UK Sport getting into knots again - Saying they are not setting a target for medals for Team GB so they dont put "pressure" on them but almost in the same breadth saying they might get to 70 medals .
This is the same body that pre London 2012 demanded gold medals and funded that programme with individual sport bodies to get them , then when "wokeness" arrived disowned those sport bodies that took them at their word and washed their hands when society accused them of bullying athletes . All brilliantly told in the great book - The Medal Factory which focuses on British Cycling and its rise from being useless as a medal contender to sweeping the board by taking UK Sport at its word -
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Boo hiss. An ideological move that asshats will cheer, and will not help state school kids one jot.
a negative move to start government - well done labour - will mean even more so that only the very rich can afford it- Do Labour really want an elite?
Only the very rich can already afford it.
Most families with kids have 2 kids, and paying 2 kids fees alone takes more than the median salary.
I'd like to see ways to make it more affordable, but it being unaffordable for the overwhelming majority is already the case.
Set the price of a state education at, say £7200 a year. Give every parent a voucher for education to the value of £7200 a year.
Allow parents to use that voucher in the state system, or to use it as partial credit towards a private education and top up the fees with their own money.
Marketise the school system, abolish catchment areas, allow anyone to attend any school with the voucher acting as the baseline to ensure a basic education, let parents decide on the value of an education.
Make all children go to their nearest school. This will get rid of half the cars off the road and free up bus space for wheelchairs, as we discussed last week. It will not alter the number of children at any particular school, so is neutral in that regard.
Not to mention the property bonanza for those who cleverly purchased in the right area, raising the net worth of those already fortunate enough to exist in the leafy suburbs. What's not to like?
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Prince Albert’s memorial is “considered offensive” because it reflects a “Victorian view of the world that differs from mainstream views held today”, custodians say.
The 176ft Albert Memorial opposite the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington Gardens, west London, was built to honour Queen Victoria’s late husband in 1872, when the British Empire stretched across the globe.
It includes a golden sculpture of the Prince Consort himself, along with four groups of large statues representing the people and animals of four continents.
Asia is depicted as a woman on an elephant, America as a native American, and Africa as a woman riding a camel. The African sculpture also includes a white European woman reading a book to a black African tribesman.
The Royal Parks website now says that the Albert Memorial’s “representation of certain continents draws on racial stereotypes that are now considered offensive”.
It tells how Victorian guidebooks about the memorial “describe how this ‘uncivilised’ man hunches over his bow. This pose was intended to represent him ‘rising up from barbarism’, thanks to his Western teacher. At his feet lie broken chains, which allude to Britain’s role in the abolition of slavery”.
It adds that “descriptions of the states that represent Asia and America also reflect this Victorian view of European supremacy”.
I remember cycling through there when the tarmac was soft enough to stick to my tyres. Needless to say it was a slow day redeemed only by several cold beers at the end.
In my self regarding "huh I'm a top pro travel writer/flint knapper" genius self esteem, I have managed to book a lovely two bed apartment WITHIN the medieval walls of Aigues Mortes for a very reasonable price
I now realise why it was so reasonable. No wifi, no aircon
Fuuuuuuuuuck
I think the next stage of the roadtrip might be northwards, and upwards. Into the cool green Auvergne. I quite fancy seeing Vichy. It is so notorious because of Petain, I want to see it. Has any PBer been?
A good few years ago, I stayed a couple of night at the Hotel Balme in Villefort before meandering north to the dramatic crags of Le Puy. Individual eclectic furnishings , old French style and a fine restaurant as I recall. Travelling with a donkey optional.
Prince Albert’s memorial is “considered offensive” because it reflects a “Victorian view of the world that differs from mainstream views held today”, custodians say.
The 176ft Albert Memorial opposite the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington Gardens, west London, was built to honour Queen Victoria’s late husband in 1872, when the British Empire stretched across the globe.
It includes a golden sculpture of the Prince Consort himself, along with four groups of large statues representing the people and animals of four continents.
Asia is depicted as a woman on an elephant, America as a native American, and Africa as a woman riding a camel. The African sculpture also includes a white European woman reading a book to a black African tribesman.
The Royal Parks website now says that the Albert Memorial’s “representation of certain continents draws on racial stereotypes that are now considered offensive”.
It tells how Victorian guidebooks about the memorial “describe how this ‘uncivilised’ man hunches over his bow. This pose was intended to represent him ‘rising up from barbarism’, thanks to his Western teacher. At his feet lie broken chains, which allude to Britain’s role in the abolition of slavery”.
It adds that “descriptions of the states that represent Asia and America also reflect this Victorian view of European supremacy”.
It seems that last nights further demonstrations against the Child Snatchers General (Leeds Social Services) were peaceful and well attended.
Appears that after one of said children presented in hospital with a head injury they decided that there was a risk it was deliberate and their backsides would not be covered the other children might be at risk, unless they were all taken into care (at vast cost to the taxpayer of course).
The parents are now on hunger strike and will do a Bobby Sands unless they are returned.
There will be much more to this story than your short synopsis above.
Of course.
And in social services, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (How were the signs missed???)
Far less consequence (rarely any) if you confiscate the kids and it turns out you did so wrongly than if you don't do anything wrongly in which case a media and state agency circus follows.
Thats how bureaucracies and their precautionary principle works. Better to send them to a camp in Siberia for 20 years than risk them being dangerous traitors now that the KGB has found that there is a risk that they might be traitors after tapping their phone.
How many kids are taken into protection each week in the UK?
What processes are there?
Is a judge involved?
What appeal opportunities are there for parents?
I ask all these questions, because "a story" is usually a dangerously limited set of information to work off.
106 kids per day, 38,792 per year. So 742 per week.
Yes of course there are processes, but unless you are very wealthy and can afford decent legal representation the processes are hopelessly stacked against you, not least as it is a civil not criminal law process so balance of probability with state agencies word carrying a presumption of correctness unless otherwise proven.
Hold on, that's 106 kids total going into care being looked after, that's not 106 kids being taken away from parents.
There are many reasons kids enter the care system. Orphans with nobody to look after them. Parents who abandon their kids. Parents who give their kids up as they can't/don't want to look after them. Parents who are temporarily hospitalised or otherwise too ill to look after children with no other support system, so care is temporarily needed until the parent recovers. And yes, children taken into care against their parents will as well.
You can't count the former as the latter.
EDIT: That's looked after children data not care data, so I believe homeless families who are given temporary accommodation (with the children still with their parents in the accommodation) are counted in that data too.
Be interesting to know what the figure is, that was the best source I could find. The same site says that 104,808 kids are being looked after away from home in the UK.
What all sites discussing it agree on is that the numbers have been inexorably rising for years.
In the five years after Baby P the number taken into care doubled (2008 to 2013) and since then has continued to rise with a further 50% rise (in England) from 2015-2021
Sadly Christopher Booker is no longer alive to shine alight on this most Kafkaesque corner of the state and John Hemming is no longer an MP and able to use parliamentary privilege to ignore secret injunctions by mluds.
Mention of baby P undermines your case really. There would have been nothing nanny state or Kafka about taking him away from the people who tortured him to death.
The whole point is that after this they started grossly overreacting, doubling the number taken in five years, when the cause of baby P was monumental incompetence ignoring the obvious.
Use of hard cases like this and the "it must never happen again mantra" just leads to widespread injustice and misery. In this case the taking of children from their families on the precautionary principle, just in case they might do something horrible.
A tripling of the number of children in care away from home since 2008 on the precautionary principle because of one unpleasant murder is worthy of Stalins Cheka (as are their secretive processes).
I'm not very happy about it as a council tax payer either.
Roughly a child a week is murdered by its step or real parents.
52 a year out of 12.7 million kids. 0.0004%.
Thats a matter for the courts to deal with the parents, not for a standing state inquistion on the parents of the other 12,699,948 children.
Shit happens, people are evil, get over it. We don't live in utopia
So you’d rather wait for the kids to get killed rather than prevent them getting killed? And your justification for that is “shit happens”? Forgive me if I’m not overly impressed by that line of reasoning.
It is the utopian condundrum.
The lower you get the level of unfortunate events the more extreme, disruptive and expensive the measures you need to take to get it to zero. Beyond a certain point you cause far more distress and misery than you save.
The "it must never happen again" brigade won't be happy until we are as spied on and tracked as the Chinese are.
1,700 people a year are killed on the roads in Britain. That's a terrible toll. So many families bereaved. It could be totally prevented by having a man with a red flag walk in front of every vehicle.
We, as a society, are happy to live with that death toll on the roads but insist on spending a fortune to try to achieve zero deaths on the railways. Overall, there would be fewer deaths if the safety investment was targeted in a smarter way.
I remember cycling through there when the tarmac was soft enough to stick to my tyres. Needless to say it was a slow day redeemed only by several cold beers at the end.
In my self regarding "huh I'm a top pro travel writer/flint knapper" genius self esteem, I have managed to book a lovely two bed apartment WITHIN the medieval walls of Aigues Mortes for a very reasonable price
I now realise why it was so reasonable. No wifi, no aircon
Fuuuuuuuuuck
I think the next stage of the roadtrip might be northwards, and upwards. Into the cool green Auvergne. I quite fancy seeing Vichy. It is so notorious because of Petain, I want to see it. Has any PBer been?
Please report back. Currently trying to persuade Mrs. F that our golden wedding European road trip, finishing in Champagne, should include the Auvergne.
P.S. recommendations for underrated Champagnes and Champagne villages also welcomed.
That sounds like it will be a lovely holiday. Driving through France is a delight.
Thanks. Planning to use the Newcastle to Amsterdam ferry to avoid the hell that is the M6, M1, A1, M11, M25 and M20. Bring back motorail!
I remember cycling through there when the tarmac was soft enough to stick to my tyres. Needless to say it was a slow day redeemed only by several cold beers at the end.
In my self regarding "huh I'm a top pro travel writer/flint knapper" genius self esteem, I have managed to book a lovely two bed apartment WITHIN the medieval walls of Aigues Mortes for a very reasonable price
I now realise why it was so reasonable. No wifi, no aircon
Fuuuuuuuuuck
I think the next stage of the roadtrip might be northwards, and upwards. Into the cool green Auvergne. I quite fancy seeing Vichy. It is so notorious because of Petain, I want to see it. Has any PBer been?
Please report back. Currently trying to persuade Mrs. F that our golden wedding European road trip, finishing in Champagne, should include the Auvergne.
P.S. recommendations for underrated Champagnes and Champagne villages also welcomed.
The french export the good champagne to the UK and retain a lot of real rubbish. Save your money and buy cremant.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad to leave it.
Its under the equality act not the human wrongs actl.
I would repeal both but it is always fun when those who pass fatuous and oppressive acts get upended by their own act,
How has anyone been oppressed by the Equality Act? It’s not as if it’s resulted in anyone going to prison.
Prince Albert’s memorial is “considered offensive” because it reflects a “Victorian view of the world that differs from mainstream views held today”, custodians say.
The 176ft Albert Memorial opposite the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington Gardens, west London, was built to honour Queen Victoria’s late husband in 1872, when the British Empire stretched across the globe.
It includes a golden sculpture of the Prince Consort himself, along with four groups of large statues representing the people and animals of four continents.
Asia is depicted as a woman on an elephant, America as a native American, and Africa as a woman riding a camel. The African sculpture also includes a white European woman reading a book to a black African tribesman.
The Royal Parks website now says that the Albert Memorial’s “representation of certain continents draws on racial stereotypes that are now considered offensive”.
It tells how Victorian guidebooks about the memorial “describe how this ‘uncivilised’ man hunches over his bow. This pose was intended to represent him ‘rising up from barbarism’, thanks to his Western teacher. At his feet lie broken chains, which allude to Britain’s role in the abolition of slavery”.
It adds that “descriptions of the states that represent Asia and America also reflect this Victorian view of European supremacy”.
Prince Albert’s memorial is “considered offensive” because it reflects a “Victorian view of the world that differs from mainstream views held today”, custodians say.
The 176ft Albert Memorial opposite the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington Gardens, west London, was built to honour Queen Victoria’s late husband in 1872, when the British Empire stretched across the globe.
It includes a golden sculpture of the Prince Consort himself, along with four groups of large statues representing the people and animals of four continents.
Asia is depicted as a woman on an elephant, America as a native American, and Africa as a woman riding a camel. The African sculpture also includes a white European woman reading a book to a black African tribesman.
The Royal Parks website now says that the Albert Memorial’s “representation of certain continents draws on racial stereotypes that are now considered offensive”.
It tells how Victorian guidebooks about the memorial “describe how this ‘uncivilised’ man hunches over his bow. This pose was intended to represent him ‘rising up from barbarism’, thanks to his Western teacher. At his feet lie broken chains, which allude to Britain’s role in the abolition of slavery”.
It adds that “descriptions of the states that represent Asia and America also reflect this Victorian view of European supremacy”.
I remember cycling through there when the tarmac was soft enough to stick to my tyres. Needless to say it was a slow day redeemed only by several cold beers at the end.
In my self regarding "huh I'm a top pro travel writer/flint knapper" genius self esteem, I have managed to book a lovely two bed apartment WITHIN the medieval walls of Aigues Mortes for a very reasonable price
I now realise why it was so reasonable. No wifi, no aircon
Fuuuuuuuuuck
I think the next stage of the roadtrip might be northwards, and upwards. Into the cool green Auvergne. I quite fancy seeing Vichy. It is so notorious because of Petain, I want to see it. Has any PBer been?
Please report back. Currently trying to persuade Mrs. F that our golden wedding European road trip, finishing in Champagne, should include the Auvergne.
P.S. recommendations for underrated Champagnes and Champagne villages also welcomed.
That sounds like it will be a lovely holiday. Driving through France is a delight.
Thanks. Planning to use the Newcastle to Amsterdam ferry to avoid the hell that is the M6, M1, A1, M11, M25 and M20. Bring back motorail!
A benefit of living in East Kent. We don’t even have to take the M20.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
I think it's fantastic news. All the oiks whose parents can't afford to send them to a proper public school will end up in the state system, making my proper public school education far more rare and valuable.
Bravo to the Labour party for kicking the ladder of social mobility away from all those middle class yobbos whose parents dared to send them to middling private schools.
Now a public school education will actually mean something again. Glad to see the Labour party acting to entrench social privilege in this country. About bloody time someone did.
Problem is all the private school kids looking down on those who can’t afford to go to private school are focussed in on by those who went to public schools so it rarifies further those who went to the actual public schools and leaves the private school kids more exposed to mockery. There is now a new bottom of the rung to pick on which might not be so great for those who thought they were a bit superior before.
Luckily as you went to one of the nine public schools you can join us in mocking the private school kids.
The easiest way of stopping kids being killed by their parents is to bank the sperm of males aged 14 and then castrate them. The sperm would then be used after parents have ensured they are fit to raise children. There would also be dormitories for the children to sleep in overnight. The plan has the further advantage lower the prevalence of sexual assault amongst young males and unwanted pregnancies.
Or just stop everyone having children. With the added bonus of humankind becoming extinct. A double win.
The first is how much state control there is over schools and the useless woke PC crap they are FORCED teach as a result. Be honest should anyone learn Shakespeare before uni ? No it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time to learn plays from 400yrs ago !!
Second is it is FORCED on parents when a lot of children aren’t suited to it especially up to 18 and they would be better off learning real skills. many kids used to leave at 14 and were better set up at life
Problem is no one dares stand up for common sense and these sacred cows
The easiest way of stopping kids being killed by their parents is to bank the sperm of males aged 14 and then castrate them. The sperm would then be used after parents have ensured they are fit to raise children. There would also be dormitories for the children to sleep in overnight. The plan has the further advantage lower the prevalence of sexual assault amongst young males and unwanted pregnancies.
Or just stop everyone having children. With the added bonus of humankind becoming extinct. A double win.
no more smoking them or misgendering or driving at 23mph through town or indeed those evil private schools that are such a cause of British woe
We, as a society, are happy to live with that death toll on the roads but insist on spending a fortune to try to achieve zero deaths on the railways. Overall, there would be fewer deaths if the safety investment was targeted in a smarter way.
It would be easier to teach a dog to play a piano than to get the public and politicians to understand risk. It would also be more enjoyable to spend time with the dog.
The easiest way of stopping kids being killed by their parents is to bank the sperm of males aged 14 and then castrate them. The sperm would then be used after parents have ensured they are fit to raise children. There would also be dormitories for the children to sleep in overnight. The plan has the further advantage lower the prevalence of sexual assault amongst young males and unwanted pregnancies.
Or just stop everyone having children. With the added bonus of humankind becoming extinct. A double win.
Yes. I don’t think we deserve to survive as a species and it doesn’t look like we will.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Boo hiss. An ideological move that asshats will cheer, and will not help state school kids one jot.
a negative move to start government - well done labour - will mean even more so that only the very rich can afford it- Do Labour really want an elite?
Only the very rich can already afford it.
Most families with kids have 2 kids, and paying 2 kids fees alone takes more than the median salary.
I'd like to see ways to make it more affordable, but it being unaffordable for the overwhelming majority is already the case.
Set the price of a state education at, say £7200 a year. Give every parent a voucher for education to the value of £7200 a year.
Allow parents to use that voucher in the state system, or to use it as partial credit towards a private education and top up the fees with their own money.
Marketise the school system, abolish catchment areas, allow anyone to attend any school with the voucher acting as the baseline to ensure a basic education, let parents decide on the value of an education.
Make all children go to their nearest school. This will get rid of half the cars off the road and free up bus space for wheelchairs, as we discussed last week. It will not alter the number of children at any particular school, so is neutral in that regard.
Not to mention the property bonanza for those who cleverly purchased in the right area, raising the net worth of those already fortunate enough to exist in the leafy suburbs. What's not to like?
That basically is the current system. Selection by who can afford to live in the catchment areas of the good schools.
It would be a lot fairer to set by ability but that is anathema.
The first is how much state control there is over schools and the useless woke PC crap they are FORCED teach as a result. Be honest should anyone learn Shakespeare before uni ? No it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time to learn plays from 400yrs ago !!
Second is it is FORCED on parents when a lot of children aren’t suited to it especially up to 18 and they would be better off learning real skills. many kids used to leave at 14 and were better set up at life
Problem is no one dares stand up for common sense and these sacred cows
First time I've ever heard Shakespearean plays be called woke PC crap.
The easiest way of stopping kids being killed by their parents is to bank the sperm of males aged 14 and then castrate them. The sperm would then be used after parents have ensured they are fit to raise children. There would also be dormitories for the children to sleep in overnight. The plan has the further advantage lower the prevalence of sexual assault amongst young males and unwanted pregnancies.
Or just stop everyone having children. With the added bonus of humankind becoming extinct. A double win.
The easiest way of stopping kids being killed by their parents is to bank the sperm of males aged 14 and then castrate them. The sperm would then be used after parents have ensured they are fit to raise children. There would also be dormitories for the children to sleep in overnight. The plan has the further advantage lower the prevalence of sexual assault amongst young males and unwanted pregnancies.
Or just stop everyone having children. With the added bonus of humankind becoming extinct. A double win.
no more smoking them or misgendering or driving at 23mph through town or indeed those evil private schools that are such a cause of British woe
"no more smoking them" . . . who's been smoking children?
We, as a society, are happy to live with that death toll on the roads but insist on spending a fortune to try to achieve zero deaths on the railways. Overall, there would be fewer deaths if the safety investment was targeted in a smarter way.
It would be easier to teach a dog to play a piano than to get the public and politicians to understand risk. It would also be more enjoyable to spend time with the dog.
What’s needed is a scale of risk using dogs for scale.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
I think it's fantastic news. All the oiks whose parents can't afford to send them to a proper public school will end up in the state system, making my proper public school education far more rare and valuable.
Bravo to the Labour party for kicking the ladder of social mobility away from all those middle class yobbos whose parents dared to send them to middling private schools.
Now a public school education will actually mean something again. Glad to see the Labour party acting to entrench social privilege in this country. About bloody time someone did.
Problem is all the private school kids looking down on those who can’t afford to go to private school are focussed in on by those who went to public schools so it rarifies further those who went to the actual public schools and leaves the private school kids more exposed to mockery. There is now a new bottom of the rung to pick on which might not be so great for those who thought they were a bit superior before.
Luckily as you went to one of the nine public schools you can join us in mocking the private school kids.
There are eight others?
Being generous. Sticking to Clarendon Commission guidelines.
It seems that last nights further demonstrations against the Child Snatchers General (Leeds Social Services) were peaceful and well attended.
Appears that after one of said children presented in hospital with a head injury they decided that there was a risk it was deliberate and their backsides would not be covered the other children might be at risk, unless they were all taken into care (at vast cost to the taxpayer of course).
The parents are now on hunger strike and will do a Bobby Sands unless they are returned.
There will be much more to this story than your short synopsis above.
Of course.
And in social services, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (How were the signs missed???)
Far less consequence (rarely any) if you confiscate the kids and it turns out you did so wrongly than if you don't do anything wrongly in which case a media and state agency circus follows.
Thats how bureaucracies and their precautionary principle works. Better to send them to a camp in Siberia for 20 years than risk them being dangerous traitors now that the KGB has found that there is a risk that they might be traitors after tapping their phone.
How many kids are taken into protection each week in the UK?
What processes are there?
Is a judge involved?
What appeal opportunities are there for parents?
I ask all these questions, because "a story" is usually a dangerously limited set of information to work off.
106 kids per day, 38,792 per year. So 742 per week.
Yes of course there are processes, but unless you are very wealthy and can afford decent legal representation the processes are hopelessly stacked against you, not least as it is a civil not criminal law process so balance of probability with state agencies word carrying a presumption of correctness unless otherwise proven.
Hold on, that's 106 kids total going into care being looked after, that's not 106 kids being taken away from parents.
There are many reasons kids enter the care system. Orphans with nobody to look after them. Parents who abandon their kids. Parents who give their kids up as they can't/don't want to look after them. Parents who are temporarily hospitalised or otherwise too ill to look after children with no other support system, so care is temporarily needed until the parent recovers. And yes, children taken into care against their parents will as well.
You can't count the former as the latter.
EDIT: That's looked after children data not care data, so I believe homeless families who are given temporary accommodation (with the children still with their parents in the accommodation) are counted in that data too.
Be interesting to know what the figure is, that was the best source I could find. The same site says that 104,808 kids are being looked after away from home in the UK.
What all sites discussing it agree on is that the numbers have been inexorably rising for years.
In the five years after Baby P the number taken into care doubled (2008 to 2013) and since then has continued to rise with a further 50% rise (in England) from 2015-2021
Sadly Christopher Booker is no longer alive to shine alight on this most Kafkaesque corner of the state and John Hemming is no longer an MP and able to use parliamentary privilege to ignore secret injunctions by mluds.
Mention of baby P undermines your case really. There would have been nothing nanny state or Kafka about taking him away from the people who tortured him to death.
The whole point is that after this they started grossly overreacting, doubling the number taken in five years, when the cause of baby P was monumental incompetence ignoring the obvious.
Use of hard cases like this and the "it must never happen again mantra" just leads to widespread injustice and misery. In this case the taking of children from their families on the precautionary principle, just in case they might do something horrible.
A tripling of the number of children in care away from home since 2008 on the precautionary principle because of one unpleasant murder is worthy of Stalins Cheka (as are their secretive processes).
I'm not very happy about it as a council tax payer either.
Roughly a child a week is murdered by its step or real parents.
52 a year out of 12.7 million kids. 0.0004%.
Thats a matter for the courts to deal with the parents, not for a standing state inquistion on the parents of the other 12,699,948 children.
Shit happens, people are evil, get over it. We don't live in utopia
So you’d rather wait for the kids to get killed rather than prevent them getting killed? And your justification for that is “shit happens”? Forgive me if I’m not overly impressed by that line of reasoning.
It is the utopian condundrum.
The lower you get the level of unfortunate events the more extreme, disruptive and expensive the measures you need to take to get it to zero. Beyond a certain point you cause far more distress and misery than you save.
The "it must never happen again" brigade won't be happy until we are as spied on and tracked as the Chinese are.
1,700 people a year are killed on the roads in Britain. That's a terrible toll. So many families bereaved. It could be totally prevented by having a man with a red flag walk in front of every vehicle.
How amusing you are being at the thought of an infant who had his fingernails torn out with pliers. You must feel like a real man after that post. Well done.
The first is how much state control there is over schools and the useless woke PC crap they are FORCED teach as a result. Be honest should anyone learn Shakespeare before uni ? No it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time to learn plays from 400yrs ago !!
Second is it is FORCED on parents when a lot of children aren’t suited to it especially up to 18 and they would be better off learning real skills. many kids used to leave at 14 and were better set up at life
Problem is no one dares stand up for common sense and these sacred cows
Brilliant. Shakespeare is now "woke PC crap". (Sorry Bart - beat me to it).
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Boo hiss. An ideological move that asshats will cheer, and will not help state school kids one jot.
a negative move to start government - well done labour - will mean even more so that only the very rich can afford it- Do Labour really want an elite?
Only the very rich can already afford it.
Most families with kids have 2 kids, and paying 2 kids fees alone takes more than the median salary.
I'd like to see ways to make it more affordable, but it being unaffordable for the overwhelming majority is already the case.
Set the price of a state education at, say £7200 a year. Give every parent a voucher for education to the value of £7200 a year.
Allow parents to use that voucher in the state system, or to use it as partial credit towards a private education and top up the fees with their own money.
Marketise the school system, abolish catchment areas, allow anyone to attend any school with the voucher acting as the baseline to ensure a basic education, let parents decide on the value of an education.
Make all children go to their nearest school. This will get rid of half the cars off the road and free up bus space for wheelchairs, as we discussed last week. It will not alter the number of children at any particular school, so is neutral in that regard.
Not to mention the property bonanza for those who cleverly purchased in the right area, raising the net worth of those already fortunate enough to exist in the leafy suburbs. What's not to like?
That basically is the current system. Selection by who can afford to live in the catchment areas of the good schools.
It would be a lot fairer to set by ability but that is anathema.
No it’s not. You fall into the usual right wing bedwetter misconception that criticising your ideas is the same as trying to silence you. It’s not.
Anyway be careful what you wish for. I’m a grammar school product and you’d like to see my type conveniently disappeared.
It seems that last nights further demonstrations against the Child Snatchers General (Leeds Social Services) were peaceful and well attended.
Appears that after one of said children presented in hospital with a head injury they decided that there was a risk it was deliberate and their backsides would not be covered the other children might be at risk, unless they were all taken into care (at vast cost to the taxpayer of course).
The parents are now on hunger strike and will do a Bobby Sands unless they are returned.
There will be much more to this story than your short synopsis above.
Of course.
And in social services, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (How were the signs missed???)
Far less consequence (rarely any) if you confiscate the kids and it turns out you did so wrongly than if you don't do anything wrongly in which case a media and state agency circus follows.
Thats how bureaucracies and their precautionary principle works. Better to send them to a camp in Siberia for 20 years than risk them being dangerous traitors now that the KGB has found that there is a risk that they might be traitors after tapping their phone.
How many kids are taken into protection each week in the UK?
What processes are there?
Is a judge involved?
What appeal opportunities are there for parents?
I ask all these questions, because "a story" is usually a dangerously limited set of information to work off.
106 kids per day, 38,792 per year. So 742 per week.
Yes of course there are processes, but unless you are very wealthy and can afford decent legal representation the processes are hopelessly stacked against you, not least as it is a civil not criminal law process so balance of probability with state agencies word carrying a presumption of correctness unless otherwise proven.
Hold on, that's 106 kids total going into care being looked after, that's not 106 kids being taken away from parents.
There are many reasons kids enter the care system. Orphans with nobody to look after them. Parents who abandon their kids. Parents who give their kids up as they can't/don't want to look after them. Parents who are temporarily hospitalised or otherwise too ill to look after children with no other support system, so care is temporarily needed until the parent recovers. And yes, children taken into care against their parents will as well.
You can't count the former as the latter.
EDIT: That's looked after children data not care data, so I believe homeless families who are given temporary accommodation (with the children still with their parents in the accommodation) are counted in that data too.
Be interesting to know what the figure is, that was the best source I could find. The same site says that 104,808 kids are being looked after away from home in the UK.
What all sites discussing it agree on is that the numbers have been inexorably rising for years.
In the five years after Baby P the number taken into care doubled (2008 to 2013) and since then has continued to rise with a further 50% rise (in England) from 2015-2021
Sadly Christopher Booker is no longer alive to shine alight on this most Kafkaesque corner of the state and John Hemming is no longer an MP and able to use parliamentary privilege to ignore secret injunctions by mluds.
Mention of baby P undermines your case really. There would have been nothing nanny state or Kafka about taking him away from the people who tortured him to death.
The whole point is that after this they started grossly overreacting, doubling the number taken in five years, when the cause of baby P was monumental incompetence ignoring the obvious.
Use of hard cases like this and the "it must never happen again mantra" just leads to widespread injustice and misery. In this case the taking of children from their families on the precautionary principle, just in case they might do something horrible.
A tripling of the number of children in care away from home since 2008 on the precautionary principle because of one unpleasant murder is worthy of Stalins Cheka (as are their secretive processes).
I'm not very happy about it as a council tax payer either.
Roughly a child a week is murdered by its step or real parents.
52 a year out of 12.7 million kids. 0.0004%.
Thats a matter for the courts to deal with the parents, not for a standing state inquistion on the parents of the other 12,699,948 children.
Shit happens, people are evil, get over it. We don't live in utopia
So you’d rather wait for the kids to get killed rather than prevent them getting killed? And your justification for that is “shit happens”? Forgive me if I’m not overly impressed by that line of reasoning.
It is the utopian condundrum.
The lower you get the level of unfortunate events the more extreme, disruptive and expensive the measures you need to take to get it to zero. Beyond a certain point you cause far more distress and misery than you save.
The "it must never happen again" brigade won't be happy until we are as spied on and tracked as the Chinese are.
Sorry, but you are writing bollocks. It really isn't a "Utopian conundrum".
Yes it is. The number of children killed per year has not changed greatly since the 1970s at one to two a week. (they only started collecting the stats in 1972).
The NSPCC got very cross about media reports around the millenium that the rate had halved in 30 years when no such thing had happened. They were correct.
Of course, like all bureauracracies their solution to thir ideas not working is more control, more intervention and more taxpayers money. Rinse and repeat.
Of course the obvious solution, hanging the parents who do kill their children, pour les encouragement les autres, is anathema.
It will end when the state is bankrupt.
On the other hand the handful of public inquiries we have mulled over since Baby P. don't come cheap either.
Having seen it for myself I don't believe the state should sit back and do nothing. Sterilise the guilty after child one has been taken into care, preferably with two house bricks and no anaesthetic. That would be cost effective.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Boo hiss. An ideological move that asshats will cheer, and will not help state school kids one jot.
a negative move to start government - well done labour - will mean even more so that only the very rich can afford it- Do Labour really want an elite?
Only the very rich can already afford it.
Most families with kids have 2 kids, and paying 2 kids fees alone takes more than the median salary.
I'd like to see ways to make it more affordable, but it being unaffordable for the overwhelming majority is already the case.
Set the price of a state education at, say £7200 a year. Give every parent a voucher for education to the value of £7200 a year.
Allow parents to use that voucher in the state system, or to use it as partial credit towards a private education and top up the fees with their own money.
Marketise the school system, abolish catchment areas, allow anyone to attend any school with the voucher acting as the baseline to ensure a basic education, let parents decide on the value of an education.
Make all children go to their nearest school. This will get rid of half the cars off the road and free up bus space for wheelchairs, as we discussed last week. It will not alter the number of children at any particular school, so is neutral in that regard.
Not to mention the property bonanza for those who cleverly purchased in the right area, raising the net worth of those already fortunate enough to exist in the leafy suburbs. What's not to like?
That basically is the current system. Selection by who can afford to live in the catchment areas of the good schools.
It would be a lot fairer to set by ability but that is anathema.
No it’s not. You fall into the usual right wing bedwetter misconception that criticising your ideas is the same as trying to silence you. It’s not.
Anyway be careful what you wish for. I’m a grammar school product and you’d like to see my type conveniently disappeared.
It absolutely is the current system.
My daughter is in year 5 so we've been looking at secondary schools as we'll be applying this year. The catchment area of the best secondary state secondary schools (not private ones) adds 100k+ to property prices.
People absolutely can and do pay extra to move houses to be in better schools catchment areas. And that's while we don't have the asinine proposal said earlier of forcing people to the nearest one which balances things out a bit, forcing everyone to the nearest one would spike that discrepancy up even further.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Boo hiss. An ideological move that asshats will cheer, and will not help state school kids one jot.
a negative move to start government - well done labour - will mean even more so that only the very rich can afford it- Do Labour really want an elite?
Only the very rich can already afford it.
Most families with kids have 2 kids, and paying 2 kids fees alone takes more than the median salary.
I'd like to see ways to make it more affordable, but it being unaffordable for the overwhelming majority is already the case.
Set the price of a state education at, say £7200 a year. Give every parent a voucher for education to the value of £7200 a year.
Allow parents to use that voucher in the state system, or to use it as partial credit towards a private education and top up the fees with their own money.
Marketise the school system, abolish catchment areas, allow anyone to attend any school with the voucher acting as the baseline to ensure a basic education, let parents decide on the value of an education.
Make all children go to their nearest school. This will get rid of half the cars off the road and free up bus space for wheelchairs, as we discussed last week. It will not alter the number of children at any particular school, so is neutral in that regard.
Not to mention the property bonanza for those who cleverly purchased in the right area, raising the net worth of those already fortunate enough to exist in the leafy suburbs. What's not to like?
That basically is the current system. Selection by who can afford to live in the catchment areas of the good schools.
It would be a lot fairer to set by ability but that is anathema.
No it’s not. You fall into the usual right wing bedwetter misconception that criticising your ideas is the same as trying to silence you. It’s not.
Anyway be careful what you wish for. I’m a grammar school product and you’d like to see my type conveniently disappeared.
It absolutely is the current system.
My daughter is in year 5 so we've been looking at secondary schools as we'll be applying this year. The catchment area of the best secondary state secondary schools (not private ones) adds 100k+ to property prices.
People absolutely can and do pay extra to move houses to be in better schools catchment areas. And that's while we don't have the asinine proposal said earlier of forcing people to the nearest one which balances things out a bit, forcing everyone to the nearest one would spike that discrepancy up even further.
Prince Albert’s memorial is “considered offensive” because it reflects a “Victorian view of the world that differs from mainstream views held today”, custodians say.
The 176ft Albert Memorial opposite the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington Gardens, west London, was built to honour Queen Victoria’s late husband in 1872, when the British Empire stretched across the globe.
It includes a golden sculpture of the Prince Consort himself, along with four groups of large statues representing the people and animals of four continents.
Asia is depicted as a woman on an elephant, America as a native American, and Africa as a woman riding a camel. The African sculpture also includes a white European woman reading a book to a black African tribesman.
The Royal Parks website now says that the Albert Memorial’s “representation of certain continents draws on racial stereotypes that are now considered offensive”.
It tells how Victorian guidebooks about the memorial “describe how this ‘uncivilised’ man hunches over his bow. This pose was intended to represent him ‘rising up from barbarism’, thanks to his Western teacher. At his feet lie broken chains, which allude to Britain’s role in the abolition of slavery”.
It adds that “descriptions of the states that represent Asia and America also reflect this Victorian view of European supremacy”.
I have no sympathy for the social climbers. Let them pay for their pretensions...
They should get back to where they belong.
No they should just pay the applied 20% VAT. When the poor cannot afford nutritional meals for their children they are told to forego booze, fags, Sky TV and downgrade their ride to something more affordable. The same applies.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
I remember cycling through there when the tarmac was soft enough to stick to my tyres. Needless to say it was a slow day redeemed only by several cold beers at the end.
In my self regarding "huh I'm a top pro travel writer/flint knapper" genius self esteem, I have managed to book a lovely two bed apartment WITHIN the medieval walls of Aigues Mortes for a very reasonable price
I now realise why it was so reasonable. No wifi, no aircon
Fuuuuuuuuuck
I think the next stage of the roadtrip might be northwards, and upwards. Into the cool green Auvergne. I quite fancy seeing Vichy. It is so notorious because of Petain, I want to see it. Has any PBer been?
Please report back. Currently trying to persuade Mrs. F that our golden wedding European road trip, finishing in Champagne, should include the Auvergne.
P.S. recommendations for underrated Champagnes and Champagne villages also welcomed.
That sounds like it will be a lovely holiday. Driving through France is a delight.
Thanks. Planning to use the Newcastle to Amsterdam ferry to avoid the hell that is the M6, M1, A1, M11, M25 and M20. Bring back motorail!
A benefit of living in East Kent. We don’t even have to take the M20.
Prince Albert’s memorial is “considered offensive” because it reflects a “Victorian view of the world that differs from mainstream views held today”, custodians say.
The 176ft Albert Memorial opposite the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington Gardens, west London, was built to honour Queen Victoria’s late husband in 1872, when the British Empire stretched across the globe.
It includes a golden sculpture of the Prince Consort himself, along with four groups of large statues representing the people and animals of four continents.
Asia is depicted as a woman on an elephant, America as a native American, and Africa as a woman riding a camel. The African sculpture also includes a white European woman reading a book to a black African tribesman.
The Royal Parks website now says that the Albert Memorial’s “representation of certain continents draws on racial stereotypes that are now considered offensive”.
It tells how Victorian guidebooks about the memorial “describe how this ‘uncivilised’ man hunches over his bow. This pose was intended to represent him ‘rising up from barbarism’, thanks to his Western teacher. At his feet lie broken chains, which allude to Britain’s role in the abolition of slavery”.
It adds that “descriptions of the states that represent Asia and America also reflect this Victorian view of European supremacy”.
For fuck’s sake! Can nobody cull the arseholes that have so little understanding of history that they think that’s a good idea?
One of the first lesson I was taught in history was to not judge people from history by today's standards.
The example I cite these days is the overwhelming majority of Tories who opposed appeasement in the 1930s were also virulent homophobes.
It was TSE who raised the possibility of removing the Albert Memorial.
The collective outrage on here has been triggered by is a page on a charity’s website. Can someone point out which bit of the text quoted is wrong? Or even demeaning to anyone?
Prince Albert’s memorial is “considered offensive” because it reflects a “Victorian view of the world that differs from mainstream views held today”, custodians say.
The 176ft Albert Memorial opposite the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington Gardens, west London, was built to honour Queen Victoria’s late husband in 1872, when the British Empire stretched across the globe.
It includes a golden sculpture of the Prince Consort himself, along with four groups of large statues representing the people and animals of four continents.
Asia is depicted as a woman on an elephant, America as a native American, and Africa as a woman riding a camel. The African sculpture also includes a white European woman reading a book to a black African tribesman.
The Royal Parks website now says that the Albert Memorial’s “representation of certain continents draws on racial stereotypes that are now considered offensive”.
It tells how Victorian guidebooks about the memorial “describe how this ‘uncivilised’ man hunches over his bow. This pose was intended to represent him ‘rising up from barbarism’, thanks to his Western teacher. At his feet lie broken chains, which allude to Britain’s role in the abolition of slavery”.
It adds that “descriptions of the states that represent Asia and America also reflect this Victorian view of European supremacy”.
It seems that last nights further demonstrations against the Child Snatchers General (Leeds Social Services) were peaceful and well attended.
Appears that after one of said children presented in hospital with a head injury they decided that there was a risk it was deliberate and their backsides would not be covered the other children might be at risk, unless they were all taken into care (at vast cost to the taxpayer of course).
The parents are now on hunger strike and will do a Bobby Sands unless they are returned.
There will be much more to this story than your short synopsis above.
Of course.
And in social services, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (How were the signs missed???)
Far less consequence (rarely any) if you confiscate the kids and it turns out you did so wrongly than if you don't do anything wrongly in which case a media and state agency circus follows.
Thats how bureaucracies and their precautionary principle works. Better to send them to a camp in Siberia for 20 years than risk them being dangerous traitors now that the KGB has found that there is a risk that they might be traitors after tapping their phone.
How many kids are taken into protection each week in the UK?
What processes are there?
Is a judge involved?
What appeal opportunities are there for parents?
I ask all these questions, because "a story" is usually a dangerously limited set of information to work off.
106 kids per day, 38,792 per year. So 742 per week.
Yes of course there are processes, but unless you are very wealthy and can afford decent legal representation the processes are hopelessly stacked against you, not least as it is a civil not criminal law process so balance of probability with state agencies word carrying a presumption of correctness unless otherwise proven.
Hold on, that's 106 kids total going into care being looked after, that's not 106 kids being taken away from parents.
There are many reasons kids enter the care system. Orphans with nobody to look after them. Parents who abandon their kids. Parents who give their kids up as they can't/don't want to look after them. Parents who are temporarily hospitalised or otherwise too ill to look after children with no other support system, so care is temporarily needed until the parent recovers. And yes, children taken into care against their parents will as well.
You can't count the former as the latter.
EDIT: That's looked after children data not care data, so I believe homeless families who are given temporary accommodation (with the children still with their parents in the accommodation) are counted in that data too.
Be interesting to know what the figure is, that was the best source I could find. The same site says that 104,808 kids are being looked after away from home in the UK.
What all sites discussing it agree on is that the numbers have been inexorably rising for years.
In the five years after Baby P the number taken into care doubled (2008 to 2013) and since then has continued to rise with a further 50% rise (in England) from 2015-2021
Sadly Christopher Booker is no longer alive to shine alight on this most Kafkaesque corner of the state and John Hemming is no longer an MP and able to use parliamentary privilege to ignore secret injunctions by mluds.
Mention of baby P undermines your case really. There would have been nothing nanny state or Kafka about taking him away from the people who tortured him to death.
The whole point is that after this they started grossly overreacting, doubling the number taken in five years, when the cause of baby P was monumental incompetence ignoring the obvious.
Use of hard cases like this and the "it must never happen again mantra" just leads to widespread injustice and misery. In this case the taking of children from their families on the precautionary principle, just in case they might do something horrible.
A tripling of the number of children in care away from home since 2008 on the precautionary principle because of one unpleasant murder is worthy of Stalins Cheka (as are their secretive processes).
I'm not very happy about it as a council tax payer either.
Roughly a child a week is murdered by its step or real parents.
52 a year out of 12.7 million kids. 0.0004%.
Thats a matter for the courts to deal with the parents, not for a standing state inquistion on the parents of the other 12,699,948 children.
Shit happens, people are evil, get over it. We don't live in utopia
So you’d rather wait for the kids to get killed rather than prevent them getting killed? And your justification for that is “shit happens”? Forgive me if I’m not overly impressed by that line of reasoning.
It is the utopian condundrum.
The lower you get the level of unfortunate events the more extreme, disruptive and expensive the measures you need to take to get it to zero. Beyond a certain point you cause far more distress and misery than you save.
The "it must never happen again" brigade won't be happy until we are as spied on and tracked as the Chinese are.
1,700 people a year are killed on the roads in Britain. That's a terrible toll. So many families bereaved. It could be totally prevented by having a man with a red flag walk in front of every vehicle.
How amusing you are being at the thought of an infant who had his fingernails torn out with pliers. You must feel like a real man after that post. Well done.
The first is how much state control there is over schools and the useless woke PC crap they are FORCED teach as a result. Be honest should anyone learn Shakespeare before uni ? No it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time to learn plays from 400yrs ago !!
Second is it is FORCED on parents when a lot of children aren’t suited to it especially up to 18 and they would be better off learning real skills. many kids used to leave at 14 and were better set up at life
Problem is no one dares stand up for common sense and these sacred cows
First time I've ever heard Shakespearean plays be called woke PC crap.
The feel good idea that everyone should learn useless plays from century’s ago IS PC crap
Waste of time
Meanwhile in India and China they are learning advanced mathematics and biology and engineering and tech !!
It seems that last nights further demonstrations against the Child Snatchers General (Leeds Social Services) were peaceful and well attended.
Appears that after one of said children presented in hospital with a head injury they decided that there was a risk it was deliberate and their backsides would not be covered the other children might be at risk, unless they were all taken into care (at vast cost to the taxpayer of course).
The parents are now on hunger strike and will do a Bobby Sands unless they are returned.
There will be much more to this story than your short synopsis above.
Of course.
And in social services, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (How were the signs missed???)
Far less consequence (rarely any) if you confiscate the kids and it turns out you did so wrongly than if you don't do anything wrongly in which case a media and state agency circus follows.
Thats how bureaucracies and their precautionary principle works. Better to send them to a camp in Siberia for 20 years than risk them being dangerous traitors now that the KGB has found that there is a risk that they might be traitors after tapping their phone.
How many kids are taken into protection each week in the UK?
What processes are there?
Is a judge involved?
What appeal opportunities are there for parents?
I ask all these questions, because "a story" is usually a dangerously limited set of information to work off.
106 kids per day, 38,792 per year. So 742 per week.
Yes of course there are processes, but unless you are very wealthy and can afford decent legal representation the processes are hopelessly stacked against you, not least as it is a civil not criminal law process so balance of probability with state agencies word carrying a presumption of correctness unless otherwise proven.
Hold on, that's 106 kids total going into care being looked after, that's not 106 kids being taken away from parents.
There are many reasons kids enter the care system. Orphans with nobody to look after them. Parents who abandon their kids. Parents who give their kids up as they can't/don't want to look after them. Parents who are temporarily hospitalised or otherwise too ill to look after children with no other support system, so care is temporarily needed until the parent recovers. And yes, children taken into care against their parents will as well.
You can't count the former as the latter.
EDIT: That's looked after children data not care data, so I believe homeless families who are given temporary accommodation (with the children still with their parents in the accommodation) are counted in that data too.
Be interesting to know what the figure is, that was the best source I could find. The same site says that 104,808 kids are being looked after away from home in the UK.
What all sites discussing it agree on is that the numbers have been inexorably rising for years.
In the five years after Baby P the number taken into care doubled (2008 to 2013) and since then has continued to rise with a further 50% rise (in England) from 2015-2021
Sadly Christopher Booker is no longer alive to shine alight on this most Kafkaesque corner of the state and John Hemming is no longer an MP and able to use parliamentary privilege to ignore secret injunctions by mluds.
Mention of baby P undermines your case really. There would have been nothing nanny state or Kafka about taking him away from the people who tortured him to death.
The whole point is that after this they started grossly overreacting, doubling the number taken in five years, when the cause of baby P was monumental incompetence ignoring the obvious.
Use of hard cases like this and the "it must never happen again mantra" just leads to widespread injustice and misery. In this case the taking of children from their families on the precautionary principle, just in case they might do something horrible.
A tripling of the number of children in care away from home since 2008 on the precautionary principle because of one unpleasant murder is worthy of Stalins Cheka (as are their secretive processes).
I'm not very happy about it as a council tax payer either.
Roughly a child a week is murdered by its step or real parents.
52 a year out of 12.7 million kids. 0.0004%.
Thats a matter for the courts to deal with the parents, not for a standing state inquistion on the parents of the other 12,699,948 children.
Shit happens, people are evil, get over it. We don't live in utopia
So you’d rather wait for the kids to get killed rather than prevent them getting killed? And your justification for that is “shit happens”? Forgive me if I’m not overly impressed by that line of reasoning.
It is the utopian condundrum.
The lower you get the level of unfortunate events the more extreme, disruptive and expensive the measures you need to take to get it to zero. Beyond a certain point you cause far more distress and misery than you save.
The "it must never happen again" brigade won't be happy until we are as spied on and tracked as the Chinese are.
1,700 people a year are killed on the roads in Britain. That's a terrible toll. So many families bereaved. It could be totally prevented by having a man with a red flag walk in front of every vehicle.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Boo hiss. An ideological move that asshats will cheer, and will not help state school kids one jot.
a negative move to start government - well done labour - will mean even more so that only the very rich can afford it- Do Labour really want an elite?
Only the very rich can already afford it.
Most families with kids have 2 kids, and paying 2 kids fees alone takes more than the median salary.
I'd like to see ways to make it more affordable, but it being unaffordable for the overwhelming majority is already the case.
Set the price of a state education at, say £7200 a year. Give every parent a voucher for education to the value of £7200 a year.
Allow parents to use that voucher in the state system, or to use it as partial credit towards a private education and top up the fees with their own money.
Marketise the school system, abolish catchment areas, allow anyone to attend any school with the voucher acting as the baseline to ensure a basic education, let parents decide on the value of an education.
Make all children go to their nearest school. This will get rid of half the cars off the road and free up bus space for wheelchairs, as we discussed last week. It will not alter the number of children at any particular school, so is neutral in that regard.
Not to mention the property bonanza for those who cleverly purchased in the right area, raising the net worth of those already fortunate enough to exist in the leafy suburbs. What's not to like?
That basically is the current system. Selection by who can afford to live in the catchment areas of the good schools.
It would be a lot fairer to set by ability but that is anathema.
No it’s not. You fall into the usual right wing bedwetter misconception that criticising your ideas is the same as trying to silence you. It’s not.
Anyway be careful what you wish for. I’m a grammar school product and you’d like to see my type conveniently disappeared.
Eh?
I'm making the argument *for* grammar schools, not against them.
Think you need to reread my post a little more slowly.
It seems that last nights further demonstrations against the Child Snatchers General (Leeds Social Services) were peaceful and well attended.
Appears that after one of said children presented in hospital with a head injury they decided that there was a risk it was deliberate and their backsides would not be covered the other children might be at risk, unless they were all taken into care (at vast cost to the taxpayer of course).
The parents are now on hunger strike and will do a Bobby Sands unless they are returned.
There will be much more to this story than your short synopsis above.
Of course.
And in social services, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (How were the signs missed???)
Far less consequence (rarely any) if you confiscate the kids and it turns out you did so wrongly than if you don't do anything wrongly in which case a media and state agency circus follows.
Thats how bureaucracies and their precautionary principle works. Better to send them to a camp in Siberia for 20 years than risk them being dangerous traitors now that the KGB has found that there is a risk that they might be traitors after tapping their phone.
How many kids are taken into protection each week in the UK?
What processes are there?
Is a judge involved?
What appeal opportunities are there for parents?
I ask all these questions, because "a story" is usually a dangerously limited set of information to work off.
106 kids per day, 38,792 per year. So 742 per week.
Yes of course there are processes, but unless you are very wealthy and can afford decent legal representation the processes are hopelessly stacked against you, not least as it is a civil not criminal law process so balance of probability with state agencies word carrying a presumption of correctness unless otherwise proven.
Hold on, that's 106 kids total going into care being looked after, that's not 106 kids being taken away from parents.
There are many reasons kids enter the care system. Orphans with nobody to look after them. Parents who abandon their kids. Parents who give their kids up as they can't/don't want to look after them. Parents who are temporarily hospitalised or otherwise too ill to look after children with no other support system, so care is temporarily needed until the parent recovers. And yes, children taken into care against their parents will as well.
You can't count the former as the latter.
EDIT: That's looked after children data not care data, so I believe homeless families who are given temporary accommodation (with the children still with their parents in the accommodation) are counted in that data too.
Be interesting to know what the figure is, that was the best source I could find. The same site says that 104,808 kids are being looked after away from home in the UK.
What all sites discussing it agree on is that the numbers have been inexorably rising for years.
In the five years after Baby P the number taken into care doubled (2008 to 2013) and since then has continued to rise with a further 50% rise (in England) from 2015-2021
Sadly Christopher Booker is no longer alive to shine alight on this most Kafkaesque corner of the state and John Hemming is no longer an MP and able to use parliamentary privilege to ignore secret injunctions by mluds.
Mention of baby P undermines your case really. There would have been nothing nanny state or Kafka about taking him away from the people who tortured him to death.
The whole point is that after this they started grossly overreacting, doubling the number taken in five years, when the cause of baby P was monumental incompetence ignoring the obvious.
Use of hard cases like this and the "it must never happen again mantra" just leads to widespread injustice and misery. In this case the taking of children from their families on the precautionary principle, just in case they might do something horrible.
A tripling of the number of children in care away from home since 2008 on the precautionary principle because of one unpleasant murder is worthy of Stalins Cheka (as are their secretive processes).
I'm not very happy about it as a council tax payer either.
Roughly a child a week is murdered by its step or real parents.
52 a year out of 12.7 million kids. 0.0004%.
Thats a matter for the courts to deal with the parents, not for a standing state inquistion on the parents of the other 12,699,948 children.
Shit happens, people are evil, get over it. We don't live in utopia
So you’d rather wait for the kids to get killed rather than prevent them getting killed? And your justification for that is “shit happens”? Forgive me if I’m not overly impressed by that line of reasoning.
It is the utopian condundrum.
The lower you get the level of unfortunate events the more extreme, disruptive and expensive the measures you need to take to get it to zero. Beyond a certain point you cause far more distress and misery than you save.
The "it must never happen again" brigade won't be happy until we are as spied on and tracked as the Chinese are.
1,700 people a year are killed on the roads in Britain. That's a terrible toll. So many families bereaved. It could be totally prevented by having a man with a red flag walk in front of every vehicle.
The first is how much state control there is over schools and the useless woke PC crap they are FORCED teach as a result. Be honest should anyone learn Shakespeare before uni ? No it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time to learn plays from 400yrs ago !!
Second is it is FORCED on parents when a lot of children aren’t suited to it especially up to 18 and they would be better off learning real skills. many kids used to leave at 14 and were better set up at life
Problem is no one dares stand up for common sense and these sacred cows
First time I've ever heard Shakespearean plays be called woke PC crap.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
I have no sympathy for the social climbers. Let them pay for their pretensions...
They should get back to where they belong.
No they should just pay the applied 20% VAT. When the poor cannot afford nutritional meals for their children they are told to forego booze, fags, Sky TV and downgrade their ride to something more affordable. The same applies.
What part of booze, fags, sky TV and luxury SUVs do you think enhance children's attainment prospects?
The first is how much state control there is over schools and the useless woke PC crap they are FORCED teach as a result. Be honest should anyone learn Shakespeare before uni ? No it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time to learn plays from 400yrs ago !!
Second is it is FORCED on parents when a lot of children aren’t suited to it especially up to 18 and they would be better off learning real skills. many kids used to leave at 14 and were better set up at life
Problem is no one dares stand up for common sense and these sacred cows
First time I've ever heard Shakespearean plays be called woke PC crap.
The feel good idea that everyone should learn useless plays from century’s ago IS PC crap
Waste of time
Meanwhile in India and China they are learning advanced mathematics and biology and engineering and tech !!
Any wonder we can’t compete ??
#EverythingIDislikeIsWoke
It may be crap, but I'm pretty certain it was Michael Gove who changed the curriculum to insist everyone learns Shakespeare - and I'm not sure it was for PC/woke reasons.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Boo hiss. An ideological move that asshats will cheer, and will not help state school kids one jot.
a negative move to start government - well done labour - will mean even more so that only the very rich can afford it- Do Labour really want an elite?
Only the very rich can already afford it.
Most families with kids have 2 kids, and paying 2 kids fees alone takes more than the median salary.
I'd like to see ways to make it more affordable, but it being unaffordable for the overwhelming majority is already the case.
Set the price of a state education at, say £7200 a year. Give every parent a voucher for education to the value of £7200 a year.
Allow parents to use that voucher in the state system, or to use it as partial credit towards a private education and top up the fees with their own money.
Marketise the school system, abolish catchment areas, allow anyone to attend any school with the voucher acting as the baseline to ensure a basic education, let parents decide on the value of an education.
Make all children go to their nearest school. This will get rid of half the cars off the road and free up bus space for wheelchairs, as we discussed last week. It will not alter the number of children at any particular school, so is neutral in that regard.
Not to mention the property bonanza for those who cleverly purchased in the right area, raising the net worth of those already fortunate enough to exist in the leafy suburbs. What's not to like?
That basically is the current system. Selection by who can afford to live in the catchment areas of the good schools.
It would be a lot fairer to set by ability but that is anathema.
No it’s not. You fall into the usual right wing bedwetter misconception that criticising your ideas is the same as trying to silence you. It’s not.
Anyway be careful what you wish for. I’m a grammar school product and you’d like to see my type conveniently disappeared.
It absolutely is the current system.
My daughter is in year 5 so we've been looking at secondary schools as we'll be applying this year. The catchment area of the best secondary state secondary schools (not private ones) adds 100k+ to property prices.
People absolutely can and do pay extra to move houses to be in better schools catchment areas. And that's while we don't have the asinine proposal said earlier of forcing people to the nearest one which balances things out a bit, forcing everyone to the nearest one would spike that discrepancy up even further.
I meant it’s not an “anathema” as MrBed states.
It is to Starmer and co and virtually the entire educational establishment. Thats what I meant.
It seems that last nights further demonstrations against the Child Snatchers General (Leeds Social Services) were peaceful and well attended.
Appears that after one of said children presented in hospital with a head injury they decided that there was a risk it was deliberate and their backsides would not be covered the other children might be at risk, unless they were all taken into care (at vast cost to the taxpayer of course).
The parents are now on hunger strike and will do a Bobby Sands unless they are returned.
There will be much more to this story than your short synopsis above.
Of course.
And in social services, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (How were the signs missed???)
Far less consequence (rarely any) if you confiscate the kids and it turns out you did so wrongly than if you don't do anything wrongly in which case a media and state agency circus follows.
Thats how bureaucracies and their precautionary principle works. Better to send them to a camp in Siberia for 20 years than risk them being dangerous traitors now that the KGB has found that there is a risk that they might be traitors after tapping their phone.
How many kids are taken into protection each week in the UK?
What processes are there?
Is a judge involved?
What appeal opportunities are there for parents?
I ask all these questions, because "a story" is usually a dangerously limited set of information to work off.
106 kids per day, 38,792 per year. So 742 per week.
Yes of course there are processes, but unless you are very wealthy and can afford decent legal representation the processes are hopelessly stacked against you, not least as it is a civil not criminal law process so balance of probability with state agencies word carrying a presumption of correctness unless otherwise proven.
Hold on, that's 106 kids total going into care being looked after, that's not 106 kids being taken away from parents.
There are many reasons kids enter the care system. Orphans with nobody to look after them. Parents who abandon their kids. Parents who give their kids up as they can't/don't want to look after them. Parents who are temporarily hospitalised or otherwise too ill to look after children with no other support system, so care is temporarily needed until the parent recovers. And yes, children taken into care against their parents will as well.
You can't count the former as the latter.
EDIT: That's looked after children data not care data, so I believe homeless families who are given temporary accommodation (with the children still with their parents in the accommodation) are counted in that data too.
Be interesting to know what the figure is, that was the best source I could find. The same site says that 104,808 kids are being looked after away from home in the UK.
What all sites discussing it agree on is that the numbers have been inexorably rising for years.
In the five years after Baby P the number taken into care doubled (2008 to 2013) and since then has continued to rise with a further 50% rise (in England) from 2015-2021
Sadly Christopher Booker is no longer alive to shine alight on this most Kafkaesque corner of the state and John Hemming is no longer an MP and able to use parliamentary privilege to ignore secret injunctions by mluds.
Mention of baby P undermines your case really. There would have been nothing nanny state or Kafka about taking him away from the people who tortured him to death.
The whole point is that after this they started grossly overreacting, doubling the number taken in five years, when the cause of baby P was monumental incompetence ignoring the obvious.
Use of hard cases like this and the "it must never happen again mantra" just leads to widespread injustice and misery. In this case the taking of children from their families on the precautionary principle, just in case they might do something horrible.
A tripling of the number of children in care away from home since 2008 on the precautionary principle because of one unpleasant murder is worthy of Stalins Cheka (as are their secretive processes).
I'm not very happy about it as a council tax payer either.
Roughly a child a week is murdered by its step or real parents.
52 a year out of 12.7 million kids. 0.0004%.
Thats a matter for the courts to deal with the parents, not for a standing state inquistion on the parents of the other 12,699,948 children.
Shit happens, people are evil, get over it. We don't live in utopia
So you’d rather wait for the kids to get killed rather than prevent them getting killed? And your justification for that is “shit happens”? Forgive me if I’m not overly impressed by that line of reasoning.
It is the utopian condundrum.
The lower you get the level of unfortunate events the more extreme, disruptive and expensive the measures you need to take to get it to zero. Beyond a certain point you cause far more distress and misery than you save.
The "it must never happen again" brigade won't be happy until we are as spied on and tracked as the Chinese are.
1,700 people a year are killed on the roads in Britain. That's a terrible toll. So many families bereaved. It could be totally prevented by having a man with a red flag walk in front of every vehicle.
How amusing you are being at the thought of an infant who had his fingernails torn out with pliers. You must feel like a real man after that post. Well done.
And toenails BTW. What a card you are.
Do you support hanging parents who do that?
It's complicated. Not necessarily against. But I would bet my house the poster I was replying to has happily shaken down the NHS for high six figures to keep him or her alive, and that's ok because.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
All faith schools should be shut down. Not just the private ones.
why? again faith schools generally produce good results - its poo state schools that produce bad results
I don't have a problem with the quality of education and results. It is the indoctrination that I object to.
I think any indoctrination is pretty gentle and not working given the amount of people who attend church . Anyway who is to say there is no God to think about and if parents are happy to send kids to faith schools (as most are) who is the state (that has an official religion in any case) to say no
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
All faith schools should be shut down. Not just the private ones.
why? again faith schools generally produce good results - its poo state schools that produce bad results
I don't have a problem with the quality of education and results. It is the indoctrination that I object to.
I think any indoctrination is pretty gentle and not working given the amount of people who attend church . Anyway who is to say there is no God to think about and if parents are happy to send kids to faith schools (as most are) who is the state (that has an official religion in any case) to say no
Only *part* of the state has an official religion (which just shows what a mess it all is).
Prince Albert’s memorial is “considered offensive” because it reflects a “Victorian view of the world that differs from mainstream views held today”, custodians say.
The 176ft Albert Memorial opposite the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington Gardens, west London, was built to honour Queen Victoria’s late husband in 1872, when the British Empire stretched across the globe.
It includes a golden sculpture of the Prince Consort himself, along with four groups of large statues representing the people and animals of four continents.
Asia is depicted as a woman on an elephant, America as a native American, and Africa as a woman riding a camel. The African sculpture also includes a white European woman reading a book to a black African tribesman.
The Royal Parks website now says that the Albert Memorial’s “representation of certain continents draws on racial stereotypes that are now considered offensive”.
It tells how Victorian guidebooks about the memorial “describe how this ‘uncivilised’ man hunches over his bow. This pose was intended to represent him ‘rising up from barbarism’, thanks to his Western teacher. At his feet lie broken chains, which allude to Britain’s role in the abolition of slavery”.
It adds that “descriptions of the states that represent Asia and America also reflect this Victorian view of European supremacy”.
I would guess that the comments largely have in mind that children will be learning about such things, and are intended precisely to give historical perspective and to make it clear that most people don't consider these attitudes appropriate now. It seems perfectly sensible to me.
Obviously "Tear down this racist memorial" is TSE's attempt at a satirical comment, but I think he has missed the point.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Boo hiss. An ideological move that asshats will cheer, and will not help state school kids one jot.
a negative move to start government - well done labour - will mean even more so that only the very rich can afford it- Do Labour really want an elite?
Only the very rich can already afford it.
Most families with kids have 2 kids, and paying 2 kids fees alone takes more than the median salary.
I'd like to see ways to make it more affordable, but it being unaffordable for the overwhelming majority is already the case.
Set the price of a state education at, say £7200 a year. Give every parent a voucher for education to the value of £7200 a year.
Allow parents to use that voucher in the state system, or to use it as partial credit towards a private education and top up the fees with their own money.
Marketise the school system, abolish catchment areas, allow anyone to attend any school with the voucher acting as the baseline to ensure a basic education, let parents decide on the value of an education.
Make all children go to their nearest school. This will get rid of half the cars off the road and free up bus space for wheelchairs, as we discussed last week. It will not alter the number of children at any particular school, so is neutral in that regard.
Not to mention the property bonanza for those who cleverly purchased in the right area, raising the net worth of those already fortunate enough to exist in the leafy suburbs. What's not to like?
That basically is the current system. Selection by who can afford to live in the catchment areas of the good schools.
It would be a lot fairer to set by ability but that is anathema.
No it’s not. You fall into the usual right wing bedwetter misconception that criticising your ideas is the same as trying to silence you. It’s not.
Anyway be careful what you wish for. I’m a grammar school product and you’d like to see my type conveniently disappeared.
Eh?
I'm making the argument *for* grammar schools, not against them.
Think you need to reread my post a little more slowly.
You need to read my post more slowly. Grammar schools are shit. I know. Because I went to one. And I’m further making the point that I hold political views you would make illegal, so Grammar schools are not producing the sort of people you want to share the planet with and would be at the end of a rope in your ideal U.K.
Prince Albert’s memorial is “considered offensive” because it reflects a “Victorian view of the world that differs from mainstream views held today”, custodians say.
The 176ft Albert Memorial opposite the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington Gardens, west London, was built to honour Queen Victoria’s late husband in 1872, when the British Empire stretched across the globe.
It includes a golden sculpture of the Prince Consort himself, along with four groups of large statues representing the people and animals of four continents.
Asia is depicted as a woman on an elephant, America as a native American, and Africa as a woman riding a camel. The African sculpture also includes a white European woman reading a book to a black African tribesman.
The Royal Parks website now says that the Albert Memorial’s “representation of certain continents draws on racial stereotypes that are now considered offensive”.
It tells how Victorian guidebooks about the memorial “describe how this ‘uncivilised’ man hunches over his bow. This pose was intended to represent him ‘rising up from barbarism’, thanks to his Western teacher. At his feet lie broken chains, which allude to Britain’s role in the abolition of slavery”.
It adds that “descriptions of the states that represent Asia and America also reflect this Victorian view of European supremacy”.
For fuck’s sake! Can nobody cull the arseholes that have so little understanding of history that they think that’s a good idea?
One of the first lesson I was taught in history was to not judge people from history by today's standards.
The example I cite these days is the overwhelming majority of Tories who opposed appeasement in the 1930s were also virulent homophobes.
It was TSE who raised the possibility of removing the Albert Memorial.
The collective outrage on here has been triggered by is a page on a charity’s website. Can someone point out which bit of the text quoted is wrong? Or even demeaning to anyone?
It's, notably, clearly putting the views in their historical context. That doesn't affect what we can or should or wish to think.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
All faith schools should be shut down. Not just the private ones.
why? again faith schools generally produce good results - its poo state schools that produce bad results
I don't have a problem with the quality of education and results. It is the indoctrination that I object to.
I think any indoctrination is pretty gentle and not working given the amount of people who attend church . Anyway who is to say there is no God to think about and if parents are happy to send kids to faith schools (as most are) who is the state (that has an official religion in any case) to say no
As a Devils Advocate, if the indoctrination is gentle and not working in Christian schools, but is strong and working in Islamic schools (which are increasingly common) are you OK with that?
If parents want their child educated in an Islamic Faith school, paid for by taxpayers not fees, to indoctrinate people in the Islamic Faith, and not mixing with people of other faiths (and none) are you OK with that?
It seems that last nights further demonstrations against the Child Snatchers General (Leeds Social Services) were peaceful and well attended.
Appears that after one of said children presented in hospital with a head injury they decided that there was a risk it was deliberate and their backsides would not be covered the other children might be at risk, unless they were all taken into care (at vast cost to the taxpayer of course).
The parents are now on hunger strike and will do a Bobby Sands unless they are returned.
There will be much more to this story than your short synopsis above.
Of course.
And in social services, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (How were the signs missed???)
Far less consequence (rarely any) if you confiscate the kids and it turns out you did so wrongly than if you don't do anything wrongly in which case a media and state agency circus follows.
Thats how bureaucracies and their precautionary principle works. Better to send them to a camp in Siberia for 20 years than risk them being dangerous traitors now that the KGB has found that there is a risk that they might be traitors after tapping their phone.
How many kids are taken into protection each week in the UK?
What processes are there?
Is a judge involved?
What appeal opportunities are there for parents?
I ask all these questions, because "a story" is usually a dangerously limited set of information to work off.
106 kids per day, 38,792 per year. So 742 per week.
Yes of course there are processes, but unless you are very wealthy and can afford decent legal representation the processes are hopelessly stacked against you, not least as it is a civil not criminal law process so balance of probability with state agencies word carrying a presumption of correctness unless otherwise proven.
Hold on, that's 106 kids total going into care being looked after, that's not 106 kids being taken away from parents.
There are many reasons kids enter the care system. Orphans with nobody to look after them. Parents who abandon their kids. Parents who give their kids up as they can't/don't want to look after them. Parents who are temporarily hospitalised or otherwise too ill to look after children with no other support system, so care is temporarily needed until the parent recovers. And yes, children taken into care against their parents will as well.
You can't count the former as the latter.
EDIT: That's looked after children data not care data, so I believe homeless families who are given temporary accommodation (with the children still with their parents in the accommodation) are counted in that data too.
Be interesting to know what the figure is, that was the best source I could find. The same site says that 104,808 kids are being looked after away from home in the UK.
What all sites discussing it agree on is that the numbers have been inexorably rising for years.
In the five years after Baby P the number taken into care doubled (2008 to 2013) and since then has continued to rise with a further 50% rise (in England) from 2015-2021
Sadly Christopher Booker is no longer alive to shine alight on this most Kafkaesque corner of the state and John Hemming is no longer an MP and able to use parliamentary privilege to ignore secret injunctions by mluds.
Mention of baby P undermines your case really. There would have been nothing nanny state or Kafka about taking him away from the people who tortured him to death.
The whole point is that after this they started grossly overreacting, doubling the number taken in five years, when the cause of baby P was monumental incompetence ignoring the obvious.
Use of hard cases like this and the "it must never happen again mantra" just leads to widespread injustice and misery. In this case the taking of children from their families on the precautionary principle, just in case they might do something horrible.
A tripling of the number of children in care away from home since 2008 on the precautionary principle because of one unpleasant murder is worthy of Stalins Cheka (as are their secretive processes).
I'm not very happy about it as a council tax payer either.
Roughly a child a week is murdered by its step or real parents.
52 a year out of 12.7 million kids. 0.0004%.
Thats a matter for the courts to deal with the parents, not for a standing state inquistion on the parents of the other 12,699,948 children.
Shit happens, people are evil, get over it. We don't live in utopia
So you’d rather wait for the kids to get killed rather than prevent them getting killed? And your justification for that is “shit happens”? Forgive me if I’m not overly impressed by that line of reasoning.
It is the utopian condundrum.
The lower you get the level of unfortunate events the more extreme, disruptive and expensive the measures you need to take to get it to zero. Beyond a certain point you cause far more distress and misery than you save.
The "it must never happen again" brigade won't be happy until we are as spied on and tracked as the Chinese are.
1,700 people a year are killed on the roads in Britain. That's a terrible toll. So many families bereaved. It could be totally prevented by having a man with a red flag walk in front of every vehicle.
Which would lead to 3,800,203 men holding red flags being killed by the impatient driver behind...
Most of the reduction in deaths from 5,000 to 2,000 in the last 50 years is down to technology. Modern design protectng both the occupants and to some extent pedestrians, along with education, morerate fines to keep people in line and jailing those who drive recklessly.
Now they have got the "if it saves one life" mantra into their heads they are filling the jails with people who have a moments inattention and being the unlucky 1 in 100,000 where this leads to catastrophe.
Another example of attempts to reach utopia resulting both in more misery and not reaching utolia (deaths are currently rising again). In this case legalising revenge/venegance is part of the equation.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Boo hiss. An ideological move that asshats will cheer, and will not help state school kids one jot.
a negative move to start government - well done labour - will mean even more so that only the very rich can afford it- Do Labour really want an elite?
Only the very rich can already afford it.
Most families with kids have 2 kids, and paying 2 kids fees alone takes more than the median salary.
I'd like to see ways to make it more affordable, but it being unaffordable for the overwhelming majority is already the case.
Set the price of a state education at, say £7200 a year. Give every parent a voucher for education to the value of £7200 a year.
Allow parents to use that voucher in the state system, or to use it as partial credit towards a private education and top up the fees with their own money.
Marketise the school system, abolish catchment areas, allow anyone to attend any school with the voucher acting as the baseline to ensure a basic education, let parents decide on the value of an education.
Make all children go to their nearest school. This will get rid of half the cars off the road and free up bus space for wheelchairs, as we discussed last week. It will not alter the number of children at any particular school, so is neutral in that regard.
Not to mention the property bonanza for those who cleverly purchased in the right area, raising the net worth of those already fortunate enough to exist in the leafy suburbs. What's not to like?
That basically is the current system. Selection by who can afford to live in the catchment areas of the good schools.
It would be a lot fairer to set by ability but that is anathema.
No it’s not. You fall into the usual right wing bedwetter misconception that criticising your ideas is the same as trying to silence you. It’s not.
Anyway be careful what you wish for. I’m a grammar school product and you’d like to see my type conveniently disappeared.
It absolutely is the current system.
My daughter is in year 5 so we've been looking at secondary schools as we'll be applying this year. The catchment area of the best secondary state secondary schools (not private ones) adds 100k+ to property prices.
People absolutely can and do pay extra to move houses to be in better schools catchment areas. And that's while we don't have the asinine proposal said earlier of forcing people to the nearest one which balances things out a bit, forcing everyone to the nearest one would spike that discrepancy up even further.
I meant it’s not an “anathema” as MrBed states.
It is to Starmer and co and virtually the entire educational establishment. Thats what I meant.
That’s not what anathema means though. You can’t reinvent the language.
Prince Albert’s memorial is “considered offensive” because it reflects a “Victorian view of the world that differs from mainstream views held today”, custodians say.
The 176ft Albert Memorial opposite the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington Gardens, west London, was built to honour Queen Victoria’s late husband in 1872, when the British Empire stretched across the globe.
It includes a golden sculpture of the Prince Consort himself, along with four groups of large statues representing the people and animals of four continents.
Asia is depicted as a woman on an elephant, America as a native American, and Africa as a woman riding a camel. The African sculpture also includes a white European woman reading a book to a black African tribesman.
The Royal Parks website now says that the Albert Memorial’s “representation of certain continents draws on racial stereotypes that are now considered offensive”.
It tells how Victorian guidebooks about the memorial “describe how this ‘uncivilised’ man hunches over his bow. This pose was intended to represent him ‘rising up from barbarism’, thanks to his Western teacher. At his feet lie broken chains, which allude to Britain’s role in the abolition of slavery”.
It adds that “descriptions of the states that represent Asia and America also reflect this Victorian view of European supremacy”.
I would guess that the comments largely have in mind that children will be learning about such things, and are intended precisely to give historical perspective and to make it clear that most people don't consider these attitudes appropriate now. It seems perfectly sensible to me.
Obviously "Tear down this racist memorial" is TSE's attempt at a satirical comment, but I think he has missed the point.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
All faith schools should be shut down. Not just the private ones.
why? again faith schools generally produce good results - its poo state schools that produce bad results
I don't have a problem with the quality of education and results. It is the indoctrination that I object to.
I think any indoctrination is pretty gentle and not working given the amount of people who attend church . Anyway who is to say there is no God to think about and if parents are happy to send kids to faith schools (as most are) who is the state (that has an official religion in any case) to say no
Only *part* of the state has an official religion (which just shows what a mess it all is).
The part (England) of the state (United Kingdom) that is the least religious (compared to Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland).
One reason being the innate, self-defeating hypocrisy of an "official religion" at leas for the last several centuries.
It seems that last nights further demonstrations against the Child Snatchers General (Leeds Social Services) were peaceful and well attended.
Appears that after one of said children presented in hospital with a head injury they decided that there was a risk it was deliberate and their backsides would not be covered the other children might be at risk, unless they were all taken into care (at vast cost to the taxpayer of course).
The parents are now on hunger strike and will do a Bobby Sands unless they are returned.
There will be much more to this story than your short synopsis above.
Of course.
And in social services, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (How were the signs missed???)
Far less consequence (rarely any) if you confiscate the kids and it turns out you did so wrongly than if you don't do anything wrongly in which case a media and state agency circus follows.
Thats how bureaucracies and their precautionary principle works. Better to send them to a camp in Siberia for 20 years than risk them being dangerous traitors now that the KGB has found that there is a risk that they might be traitors after tapping their phone.
How many kids are taken into protection each week in the UK?
What processes are there?
Is a judge involved?
What appeal opportunities are there for parents?
I ask all these questions, because "a story" is usually a dangerously limited set of information to work off.
106 kids per day, 38,792 per year. So 742 per week.
Yes of course there are processes, but unless you are very wealthy and can afford decent legal representation the processes are hopelessly stacked against you, not least as it is a civil not criminal law process so balance of probability with state agencies word carrying a presumption of correctness unless otherwise proven.
Hold on, that's 106 kids total going into care being looked after, that's not 106 kids being taken away from parents.
There are many reasons kids enter the care system. Orphans with nobody to look after them. Parents who abandon their kids. Parents who give their kids up as they can't/don't want to look after them. Parents who are temporarily hospitalised or otherwise too ill to look after children with no other support system, so care is temporarily needed until the parent recovers. And yes, children taken into care against their parents will as well.
You can't count the former as the latter.
EDIT: That's looked after children data not care data, so I believe homeless families who are given temporary accommodation (with the children still with their parents in the accommodation) are counted in that data too.
Be interesting to know what the figure is, that was the best source I could find. The same site says that 104,808 kids are being looked after away from home in the UK.
What all sites discussing it agree on is that the numbers have been inexorably rising for years.
In the five years after Baby P the number taken into care doubled (2008 to 2013) and since then has continued to rise with a further 50% rise (in England) from 2015-2021
Sadly Christopher Booker is no longer alive to shine alight on this most Kafkaesque corner of the state and John Hemming is no longer an MP and able to use parliamentary privilege to ignore secret injunctions by mluds.
Mention of baby P undermines your case really. There would have been nothing nanny state or Kafka about taking him away from the people who tortured him to death.
The whole point is that after this they started grossly overreacting, doubling the number taken in five years, when the cause of baby P was monumental incompetence ignoring the obvious.
Use of hard cases like this and the "it must never happen again mantra" just leads to widespread injustice and misery. In this case the taking of children from their families on the precautionary principle, just in case they might do something horrible.
A tripling of the number of children in care away from home since 2008 on the precautionary principle because of one unpleasant murder is worthy of Stalins Cheka (as are their secretive processes).
I'm not very happy about it as a council tax payer either.
Roughly a child a week is murdered by its step or real parents.
52 a year out of 12.7 million kids. 0.0004%.
Thats a matter for the courts to deal with the parents, not for a standing state inquistion on the parents of the other 12,699,948 children.
Shit happens, people are evil, get over it. We don't live in utopia
So you’d rather wait for the kids to get killed rather than prevent them getting killed? And your justification for that is “shit happens”? Forgive me if I’m not overly impressed by that line of reasoning.
It is the utopian condundrum.
The lower you get the level of unfortunate events the more extreme, disruptive and expensive the measures you need to take to get it to zero. Beyond a certain point you cause far more distress and misery than you save.
The "it must never happen again" brigade won't be happy until we are as spied on and tracked as the Chinese are.
1,700 people a year are killed on the roads in Britain. That's a terrible toll. So many families bereaved. It could be totally prevented by having a man with a red flag walk in front of every vehicle.
Only if you don't count the deaths of men with red flags
Prince Albert’s memorial is “considered offensive” because it reflects a “Victorian view of the world that differs from mainstream views held today”, custodians say.
The 176ft Albert Memorial opposite the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington Gardens, west London, was built to honour Queen Victoria’s late husband in 1872, when the British Empire stretched across the globe.
It includes a golden sculpture of the Prince Consort himself, along with four groups of large statues representing the people and animals of four continents.
Asia is depicted as a woman on an elephant, America as a native American, and Africa as a woman riding a camel. The African sculpture also includes a white European woman reading a book to a black African tribesman.
The Royal Parks website now says that the Albert Memorial’s “representation of certain continents draws on racial stereotypes that are now considered offensive”.
It tells how Victorian guidebooks about the memorial “describe how this ‘uncivilised’ man hunches over his bow. This pose was intended to represent him ‘rising up from barbarism’, thanks to his Western teacher. At his feet lie broken chains, which allude to Britain’s role in the abolition of slavery”.
It adds that “descriptions of the states that represent Asia and America also reflect this Victorian view of European supremacy”.
I would guess that the comments largely have in mind that children will be learning about such things, and are intended precisely to give historical perspective and to make it clear that most people don't consider these attitudes appropriate now. It seems perfectly sensible to me.
Obviously "Tear down this racist memorial" is TSE's attempt at a satirical comment, but I think he has missed the point.
What's wrong with pulling down Victorian memorials?
That's exactly what the Victorians did. The Victorians routinely pulled down things they didn't like and put up what they wanted instead.
If we decide we no longer want up what the Victorians put up, and want to put something else up instead, that's our choice.
And if our descendants decide they don't like what we put up, and want to replace it, that's their choice.
The first is how much state control there is over schools and the useless woke PC crap they are FORCED teach as a result. Be honest should anyone learn Shakespeare before uni ? No it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time to learn plays from 400yrs ago !!
Second is it is FORCED on parents when a lot of children aren’t suited to it especially up to 18 and they would be better off learning real skills. many kids used to leave at 14 and were better set up at life
Problem is no one dares stand up for common sense and these sacred cows
First time I've ever heard Shakespearean plays be called woke PC crap.
The feel good idea that everyone should learn useless plays from century’s ago IS PC crap
Waste of time
Meanwhile in India and China they are learning advanced mathematics and biology and engineering and tech !!
Any wonder we can’t compete ??
The idea that schoolchildren in India and China are being taught advanced mathematics, biology and engineering is the most idiotically ill-informed thing I have ever read on here. And that is saying something.
It seems that last nights further demonstrations against the Child Snatchers General (Leeds Social Services) were peaceful and well attended.
Appears that after one of said children presented in hospital with a head injury they decided that there was a risk it was deliberate and their backsides would not be covered the other children might be at risk, unless they were all taken into care (at vast cost to the taxpayer of course).
The parents are now on hunger strike and will do a Bobby Sands unless they are returned.
There will be much more to this story than your short synopsis above.
Of course.
And in social services, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (How were the signs missed???)
Far less consequence (rarely any) if you confiscate the kids and it turns out you did so wrongly than if you don't do anything wrongly in which case a media and state agency circus follows.
Thats how bureaucracies and their precautionary principle works. Better to send them to a camp in Siberia for 20 years than risk them being dangerous traitors now that the KGB has found that there is a risk that they might be traitors after tapping their phone.
How many kids are taken into protection each week in the UK?
What processes are there?
Is a judge involved?
What appeal opportunities are there for parents?
I ask all these questions, because "a story" is usually a dangerously limited set of information to work off.
106 kids per day, 38,792 per year. So 742 per week.
Yes of course there are processes, but unless you are very wealthy and can afford decent legal representation the processes are hopelessly stacked against you, not least as it is a civil not criminal law process so balance of probability with state agencies word carrying a presumption of correctness unless otherwise proven.
Hold on, that's 106 kids total going into care being looked after, that's not 106 kids being taken away from parents.
There are many reasons kids enter the care system. Orphans with nobody to look after them. Parents who abandon their kids. Parents who give their kids up as they can't/don't want to look after them. Parents who are temporarily hospitalised or otherwise too ill to look after children with no other support system, so care is temporarily needed until the parent recovers. And yes, children taken into care against their parents will as well.
You can't count the former as the latter.
EDIT: That's looked after children data not care data, so I believe homeless families who are given temporary accommodation (with the children still with their parents in the accommodation) are counted in that data too.
Be interesting to know what the figure is, that was the best source I could find. The same site says that 104,808 kids are being looked after away from home in the UK.
What all sites discussing it agree on is that the numbers have been inexorably rising for years.
In the five years after Baby P the number taken into care doubled (2008 to 2013) and since then has continued to rise with a further 50% rise (in England) from 2015-2021
Sadly Christopher Booker is no longer alive to shine alight on this most Kafkaesque corner of the state and John Hemming is no longer an MP and able to use parliamentary privilege to ignore secret injunctions by mluds.
Mention of baby P undermines your case really. There would have been nothing nanny state or Kafka about taking him away from the people who tortured him to death.
The whole point is that after this they started grossly overreacting, doubling the number taken in five years, when the cause of baby P was monumental incompetence ignoring the obvious.
Use of hard cases like this and the "it must never happen again mantra" just leads to widespread injustice and misery. In this case the taking of children from their families on the precautionary principle, just in case they might do something horrible.
A tripling of the number of children in care away from home since 2008 on the precautionary principle because of one unpleasant murder is worthy of Stalins Cheka (as are their secretive processes).
I'm not very happy about it as a council tax payer either.
Roughly a child a week is murdered by its step or real parents.
52 a year out of 12.7 million kids. 0.0004%.
Thats a matter for the courts to deal with the parents, not for a standing state inquistion on the parents of the other 12,699,948 children.
Shit happens, people are evil, get over it. We don't live in utopia
So you’d rather wait for the kids to get killed rather than prevent them getting killed? And your justification for that is “shit happens”? Forgive me if I’m not overly impressed by that line of reasoning.
It is the utopian condundrum.
The lower you get the level of unfortunate events the more extreme, disruptive and expensive the measures you need to take to get it to zero. Beyond a certain point you cause far more distress and misery than you save.
The "it must never happen again" brigade won't be happy until we are as spied on and tracked as the Chinese are.
1,700 people a year are killed on the roads in Britain. That's a terrible toll. So many families bereaved. It could be totally prevented by having a man with a red flag walk in front of every vehicle.
How amusing you are being at the thought of an infant who had his fingernails torn out with pliers. You must feel like a real man after that post. Well done.
And toenails BTW. What a card you are.
Do you support hanging parents who do that?
It's complicated. Not necessarily against. But I would bet my house the poster I was replying to has happily shaken down the NHS for high six figures to keep him or her alive, and that's ok because.
Its not an argument against punishing cruel parents, its a debate as to whether as a society and how far as a society we should place the 99.99999% of uncruel parents under suspicion to try and catch the 0.00001% of cruel parents before they are cruel.
Personally I would rather be hanged than had my children taken away from me and forcibly adopted. Parents, particularly Mothers, who suffer that fate live a living death.
At least you had to be convicted beyond reasonable doubt by a jury to be hanged. Mothers have their children forcibly adopted (with gagging orders placed on them) on the balance of probabilty in an in camera court on a judges say so.
Prince Albert’s memorial is “considered offensive” because it reflects a “Victorian view of the world that differs from mainstream views held today”, custodians say.
The 176ft Albert Memorial opposite the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington Gardens, west London, was built to honour Queen Victoria’s late husband in 1872, when the British Empire stretched across the globe.
It includes a golden sculpture of the Prince Consort himself, along with four groups of large statues representing the people and animals of four continents.
Asia is depicted as a woman on an elephant, America as a native American, and Africa as a woman riding a camel. The African sculpture also includes a white European woman reading a book to a black African tribesman.
The Royal Parks website now says that the Albert Memorial’s “representation of certain continents draws on racial stereotypes that are now considered offensive”.
It tells how Victorian guidebooks about the memorial “describe how this ‘uncivilised’ man hunches over his bow. This pose was intended to represent him ‘rising up from barbarism’, thanks to his Western teacher. At his feet lie broken chains, which allude to Britain’s role in the abolition of slavery”.
It adds that “descriptions of the states that represent Asia and America also reflect this Victorian view of European supremacy”.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Boo hiss. An ideological move that asshats will cheer, and will not help state school kids one jot.
a negative move to start government - well done labour - will mean even more so that only the very rich can afford it- Do Labour really want an elite?
Only the very rich can already afford it.
Most families with kids have 2 kids, and paying 2 kids fees alone takes more than the median salary.
I'd like to see ways to make it more affordable, but it being unaffordable for the overwhelming majority is already the case.
Set the price of a state education at, say £7200 a year. Give every parent a voucher for education to the value of £7200 a year.
Allow parents to use that voucher in the state system, or to use it as partial credit towards a private education and top up the fees with their own money.
Marketise the school system, abolish catchment areas, allow anyone to attend any school with the voucher acting as the baseline to ensure a basic education, let parents decide on the value of an education.
Make all children go to their nearest school. This will get rid of half the cars off the road and free up bus space for wheelchairs, as we discussed last week. It will not alter the number of children at any particular school, so is neutral in that regard.
Not to mention the property bonanza for those who cleverly purchased in the right area, raising the net worth of those already fortunate enough to exist in the leafy suburbs. What's not to like?
That basically is the current system. Selection by who can afford to live in the catchment areas of the good schools.
It would be a lot fairer to set by ability but that is anathema.
No it’s not. You fall into the usual right wing bedwetter misconception that criticising your ideas is the same as trying to silence you. It’s not.
Anyway be careful what you wish for. I’m a grammar school product and you’d like to see my type conveniently disappeared.
It absolutely is the current system.
My daughter is in year 5 so we've been looking at secondary schools as we'll be applying this year. The catchment area of the best secondary state secondary schools (not private ones) adds 100k+ to property prices.
People absolutely can and do pay extra to move houses to be in better schools catchment areas. And that's while we don't have the asinine proposal said earlier of forcing people to the nearest one which balances things out a bit, forcing everyone to the nearest one would spike that discrepancy up even further.
I meant it’s not an “anathema” as MrBed states.
It is to Starmer and co and virtually the entire educational establishment. Thats what I meant.
That’s not what anathema means though. You can’t reinvent the language.
Yes it is. As in "Such a policy is anathema to the Prime Minister"
The first is how much state control there is over schools and the useless woke PC crap they are FORCED teach as a result. Be honest should anyone learn Shakespeare before uni ? No it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time to learn plays from 400yrs ago !!
Second is it is FORCED on parents when a lot of children aren’t suited to it especially up to 18 and they would be better off learning real skills. many kids used to leave at 14 and were better set up at life
Problem is no one dares stand up for common sense and these sacred cows
First time I've ever heard Shakespearean plays be called woke PC crap.
The feel good idea that everyone should learn useless plays from century’s ago IS PC crap
Waste of time
Meanwhile in India and China they are learning advanced mathematics and biology and engineering and tech !!
Any wonder we can’t compete ??
The idea that schoolchildren in India and China are being taught advanced mathematics, biology and engineering is the most idiotically ill-informed thing I have ever read on here. And that is saying something.
The first is how much state control there is over schools and the useless woke PC crap they are FORCED teach as a result. Be honest should anyone learn Shakespeare before uni ? No it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time to learn plays from 400yrs ago !!
Second is it is FORCED on parents when a lot of children aren’t suited to it especially up to 18 and they would be better off learning real skills. many kids used to leave at 14 and were better set up at life
Problem is no one dares stand up for common sense and these sacred cows
First time I've ever heard Shakespearean plays be called woke PC crap.
The feel good idea that everyone should learn useless plays from century’s ago IS PC crap
Waste of time
Meanwhile in India and China they are learning advanced mathematics and biology and engineering and tech !!
Any wonder we can’t compete ??
The idea that schoolchildren in India and China are being taught advanced mathematics, biology and engineering is the most idiotically ill-informed thing I have ever read on here. And that is saying something.
So what were the 1.38 Chinese students awarded engineering degrees in China in 2020 studying? Ancient Babylonian History?
It seems that last nights further demonstrations against the Child Snatchers General (Leeds Social Services) were peaceful and well attended.
Appears that after one of said children presented in hospital with a head injury they decided that there was a risk it was deliberate and their backsides would not be covered the other children might be at risk, unless they were all taken into care (at vast cost to the taxpayer of course).
The parents are now on hunger strike and will do a Bobby Sands unless they are returned.
There will be much more to this story than your short synopsis above.
Of course.
And in social services, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (How were the signs missed???)
Far less consequence (rarely any) if you confiscate the kids and it turns out you did so wrongly than if you don't do anything wrongly in which case a media and state agency circus follows.
Thats how bureaucracies and their precautionary principle works. Better to send them to a camp in Siberia for 20 years than risk them being dangerous traitors now that the KGB has found that there is a risk that they might be traitors after tapping their phone.
How many kids are taken into protection each week in the UK?
What processes are there?
Is a judge involved?
What appeal opportunities are there for parents?
I ask all these questions, because "a story" is usually a dangerously limited set of information to work off.
106 kids per day, 38,792 per year. So 742 per week.
Yes of course there are processes, but unless you are very wealthy and can afford decent legal representation the processes are hopelessly stacked against you, not least as it is a civil not criminal law process so balance of probability with state agencies word carrying a presumption of correctness unless otherwise proven.
Hold on, that's 106 kids total going into care being looked after, that's not 106 kids being taken away from parents.
There are many reasons kids enter the care system. Orphans with nobody to look after them. Parents who abandon their kids. Parents who give their kids up as they can't/don't want to look after them. Parents who are temporarily hospitalised or otherwise too ill to look after children with no other support system, so care is temporarily needed until the parent recovers. And yes, children taken into care against their parents will as well.
You can't count the former as the latter.
EDIT: That's looked after children data not care data, so I believe homeless families who are given temporary accommodation (with the children still with their parents in the accommodation) are counted in that data too.
Be interesting to know what the figure is, that was the best source I could find. The same site says that 104,808 kids are being looked after away from home in the UK.
What all sites discussing it agree on is that the numbers have been inexorably rising for years.
In the five years after Baby P the number taken into care doubled (2008 to 2013) and since then has continued to rise with a further 50% rise (in England) from 2015-2021
Sadly Christopher Booker is no longer alive to shine alight on this most Kafkaesque corner of the state and John Hemming is no longer an MP and able to use parliamentary privilege to ignore secret injunctions by mluds.
Mention of baby P undermines your case really. There would have been nothing nanny state or Kafka about taking him away from the people who tortured him to death.
The whole point is that after this they started grossly overreacting, doubling the number taken in five years, when the cause of baby P was monumental incompetence ignoring the obvious.
Use of hard cases like this and the "it must never happen again mantra" just leads to widespread injustice and misery. In this case the taking of children from their families on the precautionary principle, just in case they might do something horrible.
A tripling of the number of children in care away from home since 2008 on the precautionary principle because of one unpleasant murder is worthy of Stalins Cheka (as are their secretive processes).
I'm not very happy about it as a council tax payer either.
Roughly a child a week is murdered by its step or real parents.
52 a year out of 12.7 million kids. 0.0004%.
Thats a matter for the courts to deal with the parents, not for a standing state inquistion on the parents of the other 12,699,948 children.
Shit happens, people are evil, get over it. We don't live in utopia
So you’d rather wait for the kids to get killed rather than prevent them getting killed? And your justification for that is “shit happens”? Forgive me if I’m not overly impressed by that line of reasoning.
It is the utopian condundrum.
The lower you get the level of unfortunate events the more extreme, disruptive and expensive the measures you need to take to get it to zero. Beyond a certain point you cause far more distress and misery than you save.
The "it must never happen again" brigade won't be happy until we are as spied on and tracked as the Chinese are.
1,700 people a year are killed on the roads in Britain. That's a terrible toll. So many families bereaved. It could be totally prevented by having a man with a red flag walk in front of every vehicle.
How amusing you are being at the thought of an infant who had his fingernails torn out with pliers. You must feel like a real man after that post. Well done.
And toenails BTW. What a card you are.
Do you support hanging parents who do that?
It's complicated. Not necessarily against. But I would bet my house the poster I was replying to has happily shaken down the NHS for high six figures to keep him or her alive, and that's ok because.
Its not an argument against punishing cruel parents, its a debate as to whether as a society and how far as a society we should place the 99.99999% of uncruel parents under suspicion to try and catch the 0.00001% of cruel parents before they are cruel.
Personally I would rather be hanged than had my children taken away from me and forcibly adopted. Parents, particularly Mothers, who suffer that fate live a living death.
At least you had to be convicted beyond reasonable doubt by a jury to be hanged. Mothers have their children forcibly adopted (with gagging orders placed on them) on the balance of probabilty in an in camera court on a judges say so.
Do you think parents should be able to remove a 7 month baby with a head injury from hospital without follow up or investigation?
The first is how much state control there is over schools and the useless woke PC crap they are FORCED teach as a result. Be honest should anyone learn Shakespeare before uni ? No it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time to learn plays from 400yrs ago !!
Second is it is FORCED on parents when a lot of children aren’t suited to it especially up to 18 and they would be better off learning real skills. many kids used to leave at 14 and were better set up at life
Problem is no one dares stand up for common sense and these sacred cows
First time I've ever heard Shakespearean plays be called woke PC crap.
The feel good idea that everyone should learn useless plays from century’s ago IS PC crap
Waste of time
Meanwhile in India and China they are learning advanced mathematics and biology and engineering and tech !!
Any wonder we can’t compete ??
#EverythingIDislikeIsWoke
It may be crap, but I'm pretty certain it was Michael Gove who changed the curriculum to insist everyone learns Shakespeare - and I'm not sure it was for PC/woke reasons.
Ok what would you call it then ?
that sort of the lefty feel good bs is why the tories have just lost millions of votes to reform
It seems that last nights further demonstrations against the Child Snatchers General (Leeds Social Services) were peaceful and well attended.
Appears that after one of said children presented in hospital with a head injury they decided that there was a risk it was deliberate and their backsides would not be covered the other children might be at risk, unless they were all taken into care (at vast cost to the taxpayer of course).
The parents are now on hunger strike and will do a Bobby Sands unless they are returned.
There will be much more to this story than your short synopsis above.
Of course.
And in social services, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (How were the signs missed???)
Far less consequence (rarely any) if you confiscate the kids and it turns out you did so wrongly than if you don't do anything wrongly in which case a media and state agency circus follows.
Thats how bureaucracies and their precautionary principle works. Better to send them to a camp in Siberia for 20 years than risk them being dangerous traitors now that the KGB has found that there is a risk that they might be traitors after tapping their phone.
How many kids are taken into protection each week in the UK?
What processes are there?
Is a judge involved?
What appeal opportunities are there for parents?
I ask all these questions, because "a story" is usually a dangerously limited set of information to work off.
106 kids per day, 38,792 per year. So 742 per week.
Yes of course there are processes, but unless you are very wealthy and can afford decent legal representation the processes are hopelessly stacked against you, not least as it is a civil not criminal law process so balance of probability with state agencies word carrying a presumption of correctness unless otherwise proven.
Hold on, that's 106 kids total going into care being looked after, that's not 106 kids being taken away from parents.
There are many reasons kids enter the care system. Orphans with nobody to look after them. Parents who abandon their kids. Parents who give their kids up as they can't/don't want to look after them. Parents who are temporarily hospitalised or otherwise too ill to look after children with no other support system, so care is temporarily needed until the parent recovers. And yes, children taken into care against their parents will as well.
You can't count the former as the latter.
EDIT: That's looked after children data not care data, so I believe homeless families who are given temporary accommodation (with the children still with their parents in the accommodation) are counted in that data too.
Be interesting to know what the figure is, that was the best source I could find. The same site says that 104,808 kids are being looked after away from home in the UK.
What all sites discussing it agree on is that the numbers have been inexorably rising for years.
In the five years after Baby P the number taken into care doubled (2008 to 2013) and since then has continued to rise with a further 50% rise (in England) from 2015-2021
Sadly Christopher Booker is no longer alive to shine alight on this most Kafkaesque corner of the state and John Hemming is no longer an MP and able to use parliamentary privilege to ignore secret injunctions by mluds.
Mention of baby P undermines your case really. There would have been nothing nanny state or Kafka about taking him away from the people who tortured him to death.
The whole point is that after this they started grossly overreacting, doubling the number taken in five years, when the cause of baby P was monumental incompetence ignoring the obvious.
Use of hard cases like this and the "it must never happen again mantra" just leads to widespread injustice and misery. In this case the taking of children from their families on the precautionary principle, just in case they might do something horrible.
A tripling of the number of children in care away from home since 2008 on the precautionary principle because of one unpleasant murder is worthy of Stalins Cheka (as are their secretive processes).
I'm not very happy about it as a council tax payer either.
Roughly a child a week is murdered by its step or real parents.
52 a year out of 12.7 million kids. 0.0004%.
Thats a matter for the courts to deal with the parents, not for a standing state inquistion on the parents of the other 12,699,948 children.
Shit happens, people are evil, get over it. We don't live in utopia
So you’d rather wait for the kids to get killed rather than prevent them getting killed? And your justification for that is “shit happens”? Forgive me if I’m not overly impressed by that line of reasoning.
It is the utopian condundrum.
The lower you get the level of unfortunate events the more extreme, disruptive and expensive the measures you need to take to get it to zero. Beyond a certain point you cause far more distress and misery than you save.
The "it must never happen again" brigade won't be happy until we are as spied on and tracked as the Chinese are.
1,700 people a year are killed on the roads in Britain. That's a terrible toll. So many families bereaved. It could be totally prevented by having a man with a red flag walk in front of every vehicle.
How amusing you are being at the thought of an infant who had his fingernails torn out with pliers. You must feel like a real man after that post. Well done.
And toenails BTW. What a card you are.
Do you support hanging parents who do that?
It's complicated. Not necessarily against. But I would bet my house the poster I was replying to has happily shaken down the NHS for high six figures to keep him or her alive, and that's ok because.
Its not an argument against punishing cruel parents, its a debate as to whether as a society and how far as a society we should place the 99.99999% of uncruel parents under suspicion to try and catch the 0.00001% of cruel parents before they are cruel.
Personally I would rather be hanged than had my children taken away from me and forcibly adopted. Parents, particularly Mothers, who suffer that fate live a living death.
At least you had to be convicted beyond reasonable doubt by a jury to be hanged. Mothers have their children forcibly adopted (with gagging orders placed on them) on the balance of probabilty in an in camera court on a judges say so.
You make the assumption that nearly all parents are under suspicion. They are not.
If you were a child abuser (and clearly you are not) your feelings about whether your children should be taken away is neither here nor there’s. It is better that 100 children be put into care by mistake than 1 suffer horrific abuse. Parent’s feelings shouldn’t come into it. Unfortunately all too often they do. This sentimental crap needs to end.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
All faith schools should be shut down. Not just the private ones.
why? again faith schools generally produce good results - its poo state schools that produce bad results
I don't have a problem with the quality of education and results. It is the indoctrination that I object to.
I think any indoctrination is pretty gentle and not working given the amount of people who attend church . Anyway who is to say there is no God to think about and if parents are happy to send kids to faith schools (as most are) who is the state (that has an official religion in any case) to say no
As a Devils Advocate, if the indoctrination is gentle and not working in Christian schools, but is strong and working in Islamic schools (which are increasingly common) are you OK with that?
If parents want their child educated in an Islamic Faith school, paid for by taxpayers not fees, to indoctrinate people in the Islamic Faith, and not mixing with people of other faiths (and none) are you OK with that?
I think we should ban all schools except religious schools.
Prince Albert’s memorial is “considered offensive” because it reflects a “Victorian view of the world that differs from mainstream views held today”, custodians say.
The 176ft Albert Memorial opposite the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington Gardens, west London, was built to honour Queen Victoria’s late husband in 1872, when the British Empire stretched across the globe.
It includes a golden sculpture of the Prince Consort himself, along with four groups of large statues representing the people and animals of four continents.
Asia is depicted as a woman on an elephant, America as a native American, and Africa as a woman riding a camel. The African sculpture also includes a white European woman reading a book to a black African tribesman.
The Royal Parks website now says that the Albert Memorial’s “representation of certain continents draws on racial stereotypes that are now considered offensive”.
It tells how Victorian guidebooks about the memorial “describe how this ‘uncivilised’ man hunches over his bow. This pose was intended to represent him ‘rising up from barbarism’, thanks to his Western teacher. At his feet lie broken chains, which allude to Britain’s role in the abolition of slavery”.
It adds that “descriptions of the states that represent Asia and America also reflect this Victorian view of European supremacy”.
"Joe Biden has been left feeling angry and betrayed by Democrats trying to convince him to quit the presidential race, sources say, as the number calling for him to go reaches 36."
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
All faith schools should be shut down. Not just the private ones.
***Checks to see if my mother is about***
Totally agree.
(To be fair to her, she had the option of sending me to a faith school, she declined and sent me to a private non faith school.)
I told my parents that I didn't want to go to the Catholic secondary school. So I didn't.
Maybe if I had have done, I'd still be attending Mass to this day?
I married a Catholic, we concluded I would have made a terrible Catholic.
I would have been kicked out for confession because the priest would have told me 'You're not confessing, you're boasting' and when I did do a bad thing I would have asked how many Hail Marys do I need to say, also I would have struggled with the act of contrition.
The first is how much state control there is over schools and the useless woke PC crap they are FORCED teach as a result. Be honest should anyone learn Shakespeare before uni ? No it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time to learn plays from 400yrs ago !!
Second is it is FORCED on parents when a lot of children aren’t suited to it especially up to 18 and they would be better off learning real skills. many kids used to leave at 14 and were better set up at life
Problem is no one dares stand up for common sense and these sacred cows
First time I've ever heard Shakespearean plays be called woke PC crap.
The feel good idea that everyone should learn useless plays from century’s ago IS PC crap
Waste of time
Meanwhile in India and China they are learning advanced mathematics and biology and engineering and tech !!
Any wonder we can’t compete ??
#EverythingIDislikeIsWoke
It may be crap, but I'm pretty certain it was Michael Gove who changed the curriculum to insist everyone learns Shakespeare - and I'm not sure it was for PC/woke reasons.
Ok what would you call it then ?
that sort of the lefty feel good bs is why the tories have just lost millions of votes to reform
No common sense at all !l
You do realise that Shakespeare is taught in India BTW? It’s quite controversial that it is, having been introduced by the coloniser and all that, but nevertheless he survives in schools there.
It seems that last nights further demonstrations against the Child Snatchers General (Leeds Social Services) were peaceful and well attended.
Appears that after one of said children presented in hospital with a head injury they decided that there was a risk it was deliberate and their backsides would not be covered the other children might be at risk, unless they were all taken into care (at vast cost to the taxpayer of course).
The parents are now on hunger strike and will do a Bobby Sands unless they are returned.
There will be much more to this story than your short synopsis above.
Of course.
And in social services, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (How were the signs missed???)
Far less consequence (rarely any) if you confiscate the kids and it turns out you did so wrongly than if you don't do anything wrongly in which case a media and state agency circus follows.
Thats how bureaucracies and their precautionary principle works. Better to send them to a camp in Siberia for 20 years than risk them being dangerous traitors now that the KGB has found that there is a risk that they might be traitors after tapping their phone.
How many kids are taken into protection each week in the UK?
What processes are there?
Is a judge involved?
What appeal opportunities are there for parents?
I ask all these questions, because "a story" is usually a dangerously limited set of information to work off.
106 kids per day, 38,792 per year. So 742 per week.
Yes of course there are processes, but unless you are very wealthy and can afford decent legal representation the processes are hopelessly stacked against you, not least as it is a civil not criminal law process so balance of probability with state agencies word carrying a presumption of correctness unless otherwise proven.
Hold on, that's 106 kids total going into care being looked after, that's not 106 kids being taken away from parents.
There are many reasons kids enter the care system. Orphans with nobody to look after them. Parents who abandon their kids. Parents who give their kids up as they can't/don't want to look after them. Parents who are temporarily hospitalised or otherwise too ill to look after children with no other support system, so care is temporarily needed until the parent recovers. And yes, children taken into care against their parents will as well.
You can't count the former as the latter.
EDIT: That's looked after children data not care data, so I believe homeless families who are given temporary accommodation (with the children still with their parents in the accommodation) are counted in that data too.
Be interesting to know what the figure is, that was the best source I could find. The same site says that 104,808 kids are being looked after away from home in the UK.
What all sites discussing it agree on is that the numbers have been inexorably rising for years.
In the five years after Baby P the number taken into care doubled (2008 to 2013) and since then has continued to rise with a further 50% rise (in England) from 2015-2021
Sadly Christopher Booker is no longer alive to shine alight on this most Kafkaesque corner of the state and John Hemming is no longer an MP and able to use parliamentary privilege to ignore secret injunctions by mluds.
Mention of baby P undermines your case really. There would have been nothing nanny state or Kafka about taking him away from the people who tortured him to death.
The whole point is that after this they started grossly overreacting, doubling the number taken in five years, when the cause of baby P was monumental incompetence ignoring the obvious.
Use of hard cases like this and the "it must never happen again mantra" just leads to widespread injustice and misery. In this case the taking of children from their families on the precautionary principle, just in case they might do something horrible.
A tripling of the number of children in care away from home since 2008 on the precautionary principle because of one unpleasant murder is worthy of Stalins Cheka (as are their secretive processes).
I'm not very happy about it as a council tax payer either.
Roughly a child a week is murdered by its step or real parents.
52 a year out of 12.7 million kids. 0.0004%.
Thats a matter for the courts to deal with the parents, not for a standing state inquistion on the parents of the other 12,699,948 children.
Shit happens, people are evil, get over it. We don't live in utopia
So you’d rather wait for the kids to get killed rather than prevent them getting killed? And your justification for that is “shit happens”? Forgive me if I’m not overly impressed by that line of reasoning.
It is the utopian condundrum.
The lower you get the level of unfortunate events the more extreme, disruptive and expensive the measures you need to take to get it to zero. Beyond a certain point you cause far more distress and misery than you save.
The "it must never happen again" brigade won't be happy until we are as spied on and tracked as the Chinese are.
1,700 people a year are killed on the roads in Britain. That's a terrible toll. So many families bereaved. It could be totally prevented by having a man with a red flag walk in front of every vehicle.
How amusing you are being at the thought of an infant who had his fingernails torn out with pliers. You must feel like a real man after that post. Well done.
And toenails BTW. What a card you are.
Do you support hanging parents who do that?
It's complicated. Not necessarily against. But I would bet my house the poster I was replying to has happily shaken down the NHS for high six figures to keep him or her alive, and that's ok because.
Its not an argument against punishing cruel parents, its a debate as to whether as a society and how far as a society we should place the 99.99999% of uncruel parents under suspicion to try and catch the 0.00001% of cruel parents before they are cruel.
Personally I would rather be hanged than had my children taken away from me and forcibly adopted. Parents, particularly Mothers, who suffer that fate live a living death.
At least you had to be convicted beyond reasonable doubt by a jury to be hanged. Mothers have their children forcibly adopted (with gagging orders placed on them) on the balance of probabilty in an in camera court on a judges say so.
Your percentages there display a lack of understanding either of child abuse statistics, or place value. Possibly both.
The first is how much state control there is over schools and the useless woke PC crap they are FORCED teach as a result. Be honest should anyone learn Shakespeare before uni ? No it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time to learn plays from 400yrs ago !!
Second is it is FORCED on parents when a lot of children aren’t suited to it especially up to 18 and they would be better off learning real skills. many kids used to leave at 14 and were better set up at life
Problem is no one dares stand up for common sense and these sacred cows
First time I've ever heard Shakespearean plays be called woke PC crap.
The feel good idea that everyone should learn useless plays from century’s ago IS PC crap
Waste of time
Meanwhile in India and China they are learning advanced mathematics and biology and engineering and tech !!
Any wonder we can’t compete ??
The idea that schoolchildren in India and China are being taught advanced mathematics, biology and engineering is the most idiotically ill-informed thing I have ever read on here. And that is saying something.
So what were the 1.38 Chinese students awarded engineering degrees in China in 2020 studying? Ancient Babylonian History?
They weren’t awarded their degrees at school. You get degrees at university. You do realise that “schoolchildren” are not at university? They are at school.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
All faith schools should be shut down. Not just the private ones.
why? again faith schools generally produce good results - its poo state schools that produce bad results
I don't have a problem with the quality of education and results. It is the indoctrination that I object to.
I think any indoctrination is pretty gentle and not working given the amount of people who attend church . Anyway who is to say there is no God to think about and if parents are happy to send kids to faith schools (as most are) who is the state (that has an official religion in any case) to say no
As a Devils Advocate, if the indoctrination is gentle and not working in Christian schools, but is strong and working in Islamic schools (which are increasingly common) are you OK with that?
If parents want their child educated in an Islamic Faith school, paid for by taxpayers not fees, to indoctrinate people in the Islamic Faith, and not mixing with people of other faiths (and none) are you OK with that?
I think we should ban all schools except religious schools.
Prince Albert’s memorial is “considered offensive” because it reflects a “Victorian view of the world that differs from mainstream views held today”, custodians say.
The 176ft Albert Memorial opposite the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington Gardens, west London, was built to honour Queen Victoria’s late husband in 1872, when the British Empire stretched across the globe.
It includes a golden sculpture of the Prince Consort himself, along with four groups of large statues representing the people and animals of four continents.
Asia is depicted as a woman on an elephant, America as a native American, and Africa as a woman riding a camel. The African sculpture also includes a white European woman reading a book to a black African tribesman.
The Royal Parks website now says that the Albert Memorial’s “representation of certain continents draws on racial stereotypes that are now considered offensive”.
It tells how Victorian guidebooks about the memorial “describe how this ‘uncivilised’ man hunches over his bow. This pose was intended to represent him ‘rising up from barbarism’, thanks to his Western teacher. At his feet lie broken chains, which allude to Britain’s role in the abolition of slavery”.
It adds that “descriptions of the states that represent Asia and America also reflect this Victorian view of European supremacy”.
The first is how much state control there is over schools and the useless woke PC crap they are FORCED teach as a result. Be honest should anyone learn Shakespeare before uni ? No it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time to learn plays from 400yrs ago !!
Second is it is FORCED on parents when a lot of children aren’t suited to it especially up to 18 and they would be better off learning real skills. many kids used to leave at 14 and were better set up at life
Problem is no one dares stand up for common sense and these sacred cows
First time I've ever heard Shakespearean plays be called woke PC crap.
The feel good idea that everyone should learn useless plays from century’s ago IS PC crap
Waste of time
Meanwhile in India and China they are learning advanced mathematics and biology and engineering and tech !!
Any wonder we can’t compete ??
The idea that schoolchildren in India and China are being taught advanced mathematics, biology and engineering is the most idiotically ill-informed thing I have ever read on here. And that is saying something.
Millions and millions are
Open your eyes
Even UK uni science depts are packed to the brim with Chinese and Indians !!
It seems that last nights further demonstrations against the Child Snatchers General (Leeds Social Services) were peaceful and well attended.
Appears that after one of said children presented in hospital with a head injury they decided that there was a risk it was deliberate and their backsides would not be covered the other children might be at risk, unless they were all taken into care (at vast cost to the taxpayer of course).
The parents are now on hunger strike and will do a Bobby Sands unless they are returned.
There will be much more to this story than your short synopsis above.
Of course.
And in social services, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (How were the signs missed???)
Far less consequence (rarely any) if you confiscate the kids and it turns out you did so wrongly than if you don't do anything wrongly in which case a media and state agency circus follows.
Thats how bureaucracies and their precautionary principle works. Better to send them to a camp in Siberia for 20 years than risk them being dangerous traitors now that the KGB has found that there is a risk that they might be traitors after tapping their phone.
How many kids are taken into protection each week in the UK?
What processes are there?
Is a judge involved?
What appeal opportunities are there for parents?
I ask all these questions, because "a story" is usually a dangerously limited set of information to work off.
106 kids per day, 38,792 per year. So 742 per week.
Yes of course there are processes, but unless you are very wealthy and can afford decent legal representation the processes are hopelessly stacked against you, not least as it is a civil not criminal law process so balance of probability with state agencies word carrying a presumption of correctness unless otherwise proven.
Hold on, that's 106 kids total going into care being looked after, that's not 106 kids being taken away from parents.
There are many reasons kids enter the care system. Orphans with nobody to look after them. Parents who abandon their kids. Parents who give their kids up as they can't/don't want to look after them. Parents who are temporarily hospitalised or otherwise too ill to look after children with no other support system, so care is temporarily needed until the parent recovers. And yes, children taken into care against their parents will as well.
You can't count the former as the latter.
EDIT: That's looked after children data not care data, so I believe homeless families who are given temporary accommodation (with the children still with their parents in the accommodation) are counted in that data too.
Be interesting to know what the figure is, that was the best source I could find. The same site says that 104,808 kids are being looked after away from home in the UK.
What all sites discussing it agree on is that the numbers have been inexorably rising for years.
In the five years after Baby P the number taken into care doubled (2008 to 2013) and since then has continued to rise with a further 50% rise (in England) from 2015-2021
Sadly Christopher Booker is no longer alive to shine alight on this most Kafkaesque corner of the state and John Hemming is no longer an MP and able to use parliamentary privilege to ignore secret injunctions by mluds.
Mention of baby P undermines your case really. There would have been nothing nanny state or Kafka about taking him away from the people who tortured him to death.
The whole point is that after this they started grossly overreacting, doubling the number taken in five years, when the cause of baby P was monumental incompetence ignoring the obvious.
Use of hard cases like this and the "it must never happen again mantra" just leads to widespread injustice and misery. In this case the taking of children from their families on the precautionary principle, just in case they might do something horrible.
A tripling of the number of children in care away from home since 2008 on the precautionary principle because of one unpleasant murder is worthy of Stalins Cheka (as are their secretive processes).
I'm not very happy about it as a council tax payer either.
Roughly a child a week is murdered by its step or real parents.
52 a year out of 12.7 million kids. 0.0004%.
Thats a matter for the courts to deal with the parents, not for a standing state inquistion on the parents of the other 12,699,948 children.
Shit happens, people are evil, get over it. We don't live in utopia
So you’d rather wait for the kids to get killed rather than prevent them getting killed? And your justification for that is “shit happens”? Forgive me if I’m not overly impressed by that line of reasoning.
It is the utopian condundrum.
The lower you get the level of unfortunate events the more extreme, disruptive and expensive the measures you need to take to get it to zero. Beyond a certain point you cause far more distress and misery than you save.
The "it must never happen again" brigade won't be happy until we are as spied on and tracked as the Chinese are.
1,700 people a year are killed on the roads in Britain. That's a terrible toll. So many families bereaved. It could be totally prevented by having a man with a red flag walk in front of every vehicle.
How amusing you are being at the thought of an infant who had his fingernails torn out with pliers. You must feel like a real man after that post. Well done.
And toenails BTW. What a card you are.
Do you support hanging parents who do that?
It's complicated. Not necessarily against. But I would bet my house the poster I was replying to has happily shaken down the NHS for high six figures to keep him or her alive, and that's ok because.
Its not an argument against punishing cruel parents, its a debate as to whether as a society and how far as a society we should place the 99.99999% of uncruel parents under suspicion to try and catch the 0.00001% of cruel parents before they are cruel.
Personally I would rather be hanged than had my children taken away from me and forcibly adopted. Parents, particularly Mothers, who suffer that fate live a living death.
At least you had to be convicted beyond reasonable doubt by a jury to be hanged. Mothers have their children forcibly adopted (with gagging orders placed on them) on the balance of probabilty in an in camera court on a judges say so.
Your percentages there display a lack of understanding either of child abuse statistics, or place value. Possibly both.
His comments about special needs children shows both, so it is both in this case.
The first is how much state control there is over schools and the useless woke PC crap they are FORCED teach as a result. Be honest should anyone learn Shakespeare before uni ? No it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time to learn plays from 400yrs ago !!
Second is it is FORCED on parents when a lot of children aren’t suited to it especially up to 18 and they would be better off learning real skills. many kids used to leave at 14 and were better set up at life
Problem is no one dares stand up for common sense and these sacred cows
First time I've ever heard Shakespearean plays be called woke PC crap.
The feel good idea that everyone should learn useless plays from century’s ago IS PC crap
Waste of time
Meanwhile in India and China they are learning advanced mathematics and biology and engineering and tech !!
Any wonder we can’t compete ??
The idea that schoolchildren in India and China are being taught advanced mathematics, biology and engineering is the most idiotically ill-informed thing I have ever read on here. And that is saying something.
Millions and millions are
Open your eyes
Even UK uni science depts are packed to the brim with Chinese and Indians !!
Wonder how that happened
So why is Shakespeare being taught in India if it’s all PC crap?
As I said to Mr Bed, they are not being taught advanced engineering at school. If they were then why are they doing it at University? You don’t get taught advanced engineering at school anywhere.
Open your eyes! Stop getting your news from Facebook.
The first is how much state control there is over schools and the useless woke PC crap they are FORCED teach as a result. Be honest should anyone learn Shakespeare before uni ? No it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time to learn plays from 400yrs ago !!
Second is it is FORCED on parents when a lot of children aren’t suited to it especially up to 18 and they would be better off learning real skills. many kids used to leave at 14 and were better set up at life
Problem is no one dares stand up for common sense and these sacred cows
First time I've ever heard Shakespearean plays be called woke PC crap.
The feel good idea that everyone should learn useless plays from century’s ago IS PC crap
Waste of time
Meanwhile in India and China they are learning advanced mathematics and biology and engineering and tech !!
Any wonder we can’t compete ??
#EverythingIDislikeIsWoke
It may be crap, but I'm pretty certain it was Michael Gove who changed the curriculum to insist everyone learns Shakespeare - and I'm not sure it was for PC/woke reasons.
Ok what would you call it then ?
that sort of the lefty feel good bs is why the tories have just lost millions of votes to reform
No common sense at all !l
Was dissing Shakespeare for his proto-Wokeism in the Reform manifesto?
Can imagine it came up quite often on the doorstep!
"What I really hate about the Tories, is their precious William Woke Shakespeare; 'this sceptred isle' my arse! Not when it's being overrun by Othello and his lot."
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The first is how much state control there is over schools and the useless woke PC crap they are FORCED teach as a result. Be honest should anyone learn Shakespeare before uni ? No it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time to learn plays from 400yrs ago !!
Second is it is FORCED on parents when a lot of children aren’t suited to it especially up to 18 and they would be better off learning real skills. many kids used to leave at 14 and were better set up at life
Problem is no one dares stand up for common sense and these sacred cows
First time I've ever heard Shakespearean plays be called woke PC crap.
The feel good idea that everyone should learn useless plays from century’s ago IS PC crap
Waste of time
Meanwhile in India and China they are learning advanced mathematics and biology and engineering and tech !!
Any wonder we can’t compete ??
The idea that schoolchildren in India and China are being taught advanced mathematics, biology and engineering is the most idiotically ill-informed thing I have ever read on here. And that is saying something.
Millions and millions are
Open your eyes
Even UK uni science depts are packed to the brim with Chinese and Indians !!
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
I think it's fantastic news. All the oiks whose parents can't afford to send them to a proper public school will end up in the state system, making my proper public school education far more rare and valuable.
Bravo to the Labour party for kicking the ladder of social mobility away from all those middle class yobbos whose parents dared to send them to middling private schools.
Now a public school education will actually mean something again. Glad to see the Labour party acting to entrench social privilege in this country. About bloody time someone did.
Problem is all the private school kids looking down on those who can’t afford to go to private school are focussed in on by those who went to public schools so it rarifies further those who went to the actual public schools and leaves the private school kids more exposed to mockery. There is now a new bottom of the rung to pick on which might not be so great for those who thought they were a bit superior before.
Luckily as you went to one of the nine public schools you can join us in mocking the private school kids.
It seems that last nights further demonstrations against the Child Snatchers General (Leeds Social Services) were peaceful and well attended.
Appears that after one of said children presented in hospital with a head injury they decided that there was a risk it was deliberate and their backsides would not be covered the other children might be at risk, unless they were all taken into care (at vast cost to the taxpayer of course).
The parents are now on hunger strike and will do a Bobby Sands unless they are returned.
There will be much more to this story than your short synopsis above.
Of course.
And in social services, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (How were the signs missed???)
Far less consequence (rarely any) if you confiscate the kids and it turns out you did so wrongly than if you don't do anything wrongly in which case a media and state agency circus follows.
Thats how bureaucracies and their precautionary principle works. Better to send them to a camp in Siberia for 20 years than risk them being dangerous traitors now that the KGB has found that there is a risk that they might be traitors after tapping their phone.
How many kids are taken into protection each week in the UK?
What processes are there?
Is a judge involved?
What appeal opportunities are there for parents?
I ask all these questions, because "a story" is usually a dangerously limited set of information to work off.
106 kids per day, 38,792 per year. So 742 per week.
Yes of course there are processes, but unless you are very wealthy and can afford decent legal representation the processes are hopelessly stacked against you, not least as it is a civil not criminal law process so balance of probability with state agencies word carrying a presumption of correctness unless otherwise proven.
Hold on, that's 106 kids total going into care being looked after, that's not 106 kids being taken away from parents.
There are many reasons kids enter the care system. Orphans with nobody to look after them. Parents who abandon their kids. Parents who give their kids up as they can't/don't want to look after them. Parents who are temporarily hospitalised or otherwise too ill to look after children with no other support system, so care is temporarily needed until the parent recovers. And yes, children taken into care against their parents will as well.
You can't count the former as the latter.
EDIT: That's looked after children data not care data, so I believe homeless families who are given temporary accommodation (with the children still with their parents in the accommodation) are counted in that data too.
Be interesting to know what the figure is, that was the best source I could find. The same site says that 104,808 kids are being looked after away from home in the UK.
What all sites discussing it agree on is that the numbers have been inexorably rising for years.
In the five years after Baby P the number taken into care doubled (2008 to 2013) and since then has continued to rise with a further 50% rise (in England) from 2015-2021
Sadly Christopher Booker is no longer alive to shine alight on this most Kafkaesque corner of the state and John Hemming is no longer an MP and able to use parliamentary privilege to ignore secret injunctions by mluds.
Mention of baby P undermines your case really. There would have been nothing nanny state or Kafka about taking him away from the people who tortured him to death.
The whole point is that after this they started grossly overreacting, doubling the number taken in five years, when the cause of baby P was monumental incompetence ignoring the obvious.
Use of hard cases like this and the "it must never happen again mantra" just leads to widespread injustice and misery. In this case the taking of children from their families on the precautionary principle, just in case they might do something horrible.
A tripling of the number of children in care away from home since 2008 on the precautionary principle because of one unpleasant murder is worthy of Stalins Cheka (as are their secretive processes).
I'm not very happy about it as a council tax payer either.
Roughly a child a week is murdered by its step or real parents.
52 a year out of 12.7 million kids. 0.0004%.
Thats a matter for the courts to deal with the parents, not for a standing state inquistion on the parents of the other 12,699,948 children.
Shit happens, people are evil, get over it. We don't live in utopia
So you’d rather wait for the kids to get killed rather than prevent them getting killed? And your justification for that is “shit happens”? Forgive me if I’m not overly impressed by that line of reasoning.
It is the utopian condundrum.
The lower you get the level of unfortunate events the more extreme, disruptive and expensive the measures you need to take to get it to zero. Beyond a certain point you cause far more distress and misery than you save.
The "it must never happen again" brigade won't be happy until we are as spied on and tracked as the Chinese are.
1,700 people a year are killed on the roads in Britain. That's a terrible toll. So many families bereaved. It could be totally prevented by having a man with a red flag walk in front of every vehicle.
How amusing you are being at the thought of an infant who had his fingernails torn out with pliers. You must feel like a real man after that post. Well done.
And toenails BTW. What a card you are.
Do you support hanging parents who do that?
It's complicated. Not necessarily against. But I would bet my house the poster I was replying to has happily shaken down the NHS for high six figures to keep him or her alive, and that's ok because.
Its not an argument against punishing cruel parents, its a debate as to whether as a society and how far as a society we should place the 99.99999% of uncruel parents under suspicion to try and catch the 0.00001% of cruel parents before they are cruel.
Personally I would rather be hanged than had my children taken away from me and forcibly adopted. Parents, particularly Mothers, who suffer that fate live a living death.
At least you had to be convicted beyond reasonable doubt by a jury to be hanged. Mothers have their children forcibly adopted (with gagging orders placed on them) on the balance of probabilty in an in camera court on a judges say so.
Do you think parents should be able to remove a 7 month baby with a head injury from hospital without follow up or investigation?
That rather depends on both the injury and the general conditon of the child.
And that dosent mean you should drag their other four healthy children kicking and screaming from their home in case they might get injured too.
I knew someone who fostered kids. In the end they virtually had a breakdown and stopped. The rules were that every time the fostered kid had even a small bruise it had to be reported to social services who then started an investigation, with their own kids at risk of being taken away from them too.
Sorry, but good for the Roma. If the English reacted like this to agents of the state interfering with them, the authorities would tread a lot more carefully. We could learn a lot from both the French and Northern Irish in this regard.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
I think it's fantastic news. All the oiks whose parents can't afford to send them to a proper public school will end up in the state system, making my proper public school education far more rare and valuable.
Bravo to the Labour party for kicking the ladder of social mobility away from all those middle class yobbos whose parents dared to send them to middling private schools.
Now a public school education will actually mean something again. Glad to see the Labour party acting to entrench social privilege in this country. About bloody time someone did.
Problem is all the private school kids looking down on those who can’t afford to go to private school are focussed in on by those who went to public schools so it rarifies further those who went to the actual public schools and leaves the private school kids more exposed to mockery. There is now a new bottom of the rung to pick on which might not be so great for those who thought they were a bit superior before.
Luckily as you went to one of the nine public schools you can join us in mocking the private school kids.
There are eight others?
LOL
There's always a pecking order, isn't there...
In USA only Seven Sisters = elite women's colleges (originally) the distaff equivalent to the Ivy League
> Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, Vassar, Wellesley.
It seems that last nights further demonstrations against the Child Snatchers General (Leeds Social Services) were peaceful and well attended.
Appears that after one of said children presented in hospital with a head injury they decided that there was a risk it was deliberate and their backsides would not be covered the other children might be at risk, unless they were all taken into care (at vast cost to the taxpayer of course).
The parents are now on hunger strike and will do a Bobby Sands unless they are returned.
There will be much more to this story than your short synopsis above.
Of course.
And in social services, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (How were the signs missed???)
Far less consequence (rarely any) if you confiscate the kids and it turns out you did so wrongly than if you don't do anything wrongly in which case a media and state agency circus follows.
Thats how bureaucracies and their precautionary principle works. Better to send them to a camp in Siberia for 20 years than risk them being dangerous traitors now that the KGB has found that there is a risk that they might be traitors after tapping their phone.
How many kids are taken into protection each week in the UK?
What processes are there?
Is a judge involved?
What appeal opportunities are there for parents?
I ask all these questions, because "a story" is usually a dangerously limited set of information to work off.
106 kids per day, 38,792 per year. So 742 per week.
Yes of course there are processes, but unless you are very wealthy and can afford decent legal representation the processes are hopelessly stacked against you, not least as it is a civil not criminal law process so balance of probability with state agencies word carrying a presumption of correctness unless otherwise proven.
Hold on, that's 106 kids total going into care being looked after, that's not 106 kids being taken away from parents.
There are many reasons kids enter the care system. Orphans with nobody to look after them. Parents who abandon their kids. Parents who give their kids up as they can't/don't want to look after them. Parents who are temporarily hospitalised or otherwise too ill to look after children with no other support system, so care is temporarily needed until the parent recovers. And yes, children taken into care against their parents will as well.
You can't count the former as the latter.
EDIT: That's looked after children data not care data, so I believe homeless families who are given temporary accommodation (with the children still with their parents in the accommodation) are counted in that data too.
Be interesting to know what the figure is, that was the best source I could find. The same site says that 104,808 kids are being looked after away from home in the UK.
What all sites discussing it agree on is that the numbers have been inexorably rising for years.
In the five years after Baby P the number taken into care doubled (2008 to 2013) and since then has continued to rise with a further 50% rise (in England) from 2015-2021
Sadly Christopher Booker is no longer alive to shine alight on this most Kafkaesque corner of the state and John Hemming is no longer an MP and able to use parliamentary privilege to ignore secret injunctions by mluds.
Mention of baby P undermines your case really. There would have been nothing nanny state or Kafka about taking him away from the people who tortured him to death.
The whole point is that after this they started grossly overreacting, doubling the number taken in five years, when the cause of baby P was monumental incompetence ignoring the obvious.
Use of hard cases like this and the "it must never happen again mantra" just leads to widespread injustice and misery. In this case the taking of children from their families on the precautionary principle, just in case they might do something horrible.
A tripling of the number of children in care away from home since 2008 on the precautionary principle because of one unpleasant murder is worthy of Stalins Cheka (as are their secretive processes).
I'm not very happy about it as a council tax payer either.
Roughly a child a week is murdered by its step or real parents.
52 a year out of 12.7 million kids. 0.0004%.
Thats a matter for the courts to deal with the parents, not for a standing state inquistion on the parents of the other 12,699,948 children.
Shit happens, people are evil, get over it. We don't live in utopia
So you’d rather wait for the kids to get killed rather than prevent them getting killed? And your justification for that is “shit happens”? Forgive me if I’m not overly impressed by that line of reasoning.
It is the utopian condundrum.
The lower you get the level of unfortunate events the more extreme, disruptive and expensive the measures you need to take to get it to zero. Beyond a certain point you cause far more distress and misery than you save.
The "it must never happen again" brigade won't be happy until we are as spied on and tracked as the Chinese are.
1,700 people a year are killed on the roads in Britain. That's a terrible toll. So many families bereaved. It could be totally prevented by having a man with a red flag walk in front of every vehicle.
How amusing you are being at the thought of an infant who had his fingernails torn out with pliers. You must feel like a real man after that post. Well done.
And toenails BTW. What a card you are.
Do you support hanging parents who do that?
It's complicated. Not necessarily against. But I would bet my house the poster I was replying to has happily shaken down the NHS for high six figures to keep him or her alive, and that's ok because.
Its not an argument against punishing cruel parents, its a debate as to whether as a society and how far as a society we should place the 99.99999% of uncruel parents under suspicion to try and catch the 0.00001% of cruel parents before they are cruel.
Personally I would rather be hanged than had my children taken away from me and forcibly adopted. Parents, particularly Mothers, who suffer that fate live a living death.
At least you had to be convicted beyond reasonable doubt by a jury to be hanged. Mothers have their children forcibly adopted (with gagging orders placed on them) on the balance of probabilty in an in camera court on a judges say so.
Do you think parents should be able to remove a 7 month baby with a head injury from hospital without follow up or investigation?
That rather depends on both the injury and the general conditon of the child.
And that dosent mean you should drag their other four healthy children kicking and screaming from their home in case they might get injured too.
I knew someone who fostered kids. In the end they virtually had a breakdown and stopped. The rules were that every time the fostered kid had even a small bruise it had to be reported to social services who then started an investigation, with their own kids at risk of being taken away from them too.
Sorry, but good for the Roma. If the English reacted like this to agents of the state interfering with them, the authorities would tread a lot more carefully. We could learn a lot from both the French and Northern Irish in this regard.
So do you think Social workers should go round to the house, see the injured baby and assess the level of risk to the siblings?
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
All faith schools should be shut down. Not just the private ones.
why? again faith schools generally produce good results - its poo state schools that produce bad results
I don't have a problem with the quality of education and results. It is the indoctrination that I object to.
I think any indoctrination is pretty gentle and not working given the amount of people who attend church . Anyway who is to say there is no God to think about and if parents are happy to send kids to faith schools (as most are) who is the state (that has an official religion in any case) to say no
As a Devils Advocate, if the indoctrination is gentle and not working in Christian schools, but is strong and working in Islamic schools (which are increasingly common) are you OK with that?
If parents want their child educated in an Islamic Faith school, paid for by taxpayers not fees, to indoctrinate people in the Islamic Faith, and not mixing with people of other faiths (and none) are you OK with that?
I think we should ban all schools except religious schools.
Prince Albert’s memorial is “considered offensive” because it reflects a “Victorian view of the world that differs from mainstream views held today”, custodians say.
The 176ft Albert Memorial opposite the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington Gardens, west London, was built to honour Queen Victoria’s late husband in 1872, when the British Empire stretched across the globe.
It includes a golden sculpture of the Prince Consort himself, along with four groups of large statues representing the people and animals of four continents.
Asia is depicted as a woman on an elephant, America as a native American, and Africa as a woman riding a camel. The African sculpture also includes a white European woman reading a book to a black African tribesman.
The Royal Parks website now says that the Albert Memorial’s “representation of certain continents draws on racial stereotypes that are now considered offensive”.
It tells how Victorian guidebooks about the memorial “describe how this ‘uncivilised’ man hunches over his bow. This pose was intended to represent him ‘rising up from barbarism’, thanks to his Western teacher. At his feet lie broken chains, which allude to Britain’s role in the abolition of slavery”.
It adds that “descriptions of the states that represent Asia and America also reflect this Victorian view of European supremacy”.
For fuck’s sake! Can nobody cull the arseholes that have so little understanding of history that they think that’s a good idea?
One of the first lesson I was taught in history was to not judge people from history by today's standards.
The example I cite these days is the overwhelming majority of Tories who opposed appeasement in the 1930s were also virulent homophobes.
To be fair the Tories who backed appeasement were also virulent homophones.
Most Britons were at the time.
Fun fact. In Victorian times a Heterosexual was an oversexed person who had sex decadently for the enjoyment of it with the opposite sex.
Having sex other than for its intended purpose of procreation was frowned upon.
Do you have a source for that nonsensical claim?
"The word "heterosexual" was listed in Merriam-Webster's New International Dictionary in 1923 as a medical term for "morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex""
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
All faith schools should be shut down. Not just the private ones.
***Checks to see if my mother is about***
Totally agree.
(To be fair to her, she had the option of sending me to a faith school, she declined and sent me to a private non faith school.)
I told my parents that I didn't want to go to the Catholic secondary school. So I didn't.
Maybe if I had have done, I'd still be attending Mass to this day?
I married a Catholic, we concluded I would have made a terrible Catholic.
I would have been kicked out for confession because the priest would have told me 'You're not confessing, you're boasting' and when I did do a bad thing I would have asked how many Hail Marys do I need to say, also I would have struggled with the act of contrition.
You don't have to mean any of it. It is just performative.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
All faith schools should be shut down. Not just the private ones.
***Checks to see if my mother is about***
Totally agree.
(To be fair to her, she had the option of sending me to a faith school, she declined and sent me to a private non faith school.)
I told my parents that I didn't want to go to the Catholic secondary school. So I didn't.
Maybe if I had have done, I'd still be attending Mass to this day?
I married a Catholic, we concluded I would have made a terrible Catholic.
I would have been kicked out for confession because the priest would have told me 'You're not confessing, you're boasting' and when I did do a bad thing I would have asked how many Hail Marys do I need to say, also I would have struggled with the act of contrition.
Cue Northern Ireland. But are you a protestant muslim or a catholic muslim?
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Whilst this is unfortunate - The problem with education is poor state schools not private ones - However currently schools cannot claim input VAT and if they have to charge VAT then they can do so - effectively it means fees will rise but not by 20%
Given how many BAME parents send their kids to private schools this seems a bit of a racist policy.
And if BAME parents are a higher proportion of those sending their children to private schools the policy may be struck out by judicial review under the equality act.
Hurrah for the ECHR.
We’d be mad yo leave it.
How would the ECHR be engaged here?
I thought it was one of the ways Lord Pannick was going to fight the VAT change as it hurts minorities more such as Jewish schools.
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
All faith schools should be shut down. Not just the private ones.
why? again faith schools generally produce good results - its poo state schools that produce bad results
I don't have a problem with the quality of education and results. It is the indoctrination that I object to.
I think any indoctrination is pretty gentle and not working given the amount of people who attend church . Anyway who is to say there is no God to think about and if parents are happy to send kids to faith schools (as most are) who is the state (that has an official religion in any case) to say no
Only *part* of the state has an official religion (which just shows what a mess it all is).
The part (England) of the state (United Kingdom) that is the least religious (compared to Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland).
One reason being the innate, self-defeating hypocrisy of an "official religion" at leas for the last several centuries.
Wrong, ONS and Scottiish census has 46% in England Christian compared to 43% in Wales and only 38% in Scotland. 51% non religious in Scotland, 46% non religious in Wales and just 37% in England.
Only NI higher, with 78% of Northern Irish Christian stil and just 17% non religious
Comments
This is the same body that pre London 2012 demanded gold medals and funded that programme with individual sport bodies to get them , then when "wokeness" arrived disowned those sport bodies that took them at their word and washed their hands when society accused them of bullying athletes . All brilliantly told in the great book - The Medal Factory which focuses on British Cycling and its rise from being useless as a medal contender to sweeping the board by taking UK Sport at its word -
Edit - see here.
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/labour-private-vat-raid-decimate-jewish-schools/
Oh ... the Royal Parks Website has a web page explaining the historical context.
Sounds like a pretty good idea, as it does not interfere with the monument.
http://www.randonnee-montlozere.com/
The Victorians themselves regularly removed statues they didn't approve of, and put new ones up in their place.
That's why the Victorians ones are there now.
Turnabout is fair play, if we do the same to them as they did to their predecessors, what is wrong with that?
Nothing should ever be ossified, if we decide to make changes then that's fair enough.
https://www.royalparks.org.uk/about-us/royal-parks-charity
The first is how much state control there is over schools and the useless woke PC crap they are FORCED teach as a result. Be honest should anyone learn Shakespeare before uni ? No it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time to learn plays from 400yrs ago !!
Second is it is FORCED on parents when a lot of children aren’t suited to it especially up to 18 and they would be better off learning real skills. many kids used to leave at 14 and were better set up at life
Problem is no one dares stand up for common sense and these sacred cows
It would be a lot fairer to set by ability but that is anathema.
I'll stick to smoked ham thank you.
But I don’t think it would sound much like Pete Buttigieg.
And toenails BTW. What a card you are.
(Sorry Bart - beat me to it).
Anyway be careful what you wish for. I’m a grammar school product and you’d like to see my type conveniently disappeared.
Having seen it for myself I don't believe the state should sit back and do nothing. Sterilise the guilty after child one has been taken into care, preferably with two house bricks and no anaesthetic. That would be cost effective.
Anyway, enough bollocks from me on the subject.
My daughter is in year 5 so we've been looking at secondary schools as we'll be applying this year. The catchment area of the best secondary state secondary schools (not private ones) adds 100k+ to property prices.
People absolutely can and do pay extra to move houses to be in better schools catchment areas. And that's while we don't have the asinine proposal said earlier of forcing people to the nearest one which balances things out a bit, forcing everyone to the nearest one would spike that discrepancy up even further.
The example I cite these days is the overwhelming majority of Tories who opposed appeasement in the 1930s were also virulent homophobes.
Totally agree.
(To be fair to her, she had the option of sending me to a faith school, she declined and sent me to a private non faith school.)
The collective outrage on here has been triggered by is a page on a charity’s website. Can someone point out which bit of the text quoted is wrong? Or even demeaning to anyone?
Waste of time
Meanwhile in India and China they are learning advanced mathematics and biology and engineering and tech !!
Any wonder we can’t compete ??
Maybe if I had have done, I'd still be attending Mass to this day?
I'm making the argument *for* grammar schools, not against them.
Think you need to reread my post a little more slowly.
It may be crap, but I'm pretty certain it was Michael Gove who changed the curriculum to insist everyone learns Shakespeare - and I'm not sure it was for PC/woke reasons.
Obviously "Tear down this racist memorial" is TSE's attempt at a satirical comment, but I think he has missed the point.
If parents want their child educated in an Islamic Faith school, paid for by taxpayers not fees, to indoctrinate people in the Islamic Faith, and not mixing with people of other faiths (and none) are you OK with that?
Now they have got the "if it saves one life" mantra into their heads they are filling the jails with people who have a moments inattention and being the unlucky 1 in 100,000 where this leads to catastrophe.
Another example of attempts to reach utopia resulting both in more misery and not reaching utolia (deaths are currently rising again). In this case legalising revenge/venegance is part of the equation.
One reason being the innate, self-defeating hypocrisy of an "official religion" at leas for the last several centuries.
That's exactly what the Victorians did. The Victorians routinely pulled down things they didn't like and put up what they wanted instead.
If we decide we no longer want up what the Victorians put up, and want to put something else up instead, that's our choice.
And if our descendants decide they don't like what we put up, and want to replace it, that's their choice.
Personally I would rather be hanged than had my children taken away from me and forcibly adopted. Parents, particularly Mothers, who suffer that fate live a living death.
At least you had to be convicted beyond reasonable doubt by a jury to be hanged. Mothers have their children forcibly adopted (with gagging orders placed on them) on the balance of probabilty in an in camera court on a judges say so.
Most Britons were at the time.
that sort of the lefty feel good bs is why the tories have just lost millions of votes to reform
No common sense at all !l
32 Farview Rd, Rehoboth Beach, DE 19971
If you were a child abuser (and clearly you are not) your feelings about whether your children should be taken away is neither here nor there’s. It is better that 100 children be put into care by mistake than 1 suffer horrific abuse. Parent’s feelings shouldn’t come into it. Unfortunately all too often they do. This sentimental crap needs to end.
Having sex other than for its intended purpose of procreation was frowned upon.
https://news.sky.com/story/trump-biden-drop-out-democrat-candidate-shooting-latest-live-sky-news-blog-13177655
I would have been kicked out for confession because the priest would have told me 'You're not confessing, you're boasting' and when I did do a bad thing I would have asked how many Hail Marys do I need to say, also I would have struggled with the act of contrition.
Possibly both.
EDIT Moron.
Open your eyes
Even UK uni science depts are packed to the brim with Chinese and Indians !!
Wonder how that happened
As I said to Mr Bed, they are not being taught advanced engineering at school. If they were then why are they doing it at University? You don’t get taught advanced engineering at school anywhere.
Open your eyes! Stop getting your news from Facebook.
Can imagine it came up quite often on the doorstep!
"What I really hate about the Tories, is their precious William Woke Shakespeare; 'this sceptred isle' my arse! Not when it's being overrun by Othello and his lot."
[**Other religious groups are naturally of no matter]
There's always a pecking order, isn't there...
And that dosent mean you should drag their other four healthy children kicking and screaming from their home in case they might get injured too.
I knew someone who fostered kids. In the end they virtually had a breakdown and stopped. The rules were that every time the fostered kid had even a small bruise it had to be reported to social services who then started an investigation, with their own kids at risk of being taken away from them too.
Sorry, but good for the Roma. If the English reacted like this to agents of the state interfering with them, the authorities would tread a lot more carefully. We could learn a lot from both the French and Northern Irish in this regard.
> Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, Vassar, Wellesley.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosexuality.
Plenty more about it if you care to ask Mr Google.
Only NI higher, with 78% of Northern Irish Christian stil and just 17% non religious
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/21/majority-of-people-in-scotland-do-not-believe-in-any-religion-census-shows#:~:text=Overall, only 38.8% of Scotland's,people saying they were Christian.
https://www.nisra.gov.uk/system/files/statistics/census-2021-main-statistics-for-northern-ireland-phase-1-statistical-bulletin-religion.pdf