Another point is that FPTP has traditionally tended to contribute to a smaller-party squeeze; but in 2024 that wasn’t as apparent. If politics becomes more fragmented, and there’s a strong “plague on both your houses” feeling towards Labour and the Tories (which really can’t be that hard to visualise) then we could see a very weird geographic distribution of seats and votes and a very bonkers result. LAB/REF/CON/LD all in the 80-180 seat range, for instance.
I think we’re going to see Reform leading a poll in 2025.
The danger for the Tories is already well documented - Reform holds them back in the seats they need to win back. The danger for Labour has been less publicised but it is just as bad - Reform are the main opposition to Labour in a number of seats and a possible repository for the “2019 Tory” contingent who delivered the Red Wall.
Reform have also seemingly transcended being the Farage party. Despite his importance as a figurehead, he's almost incidental to their post-GE consolidation in the polls.
I think we’re going to see Reform leading a poll in 2025.
The danger for the Tories is already well documented - Reform holds them back in the seats they need to win back. The danger for Labour has been less publicised but it is just as bad - Reform are the main opposition to Labour in a number of seats and a possible repository for the “2019 Tory” contingent who delivered the Red Wall.
Reform have also seemingly transcended being the Farage party. Despite his importance as a figurehead, he's almost incidental to their post-GE consolidation in the polls.
Not sure I agree with that
Farage has been all over the media today with a press conference on immigration and the defection of Jenkyns
I think we’re going to see Reform leading a poll in 2025.
The danger for the Tories is already well documented - Reform holds them back in the seats they need to win back. The danger for Labour has been less publicised but it is just as bad - Reform are the main opposition to Labour in a number of seats and a possible repository for the “2019 Tory” contingent who delivered the Red Wall.
They may well do but Farage is still miles from a majority so he cannot hope to form a government without Tory support too
Any reason why these mayoralties have such moronic names? West of England should be Greater Bristol. West Midlands, greater Birmingham. I think there is a Greater Newcastle one too which has a daft name?
Can I watch the reaction when you tell people they live in “greater Birmingham”?
Most of the residents of Sutton Coldfield still don't consider themselves to live in Birmingham, greater or otherwise.
"Birmingham and the lands beyond" "Birmingham and all parishes, raions, voivoidships and thanes beyond" "Birmingham and the outer darkness" "Birmingham and all townships with enough gravity to force it into a spherical shape" "Birmingham and all those in fellowship" "The Birmingham Pact" "The Birmingham Alliance" "Imperial Birmingham" "Brum"
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
Voting LD at a general election is now like shopping at Waitrose or M & S or having coffee at Gail's or sending your children to private school or living in the Home Counties or posh parts of West London. Something you can do to prove you are upper middle class and don't need to vote for the more common parties but which has a ceiling of about 12% of the vote
While the BBC looks inward at itself (again) and the 'who would ever have believed it' Wallace allegations, they seem to be ignoring completely the dramatic developments in Syria. Can't find it on main page of news site.
Some big serious losses for Assad, could lose Aleppo. Iranian Brigadier General reported killed. Russia (having lost a number of men) now bombing the area. Things not going well Iran at the moment.
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
It's odd that the LDs are stranded at the figure they were at the GE 2024 - (12.2%). But it got them 72 seats. Another 26 and, if no other change, Davey becomes LOTO. And it is seats not mega % they need for that.
There is no momentum behind any of the three great 'legacy' parties. LDs no different. I think this points up the disillusion there is with what I would call the social democrat consensus. No-one has really noticed that Reform offer (though of course simplistically) social democracy+national populism. The fundamental post 1945 state model is completely unchanged with Reform policies.
Reform has spotted that people are not voting against a free NHS, education, state pensions and a welfare state cradle to grave. Nor are they going to. Thety are voting to scapegoat. Good luck with that one.
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
Voting LD at a general election is now like shopping at Waitrose or M & S or having coffee at Gail's or sending your children to private school or living in the Home Counties or posh parts of West London. Something you can do to prove you are upper middle class and don't need to vote for the more common parties but which has a ceiling of about 12% of the vote
Ilford town centre lost its M & S a few months back, along with a Waterstones
A parliament with the Tories in power and Reform as the Opposition is not impossible. Cue hilarity
Based on UNS calculations it looks extremely unlikely. You'd need to see not just a collapse in the Labour vote but in the Lib Dem vote too - an implausibly large shift of the electorate to the right. It does become more likely if the two right wing parties cooperate. A Tory-Reform coalition government is a much more likely outcome IMHO.
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
25% would be the lowest Labour score at a GE since 1918, even if 27% would be the second lowest Tory GE voteshare ever too
-9? Is this a reputable pollster? I don't think I've heard of them. I think the government has been rubbish so far, but I just don't find this plausible. People rarely change their minds that quickly.
What? Are you not a regular PBer?
This is entirely consistent with Starmer's appalling personal polling. Labour have fallen off a cliff since the GE
I think we’re going to see Reform leading a poll in 2025.
The danger for the Tories is already well documented - Reform holds them back in the seats they need to win back. The danger for Labour has been less publicised but it is just as bad - Reform are the main opposition to Labour in a number of seats and a possible repository for the “2019 Tory” contingent who delivered the Red Wall.
Reform have also seemingly transcended being the Farage party. Despite his importance as a figurehead, he's almost incidental to their post-GE consolidation in the polls.
Not sure I agree with that
Farage has been all over the media today with a press conference on immigration and the defection of Jenkyns
The thing that will drive Reform’s success, like MAGA, is if it starts converting others. By that, I don’t mean fellow travellers like Jenkyns or Braverman who have always been on the right of the Tories and considered a bit “out there”.
So watch figures on the centre right (and even centre left) this parliament. By that I don’t necessarily even mean MPs. It could be media figures, politicians, even celebrities. Trump managed to normalise his politics this way. Whether Farage can or not will I think be decisive as to where REF goes from here. He’s already started by getting 5 MPs.
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
Voting LD at a general election is now like shopping at Waitrose or M & S or having coffee at Gail's or sending your children to private school or living in the Home Counties or posh parts of West London. Something you can do to prove you are upper middle class and don't need to vote for the more common parties but which has a ceiling of about 12% of the vote
Ilford town centre lost its M & S a few months back, along with a Waterstones
And Ilford has Labour MPs with the LDs not even in the top 3
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
Voting LD at a general election is now like shopping at Waitrose or M & S or having coffee at Gail's or sending your children to private school or living in the Home Counties or posh parts of West London. Something you can do to prove you are upper middle class and don't need to vote for the more common parties but which has a ceiling of about 12% of the vote
Tempting analysis but wrong. Everywhere in the country you get the Conservatives; they are omnipresent as an alternative. But everywhere in the country you either get Labour (most of it) or LDs (the rest) as the alternative to the Tories. Almost nowhere are both in serious contention. Once this is accounted for LDs are neither more nor less posh than Labour. In loads of wealthy places the LDs barely register.
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
It's odd that the LDs are stranded at the figure they were at the GE 2024 - (12.2%). But it got them 72 seats. Another 26 and, if no other change, Davey becomes LOTO. And it is seats not mega % they need for that.
There is no momentum behind any of the three great 'legacy' parties. LDs no different. I think this points up the disillusion there is with what I would call the social democrat consensus. No-one has really noticed that Reform offer (though of course simplistically) social democracy+national populism. The fundamental post 1945 state model is completely unchanged with Reform policies.
Reform has spotted that people are not voting against a free NHS, education, state pensions and a welfare state cradle to grave. Nor are they going to. Thety are voting to scapegoat. Good luck with that one.
Farage is low tax as well as low immigration and anti woke, he is not libertarian but certainly less big spend than Labour
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
Voting LD at a general election is now like shopping at Waitrose or M & S or having coffee at Gail's or sending your children to private school or living in the Home Counties or posh parts of West London. Something you can do to prove you are upper middle class and don't need to vote for the more common parties but which has a ceiling of about 12% of the vote
Ilford town centre lost its M & S a few months back, along with a Waterstones
Hexham lost M&S recently and gained for the first time since about 1066 a Labour MP.
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
It's odd that the LDs are stranded at the figure they were at the GE 2024 - (12.2%). But it got them 72 seats. Another 26 and, if no other change, Davey becomes LOTO. And it is seats not mega % they need for that.
There is no momentum behind any of the three great 'legacy' parties. LDs no different. I think this points up the disillusion there is with what I would call the social democrat consensus. No-one has really noticed that Reform offer (though of course simplistically) social democracy+national populism. The fundamental post 1945 state model is completely unchanged with Reform policies.
Reform has spotted that people are not voting against a free NHS, education, state pensions and a welfare state cradle to grave. Nor are they going to. Thety are voting to scapegoat. Good luck with that one.
Farage is low tax as well as low immigration and anti woke, he is not libertarian but certainly less big spend than Labour
Everyone is low tax until they have to manage a budget and be accountable for public services.
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
SPLORG 48%. Lab/Con 52%. That is, by two or three points I think, a record low. Heading for parity? At which point the rest of the world may begin to notice the possibility of epoch making change.
Tories and Ref have a good chance of getting 50% at the next election, but can they transfer that into a majority of seats?
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
It's odd that the LDs are stranded at the figure they were at the GE 2024 - (12.2%). But it got them 72 seats. Another 26 and, if no other change, Davey becomes LOTO. And it is seats not mega % they need for that.
There is no momentum behind any of the three great 'legacy' parties. LDs no different. I think this points up the disillusion there is with what I would call the social democrat consensus. No-one has really noticed that Reform offer (though of course simplistically) social democracy+national populism. The fundamental post 1945 state model is completely unchanged with Reform policies.
Reform has spotted that people are not voting against a free NHS, education, state pensions and a welfare state cradle to grave. Nor are they going to. Thety are voting to scapegoat. Good luck with that one.
Farage is low tax as well as low immigration and anti woke, he is not libertarian but certainly less big spend than Labour
There are no expensive bits of the social democrat state Reform propose to turn from. Of course he supports low tax. So does everyone. There is no possibility he could deliver it. Do the costsings. Reform voters are highly wedded to the social democrat state.
Low migration is entirely consistent with social democracy. Whatever woke is regarded as it has no relation to the social democrat state. Attlee wasn't woke either.
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
It's odd that the LDs are stranded at the figure they were at the GE 2024 - (12.2%). But it got them 72 seats. Another 26 and, if no other change, Davey becomes LOTO. And it is seats not mega % they need for that.
There is no momentum behind any of the three great 'legacy' parties. LDs no different. I think this points up the disillusion there is with what I would call the social democrat consensus. No-one has really noticed that Reform offer (though of course simplistically) social democracy+national populism. The fundamental post 1945 state model is completely unchanged with Reform policies.
Reform has spotted that people are not voting against a free NHS, education, state pensions and a welfare state cradle to grave. Nor are they going to. Thety are voting to scapegoat. Good luck with that one.
Farage is low tax as well as low immigration and anti woke, he is not libertarian but certainly less big spend than Labour
Everyone is low tax until they have to manage a budget and be accountable for public services.
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
It's odd that the LDs are stranded at the figure they were at the GE 2024 - (12.2%). But it got them 72 seats. Another 26 and, if no other change, Davey becomes LOTO. And it is seats not mega % they need for that.
There is no momentum behind any of the three great 'legacy' parties. LDs no different. I think this points up the disillusion there is with what I would call the social democrat consensus. No-one has really noticed that Reform offer (though of course simplistically) social democracy+national populism. The fundamental post 1945 state model is completely unchanged with Reform policies.
Reform has spotted that people are not voting against a free NHS, education, state pensions and a welfare state cradle to grave. Nor are they going to. Thety are voting to scapegoat. Good luck with that one.
Seeing immigration restrictionism as scapegoating is a mistake. It's a perfectly legitimate preference - and one that the major parties ostensibly support.
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
It's odd that the LDs are stranded at the figure they were at the GE 2024 - (12.2%). But it got them 72 seats. Another 26 and, if no other change, Davey becomes LOTO. And it is seats not mega % they need for that.
There is no momentum behind any of the three great 'legacy' parties. LDs no different. I think this points up the disillusion there is with what I would call the social democrat consensus. No-one has really noticed that Reform offer (though of course simplistically) social democracy+national populism. The fundamental post 1945 state model is completely unchanged with Reform policies.
Reform has spotted that people are not voting against a free NHS, education, state pensions and a welfare state cradle to grave. Nor are they going to. Thety are voting to scapegoat. Good luck with that one.
Farage is low tax as well as low immigration and anti woke, he is not libertarian but certainly less big spend than Labour
Everyone is low tax until they have to manage a budget and be accountable for public services.
Including Trump.
Trump is there for autocratic kleptocracy. His mates will find ways to stretch public finances immensely.
Another point is that FPTP has traditionally tended to contribute to a smaller-party squeeze; but in 2024 that wasn’t as apparent. If politics becomes more fragmented, and there’s a strong “plague on both your houses” feeling towards Labour and the Tories (which really can’t be that hard to visualise) then we could see a very weird geographic distribution of seats and votes and a very bonkers result. LAB/REF/CON/LD all in the 80-180 seat range, for instance.
I think there is a rationality in voters turning away from traditional parties. If it is assumed you have no choice than your views are discounted and policies diluted. It is the floating voters who get the attention and policies. The electorate are rewarded for flakiness and the flakier they are the bigger the bribes.
It will be interesting to hear what our Scottish contributors think of the SNP reintroducing universal WFP
Just rejoice at that news. If you fancy moving up here to enjoy our social democratic nirvana. I'm happy to offer you mate's rates on my one-bed flat, only £1,400 PCM.
I think we’re going to see Reform leading a poll in 2025.
The danger for the Tories is already well documented - Reform holds them back in the seats they need to win back. The danger for Labour has been less publicised but it is just as bad - Reform are the main opposition to Labour in a number of seats and a possible repository for the “2019 Tory” contingent who delivered the Red Wall.
This would be an excellent issue for a question if there is a 2025 January prediction contest. Please may we have one? (I am currently, I think, on 1 out of 10; I was going to be on Zero/10 until Trump won POTUS.)
Another point is that FPTP has traditionally tended to contribute to a smaller-party squeeze; but in 2024 that wasn’t as apparent. If politics becomes more fragmented, and there’s a strong “plague on both your houses” feeling towards Labour and the Tories (which really can’t be that hard to visualise) then we could see a very weird geographic distribution of seats and votes and a very bonkers result. LAB/REF/CON/LD all in the 80-180 seat range, for instance.
I think there is a rationality in voters turning away from traditional parties. If it is assumed you have no choice than your views are discounted and policies diluted. It is the floating voters who get the attention and policies. The electorate are rewarded for flakiness and the flakier they are the bigger the bribes.
Not to mention the "quality" offered by the major parties, especially Labour 17, 19 and Conservatives 19,24. How is anyone rational supposed to vote for those?
It will be interesting to hear what our Scottish contributors think of the SNP reintroducing universal WFP
Just rejoice at that news. If you fancy moving up here to enjoy our social democratic nirvana. I'm happy to offer you mate's rates on my one-bed flat. Only £1,400 PCM.
I could move back to Scotland but after 62 years here this is home
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
Voting LD at a general election is now like shopping at Waitrose or M & S or having coffee at Gail's or sending your children to private school or living in the Home Counties or posh parts of West London. Something you can do to prove you are upper middle class and don't need to vote for the more common parties but which has a ceiling of about 12% of the vote
That is just not true by simply looking at the ballot boxes as they are opened. In the Surrey seats where they won they clean up in the urban areas and then squeeze the Tories in the rural areas but actually still lost them or tied. Basically getting a good lead where they can and minimising the losses where they can't, with a net effect of winning. So in my ward we tied, where we would expect to lose badly and in surrounding areas we lost, but not by much, but cleaned up in the town.
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
It's odd that the LDs are stranded at the figure they were at the GE 2024 - (12.2%). But it got them 72 seats. Another 26 and, if no other change, Davey becomes LOTO. And it is seats not mega % they need for that.
There is no momentum behind any of the three great 'legacy' parties. LDs no different. I think this points up the disillusion there is with what I would call the social democrat consensus. No-one has really noticed that Reform offer (though of course simplistically) social democracy+national populism. The fundamental post 1945 state model is completely unchanged with Reform policies.
Reform has spotted that people are not voting against a free NHS, education, state pensions and a welfare state cradle to grave. Nor are they going to. Thety are voting to scapegoat. Good luck with that one.
Seeing immigration restrictionism as scapegoating is a mistake. It's a perfectly legitimate preference - and one that the major parties ostensibly support.
Indeed the Reform position is MORE coherent than the shite offered by the other three parties. We have just had net migration of nearly a million people in ONE YEAR. Fucking insane
No wonder the NHS is buckling, no wonder councils are going bust. This is an historically unprecedented influx and it happening year on year. Then add in the boat people, costing MORE billions
The Welfare State as we know it cannot survive this level of migration. Reform promise to bring migration down to net zero, thereby saving the NHS. Labour and the Tories look comparatively clueless with their Ponzi schemes
A parliament with the Tories in power and Reform as the Opposition is not impossible. Cue hilarity
Based on UNS calculations it looks extremely unlikely. You'd need to see not just a collapse in the Labour vote but in the Lib Dem vote too - an implausibly large shift of the electorate to the right. It does become more likely if the two right wing parties cooperate. A Tory-Reform coalition government is a much more likely outcome IMHO.
Not likely.... But then Brexit seemed basically impossible 15 years ago
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
A friend, who did a PhD in art history, argued for a version of the Grand Tour. Spend 8 months, each, in 6 different major cultural cities. Work as a barista or similar, spend your spare time sketching in the museums. At the end of the 4 years, you would have a chunk of the language, friends, a knowledge of the culture and how to navigate it.
Yes, exactly, as time passes something like that will be seen as vastly preferable to the university model - for 90% of kids
Reserving a top education exclusively for the elite 10%. HYUFD will be pleased.
I think it might end up nearer 1% than 10%. Either way unis are heading for collapse
You are the perfect example of a humanities grad who has no understanding of how science or engineering is taught or done.
BREAKING: It will probably come as no surprise to anyone to hear former Tory Minister Dame Andrea Jenkyns has defected to Reform and will stand to be Greater Lincolnshire Mayor
It's not. It's an ex-Conservative MP joining Reform for career advancement. That says a lot.
Mayoral votes on that scale are not a triviality. No party other than the Tories or Labour has won any (Livingstone won London as an independent, though that was an exceptional circumstance). If Reform manages it, it boosts their profile and their electoral credibility (same with the Greens in the laughably-named 'West of England').
Any reason why these mayoralties have such moronic names? West of England should be Greater Bristol. West Midlands, greater Birmingham. I think there is a Greater Newcastle one too which has a daft name?
Can I watch the reaction when you tell people they live in “greater Birmingham”?
People probably says similar when Greater Manchester was created in 1974: they got used to it. You could call it Birmingham & the Black Country I suppose, but it’s a bit of a mouthful.
I wonder if the government will now reverse ferret one of the first things they did when they came in which was to scrap the programmed higher levels of income for visas?
You only need to earn £29k a year to be able to bring in family members with you, it was set to be raised shortly to £39k.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
But they cost far too much for the student and increasingly the degrees are useless and pointless. Cheaper ways of nourishing the 18 year old brain will be found
Yes - but I'm just saying don't forget that bit. It's not all about research, teaching and jobs.
I would argue that they could leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults by ... leaving home, making new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults. My Dad did all that when he moved to London aged 18 to get a job (you couldn't do that nowadays, of course, but I would argue that you could still easily as an 18 year old move to Manchester or Leeds or Newcastle or Glasgow and have a splendid time, whether you were studying or working). Getting into debt to the tune of two years' salary in order to also know about glaciation and/or the Spanish civil war on top of that strikes me as a sub-optimal arrangement.
The advice I will give my daughters is only to go to university if you have very clear ideas about why you want to go.
That's sound advice (to your daughters) but on the general point I don’t think you’re quite feeling me. A big point of uni is you don’t have a job. Being 18 and just left home is challenging enough without having to cope with a job as well. Also, more importantly, a job would get in the way of what you’re meant to be doing, which is expanding and maturing into a young adult. You need a bit of space to do this properly. Eg how can you hang out into the early hours with a stimulating new acquaintance, discussing whether there’s such a thing as free will, if you have to go to work the next morning? You’ll be working soon enough and long enough as it is. This time (18 to 21) is for other things. Perhaps it is on its way out, for tech and financial reasons, but I for one won’t be cheering if it is.
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
Voting LD at a general election is now like shopping at Waitrose or M & S or having coffee at Gail's or sending your children to private school or living in the Home Counties or posh parts of West London. Something you can do to prove you are upper middle class and don't need to vote for the more common parties but which has a ceiling of about 12% of the vote
That is just not true by simply looking at the ballot boxes as they are opened. In the Surrey seats where they won they clean up in the urban areas and then squeeze the Tories in the rural areas but actually still lost them or tied. Basically getting a good lead where they can and minimising the losses where they can't, with a net effect of winning. So in my ward we tied, where we would expect to lose badly and in surrounding areas we lost, but not by much, but cleaned up in the town.
At General Elections not local elections it very much is true.
It will be interesting to hear what our Scottish contributors think of the SNP reintroducing universal WFP
Just rejoice at that news. If you fancy moving up here to enjoy our social democratic nirvana. I'm happy to offer you mate's rates on my one-bed flat, only £1,400 PCM.
Also, not universal WFP as was, as BigG implies (perhaps inadvertently). Differently structured, £100 for all, but £200/300 for the folk on the dole (which at least saves money on bureaucracy).
Just what is needed to keep a Tory person happy (not nec. Big G I hasten to add) who can't bear to see pensioners not get a bung, but doesn't want civil servants to exist or money to be spent.
Edit: or indeed a Slab person who claims that London Labour is n othing to do with them.
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
It's odd that the LDs are stranded at the figure they were at the GE 2024 - (12.2%). But it got them 72 seats. Another 26 and, if no other change, Davey becomes LOTO. And it is seats not mega % they need for that.
There is no momentum behind any of the three great 'legacy' parties. LDs no different. I think this points up the disillusion there is with what I would call the social democrat consensus. No-one has really noticed that Reform offer (though of course simplistically) social democracy+national populism. The fundamental post 1945 state model is completely unchanged with Reform policies.
Reform has spotted that people are not voting against a free NHS, education, state pensions and a welfare state cradle to grave. Nor are they going to. Thety are voting to scapegoat. Good luck with that one.
Seeing immigration restrictionism as scapegoating is a mistake. It's a perfectly legitimate preference - and one that the major parties ostensibly support.
Indeed the Reform position is MORE coherent than the shite offered by the other three parties. We have just had net migration of nearly a million people in ONE YEAR. Fucking insane
No wonder the NHS is buckling, no wonder councils are going bust. This is an historically unprecedented influx and it happening year on year. Then add in the boat people, costing MORE billions
The Welfare State as we know it cannot survive this level of migration. Reform promise to bring migration down to net zero, thereby saving the NHS. Labour and the Tories look comparatively clueless with their Ponzi schemes
Isn't that million just because of the procedural backlog accumulated by the last lot being dealt with efficiently?
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
25% would be the lowest Labour score at a GE since 1918, even if 27% would be the second lowest Tory GE voteshare ever too
-9? Is this a reputable pollster? I don't think I've heard of them. I think the government has been rubbish so far, but I just don't find this plausible. People rarely change their minds that quickly.
What? Are you not a regular PBer?
This is entirely consistent with Starmer's appalling personal polling. Labour have fallen off a cliff since the GE
Opinion polls this far out are also a chance to express being pissed off with the government for whatever reason. Combine that with some (much?) of Lab's vote being tactical anti-Con and it's no surprise.
I gave Lab a vote at the GE. If polled I'd likely answer LD now. But I quite like our local Lab MP and LD are nowhere in my constituency, so my next vote is most likely Lab, I guess. Could be Con if Lab screw up and Con enthuse (probably requires a different leader). Could be LD if either I think the Lab guy is safe or don't really care between Con and Lab nationally and the Lab and Con candidates locally.
TLDR: If polled I'd be in the -9, but I may well come back at the GE.
It will be interesting to hear what our Scottish contributors think of the SNP reintroducing universal WFP
Just rejoice at that news. If you fancy moving up here to enjoy our social democratic nirvana. I'm happy to offer you mate's rates on my one-bed flat, only £1,400 PCM.
Also, not universal WFP as was, as BigG implies (perhaps inadvertently). Differently structured, £100 for all, but £200/300 for the folk on the dole (which at least saves money on bureaucracy).
Just what is needed to keep a Tory person happy (not nec. Big G I hasten to add) who can't bear to see pensioners not get a bung, but doesn't want civil servants to exist or money to be spent.
I'm mystified and irritated by the Tory opposition to the abolition of WFP.
Another point is that FPTP has traditionally tended to contribute to a smaller-party squeeze; but in 2024 that wasn’t as apparent. If politics becomes more fragmented, and there’s a strong “plague on both your houses” feeling towards Labour and the Tories (which really can’t be that hard to visualise) then we could see a very weird geographic distribution of seats and votes and a very bonkers result. LAB/REF/CON/LD all in the 80-180 seat range, for instance.
I think there is a rationality in voters turning away from traditional parties. If it is assumed you have no choice than your views are discounted and policies diluted. It is the floating voters who get the attention and policies. The electorate are rewarded for flakiness and the flakier they are the bigger the bribes.
Not to mention the "quality" offered by the major parties, especially Labour 17, 19 and Conservatives 19,24. How is anyone rational supposed to vote for those?
2017 had the biggest turnout since 1992, the lowest being 2024.
If i have a theory it is:
The more triangulating the greater the electorate's cynicism but the more efficient the vote. So a way for non-centrist voters affect the system is to choose the more radical alternative driving parties to the extremes.
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
It's odd that the LDs are stranded at the figure they were at the GE 2024 - (12.2%). But it got them 72 seats. Another 26 and, if no other change, Davey becomes LOTO. And it is seats not mega % they need for that.
There is no momentum behind any of the three great 'legacy' parties. LDs no different. I think this points up the disillusion there is with what I would call the social democrat consensus. No-one has really noticed that Reform offer (though of course simplistically) social democracy+national populism. The fundamental post 1945 state model is completely unchanged with Reform policies.
Reform has spotted that people are not voting against a free NHS, education, state pensions and a welfare state cradle to grave. Nor are they going to. Thety are voting to scapegoat. Good luck with that one.
Farage is low tax as well as low immigration and anti woke, he is not libertarian but certainly less big spend than Labour
There are no expensive bits of the social democrat state Reform propose to turn from. Of course he supports low tax. So does everyone. There is no possibility he could deliver it. Do the costsings. Reform voters are highly wedded to the social democrat state.
Low migration is entirely consistent with social democracy. Whatever woke is regarded as it has no relation to the social democrat state. Attlee wasn't woke either.
There was a huge black hole in the Reform manifesto. That's why they won't talk about how they would actually do anything imo, whilst inserting fictional little asides about "asylum seeks in 4 star hotels" etc to rile up their potential supporters. They can't deal with people being curious.
Carl Emmerson, deputy director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: “Reform UK proposes tax cuts that it estimates would cost nearly £90 billion per year, and spending increases of £50 billion per year. It claims that it would pay for these through £150 billion per year of reductions in other spending, covering public services, debt interest and working-age benefits.
This would represent a big cut to the size of the state. Regardless of the pros and cons of shrinking the state, or of any of their specific measures, the package as a whole is problematic. Spending reductions would save less than stated, and the tax cuts would cost more than stated, by a margin of tens of billions of pounds per year. Meanwhile the spending increases would cost more than stated if they are to achieve their objectives. https://ifs.org.uk/articles/reform-uk-manifesto-reaction
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
It's odd that the LDs are stranded at the figure they were at the GE 2024 - (12.2%). But it got them 72 seats. Another 26 and, if no other change, Davey becomes LOTO. And it is seats not mega % they need for that.
There is no momentum behind any of the three great 'legacy' parties. LDs no different. I think this points up the disillusion there is with what I would call the social democrat consensus. No-one has really noticed that Reform offer (though of course simplistically) social democracy+national populism. The fundamental post 1945 state model is completely unchanged with Reform policies.
Reform has spotted that people are not voting against a free NHS, education, state pensions and a welfare state cradle to grave. Nor are they going to. Thety are voting to scapegoat. Good luck with that one.
Seeing immigration restrictionism as scapegoating is a mistake. It's a perfectly legitimate preference - and one that the major parties ostensibly support.
Indeed the Reform position is MORE coherent than the shite offered by the other three parties. We have just had net migration of nearly a million people in ONE YEAR. Fucking insane
No wonder the NHS is buckling, no wonder councils are going bust. This is an historically unprecedented influx and it happening year on year. Then add in the boat people, costing MORE billions
The Welfare State as we know it cannot survive this level of migration. Reform promise to bring migration down to net zero, thereby saving the NHS. Labour and the Tories look comparatively clueless with their Ponzi schemes
Isn't that million just because of the procedural backlog accumulated by the last lot being dealt with efficiently?
It's mostly people arriving with work or study visas. Very little contribution from asylum.
I thought Casino's post earlier was interesting for saying what he would do differently and the numbers that would result. The net migration he envisages is still at quite a high level by historical standards, and some way above Cameron's "tens of thousands" pledge. I was surprised.
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
It's odd that the LDs are stranded at the figure they were at the GE 2024 - (12.2%). But it got them 72 seats. Another 26 and, if no other change, Davey becomes LOTO. And it is seats not mega % they need for that.
There is no momentum behind any of the three great 'legacy' parties. LDs no different. I think this points up the disillusion there is with what I would call the social democrat consensus. No-one has really noticed that Reform offer (though of course simplistically) social democracy+national populism. The fundamental post 1945 state model is completely unchanged with Reform policies.
Reform has spotted that people are not voting against a free NHS, education, state pensions and a welfare state cradle to grave. Nor are they going to. Thety are voting to scapegoat. Good luck with that one.
Seeing immigration restrictionism as scapegoating is a mistake. It's a perfectly legitimate preference - and one that the major parties ostensibly support.
Indeed the Reform position is MORE coherent than the shite offered by the other three parties. We have just had net migration of nearly a million people in ONE YEAR. Fucking insane
No wonder the NHS is buckling, no wonder councils are going bust. This is an historically unprecedented influx and it happening year on year. Then add in the boat people, costing MORE billions
The Welfare State as we know it cannot survive this level of migration. Reform promise to bring migration down to net zero, thereby saving the NHS. Labour and the Tories look comparatively clueless with their Ponzi schemes
For the Tories, everything came down to protecting the interests of their last bastion of support - pensioners who owned their homes outright, and employers desperate to hold down wages, and throwing the rest of the population under the bus. Mass migration props up house prices and keeps down wages.
The age profile of Reform's supporters skews significantly younger than that of the Conservatives.
It will be interesting to hear what our Scottish contributors think of the SNP reintroducing universal WFP
Just rejoice at that news. If you fancy moving up here to enjoy our social democratic nirvana. I'm happy to offer you mate's rates on my one-bed flat, only £1,400 PCM.
Also, not universal WFP as was, as BigG implies (perhaps inadvertently). Differently structured, £100 for all, but £200/300 for the folk on the dole (which at least saves money on bureaucracy).
Just what is needed to keep a Tory person happy (not nec. Big G I hasten to add) who can't bear to see pensioners not get a bung, but doesn't want civil servants to exist or money to be spent.
Edit: or indeed a Slab person who claims that London Labour is n othing to do with them.
Just perusing Facebook; now the comments are flooded by people on minimum wage, single parents, students etc who won't get PAWHP even while millionaire pensioners do.
The change is devastating for Scottish Labour, but not universally applauded either.
A parliament with the Tories in power and Reform as the Opposition is not impossible. Cue hilarity
Based on UNS calculations it looks extremely unlikely. You'd need to see not just a collapse in the Labour vote but in the Lib Dem vote too - an implausibly large shift of the electorate to the right. It does become more likely if the two right wing parties cooperate. A Tory-Reform coalition government is a much more likely outcome IMHO.
Not likely.... But then Brexit seemed basically impossible 15 years ago
We live in strange times
Yes it makes sense to expect the worst and most stupid outcome these days.
It will be interesting to hear what our Scottish contributors think of the SNP reintroducing universal WFP
Just rejoice at that news. If you fancy moving up here to enjoy our social democratic nirvana. I'm happy to offer you mate's rates on my one-bed flat, only £1,400 PCM.
Also, not universal WFP as was, as BigG implies (perhaps inadvertently). Differently structured, £100 for all, but £200/300 for the folk on the dole (which at least saves money on bureaucracy).
Just what is needed to keep a Tory person happy (not nec. Big G I hasten to add) who can't bear to see pensioners not get a bung, but doesn't want civil servants to exist or money to be spent.
I'm mystified and irritated by the Tory opposition to the abolition of WFP.
Oh, it's easy. They've painted themselves into the "credulous old pensioner" corner as far as votes are concerned.
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
It's odd that the LDs are stranded at the figure they were at the GE 2024 - (12.2%). But it got them 72 seats. Another 26 and, if no other change, Davey becomes LOTO. And it is seats not mega % they need for that.
There is no momentum behind any of the three great 'legacy' parties. LDs no different. I think this points up the disillusion there is with what I would call the social democrat consensus. No-one has really noticed that Reform offer (though of course simplistically) social democracy+national populism. The fundamental post 1945 state model is completely unchanged with Reform policies.
Reform has spotted that people are not voting against a free NHS, education, state pensions and a welfare state cradle to grave. Nor are they going to. Thety are voting to scapegoat. Good luck with that one.
Seeing immigration restrictionism as scapegoating is a mistake. It's a perfectly legitimate preference - and one that the major parties ostensibly support.
Indeed the Reform position is MORE coherent than the shite offered by the other three parties. We have just had net migration of nearly a million people in ONE YEAR. Fucking insane
No wonder the NHS is buckling, no wonder councils are going bust. This is an historically unprecedented influx and it happening year on year. Then add in the boat people, costing MORE billions
The Welfare State as we know it cannot survive this level of migration. Reform promise to bring migration down to net zero, thereby saving the NHS. Labour and the Tories look comparatively clueless with their Ponzi schemes
For the Tories, everything came down to protecting the interests of their last bastion of support - pensioners who owned their homes outright, and employers desperate to hold down wages, and throwing the rest of the population under the bus. Mass migration props up house prices and keeps down wages.
The age profile of Reform's supporters skews significantly younger than that of the Conservatives.
It also keeps care costs low. It is not in a younger persons interest to have the older and wealthier cohort serviced by a class of low wage migrants. Maybe an alternative would be to have service sector costs rise through restricted labour supply and we can rebalance the economy towards the working population.
Are we full circle from the 80s and back to supporting Al Qaeda & other associated militants in the middle east ?
No. But Syrian rebels aren't Al Qaeda, whether or not we support them.
It's complex. As far as I'm aware, the current advances are not being made by ISIS/AQ groups, but there are still scattered pockets of ISIS fighters in the country. They fight not just Assad's forces, but seemingly everyone.
and this is how weird it gets: "On 6 June, Six shepherds were killed in a massacre by suspected ISIS militants in the village of Abu Al-Alya village, in the eastern countryside of Homs.
On 8 June, As an act of revenge for killing Six Shepherds two days ago by ISIS cells, local shepherds attacked and killed two ISIS members and retook the herd of sheep captured by them."
" Everybody and their mums is packin' round here. Like who? Shepherds. Who else? Shepherds' mums. "
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
But they cost far too much for the student and increasingly the degrees are useless and pointless. Cheaper ways of nourishing the 18 year old brain will be found
Yes - but I'm just saying don't forget that bit. It's not all about research, teaching and jobs.
I would argue that they could leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults by ... leaving home, making new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults. My Dad did all that when he moved to London aged 18 to get a job (you couldn't do that nowadays, of course, but I would argue that you could still easily as an 18 year old move to Manchester or Leeds or Newcastle or Glasgow and have a splendid time, whether you were studying or working). Getting into debt to the tune of two years' salary in order to also know about glaciation and/or the Spanish civil war on top of that strikes me as a sub-optimal arrangement.
The advice I will give my daughters is only to go to university if you have very clear ideas about why you want to go.
That's sound advice (to your daughters) but on the general point I don’t think you’re quite feeling me. A big point of uni is you don’t have a job. Being 18 and just left home is challenging enough without having to cope with a job as well. Also, more importantly, a job would get in the way of what you’re meant to be doing, which is expanding and maturing into a young adult. You need a bit of space to do this properly. Eg how can you hang out into the early hours with a stimulating new acquaintance, discussing whether there’s such a thing as free will, if you have to go to work the next morning? You’ll be working soon enough and long enough as it is. This time (18 to 21) is for other things. Perhaps it is on its way out, for tech and financial reasons, but I for one won’t be cheering if it is.
It always seemed quite generous to give middle class kids a three-year party as a reward for getting good A Levels, even when they stopped paying you to have it. Bill Bryson noted this in Notes from a Small Island back in the early 90s, I think.
When I went through it I found it a little bleak. I was, on the face of it, having a very good time - the best friends I could ever have, alcohol, sex and live music - but it was all so existentially unsatisfying. What was the point of it all? Intellectually it all seemed rather less rigorous than A Levels. So much woolly thinking went on in universities for so little purpose.
It will be interesting to hear what our Scottish contributors think of the SNP reintroducing universal WFP
Just rejoice at that news. If you fancy moving up here to enjoy our social democratic nirvana. I'm happy to offer you mate's rates on my one-bed flat, only £1,400 PCM.
Also, not universal WFP as was, as BigG implies (perhaps inadvertently). Differently structured, £100 for all, but £200/300 for the folk on the dole (which at least saves money on bureaucracy).
Just what is needed to keep a Tory person happy (not nec. Big G I hasten to add) who can't bear to see pensioners not get a bung, but doesn't want civil servants to exist or money to be spent.
I'm mystified and irritated by the Tory opposition to the abolition of WFP.
Reform and the LDs, the Greens and SNP also oppose the WFP cut
Of course it is: the entire premise of the film depends on it being Christmas Eve. Hence why the entire skyscraper is deserted bar a Japanese bank!
Ok. Strong point. But is a film set at Christmas necessarily a Christmas film? Doesn't it also need to have a Christmas theme and at least a modicum of Christmas spirit? I can't recall the Bruce Willis character mentioning anything about it in Die Hard. Or anybody else for that matter. In fact as various people romp around fighting and causing mayhem it's not clear they know it's Christmas time at all.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
But they cost far too much for the student and increasingly the degrees are useless and pointless. Cheaper ways of nourishing the 18 year old brain will be found
Yes - but I'm just saying don't forget that bit. It's not all about research, teaching and jobs.
I would argue that they could leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults by ... leaving home, making new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults. My Dad did all that when he moved to London aged 18 to get a job (you couldn't do that nowadays, of course, but I would argue that you could still easily as an 18 year old move to Manchester or Leeds or Newcastle or Glasgow and have a splendid time, whether you were studying or working). Getting into debt to the tune of two years' salary in order to also know about glaciation and/or the Spanish civil war on top of that strikes me as a sub-optimal arrangement.
The advice I will give my daughters is only to go to university if you have very clear ideas about why you want to go.
That's sound advice (to your daughters) but on the general point I don’t think you’re quite feeling me. A big point of uni is you don’t have a job. Being 18 and just left home is challenging enough without having to cope with a job as well. Also, more importantly, a job would get in the way of what you’re meant to be doing, which is expanding and maturing into a young adult. You need a bit of space to do this properly. Eg how can you hang out into the early hours with a stimulating new acquaintance, discussing whether there’s such a thing as free will, if you have to go to work the next morning? You’ll be working soon enough and long enough as it is. This time (18 to 21) is for other things. Perhaps it is on its way out, for tech and financial reasons, but I for one won’t be cheering if it is.
It always seemed quite generous to give middle class kids a three-year party as a reward for getting good A Levels, even when they stopped paying you to have it. Bill Bryson noted this in Notes from a Small Island back in the early 90s, I think.
When I went through it I found it a little bleak. I was, on the face of it, having a very good time - the best friends I could ever have, alcohol, sex and live music - but it was all so existentially unsatisfying. What was the point of it all? Intellectually it all seemed rather less rigorous than A Levels. So much woolly thinking went on in universities for so little purpose.
But more importantly the grant was an entry into the professions for the working classes as well.
And I can't speak for your uni, but I was given a tough time intellectually, or, rather and more subtly, made to give myself a tough time.
Of course it is: the entire premise of the film depends on it being Christmas Eve. Hence why the entire skyscraper is deserted bar a Japanese bank!
Ok. Strong point. But is a film set at Christmas necessarily a Christmas film? Doesn't it also need to have a Christmas theme and at least a modicum of Christmas spirit? I can't recall the Bruce Willis character mentioning anything about it in Die Hard. Or anybody else for that matter. In fact as various people romp around fighting and causing mayhem it's not clear they know it's Christmas time at all.
Watch the embedded video. There's loads of Christmas spirit. It's just not as in-your-face as some films.
It will be interesting to hear what our Scottish contributors think of the SNP reintroducing universal WFP
Just rejoice at that news. If you fancy moving up here to enjoy our social democratic nirvana. I'm happy to offer you mate's rates on my one-bed flat, only £1,400 PCM.
Also, not universal WFP as was, as BigG implies (perhaps inadvertently). Differently structured, £100 for all, but £200/300 for the folk on the dole (which at least saves money on bureaucracy).
Just what is needed to keep a Tory person happy (not nec. Big G I hasten to add) who can't bear to see pensioners not get a bung, but doesn't want civil servants to exist or money to be spent.
I'm mystified and irritated by the Tory opposition to the abolition of WFP.
Reform and the LDs, the Greens and SNP also oppose the WFP cut
Yes, something that isn't endearing the LDs to me at present, along with their blanket opposition to the farming IHT changes. As discussed on here, there are clear issues with the Labour farming IHT changes, but the LDs don't seem to have proposed a better approach (also discussed on here) that would still close the 'buy farmland' IHT loophole.
It will be interesting to hear what our Scottish contributors think of the SNP reintroducing universal WFP
Just rejoice at that news. If you fancy moving up here to enjoy our social democratic nirvana. I'm happy to offer you mate's rates on my one-bed flat, only £1,400 PCM.
Also, not universal WFP as was, as BigG implies (perhaps inadvertently). Differently structured, £100 for all, but £200/300 for the folk on the dole (which at least saves money on bureaucracy).
Just what is needed to keep a Tory person happy (not nec. Big G I hasten to add) who can't bear to see pensioners not get a bung, but doesn't want civil servants to exist or money to be spent.
I'm mystified and irritated by the Tory opposition to the abolition of WFP.
Reform and the LDs, the Greens and SNP also oppose the WFP cut
You missed out Plaid - indeed everyone but Labour opposed it !!!
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
It's odd that the LDs are stranded at the figure they were at the GE 2024 - (12.2%). But it got them 72 seats. Another 26 and, if no other change, Davey becomes LOTO. And it is seats not mega % they need for that.
There is no momentum behind any of the three great 'legacy' parties. LDs no different. I think this points up the disillusion there is with what I would call the social democrat consensus. No-one has really noticed that Reform offer (though of course simplistically) social democracy+national populism. The fundamental post 1945 state model is completely unchanged with Reform policies.
Reform has spotted that people are not voting against a free NHS, education, state pensions and a welfare state cradle to grave. Nor are they going to. Thety are voting to scapegoat. Good luck with that one.
Seeing immigration restrictionism as scapegoating is a mistake. It's a perfectly legitimate preference - and one that the major parties ostensibly support.
Indeed the Reform position is MORE coherent than the shite offered by the other three parties. We have just had net migration of nearly a million people in ONE YEAR. Fucking insane
No wonder the NHS is buckling, no wonder councils are going bust. This is an historically unprecedented influx and it happening year on year. Then add in the boat people, costing MORE billions
The Welfare State as we know it cannot survive this level of migration. Reform promise to bring migration down to net zero, thereby saving the NHS. Labour and the Tories look comparatively clueless with their Ponzi schemes
For the Tories, everything came down to protecting the interests of their last bastion of support - pensioners who owned their homes outright, and employers desperate to hold down wages, and throwing the rest of the population under the bus. Mass migration props up house prices and keeps down wages.
The age profile of Reform's supporters skews significantly younger than that of the Conservatives.
They've boxed themselves in to such an extent, I'm not sure how they get themselves out of it.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
But they cost far too much for the student and increasingly the degrees are useless and pointless. Cheaper ways of nourishing the 18 year old brain will be found
Yes - but I'm just saying don't forget that bit. It's not all about research, teaching and jobs.
I would argue that they could leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults by ... leaving home, making new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults. My Dad did all that when he moved to London aged 18 to get a job (you couldn't do that nowadays, of course, but I would argue that you could still easily as an 18 year old move to Manchester or Leeds or Newcastle or Glasgow and have a splendid time, whether you were studying or working). Getting into debt to the tune of two years' salary in order to also know about glaciation and/or the Spanish civil war on top of that strikes me as a sub-optimal arrangement.
The advice I will give my daughters is only to go to university if you have very clear ideas about why you want to go.
That's sound advice (to your daughters) but on the general point I don’t think you’re quite feeling me. A big point of uni is you don’t have a job. Being 18 and just left home is challenging enough without having to cope with a job as well. Also, more importantly, a job would get in the way of what you’re meant to be doing, which is expanding and maturing into a young adult. You need a bit of space to do this properly. Eg how can you hang out into the early hours with a stimulating new acquaintance, discussing whether there’s such a thing as free will, if you have to go to work the next morning? You’ll be working soon enough and long enough as it is. This time (18 to 21) is for other things. Perhaps it is on its way out, for tech and financial reasons, but I for one won’t be cheering if it is.
It always seemed quite generous to give middle class kids a three-year party as a reward for getting good A Levels, even when they stopped paying you to have it. Bill Bryson noted this in Notes from a Small Island back in the early 90s, I think.
When I went through it I found it a little bleak. I was, on the face of it, having a very good time - the best friends I could ever have, alcohol, sex and live music - but it was all so existentially unsatisfying. What was the point of it all? Intellectually it all seemed rather less rigorous than A Levels. So much woolly thinking went on in universities for so little purpose.
My son felt that actually. He found it a bit artificial. For me it remains intense and formative - in ways both positive and negative.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
But they cost far too much for the student and increasingly the degrees are useless and pointless. Cheaper ways of nourishing the 18 year old brain will be found
Yes - but I'm just saying don't forget that bit. It's not all about research, teaching and jobs.
I would argue that they could leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults by ... leaving home, making new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults. My Dad did all that when he moved to London aged 18 to get a job (you couldn't do that nowadays, of course, but I would argue that you could still easily as an 18 year old move to Manchester or Leeds or Newcastle or Glasgow and have a splendid time, whether you were studying or working). Getting into debt to the tune of two years' salary in order to also know about glaciation and/or the Spanish civil war on top of that strikes me as a sub-optimal arrangement.
The advice I will give my daughters is only to go to university if you have very clear ideas about why you want to go.
That's sound advice (to your daughters) but on the general point I don’t think you’re quite feeling me. A big point of uni is you don’t have a job. Being 18 and just left home is challenging enough without having to cope with a job as well. Also, more importantly, a job would get in the way of what you’re meant to be doing, which is expanding and maturing into a young adult. You need a bit of space to do this properly. Eg how can you hang out into the early hours with a stimulating new acquaintance, discussing whether there’s such a thing as free will, if you have to go to work the next morning? You’ll be working soon enough and long enough as it is. This time (18 to 21) is for other things. Perhaps it is on its way out, for tech and financial reasons, but I for one won’t be cheering if it is.
I agree with all that, I just don't think the uni system CAN continue as is, because for many people it will be a huge waste of money. All that debt and quite likely no "graduate-level job" at the end of it? The Uni system is already wildly bloated, it was gonna shrink anyway, now it will implode, slowly then quickly
So, how will young people have those socially-expanding late teen years? Some kind of volunteering/working abroad seems like a good option
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
But they cost far too much for the student and increasingly the degrees are useless and pointless. Cheaper ways of nourishing the 18 year old brain will be found
Yes - but I'm just saying don't forget that bit. It's not all about research, teaching and jobs.
I would argue that they could leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults by ... leaving home, making new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults. My Dad did all that when he moved to London aged 18 to get a job (you couldn't do that nowadays, of course, but I would argue that you could still easily as an 18 year old move to Manchester or Leeds or Newcastle or Glasgow and have a splendid time, whether you were studying or working). Getting into debt to the tune of two years' salary in order to also know about glaciation and/or the Spanish civil war on top of that strikes me as a sub-optimal arrangement.
The advice I will give my daughters is only to go to university if you have very clear ideas about why you want to go.
That's sound advice (to your daughters) but on the general point I don’t think you’re quite feeling me. A big point of uni is you don’t have a job. Being 18 and just left home is challenging enough without having to cope with a job as well. Also, more importantly, a job would get in the way of what you’re meant to be doing, which is expanding and maturing into a young adult. You need a bit of space to do this properly. Eg how can you hang out into the early hours with a stimulating new acquaintance, discussing whether there’s such a thing as free will, if you have to go to work the next morning? You’ll be working soon enough and long enough as it is. This time (18 to 21) is for other things. Perhaps it is on its way out, for tech and financial reasons, but I for one won’t be cheering if it is.
It always seemed quite generous to give middle class kids a three-year party as a reward for getting good A Levels, even when they stopped paying you to have it. Bill Bryson noted this in Notes from a Small Island back in the early 90s, I think.
When I went through it I found it a little bleak. I was, on the face of it, having a very good time - the best friends I could ever have, alcohol, sex and live music - but it was all so existentially unsatisfying. What was the point of it all? Intellectually it all seemed rather less rigorous than A Levels. So much woolly thinking went on in universities for so little purpose.
My son felt that actually. He found it a bit artificial. For me it remains intense and formative - in ways both positive and negative.
For me it was utterly transformative, socially, sexually, emotionally, generally for the good, or very good (with some bad shit)
Didn't go to a single lecture or tutorial for the last two years however
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
But they cost far too much for the student and increasingly the degrees are useless and pointless. Cheaper ways of nourishing the 18 year old brain will be found
Yes - but I'm just saying don't forget that bit. It's not all about research, teaching and jobs.
I would argue that they could leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults by ... leaving home, making new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults. My Dad did all that when he moved to London aged 18 to get a job (you couldn't do that nowadays, of course, but I would argue that you could still easily as an 18 year old move to Manchester or Leeds or Newcastle or Glasgow and have a splendid time, whether you were studying or working). Getting into debt to the tune of two years' salary in order to also know about glaciation and/or the Spanish civil war on top of that strikes me as a sub-optimal arrangement.
The advice I will give my daughters is only to go to university if you have very clear ideas about why you want to go.
That's sound advice (to your daughters) but on the general point I don’t think you’re quite feeling me. A big point of uni is you don’t have a job. Being 18 and just left home is challenging enough without having to cope with a job as well. Also, more importantly, a job would get in the way of what you’re meant to be doing, which is expanding and maturing into a young adult. You need a bit of space to do this properly. Eg how can you hang out into the early hours with a stimulating new acquaintance, discussing whether there’s such a thing as free will, if you have to go to work the next morning? You’ll be working soon enough and long enough as it is. This time (18 to 21) is for other things. Perhaps it is on its way out, for tech and financial reasons, but I for one won’t be cheering if it is.
It always seemed quite generous to give middle class kids a three-year party as a reward for getting good A Levels, even when they stopped paying you to have it. Bill Bryson noted this in Notes from a Small Island back in the early 90s, I think.
When I went through it I found it a little bleak. I was, on the face of it, having a very good time - the best friends I could ever have, alcohol, sex and live music - but it was all so existentially unsatisfying. What was the point of it all? Intellectually it all seemed rather less rigorous than A Levels. So much woolly thinking went on in universities for so little purpose.
But more importantly the grant was an entry into the professions for the working classes as well.
And I can't speak for your uni, but I was given a tough time intellectually, or, rather and more subtly, made to give myself a tough time.
There are all sorts of reasons, like the ones you say, for doing something university-like. But it doesn't appear university itself is a terribly effective or efficient way of achieving any of the things we would like it to. I'm not quite in a rip-it-up-and-start-again mood, but there's a lot about the university sector we could do very differently in order to achieve better outcomes at lower costs to customers.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
But they cost far too much for the student and increasingly the degrees are useless and pointless. Cheaper ways of nourishing the 18 year old brain will be found
Yes - but I'm just saying don't forget that bit. It's not all about research, teaching and jobs.
I would argue that they could leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults by ... leaving home, making new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults. My Dad did all that when he moved to London aged 18 to get a job (you couldn't do that nowadays, of course, but I would argue that you could still easily as an 18 year old move to Manchester or Leeds or Newcastle or Glasgow and have a splendid time, whether you were studying or working). Getting into debt to the tune of two years' salary in order to also know about glaciation and/or the Spanish civil war on top of that strikes me as a sub-optimal arrangement.
The advice I will give my daughters is only to go to university if you have very clear ideas about why you want to go.
That's sound advice (to your daughters) but on the general point I don’t think you’re quite feeling me. A big point of uni is you don’t have a job. Being 18 and just left home is challenging enough without having to cope with a job as well. Also, more importantly, a job would get in the way of what you’re meant to be doing, which is expanding and maturing into a young adult. You need a bit of space to do this properly. Eg how can you hang out into the early hours with a stimulating new acquaintance, discussing whether there’s such a thing as free will, if you have to go to work the next morning? You’ll be working soon enough and long enough as it is. This time (18 to 21) is for other things. Perhaps it is on its way out, for tech and financial reasons, but I for one won’t be cheering if it is.
I nearly added that in with my reply to Leon - finding yourself and getting used to being away from home, but gently, is a useful by-product of Universities (and was for me and my daughter who went away for Uni), but it isn't their purpose. And Cookie is right that many people manage this without going to Uni. And increasingly, as with my other daughter, students are staying local, so are going to lectures then coming straight back home again to their family for dinner just as if they were working, and doing none of the socialising and sitting in rooms drinking and discussing into the small hours that I did. And yes it feels like a loss, but the world turns and times change.
Via @FindoutnowUK , On 27th November, Changes w/ GE2024.
Three parties in the 20s.
Lib Dems moribund.
It's odd that the LDs are stranded at the figure they were at the GE 2024 - (12.2%). But it got them 72 seats. Another 26 and, if no other change, Davey becomes LOTO. And it is seats not mega % they need for that.
There is no momentum behind any of the three great 'legacy' parties. LDs no different. I think this points up the disillusion there is with what I would call the social democrat consensus. No-one has really noticed that Reform offer (though of course simplistically) social democracy+national populism. The fundamental post 1945 state model is completely unchanged with Reform policies.
Reform has spotted that people are not voting against a free NHS, education, state pensions and a welfare state cradle to grave. Nor are they going to. Thety are voting to scapegoat. Good luck with that one.
Seeing immigration restrictionism as scapegoating is a mistake. It's a perfectly legitimate preference - and one that the major parties ostensibly support.
Indeed the Reform position is MORE coherent than the shite offered by the other three parties. We have just had net migration of nearly a million people in ONE YEAR. Fucking insane
No wonder the NHS is buckling, no wonder councils are going bust. This is an historically unprecedented influx and it happening year on year. Then add in the boat people, costing MORE billions
The Welfare State as we know it cannot survive this level of migration. Reform promise to bring migration down to net zero, thereby saving the NHS. Labour and the Tories look comparatively clueless with their Ponzi schemes
Isn't that million just because of the procedural backlog accumulated by the last lot being dealt with efficiently?
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
But they cost far too much for the student and increasingly the degrees are useless and pointless. Cheaper ways of nourishing the 18 year old brain will be found
Yes - but I'm just saying don't forget that bit. It's not all about research, teaching and jobs.
I would argue that they could leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults by ... leaving home, making new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults. My Dad did all that when he moved to London aged 18 to get a job (you couldn't do that nowadays, of course, but I would argue that you could still easily as an 18 year old move to Manchester or Leeds or Newcastle or Glasgow and have a splendid time, whether you were studying or working). Getting into debt to the tune of two years' salary in order to also know about glaciation and/or the Spanish civil war on top of that strikes me as a sub-optimal arrangement.
The advice I will give my daughters is only to go to university if you have very clear ideas about why you want to go.
That's sound advice (to your daughters) but on the general point I don’t think you’re quite feeling me. A big point of uni is you don’t have a job. Being 18 and just left home is challenging enough without having to cope with a job as well. Also, more importantly, a job would get in the way of what you’re meant to be doing, which is expanding and maturing into a young adult. You need a bit of space to do this properly. Eg how can you hang out into the early hours with a stimulating new acquaintance, discussing whether there’s such a thing as free will, if you have to go to work the next morning? You’ll be working soon enough and long enough as it is. This time (18 to 21) is for other things. Perhaps it is on its way out, for tech and financial reasons, but I for one won’t be cheering if it is.
It always seemed quite generous to give middle class kids a three-year party as a reward for getting good A Levels, even when they stopped paying you to have it. Bill Bryson noted this in Notes from a Small Island back in the early 90s, I think.
When I went through it I found it a little bleak. I was, on the face of it, having a very good time - the best friends I could ever have, alcohol, sex and live music - but it was all so existentially unsatisfying. What was the point of it all? Intellectually it all seemed rather less rigorous than A Levels. So much woolly thinking went on in universities for so little purpose.
Out of interest, where did you go?
From my experience, it REALLY mattered which uni you went to, as to whether you had a good/rewarding time. eg in the 1980s UCL was brilliant socially - we got strays from Imperial and LSE coming to our Union bar all the time, because theirs was shite, and that expanded into parties and friendship networks
A friend of mine went to Middlesex Poly at exactly the same time and was miserable, and only cheered up when he met my UCL friendship group AFTER Uni
O/T but just came across this which as a pensioner who likes his wine I appreciate. It is from the Arthur Waley translation of a poem by Bai Juyi. "On the rules of Superannuation, is there any clause that bars the subsequent singing of mad songs or reeling in a drunken dance." As a former public official Bai retired with a hundred days of sick leave on full pay, and then to half his final salary for the rest of his life. That was in 9th century China!
O/T but just came across this which as a pensioner who likes his wine I appreciate. It is from the Arthur Waley translation of a poem by Bai Juyi. "On the rules of Superannuation, is there any clause that bars the subsequent singing of mad songs or reeling in a drunken dance." As a former public official Bai retired with a hundred days of sick leave on full pay, and then to half his final salary for the rest of his life. That was in 9th century China!
Bells and jade and feasts and drums are all esteemed in vain Just let me be forever drunk, and never be sober again
Indeed. Especially good that they chose a plane that is quite flyable by modern standards. Some WWI aircraft are utter death traps - had a chance to talk to someone who has a Camel. He removed the replica rotary and flies with a radial - because he doesn't want to die...
I wonder what is happening with the Hornet build in New Zealand?
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
But they cost far too much for the student and increasingly the degrees are useless and pointless. Cheaper ways of nourishing the 18 year old brain will be found
Yes - but I'm just saying don't forget that bit. It's not all about research, teaching and jobs.
I would argue that they could leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults by ... leaving home, making new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults. My Dad did all that when he moved to London aged 18 to get a job (you couldn't do that nowadays, of course, but I would argue that you could still easily as an 18 year old move to Manchester or Leeds or Newcastle or Glasgow and have a splendid time, whether you were studying or working). Getting into debt to the tune of two years' salary in order to also know about glaciation and/or the Spanish civil war on top of that strikes me as a sub-optimal arrangement.
The advice I will give my daughters is only to go to university if you have very clear ideas about why you want to go.
That's sound advice (to your daughters) but on the general point I don’t think you’re quite feeling me. A big point of uni is you don’t have a job. Being 18 and just left home is challenging enough without having to cope with a job as well. Also, more importantly, a job would get in the way of what you’re meant to be doing, which is expanding and maturing into a young adult. You need a bit of space to do this properly. Eg how can you hang out into the early hours with a stimulating new acquaintance, discussing whether there’s such a thing as free will, if you have to go to work the next morning? You’ll be working soon enough and long enough as it is. This time (18 to 21) is for other things. Perhaps it is on its way out, for tech and financial reasons, but I for one won’t be cheering if it is.
It always seemed quite generous to give middle class kids a three-year party as a reward for getting good A Levels, even when they stopped paying you to have it. Bill Bryson noted this in Notes from a Small Island back in the early 90s, I think.
When I went through it I found it a little bleak. I was, on the face of it, having a very good time - the best friends I could ever have, alcohol, sex and live music - but it was all so existentially unsatisfying. What was the point of it all? Intellectually it all seemed rather less rigorous than A Levels. So much woolly thinking went on in universities for so little purpose.
Out of interest, where did you go?
From my experience, it REALLY mattered which uni you went to, as to whether you had a good/rewarding time. eg in the 1980s UCL was brilliant socially - we got strays from Imperial and LSE coming to our Union bar all the time, because theirs was shite, and that expanded into parties and friendship networks
A friend of mine went to Middlesex Poly at exactly the same time and was miserable, and only cheered up when he met my UCL friendship group AFTER Uni
And the department/course was and remains also a vital factor. Which, with your point, makes the obsession with Oxbridge and Russell Group a distinctly unreliable approach.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
But they cost far too much for the student and increasingly the degrees are useless and pointless. Cheaper ways of nourishing the 18 year old brain will be found
Yes - but I'm just saying don't forget that bit. It's not all about research, teaching and jobs.
I would argue that they could leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults by ... leaving home, making new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults. My Dad did all that when he moved to London aged 18 to get a job (you couldn't do that nowadays, of course, but I would argue that you could still easily as an 18 year old move to Manchester or Leeds or Newcastle or Glasgow and have a splendid time, whether you were studying or working). Getting into debt to the tune of two years' salary in order to also know about glaciation and/or the Spanish civil war on top of that strikes me as a sub-optimal arrangement.
The advice I will give my daughters is only to go to university if you have very clear ideas about why you want to go.
That's sound advice (to your daughters) but on the general point I don’t think you’re quite feeling me. A big point of uni is you don’t have a job. Being 18 and just left home is challenging enough without having to cope with a job as well. Also, more importantly, a job would get in the way of what you’re meant to be doing, which is expanding and maturing into a young adult. You need a bit of space to do this properly. Eg how can you hang out into the early hours with a stimulating new acquaintance, discussing whether there’s such a thing as free will, if you have to go to work the next morning? You’ll be working soon enough and long enough as it is. This time (18 to 21) is for other things. Perhaps it is on its way out, for tech and financial reasons, but I for one won’t be cheering if it is.
It always seemed quite generous to give middle class kids a three-year party as a reward for getting good A Levels, even when they stopped paying you to have it. Bill Bryson noted this in Notes from a Small Island back in the early 90s, I think.
When I went through it I found it a little bleak. I was, on the face of it, having a very good time - the best friends I could ever have, alcohol, sex and live music - but it was all so existentially unsatisfying. What was the point of it all? Intellectually it all seemed rather less rigorous than A Levels. So much woolly thinking went on in universities for so little purpose.
Out of interest, where did you go?
From my experience, it REALLY mattered which uni you went to, as to whether you had a good/rewarding time. eg in the 1980s UCL was brilliant socially - we got strays from Imperial and LSE coming to our Union bar all the time, because theirs was shite, and that expanded into parties and friendship networks
A friend of mine went to Middlesex Poly at exactly the same time and was miserable, and only cheered up when he met my UCL friendship group AFTER Uni
Our eldest granddaughter went to UCLAN and worked pretty well every Saturday afternoon and evening waitressing. Which to me seemed a terrible waste of time, although financially rewarding. Doesn't look, from what we can see, as though she made any permanent friends, nor did she when she did her teachers course at Keele. However when she did her PhD that was a different kettle of fish, even though much, if not all, of it was during lockdown and 'socialising' was largely on-line.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
But they cost far too much for the student and increasingly the degrees are useless and pointless. Cheaper ways of nourishing the 18 year old brain will be found
Yes - but I'm just saying don't forget that bit. It's not all about research, teaching and jobs.
I would argue that they could leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults by ... leaving home, making new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults. My Dad did all that when he moved to London aged 18 to get a job (you couldn't do that nowadays, of course, but I would argue that you could still easily as an 18 year old move to Manchester or Leeds or Newcastle or Glasgow and have a splendid time, whether you were studying or working). Getting into debt to the tune of two years' salary in order to also know about glaciation and/or the Spanish civil war on top of that strikes me as a sub-optimal arrangement.
The advice I will give my daughters is only to go to university if you have very clear ideas about why you want to go.
That's sound advice (to your daughters) but on the general point I don’t think you’re quite feeling me. A big point of uni is you don’t have a job. Being 18 and just left home is challenging enough without having to cope with a job as well. Also, more importantly, a job would get in the way of what you’re meant to be doing, which is expanding and maturing into a young adult. You need a bit of space to do this properly. Eg how can you hang out into the early hours with a stimulating new acquaintance, discussing whether there’s such a thing as free will, if you have to go to work the next morning? You’ll be working soon enough and long enough as it is. This time (18 to 21) is for other things. Perhaps it is on its way out, for tech and financial reasons, but I for one won’t be cheering if it is.
It always seemed quite generous to give middle class kids a three-year party as a reward for getting good A Levels, even when they stopped paying you to have it. Bill Bryson noted this in Notes from a Small Island back in the early 90s, I think.
When I went through it I found it a little bleak. I was, on the face of it, having a very good time - the best friends I could ever have, alcohol, sex and live music - but it was all so existentially unsatisfying. What was the point of it all? Intellectually it all seemed rather less rigorous than A Levels. So much woolly thinking went on in universities for so little purpose.
My son felt that actually. He found it a bit artificial. For me it remains intense and formative - in ways both positive and negative.
For me it was utterly transformative, socially, sexually, emotionally, generally for the good, or very good (with some bad shit)
Didn't go to a single lecture or tutorial for the last two years however
I also opted right out of the academic side of it. Can't believe my recklessness looking back. Ah well.
O/T but just came across this which as a pensioner who likes his wine I appreciate. It is from the Arthur Waley translation of a poem by Bai Juyi. "On the rules of Superannuation, is there any clause that bars the subsequent singing of mad songs or reeling in a drunken dance." As a former public official Bai retired with a hundred days of sick leave on full pay, and then to half his final salary for the rest of his life. That was in 9th century China!
Bells and jade and feasts and drums are all esteemed in vain Just let me be forever drunk, and never be sober again
Li Bai, China, 8th century
Why has China produced so many good poets but also so much death and destruction? Are they related?
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
But they cost far too much for the student and increasingly the degrees are useless and pointless. Cheaper ways of nourishing the 18 year old brain will be found
Yes - but I'm just saying don't forget that bit. It's not all about research, teaching and jobs.
I would argue that they could leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults by ... leaving home, making new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults. My Dad did all that when he moved to London aged 18 to get a job (you couldn't do that nowadays, of course, but I would argue that you could still easily as an 18 year old move to Manchester or Leeds or Newcastle or Glasgow and have a splendid time, whether you were studying or working). Getting into debt to the tune of two years' salary in order to also know about glaciation and/or the Spanish civil war on top of that strikes me as a sub-optimal arrangement.
The advice I will give my daughters is only to go to university if you have very clear ideas about why you want to go.
That's sound advice (to your daughters) but on the general point I don’t think you’re quite feeling me. A big point of uni is you don’t have a job. Being 18 and just left home is challenging enough without having to cope with a job as well. Also, more importantly, a job would get in the way of what you’re meant to be doing, which is expanding and maturing into a young adult. You need a bit of space to do this properly. Eg how can you hang out into the early hours with a stimulating new acquaintance, discussing whether there’s such a thing as free will, if you have to go to work the next morning? You’ll be working soon enough and long enough as it is. This time (18 to 21) is for other things. Perhaps it is on its way out, for tech and financial reasons, but I for one won’t be cheering if it is.
It always seemed quite generous to give middle class kids a three-year party as a reward for getting good A Levels, even when they stopped paying you to have it. Bill Bryson noted this in Notes from a Small Island back in the early 90s, I think.
When I went through it I found it a little bleak. I was, on the face of it, having a very good time - the best friends I could ever have, alcohol, sex and live music - but it was all so existentially unsatisfying. What was the point of it all? Intellectually it all seemed rather less rigorous than A Levels. So much woolly thinking went on in universities for so little purpose.
My son felt that actually. He found it a bit artificial. For me it remains intense and formative - in ways both positive and negative.
For me it was utterly transformative, socially, sexually, emotionally, generally for the good, or very good (with some bad shit)
Didn't go to a single lecture or tutorial for the last two years however
I also opted right out of the academic side of it. Can't believe my recklessness looking back. Ah well.
The trouble to my mind is that the system is certainly inflated, partly because the Tories did so much damage to the apprenticeships (as I recall my father complaining; he had a lot to do with such things) even before the Blair years. But much of the current attack seems to be an opportunistic one by the right, trying to reserve university, as an entree to the professional middle classes, to the children of the well-off. Which is, apart from anything, completely stupid in terms of making the best national use of people.
O/T but just came across this which as a pensioner who likes his wine I appreciate. It is from the Arthur Waley translation of a poem by Bai Juyi. "On the rules of Superannuation, is there any clause that bars the subsequent singing of mad songs or reeling in a drunken dance." As a former public official Bai retired with a hundred days of sick leave on full pay, and then to half his final salary for the rest of his life. That was in 9th century China!
Bells and jade and feasts and drums are all esteemed in vain Just let me be forever drunk, and never be sober again
Li Bai, China, 8th century
Why has China produced so many good poets but also so much death and destruction? Are they related?
It's always been a big and populous country. So, all things being equal, you would expect them to produce a lot of everything.
Bit insulting to call it homemade, I’d guess those ‘grandads’ know their stuff. I think a flying First World War fighter plane is a fairly abstract concept in the Ship of Theseus sense. Who’d want to bet their life on 100+ year old timber, linen, metal and rigging?
‘We started with the original joystick but reconstructed the rest. Then we decided to replace the joystick, just in case.’
O/T but just came across this which as a pensioner who likes his wine I appreciate. It is from the Arthur Waley translation of a poem by Bai Juyi. "On the rules of Superannuation, is there any clause that bars the subsequent singing of mad songs or reeling in a drunken dance." As a former public official Bai retired with a hundred days of sick leave on full pay, and then to half his final salary for the rest of his life. That was in 9th century China!
Bells and jade and feasts and drums are all esteemed in vain Just let me be forever drunk, and never be sober again
Li Bai, China, 8th century
Why has China produced so many good poets but also so much death and destruction? Are they related?
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
But they cost far too much for the student and increasingly the degrees are useless and pointless. Cheaper ways of nourishing the 18 year old brain will be found
Yes - but I'm just saying don't forget that bit. It's not all about research, teaching and jobs.
I would argue that they could leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults by ... leaving home, making new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults. My Dad did all that when he moved to London aged 18 to get a job (you couldn't do that nowadays, of course, but I would argue that you could still easily as an 18 year old move to Manchester or Leeds or Newcastle or Glasgow and have a splendid time, whether you were studying or working). Getting into debt to the tune of two years' salary in order to also know about glaciation and/or the Spanish civil war on top of that strikes me as a sub-optimal arrangement.
The advice I will give my daughters is only to go to university if you have very clear ideas about why you want to go.
That's sound advice (to your daughters) but on the general point I don’t think you’re quite feeling me. A big point of uni is you don’t have a job. Being 18 and just left home is challenging enough without having to cope with a job as well. Also, more importantly, a job would get in the way of what you’re meant to be doing, which is expanding and maturing into a young adult. You need a bit of space to do this properly. Eg how can you hang out into the early hours with a stimulating new acquaintance, discussing whether there’s such a thing as free will, if you have to go to work the next morning? You’ll be working soon enough and long enough as it is. This time (18 to 21) is for other things. Perhaps it is on its way out, for tech and financial reasons, but I for one won’t be cheering if it is.
It always seemed quite generous to give middle class kids a three-year party as a reward for getting good A Levels, even when they stopped paying you to have it. Bill Bryson noted this in Notes from a Small Island back in the early 90s, I think.
When I went through it I found it a little bleak. I was, on the face of it, having a very good time - the best friends I could ever have, alcohol, sex and live music - but it was all so existentially unsatisfying. What was the point of it all? Intellectually it all seemed rather less rigorous than A Levels. So much woolly thinking went on in universities for so little purpose.
Out of interest, where did you go?
From my experience, it REALLY mattered which uni you went to, as to whether you had a good/rewarding time. eg in the 1980s UCL was brilliant socially - we got strays from Imperial and LSE coming to our Union bar all the time, because theirs was shite, and that expanded into parties and friendship networks
A friend of mine went to Middlesex Poly at exactly the same time and was miserable, and only cheered up when he met my UCL friendship group AFTER Uni
Sheffield Uni. Brilliant socially, brilliant for nightlife. Wonderful city. Academically undemanding, which to my surprise turned out to be surprisingly frustating. I was encouraged to go for Oxbridge, but it seemed needlessly hard work in small towns far away. 'Just go to uni, it doesn't matter which one'. Turned out it does. However, had I gone to Oxbridge I'd have probably found it differently unenjoyable. Intellectually demanding but socially unstimulating. A couple of years out to decide what I wanted to do, then something vocational-ish at, say, Edinburgh. That would have been the way. Still, Sheffield led, indirectly, to the life I have now, which is pretty good. So can't complain.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
But they cost far too much for the student and increasingly the degrees are useless and pointless. Cheaper ways of nourishing the 18 year old brain will be found
Yes - but I'm just saying don't forget that bit. It's not all about research, teaching and jobs.
I would argue that they could leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults by ... leaving home, making new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults. My Dad did all that when he moved to London aged 18 to get a job (you couldn't do that nowadays, of course, but I would argue that you could still easily as an 18 year old move to Manchester or Leeds or Newcastle or Glasgow and have a splendid time, whether you were studying or working). Getting into debt to the tune of two years' salary in order to also know about glaciation and/or the Spanish civil war on top of that strikes me as a sub-optimal arrangement.
The advice I will give my daughters is only to go to university if you have very clear ideas about why you want to go.
That's sound advice (to your daughters) but on the general point I don’t think you’re quite feeling me. A big point of uni is you don’t have a job. Being 18 and just left home is challenging enough without having to cope with a job as well. Also, more importantly, a job would get in the way of what you’re meant to be doing, which is expanding and maturing into a young adult. You need a bit of space to do this properly. Eg how can you hang out into the early hours with a stimulating new acquaintance, discussing whether there’s such a thing as free will, if you have to go to work the next morning? You’ll be working soon enough and long enough as it is. This time (18 to 21) is for other things. Perhaps it is on its way out, for tech and financial reasons, but I for one won’t be cheering if it is.
It always seemed quite generous to give middle class kids a three-year party as a reward for getting good A Levels, even when they stopped paying you to have it. Bill Bryson noted this in Notes from a Small Island back in the early 90s, I think.
When I went through it I found it a little bleak. I was, on the face of it, having a very good time - the best friends I could ever have, alcohol, sex and live music - but it was all so existentially unsatisfying. What was the point of it all? Intellectually it all seemed rather less rigorous than A Levels. So much woolly thinking went on in universities for so little purpose.
University was far harder than A Levels, for me. I cruised through school, had to actually work at uni Still plenty of fun, but I went to most lectures and had to do some reading up on the side, which wasn't at all necessary at school.
Mind you, I am in a completely different bit of science now and don't use much of my degree, in all honesty. But that was more due to a pivot post-PhD. I did use my degree knowledge quite extensively for about eight years up until then. Most of my PhD learning never got any use after PhD, except for the general bit on how to do science without hand-holding, which was obviously quite important.
It will be interesting to hear what our Scottish contributors think of the SNP reintroducing universal WFP
Just rejoice at that news. If you fancy moving up here to enjoy our social democratic nirvana. I'm happy to offer you mate's rates on my one-bed flat, only £1,400 PCM.
Also, not universal WFP as was, as BigG implies (perhaps inadvertently). Differently structured, £100 for all, but £200/300 for the folk on the dole (which at least saves money on bureaucracy).
Just what is needed to keep a Tory person happy (not nec. Big G I hasten to add) who can't bear to see pensioners not get a bung, but doesn't want civil servants to exist or money to be spent.
I'm mystified and irritated by the Tory opposition to the abolition of WFP.
Reform and the LDs, the Greens and SNP also oppose the WFP cut
Yes, something that isn't endearing the LDs to me at present, along with their blanket opposition to the farming IHT changes. As discussed on here, there are clear issues with the Labour farming IHT changes, but the LDs don't seem to have proposed a better approach (also discussed on here) that would still close the 'buy farmland' IHT loophole.
I'm also getting a bit pissed off with the opportunism of the LDs and on the verge of cancelling my membership. Labour under SKS is looking increasingly appealing.
Comments
Farage has been all over the media today with a press conference on immigration and the defection of Jenkyns
Some big serious losses for Assad, could lose Aleppo. Iranian Brigadier General reported killed. Russia (having lost a number of men) now bombing the area. Things not going well Iran at the moment.
He is described as the the commander of the Iranian advisors in Syria
https://x.com/ragipsoylu/status/1862116859258053118
There is no momentum behind any of the three great 'legacy' parties. LDs no different. I think this points up the disillusion there is with what I would call the social democrat consensus. No-one has really noticed that Reform offer (though of course simplistically) social democracy+national populism. The fundamental post 1945 state model is completely unchanged with Reform policies.
Reform has spotted that people are not voting against a free NHS, education, state pensions and a welfare state cradle to grave. Nor are they going to. Thety are voting to scapegoat. Good luck with that one.
This is entirely consistent with Starmer's appalling personal polling. Labour have fallen off a cliff since the GE
So watch figures on the centre right (and even centre left) this parliament. By that I don’t necessarily even mean MPs. It could be media figures, politicians, even celebrities. Trump managed to normalise his politics this way. Whether Farage can or not will I think be decisive as to where REF goes from here. He’s already started by getting 5 MPs.
Low migration is entirely consistent with social democracy. Whatever woke is regarded as it has no relation to the social democrat state. Attlee wasn't woke either.
No wonder the NHS is buckling, no wonder councils are going bust. This is an historically unprecedented influx and it happening year on year. Then add in the boat people, costing MORE billions
The Welfare State as we know it cannot survive this level of migration. Reform promise to bring migration down to net zero, thereby saving the NHS. Labour and the Tories look comparatively clueless with their Ponzi schemes
We live in strange times
But Syrian rebels aren't Al Qaeda, whether or not we support them.
You only need to earn £29k a year to be able to bring in family members with you, it was set to be raised shortly to £39k.
In July the LDs got 12% nationally but 15% of those with degrees, 15% of ABs and 16% of those earning over £70,000 a year, higher than they got in any income group below
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49978-how-britain-voted-in-the-2024-general-election
Just what is needed to keep a Tory person happy (not nec. Big G I hasten to add) who can't bear to see pensioners not get a bung, but doesn't want civil servants to exist or money to be spent.
Edit: or indeed a Slab person who claims that London Labour is n othing to do with them.
I gave Lab a vote at the GE. If polled I'd likely answer LD now. But I quite like our local Lab MP and LD are nowhere in my constituency, so my next vote is most likely Lab, I guess. Could be Con if Lab screw up and Con enthuse (probably requires a different leader). Could be LD if either I think the Lab guy is safe or don't really care between Con and Lab nationally and the Lab and Con candidates locally.
TLDR: If polled I'd be in the -9, but I may well come back at the GE.
If i have a theory it is:
The more triangulating the greater the electorate's cynicism but the more efficient the vote. So a way for non-centrist voters affect the system is to choose the more radical alternative driving parties to the extremes.
Carl Emmerson, deputy director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: “Reform UK proposes tax cuts that it estimates would cost nearly £90 billion per year, and spending increases of £50 billion per year. It claims that it would pay for these through £150 billion per year of reductions in other spending, covering public services, debt interest and working-age benefits.
This would represent a big cut to the size of the state. Regardless of the pros and cons of shrinking the state, or of any of their specific measures, the package as a whole is problematic. Spending reductions would save less than stated, and the tax cuts would cost more than stated, by a margin of tens of billions of pounds per year. Meanwhile the spending increases would cost more than stated if they are to achieve their objectives.
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/reform-uk-manifesto-reaction
I thought Casino's post earlier was interesting for saying what he would do differently and the numbers that would result. The net migration he envisages is still at quite a high level by historical standards, and some way above Cameron's "tens of thousands" pledge. I was surprised.
The age profile of Reform's supporters skews significantly younger than that of the Conservatives.
The change is devastating for Scottish Labour, but not universally applauded either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Syrian_civil_war_(2024)
and this is how weird it gets:
"On 6 June, Six shepherds were killed in a massacre by suspected ISIS militants in the village of Abu Al-Alya village, in the eastern countryside of Homs.
On 8 June, As an act of revenge for killing Six Shepherds two days ago by ISIS cells, local shepherds attacked and killed two ISIS members and retook the herd of sheep captured by them."
"
Everybody and their mums is packin' round here.
Like who?
Shepherds.
Who else?
Shepherds' mums.
"
When I went through it I found it a little bleak. I was, on the face of it, having a very good time - the best friends I could ever have, alcohol, sex and live music - but it was all so existentially unsatisfying. What was the point of it all? Intellectually it all seemed rather less rigorous than A Levels. So much woolly thinking went on in universities for so little purpose.
And I can't speak for your uni, but I was given a tough time intellectually, or, rather and more subtly, made to give myself a tough time.
So, how will young people have those socially-expanding late teen years? Some kind of volunteering/working abroad seems like a good option
https://news.stv.tv/east-central/grandads-make-history-by-flying-homemade-first-world-war-fighter-plane
Didn't go to a single lecture or tutorial for the last two years however
I need to cite this.
From my experience, it REALLY mattered which uni you went to, as to whether you had a good/rewarding time. eg in the 1980s UCL was brilliant socially - we got strays from Imperial and LSE coming to our Union bar all the time, because theirs was shite, and that expanded into parties and friendship networks
A friend of mine went to Middlesex Poly at exactly the same time and was miserable, and only cheered up when he met my UCL friendship group AFTER Uni
As a former public official Bai retired with a hundred days of sick leave on full pay, and then to half his final salary for the rest of his life. That was in 9th century China!
Just let me be forever drunk, and never be sober again
Li Bai, China, 8th century
I wonder what is happening with the Hornet build in New Zealand?
I think a flying First World War fighter plane is a fairly abstract concept in the Ship of Theseus sense. Who’d want to bet their life on 100+ year old timber, linen, metal and rigging?
‘We started with the original joystick but reconstructed the rest. Then we decided to replace the joystick, just in case.’
However, for battleships, I've always been interested in both WW1 and WW2.
I was encouraged to go for Oxbridge, but it seemed needlessly hard work in small towns far away. 'Just go to uni, it doesn't matter which one'. Turned out it does.
However, had I gone to Oxbridge I'd have probably found it differently unenjoyable. Intellectually demanding but socially unstimulating.
A couple of years out to decide what I wanted to do, then something vocational-ish at, say, Edinburgh. That would have been the way.
Still, Sheffield led, indirectly, to the life I have now, which is pretty good. So can't complain.
Mind you, I am in a completely different bit of science now and don't use much of my degree, in all honesty. But that was more due to a pivot post-PhD. I did use my degree knowledge quite extensively for about eight years up until then. Most of my PhD learning never got any use after PhD, except for the general bit on how to do science without hand-holding, which was obviously quite important.