👀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?
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.
Well said. I'm really pissed off at the rise of 'pissed' for 'pissed off'.
It's up there with mac 'n' cheese for macaroni cheese.
👀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.
I agree. But not sure Americans can see what is so obviously coming.
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.
Alternating names of northern cities is not the same as removing the name of one of the biggest figures of 19th century Britain, it would be a culture war act of left liberal aggression to rename it and the EDL, Farage, Johnson, the tabloid press etc would jump on that accordingly
👀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.
I agree. But not sure Americans can see what is so obviously coming.
Trump's supporters don't care, they would make him President for life if they could
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.
People who choose to live in rural areas choose to live somewhere where there's less choice. Fewer schools, fewer supermarkets, fewer pubs, fewer houses. Kind of the point of being rural, that's their choice though.
For those who aren't rural, there's absolutely nothing wrong with making a choice from what's available. For those who are rural with multiple options, there's absolutely nothing with making a choice from what's available either.
It seems that last nights further demonstrations against the Child Snatchers General (Leeds Social Services) were peaceful and well attended.
Appears that after one of said children presented in hospital with a head injury they decided that there was a risk it was deliberate and their backsides would not be covered the other children might be at risk, unless they were all taken into care (at vast cost to the taxpayer of course).
The parents are now on hunger strike and will do a Bobby Sands unless they are returned.
There will be much more to this story than your short synopsis above.
Of course.
And in social services, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (How were the signs missed???)
Far less consequence (rarely any) if you confiscate the kids and it turns out you did so wrongly than if you don't do anything wrongly in which case a media and state agency circus follows.
Thats how bureaucracies and their precautionary principle works. Better to send them to a camp in Siberia for 20 years than risk them being dangerous traitors now that the KGB has found that there is a risk that they might be traitors after tapping their phone.
How many kids are taken into protection each week in the UK?
What processes are there?
Is a judge involved?
What appeal opportunities are there for parents?
I ask all these questions, because "a story" is usually a dangerously limited set of information to work off.
106 kids per day, 38,792 per year. So 742 per week.
Yes of course there are processes, but unless you are very wealthy and can afford decent legal representation the processes are hopelessly stacked against you, not least as it is a civil not criminal law process so balance of probability with state agencies word carrying a presumption of correctness unless otherwise proven.
Hold on, that's 106 kids total going into care being looked after, that's not 106 kids being taken away from parents.
There are many reasons kids enter the care system. Orphans with nobody to look after them. Parents who abandon their kids. Parents who give their kids up as they can't/don't want to look after them. Parents who are temporarily hospitalised or otherwise too ill to look after children with no other support system, so care is temporarily needed until the parent recovers. And yes, children taken into care against their parents will as well.
You can't count the former as the latter.
EDIT: That's looked after children data not care data, so I believe homeless families who are given temporary accommodation (with the children still with their parents in the accommodation) are counted in that data too.
Be interesting to know what the figure is, that was the best source I could find. The same site says that 104,808 kids are being looked after away from home in the UK.
What all sites discussing it agree on is that the numbers have been inexorably rising for years.
In the five years after Baby P the number taken into care doubled (2008 to 2013) and since then has continued to rise with a further 50% rise (in England) from 2015-2021
Sadly Christopher Booker is no longer alive to shine alight on this most Kafkaesque corner of the state and John Hemming is no longer an MP and able to use parliamentary privilege to ignore secret injunctions by mluds.
Mention of baby P undermines your case really. There would have been nothing nanny state or Kafka about taking him away from the people who tortured him to death.
The whole point is that after this they started grossly overreacting, doubling the number taken in five years, when the cause of baby P was monumental incompetence ignoring the obvious.
Use of hard cases like this and the "it must never happen again mantra" just leads to widespread injustice and misery. In this case the taking of children from their families on the precautionary principle, just in case they might do something horrible.
A tripling of the number of children in care away from home since 2008 on the precautionary principle because of one unpleasant murder is worthy of Stalins Cheka (as are their secretive processes).
I'm not very happy about it as a council tax payer either.
Roughly a child a week is murdered by its step or real parents.
52 a year out of 12.7 million kids. 0.0004%.
Thats a matter for the courts to deal with the parents, not for a standing state inquistion on the parents of the other 12,699,948 children.
Shit happens, people are evil, get over it. We don't live in utopia
So you’d rather wait for the kids to get killed rather than prevent them getting killed? And your justification for that is “shit happens”? Forgive me if I’m not overly impressed by that line of reasoning.
It is the utopian condundrum.
The lower you get the level of unfortunate events the more extreme, disruptive and expensive the measures you need to take to get it to zero. Beyond a certain point you cause far more distress and misery than you save.
The "it must never happen again" brigade won't be happy until we are as spied on and tracked as the Chinese are.
Sorry, but you are writing bollocks. It really isn't a "Utopian conundrum".
Yes it is. The number of children killed per year has not changed greatly since the 1970s at one to two a week. (they only started collecting the stats in 1972).
The NSPCC got very cross about media reports around the millenium that the rate had halved in 30 years when no such thing had happened. They were correct.
Of course, like all bureauracracies their solution to thir ideas not working is more control, more intervention and more taxpayers money. Rinse and repeat.
Of course the obvious solution, hanging the parents who do kill their children, pour les encouragement les autres, is anathema.
It will end when the state is bankrupt.
Kids who are taken into care are not uniformly at risk of being killed. Many of them are “merely” at risk of being abused. But that’s okay in your view? You don’t mention those kids much.
The problem with hanging people is that you are handing to the state the ability to kill people on the say so of other people. Yet you don’t trust the state in any other capacity but you clearly get aroused by the thought of a noose. If someone accused you falsely of a capital crime would you still be a supporter? Because that’s what will happen.
Neither will hanging parents stop kids being killed. It’s not obvious nor is it logical. It will just end in ordinary people being killed.
The Nazis tried everything to reform “problem families”
Including executing people who killed their kids. No noticeable effect…
In the end, they conscripted the men into the army. Where lots graduated to the Dirlewanger Brigade.
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?
"Oh, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on!"
👀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.
Well said. I'm really pissed off at the rise of 'pissed' for 'pissed off'.
It's up there with mac 'n' cheese for macaroni cheese.
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.
People who choose to live in rural areas choose to live somewhere where there's less choice. Fewer schools, fewer supermarkets, fewer pubs, fewer houses. Kind of the point of being rural, that's their choice though.
For those who aren't rural, there's absolutely nothing wrong with making a choice from what's available. For those who are rural with multiple options, there's absolutely nothing with making a choice from what's available either.
There tend to be more churches in rural areas though, even with small congregations and often more pubs. It is often urban areas which have seen the biggest decline in pubs (excluding Wetherspoons) due to competition from cafes, coffee shops and bars while in rural areas pubs are often the only eating and drinking establishment in the village or hamlet
👀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.
Well said. I'm really pissed off at the rise of 'pissed' for 'pissed off'.
It's up there with mac 'n' cheese for macaroni cheese.
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.
I endorse all of this post, but particularly the final paragraph. Large sections of society - including, it would appear, schools - seem to fail to realise that parents have jobs to do. If we drive our kids to school, it's not because we're too lazy to walk, it's because primary schooĺs expect a parent to be there at drop off - at 8.50 - and typically we have to start work about ten minutes later. Getting up earlier won't solve this problem.
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.
Alternating names of northern cities is not the same as removing the name of one of the biggest figures of 19th century Britain, it would be a culture war act of left liberal aggression to rename it and the EDL, Farage, Johnson, the tabloid press etc would jump on that accordingly
Naming public buildings after Germans isn't especially patriotic.
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.
Alternating names of northern cities is not the same as removing the name of one of the biggest figures of 19th century Britain, it would be a culture war act of left liberal aggression to rename it and the EDL, Farage, Johnson, the tabloid press etc would jump on that accordingly
We changed Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor and no-one batted an eyelid.
In an open or contested convention, with Joe Biden out of the race, Kamala Harris starts out with a major advantage over other prospects. Because the Biden 2024 campaign has been functionally (if not legally as per DNC rules and state laws) the Biden/Harris campaign.
For example, every campaign message and fundraising appeal targeting yours truly, via the web and over broadcast TV (don't do cable) has been from Biden / Harris. Note also that fundraising messages sent my way on YouTube for JB/KH have been featured & pretty evenly divided between 3 messangers: Joe Biden, Barrack Obama and . . . wait for it . . . Kamala Harris.
Would also add, that this guff about Harris being the darling and exemplar of the US coastal elites is mostly just that - guff.
Seeing as how her REAL base is with African American voters, which also resonates with MANY White progressives AND moderates.
Notion that Harris is pure poison in Rust Belt and Midwest generally is greatly over-inflated to put it mildly.
Would argue that her actual appeal as candidate for President is actually as yet UNTESTED. And will be UNTIL the incumbent in the White House (currently "vacationing" on the Delaware Shore) leaves the race.
THEN polling for her and other POTUS hopefuls becomes truly relevant and revealing.
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.
Alternating names of northern cities is not the same as removing the name of one of the biggest figures of 19th century Britain, it would be a culture war act of left liberal aggression to rename it and the EDL, Farage, Johnson, the tabloid press etc would jump on that accordingly
We changed Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor and no-one batted an eyelid.
👀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.
Well said. I'm really pissed off at the rise of 'pissed' for 'pissed off'.
It's up there with mac 'n' cheese for macaroni cheese.
👀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.
There are swings and roundabouta here though. There will be some voters who vote for him because he is gay. It won't all be one way.
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.
People who choose to live in rural areas choose to live somewhere where there's less choice. Fewer schools, fewer supermarkets, fewer pubs, fewer houses. Kind of the point of being rural, that's their choice though.
For those who aren't rural, there's absolutely nothing wrong with making a choice from what's available. For those who are rural with multiple options, there's absolutely nothing with making a choice from what's available either.
There tend to be more churches in rural areas though, even with small congregations and often more pubs. It is often urban areas which have seen the biggest decline in pubs (excluding Wetherspoons) due to competition from cafes, coffee shops and bars while in rural areas pubs are often the only eating and drinking establishment in the village or hamlet
That's just daft. You can have a decent pub crawl in just about any town centre. In a village there is one pub, two if you are lucky.
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.
Alternating names of northern cities is not the same as removing the name of one of the biggest figures of 19th century Britain, it would be a culture war act of left liberal aggression to rename it and the EDL, Farage, Johnson, the tabloid press etc would jump on that accordingly
Well alternating Dukes actually. I agree that the Albert Hall shouldn't be renamed (if for no other reason than it's owned by a trust who get to choose what it's called) but the principle isn't outrageous. No city has ever been preserved in aspic, you might as well get annoyed at the Edwardians for demolishing loads of Dickensian streets to build Kingsway and the Strand.
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.
Alternating names of northern cities is not the same as removing the name of one of the biggest figures of 19th century Britain, it would be a culture war act of left liberal aggression to rename it and the EDL, Farage, Johnson, the tabloid press etc would jump on that accordingly
We changed Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor and no-one batted an eyelid.
Was done by popular demand - to put it mildly - in 1916.
When (for some reason) anti-German prejudice in UK reached levels unequaled even in 1940, and not approached until 1970, 1990 and 2010.
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.
Alternating names of northern cities is not the same as removing the name of one of the biggest figures of 19th century Britain, it would be a culture war act of left liberal aggression to rename it and the EDL, Farage, Johnson, the tabloid press etc would jump on that accordingly
We changed Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor and no-one batted an eyelid.
Was done by popular demand - to put it mildly - in 1916.
When (for some reason) anti-German prejudice in UK reached levels unequaled even in 1940, and not approached until 1970, 1990 and 2010.
In an open or contested convention, with Joe Biden out of the race, Kamala Harris starts out with a major advantage over other prospects. Because the Biden 2024 campaign has been functionally (if not legally as per DNC rules and state laws) the Biden/Harris campaign.
For example, every campaign message and fundraising appeal targeting yours truly, via the web and over broadcast TV (don't do cable) has been from Biden / Harris. Note also that fundraising messages sent my way on YouTube for JB/KH have been featured & pretty evenly divided between 3 messangers: Joe Biden, Barrack Obama and . . . wait for it . . . Kamala Harris.
Would also add, that this guff about Harris being the darling and exemplar of the US coastal elites is mostly just that - guff.
Seeing as how her REAL base is with African American voters, which also resonates with MANY White progressives AND moderates.
Notion that Harris is pure poison in Rust Belt and Midwest generally is greatly over-inflated to put it mildly.
Would argue that her actual appeal as candidate for President is actually as yet UNTESTED. And will be UNTIL the incumbent in the White House (currently "vacationing" on the Delaware Shore) leaves the race.
THEN polling for her and other POTUS hopefuls becomes truly relevant and revealing.
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.
People who choose to live in rural areas choose to live somewhere where there's less choice. Fewer schools, fewer supermarkets, fewer pubs, fewer houses. Kind of the point of being rural, that's their choice though.
For those who aren't rural, there's absolutely nothing wrong with making a choice from what's available. For those who are rural with multiple options, there's absolutely nothing with making a choice from what's available either.
There tend to be more churches in rural areas though, even with small congregations and often more pubs. It is often urban areas which have seen the biggest decline in pubs (excluding Wetherspoons) due to competition from cafes, coffee shops and bars while in rural areas pubs are often the only eating and drinking establishment in the village or hamlet
That's just daft. You can have a decent pub crawl in just about any town centre. In a village there is one pub, two if you are lucky.
Well obviously given most towns are about ten times the size of the average village and most cities about 50 times the size and London over a thousand times as big.
However in the average town or even city try and find a non Wetherspoons pub and you will find it much harder than you would have done 25 years ago, many more Starbucks, Prets and Cafe Neros though and plenty of bars still.
Most villages have kept their one pub, many town or city pubs have been forced to close by competition from Wetherspoons or coffee shops and sandwich bars
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.
People who choose to live in rural areas choose to live somewhere where there's less choice. Fewer schools, fewer supermarkets, fewer pubs, fewer houses. Kind of the point of being rural, that's their choice though.
For those who aren't rural, there's absolutely nothing wrong with making a choice from what's available. For those who are rural with multiple options, there's absolutely nothing with making a choice from what's available either.
There tend to be more churches in rural areas though, even with small congregations and often more pubs. It is often urban areas which have seen the biggest decline in pubs (excluding Wetherspoons) due to competition from cafes, coffee shops and bars while in rural areas pubs are often the only eating and drinking establishment in the village or hamlet
That's just daft. You can have a decent pub crawl in just about any town centre. In a village there is one pub, two if you are lucky.
Mm. Not entirely daft. Rings true for me. My own home town of Sale is bloody awful for pubs. There are lots of them, but none better than the town's bog-standard Wetherspoons. Plenty of good places to eat, but rubbish pubs. Head out into the countryside and almost every village will have a better pub than Sale does.
Buttigieg actually increased his vote to 80% in the mayoral election after he came out as gay. South Bend Indiana I assume isn't a bastion of liberalism and it does have a very large black population, who presumably voted for him.
I suspect being a then active serviceman counted for more.
In an open or contested convention, with Joe Biden out of the race, Kamala Harris starts out with a major advantage over other prospects. Because the Biden 2024 campaign has been functionally (if not legally as per DNC rules and state laws) the Biden/Harris campaign.
For example, every campaign message and fundraising appeal targeting yours truly, via the web and over broadcast TV (don't do cable) has been from Biden / Harris. Note also that fundraising messages sent my way on YouTube for JB/KH have been featured & pretty evenly divided between 3 messangers: Joe Biden, Barrack Obama and . . . wait for it . . . Kamala Harris.
Would also add, that this guff about Harris being the darling and exemplar of the US coastal elites is mostly just that - guff.
Seeing as how her REAL base is with African American voters, which also resonates with MANY White progressives AND moderates.
Notion that Harris is pure poison in Rust Belt and Midwest generally is greatly over-inflated to put it mildly.
Would argue that her actual appeal as candidate for President is actually as yet UNTESTED. And will be UNTIL the incumbent in the White House (currently "vacationing" on the Delaware Shore) leaves the race.
THEN polling for her and other POTUS hopefuls becomes truly relevant and revealing.
If Harris is the nominee I expect the lowest Democratic EC vote since Dukakis and the lowest Democratic voteshare since Clinton in 1992 (which was affected by Perot anyway).
Indeed I think Trump could win Nevada, Virginia and Colorado and even New Jersey and Minnesota, Maine and New Hampshire against Harris plus all the states he took against Hillary in 2016
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.
That's not far off what happens in NI.
Fee-paying schools get the normal state contribution, and then charge a mandatory 'capital fee' (determined according to a Department of Education formula) and a 'voluntary charge' on top.
Even accounting for the state grant, you'd expect English schools to cost maybe £8-10k, but they don't, they're all twice or three times as much.
Why, though? I don't really understand why there's such a huge gap - it's not even as if they get better results (in fact, schools in NI tend to be at the top of any combined league tables).
I'm all for private education (and healthcare, for that matter), but don't see why it should attract tax breaks. Just treat it like a normal business, like everything else.
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.
People who choose to live in rural areas choose to live somewhere where there's less choice. Fewer schools, fewer supermarkets, fewer pubs, fewer houses. Kind of the point of being rural, that's their choice though.
For those who aren't rural, there's absolutely nothing wrong with making a choice from what's available. For those who are rural with multiple options, there's absolutely nothing with making a choice from what's available either.
There tend to be more churches in rural areas though, even with small congregations and often more pubs. It is often urban areas which have seen the biggest decline in pubs (excluding Wetherspoons) due to competition from cafes, coffee shops and bars while in rural areas pubs are often the only eating and drinking establishment in the village or hamlet
That's just daft. You can have a decent pub crawl in just about any town centre. In a village there is one pub, two if you are lucky.
Well obviously given most towns are about ten times the size of the average village and most cities about 50 times the size and London over a thousand times as big.
However in the average town or even city try and find a non Wetherspoons pub and you will find it much harder than you would have done 25 years ago, many more Starbucks, Prets and Cafe Neros though and plenty of bars still.
Most villages have kept their one pub, many town or city pubs have been forced to close by competition from Wetherspoons or coffee shops and sandwich bars
That's total bullshit.
There are independent and non-Wetherspoon pubs in every town I go to.
👀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.
There are swings and roundabouta here though. There will be some voters who vote for him because he is gay. It won't all be one way.
Would add that homophobia was NOT he basic problem for Pete Buttigieg in 2020, instead it was poor reviews re: his mayoralty of South Bend, Indiana by many local Blacks. Which was wide publicized via media with strong assist from Harris, Biden and other Democratic caucus & primary opponents.
As far as I can tell, not huge amount of deep-seated African American antipathy. And while there's some leakage toward Trump in parts of Black community, the lion's share of Black voters would rather vote for a Democratic drag queen - think Sec. of Trans (!) with Hillary Clinton's wardrobe - than Trump or Vance.
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.
People who choose to live in rural areas choose to live somewhere where there's less choice. Fewer schools, fewer supermarkets, fewer pubs, fewer houses. Kind of the point of being rural, that's their choice though.
For those who aren't rural, there's absolutely nothing wrong with making a choice from what's available. For those who are rural with multiple options, there's absolutely nothing with making a choice from what's available either.
There tend to be more churches in rural areas though, even with small congregations and often more pubs. It is often urban areas which have seen the biggest decline in pubs (excluding Wetherspoons) due to competition from cafes, coffee shops and bars while in rural areas pubs are often the only eating and drinking establishment in the village or hamlet
That's just daft. You can have a decent pub crawl in just about any town centre. In a village there is one pub, two if you are lucky.
Well obviously given most towns are about ten times the size of the average village and most cities about 50 times the size and London over a thousand times as big.
However in the average town or even city try and find a non Wetherspoons pub and you will find it much harder than you would have done 25 years ago, many more Starbucks, Prets and Cafe Neros though and plenty of bars still.
Most villages have kept their one pub, many town or city pubs have been forced to close by competition from Wetherspoons or coffee shops and sandwich bars
That's total bullshit.
There are independent and non-Wetherspoon pubs in every town I go to.
Over 98.5% of pubs are non-Wetherspoons.
Less than there were a few decades ago, competition from coffee shops as well as Wetherspoons and there are no Wetherspoons in rural areas and villages, only traditional country pubs.
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.
People who choose to live in rural areas choose to live somewhere where there's less choice. Fewer schools, fewer supermarkets, fewer pubs, fewer houses. Kind of the point of being rural, that's their choice though.
For those who aren't rural, there's absolutely nothing wrong with making a choice from what's available. For those who are rural with multiple options, there's absolutely nothing with making a choice from what's available either.
There tend to be more churches in rural areas though, even with small congregations and often more pubs. It is often urban areas which have seen the biggest decline in pubs (excluding Wetherspoons) due to competition from cafes, coffee shops and bars while in rural areas pubs are often the only eating and drinking establishment in the village or hamlet
That's just daft. You can have a decent pub crawl in just about any town centre. In a village there is one pub, two if you are lucky.
Well obviously given most towns are about ten times the size of the average village and most cities about 50 times the size and London over a thousand times as big.
However in the average town or even city try and find a non Wetherspoons pub and you will find it much harder than you would have done 25 years ago, many more Starbucks, Prets and Cafe Neros though and plenty of bars still.
Most villages have kept their one pub, many town or city pubs have been forced to close by competition from Wetherspoons or coffee shops and sandwich bars
That's total bullshit.
There are independent and non-Wetherspoon pubs in every town I go to.
Over 98.5% of pubs are non-Wetherspoons.
Less than there were a few decades ago and there are no Wetherspoons in rural areas and villages, only traditional country pubs
This is preposterous.
Name any town or city where you've struggled to find a non-Wetherspoons pub.
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.
That's not far off what happens in NI.
Fee-paying schools get the normal state contribution, and then charge a mandatory 'capital fee' (determined according to a Department of Education formula) and a 'voluntary charge' on top.
Even accounting for the state grant, you'd expect English schools to cost maybe £8-10k, but they don't, they're all twice or three times as much.
Why, though? I don't really understand why there's such a huge gap - it's not even as if they get better results (in fact, schools in NI tend to be at the top of any combined league tables).
I'm all for private education (and healthcare, for that matter), but don't see why it should attract tax breaks. Just treat it like a normal business, like everything else.
That's fascinating to know.
My view is that subsidising education (by providing a tax break via zero VAT) is a good thing. But subsidising education for all by giving everyone a voucher to ensure minimum standards then letting people top up - probably spending the amount you suggest above - would be better.
In my hypothetical scenario where everyone gets a £7200 voucher, I probably wouldn't keep the VAT exemption, because my aim to encourage people to spend more on educating their kids than the state minimum would be achieved in other ways.
In a scenario where the govt provides a state voucher of £7200, I envision a lot of schools in the 10-13k range with pupils invested in the process because their parents are paying for it (parental contribution to fees being a major factor in discipline in schools). Rather than the stiuation Labour will give us, which is a small number of poshos going to public schools, vs everyone else's education being determined by the parents' ability to buy in the right postcode.
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.
Alternating names of northern cities is not the same as removing the name of one of the biggest figures of 19th century Britain, it would be a culture war act of left liberal aggression to rename it and the EDL, Farage, Johnson, the tabloid press etc would jump on that accordingly
We changed Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor and no-one batted an eyelid.
Was done by popular demand - to put it mildly - in 1916.
When (for some reason) anti-German prejudice in UK reached levels unequaled even in 1940, and not approached until 1970, 1990 and 2010.
See also German, sorry Belgian, sorry Empire biscuits (still a very popular delicacy around here, at least).
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.
It is not just harm. Babies can be removed soon after birth from mothers deemed intellectually unable to care for them. Then there is also wrongly evaluated risk, such as the hysteria around reflex anal dilatation in the 1980s.
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.
People who choose to live in rural areas choose to live somewhere where there's less choice. Fewer schools, fewer supermarkets, fewer pubs, fewer houses. Kind of the point of being rural, that's their choice though.
For those who aren't rural, there's absolutely nothing wrong with making a choice from what's available. For those who are rural with multiple options, there's absolutely nothing with making a choice from what's available either.
There tend to be more churches in rural areas though, even with small congregations and often more pubs. It is often urban areas which have seen the biggest decline in pubs (excluding Wetherspoons) due to competition from cafes, coffee shops and bars while in rural areas pubs are often the only eating and drinking establishment in the village or hamlet
That's just daft. You can have a decent pub crawl in just about any town centre. In a village there is one pub, two if you are lucky.
Well obviously given most towns are about ten times the size of the average village and most cities about 50 times the size and London over a thousand times as big.
However in the average town or even city try and find a non Wetherspoons pub and you will find it much harder than you would have done 25 years ago, many more Starbucks, Prets and Cafe Neros though and plenty of bars still.
Most villages have kept their one pub, many town or city pubs have been forced to close by competition from Wetherspoons or coffee shops and sandwich bars
That's total bullshit.
There are independent and non-Wetherspoon pubs in every town I go to.
Over 98.5% of pubs are non-Wetherspoons.
Less than there were a few decades ago, competition from coffee shops as well as Wetherspoons and there are no Wetherspoons in rural areas and villages, only traditional country pubs.
'There are over 3,000 authentic pubs in England’s capital, but a recent analysis found that London has lost over 25% of its pubs since 2001. In 2015 alone, London lost 497 pubs (the net figure, also considering new openings). That’s almost 10 pubs a week — a sobering trend..London is closing its pubs faster than anywhere else in England and the last six months have been no exception. And many of its iconic pubs are closing' https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/pieces/london-is-losing-its-pubs-but-is-this-really-a-problem/
Seems to be a PB outbreak of expertise on how to educate damaged kids. Will refrain from my opinion to avoid exacerbating big T trauma.
For kids with attachment disorder, there aren't any easy answers.
Really? Thanks for that. Actually there are. It just takes time and investment. It needs someone to be a trained professional and properly trained. It won't work in a week or a month or a year. But it sure as Hell won't work with Supply on minimum wage.
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.
People who choose to live in rural areas choose to live somewhere where there's less choice. Fewer schools, fewer supermarkets, fewer pubs, fewer houses. Kind of the point of being rural, that's their choice though.
For those who aren't rural, there's absolutely nothing wrong with making a choice from what's available. For those who are rural with multiple options, there's absolutely nothing with making a choice from what's available either.
There tend to be more churches in rural areas though, even with small congregations and often more pubs. It is often urban areas which have seen the biggest decline in pubs (excluding Wetherspoons) due to competition from cafes, coffee shops and bars while in rural areas pubs are often the only eating and drinking establishment in the village or hamlet
That's just daft. You can have a decent pub crawl in just about any town centre. In a village there is one pub, two if you are lucky.
Well obviously given most towns are about ten times the size of the average village and most cities about 50 times the size and London over a thousand times as big.
However in the average town or even city try and find a non Wetherspoons pub and you will find it much harder than you would have done 25 years ago, many more Starbucks, Prets and Cafe Neros though and plenty of bars still.
Most villages have kept their one pub, many town or city pubs have been forced to close by competition from Wetherspoons or coffee shops and sandwich bars
That's total bullshit.
There are independent and non-Wetherspoon pubs in every town I go to.
Over 98.5% of pubs are non-Wetherspoons.
Less than there were a few decades ago, competition from coffee shops as well as Wetherspoons and there are no Wetherspoons in rural areas and villages, only traditional country pubs.
'There are over 3,000 authentic pubs in England’s capital, but a recent analysis found that London has lost over 25% of its pubs since 2001. In 2015 alone, London lost 497 pubs (the net figure, also considering new openings). That’s almost 10 pubs a week — a sobering trend..London is closing its pubs faster than anywhere else in England and the last six months have been no exception. And many of its iconic pubs are closing' https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/pieces/london-is-losing-its-pubs-but-is-this-really-a-problem/
What's your point?
An increasing percentage of people are teetotal. And there's competition for those who aren't from supermarkets etc
But there's absolutely no areas where there's no non-Wetherspoons pubs.
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.
Alternating names of northern cities is not the same as removing the name of one of the biggest figures of 19th century Britain, it would be a culture war act of left liberal aggression to rename it and the EDL, Farage, Johnson, the tabloid press etc would jump on that accordingly
We changed Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor and no-one batted an eyelid.
Was done by popular demand - to put it mildly - in 1916.
When (for some reason) anti-German prejudice in UK reached levels unequaled even in 1940, and not approached until 1970, 1990 and 2010.
See also German, sorry Belgian, sorry Empire biscuits (still a very popular delicacy around here, at least).
Popular cream-filled round pastry in USA called a "Bismarck" had name changed to "Pershing" in 1917.
Since then has mostly reverted back to honoring Otto, but few years ago in Seattle at Pike Place Market, saw that one bakery was featuring Bismarcks in its window, while a few stalls down they were sell Pershings.
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.
People who choose to live in rural areas choose to live somewhere where there's less choice. Fewer schools, fewer supermarkets, fewer pubs, fewer houses. Kind of the point of being rural, that's their choice though.
For those who aren't rural, there's absolutely nothing wrong with making a choice from what's available. For those who are rural with multiple options, there's absolutely nothing with making a choice from what's available either.
There tend to be more churches in rural areas though, even with small congregations and often more pubs. It is often urban areas which have seen the biggest decline in pubs (excluding Wetherspoons) due to competition from cafes, coffee shops and bars while in rural areas pubs are often the only eating and drinking establishment in the village or hamlet
That's just daft. You can have a decent pub crawl in just about any town centre. In a village there is one pub, two if you are lucky.
Well obviously given most towns are about ten times the size of the average village and most cities about 50 times the size and London over a thousand times as big.
However in the average town or even city try and find a non Wetherspoons pub and you will find it much harder than you would have done 25 years ago, many more Starbucks, Prets and Cafe Neros though and plenty of bars still.
Most villages have kept their one pub, many town or city pubs have been forced to close by competition from Wetherspoons or coffee shops and sandwich bars
That's total bullshit.
There are independent and non-Wetherspoon pubs in every town I go to.
Over 98.5% of pubs are non-Wetherspoons.
Less than there were a few decades ago, competition from coffee shops as well as Wetherspoons and there are no Wetherspoons in rural areas and villages, only traditional country pubs.
'There are over 3,000 authentic pubs in England’s capital, but a recent analysis found that London has lost over 25% of its pubs since 2001. In 2015 alone, London lost 497 pubs (the net figure, also considering new openings). That’s almost 10 pubs a week — a sobering trend..London is closing its pubs faster than anywhere else in England and the last six months have been no exception. And many of its iconic pubs are closing' https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/pieces/london-is-losing-its-pubs-but-is-this-really-a-problem/
What's your point?
An increasing percentage of people are teetotal. And there's competition for those who aren't from supermarkets etc
But there's absolutely no areas where there's no non-Wetherspoons pubs.
No supermarkets in most rural areas either, at most still a village store. Rural areas also tend to have more older beer and real ale drinkers
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.
Another sign of the times is that your children need to be taken to school. My mother walked me to school only once, on my first day, at age 5. Jumpers for goalposts!
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 despairs - its like the taliban principle of pulling down anything that you find offensive -
Or the Victorian principle.
The Victorians themselves regularly removed statues they didn't approve of, and put new ones up in their place.
That's why the Victorians ones are there now.
Turnabout is fair play, if we do the same to them as they did to their predecessors, what is wrong with that?
Nothing should ever be ossified, if we decide to make changes then that's fair enough.
Honestly, the Albert memorial is gaudy as fuck, and is possibly the least British thing in London. We love to sneer at the Trevi fountain in Rome or that ginormous fleg in Madrid's Plaza de Colon, but what right have we to do so when we harbour that gold-leaf monstrosity in Hyde Park?
The best thing to do would be to paint it black, as it was for most of the 20th century; keep it as memorial to pollution that his era wrought upon us.
Seems to be a PB outbreak of expertise on how to educate damaged kids. Will refrain from my opinion to avoid exacerbating big T trauma.
For kids with attachment disorder, there aren't any easy answers.
Really? Thanks for that. Actually there are. It just takes time and investment. It needs someone to be a trained professional and properly trained. It won't work in a week or a month or a year. But it sure as Hell won't work with Supply on minimum wage.
But surely we can import people from somewhere who will gladly work at minimum wage to do the jobs the natives are too lazy to do?
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.
It is not just harm. Babies can be removed soon after birth from mothers deemed intellectually unable to care for them. Then there is also wrongly evaluated risk, such as the hysteria around reflex anal dilatation in the 1980s.
121 parents wrongly accused of raping their own kids with their kids removed. How do parents or kids ever recover from something like that?
Buttigieg actually increased his vote to 80% in the mayoral election after he came out as gay. South Bend Indiana I assume isn't a bastion of liberalism and it does have a very large black population, who presumably voted for him.
I suspect being a then active serviceman counted for more.
Bless, the DE is still fighting last decades battle .
How will we cope , apparently those horrible hated EU diktats are back . I may need to join a support group !
The right wing papers need to move on or get counseling . Most of the public simply don’t care anymore , they’re not going to riot because God forbid we sign up to maintaining certain safety or food standards .
Seems to be a PB outbreak of expertise on how to educate damaged kids. Will refrain from my opinion to avoid exacerbating big T trauma.
I'm genuinely interested in your take, as you're someone who gets the joys of working with them.
I think it's a very difficult area no matter how one goes at it. My sister did educational stats for the civil service for a while - her take on things, as someone with access to data pretty much at a child by child level, was that virtually the only meaningful statistical correlations with the kid doing well were things which were proxies for "does the parent care about the kid" - everything else was just noise.
Unfortunately, it seems getting the bad end of the parent distribution to care about their kids is really difficult.
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.
Another sign of the times is that your children need to be taken to school. My mother walked me to school only once, on my first day, at age 5. Jumpers for goalposts!
See my post about replacing VED and Petrol duty with variable per mile charges using trackers similar to those used by insurance companies, enabling eyewatering tolls to be levied on those driving short journeys to schools at opening and closing times.
Indeed I would make all short journeys disproportionately expensive unless the driver had a disabilty that made walking difficult.
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 despairs - its like the taliban principle of pulling down anything that you find offensive -
Or the Victorian principle.
The Victorians themselves regularly removed statues they didn't approve of, and put new ones up in their place.
That's why the Victorians ones are there now.
Turnabout is fair play, if we do the same to them as they did to their predecessors, what is wrong with that?
Nothing should ever be ossified, if we decide to make changes then that's fair enough.
Honestly, the Albert memorial is gaudy as fuck, and is possibly the least British thing in London. We love to sneer at the Trevi fountain in Rome or that ginormous fleg in Madrid's Plaza de Colon, but what right have we to do so when we harbour that gold-leaf monstrosity in Hyde Park?
The best thing to do would be to paint it black, as it was for most of the 20th century; keep it as memorial to pollution that his era wrought upon us.
A short story by Saki, it revolves around the threat by suffragettes to erect copies of the Victoria memorial all over the country…
"'Something more insidious than that,' she said; 'you could prevent us from building forts; you can't prevent us from erecting an exact replica of the Victoria Memorial on each of those sites. They're all private property, with no building restrictions attached.'
———-
"The Prime Minister always declared himself an opponent of anything savouring of panic legislation, but he brought a Bill into Parliament forthwith and successfully appealed to both Houses to pass it through all its stages within the week. And that is how we got one of the most glorious measures of the century."
"A measure conferring the vote on women?" asked the nephew.
"Oh dear, no. An Act which made it a penal offence to erect commemorative statuary anywhere within three miles of a public highway."
👀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
Donald Trump literally had a gold fucking toilet. He owes his whole career to Daddy's millions. He is the biggest elitist there is.
Really struggling on here with discussions around SEN kids. It's almost as if there's a bunch of extraordinarily intelligent people who have fuck all knowledge of a subject but wilfully wish to impose their ideology onto it to make an easy solution to salve their conscience
👀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
Donald Trump literally had a gold fucking toilet. He owes his whole career to Daddy's millions. He is the biggest elitist there is.
Trump isn't a liberal cultural elitist though and is pro tariff and anti immigration and anti woke which is what the white working class want
Really struggling on here with discussions around SEN kids. It's almost as if there's a bunch of extraordinarily intelligent people who have fuck all knowledge of a subject but wilfully wish to impose their ideology onto it to make an easy solution to salve their conscience
Please don't. It's really difficult. I can't cope with it.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Boo hiss. An ideological move that asshats will cheer, and will not help state school kids one jot.
a negative move to start government - well done labour - will mean even more so that only the very rich can afford it- Do Labour really want an elite?
Only the very rich can already afford it.
Most families with kids have 2 kids, and paying 2 kids fees alone takes more than the median salary.
I'd like to see ways to make it more affordable, but it being unaffordable for the overwhelming majority is already the case.
Set the price of a state education at, say £7200 a year. Give every parent a voucher for education to the value of £7200 a year.
Allow parents to use that voucher in the state system, or to use it as partial credit towards a private education and top up the fees with their own money.
Marketise the school system, abolish catchment areas, allow anyone to attend any school with the voucher acting as the baseline to ensure a basic education, let parents decide on the value of an education.
Make all children go to their nearest school. This will get rid of half the cars off the road and free up bus space for wheelchairs, as we discussed last week. It will not alter the number of children at any particular school, so is neutral in that regard.
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.
Another sign of the times is that your children need to be taken to school. My mother walked me to school only once, on my first day, at age 5. Jumpers for goalposts!
OK grandpa.
Yes times are we're safer with kids nowadays and know more about threats like creeps and other risks than to let 5 year olds wander the streets by themselves.
My kids aren't allowed anywhere by themselves. And no, not just because of cars as some people say, my kids aren't currently allowed to the nearby park without us and that's in walking distance without crossing any roads.
Now my eldest is 10 we're talking about maybe letting her start to go to some places by herself. Which FYI is roughly the same age I was when I was allowed to do so too.
Seems to be a PB outbreak of expertise on how to educate damaged kids. Will refrain from my opinion to avoid exacerbating big T trauma.
I'm genuinely interested in your take, as you're someone who gets the joys of working with them.
I think it's a very difficult area no matter how one goes at it. My sister did educational stats for the civil service for a while - her take on things, as someone with access to data pretty much at a child by child level, was that virtually the only meaningful statistical correlations with the kid doing well were things which were proxies for "does the parent care about the kid" - everything else was just noise.
Unfortunately, it seems getting the bad end of the parent distribution to care about their kids is really difficult.
Yep. That's why parental rights is so dangerous. It's fine and groovy if you have compassionate parents. How about children's rights?
Really struggling on here with discussions around SEN kids. It's almost as if there's a bunch of extraordinarily intelligent people who have fuck all knowledge of a subject but wilfully wish to impose their ideology onto it to make an easy solution to salve their conscience
Surely, the answer is in “man up” while threatening them with a stick?
And/or conscripting their parents into a penal battalion for the military?
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.
That's not far off what happens in NI.
Fee-paying schools get the normal state contribution, and then charge a mandatory 'capital fee' (determined according to a Department of Education formula) and a 'voluntary charge' on top.
Even accounting for the state grant, you'd expect English schools to cost maybe £8-10k, but they don't, they're all twice or three times as much.
Why, though? I don't really understand why there's such a huge gap - it's not even as if they get better results (in fact, schools in NI tend to be at the top of any combined league tables).
I'm all for private education (and healthcare, for that matter), but don't see why it should attract tax breaks. Just treat it like a normal business, like everything else.
That's fascinating to know.
My view is that subsidising education (by providing a tax break via zero VAT) is a good thing. But subsidising education for all by giving everyone a voucher to ensure minimum standards then letting people top up - probably spending the amount you suggest above - would be better.
In my hypothetical scenario where everyone gets a £7200 voucher, I probably wouldn't keep the VAT exemption, because my aim to encourage people to spend more on educating their kids than the state minimum would be achieved in other ways.
In a scenario where the govt provides a state voucher of £7200, I envision a lot of schools in the 10-13k range with pupils invested in the process because their parents are paying for it (parental contribution to fees being a major factor in discipline in schools). Rather than the stiuation Labour will give us, which is a small number of poshos going to public schools, vs everyone else's education being determined by the parents' ability to buy in the right postcode.
Agreed. The real poison comes from the elitism - the enormous, unbridgeable gap between the top public schools and everyone else.
If there were a range of institutions charging a few thousand a year (or your £10-13k inc. the state voucher), it would be much more achievable for people on middling incomes.
In NI, something like 40% of the population goes to a fee-paying grammar of the sort I mentioned - and fewer than 1% go to a public school.
It's that middling sort that have been stamped upon in England - you get 5% of the population desperately trying to pay £15k for public school, and everyone else goes to a comprehensive. And if only the elite are to be privately educated, then there shouldn't be any tax breaks for it.
VAT on private school fees expected as soon as January
Labour is preparing to bring forward from September next year a change that may see bills go up by 20%
Parents could have to pay VAT on their children’s private school fees as soon as January as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, prepares to bring in the policy nine months earlier than expected.
The government confirmed it will remove the 20 per cent tax exemption in last week’s King’s Speech. The change, which ministers expect will raise £1.6 billion a year to fund an additional 6,500 teachers, will be included in Reeves’s first budget this autumn.
It will become law after being passed in Labour’s first finance bill, which means the earliest it could take effect would be in the term starting in January 2025.
It had been widely expected that the policy would probably not come into force until the start of the school year in September 2025.
But senior Whitehall sources have now said the government is preparing to introduce the changes “as soon as possible” and they could take effect as soon as January — nine months earlier.
Boo hiss. An ideological move that asshats will cheer, and will not help state school kids one jot.
a negative move to start government - well done labour - will mean even more so that only the very rich can afford it- Do Labour really want an elite?
Only the very rich can already afford it.
Most families with kids have 2 kids, and paying 2 kids fees alone takes more than the median salary.
I'd like to see ways to make it more affordable, but it being unaffordable for the overwhelming majority is already the case.
Set the price of a state education at, say £7200 a year. Give every parent a voucher for education to the value of £7200 a year.
Allow parents to use that voucher in the state system, or to use it as partial credit towards a private education and top up the fees with their own money.
Marketise the school system, abolish catchment areas, allow anyone to attend any school with the voucher acting as the baseline to ensure a basic education, let parents decide on the value of an education.
That's not far off what happens in NI.
Fee-paying schools get the normal state contribution, and then charge a mandatory 'capital fee' (determined according to a Department of Education formula) and a 'voluntary charge' on top.
Even accounting for the state grant, you'd expect English schools to cost maybe £8-10k, but they don't, they're all twice or three times as much.
Why, though? I don't really understand why there's such a huge gap - it's not even as if they get better results (in fact, schools in NI tend to be at the top of any combined league tables).
I'm all for private education (and healthcare, for that matter), but don't see why it should attract tax breaks. Just treat it like a normal business, like everything else.
That's fascinating to know.
My view is that subsidising education (by providing a tax break via zero VAT) is a good thing. But subsidising education for all by giving everyone a voucher to ensure minimum standards then letting people top up - probably spending the amount you suggest above - would be better.
In my hypothetical scenario where everyone gets a £7200 voucher, I probably wouldn't keep the VAT exemption, because my aim to encourage people to spend more on educating their kids than the state minimum would be achieved in other ways.
In a scenario where the govt provides a state voucher of £7200, I envision a lot of schools in the 10-13k range with pupils invested in the process because their parents are paying for it (parental contribution to fees being a major factor in discipline in schools). Rather than the stiuation Labour will give us, which is a small number of poshos going to public schools, vs everyone else's education being determined by the parents' ability to buy in the right postcode.
Agreed. The real poison comes from the elitism - the enormous, unbridgeable gap between the top public schools and everyone else.
If there were a range of institutions charging a few thousand a year (or your £10-13k inc. the state voucher), it would be much more achievable for people on middling incomes.
In NI, something like 40% of the population goes to a fee-paying grammar of the sort I mentioned - and fewer than 1% go to a public school.
It's that middling sort that have been stamped upon in England - you get 5% of the population desperately trying to pay £15k for public school, and everyone else goes to a comprehensive. And if only the elite are to be privately educated, then there shouldn't be any tax breaks for it.
Indeed and the elite public schools are likely to offer fewer scholarships and bursaries with VAT added to fees
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.
Another sign of the times is that your children need to be taken to school. My mother walked me to school only once, on my first day, at age 5. Jumpers for goalposts!
OK grandpa.
Yes times are we're safer with kids nowadays and know more about threats like creeps and other risks than to let 5 year olds wander the streets by themselves.
My kids aren't allowed anywhere by themselves. And no, not just because of cars as some people say, my kids aren't currently allowed to the nearby park without us and that's in walking distance without crossing any roads.
Now my eldest is 10 we're talking about maybe letting her start to go to some places by herself. Which FYI is roughly the same age I was when I was allowed to do so too.
Slacker.
Once they get the hang of the Webley in 0.455, ours are released into the wild.
Mind you, they get 6 rounds. Any more comes out of their allowance.
A double bluff, he really wants Harris who is Hillary without the charisma and common touch, whereas Biden beat him last time
Hmmm. Not convinced. He may have felt that a month ago but then he stood at that debate and watched Biden implode completely.
If Harris is nominee Trump could well win every state between Maryland and the Pacific west coast with the possible exception of Illinois
In the likely event Biden implodes again at the next debate what are the Dems chances then ?
Biden probably at worst still wins Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia and maybe even Michigan, the last debate made little real poll impact and there is only 1 more scheduled. I would not be sure Harris holds any of those states and unlike Scranton native Biden has no chance in Pennsylvania either unless Shapiro is her VP nominee.
Granted Harris might win by even more than Biden in California, DC, New York city and Massachusetts but they don't help at all in the EC as they are safe blue states
👀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
Donald Trump literally had a gold fucking toilet. He owes his whole career to Daddy's millions. He is the biggest elitist there is.
Trump isn't a liberal cultural elitist though and is pro tariff and anti immigration and anti woke which is what the white working class want
I was listening to - I think- the Economist podcast this morning. They suggested that one of the appeals of Trump was that he was so wealthy he wouldn't f*ck around with their lives as they were so far removed. Compared to the somewhat nearer middle/upper-middle class Democrats who would preach at them and endlessly tinker with their day-to-day.
Struck me as quite plausible.
Edit: it's now also reminding me (I think) 'Down and Out in Paris and London'. A section where the unemployed were offered bread and soup by a priest/minister just with no questions asked. Decent chap. Nodding all round. And the comparison with a priest/minister who insisted they all sing along with their chosen hymns before they got anything at all - resulting in all sorts of parody/insulting lyrics being sung by the hobo's.
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.
That's not far off what happens in NI.
Fee-paying schools get the normal state contribution, and then charge a mandatory 'capital fee' (determined according to a Department of Education formula) and a 'voluntary charge' on top.
Even accounting for the state grant, you'd expect English schools to cost maybe £8-10k, but they don't, they're all twice or three times as much.
Why, though? I don't really understand why there's such a huge gap - it's not even as if they get better results (in fact, schools in NI tend to be at the top of any combined league tables).
I'm all for private education (and healthcare, for that matter), but don't see why it should attract tax breaks. Just treat it like a normal business, like everything else.
That's fascinating to know.
My view is that subsidising education (by providing a tax break via zero VAT) is a good thing. But subsidising education for all by giving everyone a voucher to ensure minimum standards then letting people top up - probably spending the amount you suggest above - would be better.
In my hypothetical scenario where everyone gets a £7200 voucher, I probably wouldn't keep the VAT exemption, because my aim to encourage people to spend more on educating their kids than the state minimum would be achieved in other ways.
In a scenario where the govt provides a state voucher of £7200, I envision a lot of schools in the 10-13k range with pupils invested in the process because their parents are paying for it (parental contribution to fees being a major factor in discipline in schools). Rather than the stiuation Labour will give us, which is a small number of poshos going to public schools, vs everyone else's education being determined by the parents' ability to buy in the right postcode.
Agreed. The real poison comes from the elitism - the enormous, unbridgeable gap between the top public schools and everyone else.
If there were a range of institutions charging a few thousand a year (or your £10-13k inc. the state voucher), it would be much more achievable for people on middling incomes.
In NI, something like 40% of the population goes to a fee-paying grammar of the sort I mentioned - and fewer than 1% go to a public school.
It's that middling sort that have been stamped upon in England - you get 5% of the population desperately trying to pay £15k for public school, and everyone else goes to a comprehensive. And if only the elite are to be privately educated, then there shouldn't be any tax breaks for it.
Maybe, rather than putting VAT on the fees, the private/public schools should be paid per pupil at standard rate by the government and have supplementary fees capped NI style, and if oversubscribed select by ability, with strict limits on overseas students?
Really struggling on here with discussions around SEN kids. It's almost as if there's a bunch of extraordinarily intelligent people who have fuck all knowledge of a subject but wilfully wish to impose their ideology onto it to make an easy solution to salve their conscience
Surely, the answer is in “man up” while threatening them with a stick?
And/or conscripting their parents into a penal battalion for the military?
I'm an education radical. I've worked in the sector for 30+ years. I've just seen what a fucking disaster the current approach is. So much so that I've quit on principle yet again.
👀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
Donald Trump literally had a gold fucking toilet. He owes his whole career to Daddy's millions. He is the biggest elitist there is.
Trump isn't a liberal cultural elitist though and is pro tariff and anti immigration and anti woke which is what the white working class want
I was listening to - I think- the Economist podcast this morning. They suggested that one of the appeals of Trump was that he was so wealthy he wouldn't f*ck around with their lives as they were so far removed. Compared to the somewhat nearer middle/upper-middle class Democrats who would preach at them and endlessly tinker with their day-to-day.
Struck me as quite plausible.
It's just such BS. Trump's tax plans radically increases taxes on the poor and middle class. Not only did the previous tax cut expire, to fund permanent tax cuts for the rich, but also slaps big inflation-raising tariff costs on consumer goods. Which make up a much bigger share of income for poor than rich Americans.
👀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
Donald Trump literally had a gold fucking toilet. He owes his whole career to Daddy's millions. He is the biggest elitist there is.
Trump isn't a liberal cultural elitist though and is pro tariff and anti immigration and anti woke which is what the white working class want
I was listening to - I think- the Economist podcast this morning. They suggested that one of the appeals of Trump was that he was so wealthy he wouldn't f*ck around with their lives as they were so far removed. Compared to the somewhat nearer middle/upper-middle class Democrats who would preach at them and endlessly tinker with their day-to-day.
Struck me as quite plausible.
It's just such BS. Trump's tax plans radically increases taxes on the poor and middle class. Not only did the previous tax cut expire, to fund permanent tax cuts for the rich, but also slaps big inflation-raising tariff costs on consumer goods. Which make up a much bigger share of income for poor than rich Americans.
Trump's supporters want tariffs on Chinese and EU imports that is part of his appeal to them too, so more buy American made produce and goods.
To be fair to Trump he also cut income tax for all American taxpayers earning over $10,000 in 2018
I love how they are about to lose the election to an American fascist who could appoint more toadies to the supreme court and end democracy as we know it but they're still thinking about how to educate the nation on the merits of ranked-choice voting.
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.
Another sign of the times is that your children need to be taken to school. My mother walked me to school only once, on my first day, at age 5. Jumpers for goalposts!
OK grandpa.
Yes times are we're safer with kids nowadays and know more about threats like creeps and other risks than to let 5 year olds wander the streets by themselves.
My kids aren't allowed anywhere by themselves. And no, not just because of cars as some people say, my kids aren't currently allowed to the nearby park without us and that's in walking distance without crossing any roads.
Now my eldest is 10 we're talking about maybe letting her start to go to some places by herself. Which FYI is roughly the same age I was when I was allowed to do so too.
Arguably though the world is now a lot safer than it was a generation ago.
I used to find it quite sad how little freedom my kids had compared to me at the same age. But it's very hard to unilaterally break a consensus of expectation. I'm roughly the same age as you; my kids a little older (range from 14 to 9). When I was at primary school I basically had the freedom to go anywhere which didn't involve crossing a main road - I had a whole housing estate, plus the fields at the back. I remember bezzing around the estate on my trike, so I would have been less than 7. (I got a bike late, but my trike was a proper trike with a chain.) I'd go round to friends' houses without calling ahead. I'd spend hours hanging out in the 'jungle' - the unused and overground land behind the car park of the office block on the main road. This just doesn't happen nowadays.
But by the time my kids got to 10, yes, they had the freedom to go to the park by themselves; and by 11 they were wandering down to the shops in the town centre and getting public transport by themselves. They actually get the same sort of freedom I did - it just arrived about three years later.
And I would happily let my primary school kids walk to school by themselves. It's not far. But the school is very clear that it expects parents or other adults to accompany children to school.
👀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
Donald Trump literally had a gold fucking toilet. He owes his whole career to Daddy's millions. He is the biggest elitist there is.
Trump isn't a liberal cultural elitist though and is pro tariff and anti immigration and anti woke which is what the white working class want
I was listening to - I think- the Economist podcast this morning. They suggested that one of the appeals of Trump was that he was so wealthy he wouldn't f*ck around with their lives as they were so far removed. Compared to the somewhat nearer middle/upper-middle class Democrats who would preach at them and endlessly tinker with their day-to-day.
Struck me as quite plausible.
It's just such BS. Trump's tax plans radically increases taxes on the poor and middle class. Not only did the previous tax cut expire, to fund permanent tax cuts for the rich, but also slaps big inflation-raising tariff costs on consumer goods. Which make up a much bigger share of income for poor than rich Americans.
Trump's supporters want tariffs on Chinese and EU imports that is part of his appeal to them too, so more buy American made produce and goods
Because Trump's supporters haven't computed that they buy the imports from foreign countries and will pay the cost. It will be "he's hurting the wrong people" on steroids. The problem is the Democrats haven't properly communicated the case because Fox and the rest of the corporate media lean Republican and Biden is a poor comminicator.
👀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
Donald Trump literally had a gold fucking toilet. He owes his whole career to Daddy's millions. He is the biggest elitist there is.
Trump isn't a liberal cultural elitist though and is pro tariff and anti immigration and anti woke which is what the white working class want
I was listening to - I think- the Economist podcast this morning. They suggested that one of the appeals of Trump was that he was so wealthy he wouldn't f*ck around with their lives as they were so far removed. Compared to the somewhat nearer middle/upper-middle class Democrats who would preach at them and endlessly tinker with their day-to-day.
Struck me as quite plausible.
It's just such BS. Trump's tax plans radically increases taxes on the poor and middle class. Not only did the previous tax cut expire, to fund permanent tax cuts for the rich, but also slaps big inflation-raising tariff costs on consumer goods. Which make up a much bigger share of income for poor than rich Americans.
The poor (imho) expect BS from their great leaders. Which robber baron will f*ck around with me the least. Maybe they'll guess wrong, maybe not. But they have one tick every 4-5 years - so why not.
👀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
Donald Trump literally had a gold fucking toilet. He owes his whole career to Daddy's millions. He is the biggest elitist there is.
Trump isn't a liberal cultural elitist though and is pro tariff and anti immigration and anti woke which is what the white working class want
I was listening to - I think- the Economist podcast this morning. They suggested that one of the appeals of Trump was that he was so wealthy he wouldn't f*ck around with their lives as they were so far removed. Compared to the somewhat nearer middle/upper-middle class Democrats who would preach at them and endlessly tinker with their day-to-day.
Struck me as quite plausible.
It's just such BS. Trump's tax plans radically increases taxes on the poor and middle class. Not only did the previous tax cut expire, to fund permanent tax cuts for the rich, but also slaps big inflation-raising tariff costs on consumer goods. Which make up a much bigger share of income for poor than rich Americans.
Trump's supporters want tariffs on Chinese and EU imports that is part of his appeal to them too, so more buy American made produce and goods
Because Trump's supporters haven't computed that they buy the imports from foreign countries and will pay the cost. It will be "he's hurting the wrong people" on steroids. The problem is the Democrats haven't properly communicated the case because Fox and the rest of the corporate media lean Republican and Biden is a poor comminicator.
And perhaps that when your main message is "he'll end democracy as we know it" and "2028 won't be a free and fair election", saying "you'll pay more taxes" seems almost picayune.
👀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
Donald Trump literally had a gold fucking toilet. He owes his whole career to Daddy's millions. He is the biggest elitist there is.
Trump isn't a liberal cultural elitist though and is pro tariff and anti immigration and anti woke which is what the white working class want
I was listening to - I think- the Economist podcast this morning. They suggested that one of the appeals of Trump was that he was so wealthy he wouldn't f*ck around with their lives as they were so far removed. Compared to the somewhat nearer middle/upper-middle class Democrats who would preach at them and endlessly tinker with their day-to-day.
Struck me as quite plausible.
It's just such BS. Trump's tax plans radically increases taxes on the poor and middle class. Not only did the previous tax cut expire, to fund permanent tax cuts for the rich, but also slaps big inflation-raising tariff costs on consumer goods. Which make up a much bigger share of income for poor than rich Americans.
Trump's supporters want tariffs on Chinese and EU imports that is part of his appeal to them too, so more buy American made produce and goods
Because Trump's supporters haven't computed that they buy the imports from foreign countries and will pay the cost. It will be "he's hurting the wrong people" on steroids. The problem is the Democrats haven't properly communicated the case because Fox and the rest of the corporate media lean Republican and Biden is a poor comminicator.
Most networks in the US, MSNBC, ABC, CNN are globalist and liberal and even Murdoch is pro free trade and sceptical of Trump's tariffs and he owns Fox.
Biden won in 2020 as he spoke about supporting US manufacturers and farmers and small businesses, who Hillary largely ignored in 2016 in favour of raising vast sums from Wall Street and the tech industry in Silicon Valley and Hollywood
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.
That's not far off what happens in NI.
Fee-paying schools get the normal state contribution, and then charge a mandatory 'capital fee' (determined according to a Department of Education formula) and a 'voluntary charge' on top.
Even accounting for the state grant, you'd expect English schools to cost maybe £8-10k, but they don't, they're all twice or three times as much.
Why, though? I don't really understand why there's such a huge gap - it's not even as if they get better results (in fact, schools in NI tend to be at the top of any combined league tables).
I'm all for private education (and healthcare, for that matter), but don't see why it should attract tax breaks. Just treat it like a normal business, like everything else.
That's fascinating to know.
My view is that subsidising education (by providing a tax break via zero VAT) is a good thing. But subsidising education for all by giving everyone a voucher to ensure minimum standards then letting people top up - probably spending the amount you suggest above - would be better.
In my hypothetical scenario where everyone gets a £7200 voucher, I probably wouldn't keep the VAT exemption, because my aim to encourage people to spend more on educating their kids than the state minimum would be achieved in other ways.
In a scenario where the govt provides a state voucher of £7200, I envision a lot of schools in the 10-13k range with pupils invested in the process because their parents are paying for it (parental contribution to fees being a major factor in discipline in schools). Rather than the stiuation Labour will give us, which is a small number of poshos going to public schools, vs everyone else's education being determined by the parents' ability to buy in the right postcode.
Agreed. The real poison comes from the elitism - the enormous, unbridgeable gap between the top public schools and everyone else.
If there were a range of institutions charging a few thousand a year (or your £10-13k inc. the state voucher), it would be much more achievable for people on middling incomes.
In NI, something like 40% of the population goes to a fee-paying grammar of the sort I mentioned - and fewer than 1% go to a public school.
It's that middling sort that have been stamped upon in England - you get 5% of the population desperately trying to pay £15k for public school, and everyone else goes to a comprehensive. And if only the elite are to be privately educated, then there shouldn't be any tax breaks for it.
Exactly my view. Set a floor at say, £7200 and encourage people to spend 3-5k if they can. It's the dichotomy of either the local comp or the impossible 20k+ per pupil that creates the current bifurcation.
VAT on schools is a nice idea, in terms of it reducing the overall number of privately educated kids, but its actual effect will be to create a much more bifurcated system of poshos vs everyone else.
I'm well up for a system where anyone from the humblest of background can top their kids fees up from the state minumum to an extra £50 a week, hopefully improving the educational attainment of a lot more. The current system we have encourages bifurcation, either pay the 20k+ a year or go without. I'd like to see a system where even a £50 extra contribution a week makes a difference.
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.
We force people to choose a single area of study at an earlier age than most other countries, though.
Currently, A-Level Maths is a bit of a Mickey-Mouse subject - it's basically a freebie if you've done Additional Maths at GCSE, and do Physics / Further Maths / Stats & Mechanics at A-Level. But if you've not chosen Triple Award Science + Additional Maths at GCSE, then any of the Maths A-Levels is probably beyond you.
Rishi's idea of requiring maths to age 18 implied a new form of maths A-Level that's open to everyone, so perhaps the current A-Level maths would be re-named Further Maths, with the current Further Maths being replaced by separate Pure Maths and Stats & Mechanics A-Levels.
But it wouldn't solve the problem of Maths-inclined people easily getting three A-Levels for the price of two - in fact, you might end up getting four A-Levels for the price of two (or five, if you include Physics!).
A double bluff, he really wants Harris who is Hillary without the charisma and common touch, whereas Biden beat him last time
Hmmm. Not convinced. He may have felt that a month ago but then he stood at that debate and watched Biden implode completely.
If Harris is nominee Trump could well win every state between Maryland and the Pacific west coast with the possible exception of Illinois
In the likely event Biden implodes again at the next debate what are the Dems chances then ?
Biden probably at worst still wins Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia and maybe even Michigan, the last debate made little real poll impact and there is only 1 more scheduled. I would not be sure Harris holds any of those states and unlike Scranton native Biden has no chance in Pennsylvania either unless Shapiro is her VP nominee.
Granted Harris might win by even more than Biden in California, DC, New York city and Massachusetts but they don't help at all in the EC as they are safe blue states
Biden was unable to pushback on a litany of lies at the last debate and just stood there taking punishment .
What excuse will Biden give for another debate disaster?
Everyone knows he won’t fulfill another 4 year term so the Trump campaign will go after Harris as essentially vote Biden get Harris . If that’s the case Harris may aswell be the nominee and at least get her chance to go after Trump and get some enthusiasm back from Dems .
Two thirds of Dems want Biden to withdraw . The lack of enthusiasm will allow the GOP higher turnout . No ones saying there’s no risk with Harris but Biden looks like he can barely climb a flight of stairs or string a coherent sentence together . He’s gone downhill rapidly and isn’t suddenly going to do a Cocoon .
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.
That's not far off what happens in NI.
Fee-paying schools get the normal state contribution, and then charge a mandatory 'capital fee' (determined according to a Department of Education formula) and a 'voluntary charge' on top.
Even accounting for the state grant, you'd expect English schools to cost maybe £8-10k, but they don't, they're all twice or three times as much.
Why, though? I don't really understand why there's such a huge gap - it's not even as if they get better results (in fact, schools in NI tend to be at the top of any combined league tables).
I'm all for private education (and healthcare, for that matter), but don't see why it should attract tax breaks. Just treat it like a normal business, like everything else.
That's fascinating to know.
My view is that subsidising education (by providing a tax break via zero VAT) is a good thing. But subsidising education for all by giving everyone a voucher to ensure minimum standards then letting people top up - probably spending the amount you suggest above - would be better.
In my hypothetical scenario where everyone gets a £7200 voucher, I probably wouldn't keep the VAT exemption, because my aim to encourage people to spend more on educating their kids than the state minimum would be achieved in other ways.
In a scenario where the govt provides a state voucher of £7200, I envision a lot of schools in the 10-13k range with pupils invested in the process because their parents are paying for it (parental contribution to fees being a major factor in discipline in schools). Rather than the stiuation Labour will give us, which is a small number of poshos going to public schools, vs everyone else's education being determined by the parents' ability to buy in the right postcode.
Agreed. The real poison comes from the elitism - the enormous, unbridgeable gap between the top public schools and everyone else.
If there were a range of institutions charging a few thousand a year (or your £10-13k inc. the state voucher), it would be much more achievable for people on middling incomes.
In NI, something like 40% of the population goes to a fee-paying grammar of the sort I mentioned - and fewer than 1% go to a public school.
It's that middling sort that have been stamped upon in England - you get 5% of the population desperately trying to pay £15k for public school, and everyone else goes to a comprehensive. And if only the elite are to be privately educated, then there shouldn't be any tax breaks for it.
Exactly my view. Set a floor at say, £7200 and encourage people to spend 3-5k if they can. It's the dichotomy of either the local comp or the impossible 20k+ per pupil that creates the current bifurcation.
VAT on schools is a nice idea, in terms of it reducing the overall number of privately educated kids, but its actual effect will be to create a much more bifurcated system of poshos vs everyone else.
I'm well up for a system where anyone from the humblest of background can top their kids fees up from the state minumum to an extra £50 a week, hopefully improving the educational attainment of a lot more. The current system we have encourages bifurcation, either pay the 20k+ a year or go without. I'd like to see a system where even a £50 extra contribution a week makes a difference.
Back in the real world, do you seriously believe that any people from the "humblest of backgrounds" could afford an extra £50 a week (per child) when they're struggling to pay their everyday bills?
A double bluff, he really wants Harris who is Hillary without the charisma and common touch, whereas Biden beat him last time
Hmmm. Not convinced. He may have felt that a month ago but then he stood at that debate and watched Biden implode completely.
If Harris is nominee Trump could well win every state between Maryland and the Pacific west coast with the possible exception of Illinois
In the likely event Biden implodes again at the next debate what are the Dems chances then ?
Biden probably at worst still wins Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia and maybe even Michigan, the last debate made little real poll impact and there is only 1 more scheduled. I would not be sure Harris holds any of those states and unlike Scranton native Biden has no chance in Pennsylvania either unless Shapiro is her VP nominee.
Granted Harris might win by even more than Biden in California, DC, New York city and Massachusetts but they don't help at all in the EC as they are safe blue states
Biden was unable to pushback on a litany of lies at the last debate and just stood there taking punishment .
What excuse will Biden give for another debate disaster?
Everyone knows he won’t fulfill another 4 year term so the Trump campaign will go after Harris as essentially vote Biden get Harris . If that’s the case Harris may aswell be the nominee and at least get her chance to go after Trump and get some enthusiasm back from Dems .
Two thirds of Dems want Biden to withdraw . The lack of enthusiasm will allow the GOP higher turnout . No ones saying there’s no risk with Harris but Biden looks like he can barely climb a flight of stairs or string a coherent sentence together . He’s gone downhill rapidly and isn’t suddenly going to do a Cocoon .
Harris is back to the limousine liberal elite candidate Hillary was, who can speak to the elites in NYC, DC and California but has a complete tin ear when addressing the concerns of Middle America and the Rustbelt and Trump would easily beat her. She is basically Hillary 2 without the charisma
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.
We force people to choose a single area of study at an earlier age than most other countries, though.
Currently, A-Level Maths is a bit of a Mickey-Mouse subject - it's basically a freebie if you've done Additional Maths at GCSE, and do Physics / Further Maths / Stats & Mechanics at A-Level. But if you've not chosen Triple Award Science + Additional Maths at GCSE, then any of the Maths A-Levels is probably beyond you.
Rishi's idea of requiring maths to age 18 implied a new form of maths A-Level that's open to everyone, so perhaps the current A-Level maths would be re-named Further Maths, with the current Further Maths being replaced by separate Pure Maths and Stats & Mechanics A-Levels.
But it wouldn't solve the problem of Maths-inclined people easily getting three A-Levels for the price of two - in fact, you might end up getting four A-Levels for the price of two (or five, if you include Physics!).
Yes we narrow studies too early.
If it were up to me I'd abolish GCSEs altogether and have pupils learn a wide range of subjects to 18.
A double bluff, he really wants Harris who is Hillary without the charisma and common touch, whereas Biden beat him last time
Hmmm. Not convinced. He may have felt that a month ago but then he stood at that debate and watched Biden implode completely.
If Harris is nominee Trump could well win every state between Maryland and the Pacific west coast with the possible exception of Illinois
In the likely event Biden implodes again at the next debate what are the Dems chances then ?
Biden probably at worst still wins Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia and maybe even Michigan, the last debate made little real poll impact and there is only 1 more scheduled. I would not be sure Harris holds any of those states and unlike Scranton native Biden has no chance in Pennsylvania either unless Shapiro is her VP nominee.
Granted Harris might win by even more than Biden in California, DC, New York city and Massachusetts but they don't help at all in the EC as they are safe blue states
Biden was unable to pushback on a litany of lies at the last debate and just stood there taking punishment .
What excuse will Biden give for another debate disaster?
Everyone knows he won’t fulfill another 4 year term so the Trump campaign will go after Harris as essentially vote Biden get Harris . If that’s the case Harris may aswell be the nominee and at least get her chance to go after Trump and get some enthusiasm back from Dems .
Two thirds of Dems want Biden to withdraw . The lack of enthusiasm will allow the GOP higher turnout . No ones saying there’s no risk with Harris but Biden looks like he can barely climb a flight of stairs or string a coherent sentence together . He’s gone downhill rapidly and isn’t suddenly going to do a Cocoon .
Harris is back to the limousine liberal elite candidate Hillary was, who can speak to the elites in NYC, DC and California but has a complete tin ear when addressing the concerns of Middle America and the Rustbelt and Trump would easily beat her. She is basically Hillary 2 without the charisma
Just because you keep saying it doesn't make it so.
I suspect part of Biden's obstinacy to move is a belief that the talk about Biden resigning undermines his public credibility. There's some foundation to this belief. The talk in Democratic circles about Biden not being up to it calls attention to the narrative that he isn't up to it. It's a negative feedback loop
Positive feedback loop. The "positive" refers to the loop, not the feedback.
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”.
Child protection is always going to be an incredibly difficult topic to get right.
My son goes to the pre-school/nursery of a state primary school. Prior to knowing them, one of his classmates has been previously temporarily removed from their mother due to injuries that turned out to be due to an underlying medical condition. It took a lot of effort to get the child returned, and to prove the medical link.
Sadly any system set up to protect children subject to abuse will result in false positives. Our friend referenced above was lucky enough to escape being one of them in the long run.
Seems to be a PB outbreak of expertise on how to educate damaged kids. Will refrain from my opinion to avoid exacerbating big T trauma.
For kids with attachment disorder, there aren't any easy answers.
Really? Thanks for that. Actually there are. It just takes time and investment. It needs someone to be a trained professional and properly trained. It won't work in a week or a month or a year. But it sure as Hell won't work with Supply on minimum wage.
Yes, and none of that is easy. My point (perhaps ill expressed) was that it's hard work; I don't think we disagree on 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.
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.
That's not far off what happens in NI.
Fee-paying schools get the normal state contribution, and then charge a mandatory 'capital fee' (determined according to a Department of Education formula) and a 'voluntary charge' on top.
Even accounting for the state grant, you'd expect English schools to cost maybe £8-10k, but they don't, they're all twice or three times as much.
Why, though? I don't really understand why there's such a huge gap - it's not even as if they get better results (in fact, schools in NI tend to be at the top of any combined league tables).
I'm all for private education (and healthcare, for that matter), but don't see why it should attract tax breaks. Just treat it like a normal business, like everything else.
That's fascinating to know.
My view is that subsidising education (by providing a tax break via zero VAT) is a good thing. But subsidising education for all by giving everyone a voucher to ensure minimum standards then letting people top up - probably spending the amount you suggest above - would be better.
In my hypothetical scenario where everyone gets a £7200 voucher, I probably wouldn't keep the VAT exemption, because my aim to encourage people to spend more on educating their kids than the state minimum would be achieved in other ways.
In a scenario where the govt provides a state voucher of £7200, I envision a lot of schools in the 10-13k range with pupils invested in the process because their parents are paying for it (parental contribution to fees being a major factor in discipline in schools). Rather than the stiuation Labour will give us, which is a small number of poshos going to public schools, vs everyone else's education being determined by the parents' ability to buy in the right postcode.
Agreed. The real poison comes from the elitism - the enormous, unbridgeable gap between the top public schools and everyone else.
If there were a range of institutions charging a few thousand a year (or your £10-13k inc. the state voucher), it would be much more achievable for people on middling incomes.
In NI, something like 40% of the population goes to a fee-paying grammar of the sort I mentioned - and fewer than 1% go to a public school.
It's that middling sort that have been stamped upon in England - you get 5% of the population desperately trying to pay £15k for public school, and everyone else goes to a comprehensive. And if only the elite are to be privately educated, then there shouldn't be any tax breaks for it.
Exactly my view. Set a floor at say, £7200 and encourage people to spend 3-5k if they can. It's the dichotomy of either the local comp or the impossible 20k+ per pupil that creates the current bifurcation.
VAT on schools is a nice idea, in terms of it reducing the overall number of privately educated kids, but its actual effect will be to create a much more bifurcated system of poshos vs everyone else.
I'm well up for a system where anyone from the humblest of background can top their kids fees up from the state minumum to an extra £50 a week, hopefully improving the educational attainment of a lot more. The current system we have encourages bifurcation, either pay the 20k+ a year or go without. I'd like to see a system where even a £50 extra contribution a week makes a difference.
The thing is that we're talking about hypotheticals and nice-to-haves. The situation as it stands is that 5% of the population goes to public school and gets a leg up on everyone else as a result.
Charging VAT doesn't end that, it simply reduces some of the advantage.
Labour are never going to argue in favour of private education, but Starmer is as friendly as the party is as likely to get any time soon. On the other hand, the Tories, as they currently stand, are more interested in culture war bollocks than standing up for anything in the private sector.
There's a pro-business space for the Lib Dems to step into, perhaps?
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.
That's not far off what happens in NI.
Fee-paying schools get the normal state contribution, and then charge a mandatory 'capital fee' (determined according to a Department of Education formula) and a 'voluntary charge' on top.
Even accounting for the state grant, you'd expect English schools to cost maybe £8-10k, but they don't, they're all twice or three times as much.
Why, though? I don't really understand why there's such a huge gap - it's not even as if they get better results (in fact, schools in NI tend to be at the top of any combined league tables).
I'm all for private education (and healthcare, for that matter), but don't see why it should attract tax breaks. Just treat it like a normal business, like everything else.
That's fascinating to know.
My view is that subsidising education (by providing a tax break via zero VAT) is a good thing. But subsidising education for all by giving everyone a voucher to ensure minimum standards then letting people top up - probably spending the amount you suggest above - would be better.
In my hypothetical scenario where everyone gets a £7200 voucher, I probably wouldn't keep the VAT exemption, because my aim to encourage people to spend more on educating their kids than the state minimum would be achieved in other ways.
In a scenario where the govt provides a state voucher of £7200, I envision a lot of schools in the 10-13k range with pupils invested in the process because their parents are paying for it (parental contribution to fees being a major factor in discipline in schools). Rather than the stiuation Labour will give us, which is a small number of poshos going to public schools, vs everyone else's education being determined by the parents' ability to buy in the right postcode.
Agreed. The real poison comes from the elitism - the enormous, unbridgeable gap between the top public schools and everyone else.
If there were a range of institutions charging a few thousand a year (or your £10-13k inc. the state voucher), it would be much more achievable for people on middling incomes.
In NI, something like 40% of the population goes to a fee-paying grammar of the sort I mentioned - and fewer than 1% go to a public school.
It's that middling sort that have been stamped upon in England - you get 5% of the population desperately trying to pay £15k for public school, and everyone else goes to a comprehensive. And if only the elite are to be privately educated, then there shouldn't be any tax breaks for it.
Exactly my view. Set a floor at say, £7200 and encourage people to spend 3-5k if they can. It's the dichotomy of either the local comp or the impossible 20k+ per pupil that creates the current bifurcation.
VAT on schools is a nice idea, in terms of it reducing the overall number of privately educated kids, but its actual effect will be to create a much more bifurcated system of poshos vs everyone else.
I'm well up for a system where anyone from the humblest of background can top their kids fees up from the state minumum to an extra £50 a week, hopefully improving the educational attainment of a lot more. The current system we have encourages bifurcation, either pay the 20k+ a year or go without. I'd like to see a system where even a £50 extra contribution a week makes a difference.
The thing is that we're talking about hypotheticals and nice-to-haves. The situation as it stands is that 5% of the population goes to public school and gets a leg up on everyone else as a result.
Charging VAT doesn't end that, it simply reduces some of the advantage.
Labour are never going to argue in favour of private education, but Starmer is as friendly as the party is as likely to get any time soon. On the other hand, the Tories, as they currently stand, are more interested in culture war bollocks than standing up for anything in the private sector.
There's a pro-business space for the Lib Dems to step into, perhaps?
I feel that the system as it stands sucks. It's pay as you play with a huge leg up for those who can afford to pay a lot. Posh school, or house in the right cachment area.
My idea, a £7200 voucher, with as little as a £50 a week top up if you're so inclined means that those without the means to afford a house in the right area or an immediate bump from £0 a year to educate your kid to £20k a year to educate them would create a fairer, albeit marketised system.
At the moment, if you can afford an extra £200 a month to pay for your kids education, there's not much you can do. A marketised system where most schools charge £7k-13k would at least give those parents who value education over (cliches like) sky tv and foreign holidays the chance to invest in those things.
An ideal situation would be one where education was so important the state minimum threshold was far above £7200k.
Though where that leaves people like me who have never had children (nor ever will) I don't know.
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.
That's not far off what happens in NI.
Fee-paying schools get the normal state contribution, and then charge a mandatory 'capital fee' (determined according to a Department of Education formula) and a 'voluntary charge' on top.
Even accounting for the state grant, you'd expect English schools to cost maybe £8-10k, but they don't, they're all twice or three times as much.
Why, though? I don't really understand why there's such a huge gap - it's not even as if they get better results (in fact, schools in NI tend to be at the top of any combined league tables).
I'm all for private education (and healthcare, for that matter), but don't see why it should attract tax breaks. Just treat it like a normal business, like everything else.
That's fascinating to know.
My view is that subsidising education (by providing a tax break via zero VAT) is a good thing. But subsidising education for all by giving everyone a voucher to ensure minimum standards then letting people top up - probably spending the amount you suggest above - would be better.
In my hypothetical scenario where everyone gets a £7200 voucher, I probably wouldn't keep the VAT exemption, because my aim to encourage people to spend more on educating their kids than the state minimum would be achieved in other ways.
In a scenario where the govt provides a state voucher of £7200, I envision a lot of schools in the 10-13k range with pupils invested in the process because their parents are paying for it (parental contribution to fees being a major factor in discipline in schools). Rather than the stiuation Labour will give us, which is a small number of poshos going to public schools, vs everyone else's education being determined by the parents' ability to buy in the right postcode.
Agreed. The real poison comes from the elitism - the enormous, unbridgeable gap between the top public schools and everyone else.
If there were a range of institutions charging a few thousand a year (or your £10-13k inc. the state voucher), it would be much more achievable for people on middling incomes.
In NI, something like 40% of the population goes to a fee-paying grammar of the sort I mentioned - and fewer than 1% go to a public school.
It's that middling sort that have been stamped upon in England - you get 5% of the population desperately trying to pay £15k for public school, and everyone else goes to a comprehensive. And if only the elite are to be privately educated, then there shouldn't be any tax breaks for it.
Exactly my view. Set a floor at say, £7200 and encourage people to spend 3-5k if they can. It's the dichotomy of either the local comp or the impossible 20k+ per pupil that creates the current bifurcation.
VAT on schools is a nice idea, in terms of it reducing the overall number of privately educated kids, but its actual effect will be to create a much more bifurcated system of poshos vs everyone else.
I'm well up for a system where anyone from the humblest of background can top their kids fees up from the state minumum to an extra £50 a week, hopefully improving the educational attainment of a lot more. The current system we have encourages bifurcation, either pay the 20k+ a year or go without. I'd like to see a system where even a £50 extra contribution a week makes a difference.
Schools do effectively do this. My upcoming primary school requests a voluntarily contribution of £15 per month. School fairs etc are another way of raising money informally.
Personally I'm in a position where I would happily pay more than that towards my child's school to boost funding, but not £20k per year that private schools necessitate.
Of course, the current way round the bifurcation is state schools plus private tuition.
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.
That's not far off what happens in NI.
Fee-paying schools get the normal state contribution, and then charge a mandatory 'capital fee' (determined according to a Department of Education formula) and a 'voluntary charge' on top.
Even accounting for the state grant, you'd expect English schools to cost maybe £8-10k, but they don't, they're all twice or three times as much.
Why, though? I don't really understand why there's such a huge gap - it's not even as if they get better results (in fact, schools in NI tend to be at the top of any combined league tables).
I'm all for private education (and healthcare, for that matter), but don't see why it should attract tax breaks. Just treat it like a normal business, like everything else.
That's fascinating to know.
My view is that subsidising education (by providing a tax break via zero VAT) is a good thing. But subsidising education for all by giving everyone a voucher to ensure minimum standards then letting people top up - probably spending the amount you suggest above - would be better.
In my hypothetical scenario where everyone gets a £7200 voucher, I probably wouldn't keep the VAT exemption, because my aim to encourage people to spend more on educating their kids than the state minimum would be achieved in other ways.
In a scenario where the govt provides a state voucher of £7200, I envision a lot of schools in the 10-13k range with pupils invested in the process because their parents are paying for it (parental contribution to fees being a major factor in discipline in schools). Rather than the stiuation Labour will give us, which is a small number of poshos going to public schools, vs everyone else's education being determined by the parents' ability to buy in the right postcode.
Agreed. The real poison comes from the elitism - the enormous, unbridgeable gap between the top public schools and everyone else.
If there were a range of institutions charging a few thousand a year (or your £10-13k inc. the state voucher), it would be much more achievable for people on middling incomes.
In NI, something like 40% of the population goes to a fee-paying grammar of the sort I mentioned - and fewer than 1% go to a public school.
It's that middling sort that have been stamped upon in England - you get 5% of the population desperately trying to pay £15k for public school, and everyone else goes to a comprehensive. And if only the elite are to be privately educated, then there shouldn't be any tax breaks for it.
Exactly my view. Set a floor at say, £7200 and encourage people to spend 3-5k if they can. It's the dichotomy of either the local comp or the impossible 20k+ per pupil that creates the current bifurcation.
VAT on schools is a nice idea, in terms of it reducing the overall number of privately educated kids, but its actual effect will be to create a much more bifurcated system of poshos vs everyone else.
I'm well up for a system where anyone from the humblest of background can top their kids fees up from the state minumum to an extra £50 a week, hopefully improving the educational attainment of a lot more. The current system we have encourages bifurcation, either pay the 20k+ a year or go without. I'd like to see a system where even a £50 extra contribution a week makes a difference.
Back in the real world, do you seriously believe that any people from the "humblest of backgrounds" could afford an extra £50 a week (per child) when they're struggling to pay their everyday bills?
I watched somebody today in the supermarket beg for [x £2.99 item for free] as they were too poor to afford it.
After being denied, they also added a £30 bag of golden virginia to their shop.
People have choices how they spend their money. I believe that most people can go without something to afford an extra £50 a week. And that is why I favour a marketised education system. Most households can probably find £50 savings a week if they look for it. Very few can afford £20k a year+ for the current private system. A system that would give people circa 7k a year for free, plus the ability to top up, would be better than the current system we have now, where someone who _does_ have £50 a week extra can't spend it on education, as you'd either need 20k a year to afford private school fees, or an extra £100k from somewhere to afford to live in a better catchment area.
£50 seems like a lot, but it's a lot less than the other options. My suggestion is an imperfect way of democratising a system that at the moment, is far more elitist.
A double bluff, he really wants Harris who is Hillary without the charisma and common touch, whereas Biden beat him last time
Hmmm. Not convinced. He may have felt that a month ago but then he stood at that debate and watched Biden implode completely.
If Harris is nominee Trump could well win every state between Maryland and the Pacific west coast with the possible exception of Illinois
In the likely event Biden implodes again at the next debate what are the Dems chances then ?
Fakes a 'medical condition', stands down as president, Harris takes over as president. "Biden" already printed on the ballot papers becomes a de-facto Harris choice. Betfair market goes bonkers.
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.
That's not far off what happens in NI.
Fee-paying schools get the normal state contribution, and then charge a mandatory 'capital fee' (determined according to a Department of Education formula) and a 'voluntary charge' on top.
Even accounting for the state grant, you'd expect English schools to cost maybe £8-10k, but they don't, they're all twice or three times as much.
Why, though? I don't really understand why there's such a huge gap - it's not even as if they get better results (in fact, schools in NI tend to be at the top of any combined league tables).
I'm all for private education (and healthcare, for that matter), but don't see why it should attract tax breaks. Just treat it like a normal business, like everything else.
That's fascinating to know.
My view is that subsidising education (by providing a tax break via zero VAT) is a good thing. But subsidising education for all by giving everyone a voucher to ensure minimum standards then letting people top up - probably spending the amount you suggest above - would be better.
In my hypothetical scenario where everyone gets a £7200 voucher, I probably wouldn't keep the VAT exemption, because my aim to encourage people to spend more on educating their kids than the state minimum would be achieved in other ways.
In a scenario where the govt provides a state voucher of £7200, I envision a lot of schools in the 10-13k range with pupils invested in the process because their parents are paying for it (parental contribution to fees being a major factor in discipline in schools). Rather than the stiuation Labour will give us, which is a small number of poshos going to public schools, vs everyone else's education being determined by the parents' ability to buy in the right postcode.
Agreed. The real poison comes from the elitism - the enormous, unbridgeable gap between the top public schools and everyone else.
If there were a range of institutions charging a few thousand a year (or your £10-13k inc. the state voucher), it would be much more achievable for people on middling incomes.
In NI, something like 40% of the population goes to a fee-paying grammar of the sort I mentioned - and fewer than 1% go to a public school.
It's that middling sort that have been stamped upon in England - you get 5% of the population desperately trying to pay £15k for public school, and everyone else goes to a comprehensive. And if only the elite are to be privately educated, then there shouldn't be any tax breaks for it.
Exactly my view. Set a floor at say, £7200 and encourage people to spend 3-5k if they can. It's the dichotomy of either the local comp or the impossible 20k+ per pupil that creates the current bifurcation.
VAT on schools is a nice idea, in terms of it reducing the overall number of privately educated kids, but its actual effect will be to create a much more bifurcated system of poshos vs everyone else.
I'm well up for a system where anyone from the humblest of background can top their kids fees up from the state minumum to an extra £50 a week, hopefully improving the educational attainment of a lot more. The current system we have encourages bifurcation, either pay the 20k+ a year or go without. I'd like to see a system where even a £50 extra contribution a week makes a difference.
The thing is that we're talking about hypotheticals and nice-to-haves. The situation as it stands is that 5% of the population goes to public school and gets a leg up on everyone else as a result.
Charging VAT doesn't end that, it simply reduces some of the advantage.
Labour are never going to argue in favour of private education, but Starmer is as friendly as the party is as likely to get any time soon. On the other hand, the Tories, as they currently stand, are more interested in culture war bollocks than standing up for anything in the private sector.
There's a pro-business space for the Lib Dems to step into, perhaps?
I feel that the system as it stands sucks. It's pay as you play with a huge leg up for those who can afford to pay a lot. Posh school, or house in the right cachment area.
My idea, a £7200 voucher, with as little as a £50 a week top up if you're so inclined means that those without the means to afford a house in the right area or an immediate bump from £0 a year to educate your kid to £20k a year to educate them would create a fairer, albeit marketised system.
At the moment, if you can afford an extra £200 a month to pay for your kids education, there's not much you can do. A marketised system where most schools charge £7k-13k would at least give those parents who value education over (cliches like) sky tv and foreign holidays the chance to invest in those things.
An ideal situation would be one where education was so important the state minimum threshold was far above £7200k.
Though where that leaves people like me who have never had children (nor ever will) I don't know.
I believe that's the Danish system, I don't think it's the worst idea.
Comments
Half the GOP is closeted anyway.
It's up there with mac 'n' cheese for macaroni cheese.
For those who aren't rural, there's absolutely nothing wrong with making a choice from what's available. For those who are rural with multiple options, there's absolutely nothing with making a choice from what's available either.
Including executing people who killed their kids. No noticeable effect…
In the end, they conscripted the men into the army. Where lots graduated to the Dirlewanger Brigade.
Not sure that is the solution we are looking for.
Large sections of society - including, it would appear, schools - seem to fail to realise that parents have jobs to do. If we drive our kids to school, it's not because we're too lazy to walk, it's because primary schooĺs expect a parent to be there at drop off - at 8.50 - and typically we have to start work about ten minutes later. Getting up earlier won't solve this problem.
For example, every campaign message and fundraising appeal targeting yours truly, via the web and over broadcast TV (don't do cable) has been from Biden / Harris. Note also that fundraising messages sent my way on YouTube for JB/KH have been featured & pretty evenly divided between 3 messangers: Joe Biden, Barrack Obama and . . . wait for it . . . Kamala Harris.
Would also add, that this guff about Harris being the darling and exemplar of the US coastal elites is mostly just that - guff.
Seeing as how her REAL base is with African American voters, which also resonates with MANY White progressives AND moderates.
Notion that Harris is pure poison in Rust Belt and Midwest generally is greatly over-inflated to put it mildly.
Would argue that her actual appeal as candidate for President is actually as yet UNTESTED. And will be UNTIL the incumbent in the White House (currently "vacationing" on the Delaware Shore) leaves the race.
THEN polling for her and other POTUS hopefuls becomes truly relevant and revealing.
It's Fuck Annoy
When (for some reason) anti-German prejudice in UK reached levels unequaled even in 1940, and not approached until 1970, 1990 and 2010.
I agree with all of the above, FWIW.
However in the average town or even city try and find a non Wetherspoons pub and you will find it much harder than you would have done 25 years ago, many more Starbucks, Prets and Cafe Neros though and plenty of bars still.
Most villages have kept their one pub, many town or city pubs have been forced to close by competition from Wetherspoons or coffee shops and sandwich bars
Head out into the countryside and almost every village will have a better pub than Sale does.
I suspect being a then active serviceman counted for more.
Indeed I think Trump could win Nevada, Virginia and Colorado and even New Jersey and Minnesota, Maine and New Hampshire against Harris plus all the states he took against Hillary in 2016
Fee-paying schools get the normal state contribution, and then charge a mandatory 'capital fee' (determined according to a Department of Education formula) and a 'voluntary charge' on top.
The pretty good school I went to currently charges £520/year: https://www.victoriacollege.org.uk/
The poshest school in the country, Inst, is £1,300/year: https://rbai.org.uk/Page/Fees-and-Bursaries/4906/Index.html
- my brothers went there, but only one paid the full amount, the other two got full bursaries because we were skint.
Even accounting for the state grant, you'd expect English schools to cost maybe £8-10k, but they don't, they're all twice or three times as much.
Why, though? I don't really understand why there's such a huge gap - it's not even as if they get better results (in fact, schools in NI tend to be at the top of any combined league tables).
I'm all for private education (and healthcare, for that matter), but don't see why it should attract tax breaks. Just treat it like a normal business, like everything else.
There are independent and non-Wetherspoon pubs in every town I go to.
Over 98.5% of pubs are non-Wetherspoons.
As far as I can tell, not huge amount of deep-seated African American antipathy. And while there's some leakage toward Trump in parts of Black community, the lion's share of Black voters would rather vote for a Democratic drag queen - think Sec. of Trans (!) with Hillary Clinton's wardrobe - than Trump or Vance.
Name any town or city where you've struggled to find a non-Wetherspoons pub.
Its absolute bollocks.
My view is that subsidising education (by providing a tax break via zero VAT) is a good thing. But subsidising education for all by giving everyone a voucher to ensure minimum standards then letting people top up - probably spending the amount you suggest above - would be better.
In my hypothetical scenario where everyone gets a £7200 voucher, I probably wouldn't keep the VAT exemption, because my aim to encourage people to spend more on educating their kids than the state minimum would be achieved in other ways.
In a scenario where the govt provides a state voucher of £7200, I envision a lot of schools in the 10-13k range with pupils invested in the process because their parents are paying for it (parental contribution to fees being a major factor in discipline in schools). Rather than the stiuation Labour will give us, which is a small number of poshos going to public schools, vs everyone else's education being determined by the parents' ability to buy in the right postcode.
Will refrain from my opinion to avoid exacerbating big T trauma.
https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/pieces/london-is-losing-its-pubs-but-is-this-really-a-problem/
Thanks for that.
Actually there are. It just takes time and investment.
It needs someone to be a trained professional and properly trained.
It won't work in a week or a month or a year.
But it sure as Hell won't work with Supply on minimum wage.
An increasing percentage of people are teetotal. And there's competition for those who aren't from supermarkets etc
But there's absolutely no areas where there's no non-Wetherspoons pubs.
Still available at 25/1
Gretchen Whitmer
@gretchenwhitmer
·
8h
Welcome to Michigan, Donald Trump and JD Vance. Here's what you need to know:
https://x.com/gretchenwhitmer/status/1814643748963295490
Since then has mostly reverted back to honoring Otto, but few years ago in Seattle at Pike Place Market, saw that one bakery was featuring Bismarcks in its window, while a few stalls down they were sell Pershings.
Ezra Klein
@ezraklein
·
2h
Mr. Trump’s senior team would prefer that Mr. Biden remains in the race…
https://x.com/ezraklein/status/1814745592524120508
The best thing to do would be to paint it black, as it was for most of the 20th century; keep it as memorial to pollution that his era wrought upon us.
How will we cope , apparently those horrible hated EU diktats are back . I may need to join a support group !
The right wing papers need to move on or get counseling . Most of the public simply don’t care anymore , they’re not going to riot because God forbid we sign up to maintaining certain safety or food standards .
I think it's a very difficult area no matter how one goes at it. My sister did educational stats for the civil service for a while - her take on things, as someone with access to data pretty much at a child by child level, was that virtually the only meaningful statistical correlations with the kid doing well were things which were proxies for "does the parent care about the kid" - everything else was just noise.
Unfortunately, it seems getting the bad end of the parent distribution to care about their kids is really difficult.
Indeed I would make all short journeys disproportionately expensive unless the driver had a disabilty that made walking difficult.
A short story by Saki, it revolves around the threat by suffragettes to erect copies of the Victoria memorial all over the country…
"'Something more insidious than that,' she said; 'you could prevent us from building forts; you can't prevent us from erecting an exact replica of the Victoria Memorial on each of those sites. They're all private property, with no building restrictions attached.'
———-
"The Prime Minister always declared himself an opponent of anything savouring of panic legislation, but he brought a Bill into Parliament forthwith and successfully appealed to both Houses to pass it through all its stages within the week. And that is how we got one of the most glorious measures of the century."
"A measure conferring the vote on women?" asked the nephew.
"Oh dear, no. An Act which made it a penal offence to erect commemorative statuary anywhere within three miles of a public highway."
It's almost as if there's a bunch of extraordinarily intelligent people who have fuck all knowledge of a subject but wilfully wish to impose their ideology onto it to make an easy solution to salve their conscience
Yes times are we're safer with kids nowadays and know more about threats like creeps and other risks than to let 5 year olds wander the streets by themselves.
My kids aren't allowed anywhere by themselves. And no, not just because of cars as some people say, my kids aren't currently allowed to the nearby park without us and that's in walking distance without crossing any roads.
Now my eldest is 10 we're talking about maybe letting her start to go to some places by herself. Which FYI is roughly the same age I was when I was allowed to do so too.
That's why parental rights is so dangerous.
It's fine and groovy if you have compassionate parents.
How about children's rights?
And/or conscripting their parents into a penal battalion for the military?
If there were a range of institutions charging a few thousand a year (or your £10-13k inc. the state voucher), it would be much more achievable for people on middling incomes.
In NI, something like 40% of the population goes to a fee-paying grammar of the sort I mentioned - and fewer than 1% go to a public school.
It's that middling sort that have been stamped upon in England - you get 5% of the population desperately trying to pay £15k for public school, and everyone else goes to a comprehensive. And if only the elite are to be privately educated, then there shouldn't be any tax breaks for it.
Once they get the hang of the Webley in 0.455, ours are released into the wild.
Mind you, they get 6 rounds. Any more comes out of their allowance.
Granted Harris might win by even more than Biden in California, DC, New York city and Massachusetts but they don't help at all in the EC as they are safe blue states
Struck me as quite plausible.
Edit: it's now also reminding me (I think) 'Down and Out in Paris and London'. A section where the unemployed were offered bread and soup by a priest/minister just with no questions asked. Decent chap. Nodding all round. And the comparison with a priest/minister who insisted they all sing along with their chosen hymns before they got anything at all - resulting in all sorts of parody/insulting lyrics being sung by the hobo's.
disaster the current approach is.
So much so that I've quit on principle yet again.
To be fair to Trump he also cut income tax for all American taxpayers earning over $10,000 in 2018
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Cuts_and_Jobs_Act
https://www.semafor.com/article/07/20/2024/democrats-detail-blitz-primary-options-to-replace-biden
I love how they are about to lose the election to an American fascist who could appoint more toadies to the supreme court and end democracy as we know it but they're still thinking about how to educate the nation on the merits of ranked-choice voting.
I used to find it quite sad how little freedom my kids had compared to me at the same age. But it's very hard to unilaterally break a consensus of expectation. I'm roughly the same age as you; my kids a little older (range from 14 to 9). When I was at primary school I basically had the freedom to go anywhere which didn't involve crossing a main road - I had a whole housing estate, plus the fields at the back. I remember bezzing around the estate on my trike, so I would have been less than 7. (I got a bike late, but my trike was a proper trike with a chain.) I'd go round to friends' houses without calling ahead. I'd spend hours hanging out in the 'jungle' - the unused and overground land behind the car park of the office block on the main road. This just doesn't happen nowadays.
But by the time my kids got to 10, yes, they had the freedom to go to the park by themselves; and by 11 they were wandering down to the shops in the town centre and getting public transport by themselves. They actually get the same sort of freedom I did - it just arrived about three years later.
And I would happily let my primary school kids walk to school by themselves. It's not far. But the school is very clear that it expects parents or other adults to accompany children to school.
Biden won in 2020 as he spoke about supporting US manufacturers and farmers and small businesses, who Hillary largely ignored in 2016 in favour of raising vast sums from Wall Street and the tech industry in Silicon Valley and Hollywood
VAT on schools is a nice idea, in terms of it reducing the overall number of privately educated kids, but its actual effect will be to create a much more bifurcated system of poshos vs everyone else.
I'm well up for a system where anyone from the humblest of background can top their kids fees up from the state minumum to an extra £50 a week, hopefully improving the educational attainment of a lot more. The current system we have encourages bifurcation, either pay the 20k+ a year or go without. I'd like to see a system where even a £50 extra contribution a week makes a difference.
Currently, A-Level Maths is a bit of a Mickey-Mouse subject - it's basically a freebie if you've done Additional Maths at GCSE, and do Physics / Further Maths / Stats & Mechanics at A-Level. But if you've not chosen Triple Award Science + Additional Maths at GCSE, then any of the Maths A-Levels is probably beyond you.
Rishi's idea of requiring maths to age 18 implied a new form of maths A-Level that's open to everyone, so perhaps the current A-Level maths would be re-named Further Maths, with the current Further Maths being replaced by separate Pure Maths and Stats & Mechanics A-Levels.
But it wouldn't solve the problem of Maths-inclined people easily getting three A-Levels for the price of two - in fact, you might end up getting four A-Levels for the price of two (or five, if you include Physics!).
What excuse will Biden give for another debate disaster?
Everyone knows he won’t fulfill another 4 year term so the Trump campaign will go after Harris as essentially vote Biden get Harris . If that’s the case Harris may aswell be the nominee and at least get her chance to go after Trump and get some enthusiasm back from Dems .
Two thirds of Dems want Biden to withdraw . The lack of enthusiasm will allow the GOP higher turnout . No ones saying there’s no risk with Harris but Biden looks like he can barely climb a flight of stairs or string a coherent sentence together . He’s gone downhill rapidly and isn’t suddenly going to do a Cocoon .
If it were up to me I'd abolish GCSEs altogether and have pupils learn a wide range of subjects to 18.
My son goes to the pre-school/nursery of a state primary school. Prior to knowing them, one of his classmates has been previously temporarily removed from their mother due to injuries that turned out to be due to an underlying medical condition. It took a lot of effort to get the child returned, and to prove the medical link.
Sadly any system set up to protect children subject to abuse will result in false positives. Our friend referenced above was lucky enough to escape being one of them in the long run.
My point (perhaps ill expressed) was that it's hard work; I don't think we disagree on that ?
Charging VAT doesn't end that, it simply reduces some of the advantage.
Labour are never going to argue in favour of private education, but Starmer is as friendly as the party is as likely to get any time soon. On the other hand, the Tories, as they currently stand, are more interested in culture war bollocks than standing up for anything in the private sector.
There's a pro-business space for the Lib Dems to step into, perhaps?
My idea, a £7200 voucher, with as little as a £50 a week top up if you're so inclined means that those without the means to afford a house in the right area or an immediate bump from £0 a year to educate your kid to £20k a year to educate them would create a fairer, albeit marketised system.
At the moment, if you can afford an extra £200 a month to pay for your kids education, there's not much you can do. A marketised system where most schools charge £7k-13k would at least give those parents who value education over (cliches like) sky tv and foreign holidays the chance to invest in those things.
An ideal situation would be one where education was so important the state minimum threshold was far above £7200k.
Though where that leaves people like me who have never had children (nor ever will) I don't know.
Personally I'm in a position where I would happily pay more than that towards my child's school to boost funding, but not £20k per year that private schools necessitate.
Of course, the current way round the bifurcation is state schools plus private tuition.
After being denied, they also added a £30 bag of golden virginia to their shop.
People have choices how they spend their money. I believe that most people can go without something to afford an extra £50 a week. And that is why I favour a marketised education system. Most households can probably find £50 savings a week if they look for it. Very few can afford £20k a year+ for the current private system. A system that would give people circa 7k a year for free, plus the ability to top up, would be better than the current system we have now, where someone who _does_ have £50 a week extra can't spend it on education, as you'd either need 20k a year to afford private school fees, or an extra £100k from somewhere to afford to live in a better catchment area.
£50 seems like a lot, but it's a lot less than the other options. My suggestion is an imperfect way of democratising a system that at the moment, is far more elitist.