecatching and affordable.
Policies that tick all those boxes are very very hard to come up with. This one does it. It's a star.
The real affluent however won’t be affected and will still have their enclaves. The people who are affected by this are the aspirational middle classes - you might think they are being deluded paying school fees - but the movers and shakers will still be sending their kids to exclusive schools.
As I said before it would be more effective to mandate a big percentage of places to pupils who the gov pay for so giving a leg up to those who could never afford it otherwise. Bit that would mean accepting that there is an element of private education that’s better than state education which is uncomfortable to deal with.
But that doesn't negate the point about it being good politics, does it? It can be good politics but poor policy.
I would say, in a similar state way to Rwanda on the other side of the coin, whether or not it is good policy hinges on its impact, rather than the theory.
As for accepting there is an element of private education that is better than state, I don't think that's uncomfortable to deal with. There is a big disparity between finding per pupil, so you'd expect private provision to be better.
Plus, with the honourable exception of specialist SEND schools, private schools tend to avoid the harder cases that disproportionately drain resources, particularly at the moment.
More Scots say they broadly agree with JK Rowling over transgender issues than disagree, a new poll for The Scotsman has found.
The poll by Savanta found 41 per cent of respondents said they tended to agree with the author's views more than they disagreed, while 23 per cent said the opposite.
More Scots say they broadly agree with JK Rowling over transgender issues than disagree, a new poll for The Scotsman has found.
The poll by Savanta found 41 per cent of respondents said they tended to agree with the author's views more than they disagreed, while 23 per cent said the opposite.
I'm surprised it's as high as 23 per cent. I'm sure that's based more on how tge trans lobby has managed to paint her than anything she has ever said - which AFAICS is rarely more controversial than 'grass is green, and those who tell you it is blue are trying to mislead you.'
I rarely agree with @CorrectHorseBattery but on this occasion he suggested making private schools irrelevant by improving the quality of state schools. Let the private sector wither as parents make their own choices.
That’s absolutely the right approach.
Making private schools worse (“attacking them”) should have no role to play.
It’s very much mutual
Charming.
I am thank you for noticing.
No, you are a self-deluded arse who likes to bully young women.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
Yes. It works on multiple levels. If it doesn't lead to a drop in private school numbers, good because it raises money to channel to the underfunded state sector. If it does lead to a drop, also good because it's about discouraging the affluent from forming their own educational 'gated community' outside of the mainstream. Either which way it can be presented with a straight face as a win.
In addition it's a policy that: (i) Pleases the left. (ii) Polls well amongst target voters in target seats, esp the Red Wall. (iii) Is both eyecatching and affordable.
Policies that tick all those boxes are very very hard to come up with. This one does it. It's a star.
The real affluent however won’t be affected and will still have their enclaves. The people who are affected by this are the aspirational middle classes - you might think they are being deluded paying school fees - but the movers and shakers will still be sending their kids to exclusive schools.
As I said before it would be more effective to mandate a big percentage of places to pupils who the gov pay for so giving a leg up to those who could never afford it otherwise. Bit that would mean accepting that there is an element of private education that’s better than state education which is uncomfortable to deal with.
Well it's prioritising state schools over private schools and I view this as a small step in the right direction - towards the goal of an egalitarian education system where parental bank balance is of little relevance to the schooling received by their children.
I'd be hoping a Labour government can travel much further down this road but let's see about that. It won't be easy even if SKS wants to (which I'm not sure he does). Private schools are deeply embedded in our high-end social fabric. Many people of wealth, power and influence are protective of them.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
I don't see why not. Presumably there is a sweet spot somewhere on the spectrum from taxatiom to subsidy. I instinctively don't think it's in the direction of more taxation, and it seems unlikely that the sweet spot is neither taxation nor subsidy.
So, you would be OK with the state spending taxpayers’ money preferentially on the rich (i.e. those who can afford private school fees)?
What, like we do with, say, the Arts Council? I'd have no principled objections to that. But when I made the point I was more assuming the state paying bursaries (of, by implication, those who would otherwise not have access to private education i.e. those outside, what, the top 10% or so.)
I rarely agree with @CorrectHorseBattery but on this occasion he suggested making private schools irrelevant by improving the quality of state schools. Let the private sector wither as parents make their own choices.
That’s absolutely the right approach.
Making private schools worse (“attacking them”) should have no role to play.
It’s very much mutual
Charming.
I am thank you for noticing.
No, you are a self-deluded arse who likes to bully young women.
I do love it when you get all dirty with me but I’m afraid I’m very much taken! But keep trying though, I do love the attention
FWIW I didn’t get agitated about you having a different view. I *did* object to you calling me ignorant and intellectually incurious. That displays an arrogance and a lack of confidence in your own assertions. Over the years I have been a trustee of charities and a private trust as well as a member of a GCC. So I have a good sense of the obligations of a trustee…
But you *are* ignorant and intellectually incurious on some issues...not others. So are most of us. The trick is, as Plato pointed out, to know what they are. I know nothing about health policy and don't generally comment on it for that reason.
As for my statements, I'm genuinely amused that you consider me 'lacking in confidence' when I'm right and you're wrong. And then accuse me of 'arrogance ' while lecturing me on something you're wrong about. There's a certain irony there...
I'm also quite worried about your comments on charities. If you hold you are right and the Charities Commission are wrong, however, feel free to tell them so they can correct their advice and make everyone's life easier.
FWIW I didn’t get agitated about you having a different view. I *did* object to you calling me ignorant and intellectually incurious. That displays an arrogance and a lack of confidence in your own assertions. Over the years I have been a trustee of charities and a private trust as well as a member of a GCC. So I have a good sense of the obligations of a trustee…
But you *are* ignorant and intellectually incurious on some issues...not others. So are most of us. The trick is, as Plato pointed out, to know what they are. I know nothing about health policy and don't generally comment on it for that reason.
As for my statements, I'm genuinely amused that you consider me 'lacking in confidence' when I'm right and you're wrong. And then accuse me of 'arrogance ' while lecturing me on something you're wrong about. There's a certain irony there...
I'm also quite worried about your comments on charities. If you hold you are right and the Charities Commission are wrong, however, feel free to tell them so they can correct their advice and make everyone's life easier.
That particular poster is very angry at something. I’ve never been able to quite work out what.
I'm sat in Plaza del Castillo in Pamplona. In an hour and a half I'm meeting up with the daughter of a lady on my mail round for dinner
I'm staying at a really rather fancy (4*) hotel tonight, right by Pamplona cathedral. I've spent (quite a few quid) extra on it so I could be right in the old city centre, both for tonight's fun, and so hat I can easily be at the bus station tomorrow morning for the early bus to San Sebastian
It's just clouded over, which is a huge relief as it's been over 25⁰C since 10am
FWIW I didn’t get agitated about you having a different view. I *did* object to you calling me ignorant and intellectually incurious. That displays an arrogance and a lack of confidence in your own assertions. Over the years I have been a trustee of charities and a private trust as well as a member of a GCC. So I have a good sense of the obligations of a trustee…
But you *are* ignorant and intellectually incurious on some issues...not others. So are most of us. The trick is, as Plato pointed out, to know what they are. I know nothing about health policy and don't generally comment on it for that reason.
As for my statements, I'm genuinely amused that you consider me 'lacking in confidence' when I'm right and you're wrong. And then accuse me of 'arrogance ' while lecturing me on something you're wrong about. There's a certain irony there...
I'm also quite worried about your comments on charities. If you hold you are right and the Charities Commission are wrong, however, feel free to tell them so they can correct their advice and make everyone's life easier.
That’s a very serious - arguably libellous - allegation.
The fact is that charitable assets are not wholly private or wholly state assets.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
Yes. It works on multiple levels. If it doesn't lead to a drop in private school numbers, good because it raises money to channel to the underfunded state sector. If it does lead to a drop, also good because it's about discouraging the affluent from forming their own educational 'gated community' outside of the mainstream. Either which way it can be presented with a straight face as a win.
In addition it's a policy that: (i) Pleases the left. (ii) Polls well amongst target voters in target seats, esp the Red Wall. (iii) Is both eyecatching and affordable.
Policies that tick all those boxes are very very hard to come up with. This one does it. It's a star.
Given the enthusiasm and joy with which various local authorities are proud of 98% occupancy in schools, what do you think will happen when there is demand for more places?
The fact that, at other times and in other places, Oxfam has occasionally had problems with sex scandals seems like a massive case of whataboutery. What does that have to do with their reporting of the situation in Gaza?
It says that they’re an utterly untrustworthy organisation, more interested in what’s in it for their own organisation and personnel, than those they purport to help. “Big Charity” is a thing, and their public records on what they spend on their own administration and fundraising vs what they spend on their actual charitable aims are well documented.
Their own public records say they spend 81p in every pound you donate on charitable causes, which ain't bad (https://www.oxfam.org.uk/donate/how-we-spend-your-money/). Some might argue the 2p per pound they spend on campaigns shouldn't be in the 81p. Still, 79p compares well to eg BHF, which only spends 26p in each pound on charitable causes.
Oxfam can be criticised for many things, but your last sentence doesn't stack up I don't think.
I thought the header was interesting and well-written, though there seemed to be little attempt to bring in politics or betting.
If there are political implications, it seems to be that a criminal justice system based on behaviourism - the belief that the negative consequences (in this instance of crime) must outweigh the positive consequences to see a decline in the undesirable behaviour, is fundamentally flawed in its approach and therefore unlikely to yield success. I don't believe this to be true, but in any event, we cannot hope to solve crime by ending all negative experiences of childhood, any more than we can hope to solve immigration by making the third world a paradise. It's not possible, and the implications of even trying to attempt it would themselves be costly at best, Orwellian at worst. That leaves us with a 'flawed' solution vs. no solution.
What are the chances of Biden getting any credit for this in Texas ?
Incredible: 50 cranes at work on Samsung's $17 billion Texas chip plant. One building alone is 11 football fields long and needs 5,000 construction workers. The plant will do cutting-edge chips and advanced packaging for HBM.
Started early 2022. Expected to open in 2024 or 2025.
To the credit of the Chips Act team, they didn't just give all the funding to Intel as the leading US chipmaker. They wisely spread out their bet across all the top foreign chipmakers... https://twitter.com/kyleichan/status/1789262557716299802
When people say that Clinton’s deplorable comment was stupid politics, the retort is sometimes “it’s true, and what else can you do?”
Biden’s economic policies are precisely aimed at the answer to this question.
You can dispute the quality and efficacy of the answer, but it is an answer, nonetheless.
Beyond the fact VAT may or may not destroy private schools, why should you not pay VAT on it? I am slightly baffled at the logic.
My view is that we should be making state education so good private schools are irrelevant.
Indeed, Starmer’s priority in education should be levelling up, rather than levelling down by attacking private schools.
You have to do both. That's how see-saws work.
Why do you need to do both?
I rarely agree with @CorrectHorseBattery but on this occasion he suggested making private schools irrelevant by improving the quality of state schools. Let the private sector wither as parents make their own choices.
That’s absolutely the right approach.
Making private schools worse (“attacking them”) should have no role to play.
It's a platitude unless it comes with support for equalising the funding per pupil.
In the conversation I had, Eton told me that they will donate about £4k per pupil to the Eton STAR Academy schools. Together with the standard subvention and the pupil premium they reckoned this would be enough to give the kids an education of the quality that they would get at Eton.
Ok, not knocking that, but what I'm talking about is increasing the education budget such that spend per pupil in state schools equals spend per pupil in private schools.
When somebody who has just rolled out the "don't attack private schools, let's instead make state schools so good that nobody chooses them" line is asked if they would support this, they usually find a way not to.
Conclusion: It's not a serious sentiment. It's a nice sounding platitude designed to avoid having to make the difficult argument that private schools are a net plus for society.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
Yes. It works on multiple levels. If it doesn't lead to a drop in private school numbers, good because it raises money to channel to the underfunded state sector. If it does lead to a drop, also good because it's about discouraging the affluent from forming their own educational 'gated community' outside of the mainstream. Either which way it can be presented with a straight face as a win.
In addition it's a policy that: (i) Pleases the left. (ii) Polls well amongst target voters in target seats, esp the Red Wall. (iii) Is both eyecatching and affordable.
Policies that tick all those boxes are very very hard to come up with. This one does it. It's a star.
Given the enthusiasm and joy with which various local authorities are proud of 98% occupancy in schools, what do you think will happen when there is demand for more places?
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
Yes. It works on multiple levels. If it doesn't lead to a drop in private school numbers, good because it raises money to channel to the underfunded state sector. If it does lead to a drop, also good because it's about discouraging the affluent from forming their own educational 'gated community' outside of the mainstream. Either which way it can be presented with a straight face as a win.
In addition it's a policy that: (i) Pleases the left. (ii) Polls well amongst target voters in target seats, esp the Red Wall. (iii) Is both eyecatching and affordable.
Policies that tick all those boxes are very very hard to come up with. This one does it. It's a star.
Given the enthusiasm and joy with which various local authorities are proud of 98% occupancy in schools, what do you think will happen when there is demand for more places?
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
Yes. It works on multiple levels. If it doesn't lead to a drop in private school numbers, good because it raises money to channel to the underfunded state sector. If it does lead to a drop, also good because it's about discouraging the affluent from forming their own educational 'gated community' outside of the mainstream. Either which way it can be presented with a straight face as a win.
In addition it's a policy that: (i) Pleases the left. (ii) Polls well amongst target voters in target seats, esp the Red Wall. (iii) Is both eyecatching and affordable.
Policies that tick all those boxes are very very hard to come up with. This one does it. It's a star.
Given the enthusiasm and joy with which various local authorities are proud of 98% occupancy in schools, what do you think will happen when there is demand for more places?
Indeed. But we are dealing with the DfE here. The policy of running at 98% occupancy of places is already insane. What makes you think that their response to falling pupils numbers (or rising pupil numbers) will be any less insane?
FWIW I didn’t get agitated about you having a different view. I *did* object to you calling me ignorant and intellectually incurious. That displays an arrogance and a lack of confidence in your own assertions. Over the years I have been a trustee of charities and a private trust as well as a member of a GCC. So I have a good sense of the obligations of a trustee…
But you *are* ignorant and intellectually incurious on some issues...not others. So are most of us. The trick is, as Plato pointed out, to know what they are. I know nothing about health policy and don't generally comment on it for that reason.
As for my statements, I'm genuinely amused that you consider me 'lacking in confidence' when I'm right and you're wrong. And then accuse me of 'arrogance ' while lecturing me on something you're wrong about. There's a certain irony there...
I'm also quite worried about your comments on charities. If you hold you are right and the Charities Commission are wrong, however, feel free to tell them so they can correct their advice and make everyone's life easier.
That’s a very serious - arguably libellous - allegation.
The fact is that charitable assets are not wholly private or wholly state assets.
Please withdraw your assertion and apologise.
That’s actually the point I made at the very beginning when you claimed that they were the same as business assets and should not therefore be touched for that reason.
You’re now apparently accepting you were wrong about that.
So why are you arguing with me?
As for withdraw and apologise, no. I’m right, and you’re wrong. Is your aggression due to a lack of confidence in your position?
It is also certainly not libellous. Merely pointing out a lack of understanding the relevant law isn’t libellous. That’s true of most people, particularly those who are not charity trustees and apparently some who are. I have made no suggestion that you’ve made any criminal action, which would be required for a libel.
I thought the header was interesting and well-written, though there seemed to be little attempt to bring in politics or betting.
If there are political implications, it seems to be that a criminal justice system based on behaviourism - the belief that the negative consequences (in this instance of crime) must outweigh the positive consequences to see a decline in the undesirable behaviour, is fundamentally flawed in its approach and therefore unlikely to yield success. I don't believe this to be true, but in any event, we cannot hope to solve crime by ending all negative experiences of childhood, any more than we can hope to solve immigration by making the third world a paradise. It's not possible, and the implications of even trying to attempt it would themselves be costly at best, Orwellian at worst. That leaves us with a 'flawed' solution vs. no solution.
It's not all or nothing is it, though?
An incremental improvement in support to struggling parents through eg reinstating Sure Start might be expected to have an incremental reduction in crime a generation later.
You seem to be getting very wound up. Maybe time to go and enjoy the sun and come back when you feel a bit calmer?
Personally, I find many of your contributions interesting, and will continue to read them and respond where I have something to add. But right now you seem in a bad mood.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
I don't see why not. Presumably there is a sweet spot somewhere on the spectrum from taxatiom to subsidy. I instinctively don't think it's in the direction of more taxation, and it seems unlikely that the sweet spot is neither taxation nor subsidy.
So, you would be OK with the state spending taxpayers’ money preferentially on the rich (i.e. those who can afford private school fees)?
What, like we do with, say, the Arts Council? I'd have no principled objections to that. But when I made the point I was more assuming the state paying bursaries (of, by implication, those who would otherwise not have access to private education i.e. those outside, what, the top 10% or so.)
The argument against VAT on private school fees is that you’ll drive students out of private schools and you’ll end up having to pay for their education through the state system. If that’s the case, then presumably a small subsidy would encourage parents to take kids out of the state system, saving the country more than the cost of the subsidy.
Yet the latter seems absurd, an unworkable policy, help targeted at the less needy. So I think that suggests there is a flaw in the argument that applying VAT would be a mistake. It’s about where the state directs its resources. Those who can afford private school fees are not the people in society most in need of help.
What are the chances of Biden getting any credit for this in Texas ?
Incredible: 50 cranes at work on Samsung's $17 billion Texas chip plant. One building alone is 11 football fields long and needs 5,000 construction workers. The plant will do cutting-edge chips and advanced packaging for HBM.
Started early 2022. Expected to open in 2024 or 2025.
To the credit of the Chips Act team, they didn't just give all the funding to Intel as the leading US chipmaker. They wisely spread out their bet across all the top foreign chipmakers... https://twitter.com/kyleichan/status/1789262557716299802
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
Yes. It works on multiple levels. If it doesn't lead to a drop in private school numbers, good because it raises money to channel to the underfunded state sector. If it does lead to a drop, also good because it's about discouraging the affluent from forming their own educational 'gated community' outside of the mainstream. Either which way it can be presented with a straight face as a win.
In addition it's a policy that: (i) Pleases the left. (ii) Polls well amongst target voters in target seats, esp the Red Wall. (iii) Is both eyecatching and affordable.
Policies that tick all those boxes are very very hard to come up with. This one does it. It's a star.
Given the enthusiasm and joy with which various local authorities are proud of 98% occupancy in schools, what do you think will happen when there is demand for more places?
We'll see, won't we. Pointless speculating.
No, it isn’t pointless. Because policies have effects. Thinking about the effects before they happen is part of planning.
Given the number of politicians that read PB, they need to start thinking about the possible outcomes
1) not much change in the disposition of pupils. 2) a big move to state education - *in certain areas*. As in, say a resumption/increase in the move if the middle classes out of the city into the sticks.
If 2) happens, then a bunch of middle class people will show up in various areas, trying to get their kids into the Good Comprehensives/Free Schools. If you actually read up on some of the effects of this kind of thing, guess who gets pushed back?
Yes, the Process State is much easier to navigate for those with education (ha) and resources to move through and round The System.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
I don't see why not. Presumably there is a sweet spot somewhere on the spectrum from taxatiom to subsidy. I instinctively don't think it's in the direction of more taxation, and it seems unlikely that the sweet spot is neither taxation nor subsidy.
So, you would be OK with the state spending taxpayers’ money preferentially on the rich (i.e. those who can afford private school fees)?
What, like we do with, say, the Arts Council? I'd have no principled objections to that. But when I made the point I was more assuming the state paying bursaries (of, by implication, those who would otherwise not have access to private education i.e. those outside, what, the top 10% or so.)
The argument against VAT on private school fees is that you’ll drive students out of private schools and you’ll end up having to pay for their education through the state system. If that’s the case, then presumably a small subsidy would encourage parents to take kids out of the state system, saving the country more than the cost of the subsidy.
Yet the latter seems absurd, an unworkable policy, help targeted at the less needy. So I think that suggests there is a flaw in the argument that applying VAT would be a mistake. It’s about where the state directs its resources. Those who can afford private school fees are not the people in society most in need of help.
To me it seems inconsistent. Why exactly are these fees exempt from VAT? It seems like an outlier to me that nobody has been able to quite explain the logic of. I’d also apply it to university fees which seem to have no business not having it applied either.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
Yes. It works on multiple levels. If it doesn't lead to a drop in private school numbers, good because it raises money to channel to the underfunded state sector. If it does lead to a drop, also good because it's about discouraging the affluent from forming their own educational 'gated community' outside of the mainstream. Either which way it can be presented with a straight face as a win.
In addition it's a policy that: (i) Pleases the left. (ii) Polls well amongst target voters in target seats, esp the Red Wall. (iii) Is both eyecatching and affordable.
Policies that tick all those boxes are very very hard to come up with. This one does it. It's a star.
Given the enthusiasm and joy with which various local authorities are proud of 98% occupancy in schools, what do you think will happen when there is demand for more places?
The number of school age children is declining. It’s expected to fall by 0.8 million over the next 9 years. The problem is not enough kids for the state system, not too many.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
Yes. It works on multiple levels. If it doesn't lead to a drop in private school numbers, good because it raises money to channel to the underfunded state sector. If it does lead to a drop, also good because it's about discouraging the affluent from forming their own educational 'gated community' outside of the mainstream. Either which way it can be presented with a straight face as a win.
In addition it's a policy that: (i) Pleases the left. (ii) Polls well amongst target voters in target seats, esp the Red Wall. (iii) Is both eyecatching and affordable.
Policies that tick all those boxes are very very hard to come up with. This one does it. It's a star.
Given the enthusiasm and joy with which various local authorities are proud of 98% occupancy in schools, what do you think will happen when there is demand for more places?
Indeed. But we are dealing with the DfE here. The policy of running at 98% occupancy of places is already insane. What makes you think that their response to falling pupils numbers (or rising pupil numbers) will be any less insane?
And there is a link back to the header there. If something apparently insane or self-harming is going on, the question is what on the mental map is causing it?
In the case of schools, it's a couple of things. One is that money follows pupils so directly- so having an empty seat in 9C is about seven grand forgone. And that's in an environment where most of the costs are fixed. Hence the bizarre phenomenon of schools advertising on the back of London buses- you don't need many responses for it to be worth it. (And if you don't, you risk losing out big time to your rivals.)
Second, even 100 percent occupancy doesn't comfortably pay the bills right now. Once you fall to ninety or eighty, your budget is screwed (this was an ongoing nightmare at the place I governed for a while.) Coupled with parent choice dynamics, what you usually get is four schools in a town full (or overfull) with all the spare places at the fifth, doomed school.
Obviously, the DfE are useless pinheads, but this one isn't their fault.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
I don't see why not. Presumably there is a sweet spot somewhere on the spectrum from taxatiom to subsidy. I instinctively don't think it's in the direction of more taxation, and it seems unlikely that the sweet spot is neither taxation nor subsidy.
So, you would be OK with the state spending taxpayers’ money preferentially on the rich (i.e. those who can afford private school fees)?
What, like we do with, say, the Arts Council? I'd have no principled objections to that. But when I made the point I was more assuming the state paying bursaries (of, by implication, those who would otherwise not have access to private education i.e. those outside, what, the top 10% or so.)
The argument against VAT on private school fees is that you’ll drive students out of private schools and you’ll end up having to pay for their education through the state system. If that’s the case, then presumably a small subsidy would encourage parents to take kids out of the state system, saving the country more than the cost of the subsidy.
Yet the latter seems absurd, an unworkable policy, help targeted at the less needy. So I think that suggests there is a flaw in the argument that applying VAT would be a mistake. It’s about where the state directs its resources. Those who can afford private school fees are not the people in society most in need of help.
To me it seems inconsistent. Why exactly are these fees exempt from VAT? It seems like an outlier to me that nobody has been able to quite explain the logic of. I’d also apply it to university fees which seem to have no business not having it applied either.
Universities are already actually receiving government subsidies for every home grown student on their books
Wouldn't charging VAT on the fees just increase the required subsidy?
I seem to remember that the EU bans charging VAT on provision of education which could cause a weird mental problem for both sides on in/out and vat/no vat.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
I don't see why not. Presumably there is a sweet spot somewhere on the spectrum from taxatiom to subsidy. I instinctively don't think it's in the direction of more taxation, and it seems unlikely that the sweet spot is neither taxation nor subsidy.
So, you would be OK with the state spending taxpayers’ money preferentially on the rich (i.e. those who can afford private school fees)?
What, like we do with, say, the Arts Council? I'd have no principled objections to that. But when I made the point I was more assuming the state paying bursaries (of, by implication, those who would otherwise not have access to private education i.e. those outside, what, the top 10% or so.)
The argument against VAT on private school fees is that you’ll drive students out of private schools and you’ll end up having to pay for their education through the state system. If that’s the case, then presumably a small subsidy would encourage parents to take kids out of the state system, saving the country more than the cost of the subsidy.
Yet the latter seems absurd, an unworkable policy, help targeted at the less needy. So I think that suggests there is a flaw in the argument that applying VAT would be a mistake. It’s about where the state directs its resources. Those who can afford private school fees are not the people in society most in need of help.
To me it seems inconsistent. Why exactly are these fees exempt from VAT? It seems like an outlier to me that nobody has been able to quite explain the logic of. I’d also apply it to university fees which seem to have no business not having it applied either.
Undergraduate fees are very different, so I can see a reason not to apply VAT. They are highly regulated; they are not set by the market. Rather, while universities are separate entities, the whole business of studying for a degree and how it is paid for is inextricably bound up with government policy, control and spending.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
Yes. It works on multiple levels. If it doesn't lead to a drop in private school numbers, good because it raises money to channel to the underfunded state sector. If it does lead to a drop, also good because it's about discouraging the affluent from forming their own educational 'gated community' outside of the mainstream. Either which way it can be presented with a straight face as a win.
In addition it's a policy that: (i) Pleases the left. (ii) Polls well amongst target voters in target seats, esp the Red Wall. (iii) Is both eyecatching and affordable.
Policies that tick all those boxes are very very hard to come up with. This one does it. It's a star.
Given the enthusiasm and joy with which various local authorities are proud of 98% occupancy in schools, what do you think will happen when there is demand for more places?
Indeed. But we are dealing with the DfE here. The policy of running at 98% occupancy of places is already insane. What makes you think that their response to falling pupils numbers (or rising pupil numbers) will be any less insane?
And there is a link back to the header there. If something apparently insane or self-harming is going on, the question is what on the mental map is causing it?
In the case of schools, it's a couple of things. One is that money follows pupils so directly- so having an empty seat in 9C is about seven grand forgone. And that's in an environment where most of the costs are fixed. Hence the bizarre phenomenon of schools advertising on the back of London buses- you don't need many responses for it to be worth it. (And if you don't, you risk losing out big time to your rivals.)
Second, even 100 percent occupancy doesn't comfortably pay the bills right now. Once you fall to ninety or eighty, your budget is screwed (this was an ongoing nightmare at the place I governed for a while.) Coupled with parent choice dynamics, what you usually get is four schools in a town full (or overfull) with all the spare places at the fifth, doomed school.
Obviously, the DfE are useless pinheads, but this one isn't their fault.
The DfE are part of the stupid system.
Operational Research tells us that an organisation or system running at such levels of utilisation will have quality failures, morale failures, loss of key staff and generally will stagger along in a fucked up state. With occasional disasters to liven the mix.
Thank you @Richard_Tyndall for reading and liking my post. It was rather long and heart felt and so I am grateful to anyone putting the effort in. Appreciated.
I not only thought the content of the post was good but the like was as much in support of you against the ludicrous accusations being made.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
I don't see why not. Presumably there is a sweet spot somewhere on the spectrum from taxatiom to subsidy. I instinctively don't think it's in the direction of more taxation, and it seems unlikely that the sweet spot is neither taxation nor subsidy.
So, you would be OK with the state spending taxpayers’ money preferentially on the rich (i.e. those who can afford private school fees)?
What, like we do with, say, the Arts Council? I'd have no principled objections to that. But when I made the point I was more assuming the state paying bursaries (of, by implication, those who would otherwise not have access to private education i.e. those outside, what, the top 10% or so.)
The argument against VAT on private school fees is that you’ll drive students out of private schools and you’ll end up having to pay for their education through the state system. If that’s the case, then presumably a small subsidy would encourage parents to take kids out of the state system, saving the country more than the cost of the subsidy.
Yet the latter seems absurd, an unworkable policy, help targeted at the less needy. So I think that suggests there is a flaw in the argument that applying VAT would be a mistake. It’s about where the state directs its resources. Those who can afford private school fees are not the people in society most in need of help.
To me it seems inconsistent. Why exactly are these fees exempt from VAT? It seems like an outlier to me that nobody has been able to quite explain the logic of. I’d also apply it to university fees which seem to have no business not having it applied either.
Undergraduate fees are very different, so I can see a reason not to apply VAT. They are highly regulated; they are not set by the market. Rather, while universities are separate entities, the whole business of studying for a degree and how it is paid for is inextricably bound up with government policy, control and spending.
Thanks, that’s a good rebuttal so I concede there.
I stand by my point on private fees though. There doesn’t seem to be a terrible amount of logic on not charging VAT there. Also private healthcare isn’t charged I believe (might be wrong).
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
I don't see why not. Presumably there is a sweet spot somewhere on the spectrum from taxatiom to subsidy. I instinctively don't think it's in the direction of more taxation, and it seems unlikely that the sweet spot is neither taxation nor subsidy.
So, you would be OK with the state spending taxpayers’ money preferentially on the rich (i.e. those who can afford private school fees)?
What, like we do with, say, the Arts Council? I'd have no principled objections to that. But when I made the point I was more assuming the state paying bursaries (of, by implication, those who would otherwise not have access to private education i.e. those outside, what, the top 10% or so.)
The argument against VAT on private school fees is that you’ll drive students out of private schools and you’ll end up having to pay for their education through the state system. If that’s the case, then presumably a small subsidy would encourage parents to take kids out of the state system, saving the country more than the cost of the subsidy.
Yet the latter seems absurd, an unworkable policy, help targeted at the less needy. So I think that suggests there is a flaw in the argument that applying VAT would be a mistake. It’s about where the state directs its resources. Those who can afford private school fees are not the people in society most in need of help.
To me it seems inconsistent. Why exactly are these fees exempt from VAT? It seems like an outlier to me that nobody has been able to quite explain the logic of. I’d also apply it to university fees which seem to have no business not having it applied either.
Undergraduate fees are very different, so I can see a reason not to apply VAT. They are highly regulated; they are not set by the market. Rather, while universities are separate entities, the whole business of studying for a degree and how it is paid for is inextricably bound up with government policy, control and spending.
Thanks, that’s a good rebuttal so I concede there.
I stand by my point on private fees though. There doesn’t seem to be a terrible amount of logic on not charging VAT there. Also private healthcare isn’t charged I believe (might be wrong).
Because the one thing the NHS needs is more patients...
. . . yet more Republican shit-stirring by MAGA-maniac shit-stirrers:
Seattle Times - Three Bob Night: Two more Bob Fergusons running for WA governor
OLYMPIA — Bob Ferguson could face Bob Ferguson and Bob Ferguson in the August primary.
That’s Bob Ferguson, the state attorney general; Bob Ferguson, a retired state employee in Yakima; and Bob Ferguson, a military veteran in Graham.
All three are running for Washington governor.
Conservative activist Glen Morgan recruited two people who share a name with the Democratic front-runner for governor to also seek the state’s highest office. They officially filed to run Friday, at the close of Washington’s candidate filing week.
“If I had started a little bit earlier, I would have been able to have six Bob Fergusons,” Morgan said. “I contacted about 12. I just ran out of time.”
Morgan, who answered calls Friday to the numbers listed for the two campaigns, declined to provide The Seattle Times with the contact information for either of the two Bob Fergusons who filed. . . .
This year, the governor’s seat is open for the first time since 2012. Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat who has led the state for more than a decade, is not running for a fourth term. Attorney General Ferguson has amassed a campaign war chest of nearly $7 million, according to campaign finance reports. . . .
In total, 30 people filed to run for governor this past week. The deadline for candidates to withdraw is Monday. The filing fee for governor is nearly $2,000.
The secretary of state had not determined how to handle the situation as of Friday night and is still reviewing it. In situations where there are two or more candidates with names that “are so similar as to be confusing to voters,” state administrative rules say that the filing officer — in this case the secretary of state — shall differentiate between candidates by including additional information on the ballot, such as their occupation or their status as an incumbent or challenger.
On Friday, the secretary of state asked all three Bob Ferguson campaigns for information about each of the candidates’ occupations.
SSI - Last time similar situation occurred in a race for WA statewide office, was in 1996 for Lieutenant Governor, where it proved to be a BIG help to "Brad Owen (State Senator)" who was eventually elected.
This year, reckon it will also be helpful to the "real" Bob Ferguson, as he will (almost certainly) be identified on the primary ballot as "Bob Ferguson (Attorney General)".
My fearless prediction - he will top the poll for Governor this August, followed by Republican former King Co. Sheriff and Congressman Dave Reichert as the other Top Two finisher.
What the GOPer wonder-weenie has accomplished, is to yet again drive home the same point made (for example) by Marjorie Taylor Greene: that today's Trump Republican Party is good for nothing except . . . wait for it . . . more and more and more shit-stirring.
Beyond the fact VAT may or may not destroy private schools, why should you not pay VAT on it? I am slightly baffled at the logic.
My view is that we should be making state education so good private schools are irrelevant.
Why do we not pay VAT on university fees? Why do we encourage certain behaviours through taxation and discourage others? Parents who educate their children privately are paying for other kids to be educated via the state, reducing the burden on the state, and paying to educate their kids (usually to a higher standard, a net good for the country) at the same time. The downside is the class based stigma, privilege and the way it turns some professions into a closed shop. Then again, the same could be said for Oxford and Cambridge. In which case, why not add VAT to studying there, but not to other universities?
The logic of VAT as it is currently is flawed and should be decomplicated. At the moment it seriously matters whether a Jaffa cake is a cake (no VAT) or a biscuit (VAT applies). That's just an introduction to the absurdities.
VAT should apply, at a much lower rate, to everything. There is no good reason for complex exemptions. All it does is distort markets, gives a lever to politicians to court favour, and make a living for accountants and lawyers while making smaller businesses a bit more complicated.
A higher rate could apply to pearls, diamonds, private jets and yachts.
That completely ignores the whole point of VAT which is that it is supposed to be levied on non essentials. It is a tax on disposable income rather than on necessities.
If you extend it to everything you remove the whole point of it and it just becomes tax burden - and one that will be disporportionatly felt by the poorest in society.
Perhaps that should be mentioned to the French, Germans and Spanish who seem to have missed this point.
As I said, we have much to learn from our European neighbours and also much to ignore. They have a different taxation history and tradition to ourselves. Not everything done by other countries is necessarily better than here, unless of course you have an instictive dislike for this country.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
I don't see why not. Presumably there is a sweet spot somewhere on the spectrum from taxatiom to subsidy. I instinctively don't think it's in the direction of more taxation, and it seems unlikely that the sweet spot is neither taxation nor subsidy.
So, you would be OK with the state spending taxpayers’ money preferentially on the rich (i.e. those who can afford private school fees)?
What, like we do with, say, the Arts Council? I'd have no principled objections to that. But when I made the point I was more assuming the state paying bursaries (of, by implication, those who would otherwise not have access to private education i.e. those outside, what, the top 10% or so.)
The argument against VAT on private school fees is that you’ll drive students out of private schools and you’ll end up having to pay for their education through the state system. If that’s the case, then presumably a small subsidy would encourage parents to take kids out of the state system, saving the country more than the cost of the subsidy.
Yet the latter seems absurd, an unworkable policy, help targeted at the less needy. So I think that suggests there is a flaw in the argument that applying VAT would be a mistake. It’s about where the state directs its resources. Those who can afford private school fees are not the people in society most in need of help.
To me it seems inconsistent. Why exactly are these fees exempt from VAT? It seems like an outlier to me that nobody has been able to quite explain the logic of. I’d also apply it to university fees which seem to have no business not having it applied either.
Undergraduate fees are very different, so I can see a reason not to apply VAT. They are highly regulated; they are not set by the market. Rather, while universities are separate entities, the whole business of studying for a degree and how it is paid for is inextricably bound up with government policy, control and spending.
Thanks, that’s a good rebuttal so I concede there.
I stand by my point on private fees though. There doesn’t seem to be a terrible amount of logic on not charging VAT there. Also private healthcare isn’t charged I believe (might be wrong).
Yes, private healthcare is exempt from VAT (except dispensing).
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
I don't see why not. Presumably there is a sweet spot somewhere on the spectrum from taxatiom to subsidy. I instinctively don't think it's in the direction of more taxation, and it seems unlikely that the sweet spot is neither taxation nor subsidy.
So, you would be OK with the state spending taxpayers’ money preferentially on the rich (i.e. those who can afford private school fees)?
What, like we do with, say, the Arts Council? I'd have no principled objections to that. But when I made the point I was more assuming the state paying bursaries (of, by implication, those who would otherwise not have access to private education i.e. those outside, what, the top 10% or so.)
The argument against VAT on private school fees is that you’ll drive students out of private schools and you’ll end up having to pay for their education through the state system. If that’s the case, then presumably a small subsidy would encourage parents to take kids out of the state system, saving the country more than the cost of the subsidy.
Yet the latter seems absurd, an unworkable policy, help targeted at the less needy. So I think that suggests there is a flaw in the argument that applying VAT would be a mistake. It’s about where the state directs its resources. Those who can afford private school fees are not the people in society most in need of help.
But if the state is better off as a result? It seems odd to say "we won't do action x which will make the state richer and give DfT more money to spend on those for whom it is providing an edication, on principle" if that principle is that it might help those in the second quintile economically.
But as I said, I don't necessarily mean that those are the people whose feea you should pay. I had something more along the lines of the old assisted places scheme in mind. And this is only on my assumption that doing so can provide more resources per pupil for all pupils! Which I don't think qn unreasonable guess but I'd want rather more data on.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
I don't see why not. Presumably there is a sweet spot somewhere on the spectrum from taxatiom to subsidy. I instinctively don't think it's in the direction of more taxation, and it seems unlikely that the sweet spot is neither taxation nor subsidy.
So, you would be OK with the state spending taxpayers’ money preferentially on the rich (i.e. those who can afford private school fees)?
What, like we do with, say, the Arts Council? I'd have no principled objections to that. But when I made the point I was more assuming the state paying bursaries (of, by implication, those who would otherwise not have access to private education i.e. those outside, what, the top 10% or so.)
The argument against VAT on private school fees is that you’ll drive students out of private schools and you’ll end up having to pay for their education through the state system. If that’s the case, then presumably a small subsidy would encourage parents to take kids out of the state system, saving the country more than the cost of the subsidy.
Yet the latter seems absurd, an unworkable policy, help targeted at the less needy. So I think that suggests there is a flaw in the argument that applying VAT would be a mistake. It’s about where the state directs its resources. Those who can afford private school fees are not the people in society most in need of help.
But if the state is better off as a result? It seems odd to say "we won't do action x which will make the state richer and give DfT more money to spend on those for whom it is providing an edication, on principle" if that principle is that it might help those in the second quintile economically.
But as I said, I don't necessarily mean that those are the people whose feea you should pay. I had something more along the lines of the old assisted places scheme in mind. And this is only on my assumption that doing so can provide more resources per pupil for all pupils! Which I don't think qn unreasonable guess but I'd want rather more data on.
This isn’t about helping people in the second quintile. Private school users are almost entirely first quintile… indeed, first decile.
I think there can be an issue with policies that are inequitable, yet leave the state better off. Fairness sometimes trumps other considerations.
Beyond the fact VAT may or may not destroy private schools, why should you not pay VAT on it? I am slightly baffled at the logic.
My view is that we should be making state education so good private schools are irrelevant.
Why do we not pay VAT on university fees? Why do we encourage certain behaviours through taxation and discourage others? Parents who educate their children privately are paying for other kids to be educated via the state, reducing the burden on the state, and paying to educate their kids (usually to a higher standard, a net good for the country) at the same time. The downside is the class based stigma, privilege and the way it turns some professions into a closed shop. Then again, the same could be said for Oxford and Cambridge. In which case, why not add VAT to studying there, but not to other universities?
The logic of VAT as it is currently is flawed and should be decomplicated. At the moment it seriously matters whether a Jaffa cake is a cake (no VAT) or a biscuit (VAT applies). That's just an introduction to the absurdities.
VAT should apply, at a much lower rate, to everything. There is no good reason for complex exemptions. All it does is distort markets, gives a lever to politicians to court favour, and make a living for accountants and lawyers while making smaller businesses a bit more complicated.
A higher rate could apply to pearls, diamonds, private jets and yachts.
That completely ignores the whole point of VAT which is that it is supposed to be levied on non essentials. It is a tax on disposable income rather than on necessities.
If you extend it to everything you remove the whole point of it and it just becomes tax burden - and one that will be disporportionatly felt by the poorest in society.
But then that’s an argument for putting it on private school fees and university fees. These are not “essentials”.
I already said I wasn't arguing against that. My argument was against the idea VAT should be extended to everything including basic essentials.
The argument about school and university fees is very different. And yes as a basic principle I have no problems extending it to private schooling. University fees are a different and more comples argument because there is no state provided alternative and we want to avoid making tertiary education the preserve of the wealthy.
I thought the header was interesting and well-written, though there seemed to be little attempt to bring in politics or betting.
If there are political implications, it seems to be that a criminal justice system based on behaviourism - the belief that the negative consequences (in this instance of crime) must outweigh the positive consequences to see a decline in the undesirable behaviour, is fundamentally flawed in its approach and therefore unlikely to yield success. I don't believe this to be true, but in any event, we cannot hope to solve crime by ending all negative experiences of childhood, any more than we can hope to solve immigration by making the third world a paradise. It's not possible, and the implications of even trying to attempt it would themselves be costly at best, Orwellian at worst. That leaves us with a 'flawed' solution vs. no solution.
It's not all or nothing is it, though?
An incremental improvement in support to struggling parents through eg reinstating Sure Start might be expected to have an incremental reduction in crime a generation later.
Why would trying to attempt it be Orwellian?
Sure Start is a name - this Government has "family hubs" - I don’t pretend to know enough about either to know whether either is better or worse. I don't think that the Government should stop trying to support families to give children a better start in life, but I do know that doing so isn't a solution to the crime and anti-social behaviour we see today.
It would be Orwellian for the Government to try and remove all experiences that the Government perceived as negative from childhood, because it would involve things like Scotland's named person scheme, and other intrusive forms of surveillance. The alternative to bad or indifferent parents is taking kids into care, which also has a track record of poor outcomes for kids.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
I don't see why not. Presumably there is a sweet spot somewhere on the spectrum from taxatiom to subsidy. I instinctively don't think it's in the direction of more taxation, and it seems unlikely that the sweet spot is neither taxation nor subsidy.
So, you would be OK with the state spending taxpayers’ money preferentially on the rich (i.e. those who can afford private school fees)?
What, like we do with, say, the Arts Council? I'd have no principled objections to that. But when I made the point I was more assuming the state paying bursaries (of, by implication, those who would otherwise not have access to private education i.e. those outside, what, the top 10% or so.)
The argument against VAT on private school fees is that you’ll drive students out of private schools and you’ll end up having to pay for their education through the state system. If that’s the case, then presumably a small subsidy would encourage parents to take kids out of the state system, saving the country more than the cost of the subsidy.
Yet the latter seems absurd, an unworkable policy, help targeted at the less needy. So I think that suggests there is a flaw in the argument that applying VAT would be a mistake. It’s about where the state directs its resources. Those who can afford private school fees are not the people in society most in need of help.
To me it seems inconsistent. Why exactly are these fees exempt from VAT? It seems like an outlier to me that nobody has been able to quite explain the logic of. I’d also apply it to university fees which seem to have no business not having it applied either.
Positive or necessary spend is often VAT exempt - books for example. Feminine sanitory products. Food. Buying education and removing the burden of educating your child from the state has clearly been seen as beneficial, so has attracted an exemption.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
Yes. It works on multiple levels. If it doesn't lead to a drop in private school numbers, good because it raises money to channel to the underfunded state sector. If it does lead to a drop, also good because it's about discouraging the affluent from forming their own educational 'gated community' outside of the mainstream. Either which way it can be presented with a straight face as a win.
In addition it's a policy that: (i) Pleases the left. (ii) Polls well amongst target voters in target seats, esp the Red Wall. (iii) Is both eyecatching and affordable.
Policies that tick all those boxes are very very hard to come up with. This one does it. It's a star.
Given the enthusiasm and joy with which various local authorities are proud of 98% occupancy in schools, what do you think will happen when there is demand for more places?
Indeed. But we are dealing with the DfE here. The policy of running at 98% occupancy of places is already insane. What makes you think that their response to falling pupils numbers (or rising pupil numbers) will be any less insane?
And there is a link back to the header there. If something apparently insane or self-harming is going on, the question is what on the mental map is causing it?
In the case of schools, it's a couple of things. One is that money follows pupils so directly- so having an empty seat in 9C is about seven grand forgone. And that's in an environment where most of the costs are fixed. Hence the bizarre phenomenon of schools advertising on the back of London buses- you don't need many responses for it to be worth it. (And if you don't, you risk losing out big time to your rivals.)
Second, even 100 percent occupancy doesn't comfortably pay the bills right now. Once you fall to ninety or eighty, your budget is screwed (this was an ongoing nightmare at the place I governed for a while.) Coupled with parent choice dynamics, what you usually get is four schools in a town full (or overfull) with all the spare places at the fifth, doomed school.
Obviously, the DfE are useless pinheads, but this one isn't their fault.
The DfE are part of the stupid system.
Operational Research tells us that an organisation or system running at such levels of utilisation will have quality failures, morale failures, loss of key staff and generally will stagger along in a fucked up state. With occasional disasters to liven the mix.
Strangely, teachers report….
Oh, absolutely.
But one of the uncomfortable realities for anyone on the right (even the dripping wet, "Starmer is a better approximation than Sunak" types like me) is that individuals acting rationally can add up to a collectively bad solution. And that has happened for parental preference in schools.
I don't see any government being willing to find meaningful spare capacity in schools, or any parent being willing to be fobbed off with "yes, that may look like an empty space at St Ofsted's, but it isn't really vacant so Tallulah can't have it."
Labour’s VAT plans blamed for fall in private school entries
Enrolments are expected to drop even further this September as parents are deterred by higher fees, which could rise by up to 20%
The number of children joining private schools has dropped by the largest proportion in more than a decade, new figures reveal.
Enrolments at independent schools this academic year have fallen by 2.7 per cent, according to a report by the Independent Schools Council (ISC), the largest annual drop since it began collecting data on new starters in 2011.
The body, which represents almost 1,400 private schools, said Labour’s pledge to remove the VAT exemption for fees deterred parents from committing to private education this year and predicted numbers would drop further this autumn. Experts say the policy could lead some schools to close.
Enrolments down by 2.7% is far less reduction than I expected. This will help Labour to firm up their view.
3 weeks ago the Telegraph were claiming that it was more like 30% of parents would withdraw their children, based on a survey.
The tax raid would affect nearly three-quarters of private school families, the Saltus Wealth Index found.
Almost a third – 29 per cent – of those parents said the rising costs mean they would no longer be able to give their child or children a private education.
One in four parents said they would have to move their child or children out of private school and enrol them in a state school, just under half of whom said they would consider moving house to be in a better catchment area for high-performing state schools.
Half of parents who responded said they could keep their children in private education but would have to make changes – either moving them from boarding to day pupils or finding a cheaper school.
A quarter said they would be unaffected by the VAT increase on fees, a flagship policy of Labour, which is on track for a 1997-style landslide election victory this year, according to the latest polls. https://archive.ph/MRot5#selection-2695.129-2703.42
You do know that on those figures 160,000 children will have to be relocated to the state schools
Yes, and I am not keen on Mr Starmer's policy. But the difference between the claim and the actuality seems startling.
I also note that a demographic fall in UK state school population is currently feeding through the system, which means that increased capacity may be available.
I thought the header was interesting and well-written, though there seemed to be little attempt to bring in politics or betting.
If there are political implications, it seems to be that a criminal justice system based on behaviourism - the belief that the negative consequences (in this instance of crime) must outweigh the positive consequences to see a decline in the undesirable behaviour, is fundamentally flawed in its approach and therefore unlikely to yield success. I don't believe this to be true, but in any event, we cannot hope to solve crime by ending all negative experiences of childhood, any more than we can hope to solve immigration by making the third world a paradise. It's not possible, and the implications of even trying to attempt it would themselves be costly at best, Orwellian at worst. That leaves us with a 'flawed' solution vs. no solution.
It's not all or nothing is it, though?
An incremental improvement in support to struggling parents through eg reinstating Sure Start might be expected to have an incremental reduction in crime a generation later.
Why would trying to attempt it be Orwellian?
Sure Start is a name - this Government has "family hubs" - I don’t pretend to know enough about either to know whether either is better or worse. I don't think that the Government should stop trying to support families to give children a better start in life, but I do know that doing so isn't a solution to the crime and anti-social behaviour we see today.
It would be Orwellian for the Government to try and remove all experiences that the Government perceived as negative from childhood, because it would involve things like Scotland's named person scheme, and other intrusive forms of surveillance. The alternative to bad or indifferent parents is taking kids into care, which also has a track record of poor outcomes for kids.
Crime and anti-social behaviour is a complex phenomenon. Dealing with it requires a range of approaches.
I seem to remember that the EU bans charging VAT on provision of education which could cause a weird mental problem for both sides on in/out and vat/no vat.
School fees are exempt but the wording is interesting as it actually says 'non-commercial school fees' so not sure how that definition would work within the UK prvate education sector.
But anyway, that would only become an issue if we were to rejoin or significantly align.
I seem to remember that the EU bans charging VAT on provision of education which could cause a weird mental problem for both sides on in/out and vat/no vat.
School fees are exempt but the wording is interesting as it actually says 'non-commercial school fees' so not sure how that definition would work within the UK prvate education sector.
But anyway, that would only become an issue if we were to rejoin or significantly align.
Probably charitable schools wouldn’t have to charge them and ones registered as businesses would.
Making the issues we’ve been discussing still worse…
Beyond the fact VAT may or may not destroy private schools, why should you not pay VAT on it? I am slightly baffled at the logic.
My view is that we should be making state education so good private schools are irrelevant.
Indeed, Starmer’s priority in education should be levelling up, rather than levelling down by attacking private schools.
You have to do both. That's how see-saws work.
Why do you need to do both?
I rarely agree with @CorrectHorseBattery but on this occasion he suggested making private schools irrelevant by improving the quality of state schools. Let the private sector wither as parents make their own choices.
That’s absolutely the right approach.
Making private schools worse (“attacking them”) should have no role to play.
It's a platitude unless it comes with support for equalising the funding per pupil.
In the conversation I had, Eton told me that they will donate about £4k per pupil to the Eton STAR Academy schools. Together with the standard subvention and the pupil premium they reckoned this would be enough to give the kids an education of the quality that they would get at Eton.
Ok, not knocking that, but what I'm talking about is increasing the education budget such that spend per pupil in state schools equals spend per pupil in private schools.
When somebody who has just rolled out the "don't attack private schools, let's instead make state schools so good that nobody chooses them" line is asked if they would support this, they usually find a way not to.
Conclusion: It's not a serious sentiment. It's a nice sounding platitude designed to avoid having to make the difficult argument that private schools are a net plus for society.
Wasn’t disagreeing - merely trying to quantify what you were suggesting. With one (informed) datapoint.
Average spending per pupil is £7,460. Pupil premium is £2,345.
There may be some double counting, but essentially Eton is suggesting that a fantastic education would cost about £14k per pupil (plus capex).
So almost a doubling of spending per head for a non-premium pupils
. . . yet more Republican shit-stirring by MAGA-maniac shit-stirrers
What do you think about Biden copying Trump's policy of a 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars? Is he in league with Elon Musk?
No, he’s in league with General Motors and chums.
What is coming down the turnpike (ha!) is genuinely cheap electric vehicles. Most of American and European auto production took the wrong lesson from Tesla. They thought they saw the possibility of selling everyone a $50k car.
At a certain price point for batteries, it becomes possible to build an EV that is cheaper than an ICE. Cheaper to buy, own and use.
FWIW I didn’t get agitated about you having a different view. I *did* object to you calling me ignorant and intellectually incurious. That displays an arrogance and a lack of confidence in your own assertions. Over the years I have been a trustee of charities and a private trust as well as a member of a GCC. So I have a good sense of the obligations of a trustee…
But you *are* ignorant and intellectually incurious on some issues...not others. So are most of us. The trick is, as Plato pointed out, to know what they are. I know nothing about health policy and don't generally comment on it for that reason.
As for my statements, I'm genuinely amused that you consider me 'lacking in confidence' when I'm right and you're wrong. And then accuse me of 'arrogance ' while lecturing me on something you're wrong about. There's a certain irony there...
I'm also quite worried about your comments on charities. If you hold you are right and the Charities Commission are wrong, however, feel free to tell them so they can correct their advice and make everyone's life easier.
That’s a very serious - arguably libellous - allegation.
The fact is that charitable assets are not wholly private or wholly state assets.
Please withdraw your assertion and apologise.
That’s actually the point I made at the very beginning when you claimed that they were the same as business assets and should not therefore be touched for that reason.
You’re now apparently accepting you were wrong about that.
So why are you arguing with me?
As for withdraw and apologise, no. I’m right, and you’re wrong. Is your aggression due to a lack of confidence in your position?
It is also certainly not libellous. Merely pointing out a lack of understanding the relevant law isn’t libellous. That’s true of most people, particularly those who are not charity trustees and apparently some who are. I have made no suggestion that you’ve made any criminal action, which would be required for a libel.
No: I said they were *private* assets ie not state assets. That’s not the same as business assets and in no ways suggests there is freedom of use.
I am the trustee of a number of charities. Reputation is important. You have implied that I am in breach of my obligations. That is a very serious allegation and one that should be withdrawn.
A libellous statement does not require criminal activity.
I seem to remember that the EU bans charging VAT on provision of education which could cause a weird mental problem for both sides on in/out and vat/no vat.
School fees are exempt but the wording is interesting as it actually says 'non-commercial school fees' so not sure how that definition would work within the UK prvate education sector.
But anyway, that would only become an issue if we were to rejoin or significantly align.
In any case, state sixth form and FE colleges are part of the VAT system, and were before Brexit.
I thought the header was interesting and well-written, though there seemed to be little attempt to bring in politics or betting.
If there are political implications, it seems to be that a criminal justice system based on behaviourism - the belief that the negative consequences (in this instance of crime) must outweigh the positive consequences to see a decline in the undesirable behaviour, is fundamentally flawed in its approach and therefore unlikely to yield success. I don't believe this to be true, but in any event, we cannot hope to solve crime by ending all negative experiences of childhood, any more than we can hope to solve immigration by making the third world a paradise. It's not possible, and the implications of even trying to attempt it would themselves be costly at best, Orwellian at worst. That leaves us with a 'flawed' solution vs. no solution.
It's not all or nothing is it, though?
An incremental improvement in support to struggling parents through eg reinstating Sure Start might be expected to have an incremental reduction in crime a generation later.
Why would trying to attempt it be Orwellian?
Sure Start is a name - this Government has "family hubs" - I don’t pretend to know enough about either to know whether either is better or worse. I don't think that the Government should stop trying to support families to give children a better start in life, but I do know that doing so isn't a solution to the crime and anti-social behaviour we see today.
It would be Orwellian for the Government to try and remove all experiences that the Government perceived as negative from childhood, because it would involve things like Scotland's named person scheme, and other intrusive forms of surveillance. The alternative to bad or indifferent parents is taking kids into care, which also has a track record of poor outcomes for kids.
Crime and anti-social behaviour is a complex phenomenon. Dealing with it requires a range of approaches.
That is certainly the accepted wisdom, but is it actually the case? Experiments by police forces in zero tolerance policing have been extremely successful. Backed up by a justice system that is prepared to be punitive where that is needed, I see no reason why crime could not go into decline and cease to be a major factor in our lives. We've never had these simple and just principles being applied consistently over the long term, so again I ask why we insist that it is so complex and difficult, when we haven't tried putting a simple approach based on universal human behaviour in place.
For the ultimate contrast, look what happened in Rotherham, where a class of people was allowed to fulfill all their most perverted desires with absolute impunity. That has been widely blamed on cultural antecedents, but behaviourism would say that it was the consequences (or lack of) that made the difference.
So let's fix the consequences, and then see what complexities are left.
I thought the header was interesting and well-written, though there seemed to be little attempt to bring in politics or betting.
If there are political implications, it seems to be that a criminal justice system based on behaviourism - the belief that the negative consequences (in this instance of crime) must outweigh the positive consequences to see a decline in the undesirable behaviour, is fundamentally flawed in its approach and therefore unlikely to yield success. I don't believe this to be true, but in any event, we cannot hope to solve crime by ending all negative experiences of childhood, any more than we can hope to solve immigration by making the third world a paradise. It's not possible, and the implications of even trying to attempt it would themselves be costly at best, Orwellian at worst. That leaves us with a 'flawed' solution vs. no solution.
It's not all or nothing is it, though?
An incremental improvement in support to struggling parents through eg reinstating Sure Start might be expected to have an incremental reduction in crime a generation later.
Why would trying to attempt it be Orwellian?
Sure Start is a name - this Government has "family hubs" - I don’t pretend to know enough about either to know whether either is better or worse. I don't think that the Government should stop trying to support families to give children a better start in life, but I do know that doing so isn't a solution to the crime and anti-social behaviour we see today.
It would be Orwellian for the Government to try and remove all experiences that the Government perceived as negative from childhood, because it would involve things like Scotland's named person scheme, and other intrusive forms of surveillance. The alternative to bad or indifferent parents is taking kids into care, which also has a track record of poor outcomes for kids.
I think it is fair to say that in general Sure Start was reasonably successful where other programmes have not been.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
Yes. It works on multiple levels. If it doesn't lead to a drop in private school numbers, good because it raises money to channel to the underfunded state sector. If it does lead to a drop, also good because it's about discouraging the affluent from forming their own educational 'gated community' outside of the mainstream. Either which way it can be presented with a straight face as a win.
In addition it's a policy that: (i) Pleases the left. (ii) Polls well amongst target voters in target seats, esp the Red Wall. (iii) Is both eyecatching and affordable.
Policies that tick all those boxes are very very hard to come up with. This one does it. It's a star.
Given the enthusiasm and joy with which various local authorities are proud of 98% occupancy in schools, what do you think will happen when there is demand for more places?
Indeed. But we are dealing with the DfE here. The policy of running at 98% occupancy of places is already insane. What makes you think that their response to falling pupils numbers (or rising pupil numbers) will be any less insane?
And there is a link back to the header there. If something apparently insane or self-harming is going on, the question is what on the mental map is causing it?
In the case of schools, it's a couple of things. One is that money follows pupils so directly- so having an empty seat in 9C is about seven grand forgone. And that's in an environment where most of the costs are fixed. Hence the bizarre phenomenon of schools advertising on the back of London buses- you don't need many responses for it to be worth it. (And if you don't, you risk losing out big time to your rivals.)
Second, even 100 percent occupancy doesn't comfortably pay the bills right now. Once you fall to ninety or eighty, your budget is screwed (this was an ongoing nightmare at the place I governed for a while.) Coupled with parent choice dynamics, what you usually get is four schools in a town full (or overfull) with all the spare places at the fifth, doomed school.
Obviously, the DfE are useless pinheads, but this one isn't their fault.
The DfE are part of the stupid system.
Operational Research tells us that an organisation or system running at such levels of utilisation will have quality failures, morale failures, loss of key staff and generally will stagger along in a fucked up state. With occasional disasters to liven the mix.
Strangely, teachers report….
Oh, absolutely.
But one of the uncomfortable realities for anyone on the right (even the dripping wet, "Starmer is a better approximation than Sunak" types like me) is that individuals acting rationally can add up to a collectively bad solution. And that has happened for parental preference in schools.
I don't see any government being willing to find meaningful spare capacity in schools, or any parent being willing to be fobbed off with "yes, that may look like an empty space at St Ofsted's, but it isn't really vacant so Tallulah can't have it."
St Ofsted's - a school name that would make the sensible a serious take their family to live in a bunker in Montana and home school.
How about this crazy idea - use falling rolls to reduce class sizes? I won’t suggest to private school levels, because that would Neon Fascist Imperialism (fitted for but not with Enslaving The Oppressed). The actual school spend could remain the same - detach from headcount. Or, increase the headcount per child to keep spend identical.
Whisper it quietly, but it is possible to educate children in crowds of less than 30.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
I don't see why not. Presumably there is a sweet spot somewhere on the spectrum from taxatiom to subsidy. I instinctively don't think it's in the direction of more taxation, and it seems unlikely that the sweet spot is neither taxation nor subsidy.
So, you would be OK with the state spending taxpayers’ money preferentially on the rich (i.e. those who can afford private school fees)?
What, like we do with, say, the Arts Council? I'd have no principled objections to that. But when I made the point I was more assuming the state paying bursaries (of, by implication, those who would otherwise not have access to private education i.e. those outside, what, the top 10% or so.)
The argument against VAT on private school fees is that you’ll drive students out of private schools and you’ll end up having to pay for their education through the state system. If that’s the case, then presumably a small subsidy would encourage parents to take kids out of the state system, saving the country more than the cost of the subsidy.
Yet the latter seems absurd, an unworkable policy, help targeted at the less needy. So I think that suggests there is a flaw in the argument that applying VAT would be a mistake. It’s about where the state directs its resources. Those who can afford private school fees are not the people in society most in need of help.
The argument is that not applying VAT to school fees saves money.
According to Google the average cost of school fees is £20,000 pet year. The VAT foregone is £4,000. The average per pupil spending is £7,400.
So it is cheaper to waive VAT than it is to pay the entire cost of a pupil in the state system. Now clearly the marginal cost of an *additional* pupil is less so the maths is more complicated than that but it’s indicative.
Beyond the fact VAT may or may not destroy private schools, why should you not pay VAT on it? I am slightly baffled at the logic.
My view is that we should be making state education so good private schools are irrelevant.
Indeed, Starmer’s priority in education should be levelling up, rather than levelling down by attacking private schools.
You have to do both. That's how see-saws work.
Why do you need to do both?
I rarely agree with @CorrectHorseBattery but on this occasion he suggested making private schools irrelevant by improving the quality of state schools. Let the private sector wither as parents make their own choices.
That’s absolutely the right approach.
Making private schools worse (“attacking them”) should have no role to play.
It's a platitude unless it comes with support for equalising the funding per pupil.
In the conversation I had, Eton told me that they will donate about £4k per pupil to the Eton STAR Academy schools. Together with the standard subvention and the pupil premium they reckoned this would be enough to give the kids an education of the quality that they would get at Eton.
Ok, not knocking that, but what I'm talking about is increasing the education budget such that spend per pupil in state schools equals spend per pupil in private schools.
When somebody who has just rolled out the "don't attack private schools, let's instead make state schools so good that nobody chooses them" line is asked if they would support this, they usually find a way not to.
Conclusion: It's not a serious sentiment. It's a nice sounding platitude designed to avoid having to make the difficult argument that private schools are a net plus for society.
Wasn’t disagreeing - merely trying to quantify what you were suggesting. With one (informed) datapoint.
Average spending per pupil is £7,460. Pupil premium is £2,345.
There may be some double counting, but essentially Eton is suggesting that a fantastic education would cost about £14k per pupil (plus capex).
So almost a doubling of spending per head for a non-premium pupils
Thanks to James Doyle for this thoughtful header. As it happens, I have been reading Charles Murray's "Coming Apart" and Derek Bok's "Our Underachieving Colleges", both of which -- from very different points of view -- describe failures of American adults in raising moral children.
And, if I may make a betting point here: For some time, I have believed that those failures help explain some of the Loser's attraction to many voters. They see the decline of marriage and community, and they want to blame some one, any one but themselves, for these declines.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
I don't see why not. Presumably there is a sweet spot somewhere on the spectrum from taxatiom to subsidy. I instinctively don't think it's in the direction of more taxation, and it seems unlikely that the sweet spot is neither taxation nor subsidy.
So, you would be OK with the state spending taxpayers’ money preferentially on the rich (i.e. those who can afford private school fees)?
What, like we do with, say, the Arts Council? I'd have no principled objections to that. But when I made the point I was more assuming the state paying bursaries (of, by implication, those who would otherwise not have access to private education i.e. those outside, what, the top 10% or so.)
The argument against VAT on private school fees is that you’ll drive students out of private schools and you’ll end up having to pay for their education through the state system. If that’s the case, then presumably a small subsidy would encourage parents to take kids out of the state system, saving the country more than the cost of the subsidy.
Yet the latter seems absurd, an unworkable policy, help targeted at the less needy. So I think that suggests there is a flaw in the argument that applying VAT would be a mistake. It’s about where the state directs its resources. Those who can afford private school fees are not the people in society most in need of help.
The argument is that not applying VAT to school fees saves money.
According to Google the average cost of school fees is £20,000 pet year. The VAT foregone is £4,000. The average per pupil spending is £7,400.
So it is cheaper to waive VAT than it is to pay the entire cost of a pupil in the state system. Now clearly the marginal cost of an *additional* pupil is less so the maths is more complicated than that but it’s indicative.
actually having no vat on education is nothing to do with charitable status , it is to do with the service of education . Education is an exempt supply for VAT purposes and the saving to the govenment would be less than £4K as input vat on expenses could be claimed if vat had to be charged. Charities are in the same VAT regime as anybody else - its the service that makes some charities seem exempt
FWIW I didn’t get agitated about you having a different view. I *did* object to you calling me ignorant and intellectually incurious. That displays an arrogance and a lack of confidence in your own assertions. Over the years I have been a trustee of charities and a private trust as well as a member of a GCC. So I have a good sense of the obligations of a trustee…
But you *are* ignorant and intellectually incurious on some issues...not others. So are most of us. The trick is, as Plato pointed out, to know what they are. I know nothing about health policy and don't generally comment on it for that reason.
As for my statements, I'm genuinely amused that you consider me 'lacking in confidence' when I'm right and you're wrong. And then accuse me of 'arrogance ' while lecturing me on something you're wrong about. There's a certain irony there...
I'm also quite worried about your comments on charities. If you hold you are right and the Charities Commission are wrong, however, feel free to tell them so they can correct their advice and make everyone's life easier.
That’s a very serious - arguably libellous - allegation.
The fact is that charitable assets are not wholly private or wholly state assets.
Please withdraw your assertion and apologise.
That’s actually the point I made at the very beginning when you claimed that they were the same as business assets and should not therefore be touched for that reason.
You’re now apparently accepting you were wrong about that.
So why are you arguing with me?
As for withdraw and apologise, no. I’m right, and you’re wrong. Is your aggression due to a lack of confidence in your position?
It is also certainly not libellous. Merely pointing out a lack of understanding the relevant law isn’t libellous. That’s true of most people, particularly those who are not charity trustees and apparently some who are. I have made no suggestion that you’ve made any criminal action, which would be required for a libel.
No: I said they were *private* assets ie not state assets. That’s not the same as business assets and in no ways suggests there is freedom of use.
I am the trustee of a number of charities. Reputation is important. You have implied that I am in breach of my obligations. That is a very serious allegation and one that should be withdrawn.
A libellous statement does not require criminal activity.
You implied you did not understand them. At no point did I suggest you were in breach of them. So you are still wrong.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
I don't see why not. Presumably there is a sweet spot somewhere on the spectrum from taxatiom to subsidy. I instinctively don't think it's in the direction of more taxation, and it seems unlikely that the sweet spot is neither taxation nor subsidy.
So, you would be OK with the state spending taxpayers’ money preferentially on the rich (i.e. those who can afford private school fees)?
What, like we do with, say, the Arts Council? I'd have no principled objections to that. But when I made the point I was more assuming the state paying bursaries (of, by implication, those who would otherwise not have access to private education i.e. those outside, what, the top 10% or so.)
The argument against VAT on private school fees is that you’ll drive students out of private schools and you’ll end up having to pay for their education through the state system. If that’s the case, then presumably a small subsidy would encourage parents to take kids out of the state system, saving the country more than the cost of the subsidy.
Yet the latter seems absurd, an unworkable policy, help targeted at the less needy. So I think that suggests there is a flaw in the argument that applying VAT would be a mistake. It’s about where the state directs its resources. Those who can afford private school fees are not the people in society most in need of help.
The argument is that not applying VAT to school fees saves money.
According to Google the average cost of school fees is £20,000 pet year. The VAT foregone is £4,000. The average per pupil spending is £7,400.
So it is cheaper to waive VAT than it is to pay the entire cost of a pupil in the state system. Now clearly the marginal cost of an *additional* pupil is less so the maths is more complicated than that but it’s indicative.
The question is the demand curve. If you impose a 20% price increase on a good, what is the change in demand?
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
I don't see why not. Presumably there is a sweet spot somewhere on the spectrum from taxatiom to subsidy. I instinctively don't think it's in the direction of more taxation, and it seems unlikely that the sweet spot is neither taxation nor subsidy.
So, you would be OK with the state spending taxpayers’ money preferentially on the rich (i.e. those who can afford private school fees)?
What, like we do with, say, the Arts Council? I'd have no principled objections to that. But when I made the point I was more assuming the state paying bursaries (of, by implication, those who would otherwise not have access to private education i.e. those outside, what, the top 10% or so.)
The argument against VAT on private school fees is that you’ll drive students out of private schools and you’ll end up having to pay for their education through the state system. If that’s the case, then presumably a small subsidy would encourage parents to take kids out of the state system, saving the country more than the cost of the subsidy.
Yet the latter seems absurd, an unworkable policy, help targeted at the less needy. So I think that suggests there is a flaw in the argument that applying VAT would be a mistake. It’s about where the state directs its resources. Those who can afford private school fees are not the people in society most in need of help.
The argument is that not applying VAT to school fees saves money.
According to Google the average cost of school fees is £20,000 pet year. The VAT foregone is £4,000. The average per pupil spending is £7,400.
So it is cheaper to waive VAT than it is to pay the entire cost of a pupil in the state system. Now clearly the marginal cost of an *additional* pupil is less so the maths is more complicated than that but it’s indicative.
The question is the demand curve. If you impose a 20% price increase on a good, what is the change in demand?
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
I don't see why not. Presumably there is a sweet spot somewhere on the spectrum from taxatiom to subsidy. I instinctively don't think it's in the direction of more taxation, and it seems unlikely that the sweet spot is neither taxation nor subsidy.
So, you would be OK with the state spending taxpayers’ money preferentially on the rich (i.e. those who can afford private school fees)?
What, like we do with, say, the Arts Council? I'd have no principled objections to that. But when I made the point I was more assuming the state paying bursaries (of, by implication, those who would otherwise not have access to private education i.e. those outside, what, the top 10% or so.)
The argument against VAT on private school fees is that you’ll drive students out of private schools and you’ll end up having to pay for their education through the state system. If that’s the case, then presumably a small subsidy would encourage parents to take kids out of the state system, saving the country more than the cost of the subsidy.
Yet the latter seems absurd, an unworkable policy, help targeted at the less needy. So I think that suggests there is a flaw in the argument that applying VAT would be a mistake. It’s about where the state directs its resources. Those who can afford private school fees are not the people in society most in need of help.
The argument is that not applying VAT to school fees saves money.
According to Google the average cost of school fees is £20,000 pet year. The VAT foregone is £4,000. The average per pupil spending is £7,400.
So it is cheaper to waive VAT than it is to pay the entire cost of a pupil in the state system. Now clearly the marginal cost of an *additional* pupil is less so the maths is more complicated than that but it’s indicative.
The question is the demand curve. If you impose a 20% price increase on a good, what is the change in demand?
But also it depends on what the schools do- how far to they implement austerity to absorb the increase and how far do they pass it on to parents?
If Eton are right, and they can deliver an Eton standard of education for 14K, and average school fees are 20K, that implies an awful lot of fat trimmable from the budget.
In the US, it is common for public libraries to carry newspapers and magazines that are free for anyone to read. Cookie's comment made me wonder if the same was true in the UK.
(And I took advantage of that yesterday to read an article in the April 30th NYT, describing how the feds are planning to kill 400K or more barred owls, in order to protect the closely related northern spotted owls. The local library, in this wealthy area, carries dozens of newspapers and magazines.)
Peripherally on education: the Times today has its list of the top 500 primary schools. Obviously the article is paywalled, so I considered buying a copy. It's £3.50 for a copy of the Times now! I was flabbergasted. Like some sort of millenial, I then went and spent twice that on a coffee and a bun, which I consumed sitting in the sun, a very pleasant experience which lasted 15 minutes, rathet thanthe couple of hours of so that a newspaper would have given me. But I have been conditioned to expect content for free and I'm not sure there is any going back now. Anyway - my mother in law, who has a subscription, read the article and told me the detail I was interested in*. I'm not sure what, if anything, this anecdote illustrates about the nature of news in the current age.
*which was that of the top 500 primary schools, by whatever methodology the Times applies, 8 are in my home town of Sale. Which given that roughly 1 in 1000 Brits live in Sale is something like 15 times more than one would expect by random chance. More, if you also think that as an urban area we have larger schools and therefore fewer per capita.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
Yes. It works on multiple levels. If it doesn't lead to a drop in private school numbers, good because it raises money to channel to the underfunded state sector. If it does lead to a drop, also good because it's about discouraging the affluent from forming their own educational 'gated community' outside of the mainstream. Either which way it can be presented with a straight face as a win.
In addition it's a policy that: (i) Pleases the left. (ii) Polls well amongst target voters in target seats, esp the Red Wall. (iii) Is both eyecatching and affordable.
Policies that tick all those boxes are very very hard to come up with. This one does it. It's a star.
Given the enthusiasm and joy with which various local authorities are proud of 98% occupancy in schools, what do you think will happen when there is demand for more places?
Indeed. But we are dealing with the DfE here. The policy of running at 98% occupancy of places is already insane. What makes you think that their response to falling pupils numbers (or rising pupil numbers) will be any less insane?
And there is a link back to the header there. If something apparently insane or self-harming is going on, the question is what on the mental map is causing it?
In the case of schools, it's a couple of things. One is that money follows pupils so directly- so having an empty seat in 9C is about seven grand forgone. And that's in an environment where most of the costs are fixed. Hence the bizarre phenomenon of schools advertising on the back of London buses- you don't need many responses for it to be worth it. (And if you don't, you risk losing out big time to your rivals.)
Second, even 100 percent occupancy doesn't comfortably pay the bills right now. Once you fall to ninety or eighty, your budget is screwed (this was an ongoing nightmare at the place I governed for a while.) Coupled with parent choice dynamics, what you usually get is four schools in a town full (or overfull) with all the spare places at the fifth, doomed school.
Obviously, the DfE are useless pinheads, but this one isn't their fault.
The DfE are part of the stupid system.
Operational Research tells us that an organisation or system running at such levels of utilisation will have quality failures, morale failures, loss of key staff and generally will stagger along in a fucked up state. With occasional disasters to liven the mix.
Strangely, teachers report….
Oh, absolutely.
But one of the uncomfortable realities for anyone on the right (even the dripping wet, "Starmer is a better approximation than Sunak" types like me) is that individuals acting rationally can add up to a collectively bad solution. And that has happened for parental preference in schools.
I don't see any government being willing to find meaningful spare capacity in schools, or any parent being willing to be fobbed off with "yes, that may look like an empty space at St Ofsted's, but it isn't really vacant so Tallulah can't have it."
Maybe we should end consumer preference in supermarkets and nationalise into one regulated one with managed spare capacity instead.
Individuals acting rationally can add up to a collectively bad solution.
In the US, it is common for public libraries to carry newspapers and magazines that are free for anyone to read. Cookie's comment made me wonder if the same was true in the UK.
(And I took advantage of that yesterday to read an article in the April 30th NYT, describing how the feds are planning to kill 400K or more barred owls, in order to protect the closely related northern spotted owls. The local library, in this wealthy area, carries dozens of newspapers and magazines.)
Public libraries? Good heavens.
In terms of newspapers and magazines, I think they disappeared from libraries round here in the last round of cuts, 2019ish?
It's just been announced that Havering council plans to shut 4 out of ten of its libraries because it's approximately broke due to the cost of social care.
What are the chances of Biden getting any credit for this in Texas ?
Incredible: 50 cranes at work on Samsung's $17 billion Texas chip plant. One building alone is 11 football fields long and needs 5,000 construction workers. The plant will do cutting-edge chips and advanced packaging for HBM.
Started early 2022. Expected to open in 2024 or 2025.
To the credit of the Chips Act team, they didn't just give all the funding to Intel as the leading US chipmaker. They wisely spread out their bet across all the top foreign chipmakers... https://twitter.com/kyleichan/status/1789262557716299802
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
Yes. It works on multiple levels. If it doesn't lead to a drop in private school numbers, good because it raises money to channel to the underfunded state sector. If it does lead to a drop, also good because it's about discouraging the affluent from forming their own educational 'gated community' outside of the mainstream. Either which way it can be presented with a straight face as a win.
In addition it's a policy that: (i) Pleases the left. (ii) Polls well amongst target voters in target seats, esp the Red Wall. (iii) Is both eyecatching and affordable.
Policies that tick all those boxes are very very hard to come up with. This one does it. It's a star.
Given the enthusiasm and joy with which various local authorities are proud of 98% occupancy in schools, what do you think will happen when there is demand for more places?
We'll see, won't we. Pointless speculating.
No, it isn’t pointless. Because policies have effects. Thinking about the effects before they happen is part of planning.
Given the number of politicians that read PB, they need to start thinking about the possible outcomes
1) not much change in the disposition of pupils. 2) a big move to state education - *in certain areas*. As in, say a resumption/increase in the move if the middle classes out of the city into the sticks.
If 2) happens, then a bunch of middle class people will show up in various areas, trying to get their kids into the Good Comprehensives/Free Schools. If you actually read up on some of the effects of this kind of thing, guess who gets pushed back?
Yes, the Process State is much easier to navigate for those with education (ha) and resources to move through and round The System.
Of course (!) the practical short-term impact of the policy should be considered. I'd hope SKS and team are doing that. Are you suggesting they aren't? What's your evidence for this? Just because we've had BoJo and Truss doesn't mean they're all rank incompetents in SW1. Least I really hope not. We may as well give up if so.
No, Malmers, that is not pointless, that is planning. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail etc. What I meant is pointless is me trying to field detailed questions from you on exactly how this policy will pan out. Esp when you've already decided what the answer is (which I think you have). Apols if I'm wrong but that's my sense of it. You (like many) dislike the policy on gutfeel and seek to find nitpicky ways it might backfire. That's the sequence.
I wonder, speaking of reading up on things, have you ever come across the technique of pretending to oppose something on purely pragmatic grounds that in truth you oppose on principle? It's so common that it ought to have a name. I bet it does actually.
Education is crying out for a technological solution. Close the schools and put the budget into producing world class content that can be made available over the internet to all British children.
VAT on private schools is excellent wedge politics from Labour. Significantly better than any of the stuff the Conservatives have tried.
For most people, private schools = that black and white Johnson/Cameron photo. And it links in beautifully with the helicoptered Sunak.
It's a nice bit of politicking that convinces the Labour faithful that Starmer might be heir to Blair, but at least he's still one of us.
It will cost the country money, in that it will cost more to educate those who would have been educated privately through the state sector instead, than it will raise in taxes.
And it will be full of unintended consequences - pushy middle class parents taking up places at better state schools that once went to those with less privileged backgrounds, further distortion of the housing market, a less well educated workforce, greater inequality (the ultra rich will still send their kids to the top public schools - it will be the climbers in the middle who miss out on the social mobility that sending your kids to a lesser day school provides), fewer initiatives for underprivileged kids that are currently provided by private schools and so on.
But it is red meat for red voters. Sometimes policies don't have to make sense to be popular, especially not when policy is based on ideology over evidence.
Whether it will cost the country money is yet to be determined.
If you are right that it will cost the country money, do you think we should subsidise private school fees? If taxing them will cost the country money, presumably we can save the country money by subsidising them.
I don't see why not. Presumably there is a sweet spot somewhere on the spectrum from taxatiom to subsidy. I instinctively don't think it's in the direction of more taxation, and it seems unlikely that the sweet spot is neither taxation nor subsidy.
So, you would be OK with the state spending taxpayers’ money preferentially on the rich (i.e. those who can afford private school fees)?
What, like we do with, say, the Arts Council? I'd have no principled objections to that. But when I made the point I was more assuming the state paying bursaries (of, by implication, those who would otherwise not have access to private education i.e. those outside, what, the top 10% or so.)
The argument against VAT on private school fees is that you’ll drive students out of private schools and you’ll end up having to pay for their education through the state system. If that’s the case, then presumably a small subsidy would encourage parents to take kids out of the state system, saving the country more than the cost of the subsidy.
Yet the latter seems absurd, an unworkable policy, help targeted at the less needy. So I think that suggests there is a flaw in the argument that applying VAT would be a mistake. It’s about where the state directs its resources. Those who can afford private school fees are not the people in society most in need of help.
To me it seems inconsistent. Why exactly are these fees exempt from VAT? It seems like an outlier to me that nobody has been able to quite explain the logic of. I’d also apply it to university fees which seem to have no business not having it applied either.
Universities are already actually receiving government subsidies for every home grown student on their books
Wouldn't charging VAT on the fees just increase the required subsidy?
A fucking stupid idea, I think
I think, secretly, most of us know charging VAT on private education is going to be messy and counterproductive: it will shrink one of our world-leading sectors, shift more spending into consumption and housing further inflating asset prices, make many of the best state schools even less accessible, lead to fewer jobs and innovations in education, and poorer outcomes - but it gets a pass because class.
Many us have a popular prejudice that the country is run by old Etonians who all know each other, aren't particularly talented, hold the rest of us in contempt and have screwed us over so we want to hit them where it hurts.
Education is crying out for a technological solution. Close the schools and put the budget into producing world class content that can be made available over the internet to all British children.
"What time is Doctor Who on, viewcode?" "Why, tis at 6:20pm, Mr Sock" "Bbbut...thats in a few minutes, viewcode!" "Best get the Doritos and dip out then, eh?" "Yay!"
"What time is Doctor Who on, viewcode?" "Why, tis at 6:20pm, Mr Sock" "Bbbut...thats in a few minutes, viewcode!" "Best get the Doritos and dip out then, eh?" "Yay!"
Hums the theme tune... Woo-oo-oooh, woo-hoo-hoo, wah wah...
Comments
Incredible: 50 cranes at work on Samsung's $17 billion Texas chip plant. One building alone is 11 football fields long and needs 5,000 construction workers. The plant will do cutting-edge chips and advanced packaging for HBM.
Started early 2022. Expected to open in 2024 or 2025.
Here are the Chips Act awards so far again:
Intel $8.5 billion
TSMC $6.6 billion
Samsung $6.4 billion
Micron: $6.1 billion
GlobalFoundries $1.5 billion
Source: https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-17/micron-mu-to-get-over-6-billion-in-chips-act-grants-in-announcement-next-week
To the credit of the Chips Act team, they didn't just give all the funding to Intel as the leading US chipmaker. They wisely spread out their bet across all the top foreign chipmakers...
https://twitter.com/kyleichan/status/1789262557716299802
Like some sort of millenial, I then went and spent twice that on a coffee and a bun, which I consumed sitting in the sun, a very pleasant experience which lasted 15 minutes, rathet thanthe couple of hours of so that a newspaper would have given me. But I have been conditioned to expect content for free and I'm not sure there is any going back now.
Anyway - my mother in law, who has a subscription, read the article and told me the detail I was interested in*. I'm not sure what, if anything, this anecdote illustrates about the nature of news in the current age.
*which was that of the top 500 primary schools, by whatever methodology the Times applies, 8 are in my home town of Sale. Which given that roughly 1 in 1000 Brits live in Sale is something like 15 times more than one would expect by random chance. More, if you also think that as an urban area we have larger schools and therefore fewer per capita.
As I said before it would be more effective to mandate a big percentage of places to pupils who the gov pay for so giving a leg up to those who could never afford it otherwise. Bit that would mean accepting that there is an element of private education that’s better than state education which is uncomfortable to deal with.
More Scots say they broadly agree with JK Rowling over transgender issues than disagree, a new poll for The Scotsman has found.
The poll by Savanta found 41 per cent of respondents said they tended to agree with the author's views more than they disagreed, while 23 per cent said the opposite.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/poll-more-scots-agree-with-jk-rowling-over-trans-issues-than-disagree-4624146
Thomas says critics are pushing ‘nastiness’ and calls Washington a ‘hideous place’
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/10/clarence-thomas-critics-00157460
https://www.mha.co.uk/insights/labours-policy-on-placing-vat-on-private-school-fees
The Third Sector is called that for a reason.
Charitable trusts are established for a purpose. They have Trustees with an obligation to oversee the use of those funds and ensure they are used for the purpose determined by the original settlor.
They are not an arm of the state and for the state to seize those assets would be expropriation of private assets.
(Not are they wholly private assets because there are regulations that govern how they can be used because the beneficiaries do not necessarily have the ability to speak for themselves).
But I have seen you have moved from disendowment being obviously legal to “there is an argument”. So that is progress of a sorts.
Your argument that Eton uses its endowment to maintain the buildings is utterly untrue - I would go so far as to say a lie. Eton spent £23m in 2023 on its premises (before capital expenditure). The endowment contributed £15m. However money is fungible - if the endowment were to contribute nothing they would still have to spend on maintaining their medieval buildings so the loss of income would have to be met through reductions in bursaries (£9m) partnerships (£3m) and teaching (£31m) not through ignoring their legal obligations to maintain their Grade 1 listed estate.
FWIW I didn’t get agitated about you having a different view. I *did* object to you calling me ignorant and intellectually incurious. That displays an arrogance and a lack of confidence in your own assertions. Over the years I have been a trustee of charities and a private trust as well as a member of a GCC. So I have a good sense of the obligations of a trustee…
It's like me claiming that I subsidise parents getting VAT free clothes for their children, because I pay VAT on my clothes
Money isn't paid to private schools, and taxing education is a really, really stupid idea
I would say, in a similar state way to Rwanda on the other side of the coin, whether or not it is good policy hinges on its impact, rather than the theory.
As for accepting there is an element of private education that is better than state, I don't think that's uncomfortable to deal with. There is a big disparity between finding per pupil, so you'd expect private provision to be better.
Plus, with the honourable exception of specialist SEND schools, private schools tend to avoid the harder cases that disproportionately drain resources, particularly at the moment.
I'd be hoping a Labour government can travel much further down this road but let's see about that. It won't be easy even if SKS wants to (which I'm not sure he does). Private schools are deeply embedded in our high-end social fabric. Many people of wealth, power and influence are protective of them.
I'd have no principled objections to that. But when I made the point I was more assuming the state paying bursaries (of, by implication, those who would otherwise not have access to private education i.e. those outside, what, the top 10% or so.)
As for my statements, I'm genuinely amused that you consider me 'lacking in confidence' when I'm right and you're wrong. And then accuse me of 'arrogance ' while lecturing me on something you're wrong about. There's a certain irony there...
I'm also quite worried about your comments on charities. If you hold you are right and the Charities Commission are wrong, however, feel free to tell them so they can correct their advice and make everyone's life easier.
He reminds of “man shouts at cloud”.
I'm staying at a really rather fancy (4*) hotel tonight, right by Pamplona cathedral. I've spent (quite a few quid) extra on it so I could be right in the old city centre, both for tonight's fun, and so hat I can easily be at the bus station tomorrow morning for the early bus to San Sebastian
It's just clouded over, which is a huge relief as it's been over 25⁰C since 10am
The fact is that charitable assets are not wholly private or wholly state assets.
Please withdraw your assertion and apologise.
Oxfam can be criticised for many things, but your last sentence doesn't stack up I don't think.
If there are political implications, it seems to be that a criminal justice system based on behaviourism - the belief that the negative consequences (in this instance of crime) must outweigh the positive consequences to see a decline in the undesirable behaviour, is fundamentally flawed in its approach and therefore unlikely to yield success. I don't believe this to be true, but in any event, we cannot hope to solve crime by ending all negative experiences of childhood, any more than we can hope to solve immigration by making the third world a paradise. It's not possible, and the implications of even trying to attempt it would themselves be costly at best, Orwellian at worst. That leaves us with a 'flawed' solution vs. no solution.
Biden’s economic policies are precisely aimed at the answer to this question.
You can dispute the quality and efficacy of the answer, but it is an answer, nonetheless.
When somebody who has just rolled out the "don't attack private schools, let's instead make state schools so good that nobody chooses them" line is asked if they would support this, they usually find a way not to.
Conclusion: It's not a serious sentiment. It's a nice sounding platitude designed to avoid having to make the difficult argument that private schools are a net plus for society.
In the financial year 2023 to 2024 our Chief Executive’s basic salary was set at £218,400.
https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-policies/our-statement-on-senior-salaries
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/birthsummarytablesenglandandwales/2022
Not sure how fundraising and generating income are different to be honest.
https://x.com/davekeating/status/1789303183421870540
https://x.com/davekeating/status/1789321679128125854
You’re now apparently accepting you were wrong about that.
So why are you arguing with me?
As for withdraw and apologise, no. I’m right, and you’re wrong. Is your aggression due to a lack of confidence in your position?
It is also certainly not libellous. Merely pointing out a lack of understanding the relevant law isn’t libellous. That’s true of most people, particularly those who are not charity trustees and apparently some who are. I have made no suggestion that you’ve made any criminal action, which would be required for a libel.
An incremental improvement in support to struggling parents through eg reinstating Sure Start might be expected to have an incremental reduction in crime a generation later.
Why would trying to attempt it be Orwellian?
May I make a friendly suggestion?
You seem to be getting very wound up. Maybe time to go and enjoy the sun and come back when you feel a bit calmer?
Personally, I find many of your contributions interesting, and will continue to read them and respond where I have something to add. But right now you seem in a bad mood.
Yet the latter seems absurd, an unworkable policy, help targeted at the less needy. So I think that suggests there is a flaw in the argument that applying VAT would be a mistake. It’s about where the state directs its resources. Those who can afford private school fees are not the people in society most in need of help.
Given the number of politicians that read PB, they need to start thinking about the possible outcomes
1) not much change in the disposition of pupils.
2) a big move to state education - *in certain areas*. As in, say a resumption/increase in the move if the middle classes out of the city into the sticks.
If 2) happens, then a bunch of middle class people will show up in various areas, trying to get their kids into the Good Comprehensives/Free Schools. If you actually read up on some of the effects of this kind of thing, guess who gets pushed back?
Yes, the Process State is much easier to navigate for those with education (ha) and resources to move through and round The System.
In the case of schools, it's a couple of things. One is that money follows pupils so directly- so having an empty seat in 9C is about seven grand forgone. And that's in an environment where most of the costs are fixed. Hence the bizarre phenomenon of schools advertising on the back of London buses- you don't need many responses for it to be worth it. (And if you don't, you risk losing out big time to your rivals.)
Second, even 100 percent occupancy doesn't comfortably pay the bills right now. Once you fall to ninety or eighty, your budget is screwed (this was an ongoing nightmare at the place I governed for a while.) Coupled with parent choice dynamics, what you usually get is four schools in a town full (or overfull) with all the spare places at the fifth, doomed school.
Obviously, the DfE are useless pinheads, but this one isn't their fault.
Wouldn't charging VAT on the fees just increase the required subsidy?
A fucking stupid idea, I think
Operational Research tells us that an organisation or system running at such levels of utilisation will have quality failures, morale failures, loss of key staff and generally will stagger along in a fucked up state. With occasional disasters to liven the mix.
Strangely, teachers report….
I stand by my point on private fees though. There doesn’t seem to be a terrible amount of logic on not charging VAT there. Also private healthcare isn’t charged I believe (might be wrong).
FFS
Seattle Times - Three Bob Night: Two more Bob Fergusons running for WA governor
OLYMPIA — Bob Ferguson could face Bob Ferguson and Bob Ferguson in the August primary.
That’s Bob Ferguson, the state attorney general; Bob Ferguson, a retired state employee in Yakima; and Bob Ferguson, a military veteran in Graham.
All three are running for Washington governor.
Conservative activist Glen Morgan recruited two people who share a name with the Democratic front-runner for governor to also seek the state’s highest office. They officially filed to run Friday, at the close of Washington’s candidate filing week.
“If I had started a little bit earlier, I would have been able to have six Bob Fergusons,” Morgan said. “I contacted about 12. I just ran out of time.”
Morgan, who answered calls Friday to the numbers listed for the two campaigns, declined to provide The Seattle Times with the contact information for either of the two Bob Fergusons who filed. . . .
This year, the governor’s seat is open for the first time since 2012. Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat who has led the state for more than a decade, is not running for a fourth term. Attorney General Ferguson has amassed a campaign war chest of nearly $7 million, according to campaign finance reports. . . .
In total, 30 people filed to run for governor this past week. The deadline for candidates to withdraw is Monday. The filing fee for governor is nearly $2,000.
The secretary of state had not determined how to handle the situation as of Friday night and is still reviewing it. In situations where there are two or more candidates with names that “are so similar as to be confusing to voters,” state administrative rules say that the filing officer — in this case the secretary of state — shall differentiate between candidates by including additional information on the ballot, such as their occupation or their status as an incumbent or challenger.
On Friday, the secretary of state asked all three Bob Ferguson campaigns for information about each of the candidates’ occupations.
SSI - Last time similar situation occurred in a race for WA statewide office, was in 1996 for Lieutenant Governor, where it proved to be a BIG help to "Brad Owen (State Senator)" who was eventually elected.
This year, reckon it will also be helpful to the "real" Bob Ferguson, as he will (almost certainly) be identified on the primary ballot as "Bob Ferguson (Attorney General)".
My fearless prediction - he will top the poll for Governor this August, followed by Republican former King Co. Sheriff and Congressman Dave Reichert as the other Top Two finisher.
What the GOPer wonder-weenie has accomplished, is to yet again drive home the same point made (for example) by Marjorie Taylor Greene: that today's Trump Republican Party is good for nothing except . . . wait for it . . . more and more and more shit-stirring.
But as I said, I don't necessarily mean that those are the people whose feea you should pay. I had something more along the lines of the old assisted places scheme in mind.
And this is only on my assumption that doing so can provide more resources per pupil for all pupils! Which I don't think qn unreasonable guess but I'd want rather more data on.
I think there can be an issue with policies that are inequitable, yet leave the state better off. Fairness sometimes trumps other considerations.
The argument about school and university fees is very different. And yes as a basic principle I have no problems extending it to private schooling. University fees are a different and more comples argument because there is no state provided alternative and we want to avoid making tertiary education the preserve of the wealthy.
It would be Orwellian for the Government to try and remove all experiences that the Government perceived as negative from childhood, because it would involve things like Scotland's named person scheme, and other intrusive forms of surveillance. The alternative to bad or indifferent parents is taking kids into care, which also has a track record of poor outcomes for kids.
But one of the uncomfortable realities for anyone on the right (even the dripping wet, "Starmer is a better approximation than Sunak" types like me) is that individuals acting rationally can add up to a collectively bad solution. And that has happened for parental preference in schools.
I don't see any government being willing to find meaningful spare capacity in schools, or any parent being willing to be fobbed off with "yes, that may look like an empty space at St Ofsted's, but it isn't really vacant so Tallulah can't have it."
I also note that a demographic fall in UK state school population is currently feeding through the system, which means that increased capacity may be available.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CDP-2023-0115/CDP-2023-0115.pdf
However, the number of primary pupils on roll has declined from a peak of 4.44 million in 2019, to 4.40 million in 2022 (a 1% decline).
Over the same period the number of secondary pupils increased by 7%.
eg See this piece about state schools in London potentially closing because of falling pupil numbers.
https://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/members-area/member-briefings/children-and-young-people/managing-falling-school-rolls-london
This is how it ends, not with a boom bang a bang but with a whimper
But anyway, that would only become an issue if we were to rejoin or significantly align.
Making the issues we’ve been discussing still worse…
Average spending per pupil is £7,460. Pupil premium is £2,345.
There may be some double counting, but essentially Eton is suggesting that a fantastic education would cost about £14k per pupil (plus capex).
So almost a doubling of spending per head for a non-premium pupils
What is coming down the turnpike (ha!) is genuinely cheap electric vehicles. Most of American and European auto production took the wrong lesson from Tesla. They thought they saw the possibility of selling everyone a $50k car.
At a certain price point for batteries, it becomes possible to build an EV that is cheaper than an ICE. Cheaper to buy, own and use.
At that point, why would anyone have an ICE?
I am the trustee of a number of charities. Reputation is important. You have implied that I am in breach of my obligations. That is a very serious allegation and one that should be withdrawn.
A libellous statement does not require criminal activity.
https://feweek.co.uk/no-plans-to-exempt-colleges-from-vat-says-treasury-secretary
One of the reasons I'm not sympathetic to fee-paying schools on this one.
For the ultimate contrast, look what happened in Rotherham, where a class of people was allowed to fulfill all their most perverted desires with absolute impunity. That has been widely blamed on cultural antecedents, but behaviourism would say that it was the consequences (or lack of) that made the difference.
So let's fix the consequences, and then see what complexities are left.
See the conclusion here for one brief evaluation of I think part of the programme.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7ae2d8e5274a319e77b6ac/DFE-RR067.pdf
How about this crazy idea - use falling rolls to reduce class sizes? I won’t suggest to private school levels, because that would Neon Fascist Imperialism (fitted for but not with Enslaving The Oppressed). The actual school spend could remain the same - detach from headcount. Or, increase the headcount per child to keep spend identical.
Whisper it quietly, but it is possible to educate children in crowds of less than 30.
According to Google the average cost of school fees is £20,000 pet year. The VAT foregone is £4,000. The average per pupil spending is £7,400.
So it is cheaper to waive VAT than it is to pay the entire cost of a pupil in the state system. Now clearly the marginal cost of an *additional* pupil is less so the maths is more complicated than that but it’s indicative.
And, if I may make a betting point here: For some time, I have believed that those failures help explain some of the Loser's attraction to many voters. They see the decline of marriage and community, and they want to blame some one, any one but themselves, for these declines.
(Those who would lose friends if they admitted to reading anything by Charles Murray may want to look at a newer book, which has gotten much favorable coverage: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo205550079.html )
Charities are in the same VAT regime as anybody else - its the service that makes some charities seem exempt
As it is I’m ok. I’m here. It’s not great but - you know what - I will try and cope. Cheers
If Eton are right, and they can deliver an Eton standard of education for 14K, and average school fees are 20K, that implies an awful lot of fat trimmable from the budget.
If they are so minded to do.
(And I took advantage of that yesterday to read an article in the April 30th NYT, describing how the feds are planning to kill 400K or more barred owls, in order to protect the closely related northern spotted owls. The local library, in this wealthy area, carries dozens of newspapers and magazines.)
Individuals acting rationally can add up to a collectively bad solution.
In terms of newspapers and magazines, I think they disappeared from libraries round here in the last round of cuts, 2019ish?
It's just been announced that Havering council plans to shut 4 out of ten of its libraries because it's approximately broke due to the cost of social care.
No, Malmers, that is not pointless, that is planning. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail etc. What I meant is pointless is me trying to field detailed questions from you on exactly how this policy will pan out. Esp when you've already decided what the answer is (which I think you have). Apols if I'm wrong but that's my sense of it. You (like many) dislike the policy on gutfeel and seek to find nitpicky ways it might backfire. That's the sequence.
I wonder, speaking of reading up on things, have you ever come across the technique of pretending to oppose something on purely pragmatic grounds that in truth you oppose on principle? It's so common that it ought to have a name. I bet it does actually.
Many us have a popular prejudice that the country is run by old Etonians who all know each other, aren't particularly talented, hold the rest of us in contempt and have screwed us over so we want to hit them where it hurts.
"Why, tis at 6:20pm, Mr Sock"
"Bbbut...thats in a few minutes, viewcode!"
"Best get the Doritos and dip out then, eh?"
"Yay!"