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""
'In response to the question “How many rocks should I eat?”, Google presented this AI Overview: “According to UC Berkeley geologists, eating at least one small rock per day is recommended because rocks contain minerals and vitamins that are important for digestive health.” Meanwhile, someone who asked about “cheese not sticking to pizza” was recommended to “add about 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to give it more tackiness”. Naturally, it didn’t take long for somebody to make and eat the glue pizza.
The erroneous information came from obviously dubious sources. Eating rocks was suggested by an article on satirical site the Onion, while the glue pizza idea was a post by “Fucksmith” on Reddit 11 years ago. Google was roundly mocked online and responded with a blog post essentially saying that these were growing pains and that the product would improve.'
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?
If it gets good exam results yes, provided they don't preach terrorism and breaching the law
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.
***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?
Catholic Muslim.
I do like the Catholic belief that faith must be backed up by deeds.
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 one where I said that people playing the system to get benefits for subjective conditions like ADHD since the 2 child UC/Tx
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?
Catholic Muslim.
I do like the Catholic belief that faith must be backed up by deeds.
OTOH the Calkvinist Presbyterian view is that you should do the deeds anyway even if you have faith. By their fruit shall ye know them.
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.
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""
'In response to the question “How many rocks should I eat?”, Google presented this AI Overview: “According to UC Berkeley geologists, eating at least one small rock per day is recommended because rocks contain minerals and vitamins that are important for digestive health.” Meanwhile, someone who asked about “cheese not sticking to pizza” was recommended to “add about 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to give it more tackiness”. Naturally, it didn’t take long for somebody to make and eat the glue pizza.
The erroneous information came from obviously dubious sources. Eating rocks was suggested by an article on satirical site the Onion, while the glue pizza idea was a post by “Fucksmith” on Reddit 11 years ago. Google was roundly mocked online and responded with a blog post essentially saying that these were growing pains and that the product would improve.'
We're living in a post-truth era without most people really realising it yet.
Google is so enshittified by fake SEO BS + AI spam now "truth" is getting harder and harder to find. I generally add "wikipedia" or "reddit" to a search just to see either an approximation of crowdsourced truth, or crowdsourced real people's opinions who aren't an AI pumping out a 600 word article for SEO. Beyond, that, search is useless.
This will get worse.
The internet is broken, and has been for a while. Dunno what it's gonna take for people to wake up to that.
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?
If it gets good exam results yes, provided they don't preach terrorism and breaching the law
I'm afraid I'll never agree that good exam results are the sole point of an education. Why do we insist kids go to school? Most could get better exam results from home.
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 comments the other day where I said that councils are so overwhelmed with people playing the system to get disability element of TC/UC and exemption from the two child cap that people whos kids really do have special needs who have no desire to play the system and no "ability" to play the system get absolutely put through the wringer and struggle to get anything?
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?
To go onto be engineers those Chinese students will have studied classical Chinese from junior high school and to pass their university qualification exams they need to show a high degree of familiarity with a wide range of texts and poems going back 3000 years.
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?
Catholic Muslim.
I do like the Catholic belief that faith must be backed up by deeds.
OTOH the Calkvinist Presbyterian view is that you should do the deeds anyway even if you have faith. By their fruit shall ye know them.
Believe the text in latest revision of Revised Standard Bible now reads "by their pineapple toppings shall ye know them".
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”.
For fuck’s sake! Can nobody cull the arseholes that have so little understanding of history that they think that’s a good idea?
Okay as a history graduate and collector of Victoriana I'll have a go at playing devil's advocate. Of course historical writing shouldn't impose contemporary values on the past but we do have the right to shape our own urban spaces. We don't have to memorialise the same people as our ancestors who themselves chose who they wished to honour in public spaces.
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?
Catholic Muslim.
I do like the Catholic belief that faith must be backed up by deeds.
OTOH the Calkvinist Presbyterian view is that you should do the deeds anyway even if you have faith. By their fruit shall ye know them.
I don't think I would have lasted long in a faith that is an anagram of Britney Spears.
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."
No but I bet you Cameron gove and their left wing agenda did
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.
I don’t know the ins and outs of all Indian schools but even if some do I would be SHOCKED if they were teaching Shakespeare in Hindi !! Use some critical thinking !!
I see you’ve resorted to tedious arguments on the meaning of “advanced”. Ok, let’s say above “advanced level” !!
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?
To go onto be engineers those Chinese students will have studied classical Chinese from junior high school and to pass their university qualification exams they need to show a high degree of familiarity with a wide range of texts and poems going back 3000 years.
That is also a route to learning the language. So it isn't quite the same thing. In Taiwan, kids learned, and were tested on, 10 new characters every day from grade one. They were still learning new characters at University.
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?
Catholic Muslim.
I do like the Catholic belief that faith must be backed up by deeds.
OTOH the Calkvinist Presbyterian view is that you should do the deeds anyway even if you have faith. By their fruit shall ye know them.
I don't think I would have lasted long in a faith that is an anagram of Britney Spears.
That's certainly an original and logically reasoned objection. Its validity, though ...
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.
Actually there is a grain of truth there, for varying levels of the term "advanced".
School ending at 16 and the English system where most people drop maths at 16 is extremely unusual in the developed world.
School until 18, with Maths to 18 is normal in most schoolchildren's education. Though that's in addition to literature, science and other subjects continuing until 18 too.
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?
Catholic Muslim.
I do like the Catholic belief that faith must be backed up by deeds.
OTOH the Calkvinist Presbyterian view is that you should do the deeds anyway even if you have faith. By their fruit shall ye know them.
I don't think I would have lasted long in a faith that is an anagram of Britney Spears.
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?
To go onto be engineers those Chinese students will have studied classical Chinese from junior high school and to pass their university qualification exams they need to show a high degree of familiarity with a wide range of texts and poems going back 3000 years.
Sure. But they will have still had to study rather a lot of Engineering and Maths as well. Even in England 30 years ago doing BTEC ONC/HNC engineering or degree level engineering (I did all three) you had to do general studies.
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?
Catholic Muslim.
I do like the Catholic belief that faith must be backed up by deeds.
OTOH the Calkvinist Presbyterian view is that you should do the deeds anyway even if you have faith. By their fruit shall ye know them.
I don't think I would have lasted long in a faith that is an anagram of Britney Spears.
That's certainly an original and logically reasoned objection. Its validity, though ...
Well technically it is an anagram of Presbyterians.
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?
Catholic Muslim.
I do like the Catholic belief that faith must be backed up by deeds.
OTOH the Calkvinist Presbyterian view is that you should do the deeds anyway even if you have faith. By their fruit shall ye know them.
I don't think I would have lasted long in a faith that is an anagram of Britney Spears.
That's certainly an original and logically reasoned objection. Its validity, though ...
Well technically it is an anagram of Presbyterians.
I'll excuse the (presumed) apostrophe, but you wouldn't get away with that in a game of Scrabble.
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.
.. But then how will you know** who's a Tim and who's a Proddy? Talk sense, man.
[**Other religious groups are naturally of no matter]
Being called Bernadette or Mary is a bit of a giveaway.
Still think it's 99.46% certain, that best way to quickly determine a Northern Irish person's family religious background, without asking directly, is by determining a) their first (and middle) name; and b) elementary/secondary schools they attended.
Labour might possibly fix one or two other things but they're going to fuck up education, aren't they?
I don't think they're really going to fix anything, CR. They're carrying forwards basically all of the same policies from the previous government and we know that doesn't work. Worse is that they're doing things that are actively harmful to the nation such as blocking all new oil and gas licences and this new stupid push for solar rather than pumping the money into nuclear SMRs.
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""
'In response to the question “How many rocks should I eat?”, Google presented this AI Overview: “According to UC Berkeley geologists, eating at least one small rock per day is recommended because rocks contain minerals and vitamins that are important for digestive health.” Meanwhile, someone who asked about “cheese not sticking to pizza” was recommended to “add about 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to give it more tackiness”. Naturally, it didn’t take long for somebody to make and eat the glue pizza.
The erroneous information came from obviously dubious sources. Eating rocks was suggested by an article on satirical site the Onion, while the glue pizza idea was a post by “Fucksmith” on Reddit 11 years ago. Google was roundly mocked online and responded with a blog post essentially saying that these were growing pains and that the product would improve.'
We're living in a post-truth era without most people really realising it yet.
Google is so enshittified by fake SEO BS + AI spam now "truth" is getting harder and harder to find. I generally add "wikipedia" or "reddit" to a search just to see either an approximation of crowdsourced truth, or crowdsourced real people's opinions who aren't an AI pumping out a 600 word article for SEO. Beyond, that, search is useless.
This will get worse.
The internet is broken, and has been for a while. Dunno what it's gonna take for people to wake up to that.
Twenty years ago a search would produce pages and pages of links that would reveal all sorts of interesting and obscure nuggets if you persued it in order of no more than how closely aligned to the search words you put in the text on the link was. Alas no more. It is harder and harder to find things.
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”.
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?
If it gets good exam results yes, provided they don't preach terrorism and breaching the law
I'm afraid I'll never agree that good exam results are the sole point of an education. Why do we insist kids go to school? Most could get better exam results from home.
Given most don't have parents who are graduates unlike teachers unlikely. Extra curricular activities important but most faith schools do plenty of those as well
Labour might possibly fix one or two other things but they're going to fuck up education, aren't they?
I don't think they're really going to fix anything, CR. They're carrying forwards basically all of the same policies from the previous government and we know that doesn't work. Worse is that they're doing things that are actively harmful to the nation such as blocking all new oil and gas licences and this new stupid push for solar rather than pumping the money into nuclear SMRs.
The return of Ed Miliband and the "green revolution" he's promising is highly alarming...
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."
No but I bet you Cameron gove and their left wing agenda did
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.
I don’t know the ins and outs of all Indian schools but even if some do I would be SHOCKED if they were teaching Shakespeare in Hindi !! Use some critical thinking !!
I see you’ve resorted to tedious arguments on the meaning of “advanced”. Ok, let’s say above “advanced level” !!
"You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon!"
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.
I thought everyone already knew about Victorian attitudes to sex? Surely there can't be anyone out there who doesn't.
THis sort of attitude?
'Thomas Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park were Victorian cross-dressers. Both were homosexual men from upper-middle-class families, both enjoyed wearing women's clothes and both enjoyed taking part in theatrical performances—playing the women's roles when they did so. It is possible that they asked for money for sex, although there is some dispute over this. In the late 1860s they were joined on a theatrical tour by Lord Arthur Clinton, the Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Newark. Also homosexual, he and Boulton entered into a relationship; Boulton called himself Clinton's wife, and had cards printed showing his name as Lady Arthur Clinton.'
Labour might possibly fix one or two other things but they're going to fuck up education, aren't they?
Well, free breakfast clubs in every primary is definitely one of the best bits of their manifesto.
"The Labour party has promised to introduce free breakfast clubs in all primary schools in England. Around 12% of state schools in England already offer a taxpayer-subsidised breakfast club through the National School Breakfast Club Programme (NSBP), but Labour’s proposal would expand breakfast clubs to all primary schools in England, continue existing provision for low-income pupils via the NSBP (which is set to run out in July 2025) and increase the generosity of the funding."
As a friend once observed about me, given my attitudes to the monarchy I should be a Puritan but he cannot think of anybody who is less of a Puritan than me.
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.
Actually there is a grain of truth there, for varying levels of the term "advanced".
School ending at 16 and the English system where most people drop maths at 16 is extremely unusual in the developed world.
School until 18, with Maths to 18 is normal in most schoolchildren's education. Though that's in addition to literature, science and other subjects continuing until 18 too.
One of my granddaughters has just completed International Baccalaureate, and her sister is just starting the course. Much wider than A level.
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.
Bingo.
Of course children being dragged kicking and screaming from their home and placed with strangers don't suffer psychological trauma comparable with abuse and children in care never suffer abuse, let alone those unfortunate enough to be in childrens homes. Perish the thought.
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”.
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?
Catholic Muslim.
I do like the Catholic belief that faith must be backed up by deeds.
OTOH the Calkvinist Presbyterian view is that you should do the deeds anyway even if you have faith. By their fruit shall ye know them.
Believe the text in latest revision of Revised Standard Bible now reads "by their pineapple toppings shall ye know them".
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”.
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.
.. But then how will you know** who's a Tim and who's a Proddy? Talk sense, man.
[**Other religious groups are naturally of no matter]
Being called Bernadette or Mary is a bit of a giveaway.
Still think it's 99.46% certain, that best way to quickly determine a Northern Irish person's family religious background, without asking directly, is by determining a) their first (and middle) name; and b) elementary/secondary schools they attended.
According to Mrs. F, the second question asked on a Glasgow dance floor, after “are ye dancin?” was “what school did you go to?”
Labour might possibly fix one or two other things but they're going to fuck up education, aren't they?
Well, free breakfast clubs in every primary is definitely one of the best bits of their manifesto.
"The Labour party has promised to introduce free breakfast clubs in all primary schools in England. Around 12% of state schools in England already offer a taxpayer-subsidised breakfast club through the National School Breakfast Club Programme (NSBP), but Labour’s proposal would expand breakfast clubs to all primary schools in England, continue existing provision for low-income pupils via the NSBP (which is set to run out in July 2025) and increase the generosity of the funding."
Could be a nice help to my wallet
Also, feeding the dears with some reasonably decent food first is a distinct help to learning. Doesn't say much for the Conservative administration that this escaped them. It's hardly the Special Theory of Relativity.
As a friend once observed about me, given my attitudes to the monarchy I should be a Puritan but he cannot think of anybody who is less of a Puritan than me.
The Irish who do not favour the monarchy are not puritan. The pro monarchy lot are the puritans.
Labour might possibly fix one or two other things but they're going to fuck up education, aren't they?
I don't think they're really going to fix anything, CR. They're carrying forwards basically all of the same policies from the previous government and we know that doesn't work. Worse is that they're doing things that are actively harmful to the nation such as blocking all new oil and gas licences and this new stupid push for solar rather than pumping the money into nuclear SMRs.
I'm not sold on nuclear SMRs to be honest. With the way our country is set-up we'll get all the upfront and overhead costs of each plant, but without the big GW power output of a Hinckley or Sizewell that makes it worthwhile. So they'll just be very expensive micro plants.
I'm very sceptical they can churn them out and stick up plants all over the place like CCGTs.
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 ??
#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."
No but I bet you Cameron gove and their left wing agenda did
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.
I don’t know the ins and outs of all Indian schools but even if some do I would be SHOCKED if they were teaching Shakespeare in Hindi !! Use some critical thinking !!
I see you’ve resorted to tedious arguments on the meaning of “advanced”. Ok, let’s say above “advanced level” !!
Shakespeare does indeed get translated as well as read in English in Indian Schools.
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.
Sorry this is bollocks, putting a child in state care is damaging to the child and well documented in and of itself. You are advocating therefore damaging 100 children to save 1 child.
Putting a child into state care by mistake is not a no loss situation
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?
Okay as a history graduate and collector of Victoriana I'll have a go at playing devil's advocate. Of course historical writing shouldn't impose contemporary values on the past but we do have the right to shape our own urban spaces. We don't have to memorialise the same people as our ancestors who themselves chose who they wished to honour in public spaces.
Given the Royal Albert Hall was literally built as a memorial to Prince Albert by Hyde Park where he had held his Great Exhibition, removing his statue would be outrageous. Provide a plaque with context, that is it
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."
No but I bet you Cameron gove and their left wing agenda did
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.
I don’t know the ins and outs of all Indian schools but even if some do I would be SHOCKED if they were teaching Shakespeare in Hindi !! Use some critical thinking !!
I see you’ve resorted to tedious arguments on the meaning of “advanced”. Ok, let’s say above “advanced level” !!
"You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon!"
Nonsense! As a Nazi professor pointed out circa-1935, Shakespeare was prevented from publishing his plays & poems in his native German, by English censorship and repression circa-1600.
I must say, I'm not sensing any sign Biden will pull out tomorrow or Monday: it's more likely he comes out swinging.
But, if he does go, I also don't think he'll slip it to Harris but suggest his delegates ruminate over a beauty parade of 3 to 4 alternatives.
She ain't popular, she'd possibly do even worse, and, aside from his vanity, I think he cares about blocking Trump - and being seen in history to have blocked Trump - more than anything.
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."
No but I bet you Cameron gove and their left wing agenda did
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.
I don’t know the ins and outs of all Indian schools but even if some do I would be SHOCKED if they were teaching Shakespeare in Hindi !! Use some critical thinking !!
I see you’ve resorted to tedious arguments on the meaning of “advanced”. Ok, let’s say above “advanced level” !!
Shakespeare does indeed get translated as well as read in English in Indian Schools.
As a friend once observed about me, given my attitudes to the monarchy I should be a Puritan but he cannot think of anybody who is less of a Puritan than me.
The Irish who do not favour the monarchy are not puritan. The pro monarchy lot are the puritans.
Albeit the US Puritans certainly weren't and aren't pro monarchy, they are staunchly republican in both senses of the word
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.
Sorry this is bollocks, putting a child in state care is damaging to the child and well documented in and of itself. You are advocating therefore damaging 100 children to save 1 child.
Putting a child into state care by mistake is not a no loss situation
The comment about it being easier to teach a dog to play the piano than get the English to understand risk someone made earlier applies.
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
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?
Okay as a history graduate and collector of Victoriana I'll have a go at playing devil's advocate. Of course historical writing shouldn't impose contemporary values on the past but we do have the right to shape our own urban spaces. We don't have to memorialise the same people as our ancestors who themselves chose who they wished to honour in public spaces.
Given the Royal Albert Hall was literally built as a memorial to Prince Albert by Hyde Park where he had held his Great Exhibition, removing his statue would be outrageous. Provide a plaque with context, that is it
Making a Great Exhibition of your Prince Albert could well get you arrested.
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?
Okay as a history graduate and collector of Victoriana I'll have a go at playing devil's advocate. Of course historical writing shouldn't impose contemporary values on the past but we do have the right to shape our own urban spaces. We don't have to memorialise the same people as our ancestors who themselves chose who they wished to honour in public spaces.
Given the Royal Albert Hall was literally built as a memorial to Prince Albert by Hyde Park where he had held his Great Exhibition, removing his statue would be outrageous. Provide a plaque with context, that is it
Making a Great Exhibition of your Prince Albert could well get you arrested.
And signing the nonce jotter for the rest of your life.
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.
The hell it is.
That's the attitude of those saying it is better that 100 innocent adults be put in jail than 1 murderer be freed.
It is better that no children be put into care by mistake.
Labour might possibly fix one or two other things but they're going to fuck up education, aren't they?
I don't think they're really going to fix anything, CR. They're carrying forwards basically all of the same policies from the previous government and we know that doesn't work. Worse is that they're doing things that are actively harmful to the nation such as blocking all new oil and gas licences and this new stupid push for solar rather than pumping the money into nuclear SMRs.
I'm not sold on nuclear SMRs to be honest. With the way our country is set-up we'll get all the upfront and overhead costs of each plant, but without the big GW power output of a Hinckley or Sizewell that makes it worthwhile. So they'll just be very expensive micro plants.
I'm very sceptical they can churn them out and stick up plants all over the place like CCGTs.
You just stick them on the existing sites of decommissioned reactors. That would sidestep a lot of planning rules, the manufacturing process will be £10bn for the first one and then the subsequent units will be way less plus it's a huge export opportunity for us as a nation.
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
Labour might possibly fix one or two other things but they're going to fuck up education, aren't they?
I don't think they're really going to fix anything, CR. They're carrying forwards basically all of the same policies from the previous government and we know that doesn't work. Worse is that they're doing things that are actively harmful to the nation such as blocking all new oil and gas licences and this new stupid push for solar rather than pumping the money into nuclear SMRs.
I'm not sold on nuclear SMRs to be honest. With the way our country is set-up we'll get all the upfront and overhead costs of each plant, but without the big GW power output of a Hinckley or Sizewell that makes it worthwhile. So they'll just be very expensive micro plants.
I'm very sceptical they can churn them out and stick up plants all over the place like CCGTs.
You just stick them on the existing sites of decommissioned reactors. That would sidestep a lot of planning rules, the manufacturing process will be £10bn for the first one and then the subsequent units will be way less plus it's a huge export opportunity for us as a nation.
If you pass an act of parliament to permit the thing to be built (like wot they used to do with Railways) then it voids the need for planning consent and voids any clause in any other act that conflicts)
This is what Starmer needs to do in various matters if he is to have any chance of succeeding in his project
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?
Okay as a history graduate and collector of Victoriana I'll have a go at playing devil's advocate. Of course historical writing shouldn't impose contemporary values on the past but we do have the right to shape our own urban spaces. We don't have to memorialise the same people as our ancestors who themselves chose who they wished to honour in public spaces.
Given the Royal Albert Hall was literally built as a memorial to Prince Albert by Hyde Park where he had held his Great Exhibition, removing his statue would be outrageous. Provide a plaque with context, that is it
Why would it be outrageous? From an artistic preservation view absolutely but do you think we have to continue to keep everyone's statue in the place where it was originally put? The Victorians wouldn't have agreed with that and were perfectly happy to shape their own urban spaces. For the record I admire Prince Albert hugely and would definitely keep his memorial in place but I find the principle that we absolutely have to keep every statue or memorial in place rather psuedo historical.
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
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.
Bingo.
Of course children being dragged kicking and screaming from their home and placed with strangers don't suffer psychological trauma comparable with abuse and children in care never suffer abuse, let alone those unfortunate enough to be in childrens homes. Perish the thought.
I used to know a chap who managed the LEA side of educating children in the care system in our local authority. From what he said about the average outcomes of being a "looked after" child, I think the bar to be taken into care should be phenomenally high. Much as one destests the average low level child neglecter/abuser, their kids probably get better outcomes left with them than dumped into the state sponsored child abuse of the care system.
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
Ye, there's a big old subplot on what happens should Biden go. I think Pelosi wants someone other than Harris.
Pete Buttigieg please.
Some modest self effacing chap tipped him at 320s yesterday.
I am going to be so pissed if Pelosi endorses Michelle Obama or Gavin Newsom.
Oh crap, which state is Pelosi from?
Newsom's biggest problem amongst the beauty parade is that he doesn't carry a competitive state. That means if you're Pelosi and looking at a non Harris character then Shapiro and Whitmer are much better bets to win the WH, as they both come with pretty much a guaranteed lock on a key state.
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.
I'm not sure that "the nine" really holds today, tbh, possibly in part due to gender - the girls I met from cheltenham ladies were posher than some of the nine that didn't admit girls. Including myself.
Is Stowe really less well heeled than Shrewsbury? To name but one. During my time it took a greater percentage of rich thickoes. And why not include Ampleforth, if you're a Catholic? I'd argue it's better than most of "the nine" if you're not bothered about your kids being buggered by monks.
The narcissism of small differences applies, obviously. But there are probably about thirty or forty really good name brand "public schools" out there that most people will have heard of - badminton, clifton college, dulwich (old boys including Raymond Chandler and N. Farage) etc.
Obvs Eton, Harrow, Westminster etc are always going to be what we define as a public school. But what differentiates the type of people who send their kids to Ampleforth or Benenden from St Armapit of Local Middleclassdom and co?
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?
Okay as a history graduate and collector of Victoriana I'll have a go at playing devil's advocate. Of course historical writing shouldn't impose contemporary values on the past but we do have the right to shape our own urban spaces. We don't have to memorialise the same people as our ancestors who themselves chose who they wished to honour in public spaces.
Given the Royal Albert Hall was literally built as a memorial to Prince Albert by Hyde Park where he had held his Great Exhibition, removing his statue would be outrageous. Provide a plaque with context, that is it
What is outrageous about it?
The Victorians were quite happy to remove any memorials they weren't keen on and put their own up instead.
If we decide we no longer want Victorian memorials and want to put our own up instead, then that'd be acting exactly like the Victorians.
And if our descendants choose to remove our memorials and put their own up, there'd be nothing wrong with that either.
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
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.
Bingo.
Of course children being dragged kicking and screaming from their home and placed with strangers don't suffer psychological trauma comparable with abuse and children in care never suffer abuse, let alone those unfortunate enough to be in childrens homes. Perish the thought.
I used to know a chap who managed the LEA side of educating children in the care system in our local authority. From what he said about the average outcomes of being a "looked after" child, I think the bar to be taken into care should be phenomenally high. Much as one destests the average low level child neglecter/abuser, their kids probably get better outcomes left with them than dumped into the state sponsored child abuse of the care system.
Had the Roma parents at the root of the issue actually been abusing their kids, I suspect that far from the rest of the community turning on the police in their defence, the police would be kept busy stopping the rest of the community from meting out brutal summary justice to them.
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?
Okay as a history graduate and collector of Victoriana I'll have a go at playing devil's advocate. Of course historical writing shouldn't impose contemporary values on the past but we do have the right to shape our own urban spaces. We don't have to memorialise the same people as our ancestors who themselves chose who they wished to honour in public spaces.
Given the Royal Albert Hall was literally built as a memorial to Prince Albert by Hyde Park where he had held his Great Exhibition, removing his statue would be outrageous. Provide a plaque with context, that is it
What is outrageous about it?
The Victorians were quite happy to remove any memorials they weren't keen on and put their own up instead.
If we decide we no longer want Victorian memorials and want to put our own up instead, then that'd be acting exactly like the Victorians.
And if our descendants choose to remove our memorials and put their own up, there'd be nothing wrong with that either.
The only one the Victorians removed was of the Duke of Cumberland over Culloden.
That is a completely different case to a memorial to the man in whose name the Royal Albert Hall was built, removal of which would be just yet another example of the woke left attack on our history, which you no doubt support anyway
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
Ye, there's a big old subplot on what happens should Biden go. I think Pelosi wants someone other than Harris.
Pete Buttigieg please.
Some modest self effacing chap tipped him at 320s yesterday.
I am going to be so pissed if Pelosi endorses Michelle Obama or Gavin Newsom.
Oh crap, which state is Pelosi from?
America will never elect a gay as president while we're alive.
They'd never elect a black as President while we're alive either too.
Until they did.
No, electing a black (or woman) president was inevitable. With the right candidate that could win over enough slightly racist Americans plus liberals it was going to happen. Being gay is something that even loads of liberals struggle with let alone traditional values types. There isn't a coalition of voters across enough states to vote for it. Obama was like average Americans, he had a wife, two daughters and a dog, white or black people can identify and understand that. A gay couple with adopted children isn't going to win the same votes.
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
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.
That's an appalling suggestion. So people should be compelled to go to an inferior school rather than go to a better school that's further away, even if the better school is also a state school?
Your logic is like saying all adults need to work at the nearest employer.
The purpose of the roads and transport is to get people moved about, education is every bit as valuable as employment. I have far more respect for people who care about their kids education enough to drive them to a school that suits them, than just dumping them in any old local school as if school is nothing more than a glorified daycare.
Parental choice also assumes parents can tell a good school from a bad one, especially as most schools are much of a muchness, and also that school quality is static despite the annual turnover of staff and pupils. In any case, the net result is the same number of children in the same number of schools. If you send your twins to Eton, two children who otherwise could have gone to Eton will end up at Harrow.
So we end up driving children across town for no real benefit.
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?
Okay as a history graduate and collector of Victoriana I'll have a go at playing devil's advocate. Of course historical writing shouldn't impose contemporary values on the past but we do have the right to shape our own urban spaces. We don't have to memorialise the same people as our ancestors who themselves chose who they wished to honour in public spaces.
Given the Royal Albert Hall was literally built as a memorial to Prince Albert by Hyde Park where he had held his Great Exhibition, removing his statue would be outrageous. Provide a plaque with context, that is it
Why would it be outrageous? From an artistic preservation view absolutely but do you think we have to continue to keep everyone's statue in the place where it was originally put? The Victorians wouldn't have agreed with that and were perfectly happy to shape their own urban spaces. For the record I admire Prince Albert hugely and would definitely keep his memorial in place but I find the principle that we absolutely have to keep every statue or memorial in place rather psuedo historical.
It would be outrageous as the Royal Albert Hall was literally built in his memory!
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
I am sure Trump is scared whitless by a nomination for elitists California left liberal Harris with a full endorsement from elitist Massachusetts left liberal Elizabeth Warren
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
Ye, there's a big old subplot on what happens should Biden go. I think Pelosi wants someone other than Harris.
Pete Buttigieg please.
Some modest self effacing chap tipped him at 320s yesterday.
I am going to be so pissed if Pelosi endorses Michelle Obama or Gavin Newsom.
Oh crap, which state is Pelosi from?
America will never elect a gay as president while we're alive.
Sadly true. Mayor Pete is one of the best presidents the US will never have, because a gay POTUS ain't gonna happen in our lifetime.
I was on a cruise with Americans in 2020. Mainly older non-Trump Republicans. I suggested that Mayor Pete would never be POTUS because of his sexuality. They were quite offended that I believed the US to be so unenlightened. They didn't see Pete as a problem.
Clearly just a Leonesque anecdote but it surprised me
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?
Okay as a history graduate and collector of Victoriana I'll have a go at playing devil's advocate. Of course historical writing shouldn't impose contemporary values on the past but we do have the right to shape our own urban spaces. We don't have to memorialise the same people as our ancestors who themselves chose who they wished to honour in public spaces.
Given the Royal Albert Hall was literally built as a memorial to Prince Albert by Hyde Park where he had held his Great Exhibition, removing his statue would be outrageous. Provide a plaque with context, that is it
What is outrageous about it?
The Victorians were quite happy to remove any memorials they weren't keen on and put their own up instead.
If we decide we no longer want Victorian memorials and want to put our own up instead, then that'd be acting exactly like the Victorians.
And if our descendants choose to remove our memorials and put their own up, there'd be nothing wrong with that either.
The only one the Victorians removed was of the Duke of Cumberland over Culloden.
That is a completely different case to a memorial to the man in whose name the Royal Albert Hall was built, removal of which would be just yet another example of the woke left attack on our history, which you no doubt support anyway
Cumberland is just a single example.
Other prominent examples.
Statues of Cromwell were removed, relocated or altered by the Victorians.
Multiple statues of Roman emperors and other ancient figures were removed or relocated by the Victorians too.
And that's just in the UK, not counting what they did elsewhere.
The Victorians were quite happy to reshape the world to be how they wanted it to be. We have every right to do the same.
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.
That's an appalling suggestion. So people should be compelled to go to an inferior school rather than go to a better school that's further away, even if the better school is also a state school?
Your logic is like saying all adults need to work at the nearest employer.
The purpose of the roads and transport is to get people moved about, education is every bit as valuable as employment. I have far more respect for people who care about their kids education enough to drive them to a school that suits them, than just dumping them in any old local school as if school is nothing more than a glorified daycare.
It's the case for more rural parents that there's likely only one likely state school for their kids (Certainly secondary). I *think* I'm in that position with both primary (Though that'll be rarer) and secondary. I'm not particularly worried about it.
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
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.
I don’t think you’re allowed actively to take the piss, though ?
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?
Even in the 1930s they could do that. It is the opaque and kafkaesque powers the 1989 Childrens Act give them that is the problem.
Particularly powers that give them the power to remove children from their parents who have not been abused because they decide they are at risk of future emotional harm (which can mean anything) with the whole thing done in an in-camera court and the parent put in prison for contempt of court if they so much as tell anyone about it.
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
Ye, there's a big old subplot on what happens should Biden go. I think Pelosi wants someone other than Harris.
Pete Buttigieg please.
Some modest self effacing chap tipped him at 320s yesterday.
I am going to be so pissed if Pelosi endorses Michelle Obama or Gavin Newsom.
Oh crap, which state is Pelosi from?
Newsom's biggest problem amongst the beauty parade is that he doesn't carry a competitive state. That means if you're Pelosi and looking at a non Harris character then Shapiro and Whitmer are much better bets to win the WH, as they both come with pretty much a guaranteed lock on a key state.
It is in the nature of politics that behind the scenes people like Newsom are trying to work out whether it is better there is a contested convention and they might win the nomination vs letting Biden or Harris lose to Trump 2.0 and then can run in 2028 as a non-loser.
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.
I don’t think you’re allowed actively to take the piss, though ?
You mean Father Ted isn't a fly on the wall documentary?
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?
Okay as a history graduate and collector of Victoriana I'll have a go at playing devil's advocate. Of course historical writing shouldn't impose contemporary values on the past but we do have the right to shape our own urban spaces. We don't have to memorialise the same people as our ancestors who themselves chose who they wished to honour in public spaces.
Given the Royal Albert Hall was literally built as a memorial to Prince Albert by Hyde Park where he had held his Great Exhibition, removing his statue would be outrageous. Provide a plaque with context, that is it
What is outrageous about it?
The Victorians were quite happy to remove any memorials they weren't keen on and put their own up instead.
If we decide we no longer want Victorian memorials and want to put our own up instead, then that'd be acting exactly like the Victorians.
And if our descendants choose to remove our memorials and put their own up, there'd be nothing wrong with that either.
The only one the Victorians removed was of the Duke of Cumberland over Culloden.
That is a completely different case to a memorial to the man in whose name the Royal Albert Hall was built, removal of which would be just yet another example of the woke left attack on our history, which you no doubt support anyway
Cumberland is just a single example.
Other prominent examples.
Statues of Cromwell were removed, relocated or altered by the Victorians.
Multiple statues of Roman emperors and other ancient figures were removed or relocated by the Victorians too.
And that's just in the UK, not counting what they did elsewhere.
The Victorians were quite happy to reshape the world to be how they wanted it to be. We have every right to do the same.
The statue of Cromwell remains outside Parliament. A few ancient classical statutes may have been relocated, they were not removed.
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
Ye, there's a big old subplot on what happens should Biden go. I think Pelosi wants someone other than Harris.
Pete Buttigieg please.
Some modest self effacing chap tipped him at 320s yesterday.
I am going to be so pissed if Pelosi endorses Michelle Obama or Gavin Newsom.
Oh crap, which state is Pelosi from?
Newsom's biggest problem amongst the beauty parade is that he doesn't carry a competitive state. That means if you're Pelosi and looking at a non Harris character then Shapiro and Whitmer are much better bets to win the WH, as they both come with pretty much a guaranteed lock on a key state.
It is in the nature of politics that behind the scenes people like Newsom are trying to work out whether it is better there is a contested convention and they might win the nomination vs letting Biden or Harris lose to Trump 2.0 and then can run in 2028 as a non-loser.
Provided a returned President Trump hasn't interned them for unAmerican activities of course with a flexible interpretation of the Constitution from a largely supportive SC in his favour
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
Ye, there's a big old subplot on what happens should Biden go. I think Pelosi wants someone other than Harris.
Pete Buttigieg please.
Some modest self effacing chap tipped him at 320s yesterday.
I am going to be so pissed if Pelosi endorses Michelle Obama or Gavin Newsom.
Oh crap, which state is Pelosi from?
America will never elect a gay as president while we're alive.
Sadly true. Mayor Pete is one of the best presidents the US will never have, because a gay POTUS ain't gonna happen in our lifetime.
I was on a cruise with Americans in 2020. Mainly older non-Trump Republicans. I suggested that Mayor Pete would never be POTUS because of his sexuality. They were quite offended that I believed the US to be so unenlightened. They didn't see Pete as a problem.
Clearly just a Leonesque anecdote but it surprised me
The biggest concern about his sexuality is likely to come from evangelicals and some African Americans, Haley backing Republicans won't be a problem
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
Ye, there's a big old subplot on what happens should Biden go. I think Pelosi wants someone other than Harris.
Pete Buttigieg please.
Some modest self effacing chap tipped him at 320s yesterday.
I am going to be so pissed if Pelosi endorses Michelle Obama or Gavin Newsom.
Oh crap, which state is Pelosi from?
Newsom's biggest problem amongst the beauty parade is that he doesn't carry a competitive state. That means if you're Pelosi and looking at a non Harris character then Shapiro and Whitmer are much better bets to win the WH, as they both come with pretty much a guaranteed lock on a key state.
It is in the nature of politics that behind the scenes people like Newsom are trying to work out whether it is better there is a contested convention and they might win the nomination vs letting Biden or Harris lose to Trump 2.0 and then can run in 2028 as a non-loser.
Lose to Trump 2.0 and there won't be a 2028 election. At least not a free and fair one.
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
Ye, there's a big old subplot on what happens should Biden go. I think Pelosi wants someone other than Harris.
Pete Buttigieg please.
Some modest self effacing chap tipped him at 320s yesterday.
I am going to be so pissed if Pelosi endorses Michelle Obama or Gavin Newsom.
Oh crap, which state is Pelosi from?
America will never elect a gay as president while we're alive.
Sadly true. Mayor Pete is one of the best presidents the US will never have, because a gay POTUS ain't gonna happen in our lifetime.
I was on a cruise with Americans in 2020. Mainly older non-Trump Republicans. I suggested that Mayor Pete would never be POTUS because of his sexuality. They were quite offended that I believed the US to be so unenlightened. They didn't see Pete as a problem.
Clearly just a Leonesque anecdote but it surprised me
As others have pointed out downthread, Mayor Pete does badly with black voters where, sadly, homophobia remains culturally ingrained. They have a word for the whole subculture, "down-low", meaning men who identify as straight but also fuck other guys - which exists to an extent in white culture in both the US and UK, but the extent to which it exists in the black community in the US, gives you an idea of why a) Buttigieg won't win and b) why he polls poorly in black communities.
There is work to be done, sadly, and even if Mayor Pete's sexuality means he polls just 2% less than other candidates, that can easily be the tipping point in a presidential election.
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?
Okay as a history graduate and collector of Victoriana I'll have a go at playing devil's advocate. Of course historical writing shouldn't impose contemporary values on the past but we do have the right to shape our own urban spaces. We don't have to memorialise the same people as our ancestors who themselves chose who they wished to honour in public spaces.
Given the Royal Albert Hall was literally built as a memorial to Prince Albert by Hyde Park where he had held his Great Exhibition, removing his statue would be outrageous. Provide a plaque with context, that is it
Why would it be outrageous? From an artistic preservation view absolutely but do you think we have to continue to keep everyone's statue in the place where it was originally put? The Victorians wouldn't have agreed with that and were perfectly happy to shape their own urban spaces. For the record I admire Prince Albert hugely and would definitely keep his memorial in place but I find the principle that we absolutely have to keep every statue or memorial in place rather psuedo historical.
It would be outrageous as the Royal Albert Hall was literally built in his memory!
I don't entirely see what that has to do with the statue but buildings also change their names regularly. Lancaster House was formerly Stafford House and prior to that York House. Again I don't think we should change the name of the Albert Hall but I defend the right of each generation to choose who they honour.
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.
That's an appalling suggestion. So people should be compelled to go to an inferior school rather than go to a better school that's further away, even if the better school is also a state school?
Your logic is like saying all adults need to work at the nearest employer.
The purpose of the roads and transport is to get people moved about, education is every bit as valuable as employment. I have far more respect for people who care about their kids education enough to drive them to a school that suits them, than just dumping them in any old local school as if school is nothing more than a glorified daycare.
Parental choice also assumes parents can tell a good school from a bad one, especially as most schools are much of a muchness, and also that school quality is static despite the annual turnover of staff and pupils. In any case, the net result is the same number of children in the same number of schools. If you send your twins to Eton, two children who otherwise could have gone to Eton will end up at Harrow.
So we end up driving children across town for no real benefit.
That's the thing with choice, people make choices. Its up to them to decide what's beneficial, not you, and education is every bit as powerful and important as any other reason to be on the road.
I drive my children to their school every day on my way to my own work. They were assigned the school (our second preference for my eldest) years ago and we quite like the school and their friends and support network are at the school.
We've subsequently moved, but chose that since we like the school they're at and they're settled there we don't want to disrupt their education by relocating them to the closer school. It'd make my life easier if they just went to the local school, but their education is too important to disrupt it unnecessarily.
Oh and since my wife and I both work, the kids will be dropped off by car no matter which school they go to. The era of one parent typically not working and being able to walk the kids in is long over.
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival 4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
Ye, there's a big old subplot on what happens should Biden go. I think Pelosi wants someone other than Harris.
Pete Buttigieg please.
Some modest self effacing chap tipped him at 320s yesterday.
I am going to be so pissed if Pelosi endorses Michelle Obama or Gavin Newsom.
Oh crap, which state is Pelosi from?
Oh Eagles. Middle.daughter yesterday complained that one of her teachers was pissed at her - then saw my dark look and said 'sorry, annoyed'. "In this country," I told her "we say pissed off. Not pissed. Unless you mean 'drunk'." "Everyone at my school just says pissed," she replied, defensively. I checked with her older sister. At my oldest's school, proper British values still remain. Pissed means drunk, pissed off means annoyed. But middle daughter's school is rather more, er, urban.
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.
I don’t think you’re allowed actively to take the piss, though ?
You mean Father Ted isn't a fly on the wall documentary?
I have lived in a community of (mostly) trainee vicars.
Comments
Just been reading this:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/20/google-is-the-worlds-biggest-search-engine-broken
'In response to the question “How many rocks should I eat?”, Google presented this AI Overview: “According to UC Berkeley geologists, eating at least one small rock per day is recommended because rocks contain minerals and vitamins that are important for digestive health.” Meanwhile, someone who asked about “cheese not sticking to pizza” was recommended to “add about 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to give it more tackiness”. Naturally, it didn’t take long for somebody to make and eat the glue pizza.
The erroneous information came from obviously dubious sources. Eating rocks was suggested by an article on satirical site the Onion, while the glue pizza idea was a post by “Fucksmith” on Reddit 11 years ago. Google was roundly mocked online and responded with a blog post essentially saying that these were growing pains and that the product would improve.'
I do like the Catholic belief that faith must be backed up by deeds.
Google is so enshittified by fake SEO BS + AI spam now "truth" is getting harder and harder to find. I generally add "wikipedia" or "reddit" to a search just to see either an approximation of crowdsourced truth, or crowdsourced real people's opinions who aren't an AI pumping out a 600 word article for SEO. Beyond, that, search is useless.
This will get worse.
The internet is broken, and has been for a while. Dunno what it's gonna take for people to wake up to that.
Why do we insist kids go to school? Most could get better exam results from home.
I don’t know the ins and outs of all Indian schools but even if some do I would be SHOCKED if they were teaching Shakespeare in Hindi !! Use some critical thinking !!
I see you’ve resorted to tedious arguments on the meaning of “advanced”. Ok, let’s say above “advanced level” !!
In Taiwan, kids learned, and were tested on, 10 new characters every day from grade one.
They were still learning new characters at University.
School ending at 16 and the English system where most people drop maths at 16 is extremely unusual in the developed world.
School until 18, with Maths to 18 is normal in most schoolchildren's education. Though that's in addition to literature, science and other subjects continuing until 18 too.
Well technically it is an anagram of Presbyterians.
Contrast to Wales, where Labour circled the drain, and Scotland where the SNP flushed a previously excellent system down the toilet.
'Thomas Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park were Victorian cross-dressers. Both were homosexual men from upper-middle-class families, both enjoyed wearing women's clothes and both enjoyed taking part in theatrical performances—playing the women's roles when they did so. It is possible that they asked for money for sex, although there is some dispute over this. In the late 1860s they were joined on a theatrical tour by Lord Arthur Clinton, the Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Newark. Also homosexual, he and Boulton entered into a relationship; Boulton called himself Clinton's wife, and had cards printed showing his name as Lady Arthur Clinton.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulton_and_Park
"The Labour party has promised to introduce free breakfast clubs in all primary schools in England. Around 12% of state schools in England already offer a taxpayer-subsidised breakfast club through the National School Breakfast Club Programme (NSBP), but Labour’s proposal would expand breakfast clubs to all primary schools in England, continue existing provision for low-income pupils via the NSBP (which is set to run out in July 2025) and increase the generosity of the funding."
Could be a nice help to my wallet
Of course children being dragged kicking and screaming from their home and placed with strangers don't suffer psychological trauma comparable with abuse and children in care never suffer abuse, let alone those unfortunate enough to be in childrens homes. Perish the thought.
She did it with Albert all the time and viewed children as an unfortunate side effect.
I'm very sceptical they can churn them out and stick up plants all over the place like CCGTs.
https://www.thecuriousreader.in/features/shakespeare-indian-schools/
Putting a child into state care by mistake is not a no loss situation
But, if he does go, I also don't think he'll slip it to Harris but suggest his delegates ruminate over a beauty parade of 3 to 4 alternatives.
She ain't popular, she'd possibly do even worse, and, aside from his vanity, I think he cares about blocking Trump - and being seen in history to have blocked Trump - more than anything.
@josephzeballos
👀Sen. Elizabeth Warren to MSNBC: “If President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party”
Adds Dems are “very lucky” to have Harris
Notable support for Harris from an influential progressive + 2020 rival
4:19 pm · 20 Jul 2024"
https://x.com/josephzeballos/status/1814681469534486929
That's the attitude of those saying it is better that 100 innocent adults be put in jail than 1 murderer be freed.
It is better that no children be put into care by mistake.
EXCL - Yvette Cooper has ordered the Home Office to launch a summer blitz of illegal immigration raids.
Car washes and beauty salons will be targeted.
Labour are deploying 1,000 new staff to speed up deportations
FFS - hand the torch now to a new generation.
Brian Krassenstein
@krassenstein
Wow.
If you are to watch one video this morning, watch this.
https://x.com/krassenstein/status/1814615918145585526
This is what Starmer needs to do in various matters if he is to have any chance of succeeding in his project
Some modest self effacing chap tipped him at 320s yesterday.
I am going to be so pissed if Pelosi endorses Michelle Obama or Gavin Newsom.
Oh crap, which state is Pelosi from?
Is Stowe really less well heeled than Shrewsbury? To name but one. During my time it took a greater percentage of rich thickoes. And why not include Ampleforth, if you're a Catholic? I'd argue it's better than most of "the nine" if you're not bothered about your kids being buggered by monks.
The narcissism of small differences applies, obviously. But there are probably about thirty or forty really good name brand "public schools" out there that most people will have heard of - badminton, clifton college, dulwich (old boys including Raymond Chandler and N. Farage) etc.
Obvs Eton, Harrow, Westminster etc are always going to be what we define as a public school. But what differentiates the type of people who send their kids to Ampleforth or Benenden from St Armapit of Local Middleclassdom and co?
The Victorians were quite happy to remove any memorials they weren't keen on and put their own up instead.
If we decide we no longer want Victorian memorials and want to put our own up instead, then that'd be acting exactly like the Victorians.
And if our descendants choose to remove our memorials and put their own up, there'd be nothing wrong with that either.
Until they did.
That is a completely different case to a memorial to the man in whose name the Royal Albert Hall was built, removal of which would be just yet another example of the woke left attack on our history, which you no doubt support anyway
So we end up driving children across town for no real benefit.
Though African Americans are less supportive of same sex marriage than white Americans which may be an issue for him, just 51% of Black Americans back same sex marriage compared to 64% of white Americans and 60% of Hispanic Americans
https://www.npr.org/2017/06/26/534443494/same-sex-marriage-support-at-all-time-high-even-among-groups-that-opposed-it
Clearly just a Leonesque anecdote but it surprised me
Other prominent examples.
Statues of Cromwell were removed, relocated or altered by the Victorians.
Multiple statues of Roman emperors and other ancient figures were removed or relocated by the Victorians too.
And that's just in the UK, not counting what they did elsewhere.
The Victorians were quite happy to reshape the world to be how they wanted it to be. We have every right to do the same.
Particularly powers that give them the power to remove children from their parents who have not been abused because they decide they are at risk of future emotional harm (which can mean anything) with the whole thing done in an in-camera court and the parent put in prison for contempt of court if they so much as tell anyone about it.
There is work to be done, sadly, and even if Mayor Pete's sexuality means he polls just 2% less than other candidates, that can easily be the tipping point in a presidential election.
I drive my children to their school every day on my way to my own work. They were assigned the school (our second preference for my eldest) years ago and we quite like the school and their friends and support network are at the school.
We've subsequently moved, but chose that since we like the school they're at and they're settled there we don't want to disrupt their education by relocating them to the closer school. It'd make my life easier if they just went to the local school, but their education is too important to disrupt it unnecessarily.
Oh and since my wife and I both work, the kids will be dropped off by car no matter which school they go to. The era of one parent typically not working and being able to walk the kids in is long over.
Middle.daughter yesterday complained that one of her teachers was pissed at her - then saw my dark look and said 'sorry, annoyed'. "In this country," I told her "we say pissed off. Not pissed. Unless you mean 'drunk'."
"Everyone at my school just says pissed," she replied, defensively.
I checked with her older sister. At my oldest's school, proper British values still remain. Pissed means drunk, pissed off means annoyed. But middle daughter's school is rather more, er, urban.
The reality is far, far weirder.