Just come in and there is a lot of comment today that I haven't had time to wade through so apologies if someone else has made the same point.
There might be merit in either aspect of the policy if thought through - but as some others have said, this (like Rwanda) isn't a policy that's meant to be actually delivered, it's just to signal to the hard right not to flirt with Reform and stick with the Tories.
But I wonder whether all it does is feed into the narrative of Chaos with the Conservatives. This policy has clearly just been pulled out of Sunak's backside, with no discussion or thought.
And that's what worries me most about the Tories. In a democratic party, policy is decided by the membership, and although the leadership has flexibility in how to prioritise and apply to circumstances, we know what their policy is. With the Tories it is whatever the leadership decides it is. Even if it's the polar opposite of what they stood for yesterday. The last 6 years show this in extreme form. The backbenchers are mostly so supine they just go along with whatever the leadership says.
If you vote Tory, there is no knowing what you might get.
I am not sure I would want Tory party membership deciding policy. The membership of any political party tends to be at the more extreme end of the spectrum.
I'm not sure if this is something that Sunak should be boasting about for electoral purposes:
Conversely, the 60 overachieving areas with the highest housing delivery tend to be in the northwest (19) and Yorkshire and the Humber (10), where prices are lower. Richmondshire, in North Yorkshire, tops the chart: the council built 1,562 homes, which exceeded its low requirement of 29 by more than 5,000 per cent. These councils may see housing development “as a way to lever in investment and improve their housing stock quality, culminating in a pro-development stance”, Edward Clarke, an associate director at Lichfields, says.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
It is that school but, with respect, you know nothing about it other than keen to find an angle that absolves Labour of all blame. It'd otherwise compell you to engage with the complexities of a nasty and unpleasant policy that you'd prefer not to.
The 20% price demand shock has been sufficient to kill it off, whereas otherwise it would have survived, and the disruption its going to cause to my son and his friends, and all the job losses it causes - including several pre-school teachers who are family friends - can be laid entirely at the door of SKS. Everyone knows he's going to win and that's having real world effects now.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
I doubt VAT on private schools is going to raise much money for the government as it will move some pupils back to the state sector.
But in the upcoming decades we're going to have to see more taxes raised and lower spending on pretty much all of the country.
And it will be easier for many of the disadvantaged groups to lose out if some of those at the top are visibly doing so as well.
Even if its unfortunate and unpleasant for your family.
Why after 14 years of Tory government is CR not blaming the current government for having failed to deliver schools of sufficient quality that he feels the need to send his kids to a private school in the first place and is so unhappy about such a prospect of a state education for his kids, as 93% of the population receive ?
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
I'm not forgetting it at all, just look at how things have changed just in 3 years?
The Tories were taking seats off Labour in by-elections just 37 months ago.
Labour will experience strong opposition from Day One. And regardless of what they do in Opposition they will be accused of "lurching".
That's just branding.
Any decent government will have to take hard decisions, for all the reasons Robert Smithson has given. Hard means unpopular.
We are - across Western democracies - paying more, for less.
I think Labour could rapidly haemorrhage support in multiple directions.
What support they do have, now, is largely built up of a coalition simply desperate to eject the incumbent administration.
It ceases to have glue at 10pm on election day.
Could do. I suppose the question is whether Starmer will be bolder in office than his cautious campaign approach, and if he needs to be to deal with the problems that are being faced, at the cost of some support? Or will be, even if he gets a big majority, play things very cautiously to avoid fracturing the coalition that put him there?
Starmer will trade on every vote he gets and use it as a personal mandate to do whatever he decides to do.
You absolutely don't know what you're going to get with SKS.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
I’m not sure that follows.
If numbers are dwindling the directors may think there is scope to turn it around. But then VAT puts prices up 20% and the decline accelerates.
It may not be the only contributing factor but it doesn’t mean that Labour isn’t responsible
It always amuses me that people cannot seem to see that many - in fact most - things are multifactorial. Events are rarely caused by just one thing, but several working together.
I n this case, it's perfectly possible that the school could have kept going, but the *threat* of the tax placed an additional burden onto the school - perhaps in part by putting off prospective parents. It's a perfectly feasible scenario.
In addition, the directors have a moral responsibility to try to give as much warning of closure as possible. Taking in another year's intake, just to close a few months later, would IMV be irresponsible.
It made the difference between surviving a bad year and closure.
On that the Trustee letter is very clear.
Most of the private schools are expecting a shakeout due to Starmer. Single sex schools are increasingly going co-ed so they can pick up families of those faced with school closures. The smaller schools are most vulnerable as they live closer to the breadline.
I suspect the net effect will be fewer schools but the really well off will go on as usual. The fall out will be less well off families who want to invest in their kids education.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
It is that school but, with respect, you know nothing about it other than keen to find an angle that absolves Labour of all blame. It'd otherwise compell you to engage with the complexities of a nasty and unpleasant policy that you'd prefer not to.
The 20% price demand shock has been sufficient to kill it off, whereas otherwise it would have survived, and the disruption its going to cause to my son and his friends, and all the job losses it causes - including several pre-school teachers who are family friends - can be laid entirely at the door of SKS. Everyone knows he's going to win and that's having real world effects now.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
I doubt VAT on private schools is going to raise much money for the government as it will move some pupils back to the state sector.
But in the upcoming decades we're going to have to see more taxes raised and lower spending on pretty much all of the country.
And it will be easier for many of the disadvantaged groups to lose out if some of those at the top are visibly doing so as well.
Even if its unfortunate and unpleasant for your family.
It is deeply unpleasant and deeply personal.
But the point is it won't raise any money for the government and will make the education smaller and worse. That's my argument as to why anyone who cares about state education should oppose it.
I think Starmer would have more fruit pursuing a line of broader wealth taxes, even if I didn't necessarily agree with them.
The headline is Labour are attacking the national service idea as a gimmick. That feels fairly smart, leave it to online weirdos to rant and rave about it whilst just dismissing it as the official line.
I think Labour's response is a lot more rational than mine - and in fact they've basically learned from the 2019 Tory campaign in that respect.
But I do think it's fair to criticise this policy on grounds that surely anyone thinks the people should at least be paid, right? Can some supporters explain why people shouldn't be paid to do it?
Asking people to volunteer one weekend in four to things that benefit society is not unreasonable.
For example: litter collection by the side of roads. Doesn’t get done for health & safety and cost reasons. But if you can solve the former and get it done by volunteers then the whole country would be better off in a small way
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
Calm down dear. It's only an election.
You forget, Chris, it's not: my son is losing his school and his teachers their jobs. The town, a school that's been at the centre of the community for almost 90 years.
This is deeply deeply real. It's not a game. It's not a ding-dong.
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
I'm not forgetting it at all, just look at how things have changed just in 3 years?
The Tories were taking seats off Labour in by-elections just 37 months ago.
Labour will experience strong opposition from Day One. And regardless of what they do in Opposition they will be accused of "lurching".
That's just branding.
Any decent government will have to take hard decisions, for all the reasons Robert Smithson has given. Hard means unpopular.
We are - across Western democracies - paying more, for less.
I think Labour could rapidly haemorrhage support in multiple directions.
What support they do have, now, is largely built up of a coalition simply desperate to eject the incumbent administration.
It ceases to have glue at 10pm on election day.
Could do. I suppose the question is whether Starmer will be bolder in office than his cautious campaign approach, and if he needs to be to deal with the problems that are being faced, at the cost of some support? Or will be, even if he gets a big majority, play things very cautiously to avoid fracturing the coalition that put him there?
Starmer will trade on every vote he gets and use it as a personal mandate to do whatever he decides to do.
You absolutely don't know what you're going to get with SKS.
Someone who won’t be forced to resign from being. PM and replaced by someone who was clearly unsuitable for the job and lasted 50 days
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
It is that school but, with respect, you know nothing about it other than keen to find an angle that absolves Labour of all blame. It'd otherwise compell you to engage with the complexities of a nasty and unpleasant policy that you'd prefer not to.
The 20% price demand shock has been sufficient to kill it off, whereas otherwise it would have survived, and the disruption its going to cause to my son and his friends, and all the job losses it causes - including several pre-school teachers who are family friends - can be laid entirely at the door of SKS. Everyone knows he's going to win and that's having real world effects now.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
I doubt VAT on private schools is going to raise much money for the government as it will move some pupils back to the state sector.
But in the upcoming decades we're going to have to see more taxes raised and lower spending on pretty much all of the country.
And it will be easier for many of the disadvantaged groups to lose out if some of those at the top are visibly doing so as well.
Even if its unfortunate and unpleasant for your family.
Why after 14 years of Tory government is CR not blaming the current government for having failed to deliver schools of sufficient quality that he feels the need to send his kids to a private school in the first place and is so unhappy about such a prospect of a state education for his kids, as 93% of the population receive ?
Because no Government since the 1960s has delivered schools of sufficient quality. As a rule state education in the UK is shit and has been for decades. I don't know if private education is any better but there is almost an element of victim blaming to attack people for trying to avoid the worst of the state sector.
Just learnt something totally new thanks to a Jago Hazzard video. Heathrow Airport airlines used to employ air terminals outside the airport to check people in and use coaches to transport them to the airport. The West London air terminal in Kensington was in use from 1957 to 1974.
On reflection, the scheme is wrongly targeted. It's idle 63 year olds like me who should be told Community Service or Army. I'd moan but it'd be good for me.
Doing something useful, fair enough - but what army in its right mind has wanted 63-year-old recruits????
If we're going to do the whole Downfall thing properly..
From a quick scan of that, even in the dying days of the Third Reich they had an upper age limit of 60 :-(
Perhaps a mandatory 10 years of national service for all public schoolboys and girls. Not just the ones leaving school now - all of them. It would free up initiative and energy. It would remove the new elite (same as the old elite). It would be disruptive. It would please a focus group of Red Wall Galloway supporters. Is that all white-board and buzzspeak blue sky thinking BS enough to get it into the Con manifesto?
Are we really sure we want to create a group comprising of the privileged offspring of the elite, separate them from the rest of society for a(nother) decade, and also give them advanced weapons training?
I mean, I'm up for it, just for shits and giggles, it's not materially worse than Rishi's plan to fix the country...
Bit too reminiscent of the Manchester & Salford Yeomanry, or for Scots the Cinque Port Light Dragoons.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
I’m not sure that follows.
If numbers are dwindling the directors may think there is scope to turn it around. But then VAT puts prices up 20% and the decline accelerates.
It may not be the only contributing factor but it doesn’t mean that Labour isn’t responsible
It always amuses me that people cannot seem to see that many - in fact most - things are multifactorial. Events are rarely caused by just one thing, but several working together.
I n this case, it's perfectly possible that the school could have kept going, but the *threat* of the tax placed an additional burden onto the school - perhaps in part by putting off prospective parents. It's a perfectly feasible scenario.
In addition, the directors have a moral responsibility to try to give as much warning of closure as possible. Taking in another year's intake, just to close a few months later, would IMV be irresponsible.
It made the difference between surviving a bad year and closure.
On that the Trustee letter is very clear.
Most of the private schools are expecting a shakeout due to Starmer. Single sex schools are increasingly going co-ed so they can pick up families of those faced with school closures. The smaller schools are most vulnerable as they live closer to the breadline.
I suspect the net effect will be fewer schools but the really well off will go on as usual. The fall out will be less well off families who want to invest in their kids education.
Yep. My wife and I have had this chat today.
We might just give up. We'd be £35k a year better off, the state about £14k worse off. We could pay for nannies, after-school care, much nicer holidays and cars, and a home extension; we could also pay off our mortgage and retire earlier. The taxpayer would pick up the bill.
She wouldn't be getting half of it if she were a bloke.
Nick Robinson was a bloke and he was lambasted on here as Toenails for his pro-Labour bias, at least until David Cameron tried to recruit Robinson who had been a Conservative even at Oxford.
True, but that was sort of a meme/piss-take but the stuff aimed at Laura Kuenssberg is just aggressive and downright nasty.
No it is not.
She is supposed to be impartial and above the fray. She is hoist by her own petard. See the podcast with another idiot Paddy O'Connell. The one about Starmer attending non-league football grounds. I can't be arsed to post it again. I've already posted it twice.
For reference I have no idea who Chris Mason votes for.
Just learnt something totally new thanks to a Jago Hazzard video. Heathrow Airport airlines used to employ air terminals outside the airport to check people in and use coaches to transport them to the airport. The West London air terminal in Kensington was in use from 1957 to 1974.
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
Most commentators thought when one Margaret Thatcher replaced defeated PM Ted Heath as Conservative leader in 1975 it was a lurch to the right and she would be unelectable and Labour would be there for a decade or more. Yet by 1979 she defeated Callaghan against the consensus due to the strikes and high inflation and poor growth under his Labour government.
In 2015 too most thought far left Corbyn being elected Labour leader guaranteed a Tory landslide at the next general election, yet May only just scraped most seats in a hung parliament against him in 2017 and needed the DUP to remain in power and it took Boris to finally defeat him clearly in 2019.
One thing in politics is that nothing is certain, we don't always elect centrist governments, especially in the current economic circumstances it is not impossible hard right or hard left leaders could win
This is a good post. Elections are won from the centre until they aren’t. I personally remain convinced that a populist right wing movement is entirely likely to arise in the next 5-10 years in this country, and it could do really well. Look at France.
It could be the Tory Party. They could choose that route. It depends on how they react to July 4th.
She wouldn't be getting half of it if she were a bloke.
Nick Robinson was a bloke and he was lambasted on here as Toenails for his pro-Labour bias, at least until David Cameron tried to recruit Robinson who had been a Conservative even at Oxford.
True, but that was sort of a meme/piss-take but the stuff aimed at Laura Kuenssberg is just aggressive and downright nasty.
No it is not.
She is supposed to be impartial and above the fray. She is hoist by her own petard. See the podcast with another idiot Paddy O'Connell. The one about Starmer attending non-league football grounds. I can't be arsed to post it again. I've already posted it twice.
For reference I have no idea who Chris Mason votes for.
Laura K who I have often defended, on the night of the LEs, literally said that the race was closer than expected and that Khan would quite possibly lose. Now this was before a single vote had even been counted.
It doesn't say much for the credibility of her sources - but also what on Earth was she doing?
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
I'm not forgetting it at all, just look at how things have changed just in 3 years?
The Tories were taking seats off Labour in by-elections just 37 months ago.
Labour will experience strong opposition from Day One. And regardless of what they do in Opposition they will be accused of "lurching".
That's just branding.
Any decent government will have to take hard decisions, for all the reasons Robert Smithson has given. Hard means unpopular.
We are - across Western democracies - paying more, for less.
I think Labour could rapidly haemorrhage support in multiple directions.
What support they do have, now, is largely built up of a coalition simply desperate to eject the incumbent administration.
It ceases to have glue at 10pm on election day.
Could do. I suppose the question is whether Starmer will be bolder in office than his cautious campaign approach, and if he needs to be to deal with the problems that are being faced, at the cost of some support? Or will be, even if he gets a big majority, play things very cautiously to avoid fracturing the coalition that put him there?
Starmer will trade on every vote he gets and use it as a personal mandate to do whatever he decides to do.
You absolutely don't know what you're going to get with SKS.
We are in a ship that is sinking rapidly in icy seas and we are not sure if the lifeboat is watertight. Most people will take the chance and go for the lifeboat. It may be the wrong decision in the end but the person to blame is the captain who ran the ship into the iceberg in the first place.
The headline is Labour are attacking the national service idea as a gimmick. That feels fairly smart, leave it to online weirdos to rant and rave about it whilst just dismissing it as the official line.
I think Labour's response is a lot more rational than mine - and in fact they've basically learned from the 2019 Tory campaign in that respect.
But I do think it's fair to criticise this policy on grounds that surely anyone thinks the people should at least be paid, right? Can some supporters explain why people shouldn't be paid to do it?
Asking people to volunteer one weekend in four to things that benefit society is not unreasonable.
For example: litter collection by the side of roads. Doesn’t get done for health & safety and cost reasons. But if you can solve the former and get it done by volunteers then the whole country would be better off in a small way
There is a big difference between asking and telling.
There is also a big difference between paid national service and forced, unpaid, labour.
No-one posting on PB, no politician or pundit backing Sunak’s wheeze, has done forced, unpaid, labour in their adult lives - unless they’ve been convicted of a crime. So why should 18 year olds alone be compelled?
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
It is that school but, with respect, you know nothing about it other than keen to find an angle that absolves Labour of all blame. It'd otherwise compell you to engage with the complexities of a nasty and unpleasant policy that you'd prefer not to.
The 20% price demand shock has been sufficient to kill it off, whereas otherwise it would have survived, and the disruption its going to cause to my son and his friends, and all the job losses it causes - including several pre-school teachers who are family friends - can be laid entirely at the door of SKS. Everyone knows he's going to win and that's having real world effects now.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
I doubt VAT on private schools is going to raise much money for the government as it will move some pupils back to the state sector.
But in the upcoming decades we're going to have to see more taxes raised and lower spending on pretty much all of the country.
And it will be easier for many of the disadvantaged groups to lose out if some of those at the top are visibly doing so as well.
Even if its unfortunate and unpleasant for your family.
The credit crunch killed off about thirty schools in the UK, and that was a one or two year blip. Assume Labour in power for ten years and the policy won't be reversed until at least 2034, and you're potentially looking at a prolonged depression that kills off (ballpark figure here) 300 private schools.
All those kids have to go somewhere. Some of them will be absorbed into other private schools, but even then, imagine if an additional 100-ish state schools need to be built to accommodate kids from private schools that have closed down, on top of an extra 10-20% demand created by parents who would have sent their kids to private schools, but are no longer able to. More schools will have to be built, meaning the cost will probably be greater than the extra £6k per child.
The truth is we don't know exactly how this policy is going to play out, but I did some calculations a few weeks ago and worked out that it's likely to have a creeping, cumulative effect, as parents will pay for kids with three or four years left to go, but be less likely to pay for 5 year olds with 13 years to go, creating a progressive hollowing out of the system that will lead to more and more private schools closing over time.
In short, I reckon Labour's tax wheeze may generate a windfall at first, but will slowly become net negative in terms of tax take over time.
But it won't be the top public schools closing down. It will be the minor schools favoured by the middle classes. So we'll end up with an even more divided system than we have now.
For those reasons, I think it's a bad policy. It will cost the taxpayer more than it brings in revenue, and actually increase division in society by limiting educational choices to an even smaller, more privileged elite.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
It is that school but, with respect, you know nothing about it other than keen to find an angle that absolves Labour of all blame. It'd otherwise compell you to engage with the complexities of a nasty and unpleasant policy that you'd prefer not to.
The 20% price demand shock has been sufficient to kill it off, whereas otherwise it would have survived, and the disruption its going to cause to my son and his friends, and all the job losses it causes - including several pre-school teachers who are family friends - can be laid entirely at the door of SKS. Everyone knows he's going to win and that's having real world effects now.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
I doubt VAT on private schools is going to raise much money for the government as it will move some pupils back to the state sector.
But in the upcoming decades we're going to have to see more taxes raised and lower spending on pretty much all of the country.
And it will be easier for many of the disadvantaged groups to lose out if some of those at the top are visibly doing so as well.
Even if its unfortunate and unpleasant for your family.
Why after 14 years of Tory government is CR not blaming the current government for having failed to deliver schools of sufficient quality that he feels the need to send his kids to a private school in the first place and is so unhappy about such a prospect of a state education for his kids, as 93% of the population receive ?
Because no Government since the 1960s has delivered schools of sufficient quality. As a rule state education in the UK is shit and has been for decades. I don't know if private education is any better but there is almost an element of victim blaming to attack people for trying to avoid the worst of the state sector.
Just learnt something totally new thanks to a Jago Hazzard video. Heathrow Airport airlines used to employ air terminals outside the airport to check people in and use coaches to transport them to the airport. The West London air terminal in Kensington was in use from 1957 to 1974.
Interesting how a concept can go out of fashion so quickly: they built a £5 million building for the terminal which opened in 1963, but just 10 and a half years later the whole idea of having air terminals outside the airport was obsolete.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
I’m not sure that follows.
If numbers are dwindling the directors may think there is scope to turn it around. But then VAT puts prices up 20% and the decline accelerates.
It may not be the only contributing factor but it doesn’t mean that Labour isn’t responsible
It always amuses me that people cannot seem to see that many - in fact most - things are multifactorial. Events are rarely caused by just one thing, but several working together.
I n this case, it's perfectly possible that the school could have kept going, but the *threat* of the tax placed an additional burden onto the school - perhaps in part by putting off prospective parents. It's a perfectly feasible scenario.
In addition, the directors have a moral responsibility to try to give as much warning of closure as possible. Taking in another year's intake, just to close a few months later, would IMV be irresponsible.
It made the difference between surviving a bad year and closure.
On that the Trustee letter is very clear.
Most of the private schools are expecting a shakeout due to Starmer. Single sex schools are increasingly going co-ed so they can pick up families of those faced with school closures. The smaller schools are most vulnerable as they live closer to the breadline.
I suspect the net effect will be fewer schools but the really well off will go on as usual. The fall out will be less well off families who want to invest in their kids education.
Yep. My wife and I have had this chat today.
We might just give up. We'd be £35k a year better off, the state about £14k worse off. We could pay for nannies, after-school care, much nicer holidays and cars, and a home extension; we could also pay off our mortgage and retire earlier. The taxpayer would pick up the bill.
But, that's the effect of a really stupid policy.
Aside from the ususal class war nonsense this isnt that well thought through.
My daughter is an assistant head at a private school. The school offers boarding during the week as many of the parents are City types who work bizarre hours so want their kids in a routine. They'll continue on pretty much as normal. So you'll just get the very rich affording education and the schools become even more exclusive.
The headline is Labour are attacking the national service idea as a gimmick. That feels fairly smart, leave it to online weirdos to rant and rave about it whilst just dismissing it as the official line.
I think Labour's response is a lot more rational than mine - and in fact they've basically learned from the 2019 Tory campaign in that respect.
But I do think it's fair to criticise this policy on grounds that surely anyone thinks the people should at least be paid, right? Can some supporters explain why people shouldn't be paid to do it?
Asking people to volunteer one weekend in four to things that benefit society is not unreasonable.
For example: litter collection by the side of roads. Doesn’t get done for health & safety and cost reasons. But if you can solve the former and get it done by volunteers then the whole country would be better off in a small way
There is a big difference between asking and telling.
There is also a big difference between paid national service and forced, unpaid, labour.
No-one posting on PB, no politician or pundit backing Sunak’s wheeze, has done forced, unpaid, labour in their adult lives - unless they’ve been convicted of a crime. So why should 18 year olds alone be compelled?
How about this, we introduce votes for 16 and 17 year olds and then have a referendum on them doing it when they turn 18.
As this is a policy for them, they should be able to vote for it, right?
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
Calm down dear. It's only an election.
You forget, Chris, it's not: my son is losing his school and his teachers their jobs. The town, a school that's been at the centre of the community for almost 90 years.
This is deeply deeply real. It's not a game. It's not a ding-dong.
Real people, real lives, real impact.
Learn it.
If you think Keir Starmer "is dirt" and you would "wade through blood" to stop him, because a school is closing, then quite frankly I think you need professional help.
I suspect that saying those kinds of things would have the police knocking at your door if you belonged to some minority communities.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
It is that school but, with respect, you know nothing about it other than keen to find an angle that absolves Labour of all blame. It'd otherwise compell you to engage with the complexities of a nasty and unpleasant policy that you'd prefer not to.
The 20% price demand shock has been sufficient to kill it off, whereas otherwise it would have survived, and the disruption its going to cause to my son and his friends, and all the job losses it causes - including several pre-school teachers who are family friends - can be laid entirely at the door of SKS. Everyone knows he's going to win and that's having real world effects now.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
Grow up, lad. This makes you sound unhinged. It's going to be a terrible six weeks for you, and the next four or five years will probably see you in a padded cell. Just let it go.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
I’m not sure that follows.
If numbers are dwindling the directors may think there is scope to turn it around. But then VAT puts prices up 20% and the decline accelerates.
It may not be the only contributing factor but it doesn’t mean that Labour isn’t responsible
The neighbouring school hoping to recruit the pupils is £3,000 more expensive, which is more or less the same as VAT would have added.
Sure. Not everyone will be able to afford it.
Let’s say that the minimum viable number of pupils for each school is 100.
At £10k for one school and £13k for the other all kids are educated (numbers made up).
If the price of the cheaper option rises to £13k then there are3 options available to parents:
- move to the more expensive school (if you are going to have to pay the same then you might as well give it to your school rather than pay it in tax) - move to the local state school if you can’t afford it - Grin and bear it
If enough parents take the first two prions then the £10k school is no longer viable and closes.
The result is:
- some pupils move to the more expensive school resulting in larger classes and diminishing (slightly) the quality of education - some pupils move to the local state school (ditto) - money is taken out of the local economy either in tax or because it is being funnelled into the £13k school - diversity of education provision is reduced - Teachers lose their jobs as do general staff
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
Calm down dear. It's only an election.
You forget, Chris, it's not: my son is losing his school and his teachers their jobs. The town, a school that's been at the centre of the community for almost 90 years.
This is deeply deeply real. It's not a game. It's not a ding-dong.
Real people, real lives, real impact.
Learn it.
Yes, it’s happened to lots of schools and many other community institutions thanks to government decisions. This one hits you, countless others have been affected by previous ones. That’s the nature of political choices, many of which you have supported and advocated.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
It is that school but, with respect, you know nothing about it other than keen to find an angle that absolves Labour of all blame. It'd otherwise compell you to engage with the complexities of a nasty and unpleasant policy that you'd prefer not to.
The 20% price demand shock has been sufficient to kill it off, whereas otherwise it would have survived, and the disruption its going to cause to my son and his friends, and all the job losses it causes - including several pre-school teachers who are family friends - can be laid entirely at the door of SKS. Everyone knows he's going to win and that's having real world effects now.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
I doubt VAT on private schools is going to raise much money for the government as it will move some pupils back to the state sector.
But in the upcoming decades we're going to have to see more taxes raised and lower spending on pretty much all of the country.
And it will be easier for many of the disadvantaged groups to lose out if some of those at the top are visibly doing so as well.
Even if its unfortunate and unpleasant for your family.
The credit crunch killed off about thirty schools in the UK, and that was a one or two year blip. Assume Labour in power for ten years and the policy won't be reversed until at least 2034, and you're potentially looking at a prolonged depression that kills off (ballpark figure here) 300 private schools.
All those kids have to go somewhere. Some of them will be absorbed into other private schools, but even then, imagine if an additional 100-ish state schools need to be built to accommodate kids from private schools that have closed down, on top of an extra 10-20% demand created by parents who would have sent their kids to private schools, but are no longer able to. More schools will have to be built, meaning the cost will probably be greater than the extra £6k per child.
The truth is we don't know exactly how this policy is going to play out, but I did some calculations a few weeks ago and worked out that it's likely to have a creeping, cumulative effect, as parents will pay for kids with three or four years left to go, but be less likely to pay for 5 year olds with 13 years to go, creating a progressive hollowing out of the system that will lead to more and more private schools closing over time.
In short, I reckon Labour's tax wheeze may generate a windfall at first, but will slowly become net negative in terms of tax take over time.
But it won't be the top public schools closing down. It will be the minor schools favoured by the middle classes. So we'll end up with an even more divided system than we have now.
For those reasons, I think it's a bad policy. It will cost the taxpayer more than it brings in revenue, and actually increase division in society by limiting educational choices to an even smaller, more privileged elite.
Except. We are facing a baby bust. The birth rate fell off a cliff around 2013. Primary Schools are already facing closure because of falling rolls. This will feed into Secondary very soon. More kids in the system leads to the much cheaper option of State schools staying open rather than the costs of closing them down.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
Calm down dear. It's only an election.
You forget, Chris, it's not: my son is losing his school and his teachers their jobs. The town, a school that's been at the centre of the community for almost 90 years.
This is deeply deeply real. It's not a game. It's not a ding-dong.
Real people, real lives, real impact.
Learn it.
If you think Keir Starmer "is dirt" and you would "wade through blood" to stop him, because a school is closing, then quite frankly I think you need professional help.
I suspect that saying those kinds of things would have the police knocking at your door if you belonged to some minority communities.
I think CR is very upset, and is venting a little.
It is odd how London's population has never been higher and yet schools are having to close because they don't have enough children enrolling.
This is the future. Its why Starmer's pledge of 6500 extra teachers is dross. Primary schools are running out of pupils because of the collapsing birth rates. That will hit hit secondary scools in about 7 years time and Unis in 14.
All our politicians and civil servants will act shocked and then claim they are learning the lessons.
I wonder if it is just a sign of my own increasing age that even though he is older than me Sunak feels very much like a young policitian, whereas Cameron seemed older thank Sunak in 2010 despite being the same age Sunak is now.
It's not due to experience, as Sunak has been an MP just as long as Cameron had back then, and is a lot more politically experienced than Cameron was in 2010, with years as a senior minister behind him.
Sunak comes across as being too green and inexperienced. Cameron, for all his faults, was a much smarter political operator across the board (a lot of that also, it has to be said, being driven by Osborne).
I do actually think Sunak has also suffered from what seems to be a paucity of good advisors. I did think bringing Cameron back might be a way to try and fix that - his Mandelson moment if you will - but it seems not.
I'm still baffled by bringing Cameron back. I liked him fine, but it was a snub to all the MPs who could have filled the role, he is not popular now, and it did not form part of any cohesive strategy to pitch to the centre - instead they've still wobbled back and forth from appealing to the right with some gimmicks and attempts at steady as she goes dull competence.
I think there were more votes available on the right, I think the centre was already lost by the Boris-Truss-Sunak debacle, so the campaign going that way is not a surprise, but undercut by things like bringing back Cameron.
The point with Sunak and why he's been useless is that while there are different routes to a winning coalition of voters, you have to pick one, and a theory of the case, and stick to it. The most obvious ones broadly being the Cameron 2010-15 one - which was founded on detoxifying the party with more liberal voters and gluing those on to more traditional Tories and those fearful or fed up of Labour. Then there's the Boris, unite Brexit voters one, which united socially conservative types sharing both left and right economic views, while daring its liberal wing to vote for Jeremy Corbyn.
Neither are now an easy option for the Tories. Brexit has receded as a frontline issue but has made the Cameron route difficult to take without a mea culpa as the fracture with liberalism (not solely caused by Brexit, but a useful shorthand for the breach) is here to stay. It's not likely Boris' works either now as it was dependent on promises of spending to those left-wing on that were empty and now impossible. Brexit is largely seen to be a failure, even by enough leave voters who support the principle, to make standing on it as your big thing a vote loser. Plus there's no Jeremy Corbyn to shore up the Tories' liberal wing.
But you do have to pick one and stick to it. Sunak has flailed between them - he's cast himself as a pragmatic ideologically unbound problem solver one minute, then sounded like a rabid right-wing Boomer Facebook group the next. Which just annoy everyone.
Like their campaign is "stick with us, we've got a sensible plan" but the policies broadcast at the loudest volume are back of a fag packet populism that tells you they haven't beyond scraping the bottom of the barrel.
To get an idea of how ludicrous it is think about what a similar approach from Labour would look. Running their "security and patriotism" stuff one minute, then, because they didn't want to upset Corbyn fans, pivoting to saying NATO is actually rubbish and why can't we all have a cup of tea with Putin and the Ayatollah the next.
Churchill was quite happy to have a cup of tea with Stalin, and he wasn't considered weak on security or patriotism, so I'm not sure of the basis of your point.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
Calm down dear. It's only an election.
You forget, Chris, it's not: my son is losing his school and his teachers their jobs. The town, a school that's been at the centre of the community for almost 90 years.
This is deeply deeply real. It's not a game. It's not a ding-dong.
Real people, real lives, real impact.
Learn it.
If you think Keir Starmer "is dirt" and you would "wade through blood" to stop him, because a school is closing, then quite frankly I think you need professional help.
I suspect that saying those kinds of things would have the police knocking at your door if you belonged to some minority communities.
I think CR is very upset, and is venting a little.
No doubt. But I think he does need to calm down with the "wade through blood to stop him" stuff. It's not healthy for anyone to be thinking like that.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
Calm down dear. It's only an election.
You forget, Chris, it's not: my son is losing his school and his teachers their jobs. The town, a school that's been at the centre of the community for almost 90 years.
This is deeply deeply real. It's not a game. It's not a ding-dong.
Real people, real lives, real impact.
Learn it.
If you think Keir Starmer "is dirt" and you would "wade through blood" to stop him, because a school is closing, then quite frankly I think you need professional help.
I suspect that saying those kinds of things would have the police knocking at your door if you belonged to some minority communities.
I think CR is very upset, and is venting a little.
No doubt. But I think he does need to calm down with the "wade through blood to stop him" stuff. It's not healthy for anyone to be thinking like that.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
Calm down dear. It's only an election.
You forget, Chris, it's not: my son is losing his school and his teachers their jobs. The town, a school that's been at the centre of the community for almost 90 years.
This is deeply deeply real. It's not a game. It's not a ding-dong.
Real people, real lives, real impact.
Learn it.
If you think Keir Starmer "is dirt" and you would "wade through blood" to stop him, because a school is closing, then quite frankly I think you need professional help.
I suspect that saying those kinds of things would have the police knocking at your door if you belonged to some minority communities.
I think CR is very upset, and is venting a little.
No doubt. But I think he does need to calm down with the "wade through blood to stop him" stuff. It's not healthy for anyone to be thinking like that.
He’s experiencing a policy that hurts him. He’s reacting as many others do. It’s understandable.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
Calm down dear. It's only an election.
You forget, Chris, it's not: my son is losing his school and his teachers their jobs. The town, a school that's been at the centre of the community for almost 90 years.
This is deeply deeply real. It's not a game. It's not a ding-dong.
Real people, real lives, real impact.
Learn it.
If you think Keir Starmer "is dirt" and you would "wade through blood" to stop him, because a school is closing, then quite frankly I think you need professional help.
I suspect that saying those kinds of things would have the police knocking at your door if you belonged to some minority communities.
Have the plods called on you yet ? I seem to remember you expressed some spicy views on Bojo and Truss.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
I’m not sure that follows.
If numbers are dwindling the directors may think there is scope to turn it around. But then VAT puts prices up 20% and the decline accelerates.
It may not be the only contributing factor but it doesn’t mean that Labour isn’t responsible
It always amuses me that people cannot seem to see that many - in fact most - things are multifactorial. Events are rarely caused by just one thing, but several working together.
I n this case, it's perfectly possible that the school could have kept going, but the *threat* of the tax placed an additional burden onto the school - perhaps in part by putting off prospective parents. It's a perfectly feasible scenario.
In addition, the directors have a moral responsibility to try to give as much warning of closure as possible. Taking in another year's intake, just to close a few months later, would IMV be irresponsible.
It made the difference between surviving a bad year and closure.
On that the Trustee letter is very clear.
Most of the private schools are expecting a shakeout due to Starmer. Single sex schools are increasingly going co-ed so they can pick up families of those faced with school closures. The smaller schools are most vulnerable as they live closer to the breadline.
I suspect the net effect will be fewer schools but the really well off will go on as usual. The fall out will be less well off families who want to invest in their kids education.
Yep. My wife and I have had this chat today.
We might just give up. We'd be £35k a year better off, the state about £14k worse off. We could pay for nannies, after-school care, much nicer holidays and cars, and a home extension; we could also pay off our mortgage and retire earlier. The taxpayer would pick up the bill.
But, that's the effect of a really stupid policy.
Aside from the ususal class war nonsense this isnt that well thought through.
My daughter is an assistant head at a private school. The school offers boarding during the week as many of the parents are City types who work bizarre hours so want their kids in a routine. They'll continue on pretty much as normal. So you'll just get the very rich affording education and the schools become even more exclusive.
I don't get this argument at all. If you're concerned about exclusivity, why not abolish them altogether? Only 7% of children go to them - that's pretty damn exclusive already.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
Calm down dear. It's only an election.
You forget, Chris, it's not: my son is losing his school and his teachers their jobs. The town, a school that's been at the centre of the community for almost 90 years.
This is deeply deeply real. It's not a game. It's not a ding-dong.
Real people, real lives, real impact.
Learn it.
If you think Keir Starmer "is dirt" and you would "wade through blood" to stop him, because a school is closing, then quite frankly I think you need professional help.
I suspect that saying those kinds of things would have the police knocking at your door if you belonged to some minority communities.
Have the plods called on you yet ? I seem to remember you expressed some spicy views on Bojo and Truss.
Maybe the professional help got to you on time.
It might not be as bad as he thinks. When I taught in an independent school we were always taking in refugees from failing schools. Deals were done, scholarships and bursaries awarded, and the students settled down. Most independent schools work together in this regard. Where is the school?
Jago Hazzard also mentions in his video that Heathrow Express tickets can be purchased for just £5.50 instead of £25 if you book 90 days in advance. I didn't know that.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
It is that school but, with respect, you know nothing about it other than keen to find an angle that absolves Labour of all blame. It'd otherwise compell you to engage with the complexities of a nasty and unpleasant policy that you'd prefer not to.
The 20% price demand shock has been sufficient to kill it off, whereas otherwise it would have survived, and the disruption its going to cause to my son and his friends, and all the job losses it causes - including several pre-school teachers who are family friends - can be laid entirely at the door of SKS. Everyone knows he's going to win and that's having real world effects now.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
I doubt VAT on private schools is going to raise much money for the government as it will move some pupils back to the state sector.
But in the upcoming decades we're going to have to see more taxes raised and lower spending on pretty much all of the country.
And it will be easier for many of the disadvantaged groups to lose out if some of those at the top are visibly doing so as well.
Even if its unfortunate and unpleasant for your family.
The credit crunch killed off about thirty schools in the UK, and that was a one or two year blip. Assume Labour in power for ten years and the policy won't be reversed until at least 2034, and you're potentially looking at a prolonged depression that kills off (ballpark figure here) 300 private schools.
All those kids have to go somewhere. Some of them will be absorbed into other private schools, but even then, imagine if an additional 100-ish state schools need to be built to accommodate kids from private schools that have closed down, on top of an extra 10-20% demand created by parents who would have sent their kids to private schools, but are no longer able to. More schools will have to be built, meaning the cost will probably be greater than the extra £6k per child.
The truth is we don't know exactly how this policy is going to play out, but I did some calculations a few weeks ago and worked out that it's likely to have a creeping, cumulative effect, as parents will pay for kids with three or four years left to go, but be less likely to pay for 5 year olds with 13 years to go, creating a progressive hollowing out of the system that will lead to more and more private schools closing over time.
In short, I reckon Labour's tax wheeze may generate a windfall at first, but will slowly become net negative in terms of tax take over time.
But it won't be the top public schools closing down. It will be the minor schools favoured by the middle classes. So we'll end up with an even more divided system than we have now.
For those reasons, I think it's a bad policy. It will cost the taxpayer more than it brings in revenue, and actually increase division in society by limiting educational choices to an even smaller, more privileged elite.
Except. We are facing a baby bust. The birth rate fell off a cliff around 2013. Primary Schools are already facing closure because of falling rolls. This will feed into Secondary very soon. More kids in the system leads to the much cheaper option of State schools staying open rather than the costs of closing them down.
I'm actually deeply unconvinced of this, based on my very unscientific study of who's at the school gates of the primary schools near me.
We've yet to see how the birthrate changes, taking into account the preferences of recent immigrants. They may well, due to cultural values, place much higher emphasis on having children than we do.
I wouldn't be surprised to see an uptick in the birthrate in the next decade.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
It is that school but, with respect, you know nothing about it other than keen to find an angle that absolves Labour of all blame. It'd otherwise compell you to engage with the complexities of a nasty and unpleasant policy that you'd prefer not to.
The 20% price demand shock has been sufficient to kill it off, whereas otherwise it would have survived, and the disruption its going to cause to my son and his friends, and all the job losses it causes - including several pre-school teachers who are family friends - can be laid entirely at the door of SKS. Everyone knows he's going to win and that's having real world effects now.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
I doubt VAT on private schools is going to raise much money for the government as it will move some pupils back to the state sector.
But in the upcoming decades we're going to have to see more taxes raised and lower spending on pretty much all of the country.
And it will be easier for many of the disadvantaged groups to lose out if some of those at the top are visibly doing so as well.
Even if its unfortunate and unpleasant for your family.
Why after 14 years of Tory government is CR not blaming the current government for having failed to deliver schools of sufficient quality that he feels the need to send his kids to a private school in the first place and is so unhappy about such a prospect of a state education for his kids, as 93% of the population receive ?
Because no Government since the 1960s has delivered schools of sufficient quality. As a rule state education in the UK is shit and has been for decades. I don't know if private education is any better but there is almost an element of victim blaming to attack people for trying to avoid the worst of the state sector.
An entirely artificial rating system based on assessments from a thoroughly discredited Government Quango. If you are having to use that as the basis for your argument then you are utterly lost.
Jago Hazzard also mentions in his video that Heathrow Express tickets can be purchased for just £5.50 instead of £25 if you book 90 days in advance. I didn't know that.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
I’m not sure that follows.
If numbers are dwindling the directors may think there is scope to turn it around. But then VAT puts prices up 20% and the decline accelerates.
It may not be the only contributing factor but it doesn’t mean that Labour isn’t responsible
It always amuses me that people cannot seem to see that many - in fact most - things are multifactorial. Events are rarely caused by just one thing, but several working together.
I n this case, it's perfectly possible that the school could have kept going, but the *threat* of the tax placed an additional burden onto the school - perhaps in part by putting off prospective parents. It's a perfectly feasible scenario.
In addition, the directors have a moral responsibility to try to give as much warning of closure as possible. Taking in another year's intake, just to close a few months later, would IMV be irresponsible.
It made the difference between surviving a bad year and closure.
On that the Trustee letter is very clear.
Most of the private schools are expecting a shakeout due to Starmer. Single sex schools are increasingly going co-ed so they can pick up families of those faced with school closures. The smaller schools are most vulnerable as they live closer to the breadline.
I suspect the net effect will be fewer schools but the really well off will go on as usual. The fall out will be less well off families who want to invest in their kids education.
Yep. My wife and I have had this chat today.
We might just give up. We'd be £35k a year better off, the state about £14k worse off. We could pay for nannies, after-school care, much nicer holidays and cars, and a home extension; we could also pay off our mortgage and retire earlier. The taxpayer would pick up the bill.
But, that's the effect of a really stupid policy.
Aside from the ususal class war nonsense this isnt that well thought through.
My daughter is an assistant head at a private school. The school offers boarding during the week as many of the parents are City types who work bizarre hours so want their kids in a routine. They'll continue on pretty much as normal. So you'll just get the very rich affording education and the schools become even more exclusive.
I don't get this argument at all. If you're concerned about exclusivity, why not abolish them altogether? Only 7% of children go to them - that's pretty damn exclusive already.
On what basis do you abolish them ? And where do you draw the line ? Are you going abolish all the schools trusts which are in effect private schools outside immediate state control.
And if you do abolish them how are you going to stop the flow of pupils to private schools in Ireland ?
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
Calm down dear. It's only an election.
You forget, Chris, it's not: my son is losing his school and his teachers their jobs. The town, a school that's been at the centre of the community for almost 90 years.
This is deeply deeply real. It's not a game. It's not a ding-dong.
Real people, real lives, real impact.
Learn it.
If you think Keir Starmer "is dirt" and you would "wade through blood" to stop him, because a school is closing, then quite frankly I think you need professional help.
I suspect that saying those kinds of things would have the police knocking at your door if you belonged to some minority communities.
Have the plods called on you yet ? I seem to remember you expressed some spicy views on Bojo and Truss.
Maybe the professional help got to you on time.
It might not be as bad as he thinks. When I taught in an independent school we were always taking in refugees from failing schools. Deals were done, scholarships and bursaries awarded, and the students settled down. Most independent schools work together in this regard. Where is the school?
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
It is that school but, with respect, you know nothing about it other than keen to find an angle that absolves Labour of all blame. It'd otherwise compell you to engage with the complexities of a nasty and unpleasant policy that you'd prefer not to.
The 20% price demand shock has been sufficient to kill it off, whereas otherwise it would have survived, and the disruption its going to cause to my son and his friends, and all the job losses it causes - including several pre-school teachers who are family friends - can be laid entirely at the door of SKS. Everyone knows he's going to win and that's having real world effects now.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
I doubt VAT on private schools is going to raise much money for the government as it will move some pupils back to the state sector.
But in the upcoming decades we're going to have to see more taxes raised and lower spending on pretty much all of the country.
And it will be easier for many of the disadvantaged groups to lose out if some of those at the top are visibly doing so as well.
Even if its unfortunate and unpleasant for your family.
Why after 14 years of Tory government is CR not blaming the current government for having failed to deliver schools of sufficient quality that he feels the need to send his kids to a private school in the first place and is so unhappy about such a prospect of a state education for his kids, as 93% of the population receive ?
Because no Government since the 1960s has delivered schools of sufficient quality. As a rule state education in the UK is shit and has been for decades. I don't know if private education is any better but there is almost an element of victim blaming to attack people for trying to avoid the worst of the state sector.
An entirely artificial rating system based on assessments from a thoroughly discredited Government Quango. If you are having to use that as the basis for your argument then you are utterly lost.
It is though partly a reflection of more choice in the system driving up standards with free schools, academies etc and a focus on getting the basics of literacy and numeracy right first
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
It is that school but, with respect, you know nothing about it other than keen to find an angle that absolves Labour of all blame. It'd otherwise compell you to engage with the complexities of a nasty and unpleasant policy that you'd prefer not to.
The 20% price demand shock has been sufficient to kill it off, whereas otherwise it would have survived, and the disruption its going to cause to my son and his friends, and all the job losses it causes - including several pre-school teachers who are family friends - can be laid entirely at the door of SKS. Everyone knows he's going to win and that's having real world effects now.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
I doubt VAT on private schools is going to raise much money for the government as it will move some pupils back to the state sector.
But in the upcoming decades we're going to have to see more taxes raised and lower spending on pretty much all of the country.
And it will be easier for many of the disadvantaged groups to lose out if some of those at the top are visibly doing so as well.
Even if its unfortunate and unpleasant for your family.
The credit crunch killed off about thirty schools in the UK, and that was a one or two year blip. Assume Labour in power for ten years and the policy won't be reversed until at least 2034, and you're potentially looking at a prolonged depression that kills off (ballpark figure here) 300 private schools.
All those kids have to go somewhere. Some of them will be absorbed into other private schools, but even then, imagine if an additional 100-ish state schools need to be built to accommodate kids from private schools that have closed down, on top of an extra 10-20% demand created by parents who would have sent their kids to private schools, but are no longer able to. More schools will have to be built, meaning the cost will probably be greater than the extra £6k per child.
The truth is we don't know exactly how this policy is going to play out, but I did some calculations a few weeks ago and worked out that it's likely to have a creeping, cumulative effect, as parents will pay for kids with three or four years left to go, but be less likely to pay for 5 year olds with 13 years to go, creating a progressive hollowing out of the system that will lead to more and more private schools closing over time.
In short, I reckon Labour's tax wheeze may generate a windfall at first, but will slowly become net negative in terms of tax take over time.
But it won't be the top public schools closing down. It will be the minor schools favoured by the middle classes. So we'll end up with an even more divided system than we have now.
For those reasons, I think it's a bad policy. It will cost the taxpayer more than it brings in revenue, and actually increase division in society by limiting educational choices to an even smaller, more privileged elite.
Except. We are facing a baby bust. The birth rate fell off a cliff around 2013. Primary Schools are already facing closure because of falling rolls. This will feed into Secondary very soon. More kids in the system leads to the much cheaper option of State schools staying open rather than the costs of closing them down.
I'm actually deeply unconvinced of this, based on my very unscientific study of who's at the school gates of the primary schools near me.
We've yet to see how the birthrate changes, taking into account the preferences of recent immigrants. They may well, due to cultural values, place much higher emphasis on having children than we do.
I wouldn't be surprised to see an uptick in the birthrate in the next decade.
To counter this, the ONS are always having to adjust their TFR estimates downwards. You might be right about immigrants, but ultimately this is more than offset by other groups - just look at Scotland.
It's another reason why we have these housing crises - population is rising in only a few spots in the country, and falling away elsewhere. You can plaster Herefordshire with houses but that doesn't make up for the fact the only people having kids are in Birmingham.
It is odd how London's population has never been higher and yet schools are having to close because they don't have enough children enrolling.
This is the future. Its why Starmer's pledge of 6500 extra teachers is dross. Primary schools are running out of pupils because of the collapsing birth rates. That will hit hit secondary scools in about 7 years time and Unis in 14.
All our politicians and civil servants will act shocked and then claim they are learning the lessons.
All part of the ever accelerating population Ponzi scheme. Import young people to shore up the tax base. Bleed them white to keep pensioners minted (firstly through the triple lock, secondly through pumping up house prices by not building enough for all the extra people.) Make it too expensive for the young to breed, so that they grow older with insufficient replacements in the next generation to support them. Import yet more young people to shore up the tax base. Etc etc, repeat til the Sun swallows the Earth.
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
Nobody is going to enjoy it, but the person most responsible for it is Rishi Sunak - a person who came in claiming he'd avert a GE defeat, but in the event, has not even had the courtesy to keep Tory MPs in their jobs for the next few months, nor let any of the policies he claimed were so vital bear any fruit. You and the two people you mention have been the biggest supporters of this waste of space and his dismal illiberal, incompetent, profligate, weak Government, and I've not seen a scrap of remorse about your poor judgement from any of you. Now you have the gall to complain about other people not manning the barricades. Enjoy knocking on doors defending this shite - perhaps you'll think more carefully about who you back for leader next time.
OK but don't you agree that Johnson was even more "illiberal, incompetent, profligate, weak"?
No. Boris had a weak personality and would usually take the path of least resistance, but he could have a flash of rebellious fire about him occasionally, and he started from liberal instincts albeit that he was so often browbeaten away from them. Sunak’s Prime Ministerial vacuum has been of a whole different order of weakness. He has shown a craven desire to be liked by anyone powerful, caving to the EU, the civil service, the Bank of England, the USA, the Quangocracy - these haven't even been capitulations - to capitulate you need at least initially to have made the opposing argument.
As for more profligate - Sunak was the Chancellor for much of that period, and value for money was becoming talked about internally as an issue for him. I suspect he'd have been moved on as COE and certainly he should have been.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
Calm down dear. It's only an election.
You forget, Chris, it's not: my son is losing his school and his teachers their jobs. The town, a school that's been at the centre of the community for almost 90 years.
This is deeply deeply real. It's not a game. It's not a ding-dong.
Real people, real lives, real impact.
Learn it.
If you think Keir Starmer "is dirt" and you would "wade through blood" to stop him, because a school is closing, then quite frankly I think you need professional help.
I suspect that saying those kinds of things would have the police knocking at your door if you belonged to some minority communities.
Have the plods called on you yet ? I seem to remember you expressed some spicy views on Bojo and Truss.
Maybe I'm having a "sense of humour failure", but if the Tory right think "I would wade through blood to stop him" is an acceptable way to talk about Starmer, I hope we're not going to hear a lot of whining from them about threats of violence towards MPs.
It is odd how London's population has never been higher and yet schools are having to close because they don't have enough children enrolling.
This is the future. Its why Starmer's pledge of 6500 extra teachers is dross. Primary schools are running out of pupils because of the collapsing birth rates. That will hit hit secondary scools in about 7 years time and Unis in 14.
All our politicians and civil servants will act shocked and then claim they are learning the lessons.
All part of the ever accelerating population Ponzi scheme. Import young people to shore up the tax base. Bleed them white to keep pensioners minted (firstly through the triple lock, secondly through pumping up house prices by not building enough for all the extra people.) Make it too expensive for the young to breed, so that they grow older with insufficient replacements in the next generation to support them. Import yet more young people to shore up the tax base. Etc etc, repeat til the Sun swallows the Earth.
If it's sustainable without collapsing until the sun swallows the earth then I'm not sure you can really classify it as a ponzi scheme...
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
Calm down dear. It's only an election.
You forget, Chris, it's not: my son is losing his school and his teachers their jobs. The town, a school that's been at the centre of the community for almost 90 years.
This is deeply deeply real. It's not a game. It's not a ding-dong.
Real people, real lives, real impact.
Learn it.
If you think Keir Starmer "is dirt" and you would "wade through blood" to stop him, because a school is closing, then quite frankly I think you need professional help.
I suspect that saying those kinds of things would have the police knocking at your door if you belonged to some minority communities.
Have the plods called on you yet ? I seem to remember you expressed some spicy views on Bojo and Truss.
Maybe the professional help got to you on time.
It might not be as bad as he thinks. When I taught in an independent school we were always taking in refugees from failing schools. Deals were done, scholarships and bursaries awarded, and the students settled down. Most independent schools work together in this regard. Where is the school?
It's in Hampshire. I don't know Casino personally at all but I wonder if we have any mutual friends, as I grew up very close to where I think he comes from/lives.
Casino is reacting to the schools policy as many of us younger folks feel about the national service policy. It makes sense.
Given Reeves this morning said Labour would not raise income tax or national insurance and would keep a tight control on public spending. Given Starmer will keep the UK out of the EU and EEA for the foreseeable future and not restore free movement and given on most other issues you now can't get a fag paper's difference between Starmer and Sunak it is seems the VAT on private schools policy could be the only significant change an incoming Labour government makes from the current Tory one (the only other one is Labour would replace the Rwanda scheme with new investigators to cut small boats crossing the channel, so still the same end goal)
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
I’m not sure that follows.
If numbers are dwindling the directors may think there is scope to turn it around. But then VAT puts prices up 20% and the decline accelerates.
It may not be the only contributing factor but it doesn’t mean that Labour isn’t responsible
It always amuses me that people cannot seem to see that many - in fact most - things are multifactorial. Events are rarely caused by just one thing, but several working together.
I n this case, it's perfectly possible that the school could have kept going, but the *threat* of the tax placed an additional burden onto the school - perhaps in part by putting off prospective parents. It's a perfectly feasible scenario.
In addition, the directors have a moral responsibility to try to give as much warning of closure as possible. Taking in another year's intake, just to close a few months later, would IMV be irresponsible.
It made the difference between surviving a bad year and closure.
On that the Trustee letter is very clear.
Most of the private schools are expecting a shakeout due to Starmer. Single sex schools are increasingly going co-ed so they can pick up families of those faced with school closures. The smaller schools are most vulnerable as they live closer to the breadline.
I suspect the net effect will be fewer schools but the really well off will go on as usual. The fall out will be less well off families who want to invest in their kids education.
Yep. My wife and I have had this chat today.
We might just give up. We'd be £35k a year better off, the state about £14k worse off. We could pay for nannies, after-school care, much nicer holidays and cars, and a home extension; we could also pay off our mortgage and retire earlier. The taxpayer would pick up the bill.
But, that's the effect of a really stupid policy.
Aside from the ususal class war nonsense this isnt that well thought through.
My daughter is an assistant head at a private school. The school offers boarding during the week as many of the parents are City types who work bizarre hours so want their kids in a routine. They'll continue on pretty much as normal. So you'll just get the very rich affording education and the schools become even more exclusive.
I don't get this argument at all. If you're concerned about exclusivity, why not abolish them altogether? Only 7% of children go to them - that's pretty damn exclusive already.
On what basis do you abolish them ? And where do you draw the line ? Are you going abolish all the schools trusts which are in effect private schools outside immediate state control.
And if you do abolish them how are you going to stop the flow of pupils to private schools in Ireland ?
Hey, I didn't say it was practical - it would be a disaster in Edinburgh. But there is a bit of a Telegraph meme where going to private school is a sort of middle class norm. It's not. It's elite.
I come from a middle class background, parents are graduates in professional/management roles, but I was nowhere near going to a private school.
It's the same twisted reference points that sees people claim people with cars are the downtrodden poor - but people in the lowest income decile have a much lower rate of ownership than those is middling ones.
I wonder if it is just a sign of my own increasing age that even though he is older than me Sunak feels very much like a young policitian, whereas Cameron seemed older thank Sunak in 2010 despite being the same age Sunak is now.
It's not due to experience, as Sunak has been an MP just as long as Cameron had back then, and is a lot more politically experienced than Cameron was in 2010, with years as a senior minister behind him.
Sunak comes across as being too green and inexperienced. Cameron, for all his faults, was a much smarter political operator across the board (a lot of that also, it has to be said, being driven by Osborne).
I do actually think Sunak has also suffered from what seems to be a paucity of good advisors. I did think bringing Cameron back might be a way to try and fix that - his Mandelson moment if you will - but it seems not.
I'm still baffled by bringing Cameron back. I liked him fine, but it was a snub to all the MPs who could have filled the role, he is not popular now, and it did not form part of any cohesive strategy to pitch to the centre - instead they've still wobbled back and forth from appealing to the right with some gimmicks and attempts at steady as she goes dull competence.
I think there were more votes available on the right, I think the centre was already lost by the Boris-Truss-Sunak debacle, so the campaign going that way is not a surprise, but undercut by things like bringing back Cameron.
The point with Sunak and why he's been useless is that while there are different routes to a winning coalition of voters, you have to pick one, and a theory of the case, and stick to it. The most obvious ones broadly being the Cameron 2010-15 one - which was founded on detoxifying the party with more liberal voters and gluing those on to more traditional Tories and those fearful or fed up of Labour. Then there's the Boris, unite Brexit voters one, which united socially conservative types sharing both left and right economic views, while daring its liberal wing to vote for Jeremy Corbyn.
Neither are now an easy option for the Tories. Brexit has receded as a frontline issue but has made the Cameron route difficult to take without a mea culpa as the fracture with liberalism (not solely caused by Brexit, but a useful shorthand for the breach) is here to stay. It's not likely Boris' works either now as it was dependent on promises of spending to those left-wing on that were empty and now impossible. Brexit is largely seen to be a failure, even by enough leave voters who support the principle, to make standing on it as your big thing a vote loser. Plus there's no Jeremy Corbyn to shore up the Tories' liberal wing.
But you do have to pick one and stick to it. Sunak has flailed between them - he's cast himself as a pragmatic ideologically unbound problem solver one minute, then sounded like a rabid right-wing Boomer Facebook group the next. Which just annoy everyone.
Like their campaign is "stick with us, we've got a sensible plan" but the policies broadcast at the loudest volume are back of a fag packet populism that tells you they haven't beyond scraping the bottom of the barrel.
To get an idea of how ludicrous it is think about what a similar approach from Labour would look. Running their "security and patriotism" stuff one minute, then, because they didn't want to upset Corbyn fans, pivoting to saying NATO is actually rubbish and why can't we all have a cup of tea with Putin and the Ayatollah the next.
Churchill was quite happy to have a cup of tea with Stalin, and he wasn't considered weak on security or patriotism, so I'm not sure of the basis of your point.
Those were desperate time for us as a nation, and everybody understood that. And then once the threat from Nazi Germany was over, or even just a bit before, Churchill stopped having cups of tea with Stalin. Cups of tea with Stalin were just a tactical move.
Today we are in the middle of a crisis and these are desperate times but just for the Conservative Party, which is shattering ever more on a daily basis. Nobody knows what the Conservative Party really stands for, so everybody applies his own worst interpretation. They have no hope in this election.
Except for the shedloads of money they are going to throw at it.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
It is that school but, with respect, you know nothing about it other than keen to find an angle that absolves Labour of all blame. It'd otherwise compell you to engage with the complexities of a nasty and unpleasant policy that you'd prefer not to.
The 20% price demand shock has been sufficient to kill it off, whereas otherwise it would have survived, and the disruption its going to cause to my son and his friends, and all the job losses it causes - including several pre-school teachers who are family friends - can be laid entirely at the door of SKS. Everyone knows he's going to win and that's having real world effects now.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
I doubt VAT on private schools is going to raise much money for the government as it will move some pupils back to the state sector.
But in the upcoming decades we're going to have to see more taxes raised and lower spending on pretty much all of the country.
And it will be easier for many of the disadvantaged groups to lose out if some of those at the top are visibly doing so as well.
Even if its unfortunate and unpleasant for your family.
The credit crunch killed off about thirty schools in the UK, and that was a one or two year blip. Assume Labour in power for ten years and the policy won't be reversed until at least 2034, and you're potentially looking at a prolonged depression that kills off (ballpark figure here) 300 private schools.
All those kids have to go somewhere. Some of them will be absorbed into other private schools, but even then, imagine if an additional 100-ish state schools need to be built to accommodate kids from private schools that have closed down, on top of an extra 10-20% demand created by parents who would have sent their kids to private schools, but are no longer able to. More schools will have to be built, meaning the cost will probably be greater than the extra £6k per child.
The truth is we don't know exactly how this policy is going to play out, but I did some calculations a few weeks ago and worked out that it's likely to have a creeping, cumulative effect, as parents will pay for kids with three or four years left to go, but be less likely to pay for 5 year olds with 13 years to go, creating a progressive hollowing out of the system that will lead to more and more private schools closing over time.
In short, I reckon Labour's tax wheeze may generate a windfall at first, but will slowly become net negative in terms of tax take over time.
But it won't be the top public schools closing down. It will be the minor schools favoured by the middle classes. So we'll end up with an even more divided system than we have now.
For those reasons, I think it's a bad policy. It will cost the taxpayer more than it brings in revenue, and actually increase division in society by limiting educational choices to an even smaller, more privileged elite.
Except. We are facing a baby bust. The birth rate fell off a cliff around 2013. Primary Schools are already facing closure because of falling rolls. This will feed into Secondary very soon. More kids in the system leads to the much cheaper option of State schools staying open rather than the costs of closing them down.
I'm actually deeply unconvinced of this, based on my very unscientific study of who's at the school gates of the primary schools near me.
We've yet to see how the birthrate changes, taking into account the preferences of recent immigrants. They may well, due to cultural values, place much higher emphasis on having children than we do.
I wouldn't be surprised to see an uptick in the birthrate in the next decade.
Not enough immigrants to change the figures that much. The underlying issue is that people of normal child-raising age can't afford to have children, because their finances are so stretched by mortgage payments.
Which is probably at least as big an issue for parents in the private school market.
It means that the state primary I went to is closing, because the area doesn't have enough children in it any more. Which is a bit sad, but not worth wading through blood for.
Hamas says it has launched a rocket attack towards the Tel Aviv area in central Israel for the first time in nearly four months.
At least eight rockets were launched from the Rafah area in southern Gaza and several were intercepted, the Israeli military says. No injuries have been reported.
The thing about this national service policy (that would never happen even if the Tories won) is like here it has generated a lot of heat.
If you are the Tories, and your strategy is supposed to be scaring people about possibility of Labour government, its another day where all the focus is on this nonsense idea.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
It is that school but, with respect, you know nothing about it other than keen to find an angle that absolves Labour of all blame. It'd otherwise compell you to engage with the complexities of a nasty and unpleasant policy that you'd prefer not to.
The 20% price demand shock has been sufficient to kill it off, whereas otherwise it would have survived, and the disruption its going to cause to my son and his friends, and all the job losses it causes - including several pre-school teachers who are family friends - can be laid entirely at the door of SKS. Everyone knows he's going to win and that's having real world effects now.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
He's a lawyer, a former socialist who immediately and shamelessly betrayed everybody who voted for him as leader of his party, now a centrist vote-chaser and a kneeler who doesn't know what a woman is. Until he suddenly found out. Of course he's dirt.
In the meantime I hope your kid's education somehow continues without too much disruption.
No teenager in their right mind is going to sign up for the armed forces for a year, so that leaves 700k bored, bundles of energy and hormones all volunteering for the sectors of public service that are on their arse. The "glamorous" bits, like maybe the Fire Service, RNLI, NHS and Police all don't have enough staff to do the jobs they're supposed to do, let alone keep unpaid volunteers meaningfully busy. They'll just get in the way. If it was full on National Service in the armed forces, then it's still a wank idea, but would make more sense than this half arsed civic duty bollocks. The Tories have spent 14 years destroying the country and now want the kids to fix it for free. How can anyone sane vote Tory? You want this lot back in again?
I don't agree with this scheme, with its implementation or its timing. But it is worth pointing out that the system of Alternative Service has been successfully used in many European Countries for many years. Seven Countries still use it and it was only dropped in France and Norway in the last couple of decades. It can be a very successful system if handled properly. But of course with the current Tory administration, that is where the problem lies. No one trusts them to actually do it properly.
In those countries, alternative service is a long commitment. It’s not 25 days in total.
Oh absolutely. As I said in my OP I don't agree at all with what is being proposed by Sunak. But the general tone here of Alternative Service being a wildly stupid idea is not, in my opinion, a valid one. It was only dropped in Norway in 2012 and even then it still had pretty widespread support. Done properly as a civilian alternative to military service it can work well and it is depressing that so many posters on here seem to think it is a non starter because British youth are lazy, feckless thieves.
It's a massive red flag that the NFU have jumped in and called for it to be used as agricultural slave labour.
You can't blame young people for being deeply suspicious of anything the Conservatives propose. It's a shame really - I think it's over for any form of youth volunteering scheme, whatever party proposes it.
Its an interesting point with the farmers. Their complaint has been a lack of available labour at almost any sustainable price. So the question is whether the scheme would work better if it was national service but paid by the farmers at the rates being paid to farm workers now?
I am not suggesting this would necessarily work, just asking the question.
But also we have already had posters down thread saying it woudln't work because the youths would steal from old people in care homes. Not exactly a balanced opinion.
Are all those being sent to care homes/domestic care support going to be vetted, DRB'd and supervised?
If not, would you want your granny have them help her get dressed in the morning?
And what are you going to do with all the 18 year olds who do have a criminal record?
Do what they do in other European countries that run have successfully run such schemes for many years. Again. This is not in support of the half arsed proposals from Sunak but the assertion that somehow Alternative Service is a non starter and some of the shameful reasons being advanced to support that assertion are pretty offensive.
If you are starting from a position that the youth of today are dishonest and not to be trusted looking after the elderly (as in your example) then it is no surprise they feel alienated.
1 year of civilian service is very different to 1 weekend a month for a year. It allows time for training and vetting, also it is paid.
I have a number of colleagues who have done their national service, mostly Greeks.
Some enjoyed it. A Consultant colleague of mine quite liked driving a Leopard 2 and firing machine guns, but others hated being frozen on the Albanian border in mountain huts with smelly colleagues. Another was on a coastguard vessel that deliberately swamped migrant boats.
So mixed opinions of its utility.
Similar with National Service in the UK armed forces in the 1940s and 1950s. Though one could do service in a hospital instead. David Hockney was a hospital porter IIRC. His account was published in a very mixed - like your examples - bunch of accounts of NS some years back.
My FiL did his National Service in the RAF in 1950. 3 months square bashing in Cannock, then a troopship. Half got off in Malta, where they spent a year eating pumpkins and being sexually harassed by predatory NCOs, the other half to Korea.
Being in Malta was the first time he travelled aboard. He came back by rail, 3rd class via Italy on a bit of leave. It took him 3 days.
My father didn't do national service because he failed the physical (terrible eyesight). This annoyed him as he'd wanted to be a conscientious objector!
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
It is that school but, with respect, you know nothing about it other than keen to find an angle that absolves Labour of all blame. It'd otherwise compell you to engage with the complexities of a nasty and unpleasant policy that you'd prefer not to.
The 20% price demand shock has been sufficient to kill it off, whereas otherwise it would have survived, and the disruption its going to cause to my son and his friends, and all the job losses it causes - including several pre-school teachers who are family friends - can be laid entirely at the door of SKS. Everyone knows he's going to win and that's having real world effects now.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
I doubt VAT on private schools is going to raise much money for the government as it will move some pupils back to the state sector.
But in the upcoming decades we're going to have to see more taxes raised and lower spending on pretty much all of the country.
And it will be easier for many of the disadvantaged groups to lose out if some of those at the top are visibly doing so as well.
Even if its unfortunate and unpleasant for your family.
The credit crunch killed off about thirty schools in the UK, and that was a one or two year blip. Assume Labour in power for ten years and the policy won't be reversed until at least 2034, and you're potentially looking at a prolonged depression that kills off (ballpark figure here) 300 private schools.
All those kids have to go somewhere. Some of them will be absorbed into other private schools, but even then, imagine if an additional 100-ish state schools need to be built to accommodate kids from private schools that have closed down, on top of an extra 10-20% demand created by parents who would have sent their kids to private schools, but are no longer able to. More schools will have to be built, meaning the cost will probably be greater than the extra £6k per child.
The truth is we don't know exactly how this policy is going to play out, but I did some calculations a few weeks ago and worked out that it's likely to have a creeping, cumulative effect, as parents will pay for kids with three or four years left to go, but be less likely to pay for 5 year olds with 13 years to go, creating a progressive hollowing out of the system that will lead to more and more private schools closing over time.
In short, I reckon Labour's tax wheeze may generate a windfall at first, but will slowly become net negative in terms of tax take over time.
But it won't be the top public schools closing down. It will be the minor schools favoured by the middle classes. So we'll end up with an even more divided system than we have now.
For those reasons, I think it's a bad policy. It will cost the taxpayer more than it brings in revenue, and actually increase division in society by limiting educational choices to an even smaller, more privileged elite.
Except. We are facing a baby bust. The birth rate fell off a cliff around 2013. Primary Schools are already facing closure because of falling rolls. This will feed into Secondary very soon. More kids in the system leads to the much cheaper option of State schools staying open rather than the costs of closing them down.
I'm actually deeply unconvinced of this, based on my very unscientific study of who's at the school gates of the primary schools near me.
We've yet to see how the birthrate changes, taking into account the preferences of recent immigrants. They may well, due to cultural values, place much higher emphasis on having children than we do.
I wouldn't be surprised to see an uptick in the birthrate in the next decade.
Not enough immigrants to change the figures that much. The underlying issue is that people of normal child-raising age can't afford to have children, because their finances are so stretched by mortgage payments.
Which is probably at least as big an issue for parents in the private school market.
It means that the state primary I went to is closing, because the area doesn't have enough children in it any more. Which is a bit sad, but not worth wading through blood for.
And you're lucky if you've got a mortgage - that cohort has been squeezed by renters and outright owners over the last decade. On average, people are buying their first homes after the age bands where they are most likely to have kids.
The headline is Labour are attacking the national service idea as a gimmick. That feels fairly smart, leave it to online weirdos to rant and rave about it whilst just dismissing it as the official line.
I think Labour's response is a lot more rational than mine - and in fact they've basically learned from the 2019 Tory campaign in that respect.
But I do think it's fair to criticise this policy on grounds that surely anyone thinks the people should at least be paid, right? Can some supporters explain why people shouldn't be paid to do it?
Asking people to volunteer one weekend in four to things that benefit society is not unreasonable.
For example: litter collection by the side of roads. Doesn’t get done for health & safety and cost reasons. But if you can solve the former and get it done by volunteers then the whole country would be better off in a small way
There is a big difference between asking and telling.
There is also a big difference between paid national service and forced, unpaid, labour.
No-one posting on PB, no politician or pundit backing Sunak’s wheeze, has done forced, unpaid, labour in their adult lives - unless they’ve been convicted of a crime. So why should 18 year olds alone be compelled?
How about this, we introduce votes for 16 and 17 year olds and then have a referendum on them doing it when they turn 18.
As this is a policy for them, they should be able to vote for it, right?
The headline is Labour are attacking the national service idea as a gimmick. That feels fairly smart, leave it to online weirdos to rant and rave about it whilst just dismissing it as the official line.
I think Labour's response is a lot more rational than mine - and in fact they've basically learned from the 2019 Tory campaign in that respect.
But I do think it's fair to criticise this policy on grounds that surely anyone thinks the people should at least be paid, right? Can some supporters explain why people shouldn't be paid to do it?
Asking people to volunteer one weekend in four to things that benefit society is not unreasonable.
For example: litter collection by the side of roads. Doesn’t get done for health & safety and cost reasons. But if you can solve the former and get it done by volunteers then the whole country would be better off in a small way
There is a big difference between asking and telling.
There is also a big difference between paid national service and forced, unpaid, labour.
No-one posting on PB, no politician or pundit backing Sunak’s wheeze, has done forced, unpaid, labour in their adult lives - unless they’ve been convicted of a crime. So why should 18 year olds alone be compelled?
How about this, we introduce votes for 16 and 17 year olds and then have a referendum on them doing it when they turn 18.
As this is a policy for them, they should be able to vote for it, right?
But of course as we know, it isn't for them.
Children should not be voting in elections.
The Scottish Tories disagree with you - or at least they did a decade ago. Now, who knows, tbf?
It will be amusing (and astounding) if in fact Sunak has pitched this just right and there is a marked swing to the Tories from this plan. That would be against the face of some brutal media and punditry takes, but is not impossible, though I do not expect it.
Can we set some reasonable benchmarks for success?
A good result might perhaps be a swing of 3 points from Refuk > Con by the end of this week, with no increase in LLG share. A Refuk > Con shift of 5 points and/or an LLG decrease by 3 points would be excellent.
Certainly, as Casino points out, they've grabbed lots of attention with this, and it's been the most effective attempt at shifting the narrative since (at least) the budget. It'll be fascinating to see how the polling changes as a result!
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
I’m not sure that follows.
If numbers are dwindling the directors may think there is scope to turn it around. But then VAT puts prices up 20% and the decline accelerates.
It may not be the only contributing factor but it doesn’t mean that Labour isn’t responsible
It always amuses me that people cannot seem to see that many - in fact most - things are multifactorial. Events are rarely caused by just one thing, but several working together.
I n this case, it's perfectly possible that the school could have kept going, but the *threat* of the tax placed an additional burden onto the school - perhaps in part by putting off prospective parents. It's a perfectly feasible scenario.
In addition, the directors have a moral responsibility to try to give as much warning of closure as possible. Taking in another year's intake, just to close a few months later, would IMV be irresponsible.
It made the difference between surviving a bad year and closure.
On that the Trustee letter is very clear.
Most of the private schools are expecting a shakeout due to Starmer. Single sex schools are increasingly going co-ed so they can pick up families of those faced with school closures. The smaller schools are most vulnerable as they live closer to the breadline.
I suspect the net effect will be fewer schools but the really well off will go on as usual. The fall out will be less well off families who want to invest in their kids education.
Yep. My wife and I have had this chat today.
We might just give up. We'd be £35k a year better off, the state about £14k worse off. We could pay for nannies, after-school care, much nicer holidays and cars, and a home extension; we could also pay off our mortgage and retire earlier. The taxpayer would pick up the bill.
But, that's the effect of a really stupid policy.
Nope that’s what you are giving up to give you child the education you wanted to give them.
Personally I think it was insane, you would be way better off going to state schools and spending the money getting tuition when required
Rishi's apparently genuine National Service announcement has finally given me a reason to vote Labour. Keeping Labour out is now less important to me than stopping the Tories.
Thing is, I am pretty receptive to the idea that our military is far less than it needs to be. But this doesn't strike me as a massively helpful solution to the problem.
It's like the maths to 18 policy. I'm receptive to the argument that as a nation we are insufficiently numerate. I'm a maths fan. But what we need is a) better basic maths education to 16, and b) encouragement for those so inclined to take it further than 18.
Like this, the national service policy is a bafflingly stupid solution to a valid problem. But at least the maths to 18 argument isn't going to needlessly ruin long periods of my kids' childhoods.
Before you do, perhaps remind yourself of what that might mean:
I'm quite aware that Labour are a bunch of dangerous and spiteful left wing nutters who will make everything worse in countless ways. But what are the Tories doing to stop any of this? State spending up, immigration up, woke up, growth down. And now they propose to deprive my kids of their liberty.
Have you read all the detail properly? That's not at all how I see it.
There are quite a few flakey Tories on here and I sometimes wonder if it's just me, @MarqueeMark and @HYUFD fighting to back our own team. I get that morale is low but, goodness, we need to pull ourselves together.
I don't think you've enjoy a Labour government with a massive majority - and a huge phalanx of left-wing MPs on its backbenches - one iota. It'd be far worse on all the things you describe and you'd have to deal with the knowledge (and the guilt) that you helped enable it.
It no longer strikes me as rational to vote Con to keep state spending or immigration or woke down, because they transparently can't.
And this is being trumpeted as 'national service'. We all know what that means because it existed in the 1950s. If it actually isn't this but giving all 18 and 19 year olds a lovely slice of cake, why don't they say that? It's because implausibly, they think there is yet more mileage in shafting the young, of extracting a bit more from they young to give to the old.
I'm not a flakey Tory. I'm not a Tory at all. I'm just a voter for whom up until now the Conservative Party has been the best way of keeping the lunacy of the left at bay. But the Conservative Party is a) clearly not keeping the left at bay (i.e. state spending, immigration and wokery are rising anf rising) and b) introducing all sorts of unnecessary bloody awful of their own. I also felt this way over the cancellation of HS2, but then Labour confirmed they'd do it too.
You're not voting for 2024, you're voting for 2029.
The Conservatives are going to lose, badly, but if there's a decent cadre of parliamentary representation they have a chance of coming back in 5 years, after what will be a deeply unpopular Starmer Government that makes all of those things you describe much worse.
Please don't be goaded by those saying you must vote Labour to be sure they win; they are simply trying to co-opt you to wipe out the centre-right as a political force in this country.
Don't play their game.
I think you can forget 2029. The defeated Tories are going to lurch to the right for at least one, possibly two elections. 2038 may be more like it. Assuming they survive at all.
I'm not forgetting it at all, just look at how things have changed just in 3 years?
The Tories were taking seats off Labour in by-elections just 37 months ago.
Labour will experience strong opposition from Day One. And regardless of what they do in Opposition they will be accused of "lurching".
That's just branding.
Well within this parliament, people on PB were wondering which *Labour* MPs would defect to the Conservatives.
The Conservative Party's decline has been vast, rapid, and totally their own fault. Or, more accurately, the fault of those who trusted Boris.
The imbecility of the Downing Street parties, with the added imbecility of leaving an email and photo evidence trail, still astounds me.
Someone really should have been given the job of ensuring that Boris didn't flout his own regulations.
There's no shortage of tough minded, incorruptible health and safety inspectors or even misery-guts, jobsworth security guards in this country.
The Conservative party needed to employ a few of those for their own good.
That. And, the imbecility of trying to protect Owen Paterson, and Chris Pincher. Then Liz Truss' economic chaos. Then, so many MPs putting their fingers in the wrong places.
All, entirely self-inflicted problems.
Covid and Ukraine would probably have done for any government, but not to this extent.
The amount of totally needless self-inflicted damage the Conservatives have done is astonishing.
It leads me to question the calibre of people who are attracted to government and politics.
It isn't that they lack abilities its rather that so many of them are fundamentally flawed.
Yet it is these fundamentally flawed people who end up in high office whereas 'normal' people who would never make such mistakes end up talking about it on PB.
So does the whole political process deserve some of the blame.
Just again, why should people not be paid for this? If they are being forced to do it, surely they should be paid? Does anyone actually think people shouldn't be paid?
It will be amusing (and astounding) if in fact Sunak has pitched this just right and there is a marked swing to the Tories from this plan. That would be against the face of some brutal media and punditry takes, but is not impossible, though I do not expect it.
Can we set some reasonable benchmarks for success?
A good result might perhaps be a swing of 3 points from Refuk > Con by the end of this week, with no increase in LLG share. A Refuk > Con shift of 5 points and/or an LLG decrease by 3 points would be excellent.
Certainly, as Casino points out, they've grabbed lots of attention with this, and it's been the most effect attempt at shifting the narrative since (at least) the budget. It'll be fascinating to see how the polling changes as a result!
The problem is that tomorrow there will be other things happening, there's the usual bobbling around the margin of error, associating small polling moves from individual events/policies is a fool's errand. Won't stop people doing it though.
I wonder if it is just a sign of my own increasing age that even though he is older than me Sunak feels very much like a young policitian, whereas Cameron seemed older thank Sunak in 2010 despite being the same age Sunak is now.
It's not due to experience, as Sunak has been an MP just as long as Cameron had back then, and is a lot more politically experienced than Cameron was in 2010, with years as a senior minister behind him.
Sunak comes across as being too green and inexperienced. Cameron, for all his faults, was a much smarter political operator across the board (a lot of that also, it has to be said, being driven by Osborne).
I do actually think Sunak has also suffered from what seems to be a paucity of good advisors. I did think bringing Cameron back might be a way to try and fix that - his Mandelson moment if you will - but it seems not.
I'm still baffled by bringing Cameron back. I liked him fine, but it was a snub to all the MPs who could have filled the role, he is not popular now, and it did not form part of any cohesive strategy to pitch to the centre - instead they've still wobbled back and forth from appealing to the right with some gimmicks and attempts at steady as she goes dull competence.
I think there were more votes available on the right, I think the centre was already lost by the Boris-Truss-Sunak debacle, so the campaign going that way is not a surprise, but undercut by things like bringing back Cameron.
The point with Sunak and why he's been useless is that while there are different routes to a winning coalition of voters, you have to pick one, and a theory of the case, and stick to it. The most obvious ones broadly being the Cameron 2010-15 one - which was founded on detoxifying the party with more liberal voters and gluing those on to more traditional Tories and those fearful or fed up of Labour. Then there's the Boris, unite Brexit voters one, which united socially conservative types sharing both left and right economic views, while daring its liberal wing to vote for Jeremy Corbyn.
Neither are now an easy option for the Tories. Brexit has receded as a frontline issue but has made the Cameron route difficult to take without a mea culpa as the fracture with liberalism (not solely caused by Brexit, but a useful shorthand for the breach) is here to stay. It's not likely Boris' works either now as it was dependent on promises of spending to those left-wing on that were empty and now impossible. Brexit is largely seen to be a failure, even by enough leave voters who support the principle, to make standing on it as your big thing a vote loser. Plus there's no Jeremy Corbyn to shore up the Tories' liberal wing.
But you do have to pick one and stick to it. Sunak has flailed between them - he's cast himself as a pragmatic ideologically unbound problem solver one minute, then sounded like a rabid right-wing Boomer Facebook group the next. Which just annoy everyone.
Like their campaign is "stick with us, we've got a sensible plan" but the policies broadcast at the loudest volume are back of a fag packet populism that tells you they haven't beyond scraping the bottom of the barrel.
To get an idea of how ludicrous it is think about what a similar approach from Labour would look. Running their "security and patriotism" stuff one minute, then, because they didn't want to upset Corbyn fans, pivoting to saying NATO is actually rubbish and why can't we all have a cup of tea with Putin and the Ayatollah the next.
Churchill was quite happy to have a cup of tea with Stalin, and he wasn't considered weak on security or patriotism, so I'm not sure of the basis of your point.
He was when we were allies - less so when Churchill was warning Stalin was a menace to European peace.
But that's by the by, whichever you agree with - Corbyn and Starmer have quite different political approaches and appeals to target voters. In relation to defence, which I used as an example Starmer makes sure to reassure he supports our existing international security arrangements and to appear strong on this. Repudiate that and take the far left's position that those security arrangements are bad and certain anti-West dictatorships have a point, and you annoy everyone and appear a fool.
You can pick one or the other of those positions or other ones associated with a particular type of politics, but if you pick both at the same time you look ridiculous.
As Sunak does by trying to promote himself as both a pragmatic problem solver aiming to "get the job done" and then by flailing about on the right trying to appease his party's headbangers.
Jago Hazzard also mentions in his video that Heathrow Express tickets can be purchased for just £5.50 instead of £25 if you book 90 days in advance. I didn't know that.
The comments section says those advance purchase cheap tickets were dropped last year, though.
(Last time I needed to get to Heathrow I took the Piccadilly -- from KGX it's not that much slower, and you can get elsewhere-to-Heathrow via tube tickets at a sane price whereas you can't for via-liz-line; getting an all in one ticket was reduced faff on the work expenses claim front.)
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
It is that school but, with respect, you know nothing about it other than keen to find an angle that absolves Labour of all blame. It'd otherwise compell you to engage with the complexities of a nasty and unpleasant policy that you'd prefer not to.
The 20% price demand shock has been sufficient to kill it off, whereas otherwise it would have survived, and the disruption its going to cause to my son and his friends, and all the job losses it causes - including several pre-school teachers who are family friends - can be laid entirely at the door of SKS. Everyone knows he's going to win and that's having real world effects now.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
Yet you're entirely happy for this government to take actions that will cause universities to go bust.
I'd walk through blood to stop the man. He has deeply angered me and ripped the heart out of one of the core pillars of our local community.
He is dirt.
Calm down dear. It's only an election.
You forget, Chris, it's not: my son is losing his school and his teachers their jobs. The town, a school that's been at the centre of the community for almost 90 years.
This is deeply deeply real. It's not a game. It's not a ding-dong.
Real people, real lives, real impact.
Learn it.
If you think Keir Starmer "is dirt" and you would "wade through blood" to stop him, because a school is closing, then quite frankly I think you need professional help.
I suspect that saying those kinds of things would have the police knocking at your door if you belonged to some minority communities.
I think CR is very upset, and is venting a little.
Better venting on here than taking it out on some innocent Labour canvasser that just happens to knock his door.
It will be amusing (and astounding) if in fact Sunak has pitched this just right and there is a marked swing to the Tories from this plan. That would be against the face of some brutal media and punditry takes, but is not impossible, though I do not expect it.
Can we set some reasonable benchmarks for success?
A good result might perhaps be a swing of 3 points from Refuk > Con by the end of this week, with no increase in LLG share. A Refuk > Con shift of 5 points and/or an LLG decrease by 3 points would be excellent.
Certainly, as Casino points out, they've grabbed lots of attention with this, and it's been the most effective attempt at shifting the narrative since (at least) the budget. It'll be fascinating to see how the polling changes as a result!
The problem is so much of the effect will be caught by changes in turnout rather than swings to other parties.
Just again, why should people not be paid for this? If they are being forced to do it, surely they should be paid? Does anyone actually think people shouldn't be paid?
It's never going to happen. There's not the numbers of voters insane enough people to vote the Tories back in.
I know why Casino is angry about the proposed closure of his kids' school - its personal. Of course its personal, you want whats best for your kids.
But - and its a very big but - if VAT is the difference between the school thriving and the school closing then I have to ask how they expect all other businesses to cope with similar increases in their costs which they can't pass on.
We need to have principles and create rules which apply evenly and equally. We charge VAT on services - and a private school provides a service. We say "market forces" when businesses fail and don't support bailing them out or preferential tax treatments to protect them. Every other school gets stuck with the local demographic impacts and budget constraints.
So when it's your kids, its personal. Get that. But does the same principle not apply to all kids? Or just your own? The argument seems to be "this will cost the state" because private school kids will transfer to the state sector. OK, thats fine. As happens all the time already when schools close.
I know why Casino is angry about the proposed closure of his kids' school - its personal. Of course its personal, you want whats best for your kids.
But - and its a very big but - if VAT is the difference between the school thriving and the school closing then I have to ask how they expect all other businesses to cope with similar increases in their costs which they can't pass on.
We need to have principles and create rules which apply evenly and equally. We charge VAT on services - and a private school provides a service. We say "market forces" when businesses fail and don't support bailing them out or preferential tax treatments to protect them. Every other school gets stuck with the local demographic impacts and budget constraints.
So when it's your kids, its personal. Get that. But does the same principle not apply to all kids? Or just your own? The argument seems to be "this will cost the state" because private school kids will transfer to the state sector. OK, thats fine. As happens all the time already when schools close.
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
I’m not sure that follows.
If numbers are dwindling the directors may think there is scope to turn it around. But then VAT puts prices up 20% and the decline accelerates.
It may not be the only contributing factor but it doesn’t mean that Labour isn’t responsible
It always amuses me that people cannot seem to see that many - in fact most - things are multifactorial. Events are rarely caused by just one thing, but several working together.
I n this case, it's perfectly possible that the school could have kept going, but the *threat* of the tax placed an additional burden onto the school - perhaps in part by putting off prospective parents. It's a perfectly feasible scenario.
In addition, the directors have a moral responsibility to try to give as much warning of closure as possible. Taking in another year's intake, just to close a few months later, would IMV be irresponsible.
It made the difference between surviving a bad year and closure.
On that the Trustee letter is very clear.
Most of the private schools are expecting a shakeout due to Starmer. Single sex schools are increasingly going co-ed so they can pick up families of those faced with school closures. The smaller schools are most vulnerable as they live closer to the breadline.
I suspect the net effect will be fewer schools but the really well off will go on as usual. The fall out will be less well off families who want to invest in their kids education.
Yep. My wife and I have had this chat today.
We might just give up. We'd be £35k a year better off, the state about £14k worse off. We could pay for nannies, after-school care, much nicer holidays and cars, and a home extension; we could also pay off our mortgage and retire earlier. The taxpayer would pick up the bill.
But, that's the effect of a really stupid policy.
Your kids might be better off if you saved £10k each for them per year so that they can afford a house in their twenties.
The difference between a state and private education now is likely to have much less effect on them than whether they become home owners or renters in the future.
I know why Casino is angry about the proposed closure of his kids' school - its personal. Of course its personal, you want whats best for your kids.
But - and its a very big but - if VAT is the difference between the school thriving and the school closing then I have to ask how they expect all other businesses to cope with similar increases in their costs which they can't pass on.
We need to have principles and create rules which apply evenly and equally. We charge VAT on services - and a private school provides a service. We say "market forces" when businesses fail and don't support bailing them out or preferential tax treatments to protect them. Every other school gets stuck with the local demographic impacts and budget constraints.
So when it's your kids, its personal. Get that. But does the same principle not apply to all kids? Or just your own? The argument seems to be "this will cost the state" because private school kids will transfer to the state sector. OK, thats fine. As happens all the time already when schools close.
So youre for VAT on university fees ?
Yes. 100%.
In fact, I'd have fees eliminated for doctors and nurses but up them for other degrees. In principle I oppose fees but accept - unlike the Tories - it is unaffordable. Of course with the £2.5bn they've just plucked out of thin air, perhaps that could eliminate the fees?
Labour have already closed my son's fucking school
Labour are not in Government
And, yet, they've still managed to close my son's school.
No. They haven't. If it's the school on the Times front page they acknowledge that pupil numbers have been dwindling for some time. A school near here, St Mary's Shaftesbury closed a few years ago for the same reason. Was that one shut by Labour too?
I’m not sure that follows.
If numbers are dwindling the directors may think there is scope to turn it around. But then VAT puts prices up 20% and the decline accelerates.
It may not be the only contributing factor but it doesn’t mean that Labour isn’t responsible
It always amuses me that people cannot seem to see that many - in fact most - things are multifactorial. Events are rarely caused by just one thing, but several working together.
I n this case, it's perfectly possible that the school could have kept going, but the *threat* of the tax placed an additional burden onto the school - perhaps in part by putting off prospective parents. It's a perfectly feasible scenario.
In addition, the directors have a moral responsibility to try to give as much warning of closure as possible. Taking in another year's intake, just to close a few months later, would IMV be irresponsible.
It made the difference between surviving a bad year and closure.
On that the Trustee letter is very clear.
Most of the private schools are expecting a shakeout due to Starmer. Single sex schools are increasingly going co-ed so they can pick up families of those faced with school closures. The smaller schools are most vulnerable as they live closer to the breadline.
I suspect the net effect will be fewer schools but the really well off will go on as usual. The fall out will be less well off families who want to invest in their kids education.
Yep. My wife and I have had this chat today.
We might just give up. We'd be £35k a year better off, the state about £14k worse off. We could pay for nannies, after-school care, much nicer holidays and cars, and a home extension; we could also pay off our mortgage and retire earlier. The taxpayer would pick up the bill.
But, that's the effect of a really stupid policy.
Good news, you'll be paying 20% VAT on that home extension and the childcare, and those business in turn will be paying more income tax for the extra staff.
Casino is reacting to the schools policy as many of us younger folks feel about the national service policy. It makes sense.
Given Reeves this morning said Labour would not raise income tax or national insurance and would keep a tight control on public spending. Given Starmer will keep the UK out of the EU and EEA for the foreseeable future and not restore free movement and given on most other issues you now can't get a fag paper's difference between Starmer and Sunak it is seems the VAT on private schools policy could be the only significant change an incoming Labour government makes from the current Tory one (the only other one is Labour would replace the Rwanda scheme with new investigators to cut small boats crossing the channel, so still the same end goal)
Plus Labour would remove the few remaining hereditaries but keep the rest of the Lords. I would not even be surprised if Starmer brought out his own version of national service
I know why Casino is angry about the proposed closure of his kids' school - its personal. Of course its personal, you want whats best for your kids.
But - and its a very big but - if VAT is the difference between the school thriving and the school closing then I have to ask how they expect all other businesses to cope with similar increases in their costs which they can't pass on.
We need to have principles and create rules which apply evenly and equally. We charge VAT on services - and a private school provides a service. We say "market forces" when businesses fail and don't support bailing them out or preferential tax treatments to protect them. Every other school gets stuck with the local demographic impacts and budget constraints.
So when it's your kids, its personal. Get that. But does the same principle not apply to all kids? Or just your own? The argument seems to be "this will cost the state" because private school kids will transfer to the state sector. OK, thats fine. As happens all the time already when schools close.
So youre for VAT on university fees ?
Yes. 100%.
In fact, I'd have fees eliminated for doctors and nurses but up them for other degrees. In principle I oppose fees but accept - unlike the Tories - it is unaffordable. Of course with the £2.5bn they've just plucked out of thin air, perhaps that could eliminate the fees?
I think forgiveness is a better approach. Each year in the NHS knocks a couple of grand off the amount to be repaid. That way you don’t train people and then they promptly bugger off without paying for it.
I'm not sure if this is something that Sunak should be boasting about for electoral purposes:
Conversely, the 60 overachieving areas with the highest housing delivery tend to be in the northwest (19) and Yorkshire and the Humber (10), where prices are lower. Richmondshire, in North Yorkshire, tops the chart: the council built 1,562 homes, which exceeded its low requirement of 29 by more than 5,000 per cent. These councils may see housing development “as a way to lever in investment and improve their housing stock quality, culminating in a pro-development stance”, Edward Clarke, an associate director at Lichfields, says.
Re any effect on the election from the likes of the NS announcement. Obviously time will tell but look at who is clutching their pearls the hardest and making the most noise in the media and on socials for a policy that polling suggests is anywhere from overall net negative to net positive without being unconscionable and wonder why. The hysteria from some of the commentariat suggests they are concerned it might shift the dial rather than any deep seated objection to the concept in and of itself. It's a classic firecracker tactic. As electoral entertainment it's gold
Comments
Conversely, the 60 overachieving areas with the highest housing delivery tend to be in the northwest (19) and Yorkshire and the Humber (10), where prices are lower. Richmondshire, in North Yorkshire, tops the chart: the council built 1,562 homes, which exceeded its low requirement of 29 by more than 5,000 per cent. These councils may see housing development “as a way to lever in investment and improve their housing stock quality, culminating in a pro-development stance”, Edward Clarke, an associate director at Lichfields, says.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why-we-dont-build-enough-homes-in-the-right-places-tr5c9lsl2
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive
But to be young and northern was very heaven!
You absolutely don't know what you're going to get with SKS.
I suspect the net effect will be fewer schools but the really well off will go on as usual. The fall out will be less well off families who want to invest in their kids education.
A: Tories say a 15-year-old knew what she was doing but 16-year-olds are too young to vote.
B: Labour says Begum was too young to know what she was doing but 16-year-olds are mature enough to vote.
Classic troll farm territory. Stir up both sides of a row and let the algorithms do the rest.
But the point is it won't raise any money for the government and will make the education smaller and worse. That's my argument as to why anyone who cares about state education should oppose it.
I think Starmer would have more fruit pursuing a line of broader wealth taxes, even if I didn't necessarily agree with them.
For example: litter collection by the side of roads. Doesn’t get done for health & safety and cost reasons. But if you can solve the former and get it done by volunteers then the whole country would be better off in a small way
This is deeply deeply real. It's not a game. It's not a ding-dong.
Real people, real lives, real impact.
Learn it.
Just learnt something totally new thanks to a Jago Hazzard video. Heathrow Airport airlines used to employ air terminals outside the airport to check people in and use coaches to transport them to the airport. The West London air terminal in Kensington was in use from 1957 to 1974.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_London_Air_Terminal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuUovamSJgg
We might just give up. We'd be £35k a year better off, the state about £14k worse off. We could pay for nannies, after-school care, much nicer holidays and cars, and a home extension; we could also pay off our mortgage and retire earlier. The taxpayer would pick up the bill.
But, that's the effect of a really stupid policy.
She is supposed to be impartial and above the fray. She is hoist by her own petard. See the podcast with another idiot Paddy O'Connell. The one about Starmer attending non-league football grounds. I can't be arsed to post it again. I've already posted it twice.
For reference I have no idea who Chris Mason votes for.
It doesn't say much for the credibility of her sources - but also what on Earth was she doing?
There is also a big difference between paid national service and forced, unpaid, labour.
No-one posting on PB, no politician or pundit backing Sunak’s wheeze, has done forced, unpaid, labour in their adult lives - unless they’ve been convicted of a crime. So why should 18 year olds alone be compelled?
All those kids have to go somewhere. Some of them will be absorbed into other private schools, but even then, imagine if an additional 100-ish state schools need to be built to accommodate kids from private schools that have closed down, on top of an extra 10-20% demand created by parents who would have sent their kids to private schools, but are no longer able to. More schools will have to be built, meaning the cost will probably be greater than the extra £6k per child.
The truth is we don't know exactly how this policy is going to play out, but I did some calculations a few weeks ago and worked out that it's likely to have a creeping, cumulative effect, as parents will pay for kids with three or four years left to go, but be less likely to pay for 5 year olds with 13 years to go, creating a progressive hollowing out of the system that will lead to more and more private schools closing over time.
In short, I reckon Labour's tax wheeze may generate a windfall at first, but will slowly become net negative in terms of tax take over time.
But it won't be the top public schools closing down. It will be the minor schools favoured by the middle classes. So we'll end up with an even more divided system than we have now.
For those reasons, I think it's a bad policy. It will cost the taxpayer more than it brings in revenue, and actually increase division in society by limiting educational choices to an even smaller, more privileged elite.
https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/ofsted-ratings-have-standards-been-improving/#:~:text=So it is true; 68,year this figure was 89%.
Deciding to either serve their country in the Armed Forces or serve their community by volunteering.
2/6
https://x.com/RishiSunak/status/1794693714721522045
But not a choice to not do it, Rishi.
My daughter is an assistant head at a private school. The school offers boarding during the week as many of the parents are City types who work bizarre hours so want their kids in a routine. They'll continue on pretty much as normal. So you'll just get the very rich affording education and the schools become even more exclusive.
As this is a policy for them, they should be able to vote for it, right?
But of course as we know, it isn't for them.
I suspect that saying those kinds of things would have the police knocking at your door if you belonged to some minority communities.
Just let it go.
Let’s say that the minimum viable number of pupils for each school is 100.
At £10k for one school and £13k for the other all kids are educated (numbers made up).
If the price of the cheaper option rises to £13k then there are3 options available to parents:
- move to the more expensive school (if you are going to have to pay the same then you might as well give it to your school rather than pay it in tax)
- move to the local state school if you can’t afford it
- Grin and bear it
If enough parents take the first two prions then the £10k school is no longer viable and closes.
The result is:
- some pupils move to the more expensive school resulting in larger classes and diminishing (slightly) the quality of education
- some pupils move to the local state school (ditto)
- money is taken out of the local economy either in tax or because it is being funnelled into the £13k school
- diversity of education provision is reduced
- Teachers lose their jobs as do general staff
I’m struggling to see any good outcomes here?
We are facing a baby bust. The birth rate fell off a cliff around 2013. Primary Schools are already facing closure because of falling rolls. This will feed into Secondary very soon.
More kids in the system leads to the much cheaper option of State schools staying open rather than the costs of closing them down.
All our politicians and civil servants will act shocked and then claim they are learning the lessons.
Maybe the professional help got to you on time.
The Echo has gone downhill since I were a lad.
Jago Hazzard also mentions in his video that Heathrow Express tickets can be purchased for just £5.50 instead of £25 if you book 90 days in advance. I didn't know that.
We've yet to see how the birthrate changes, taking into account the preferences of recent immigrants. They may well, due to cultural values, place much higher emphasis on having children than we do.
I wouldn't be surprised to see an uptick in the birthrate in the next decade.
And if you do abolish them how are you going to stop the flow of pupils to private schools in Ireland ?
Beer at 2 bob a pint?
It's another reason why we have these housing crises - population is rising in only a few spots in the country, and falling away elsewhere. You can plaster Herefordshire with houses but that doesn't make up for the fact the only people having kids are in Birmingham.
As for more profligate - Sunak was the Chancellor for much of that period, and value for money was becoming talked about internally as an issue for him. I suspect he'd have been moved on as COE and certainly he should have been.
I come from a middle class background, parents are graduates in professional/management roles, but I was nowhere near going to a private school.
It's the same twisted reference points that sees people claim people with cars are the downtrodden poor - but people in the lowest income decile have a much lower rate of ownership than those is middling ones.
Today we are in the middle of a crisis and these are desperate times but just for the Conservative Party, which is shattering ever more on a daily basis. Nobody knows what the Conservative Party really stands for, so everybody applies his own worst interpretation. They have no hope in this election.
Except for the shedloads of money they are going to throw at it.
Which is probably at least as big an issue for parents in the private school market.
It means that the state primary I went to is closing, because the area doesn't have enough children in it any more. Which is a bit sad, but not worth wading through blood for.
At least eight rockets were launched from the Rafah area in southern Gaza and several were intercepted, the Israeli military says. No injuries have been reported.
If you are the Tories, and your strategy is supposed to be scaring people about possibility of Labour government, its another day where all the focus is on this nonsense idea.
In the meantime I hope your kid's education somehow continues without too much disruption.
A good result might perhaps be a swing of 3 points from Refuk > Con by the end of this week, with no increase in LLG share. A Refuk > Con shift of 5 points and/or an LLG decrease by 3 points would be excellent.
Certainly, as Casino points out, they've grabbed lots of attention with this, and it's been the most effective attempt at shifting the narrative since (at least) the budget. It'll be fascinating to see how the polling changes as a result!
Personally I think it was insane, you would be way better off going to state schools and spending the money getting tuition when required
It leads me to question the calibre of people who are attracted to government and politics.
It isn't that they lack abilities its rather that so many of them are fundamentally flawed.
Yet it is these fundamentally flawed people who end up in high office whereas 'normal' people who would never make such mistakes end up talking about it on PB.
So does the whole political process deserve some of the blame.
But that's by the by, whichever you agree with - Corbyn and Starmer have quite different political approaches and appeals to target voters. In relation to defence, which I used as an example Starmer makes sure to reassure he supports our existing international security arrangements and to appear strong on this. Repudiate that and take the far left's position that those security arrangements are bad and certain anti-West dictatorships have a point, and you annoy everyone and appear a fool.
You can pick one or the other of those positions or other ones associated with a particular type of politics, but if you pick both at the same time you look ridiculous.
As Sunak does by trying to promote himself as both a pragmatic problem solver aiming to "get the job done" and then by flailing about on the right trying to appease his party's headbangers.
(Last time I needed to get to Heathrow I took the Piccadilly -- from KGX it's not that much slower, and you can get elsewhere-to-Heathrow via tube tickets at a sane price whereas you can't for via-liz-line; getting an all in one ticket was reduced faff on the work expenses claim front.)
But - and its a very big but - if VAT is the difference between the school thriving and the school closing then I have to ask how they expect all other businesses to cope with similar increases in their costs which they can't pass on.
We need to have principles and create rules which apply evenly and equally. We charge VAT on services - and a private school provides a service. We say "market forces" when businesses fail and don't support bailing them out or preferential tax treatments to protect them. Every other school gets stuck with the local demographic impacts and budget constraints.
So when it's your kids, its personal. Get that. But does the same principle not apply to all kids? Or just your own? The argument seems to be "this will cost the state" because private school kids will transfer to the state sector. OK, thats fine. As happens all the time already when schools close.
Time (both writing and reading), paper, ink, the savings just go on and on
Lock down to protect society, put your life on hold for two years
Up your taxes to the highest in history
Offer no help on housing - build no houses
Force you to do unpaid work
It feels like a deliberate attack on young people.
The difference between a state and private education now is likely to have much less effect on them than whether they become home owners or renters in the future.
In fact, I'd have fees eliminated for doctors and nurses but up them for other degrees. In principle I oppose fees but accept - unlike the Tories - it is unaffordable. Of course with the £2.5bn they've just plucked out of thin air, perhaps that could eliminate the fees?
2/3rds would mean a return over a longer period.
Housing is only one part of the puzzle.
Google's new AI search results are having quite the week. Here's a thread with some of my favorite answers:
https://x.com/JeremiahDJohns/status/1794543007129387208
It's a classic firecracker tactic.
As electoral entertainment it's gold