I saw Malcolm's post about "toff's children" on the prior thread.
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Private education is just education. They get no funding from government so, if an independent school wants to set up - for example, to focus on children with more distinct education needs, or to provide a local better alternative, or deliver to an alternative educational philosophy - they have to charge a fee to be viable.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
Depends if you think such families should have given rely on charity or not. There are more SEND kids in the state sector than the private sector, as a proportion, and Labour have increased spending by £1 billion per annum.
Parents should have choice in educating their children and, to the greatest extent possible, I'd like to see this liberated from the ability to pay.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Which merely subsidises those who can top them up with there own cash to send their kids to an elite school. Bad policy.
No, if you half the price you more than double those who can access it.
Your logic is the failed logic of putting VAT on school fees to attack privilege, which actually makes it even more privileged.
This is the classic dilemma of taxing luxuries. As true of air passenger duty or gas guzzling SUVs as it is of private education. It raises the price, which makes the luxury even more exclusive.
It's a tricky dilemma with no perfect answer. Other countries simply don't have the same two tier schooling system that we do, and I think most people would much prefer a situation where 95%+ of pupils make use of state education and private provision is more niche (for religion, or special needs, or musical geniuses etc), but getting from here to there is extremely difficult.
I'd prefer to blur the lines between private and state provision, but then that's because I'm a centrist (literal) dad. The private sector has huge resources and expertise which cannot simply be syphoned into the state sector by pricing parents out, but there need to be options out there that are less ruinously expensive than the current set up.
My daughter is sitting an entrance exam today (my son is in upper sixth at a private school) so we are on the cusp of renewing that eye-watering cost for another 7 years.
Agreed, and I'd say that I don't see it as a luxury.
Luxury is about self-indulgence, whereas education is a public good - and that applies even when it's not you directly.
But that's like saying caviar isn't a luxury because it's food.
Private education is a luxury substitute for a public good, not a public good in itself.
Absolute nonsense.
Education is a public good. In any form.
That's why it's been charitable for decades, including under all Labour governments, until this lot took over.
Lots of helpful suggestions from Musk and Trunp supporters underneath Musk's latest poll
According to "Magavoice", "Britain can become the 53rd state after Canada and Greenland." How on earth did Britain get into a position where a considerable number of people think that these people offer greater "independence" , than the E.U. ?
Numerically (and culturally) the UK would carry more weight as a US state than as a member of the EU.
Interesting debate to be had on the UK's accession to the USA. In order to gain influence we don't want be admitted as one state as that would give us only two US senators. Obvs the four home countries should go in separately, and there is surely a strong argument for Yorkshire demanding its own separate statehood. So there's ten senators for starters.
Incidentally @malcolmg would make an outstanding MAGA representative. No nonsense with him in Congress.
Isn't that because of the alleged smears? It was a standard RN practice to demand a court martial if someone accused you of cowardice in the face of the enemy, etc.
In typically temperate and moderate fashion, Captain Lord Cochrane loudly expressed the view that his commander, Admiral Lord Gambier, should be shot for cowardice, after the Battle of Basque Roads, in 1809. Gambier demanded a court martial, which exonerated him, largely because Cochrane was so over the top in his criticisms.
Most historians think that Gambier fought incompetently, but was no coward, and would simply have been shunted into retirement, had Cochrane been more temperate.
Cochrane is one of those fantastic figures (like Brigdier Etienne Dulong, or Maria Theresa), whose lives read like a far-fetched historical novel.
In fact, most of the age-of-sail stories take Cochrane’s exploits and map them onto their lead character.
At Basque Roads, Cochrane had a chance at wiping out the opposing fleet, Nelson style. For far less loss.
I saw Malcolm's post about "toff's children" on the prior thread.
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Private education is just education. They get no funding from government so, if an independent school wants to set up - for example, to focus on children with more distinct education needs, or to provide a local better alternative, or deliver to an alternative educational philosophy - they have to charge a fee to be viable.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
Depends if you think such families should have given rely on charity or not. There are more SEND kids in the state sector than the private sector, as a proportion, and Labour have increased spending by £1 billion per annum.
Parents should have choice in educating their children and, to the greatest extent possible, I'd like to see this liberated from the ability to pay.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Which merely subsidises those who can top them up with there own cash to send their kids to an elite school. Bad policy.
No, if you half the price you more than double those who can access it.
Your logic is the failed logic of putting VAT on school fees to attack privilege, which actually makes it even more privileged.
This is the classic dilemma of taxing luxuries. As true of air passenger duty or gas guzzling SUVs as it is of private education. It raises the price, which makes the luxury even more exclusive.
It's a tricky dilemma with no perfect answer. Other countries simply don't have the same two tier schooling system that we do, and I think most people would much prefer a situation where 95%+ of pupils make use of state education and private provision is more niche (for religion, or special needs, or musical geniuses etc), but getting from here to there is extremely difficult.
I'd prefer to blur the lines between private and state provision, but then that's because I'm a centrist (literal) dad. The private sector has huge resources and expertise which cannot simply be syphoned into the state sector by pricing parents out, but there need to be options out there that are less ruinously expensive than the current set up.
My daughter is sitting an entrance exam today (my son is in upper sixth at a private school) so we are on the cusp of renewing that eye-watering cost for another 7 years.
Agreed, and I'd say that I don't see it as a luxury.
Luxury is about self-indulgence, whereas education is a public good - and that applies even when it's not you directly.
But that's like saying caviar isn't a luxury because it's food.
Private education is a luxury substitute for a public good, not a public good in itself.
It's the old charities argument. I have heard people say straight-faced that charities should not exist, as the state should provide the functions.
Errr...I sort of agree with that, for some charities eg food banks.
In my view it depends on whether the charity is providing a service that we should collectively agree to provide to each other eg provide affordable food. In this case the charity should not exist.
On the other hand some services are outside what we have agreed collectively as a society to provide e.g. disaster relief in foreign countries (yes I know we do some of it but it's a token effort). Charities are appropriate in this space.
There are grey areas - Macmillan cancer nurses are probably the best example.
Lots of helpful suggestions from Musk and Trunp supporters underneath Musk's latest poll
According to "Magavoice", "Britain can become the 53rd state after Canada and Greenland." How on earth did Britain get into a position where a considerable number of people think that these people offer greater "independence" , than the E.U. ?
Numerically (and culturally) the UK would carry more weight as a US state than as a member of the EU.
Interesting debate to be had on the UK's accession to the USA. In order to gain influence we don't want be admitted as one state as that would give us only two US senators. Obvs the four home countries should go in separately, and there is surely a strong argument for Yorkshire demanding its own separate statehood. So there's ten senators for starters.
Incidentally @malcolmg would make an outstanding MAGA representative. No nonsense with him in Congress.
Plus Cornwall, and there’s a case for statehood for Gibraltar, IoM and the Channel Islands too.
The Elgin marbles could be removed to the Met in New York.
Lots of helpful suggestions from Musk and Trunp supporters underneath Musk's latest poll
According to "Magavoice", "Britain can become the 53rd state after Canada and Greenland." How on earth did Britain get into a position where a considerable number of people think that these people offer greater "independence" , than the E.U. ?
Numerically (and culturally) the UK would carry more weight as a US state than as a member of the EU.
Interesting debate to be had on the UK's accession to the USA. In order to gain influence we don't want be admitted as one state as that would give us only two US senators. Obvs the four home countries should go in separately, and there is surely a strong argument for Yorkshire demanding its own separate statehood. So there's ten senators for starters.
Incidentally @malcolmg would make an outstanding MAGA representative. No nonsense with him in Congress.
Surely this presumes that all countries of the Union and Free Yorkshire would have the same priorities once subsumed as US states - I’m sort of guessing they won’t.
Better off remaining as one state and being a bigger hitter than watering down influence and diverging.
I’m so excited about us becoming a US state. Always liked the idea of Thanksgiving and 4th July.
I saw Malcolm's post about "toff's children" on the prior thread.
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Private education is just education. They get no funding from government so, if an independent school wants to set up - for example, to focus on children with more distinct education needs, or to provide a local better alternative, or deliver to an alternative educational philosophy - they have to charge a fee to be viable.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
Depends if you think such families should have given rely on charity or not. There are more SEND kids in the state sector than the private sector, as a proportion, and Labour have increased spending by £1 billion per annum.
Parents should have choice in educating their children and, to the greatest extent possible, I'd like to see this liberated from the ability to pay.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Which merely subsidises those who can top them up with there own cash to send their kids to an elite school. Bad policy.
No, if you half the price you more than double those who can access it.
Your logic is the failed logic of putting VAT on school fees to attack privilege, which actually makes it even more privileged.
This is the classic dilemma of taxing luxuries. As true of air passenger duty or gas guzzling SUVs as it is of private education. It raises the price, which makes the luxury even more exclusive.
It's a tricky dilemma with no perfect answer. Other countries simply don't have the same two tier schooling system that we do, and I think most people would much prefer a situation where 95%+ of pupils make use of state education and private provision is more niche (for religion, or special needs, or musical geniuses etc), but getting from here to there is extremely difficult.
I'd prefer to blur the lines between private and state provision, but then that's because I'm a centrist (literal) dad. The private sector has huge resources and expertise which cannot simply be syphoned into the state sector by pricing parents out, but there need to be options out there that are less ruinously expensive than the current set up.
My daughter is sitting an entrance exam today (my son is in upper sixth at a private school) so we are on the cusp of renewing that eye-watering cost for another 7 years.
Agreed, and I'd say that I don't see it as a luxury.
Luxury is about self-indulgence, whereas education is a public good - and that applies even when it's not you directly.
But that's like saying caviar isn't a luxury because it's food.
Private education is a luxury substitute for a public good, not a public good in itself.
It's the old charities argument. I have heard people say straight-faced that charities should not exist, as the state should provide the functions.
Errr...I sort of agree with that, for some charities eg food banks.
In my view it depends on whether the charity is providing a service that we should collectively agree to provide to each other eg provide affordable food. In this case the charity should not exist.
On the other hand some services are outside what we have agreed collectively as a society to provide e.g. disaster relief in foreign countries (yes I know we do some of it but it's a token effort). Charities are appropriate in this space.
There are grey areas - Macmillan cancer nurses are probably the best example.
If we went down that route, nearly all medical research would be concentrated on things like heart disease and cancer; all the ailments that affect small numbers of people would get utterly ignored.
'More than half of companies are planning to raise prices in the next three months as they face a "pressure cooker of rising costs and taxes", according to one of the UK's largest business groups.
The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) said its survey of nearly 5,000 firms suggested confidence had "slumped", falling to its lowest level for two years.
Nearly two-thirds told the BCC they were worried about taxes following the Budget, which announced a rise in national insurance contributions (NICs) paid by firms from April.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0j10420e2jo
Do they mention which are the right taxes to impose instead? We are currently borrowing to meet day to day expenditure, something the BCC knows is not a great long term plan when everyone is suggesting ways of spening more taxpayers money.
Well the choices are
1) VAT - prices immediately go up and people buy less 2) employer ni - costs increase so prices go up to reflect the additional costs 3) employee NI / income tax - people have less money so people spend less
So you can see why politicians like option 2 it’s less obvious to voters than the other options but more work for businesses who need to redo their budgets and prices
I'm not a fan of Starmer, but these attacks on him by Musk and Musk's deranged fanbois are probably going to help, not hinder, him.
Even *if* Musk has a point about Starmer's involvement in the cases as DPP, he is going so over-the-top that it will hardly help justice.
I'm not so confident.
The pattern of political polarisation in recent years is that people who don't like Starmer - as a lot of people don't for various reasons - will tend to accept wild and unsubstantiated criticism as validation of their prior opinion.
You're more likely to be an outlier.
I'm sure that some of my reactions to stories about Tory ministers, 2010-2024, would fit that pattern, even though I tried to be fair and even-handed. And I reached a point with Corbyn where he passed a personal event horizon, and I flipped from giving him the benefit of the doubt to the polar opposite.
On which note, today is a perfect winter day. You just don't get this quality of light in lower latitudes.
Fair enough.
Although I'd like to make clear: when I say I'm not a fan of Starmer, I don't hate him, or even particularly dislike him. I just think he's made a poor PM so far, and in fact that he lacks some attributes that successful PMs must have.
It's sort-of like my views of Boris: where I quite liked him as a person and character, but thought he'd make a terrible PM.
Much my thoughts on Starmer, and he has surprised me on how poor he has been
My thoughts entirely Big_G. I think many hoped he was a new Tony Blair (without the war mongering perhaps) but in reality it has been proven he has no idea how to lead.
I think the problem is that most of the Labour front bench have no idea how to *govern*.
To be fair, the previous Conservative government didn’t, either.
To me, the wet fish slap at Blobism from Starmer was telling.
When he was head of the DPP, he was in a role where he was the boss. He wanted something done. It was. Anything else would have been insubordination. Sure, when dealing with other agencies, but within the DPP, he was In Charge.
He assumed, I think, that when he became PM, he would be boss of bosses.
The problem is, that in ministerial jobs, it is perfectly standard to discover you can’t just do things in your own department. The PM just has a meta version of this.
I think you may have nailed it. There are still many roles in both the private and public sector that have not moved away from hierarchical leadership models, or more accurately "managerial" models. Starmer wanted us to all believe that because he had an impressive rise to DPP then this gave him credentials. It looks very likely that it had given him exactly the wrong skillset.
Nice to see a picture of our next Prime Minister in the header.
Bridget or the dog?
If the pooch is anything like the Westie who lives down the road from us ... Walk is a stately progress out and back. Never, ever distracted by actually doing anything (other than the ritual No 1 and No 2 obvs). Totally sedate, will sniff your hand amiably but that's it. Would meet Y Doethur's specification admirably.
Our dog would be the exact opposite. He would be changing policy every 5 minutes. Every single person who meets him says he is the most hyper dog they have met. He just goes bonkers when meeting anyone (in a very friendly way). He also eats anything he can find and is very adept at stealing food. He loves going to the vet even though on a regular basis he is being induced to vomit and spins around the room bouncing off the walls. He is a Sproodle (Springer/Poodle cross).
Some of the things he has eaten or tried to eat are: 1.5kg block of cheese, 250g block of butter, tin foil that had had a cake in it (he pooed sparkling poo for several days), food still in the bag (that was a serious one), a whole bag of potatoes, a regular diet of dead deer (hairy poo) and trying to get a skull and spine off him was a challenge, my wallet, iphone, glasses, binoculars and numerous peoples dinners if they don't put their plate in a safe place when getting up from the table, bowls of peanuts and crisps, etc, etc. He costs a fortune calling the toxic helpline and vets bills and trying to get the food off him when he has it is pretty well impossible
Ah, another sproodle owner! Mine is as mad as yours, and equally hyper. No Off button at all, though she has now got used to settling down for a couple of hours while I work. She loves running with me and can cover any distance. Two full days' walking in the Lake District barely tired her out at all, the drive home was enough for her to recover.
She loves everybody, and gets wildly excited at meeting anybody. She is quite needy though, wants a lot of attention and company and follows me round the house like glue (I acquired her at 2 years, and quickly had to teach her that she wasn't allowed in the bathroom or bedroom. Cue whining).
No problem with food though or chewing things (unlike my old cavalier who was always hunting for a week-old chicken bone...).
PJH and KJH and both Sproodle owners (which is uncommon). Spooky.
Yes very needy here as well. We can't leave him. Spent a fortune on separation anxiety training, all to no avail. He sleeps in a basket at the end of our bed as we can't leave him downstairs (Again loads of training and sleepless nights and we just gave up). If my wife and I go out together we can't then go in different directions at any point as he will pull on the lead to get us back together.
He got expelled from puppy training school for being quote 'belligerent'. The class would start with 7 owners with their dogs sitting next to them. As soon as our dog turned up there were 7 dogs running around being chased by 7 owners. He is, believe or not, well trained. He knows dozens of commands and will perform lots of tricks. But it is entirely his decision whether to obey or do them or not. We have little say in the matter other than the use of treats.
The dishwasher (every dogs favourite) is a typical example. He hears it being opened from anywhere. We give him the commands 'sit' then 'wait' and he dutifully obeys, staring at the dirty plates. 10 seconds later he has forgotten and you have to repeat. Interesting though when we feed him he won't eat until he has been given the command to do so, but if we left food lying around he would steal it.
I saw Malcolm's post about "toff's children" on the prior thread.
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Private education is just education. They get no funding from government so, if an independent school wants to set up - for example, to focus on children with more distinct education needs, or to provide a local better alternative, or deliver to an alternative educational philosophy - they have to charge a fee to be viable.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
Depends if you think such families should have given rely on charity or not. There are more SEND kids in the state sector than the private sector, as a proportion, and Labour have increased spending by £1 billion per annum.
Parents should have choice in educating their children and, to the greatest extent possible, I'd like to see this liberated from the ability to pay.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Which merely subsidises those who can top them up with there own cash to send their kids to an elite school. Bad policy.
No, if you half the price you more than double those who can access it.
Your logic is the failed logic of putting VAT on school fees to attack privilege, which actually makes it even more privileged.
This is the classic dilemma of taxing luxuries. As true of air passenger duty or gas guzzling SUVs as it is of private education. It raises the price, which makes the luxury even more exclusive.
It's a tricky dilemma with no perfect answer. Other countries simply don't have the same two tier schooling system that we do, and I think most people would much prefer a situation where 95%+ of pupils make use of state education and private provision is more niche (for religion, or special needs, or musical geniuses etc), but getting from here to there is extremely difficult.
I'd prefer to blur the lines between private and state provision, but then that's because I'm a centrist (literal) dad. The private sector has huge resources and expertise which cannot simply be syphoned into the state sector by pricing parents out, but there need to be options out there that are less ruinously expensive than the current set up.
My daughter is sitting an entrance exam today (my son is in upper sixth at a private school) so we are on the cusp of renewing that eye-watering cost for another 7 years.
Agreed, and I'd say that I don't see it as a luxury.
Luxury is about self-indulgence, whereas education is a public good - and that applies even when it's not you directly.
But that's like saying caviar isn't a luxury because it's food.
Private education is a luxury substitute for a public good, not a public good in itself.
Absolute nonsense.
Education is a public good. In any form.
That's why it's been charitable for decades, including under all Labour governments, until this lot took over.
Um - private schools have to provide community benefits to get charitable status - being a school that people pay to attend isn’t enough to be a charity
@mikeysmith · 48m Suspect Keir Starmer’s insistence on continuing to call it “Twitter” will be as infuriating to Musk as anything he said today.
Proper microaggression.
I thought that last night. It's bound to irritate the hell out of Musk
I'm with SKS here. 98% of the time, changing the name of a thing - whether that is a company, a pub, a sports team, a product, a stadium - is the wrong decision. The only name changes I will accept are upon marriage.
You presumably disapprove of…
Suella Braverman JD Vance Gerald Ford Bill Clinton Bill de Blasio
How about people substituting a second name for a first name?
Boris Johnson Nikki Haley Keir Hardie Mitt Romney Mitch McConnell Ted Cruz Liz Truss Gordon Brown James Callaghan Harold Wilson
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
Mr. Walker, if a little/lot of censorship is needed to prevent wrongspeak it's clearly doubleplusgood. All hail the Online Safety Bill! I, for one, look forward to seeing the list of Permitted Discussion Topics our political masters have generously prepared for our convenience.
Lots of helpful suggestions from Musk and Trunp supporters underneath Musk's latest poll
According to "Magavoice", "Britain can become the 53rd state after Canada and Greenland." How on earth did Britain get into a position where a considerable number of people think that these people offer greater "independence" , than the E.U. ?
Numerically (and culturally) the UK would carry more weight as a US state than as a member of the EU.
Interesting debate to be had on the UK's accession to the USA. In order to gain influence we don't want be admitted as one state as that would give us only two US senators. Obvs the four home countries should go in separately, and there is surely a strong argument for Yorkshire demanding its own separate statehood. So there's ten senators for starters.
Incidentally @malcolmg would make an outstanding MAGA representative. No nonsense with him in Congress.
The monarchy would have to go, obviously, as it's a Republic.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
Indeed. If the Online Safety Bill prevents a site like PB from discussing “anything controversial” then that is surely the end of PB. Much as I enjoy conversations about cricket, dog handling, bus timetables and drinks in sunny tropical countries (with accompanying pictures) without politics as a base - and politics is necessarily controversial - what’s left?
I saw Malcolm's post about "toff's children" on the prior thread.
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Private education is just education. They get no funding from government so, if an independent school wants to set up - for example, to focus on children with more distinct education needs, or to provide a local better alternative, or deliver to an alternative educational philosophy - they have to charge a fee to be viable.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
Depends if you think such families should have given rely on charity or not. There are more SEND kids in the state sector than the private sector, as a proportion, and Labour have increased spending by £1 billion per annum.
Parents should have choice in educating their children and, to the greatest extent possible, I'd like to see this liberated from the ability to pay.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Which merely subsidises those who can top them up with there own cash to send their kids to an elite school. Bad policy.
No, if you half the price you more than double those who can access it.
Your logic is the failed logic of putting VAT on school fees to attack privilege, which actually makes it even more privileged.
This is the classic dilemma of taxing luxuries. As true of air passenger duty or gas guzzling SUVs as it is of private education. It raises the price, which makes the luxury even more exclusive.
It's a tricky dilemma with no perfect answer. Other countries simply don't have the same two tier schooling system that we do, and I think most people would much prefer a situation where 95%+ of pupils make use of state education and private provision is more niche (for religion, or special needs, or musical geniuses etc), but getting from here to there is extremely difficult.
I'd prefer to blur the lines between private and state provision, but then that's because I'm a centrist (literal) dad. The private sector has huge resources and expertise which cannot simply be syphoned into the state sector by pricing parents out, but there need to be options out there that are less ruinously expensive than the current set up.
My daughter is sitting an entrance exam today (my son is in upper sixth at a private school) so we are on the cusp of renewing that eye-watering cost for another 7 years.
Agreed, and I'd say that I don't see it as a luxury.
Luxury is about self-indulgence, whereas education is a public good - and that applies even when it's not you directly.
But that's like saying caviar isn't a luxury because it's food.
Private education is a luxury substitute for a public good, not a public good in itself.
Absolute nonsense.
Education is a public good. In any form.
That's why it's been charitable for decades, including under all Labour governments, until this lot took over.
It's a simple choice to have a better version of something that is already available, at additional cost. That's a pretty good definition of a luxury imo.
I'd also argue private education lacks some of the public good attributes of state education, specifically the social mixing that occurs at state schools.
Nevertheless I do concede education of any form retains some of the facets of a public good and, if it turns out the impact of the VAT on private schools thing is just to reduce the amount of education available then it will have failed as a policy.
I saw Malcolm's post about "toff's children" on the prior thread.
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Private education is just education. They get no funding from government so, if an independent school wants to set up - for example, to focus on children with more distinct education needs, or to provide a local better alternative, or deliver to an alternative educational philosophy - they have to charge a fee to be viable.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
Depends if you think such families should have given rely on charity or not. There are more SEND kids in the state sector than the private sector, as a proportion, and Labour have increased spending by £1 billion per annum.
Parents should have choice in educating their children and, to the greatest extent possible, I'd like to see this liberated from the ability to pay.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Which merely subsidises those who can top them up with there own cash to send their kids to an elite school. Bad policy.
No, if you half the price you more than double those who can access it.
Your logic is the failed logic of putting VAT on school fees to attack privilege, which actually makes it even more privileged.
This is the classic dilemma of taxing luxuries. As true of air passenger duty or gas guzzling SUVs as it is of private education. It raises the price, which makes the luxury even more exclusive.
It's a tricky dilemma with no perfect answer. Other countries simply don't have the same two tier schooling system that we do, and I think most people would much prefer a situation where 95%+ of pupils make use of state education and private provision is more niche (for religion, or special needs, or musical geniuses etc), but getting from here to there is extremely difficult.
I'd prefer to blur the lines between private and state provision, but then that's because I'm a centrist (literal) dad. The private sector has huge resources and expertise which cannot simply be syphoned into the state sector by pricing parents out, but there need to be options out there that are less ruinously expensive than the current set up.
My daughter is sitting an entrance exam today (my son is in upper sixth at a private school) so we are on the cusp of renewing that eye-watering cost for another 7 years.
Agreed, and I'd say that I don't see it as a luxury.
Luxury is about self-indulgence, whereas education is a public good - and that applies even when it's not you directly.
But that's like saying caviar isn't a luxury because it's food.
Private education is a luxury substitute for a public good, not a public good in itself.
Absolute nonsense.
Education is a public good. In any form.
That's why it's been charitable for decades, including under all Labour governments, until this lot took over.
Am I right in thinking things like the Accountancy bodies (ACCA, CIMA etc) are educational charities? I’m not sure that more Accountants is a public good ;-)
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
Nice to see a picture of our next Prime Minister in the header.
Bridget or the dog?
If the pooch is anything like the Westie who lives down the road from us ... Walk is a stately progress out and back. Never, ever distracted by actually doing anything (other than the ritual No 1 and No 2 obvs). Totally sedate, will sniff your hand amiably but that's it. Would meet Y Doethur's specification admirably.
Our dog would be the exact opposite. He would be changing policy every 5 minutes. Every single person who meets him says he is the most hyper dog they have met. He just goes bonkers when meeting anyone (in a very friendly way). He also eats anything he can find and is very adept at stealing food. He loves going to the vet even though on a regular basis he is being induced to vomit and spins around the room bouncing off the walls. He is a Sproodle (Springer/Poodle cross).
Some of the things he has eaten or tried to eat are: 1.5kg block of cheese, 250g block of butter, tin foil that had had a cake in it (he pooed sparkling poo for several days), food still in the bag (that was a serious one), a whole bag of potatoes, a regular diet of dead deer (hairy poo) and trying to get a skull and spine off him was a challenge, my wallet, iphone, glasses, binoculars and numerous peoples dinners if they don't put their plate in a safe place when getting up from the table, bowls of peanuts and crisps, etc, etc. He costs a fortune calling the toxic helpline and vets bills and trying to get the food off him when he has it is pretty well impossible
This may be more information than you require (and is second hand, never having tried it) but I am told that if you want to get a dog to loose hold its grip on anything (whether food or limb), you should poke a finger up its bum.
This might be better than the vet's bill. Maybe.
We can't catch him, if he has got something. I have a video of him running around the garden with a loo brush in his mouth with the two of us trying to catch him. He actually taunts us. If we give up he comes really close, crouched down so that when you go to grab him he shoots off. Even tried the dummy lunge of appearing to go one way but then going the other way. Never works
I saw Malcolm's post about "toff's children" on the prior thread.
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Private education is just education. They get no funding from government so, if an independent school wants to set up - for example, to focus on children with more distinct education needs, or to provide a local better alternative, or deliver to an alternative educational philosophy - they have to charge a fee to be viable.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
Depends if you think such families should have given rely on charity or not. There are more SEND kids in the state sector than the private sector, as a proportion, and Labour have increased spending by £1 billion per annum.
Parents should have choice in educating their children and, to the greatest extent possible, I'd like to see this liberated from the ability to pay.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Which merely subsidises those who can top them up with there own cash to send their kids to an elite school. Bad policy.
No, if you half the price you more than double those who can access it.
Your logic is the failed logic of putting VAT on school fees to attack privilege, which actually makes it even more privileged.
This is the classic dilemma of taxing luxuries. As true of air passenger duty or gas guzzling SUVs as it is of private education. It raises the price, which makes the luxury even more exclusive.
It's a tricky dilemma with no perfect answer. Other countries simply don't have the same two tier schooling system that we do, and I think most people would much prefer a situation where 95%+ of pupils make use of state education and private provision is more niche (for religion, or special needs, or musical geniuses etc), but getting from here to there is extremely difficult.
I'd prefer to blur the lines between private and state provision, but then that's because I'm a centrist (literal) dad. The private sector has huge resources and expertise which cannot simply be syphoned into the state sector by pricing parents out, but there need to be options out there that are less ruinously expensive than the current set up.
My daughter is sitting an entrance exam today (my son is in upper sixth at a private school) so we are on the cusp of renewing that eye-watering cost for another 7 years.
Agreed, and I'd say that I don't see it as a luxury.
Luxury is about self-indulgence, whereas education is a public good - and that applies even when it's not you directly.
But that's like saying caviar isn't a luxury because it's food.
Private education is a luxury substitute for a public good, not a public good in itself.
Absolute nonsense.
Education is a public good. In any form.
That's why it's been charitable for decades, including under all Labour governments, until this lot took over.
Um - private schools have to provide community benefits to get charitable status - being a school that people pay to attend isn’t enough to be a charity
I imagine that a little reflection and analysis would show that there are plenty of charities that have paying customers.
What is it that gets some people, particularly on the left so angry about people wanting to pay for their children's education? It really is quite pathetic. No body complains about someone wanting a bigger house or garden for their kids, or maybe taking them on holiday to some ridiculously expensive location or ensuring they have better quality food than those who are less well off.
Educational envy is definitely a very British disease. A very negative one.
A politician would never follow advice of not putting things off alone (hence the full quote i suppose). Doing stuff comes with risks, and who wants that?
Of course in reality politicians typically come in 3 varieties - the do nothing people, terrified of cocking up further so just put a plaster on. The tinkerers that you identify like Gove, who do try a bit but usually on small problems (in fairness their boss may not agree to do big stuff). And then the ones who do do big things on big issues, but very badly due to unearned confidence in their abilities.
PB is cynical this morning!
How long since we had an MP who had noted success in turning an organisation around and running it successfully? Let alone a minister?
Farage!
*Part of my strategy to tempt the lefties back by discussing their amazing skills of their favourite political figure.
One of Farage's major problems is that he eventually seems to fall out with everyone he works with.
It just happened much quicker with Musk than usual.
I suspect that isn't Farage's fault. When positioned at that point on the political spectrum and without a far right group to your right you are going to attract a large number of certain people who are then going to come out with some extreme views that he has to distance himself from.
To his credit (yes I know), Farage has always been good at getting rid of people in his organisations who don’t know where to draw the line. Just as UKIP was infiltrated by a number of BNP-types, now Reform has to deal with a bunch of EDL-types.
He’ll be furious at Elon Musk for misunderstanding the differences between the Overton Window in the US and UK, going too far from a position of ignorance, and basically endorsing a man far to Farage’s right who’s currently in prison for contempt of court.
It's also complete nonsense. Farage met Musk once. We were then regaled by PB-shrewdies with tales of how Musk 'held a formal role within Reform' and was calling all the shots. It now turns out that he has no formal role, and doesn't call any shots, but apparently the fact that he's gone sour on Farage is evidence of the latter 'falling out with everyone he works with'. Or perhaps you were just spouting bollocks all along, and now you're adding more bollocks on top.
Between the two of them, Reform-related storylines are dominating the media day after day, despite their just five MPs and wider irrelevance. Which is achievement in itself.
Anyhow, it's good to see that PB is having a balanced and civilised discussion this morning, after the ranting and bigotry on display yesterday evening. I took one look in and disappeared, last night; add me to the list of those who will likely drift away if the forum can't find a way to deal with the obvious problem we have.
Reform might have only five MPs but they chalked up more votes than the LibDems, so declarations of irrelevance need careful qualification.
I am sure the Lib Dems would have had more votes than Reform at the last general election, if they had decided to repeat their traditional strategy of campaigning strongly everywhere. Instead, they opted to sacrifice popular vote share in favour of winning seats.
Lots of helpful suggestions from Musk and Trunp supporters underneath Musk's latest poll
According to "Magavoice", "Britain can become the 53rd state after Canada and Greenland." How on earth did Britain get into a position where a considerable number of people think that these people offer greater "independence" , than the E.U. ?
Numerically (and culturally) the UK would carry more weight as a US state than as a member of the EU.
Interesting debate to be had on the UK's accession to the USA. In order to gain influence we don't want be admitted as one state as that would give us only two US senators. Obvs the four home countries should go in separately, and there is surely a strong argument for Yorkshire demanding its own separate statehood. So there's ten senators for starters.
Incidentally @malcolmg would make an outstanding MAGA representative. No nonsense with him in Congress.
The monarchy would have to go, obviously, as it's a Republic.
Also a national right to bear arms, which would fill up the red wall and places like inner London with guns, even if laws were like liberal America.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
The current government are not unique in having a shit understanding of the most basic concepts around the internet or technology generally, but it's a shame they're inflicting their shit understanding on the rest of us.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
That’s the end of PB, right there. Indeed the end of any internet forum based in the UK. What a ridiculous catch-all clause. Did the Tories introduce this?
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
The current government are not unique in having a shit understanding of the most basic concepts around the internet or technology generally, but it's a shame they're inflicting their shit understanding on the rest of us.
I saw Malcolm's post about "toff's children" on the prior thread.
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Private education is just education. They get no funding from government so, if an independent school wants to set up - for example, to focus on children with more distinct education needs, or to provide a local better alternative, or deliver to an alternative educational philosophy - they have to charge a fee to be viable.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
Depends if you think such families should have given rely on charity or not. There are more SEND kids in the state sector than the private sector, as a proportion, and Labour have increased spending by £1 billion per annum.
Parents should have choice in educating their children and, to the greatest extent possible, I'd like to see this liberated from the ability to pay.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Which merely subsidises those who can top them up with there own cash to send their kids to an elite school. Bad policy.
No, if you half the price you more than double those who can access it.
Your logic is the failed logic of putting VAT on school fees to attack privilege, which actually makes it even more privileged.
This is the classic dilemma of taxing luxuries. As true of air passenger duty or gas guzzling SUVs as it is of private education. It raises the price, which makes the luxury even more exclusive.
It's a tricky dilemma with no perfect answer. Other countries simply don't have the same two tier schooling system that we do, and I think most people would much prefer a situation where 95%+ of pupils make use of state education and private provision is more niche (for religion, or special needs, or musical geniuses etc), but getting from here to there is extremely difficult.
I'd prefer to blur the lines between private and state provision, but then that's because I'm a centrist (literal) dad. The private sector has huge resources and expertise which cannot simply be syphoned into the state sector by pricing parents out, but there need to be options out there that are less ruinously expensive than the current set up.
My daughter is sitting an entrance exam today (my son is in upper sixth at a private school) so we are on the cusp of renewing that eye-watering cost for another 7 years.
Agreed, and I'd say that I don't see it as a luxury.
Luxury is about self-indulgence, whereas education is a public good - and that applies even when it's not you directly.
But that's like saying caviar isn't a luxury because it's food.
Private education is a luxury substitute for a public good, not a public good in itself.
Absolute nonsense.
Education is a public good. In any form.
That's why it's been charitable for decades, including under all Labour governments, until this lot took over.
Um - private schools have to provide community benefits to get charitable status - being a school that people pay to attend isn’t enough to be a charity
I’m not sure they do. I thought ‘an advancement of education’ was a charitable purpose in its own right. (See accountancy firms above). Happy to be corrected though if you can find a reference.
@mikeysmith · 48m Suspect Keir Starmer’s insistence on continuing to call it “Twitter” will be as infuriating to Musk as anything he said today.
Proper microaggression.
I thought that last night. It's bound to irritate the hell out of Musk
I'm with SKS here. 98% of the time, changing the name of a thing - whether that is a company, a pub, a sports team, a product, a stadium - is the wrong decision. The only name changes I will accept are upon marriage.
You presumably disapprove of…
Suella Braverman JD Vance Gerald Ford Bill Clinton Bill de Blasio
How about people substituting a second name for a first name?
Boris Johnson Nikki Haley Keir Hardie Mitt Romney Mitch McConnell Ted Cruz Liz Truss Gordon Brown James Callaghan Harold Wilson
I didn't know about Bill Clinton, for one. That's an interesting story. I'd only become aware of the Gerald Ford story recently - shades of that. No, those examples seem quite sweet actually.
I have no objection to people substituting a second name for a first name, assuming they do so bloody early in life. It's only relatively recently that doing so seemed odd. A generation or two back it was moderately common for a person to have been called Alfred Brian Cook but to have gone through his whole life since infancy, including by his parents, being known as Brian.
(Edit) Even *if* Musk has a point about Starmer's involvement in the cases as DPP....
*If* you believe that, Musk has won.
I don't believe it. I haven't looked into it, but you would have to be quite a puppeteer to arrange things at such low levels, in so many places, over such a long period. My own view (having read a couple of the reports yonks ago), was that the decisions were made on an individual, and small group basis. Would decisions have got to the DPP's level?
Though having said that, Musk's statements are so wild that I'm not actually sure what he thinks Starmer did...
Suggestion by Starmer that threats have been made on Phillips.
She has already said she is resigned to death threats for the rest of her life and a man was jailed for threatening the most awful violence at her.
How does he know it is down to Musk ?
It's hard to see Musk as having helped the situation.
Agreed but by the same token you cannot blame Musk for abuse aimed at a politician who gets it regularly.
What would be interesting would be to see if it has increased markedly and if any comes from the US.
It doesn't have to come from the US.
She is more likely to be assassinated by an outraged Brummie than a US citizen who is outraged at Phillips after reading Liz Truss's response to Musk's lie
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss wrote, "This is Jess Phillips, the same Home Office Minister who excused masked Islamist thugs".
I saw you ranting about me earlier. I just want to point out that 1. I was absent for at least two weeks over Christmas, during which you all managed to have a bitter row about gangs by yourselves (so it’s really not me). 2. I’m not even allowed to mention “that thing” so I can hardly “bang on” about it and 3. I’m a MEMBER of the Groucho, not a guest
Thanks
There were a few family punch ups but it was a lot more agreeable on here over Christmas. I knew point 3 would wind you the f*** up. Over and out.
I’m not remotely wound up. I’m trying to calm you down
Nah, you're just a narcissistic wind-up merchant.
That’s clearly true, but I am ALSO trying to calm down @Mexicanpete
I somehow doubt you have ever gone anywhere and calmed anything down. I'm just glad you never tried bomb-disposal or hostage negotiation as careers...
… or indeed anything that requires judgement, responsibility, decision-making, common sense, thoughtful reflection, awareness and sensitivity to other people’s views and needs, accountability, respect for rules or social norms, or any kind of maturity.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
The current government are not unique in having a shit understanding of the most basic concepts around the internet or technology generally, but it's a shame they're inflicting their shit understanding on the rest of us.
The Online Safety Bill was enacted under the previous government.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
The current government are not unique in having a shit understanding of the most basic concepts around the internet or technology generally, but it's a shame they're inflicting their shit understanding on the rest of us.
The bill was introduced by the Tories.
Fair enough. The shit understanding of the Conservatives is to blame for the bill. Labour should axe it immediately.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
We already live in a country where the plod will turn up at your door because of a tweet that might be offensive. Of course there is a balance to be struck, and there are huge issues, but we ought to worry about why we the country of "I will not make windows into peoples' souls" SIC has become don't post anything that's not the latest Test match score/doggy photo/what I did on my holibobs.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
The current government are not unique in having a shit understanding of the most basic concepts around the internet or technology generally, but it's a shame they're inflicting their shit understanding on the rest of us.
The current government?
The only criticism you can make of them is not binning this Conservative policy.
(Edit) Even *if* Musk has a point about Starmer's involvement in the cases as DPP....
*If* you believe that, Musk has won.
I don't believe it. I haven't looked into it, but you would have to be quite a puppeteer to arrange things at such low levels, in so many places, over such a long period. My own view (having read a couple of the reports yonks ago), was that the decisions were made on an individual, and small group basis. Would decisions have got to the DPP's level?
Though having said that, Musk's statements are so wild that I'm not actually sure what he thinks Starmer did...
Suggestion by Starmer that threats have been made on Phillips.
She has already said she is resigned to death threats for the rest of her life and a man was jailed for threatening the most awful violence at her.
How does he know it is down to Musk ?
It's hard to see Musk as having helped the situation.
Agreed but by the same token you cannot blame Musk for abuse aimed at a politician who gets it regularly.
What would be interesting would be to see if it has increased markedly and if any comes from the US.
It doesn't have to come from the US.
She is more likely to be assassinated by an outraged Brummie than a US citizen who is outraged at Phillips after reading Liz Truss's response to Musk's lie
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss wrote, "This is Jess Phillips, the same Home Office Minister who excused masked Islamist thugs".
I saw you ranting about me earlier. I just want to point out that 1. I was absent for at least two weeks over Christmas, during which you all managed to have a bitter row about gangs by yourselves (so it’s really not me). 2. I’m not even allowed to mention “that thing” so I can hardly “bang on” about it and 3. I’m a MEMBER of the Groucho, not a guest
Thanks
There were a few family punch ups but it was a lot more agreeable on here over Christmas. I knew point 3 would wind you the f*** up. Over and out.
I’m not remotely wound up. I’m trying to calm you down
Nah, you're just a narcissistic wind-up merchant.
That’s clearly true, but I am ALSO trying to calm down @Mexicanpete
I somehow doubt you have ever gone anywhere and calmed anything down. I'm just glad you never tried bomb-disposal or hostage negotiation as careers...
… or indeed anything that requires judgement, responsibility, decision-making, common sense, thoughtful reflection, awareness and sensitivity to other people’s views and needs, accountability, respect for rules or social norms, or any kind of maturity.
This is just the sort of thing we were talking about. The amount of abuse Leon gets, even at one or two removes - even when he's not here - is out of all proportion to his contribution on the site. It's just odd.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
The current government are not unique in having a shit understanding of the most basic concepts around the internet or technology generally, but it's a shame they're inflicting their shit understanding on the rest of us.
The bill was introduced by the Tories.
It is a nearly universal rule in world politics, that both left and right are both utterly stupid when it comes to technology regulation.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
The current government are not unique in having a shit understanding of the most basic concepts around the internet or technology generally, but it's a shame they're inflicting their shit understanding on the rest of us.
The current government?
The only criticism you can make of them is not binning this Conservative policy.
Were they against the bill when in opposition? Normally both as bad as each other on this stuff.
Nice to see a picture of our next Prime Minister in the header.
Bridget or the dog?
If the pooch is anything like the Westie who lives down the road from us ... Walk is a stately progress out and back. Never, ever distracted by actually doing anything (other than the ritual No 1 and No 2 obvs). Totally sedate, will sniff your hand amiably but that's it. Would meet Y Doethur's specification admirably.
Our dog would be the exact opposite. He would be changing policy every 5 minutes. Every single person who meets him says he is the most hyper dog they have met. He just goes bonkers when meeting anyone (in a very friendly way). He also eats anything he can find and is very adept at stealing food. He loves going to the vet even though on a regular basis he is being induced to vomit and spins around the room bouncing off the walls. He is a Sproodle (Springer/Poodle cross).
Some of the things he has eaten or tried to eat are: 1.5kg block of cheese, 250g block of butter, tin foil that had had a cake in it (he pooed sparkling poo for several days), food still in the bag (that was a serious one), a whole bag of potatoes, a regular diet of dead deer (hairy poo) and trying to get a skull and spine off him was a challenge, my wallet, iphone, glasses, binoculars and numerous peoples dinners if they don't put their plate in a safe place when getting up from the table, bowls of peanuts and crisps, etc, etc. He costs a fortune calling the toxic helpline and vets bills and trying to get the food off him when he has it is pretty well impossible
I've said it before and I'll say it again: dogs are idiots.
On reflection, cats are idiots too. But in a much more low-key way. Cats are BETTER idiots.
There are a lot of funny dog videos and I think this is because unlike most animals dogs are clever enough to try and work things out, but generally so stupid that when they try they cock it up and are therefore funny.
One of my favourites is of a door without any glass in it, but the dog waits outside because it is closed and the human walks through where the glass should be in the closed door and the dog still won't move until the door is opened when it then walks through.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
Nice to see a picture of our next Prime Minister in the header.
Bridget or the dog?
If the pooch is anything like the Westie who lives down the road from us ... Walk is a stately progress out and back. Never, ever distracted by actually doing anything (other than the ritual No 1 and No 2 obvs). Totally sedate, will sniff your hand amiably but that's it. Would meet Y Doethur's specification admirably.
Our dog would be the exact opposite. He would be changing policy every 5 minutes. Every single person who meets him says he is the most hyper dog they have met. He just goes bonkers when meeting anyone (in a very friendly way). He also eats anything he can find and is very adept at stealing food. He loves going to the vet even though on a regular basis he is being induced to vomit and spins around the room bouncing off the walls. He is a Sproodle (Springer/Poodle cross).
Some of the things he has eaten or tried to eat are: 1.5kg block of cheese, 250g block of butter, tin foil that had had a cake in it (he pooed sparkling poo for several days), food still in the bag (that was a serious one), a whole bag of potatoes, a regular diet of dead deer (hairy poo) and trying to get a skull and spine off him was a challenge, my wallet, iphone, glasses, binoculars and numerous peoples dinners if they don't put their plate in a safe place when getting up from the table, bowls of peanuts and crisps, etc, etc. He costs a fortune calling the toxic helpline and vets bills and trying to get the food off him when he has it is pretty well impossible
I've said it before and I'll say it again: dogs are idiots.
On reflection, cats are idiots too. But in a much more low-key way. Cats are BETTER idiots.
Yet they carry more political weight than children, I reckon.
For example, there might be a permanent end to Hogmanay celebrations in Edinburgh because of the impact of fireworks on canine mental health, and there are lobby groups trying to eliminate dog-free play parks.
I also think some elements of access rights/countryside code are weighted far too much in favour of dogs. I was walking in the Lakes and every farmer had put up signs describing how many lambs had been killed/injured, some with graphic imagery. Still had spaniels firing off all over the place.
Eliminating dog-free play parks, now that really is a shite idea (so to speak).
Some of the beaches up here ban dogs for 6 months of the year, from spring into Autumn.
Come across that in the south too - Dawlish Warren, Lyme Regis, and so on spring to mind from recent trips.
Wouldn't be an issue if all owners were responsible and cleaned up the dog mess, but sadly they aren't. Was on a Devon beach last August with our dog and there was a group with a couple of dogs chatting. One dog did a poo right in front of them. I had to suggest quite forcibly that they might like to clean it up. I have no doubt that if I had said nothing they would have just left it. I believe in a world where you don't need constant vigilance when walking the streets lest you tread in dog mess. Sadly I don't live in said world because too many people are absolute bell-ends and tools.
Speaking of irresponsible dog-owners:-
Violent criminal given ‘final chance’ after leaving victim disabled spared jail again for assault Michael Murray handed a suspended sentence for a glassing attack despite 13 prior convictions ... Murray was also handed back his XL bully dog that had been seized by police after his lawyer successfully argued at his sentencing hearing on Tuesday that he was “a fit and proper person” to own one. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/05/violent-criminal-spared-jail-final-student-brain-damage/ (£££)
Three cheers for that lawyer who not only kept his client out of prison but also got his dog back despite the seeming handicap that Murray pleaded guilty to two offences of affray, one of criminal damage, one of possessing a fighting dog and breach of an SSO
More seriously, it is not just about child sex. It is sentencing like this that does lead to complaints of two-tier justice and contrasts violent physical attacks leading to life-changing injuries with posting hurty words on social media. Otoh, rentaquote would-be LotO Bob Jenrick has weighed in.
Nice to see a picture of our next Prime Minister in the header.
Bridget or the dog?
If the pooch is anything like the Westie who lives down the road from us ... Walk is a stately progress out and back. Never, ever distracted by actually doing anything (other than the ritual No 1 and No 2 obvs). Totally sedate, will sniff your hand amiably but that's it. Would meet Y Doethur's specification admirably.
Our dog would be the exact opposite. He would be changing policy every 5 minutes. Every single person who meets him says he is the most hyper dog they have met. He just goes bonkers when meeting anyone (in a very friendly way). He also eats anything he can find and is very adept at stealing food. He loves going to the vet even though on a regular basis he is being induced to vomit and spins around the room bouncing off the walls. He is a Sproodle (Springer/Poodle cross).
Some of the things he has eaten or tried to eat are: 1.5kg block of cheese, 250g block of butter, tin foil that had had a cake in it (he pooed sparkling poo for several days), food still in the bag (that was a serious one), a whole bag of potatoes, a regular diet of dead deer (hairy poo) and trying to get a skull and spine off him was a challenge, my wallet, iphone, glasses, binoculars and numerous peoples dinners if they don't put their plate in a safe place when getting up from the table, bowls of peanuts and crisps, etc, etc. He costs a fortune calling the toxic helpline and vets bills and trying to get the food off him when he has it is pretty well impossible
I've said it before and I'll say it again: dogs are idiots.
On reflection, cats are idiots too. But in a much more low-key way. Cats are BETTER idiots.
There are a lot of funny dog videos and I think this is because unlike most animals dogs are clever enough to try and work things out, but generally so stupid that when they try they cock it up and are therefore funny.
One of my favourites is of a door without any glass in it, but the dog waits outside because it is closed and the human walks through where the glass should be in the closed door and the dog still won't move until the door is opened.
To be fair, that might be a boundary issue.
My dog can be a pain, barking, getting het up over nothing. But she's super reluctant to take toys out of her own (open) toy box and will try and get other people to retrieve things for her.
Lots of helpful suggestions from Musk and Trunp supporters underneath Musk's latest poll
According to "Magavoice", "Britain can become the 53rd state after Canada and Greenland." How on earth did Britain get into a position where a considerable number of people think that these people offer greater "independence" , than the E.U. ?
Numerically (and culturally) the UK would carry more weight as a US state than as a member of the EU.
Interesting debate to be had on the UK's accession to the USA. In order to gain influence we don't want be admitted as one state as that would give us only two US senators. Obvs the four home countries should go in separately, and there is surely a strong argument for Yorkshire demanding its own separate statehood. So there's ten senators for starters.
Incidentally @malcolmg would make an outstanding MAGA representative. No nonsense with him in Congress.
There's a good case for the UK to become part of the US, as a second best to EU membership. As a middle sized mid Atlantic country we risk being frozen out of trade blocs snd losing global influence. I agree though we would have to join as at least four states (although in reality could Ireland really be split between the EU and US?)
'US President Joe Biden has announced a ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling along most of America's coastline, weeks before Donald Trump takes office.
The ban covers the entire Atlantic coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico, as well as the Pacific coast off California, Oregon and Washington and a section of the Bering Sea off Alaska..Biden is taking the action under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953, which allows presidents to withdraw areas from mineral leasing and drilling.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg6dg30vq0o
More scorched earth policies in his final days, designed to do nothing except frustrate the incoming administration. Most presidents have been a lot better than this. To add to the dubious honours and pardons, it’s surprising he doesn’t want to cement his legacy in much more positive terms.
I saw Malcolm's post about "toff's children" on the prior thread.
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Private education is just education. They get no funding from government so, if an independent school wants to set up - for example, to focus on children with more distinct education needs, or to provide a local better alternative, or deliver to an alternative educational philosophy - they have to charge a fee to be viable.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
Depends if you think such families should have given rely on charity or not. There are more SEND kids in the state sector than the private sector, as a proportion, and Labour have increased spending by £1 billion per annum.
Parents should have choice in educating their children and, to the greatest extent possible, I'd like to see this liberated from the ability to pay.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Which merely subsidises those who can top them up with there own cash to send their kids to an elite school. Bad policy.
No, if you half the price you more than double those who can access it.
Your logic is the failed logic of putting VAT on school fees to attack privilege, which actually makes it even more privileged.
This is the classic dilemma of taxing luxuries. As true of air passenger duty or gas guzzling SUVs as it is of private education. It raises the price, which makes the luxury even more exclusive.
It's a tricky dilemma with no perfect answer. Other countries simply don't have the same two tier schooling system that we do, and I think most people would much prefer a situation where 95%+ of pupils make use of state education and private provision is more niche (for religion, or special needs, or musical geniuses etc), but getting from here to there is extremely difficult.
I'd prefer to blur the lines between private and state provision, but then that's because I'm a centrist (literal) dad. The private sector has huge resources and expertise which cannot simply be syphoned into the state sector by pricing parents out, but there need to be options out there that are less ruinously expensive than the current set up.
My daughter is sitting an entrance exam today (my son is in upper sixth at a private school) so we are on the cusp of renewing that eye-watering cost for another 7 years.
Agreed, and I'd say that I don't see it as a luxury.
Luxury is about self-indulgence, whereas education is a public good - and that applies even when it's not you directly.
But that's like saying caviar isn't a luxury because it's food.
Private education is a luxury substitute for a public good, not a public good in itself.
Absolute nonsense.
Education is a public good. In any form.
That's why it's been charitable for decades, including under all Labour governments, until this lot took over.
Um - private schools have to provide community benefits to get charitable status - being a school that people pay to attend isn’t enough to be a charity
I imagine that a little reflection and analysis would show that there are plenty of charities that have paying customers.
What is it that gets some people, particularly on the left so angry about people wanting to pay for their children's education? It really is quite pathetic. No body complains about someone wanting a bigger house or garden for their kids, or maybe taking them on holiday to some ridiculously expensive location or ensuring they have better quality food than those who are less well off.
Educational envy is definitely a very British disease. A very negative one.
Two things can be true, I think.
It’s perfectly rational for parents who can afford it to pay for their children’s education. I do, and I don’t think that makes me complicit in social immobility. Though I do sometimes wonder if it’s really worth it. The state schools round here are pretty good at teaching. The biggest gap is in facilities and extra-curricular activities.
It’s also true that Britain has a problem with an entrenched 2-tier education system which also plays out in a rigid class system, something almost no other developed countries suffer.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
The current government are not unique in having a shit understanding of the most basic concepts around the internet or technology generally, but it's a shame they're inflicting their shit understanding on the rest of us.
The bill was introduced by the Tories.
It is a nearly universal rule in world politics, that both left and right are both utterly stupid when it comes to technology regulation.
Because most of them have zero understanding of science and technology. Most politicians and journos that bang on about STEM have nearly all got English degrees.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
The current government are not unique in having a shit understanding of the most basic concepts around the internet or technology generally, but it's a shame they're inflicting their shit understanding on the rest of us.
The Online Safety Bill was enacted under the previous government.
Someone put Nadine Dorries in charge. Worth thinking about that before the next pile on on the current lot.
I saw Malcolm's post about "toff's children" on the prior thread.
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Private education is just education. They get no funding from government so, if an independent school wants to set up - for example, to focus on children with more distinct education needs, or to provide a local better alternative, or deliver to an alternative educational philosophy - they have to charge a fee to be viable.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
Depends if you think such families should have given rely on charity or not. There are more SEND kids in the state sector than the private sector, as a proportion, and Labour have increased spending by £1 billion per annum.
Parents should have choice in educating their children and, to the greatest extent possible, I'd like to see this liberated from the ability to pay.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Which merely subsidises those who can top them up with there own cash to send their kids to an elite school. Bad policy.
No, if you half the price you more than double those who can access it.
Your logic is the failed logic of putting VAT on school fees to attack privilege, which actually makes it even more privileged.
This is the classic dilemma of taxing luxuries. As true of air passenger duty or gas guzzling SUVs as it is of private education. It raises the price, which makes the luxury even more exclusive.
It's a tricky dilemma with no perfect answer. Other countries simply don't have the same two tier schooling system that we do, and I think most people would much prefer a situation where 95%+ of pupils make use of state education and private provision is more niche (for religion, or special needs, or musical geniuses etc), but getting from here to there is extremely difficult.
I'd prefer to blur the lines between private and state provision, but then that's because I'm a centrist (literal) dad. The private sector has huge resources and expertise which cannot simply be syphoned into the state sector by pricing parents out, but there need to be options out there that are less ruinously expensive than the current set up.
My daughter is sitting an entrance exam today (my son is in upper sixth at a private school) so we are on the cusp of renewing that eye-watering cost for another 7 years.
Agreed, and I'd say that I don't see it as a luxury.
Luxury is about self-indulgence, whereas education is a public good - and that applies even when it's not you directly.
But that's like saying caviar isn't a luxury because it's food.
Private education is a luxury substitute for a public good, not a public good in itself.
Absolute nonsense.
Education is a public good. In any form.
That's why it's been charitable for decades, including under all Labour governments, until this lot took over.
It's a simple choice to have a better version of something that is already available, at additional cost. That's a pretty good definition of a luxury imo.
I'd also argue private education lacks some of the public good attributes of state education, specifically the social mixing that occurs at state schools.
Nevertheless I do concede education of any form retains some of the facets of a public good and, if it turns out the impact of the VAT on private schools thing is just to reduce the amount of education available then it will have failed as a policy.
A university education (at least at a top university), could be considered a luxury, but universities are still treated as charities.
Lots of helpful suggestions from Musk and Trunp supporters underneath Musk's latest poll
According to "Magavoice", "Britain can become the 53rd state after Canada and Greenland." How on earth did Britain get into a position where a considerable number of people think that these people offer greater "independence" , than the E.U. ?
Numerically (and culturally) the UK would carry more weight as a US state than as a member of the EU.
Interesting debate to be had on the UK's accession to the USA. In order to gain influence we don't want be admitted as one state as that would give us only two US senators. Obvs the four home countries should go in separately, and there is surely a strong argument for Yorkshire demanding its own separate statehood. So there's ten senators for starters.
Incidentally @malcolmg would make an outstanding MAGA representative. No nonsense with him in Congress.
There's a good case for the UK to become part of the US, as a second best to EU membership. As a middle sized mid Atlantic country we risk being frozen out of trade blocs snd losing global influence. I agree though we would have to join as at least four states (although in reality could Ireland really be split between the EU and US?)
But the majority would not support a Republic full of guns, with American levels of giant equality. So we are left in the mess Brexit left us in.
Nice to see a picture of our next Prime Minister in the header.
Bridget or the dog?
If the pooch is anything like the Westie who lives down the road from us ... Walk is a stately progress out and back. Never, ever distracted by actually doing anything (other than the ritual No 1 and No 2 obvs). Totally sedate, will sniff your hand amiably but that's it. Would meet Y Doethur's specification admirably.
Our dog would be the exact opposite. He would be changing policy every 5 minutes. Every single person who meets him says he is the most hyper dog they have met. He just goes bonkers when meeting anyone (in a very friendly way). He also eats anything he can find and is very adept at stealing food. He loves going to the vet even though on a regular basis he is being induced to vomit and spins around the room bouncing off the walls. He is a Sproodle (Springer/Poodle cross).
Some of the things he has eaten or tried to eat are: 1.5kg block of cheese, 250g block of butter, tin foil that had had a cake in it (he pooed sparkling poo for several days), food still in the bag (that was a serious one), a whole bag of potatoes, a regular diet of dead deer (hairy poo) and trying to get a skull and spine off him was a challenge, my wallet, iphone, glasses, binoculars and numerous peoples dinners if they don't put their plate in a safe place when getting up from the table, bowls of peanuts and crisps, etc, etc. He costs a fortune calling the toxic helpline and vets bills and trying to get the food off him when he has it is pretty well impossible
This may be more information than you require (and is second hand, never having tried it) but I am told that if you want to get a dog to loose hold its grip on anything (whether food or limb), you should poke a finger up its bum.
This might be better than the vet's bill. Maybe.
We can't catch him, if he has got something. I have a video of him running around the garden with a loo brush in his mouth with the two of us trying to catch him. He actually taunts us. If we give up he comes really close, crouched down so that when you go to grab him he shoots off. Even tried the dummy lunge of appearing to go one way but then going the other way. Never works
I must be extraordinarily lucky. My friend across the road has a new dog that she is struggling to stop from chewing through pretty much everything in her house. Mine doesn’t always do what I would like, but I can’t think of a single occasion when I would describe him as having been knowingly naughty.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
'US President Joe Biden has announced a ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling along most of America's coastline, weeks before Donald Trump takes office.
The ban covers the entire Atlantic coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico, as well as the Pacific coast off California, Oregon and Washington and a section of the Bering Sea off Alaska..Biden is taking the action under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953, which allows presidents to withdraw areas from mineral leasing and drilling.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg6dg30vq0o
More scorched earth policies in his final days, designed to do nothing except frustrate the incoming administration. Most presidents have been a lot better than this. To add to the dubious honours and pardons, it’s surprising he doesn’t want to cement his legacy in much more positive terms.
He doesn't have to. He'll be compared to his predecessor and successor, and he's already been massively better than early Trump, and I doubt late Trump will be any better.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
I’m sure you have investigated and possibly posted on here about it but is it really not possible to shift the domicile/hosting and ownership of the site to a jurisdiction which isn’t problematic?
The US for example with the free speech protections (maybe Elon can host it for you?).
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
That’s the end of PB, right there. Indeed the end of any internet forum based in the UK. What a ridiculous catch-all clause. Did the Tories introduce this?
My contempt for them grows daily
No it's the end of absolute knobs going rogue on PB.
I saw Malcolm's post about "toff's children" on the prior thread.
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Private education is just education. They get no funding from government so, if an independent school wants to set up - for example, to focus on children with more distinct education needs, or to provide a local better alternative, or deliver to an alternative educational philosophy - they have to charge a fee to be viable.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
Depends if you think such families should have given rely on charity or not. There are more SEND kids in the state sector than the private sector, as a proportion, and Labour have increased spending by £1 billion per annum.
Parents should have choice in educating their children and, to the greatest extent possible, I'd like to see this liberated from the ability to pay.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Which merely subsidises those who can top them up with there own cash to send their kids to an elite school. Bad policy.
No, if you half the price you more than double those who can access it.
Your logic is the failed logic of putting VAT on school fees to attack privilege, which actually makes it even more privileged.
This is the classic dilemma of taxing luxuries. As true of air passenger duty or gas guzzling SUVs as it is of private education. It raises the price, which makes the luxury even more exclusive.
It's a tricky dilemma with no perfect answer. Other countries simply don't have the same two tier schooling system that we do, and I think most people would much prefer a situation where 95%+ of pupils make use of state education and private provision is more niche (for religion, or special needs, or musical geniuses etc), but getting from here to there is extremely difficult.
I'd prefer to blur the lines between private and state provision, but then that's because I'm a centrist (literal) dad. The private sector has huge resources and expertise which cannot simply be syphoned into the state sector by pricing parents out, but there need to be options out there that are less ruinously expensive than the current set up.
My daughter is sitting an entrance exam today (my son is in upper sixth at a private school) so we are on the cusp of renewing that eye-watering cost for another 7 years.
Agreed, and I'd say that I don't see it as a luxury.
Luxury is about self-indulgence, whereas education is a public good - and that applies even when it's not you directly.
But that's like saying caviar isn't a luxury because it's food.
Private education is a luxury substitute for a public good, not a public good in itself.
It's the old charities argument. I have heard people say straight-faced that charities should not exist, as the state should provide the functions.
Errr...I sort of agree with that, for some charities eg food banks.
In my view it depends on whether the charity is providing a service that we should collectively agree to provide to each other eg provide affordable food. In this case the charity should not exist.
On the other hand some services are outside what we have agreed collectively as a society to provide e.g. disaster relief in foreign countries (yes I know we do some of it but it's a token effort). Charities are appropriate in this space.
There are grey areas - Macmillan cancer nurses are probably the best example.
1. The State will never be in a position to cover every kind of need. That is especially true, going forward.
2. No one should think they have fulfilled their ethical obligations towards those less fortunate, simply by paying taxes.
(Edit) Even *if* Musk has a point about Starmer's involvement in the cases as DPP....
*If* you believe that, Musk has won.
I don't believe it. I haven't looked into it, but you would have to be quite a puppeteer to arrange things at such low levels, in so many places, over such a long period. My own view (having read a couple of the reports yonks ago), was that the decisions were made on an individual, and small group basis. Would decisions have got to the DPP's level?
Though having said that, Musk's statements are so wild that I'm not actually sure what he thinks Starmer did...
Suggestion by Starmer that threats have been made on Phillips.
She has already said she is resigned to death threats for the rest of her life and a man was jailed for threatening the most awful violence at her.
How does he know it is down to Musk ?
It's hard to see Musk as having helped the situation.
Agreed but by the same token you cannot blame Musk for abuse aimed at a politician who gets it regularly.
What would be interesting would be to see if it has increased markedly and if any comes from the US.
It doesn't have to come from the US.
She is more likely to be assassinated by an outraged Brummie than a US citizen who is outraged at Phillips after reading Liz Truss's response to Musk's lie
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss wrote, "This is Jess Phillips, the same Home Office Minister who excused masked Islamist thugs".
I saw you ranting about me earlier. I just want to point out that 1. I was absent for at least two weeks over Christmas, during which you all managed to have a bitter row about gangs by yourselves (so it’s really not me). 2. I’m not even allowed to mention “that thing” so I can hardly “bang on” about it and 3. I’m a MEMBER of the Groucho, not a guest
Thanks
There were a few family punch ups but it was a lot more agreeable on here over Christmas. I knew point 3 would wind you the f*** up. Over and out.
I’m not remotely wound up. I’m trying to calm you down
Nah, you're just a narcissistic wind-up merchant.
That’s clearly true, but I am ALSO trying to calm down @Mexicanpete
I somehow doubt you have ever gone anywhere and calmed anything down. I'm just glad you never tried bomb-disposal or hostage negotiation as careers...
… or indeed anything that requires judgement, responsibility, decision-making, common sense, thoughtful reflection, awareness and sensitivity to other people’s views and needs, accountability, respect for rules or social norms, or any kind of maturity.
This is just the sort of thing we were talking about. The amount of abuse Leon gets, even at one or two removes - even when he's not here - is out of all proportion to his contribution on the site. It's just odd.
Not really. It’s just that you aren’t appreciating the extent of the damage he is doing.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
That’s the end of PB, right there. Indeed the end of any internet forum based in the UK. What a ridiculous catch-all clause. Did the Tories introduce this?
My contempt for them grows daily
So ignoring the fact it’s a roll over Tory bill
How would a post on a forum go viral? That would require a third party to explicitly repost it on a different social media platform. At which point it isn’t anyone on this site doing it.
A politician would never follow advice of not putting things off alone (hence the full quote i suppose). Doing stuff comes with risks, and who wants that?
Of course in reality politicians typically come in 3 varieties - the do nothing people, terrified of cocking up further so just put a plaster on. The tinkerers that you identify like Gove, who do try a bit but usually on small problems (in fairness their boss may not agree to do big stuff). And then the ones who do do big things on big issues, but very badly due to unearned confidence in their abilities.
PB is cynical this morning!
How long since we had an MP who had noted success in turning an organisation around and running it successfully? Let alone a minister?
Farage!
*Part of my strategy to tempt the lefties back by discussing their amazing skills of their favourite political figure.
One of Farage's major problems is that he eventually seems to fall out with everyone he works with.
It just happened much quicker with Musk than usual.
True, that is very much his M.O. but in this case I think it is understandable given Musk continues to support Robinson and has said Farage needs to be replaced.
Also, Musk doesn't exactly have a tip-top record on the "maintaining long-term working relationships" front.
Doesn't he? Gwynne Shotwell's been running SpaceX for him for at least two decades, and AIUI there are a fair few senior Tesla people who have been there for yonks.
Though the way he treated his secretary was awful, and perhaps the start of his descent into madness.
This is my pet theory of the week... Musk is possibly suffering some sort of mental illness. I hope he gets appropriate treatment.
It's like Horse said the other day - he's just gone full Twitter. Seen it happen to various slebs (and probably millions of others) - Lawrence Fox, Gary Lineker, Carol Vorderman - they state a forceful but not wildly mad opinion, get high on the likes and retweets and the echo chamber and just become madder and madder versions of themselves.
Even before he bought Twitter, he was always getting himself in trouble for late-night posting. Including with the SEC, who you really don’t want to upset, after he made comments about Tesla which should be announced in a formal way first or that could have materially affected the share price.
I remember saying at the time that he should have Tesla devs set his phone up with a custom app that refers all of his Tweets to a company lawyer to moderate before they went live.
As others have observed, it does appear that he exists on very little sleep, and that most of the more problematic posts occur very late in the evening or in the middle of the night.
(Edit) Even *if* Musk has a point about Starmer's involvement in the cases as DPP....
*If* you believe that, Musk has won.
I don't believe it. I haven't looked into it, but you would have to be quite a puppeteer to arrange things at such low levels, in so many places, over such a long period. My own view (having read a couple of the reports yonks ago), was that the decisions were made on an individual, and small group basis. Would decisions have got to the DPP's level?
Though having said that, Musk's statements are so wild that I'm not actually sure what he thinks Starmer did...
Suggestion by Starmer that threats have been made on Phillips.
She has already said she is resigned to death threats for the rest of her life and a man was jailed for threatening the most awful violence at her.
How does he know it is down to Musk ?
It's hard to see Musk as having helped the situation.
Agreed but by the same token you cannot blame Musk for abuse aimed at a politician who gets it regularly.
What would be interesting would be to see if it has increased markedly and if any comes from the US.
It doesn't have to come from the US.
She is more likely to be assassinated by an outraged Brummie than a US citizen who is outraged at Phillips after reading Liz Truss's response to Musk's lie
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss wrote, "This is Jess Phillips, the same Home Office Minister who excused masked Islamist thugs".
I saw you ranting about me earlier. I just want to point out that 1. I was absent for at least two weeks over Christmas, during which you all managed to have a bitter row about gangs by yourselves (so it’s really not me). 2. I’m not even allowed to mention “that thing” so I can hardly “bang on” about it and 3. I’m a MEMBER of the Groucho, not a guest
Thanks
There were a few family punch ups but it was a lot more agreeable on here over Christmas. I knew point 3 would wind you the f*** up. Over and out.
I’m not remotely wound up. I’m trying to calm you down
Nah, you're just a narcissistic wind-up merchant.
That’s clearly true, but I am ALSO trying to calm down @Mexicanpete
I somehow doubt you have ever gone anywhere and calmed anything down. I'm just glad you never tried bomb-disposal or hostage negotiation as careers...
… or indeed anything that requires judgement, responsibility, decision-making, common sense, thoughtful reflection, awareness and sensitivity to other people’s views and needs, accountability, respect for rules or social norms, or any kind of maturity.
This is just the sort of thing we were talking about. The amount of abuse Leon gets, even at one or two removes - even when he's not here - is out of all proportion to his contribution on the site. It's just odd.
I saw Malcolm's post about "toff's children" on the prior thread.
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Private education is just education. They get no funding from government so, if an independent school wants to set up - for example, to focus on children with more distinct education needs, or to provide a local better alternative, or deliver to an alternative educational philosophy - they have to charge a fee to be viable.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
Depends if you think such families should have given rely on charity or not. There are more SEND kids in the state sector than the private sector, as a proportion, and Labour have increased spending by £1 billion per annum.
Parents should have choice in educating their children and, to the greatest extent possible, I'd like to see this liberated from the ability to pay.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Which merely subsidises those who can top them up with there own cash to send their kids to an elite school. Bad policy.
No, if you half the price you more than double those who can access it.
Your logic is the failed logic of putting VAT on school fees to attack privilege, which actually makes it even more privileged.
This is the classic dilemma of taxing luxuries. As true of air passenger duty or gas guzzling SUVs as it is of private education. It raises the price, which makes the luxury even more exclusive.
It's a tricky dilemma with no perfect answer. Other countries simply don't have the same two tier schooling system that we do, and I think most people would much prefer a situation where 95%+ of pupils make use of state education and private provision is more niche (for religion, or special needs, or musical geniuses etc), but getting from here to there is extremely difficult.
I'd prefer to blur the lines between private and state provision, but then that's because I'm a centrist (literal) dad. The private sector has huge resources and expertise which cannot simply be syphoned into the state sector by pricing parents out, but there need to be options out there that are less ruinously expensive than the current set up.
My daughter is sitting an entrance exam today (my son is in upper sixth at a private school) so we are on the cusp of renewing that eye-watering cost for another 7 years.
Agreed, and I'd say that I don't see it as a luxury.
Luxury is about self-indulgence, whereas education is a public good - and that applies even when it's not you directly.
But that's like saying caviar isn't a luxury because it's food.
Private education is a luxury substitute for a public good, not a public good in itself.
Absolute nonsense.
Education is a public good. In any form.
That's why it's been charitable for decades, including under all Labour governments, until this lot took over.
It's a simple choice to have a better version of something that is already available, at additional cost. That's a pretty good definition of a luxury imo.
I'd also argue private education lacks some of the public good attributes of state education, specifically the social mixing that occurs at state schools.
Nevertheless I do concede education of any form retains some of the facets of a public good and, if it turns out the impact of the VAT on private schools thing is just to reduce the amount of education available then it will have failed as a policy.
A university education (at least at a top university), could be considered a luxury, but universities are still treated as charities.
The bastions of privilege that make up Oxbridge colleges are very private and elitist institutions. They are never attacked or undermined because so many of the smug politicians of the Labour Party went there themselves and want you to believe it was all to do with them being so much cleverer than the oikish people they purport to represent.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
That's absolutely insane. It is going to have an incredibly chilling effect on free expression in this country.
Suella’s bill. But I expect she hoped it would only catch things she doesn’t like. That’s also the mistake governments frequently make. Like her Public Order Act, which sure as night follows day will end up being used against things she and her political allies approve of.
Nice to see a picture of our next Prime Minister in the header.
Bridget or the dog?
If the pooch is anything like the Westie who lives down the road from us ... Walk is a stately progress out and back. Never, ever distracted by actually doing anything (other than the ritual No 1 and No 2 obvs). Totally sedate, will sniff your hand amiably but that's it. Would meet Y Doethur's specification admirably.
Our dog would be the exact opposite. He would be changing policy every 5 minutes. Every single person who meets him says he is the most hyper dog they have met. He just goes bonkers when meeting anyone (in a very friendly way). He also eats anything he can find and is very adept at stealing food. He loves going to the vet even though on a regular basis he is being induced to vomit and spins around the room bouncing off the walls. He is a Sproodle (Springer/Poodle cross).
Some of the things he has eaten or tried to eat are: 1.5kg block of cheese, 250g block of butter, tin foil that had had a cake in it (he pooed sparkling poo for several days), food still in the bag (that was a serious one), a whole bag of potatoes, a regular diet of dead deer (hairy poo) and trying to get a skull and spine off him was a challenge, my wallet, iphone, glasses, binoculars and numerous peoples dinners if they don't put their plate in a safe place when getting up from the table, bowls of peanuts and crisps, etc, etc. He costs a fortune calling the toxic helpline and vets bills and trying to get the food off him when he has it is pretty well impossible
I've said it before and I'll say it again: dogs are idiots.
On reflection, cats are idiots too. But in a much more low-key way. Cats are BETTER idiots.
Yet they carry more political weight than children, I reckon.
For example, there might be a permanent end to Hogmanay celebrations in Edinburgh because of the impact of fireworks on canine mental health, and there are lobby groups trying to eliminate dog-free play parks.
I also think some elements of access rights/countryside code are weighted far too much in favour of dogs. I was walking in the Lakes and every farmer had put up signs describing how many lambs had been killed/injured, some with graphic imagery. Still had spaniels firing off all over the place.
Eliminating dog-free play parks, now that really is a shite idea (so to speak).
Some of the beaches up here ban dogs for 6 months of the year, from spring into Autumn.
Come across that in the south too - Dawlish Warren, Lyme Regis, and so on spring to mind from recent trips.
Wouldn't be an issue if all owners were responsible and cleaned up the dog mess, but sadly they aren't. Was on a Devon beach last August with our dog and there was a group with a couple of dogs chatting. One dog did a poo right in front of them. I had to suggest quite forcibly that they might like to clean it up. I have no doubt that if I had said nothing they would have just left it. I believe in a world where you don't need constant vigilance when walking the streets lest you tread in dog mess. Sadly I don't live in said world because too many people are absolute bell-ends and tools.
Speaking of irresponsible dog-owners:-
Violent criminal given ‘final chance’ after leaving victim disabled spared jail again for assault Michael Murray handed a suspended sentence for a glassing attack despite 13 prior convictions ... Murray was also handed back his XL bully dog that had been seized by police after his lawyer successfully argued at his sentencing hearing on Tuesday that he was “a fit and proper person” to own one. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/05/violent-criminal-spared-jail-final-student-brain-damage/ (£££)
Three cheers for that lawyer who not only kept his client out of prison but also got his dog back despite the seeming handicap that Murray pleaded guilty to two offences of affray, one of criminal damage, one of possessing a fighting dog and breach of an SSO
More seriously, it is not just about child sex. It is sentencing like this that does lead to complaints of two-tier justice and contrasts violent physical attacks leading to life-changing injuries with posting hurty words on social media. Otoh, rentaquote would-be LotO Bob Jenrick has weighed in.
Yes, I think it's unhelpful for the two-tiers thing. The far-right online warriors were rightly locked up for inciting violence, which has been a crime for centuries (millennia?).
Having a clear, distinct line on what is and what isn't acceptable is really important, lest we end up equating that kind of obviously dangerous behaviour with something frivolous like saying some dog owners are arseholes.
A politician would never follow advice of not putting things off alone (hence the full quote i suppose). Doing stuff comes with risks, and who wants that?
Of course in reality politicians typically come in 3 varieties - the do nothing people, terrified of cocking up further so just put a plaster on. The tinkerers that you identify like Gove, who do try a bit but usually on small problems (in fairness their boss may not agree to do big stuff). And then the ones who do do big things on big issues, but very badly due to unearned confidence in their abilities.
PB is cynical this morning!
How long since we had an MP who had noted success in turning an organisation around and running it successfully? Let alone a minister?
Farage!
*Part of my strategy to tempt the lefties back by discussing their amazing skills of their favourite political figure.
One of Farage's major problems is that he eventually seems to fall out with everyone he works with.
It just happened much quicker with Musk than usual.
I suspect that isn't Farage's fault. When positioned at that point on the political spectrum and without a far right group to your right you are going to attract a large number of certain people who are then going to come out with some extreme views that he has to distance himself from.
To his credit (yes I know), Farage has always been good at getting rid of people in his organisations who don’t know where to draw the line. Just as UKIP was infiltrated by a number of BNP-types, now Reform has to deal with a bunch of EDL-types.
He’ll be furious at Elon Musk for misunderstanding the differences between the Overton Window in the US and UK, going too far from a position of ignorance, and basically endorsing a man far to Farage’s right who’s currently in prison for contempt of court.
It's also complete nonsense. Farage met Musk once. We were then regaled by PB-shrewdies with tales of how Musk 'held a formal role within Reform' and was calling all the shots. It now turns out that he has no formal role, and doesn't call any shots, but apparently the fact that he's gone sour on Farage is evidence of the latter 'falling out with everyone he works with'. Or perhaps you were just spouting bollocks all along, and now you're adding more bollocks on top.
Between the two of them, Reform-related storylines are dominating the media day after day, despite their just five MPs and wider irrelevance. Which is achievement in itself.
Anyhow, it's good to see that PB is having a balanced and civilised discussion this morning, after the ranting and bigotry on display yesterday evening. I took one look in and disappeared, last night; add me to the list of those who will likely drift away if the forum can't find a way to deal with the obvious problem we have.
Reform might have only five MPs but they chalked up more votes than the LibDems, so declarations of irrelevance need careful qualification.
I am sure the Lib Dems would have had more votes than Reform at the last general election, if they had decided to repeat their traditional strategy of campaigning strongly everywhere. Instead, they opted to sacrifice popular vote share in favour of winning seats.
That is unknowable, although it is to the LibDems' credit they remain in favour of PR despite having dozens more MPs for half a million fewer voters than Reform managed. Ed Davey has not handed his guaranteed PMQs to Nigel Farage though.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
That's absolutely insane. It is going to have an incredibly chilling effect on free expression in this country.
Suella’s bill. But I expect she hoped it would only catch things she doesn’t like. That’s also the mistake governments frequently make. Like her Public Order Act, which sure as night follows day will end up being used against things she and her political allies approve of.
I can't remember who said it, but someone said something like: "When writing a law, always imagine how your enemies might use it" or somesuch.
Nice to see a picture of our next Prime Minister in the header.
Bridget or the dog?
If the pooch is anything like the Westie who lives down the road from us ... Walk is a stately progress out and back. Never, ever distracted by actually doing anything (other than the ritual No 1 and No 2 obvs). Totally sedate, will sniff your hand amiably but that's it. Would meet Y Doethur's specification admirably.
Our dog would be the exact opposite. He would be changing policy every 5 minutes. Every single person who meets him says he is the most hyper dog they have met. He just goes bonkers when meeting anyone (in a very friendly way). He also eats anything he can find and is very adept at stealing food. He loves going to the vet even though on a regular basis he is being induced to vomit and spins around the room bouncing off the walls. He is a Sproodle (Springer/Poodle cross).
Some of the things he has eaten or tried to eat are: 1.5kg block of cheese, 250g block of butter, tin foil that had had a cake in it (he pooed sparkling poo for several days), food still in the bag (that was a serious one), a whole bag of potatoes, a regular diet of dead deer (hairy poo) and trying to get a skull and spine off him was a challenge, my wallet, iphone, glasses, binoculars and numerous peoples dinners if they don't put their plate in a safe place when getting up from the table, bowls of peanuts and crisps, etc, etc. He costs a fortune calling the toxic helpline and vets bills and trying to get the food off him when he has it is pretty well impossible
I've said it before and I'll say it again: dogs are idiots.
On reflection, cats are idiots too. But in a much more low-key way. Cats are BETTER idiots.
There are a lot of funny dog videos and I think this is because unlike most animals dogs are clever enough to try and work things out, but generally so stupid that when they try they cock it up and are therefore funny.
One of my favourites is of a door without any glass in it, but the dog waits outside because it is closed and the human walks through where the glass should be in the closed door and the dog still won't move until the door is opened when it then walks through.
Dogs, like many mammals, have an associative memory. They aren’t able to rationalise and abstract general theories from their experiences, and don’t try to ‘understand’ everything as we do, so they simply sort everything they encounter into ‘good’, ‘bad’ or harmless, and once something encountered is so sorted, they simply welcome or avoid the first and second and ignore the third, and thereafter it takes a huge effort to change anything’s categorisation. It’s why so many pets are fearful of the vets; it only takes one unpleasant examination or treatment and all vets’ premises go into the ‘bad’ category, however many treats they receive on subsequent visits.
Good to see Streeting, and now Starmer, giving full backing to Jess Phillips, and pointing out her track record in challenging violence against women and girls. But unless I've missed it, Jess herself has not commented on Musk's outrageous description of her as a 'rape genocide apologist' who should be in prison. Maybe she's keeping her powder dry, or consulting lawyers. And Richard Tice refused to condemn Musk's description of Phillips, saying it was just free speech.
I'm all for free speech within the law. But if somebody with a huge platform called me a 'rape genocide apologist' I'd be seeking some sort of redress.
Starmer rightly called out Tory MPs on this, saying this morning -
"I think only a few months ago it would have been unthinkable for the things that have been said about Jess Philips without all political parties and the leader of the opposition to call it out in terms...to condemn it...if you're not prepared to stand up as a Tory MP and denounce what's been said about her, then you need to seriously think about why you're in politics in my view."
All good stuff. And then I remember Tom Watson and his outrageous behaviour in Operation Midland and the things he said about various prominent people, including one ex-Tory MP, none of which - AFAICR - were criticised by fellow Labour MPs or his leader at the time. Plus the fact that it was the very same Starmer who nominated him in 2022 to the Lords. It was appallingly poor judgment by Starmer and, frankly, rather undercuts his criticism today. If an ex-DPP cannot understand why Watson should not have been elevated to the Lords after his conduct, then he has no business lecturing others about their similarly poor judgment.
I saw Malcolm's post about "toff's children" on the prior thread.
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Private education is just education. They get no funding from government so, if an independent school wants to set up - for example, to focus on children with more distinct education needs, or to provide a local better alternative, or deliver to an alternative educational philosophy - they have to charge a fee to be viable.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
Depends if you think such families should have given rely on charity or not. There are more SEND kids in the state sector than the private sector, as a proportion, and Labour have increased spending by £1 billion per annum.
Parents should have choice in educating their children and, to the greatest extent possible, I'd like to see this liberated from the ability to pay.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Which merely subsidises those who can top them up with there own cash to send their kids to an elite school. Bad policy.
No, if you half the price you more than double those who can access it.
Your logic is the failed logic of putting VAT on school fees to attack privilege, which actually makes it even more privileged.
This is the classic dilemma of taxing luxuries. As true of air passenger duty or gas guzzling SUVs as it is of private education. It raises the price, which makes the luxury even more exclusive.
It's a tricky dilemma with no perfect answer. Other countries simply don't have the same two tier schooling system that we do, and I think most people would much prefer a situation where 95%+ of pupils make use of state education and private provision is more niche (for religion, or special needs, or musical geniuses etc), but getting from here to there is extremely difficult.
I'd prefer to blur the lines between private and state provision, but then that's because I'm a centrist (literal) dad. The private sector has huge resources and expertise which cannot simply be syphoned into the state sector by pricing parents out, but there need to be options out there that are less ruinously expensive than the current set up.
My daughter is sitting an entrance exam today (my son is in upper sixth at a private school) so we are on the cusp of renewing that eye-watering cost for another 7 years.
Agreed, and I'd say that I don't see it as a luxury.
Luxury is about self-indulgence, whereas education is a public good - and that applies even when it's not you directly.
But that's like saying caviar isn't a luxury because it's food.
Private education is a luxury substitute for a public good, not a public good in itself.
Absolute nonsense.
Education is a public good. In any form.
That's why it's been charitable for decades, including under all Labour governments, until this lot took over.
It's a simple choice to have a better version of something that is already available, at additional cost. That's a pretty good definition of a luxury imo.
I'd also argue private education lacks some of the public good attributes of state education, specifically the social mixing that occurs at state schools.
Nevertheless I do concede education of any form retains some of the facets of a public good and, if it turns out the impact of the VAT on private schools thing is just to reduce the amount of education available then it will have failed as a policy.
A university education (at least at a top university), could be considered a luxury, but universities are still treated as charities.
The bastions of privilege that make up Oxbridge colleges are very private and elitist institutions. They are never attacked or undermined because so many of the smug politicians of the Labour Party went there themselves and want you to believe it was all to do with them being so much cleverer than the oikish people they purport to represent.
In theory, they are open to everyone. In practice, your chances of getting into a top college, if you come from the top 1% of the population, are vastly greater than your chances of getting in if you come from the bottom 50%. And, that will be true of those of the top 1% who have been State-educated.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
The current government are not unique in having a shit understanding of the most basic concepts around the internet or technology generally, but it's a shame they're inflicting their shit understanding on the rest of us.
Wasn't this drafted by the Tories.
One former Tory Advised who pops up on GMB to chat about politics in the morning said she was proud of her part in drafting it when it went into law. Salma Shah IIRC.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
The current government are not unique in having a shit understanding of the most basic concepts around the internet or technology generally, but it's a shame they're inflicting their shit understanding on the rest of us.
The bill was introduced by the Tories.
It is a nearly universal rule in world politics, that both left and right are both utterly stupid when it comes to technology regulation.
What's unique about technology? We have gambling laws that stop bookmakers paying out large winning bets until punters have provided all sorts of personal information that was not needed to place the bets. And don't get PB started on Net Zero.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
That's absolutely insane. It is going to have an incredibly chilling effect on free expression in this country.
The bar is "psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress". I'm struggling to think of anything that has been posted that would meet that threshhold in all the time I have been on here.
Okay, maybe the one about biting into a pus-filled chicken leg.
(Edit) Even *if* Musk has a point about Starmer's involvement in the cases as DPP....
*If* you believe that, Musk has won.
I don't believe it. I haven't looked into it, but you would have to be quite a puppeteer to arrange things at such low levels, in so many places, over such a long period. My own view (having read a couple of the reports yonks ago), was that the decisions were made on an individual, and small group basis. Would decisions have got to the DPP's level?
Though having said that, Musk's statements are so wild that I'm not actually sure what he thinks Starmer did...
Suggestion by Starmer that threats have been made on Phillips.
She has already said she is resigned to death threats for the rest of her life and a man was jailed for threatening the most awful violence at her.
How does he know it is down to Musk ?
It's hard to see Musk as having helped the situation.
Agreed but by the same token you cannot blame Musk for abuse aimed at a politician who gets it regularly.
What would be interesting would be to see if it has increased markedly and if any comes from the US.
It doesn't have to come from the US.
She is more likely to be assassinated by an outraged Brummie than a US citizen who is outraged at Phillips after reading Liz Truss's response to Musk's lie
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss wrote, "This is Jess Phillips, the same Home Office Minister who excused masked Islamist thugs".
I saw you ranting about me earlier. I just want to point out that 1. I was absent for at least two weeks over Christmas, during which you all managed to have a bitter row about gangs by yourselves (so it’s really not me). 2. I’m not even allowed to mention “that thing” so I can hardly “bang on” about it and 3. I’m a MEMBER of the Groucho, not a guest
Thanks
There were a few family punch ups but it was a lot more agreeable on here over Christmas. I knew point 3 would wind you the f*** up. Over and out.
I’m not remotely wound up. I’m trying to calm you down
Nah, you're just a narcissistic wind-up merchant.
That’s clearly true, but I am ALSO trying to calm down @Mexicanpete
I somehow doubt you have ever gone anywhere and calmed anything down. I'm just glad you never tried bomb-disposal or hostage negotiation as careers...
… or indeed anything that requires judgement, responsibility, decision-making, common sense, thoughtful reflection, awareness and sensitivity to other people’s views and needs, accountability, respect for rules or social norms, or any kind of maturity.
This is just the sort of thing we were talking about. The amount of abuse Leon gets, even at one or two removes - even when he's not here - is out of all proportion to his contribution on the site. It's just odd.
Not really. It’s just that you aren’t appreciating the extent of the damage he is doing.
Can you explain this? I’d like to know before PB is finally closed down thanks to this insane Tory law
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
The BIB is insane, it could cover anything, and how in the name of ruddy hell do you even define this "psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress"
How on earth did this bill make it through the committee stage and through the Lords.
I saw Malcolm's post about "toff's children" on the prior thread.
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Private education is just education. They get no funding from government so, if an independent school wants to set up - for example, to focus on children with more distinct education needs, or to provide a local better alternative, or deliver to an alternative educational philosophy - they have to charge a fee to be viable.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
Depends if you think such families should have given rely on charity or not. There are more SEND kids in the state sector than the private sector, as a proportion, and Labour have increased spending by £1 billion per annum.
Parents should have choice in educating their children and, to the greatest extent possible, I'd like to see this liberated from the ability to pay.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Which merely subsidises those who can top them up with there own cash to send their kids to an elite school. Bad policy.
No, if you half the price you more than double those who can access it.
Your logic is the failed logic of putting VAT on school fees to attack privilege, which actually makes it even more privileged.
This is the classic dilemma of taxing luxuries. As true of air passenger duty or gas guzzling SUVs as it is of private education. It raises the price, which makes the luxury even more exclusive.
It's a tricky dilemma with no perfect answer. Other countries simply don't have the same two tier schooling system that we do, and I think most people would much prefer a situation where 95%+ of pupils make use of state education and private provision is more niche (for religion, or special needs, or musical geniuses etc), but getting from here to there is extremely difficult.
I'd prefer to blur the lines between private and state provision, but then that's because I'm a centrist (literal) dad. The private sector has huge resources and expertise which cannot simply be syphoned into the state sector by pricing parents out, but there need to be options out there that are less ruinously expensive than the current set up.
My daughter is sitting an entrance exam today (my son is in upper sixth at a private school) so we are on the cusp of renewing that eye-watering cost for another 7 years.
Agreed, and I'd say that I don't see it as a luxury.
Luxury is about self-indulgence, whereas education is a public good - and that applies even when it's not you directly.
But that's like saying caviar isn't a luxury because it's food.
Private education is a luxury substitute for a public good, not a public good in itself.
Absolute nonsense.
Education is a public good. In any form.
That's why it's been charitable for decades, including under all Labour governments, until this lot took over.
Um - private schools have to provide community benefits to get charitable status - being a school that people pay to attend isn’t enough to be a charity
I imagine that a little reflection and analysis would show that there are plenty of charities that have paying customers.
What is it that gets some people, particularly on the left so angry about people wanting to pay for their children's education? It really is quite pathetic. No body complains about someone wanting a bigger house or garden for their kids, or maybe taking them on holiday to some ridiculously expensive location or ensuring they have better quality food than those who are less well off.
Educational envy is definitely a very British disease. A very negative one.
There are some unthinking green-eyed envy-mongers for sure. But if you're asking the question seriously, here's an answer as to why it is different from your other examples:
Education is in part a sorting mechanism - high grades give you status and access to more choices about your future. Buying access to higher grades through better education messes up that sorting mechanism.
The counterpoint is that the sorting mechanism is godawful anyway because school quality varies so much. But one can still argue that private education makes it even worse.
I think private education makes sense if you believe fundamentally that the state's attempt to provide a decent education to our children has failed. In my view it is that implicit belief buried within the individual parental choice that gets those on the left so riled up, because those on the left believe so deeply in the collective experience of state education.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
That's absolutely insane. It is going to have an incredibly chilling effect on free expression in this country.
Suella’s bill. But I expect she hoped it would only catch things she doesn’t like. That’s also the mistake governments frequently make. Like her Public Order Act, which sure as night follows day will end up being used against things she and her political allies approve of.
Yes, it was bad then and it's bad now. Having politicians in charge of what is and isn't allowed to be posted on the internet is completely stupid. One can only hope that the next government repeals this abomination and implements a first amendment style guarantee of free expression in it's place.
I saw Malcolm's post about "toff's children" on the prior thread.
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Private education is just education. They get no funding from government so, if an independent school wants to set up - for example, to focus on children with more distinct education needs, or to provide a local better alternative, or deliver to an alternative educational philosophy - they have to charge a fee to be viable.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
Depends if you think such families should have given rely on charity or not. There are more SEND kids in the state sector than the private sector, as a proportion, and Labour have increased spending by £1 billion per annum.
Parents should have choice in educating their children and, to the greatest extent possible, I'd like to see this liberated from the ability to pay.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Which merely subsidises those who can top them up with there own cash to send their kids to an elite school. Bad policy.
No, if you half the price you more than double those who can access it.
Your logic is the failed logic of putting VAT on school fees to attack privilege, which actually makes it even more privileged.
This is the classic dilemma of taxing luxuries. As true of air passenger duty or gas guzzling SUVs as it is of private education. It raises the price, which makes the luxury even more exclusive.
It's a tricky dilemma with no perfect answer. Other countries simply don't have the same two tier schooling system that we do, and I think most people would much prefer a situation where 95%+ of pupils make use of state education and private provision is more niche (for religion, or special needs, or musical geniuses etc), but getting from here to there is extremely difficult.
I'd prefer to blur the lines between private and state provision, but then that's because I'm a centrist (literal) dad. The private sector has huge resources and expertise which cannot simply be syphoned into the state sector by pricing parents out, but there need to be options out there that are less ruinously expensive than the current set up.
My daughter is sitting an entrance exam today (my son is in upper sixth at a private school) so we are on the cusp of renewing that eye-watering cost for another 7 years.
Agreed, and I'd say that I don't see it as a luxury.
Luxury is about self-indulgence, whereas education is a public good - and that applies even when it's not you directly.
But that's like saying caviar isn't a luxury because it's food.
Private education is a luxury substitute for a public good, not a public good in itself.
Absolute nonsense.
Education is a public good. In any form.
That's why it's been charitable for decades, including under all Labour governments, until this lot took over.
Um - private schools have to provide community benefits to get charitable status - being a school that people pay to attend isn’t enough to be a charity
I imagine that a little reflection and analysis would show that there are plenty of charities that have paying customers.
What is it that gets some people, particularly on the left so angry about people wanting to pay for their children's education? It really is quite pathetic. No body complains about someone wanting a bigger house or garden for their kids, or maybe taking them on holiday to some ridiculously expensive location or ensuring they have better quality food than those who are less well off.
Educational envy is definitely a very British disease. A very negative one.
Two things can be true, I think.
It’s perfectly rational for parents who can afford it to pay for their children’s education. I do, and I don’t think that makes me complicit in social immobility. Though I do sometimes wonder if it’s really worth it. The state schools round here are pretty good at teaching. The biggest gap is in facilities and extra-curricular activities.
It’s also true that Britain has a problem with an entrenched 2-tier education system which also plays out in a rigid class system, something almost no other developed countries suffer.
Yes, no, maybe. Looking beyond schools to universities, we have Oxbridge and especially Oxford PPE for politicians and media bigwigs; America has the Ivy League; most French politicians went to the Ecole Nationale d’Administration.
I saw Malcolm's post about "toff's children" on the prior thread.
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Private education is just education. They get no funding from government so, if an independent school wants to set up - for example, to focus on children with more distinct education needs, or to provide a local better alternative, or deliver to an alternative educational philosophy - they have to charge a fee to be viable.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
Depends if you think such families should have given rely on charity or not. There are more SEND kids in the state sector than the private sector, as a proportion, and Labour have increased spending by £1 billion per annum.
Parents should have choice in educating their children and, to the greatest extent possible, I'd like to see this liberated from the ability to pay.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Which merely subsidises those who can top them up with there own cash to send their kids to an elite school. Bad policy.
No, if you half the price you more than double those who can access it.
Your logic is the failed logic of putting VAT on school fees to attack privilege, which actually makes it even more privileged.
This is the classic dilemma of taxing luxuries. As true of air passenger duty or gas guzzling SUVs as it is of private education. It raises the price, which makes the luxury even more exclusive.
It's a tricky dilemma with no perfect answer. Other countries simply don't have the same two tier schooling system that we do, and I think most people would much prefer a situation where 95%+ of pupils make use of state education and private provision is more niche (for religion, or special needs, or musical geniuses etc), but getting from here to there is extremely difficult.
I'd prefer to blur the lines between private and state provision, but then that's because I'm a centrist (literal) dad. The private sector has huge resources and expertise which cannot simply be syphoned into the state sector by pricing parents out, but there need to be options out there that are less ruinously expensive than the current set up.
My daughter is sitting an entrance exam today (my son is in upper sixth at a private school) so we are on the cusp of renewing that eye-watering cost for another 7 years.
Agreed, and I'd say that I don't see it as a luxury.
Luxury is about self-indulgence, whereas education is a public good - and that applies even when it's not you directly.
But that's like saying caviar isn't a luxury because it's food.
Private education is a luxury substitute for a public good, not a public good in itself.
Absolute nonsense.
Education is a public good. In any form.
That's why it's been charitable for decades, including under all Labour governments, until this lot took over.
It's a simple choice to have a better version of something that is already available, at additional cost. That's a pretty good definition of a luxury imo.
I'd also argue private education lacks some of the public good attributes of state education, specifically the social mixing that occurs at state schools.
Nevertheless I do concede education of any form retains some of the facets of a public good and, if it turns out the impact of the VAT on private schools thing is just to reduce the amount of education available then it will have failed as a policy.
That's a fairer argument, and you can certainly defend the policy on social engineering grounds- although that's not something I agree with or think ever ends well.
The point is that private schools aren't making commercial profits to shareholders (so aren't businesses) and the education they do deliver is not only for the benefit of the children individually but for society as a whole.
A good, well-educated populace with diverse education provision in place is in all our interests.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
Even the Lib Dems wanted the Online Safety Bill to go even further. It's pretty much a consensus across all major parties. Not good.
I think it reflects the level of online abuse that politicians get, as well as the malign impact of social media on children. A disproportionate backlash against a real problem.
One to watch - Mumsnet. If that closes down (or threatens to do so) then things will really kick off.
(Edit) Even *if* Musk has a point about Starmer's involvement in the cases as DPP....
*If* you believe that, Musk has won.
I don't believe it. I haven't looked into it, but you would have to be quite a puppeteer to arrange things at such low levels, in so many places, over such a long period. My own view (having read a couple of the reports yonks ago), was that the decisions were made on an individual, and small group basis. Would decisions have got to the DPP's level?
Though having said that, Musk's statements are so wild that I'm not actually sure what he thinks Starmer did...
Suggestion by Starmer that threats have been made on Phillips.
She has already said she is resigned to death threats for the rest of her life and a man was jailed for threatening the most awful violence at her.
How does he know it is down to Musk ?
It's hard to see Musk as having helped the situation.
Agreed but by the same token you cannot blame Musk for abuse aimed at a politician who gets it regularly.
What would be interesting would be to see if it has increased markedly and if any comes from the US.
It doesn't have to come from the US.
She is more likely to be assassinated by an outraged Brummie than a US citizen who is outraged at Phillips after reading Liz Truss's response to Musk's lie
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss wrote, "This is Jess Phillips, the same Home Office Minister who excused masked Islamist thugs".
I saw you ranting about me earlier. I just want to point out that 1. I was absent for at least two weeks over Christmas, during which you all managed to have a bitter row about gangs by yourselves (so it’s really not me). 2. I’m not even allowed to mention “that thing” so I can hardly “bang on” about it and 3. I’m a MEMBER of the Groucho, not a guest
Thanks
There were a few family punch ups but it was a lot more agreeable on here over Christmas. I knew point 3 would wind you the f*** up. Over and out.
I’m not remotely wound up. I’m trying to calm you down
Nah, you're just a narcissistic wind-up merchant.
That’s clearly true, but I am ALSO trying to calm down @Mexicanpete
I somehow doubt you have ever gone anywhere and calmed anything down. I'm just glad you never tried bomb-disposal or hostage negotiation as careers...
… or indeed anything that requires judgement, responsibility, decision-making, common sense, thoughtful reflection, awareness and sensitivity to other people’s views and needs, accountability, respect for rules or social norms, or any kind of maturity.
This is just the sort of thing we were talking about. The amount of abuse Leon gets, even at one or two removes - even when he's not here - is out of all proportion to his contribution on the site. It's just odd.
Not really. It’s just that you aren’t appreciating the extent of the damage he is doing.
Can you explain this? I’d like to know before PB is finally closed down thanks to this insane Tory law
Get the editor of The Spectator to raise this insane law.
Oh wait, he was one of the architects of this bill and voted for it.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
The BIB is insane, it could cover anything, and how in the name of ruddy hell do you even define this "psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress"
How on earth did this bill make it through the committee stage and through the Lords.
The government had zero interest in governing and preferred to fight amongst themselves.
I saw Malcolm's post about "toff's children" on the prior thread.
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Private education is just education. They get no funding from government so, if an independent school wants to set up - for example, to focus on children with more distinct education needs, or to provide a local better alternative, or deliver to an alternative educational philosophy - they have to charge a fee to be viable.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
Depends if you think such families should have given rely on charity or not. There are more SEND kids in the state sector than the private sector, as a proportion, and Labour have increased spending by £1 billion per annum.
Parents should have choice in educating their children and, to the greatest extent possible, I'd like to see this liberated from the ability to pay.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Which merely subsidises those who can top them up with there own cash to send their kids to an elite school. Bad policy.
No, if you half the price you more than double those who can access it.
Your logic is the failed logic of putting VAT on school fees to attack privilege, which actually makes it even more privileged.
This is the classic dilemma of taxing luxuries. As true of air passenger duty or gas guzzling SUVs as it is of private education. It raises the price, which makes the luxury even more exclusive.
It's a tricky dilemma with no perfect answer. Other countries simply don't have the same two tier schooling system that we do, and I think most people would much prefer a situation where 95%+ of pupils make use of state education and private provision is more niche (for religion, or special needs, or musical geniuses etc), but getting from here to there is extremely difficult.
I'd prefer to blur the lines between private and state provision, but then that's because I'm a centrist (literal) dad. The private sector has huge resources and expertise which cannot simply be syphoned into the state sector by pricing parents out, but there need to be options out there that are less ruinously expensive than the current set up.
My daughter is sitting an entrance exam today (my son is in upper sixth at a private school) so we are on the cusp of renewing that eye-watering cost for another 7 years.
Agreed, and I'd say that I don't see it as a luxury.
Luxury is about self-indulgence, whereas education is a public good - and that applies even when it's not you directly.
But that's like saying caviar isn't a luxury because it's food.
Private education is a luxury substitute for a public good, not a public good in itself.
Absolute nonsense.
Education is a public good. In any form.
That's why it's been charitable for decades, including under all Labour governments, until this lot took over.
It's a simple choice to have a better version of something that is already available, at additional cost. That's a pretty good definition of a luxury imo.
I'd also argue private education lacks some of the public good attributes of state education, specifically the social mixing that occurs at state schools.
Nevertheless I do concede education of any form retains some of the facets of a public good and, if it turns out the impact of the VAT on private schools thing is just to reduce the amount of education available then it will have failed as a policy.
A university education (at least at a top university), could be considered a luxury, but universities are still treated as charities.
The bastions of privilege that make up Oxbridge colleges are very private and elitist institutions. They are never attacked or undermined because so many of the smug politicians of the Labour Party went there themselves and want you to believe it was all to do with them being so much cleverer than the oikish people they purport to represent.
In theory, they are open to everyone. In practice, your chances of getting into a top college, if you come from the top 1% of the population, are vastly greater than your chances of getting in if you come from the bottom 50%. And, that will be true of those of the top 1% who have been State-educated.
It used to be said with some degree of accuracy that Conservative ministers came from major public schools, whereas Labour ministers went to minor public schools. (Starmer's Cabinet is mainly state-educated, iirc.)
(Edit) Even *if* Musk has a point about Starmer's involvement in the cases as DPP....
*If* you believe that, Musk has won.
I don't believe it. I haven't looked into it, but you would have to be quite a puppeteer to arrange things at such low levels, in so many places, over such a long period. My own view (having read a couple of the reports yonks ago), was that the decisions were made on an individual, and small group basis. Would decisions have got to the DPP's level?
Though having said that, Musk's statements are so wild that I'm not actually sure what he thinks Starmer did...
Suggestion by Starmer that threats have been made on Phillips.
She has already said she is resigned to death threats for the rest of her life and a man was jailed for threatening the most awful violence at her.
How does he know it is down to Musk ?
It's hard to see Musk as having helped the situation.
Agreed but by the same token you cannot blame Musk for abuse aimed at a politician who gets it regularly.
What would be interesting would be to see if it has increased markedly and if any comes from the US.
It doesn't have to come from the US.
She is more likely to be assassinated by an outraged Brummie than a US citizen who is outraged at Phillips after reading Liz Truss's response to Musk's lie
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss wrote, "This is Jess Phillips, the same Home Office Minister who excused masked Islamist thugs".
I saw you ranting about me earlier. I just want to point out that 1. I was absent for at least two weeks over Christmas, during which you all managed to have a bitter row about gangs by yourselves (so it’s really not me). 2. I’m not even allowed to mention “that thing” so I can hardly “bang on” about it and 3. I’m a MEMBER of the Groucho, not a guest
Thanks
There were a few family punch ups but it was a lot more agreeable on here over Christmas. I knew point 3 would wind you the f*** up. Over and out.
I’m not remotely wound up. I’m trying to calm you down
Nah, you're just a narcissistic wind-up merchant.
That’s clearly true, but I am ALSO trying to calm down @Mexicanpete
I somehow doubt you have ever gone anywhere and calmed anything down. I'm just glad you never tried bomb-disposal or hostage negotiation as careers...
… or indeed anything that requires judgement, responsibility, decision-making, common sense, thoughtful reflection, awareness and sensitivity to other people’s views and needs, accountability, respect for rules or social norms, or any kind of maturity.
This is just the sort of thing we were talking about. The amount of abuse Leon gets, even at one or two removes - even when he's not here - is out of all proportion to his contribution on the site. It's just odd.
Not really. It’s just that you aren’t appreciating the extent of the damage he is doing.
Can you explain this? I’d like to know before PB is finally closed down thanks to this insane Tory law
Get the editor of The Spectator to raise this insane law.
Oh wait, he was one of the architects of this bill and voted for it.
A politician would never follow advice of not putting things off alone (hence the full quote i suppose). Doing stuff comes with risks, and who wants that?
Of course in reality politicians typically come in 3 varieties - the do nothing people, terrified of cocking up further so just put a plaster on. The tinkerers that you identify like Gove, who do try a bit but usually on small problems (in fairness their boss may not agree to do big stuff). And then the ones who do do big things on big issues, but very badly due to unearned confidence in their abilities.
PB is cynical this morning!
How long since we had an MP who had noted success in turning an organisation around and running it successfully? Let alone a minister?
Farage!
*Part of my strategy to tempt the lefties back by discussing their amazing skills of their favourite political figure.
One of Farage's major problems is that he eventually seems to fall out with everyone he works with.
It just happened much quicker with Musk than usual.
True, that is very much his M.O. but in this case I think it is understandable given Musk continues to support Robinson and has said Farage needs to be replaced.
Also, Musk doesn't exactly have a tip-top record on the "maintaining long-term working relationships" front.
Doesn't he? Gwynne Shotwell's been running SpaceX for him for at least two decades, and AIUI there are a fair few senior Tesla people who have been there for yonks.
Though the way he treated his secretary was awful, and perhaps the start of his descent into madness.
This is my pet theory of the week... Musk is possibly suffering some sort of mental illness. I hope he gets appropriate treatment.
It's like Horse said the other day - he's just gone full Twitter. Seen it happen to various slebs (and probably millions of others) - Lawrence Fox, Gary Lineker, Carol Vorderman - they state a forceful but not wildly mad opinion, get high on the likes and retweets and the echo chamber and just become madder and madder versions of themselves.
Even before he bought Twitter, he was always getting himself in trouble for late-night posting. Including with the SEC, who you really don’t want to upset, after he made comments about Tesla which should be announced in a formal way first or that could have materially affected the share price.
I remember saying at the time that he should have Tesla devs set his phone up with a custom app that refers all of his Tweets to a company lawyer to moderate before they went live.
As others have observed, it does appear that he exists on very little sleep, and that most of the more problematic posts occur very late in the evening or in the middle of the night.
There's a real question, I think, about how powerful Trump will regard him to be, once he gers into office.
He may regard him as a challenge that needs to he thrown off early, or simply too powerful to jettison. If the latter, we might actually have to genuinely prepare for issues like attempts to exercise greater day-to-day control of the U.K. Our nuclear deterrent and ultimate defence is already effectively in U.S. hands, thanks to incredible short-sightedness.
I saw Malcolm's post about "toff's children" on the prior thread.
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Private education is just education. They get no funding from government so, if an independent school wants to set up - for example, to focus on children with more distinct education needs, or to provide a local better alternative, or deliver to an alternative educational philosophy - they have to charge a fee to be viable.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
Depends if you think such families should have given rely on charity or not. There are more SEND kids in the state sector than the private sector, as a proportion, and Labour have increased spending by £1 billion per annum.
Parents should have choice in educating their children and, to the greatest extent possible, I'd like to see this liberated from the ability to pay.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Which merely subsidises those who can top them up with there own cash to send their kids to an elite school. Bad policy.
No, if you half the price you more than double those who can access it.
Your logic is the failed logic of putting VAT on school fees to attack privilege, which actually makes it even more privileged.
This is the classic dilemma of taxing luxuries. As true of air passenger duty or gas guzzling SUVs as it is of private education. It raises the price, which makes the luxury even more exclusive.
It's a tricky dilemma with no perfect answer. Other countries simply don't have the same two tier schooling system that we do, and I think most people would much prefer a situation where 95%+ of pupils make use of state education and private provision is more niche (for religion, or special needs, or musical geniuses etc), but getting from here to there is extremely difficult.
I'd prefer to blur the lines between private and state provision, but then that's because I'm a centrist (literal) dad. The private sector has huge resources and expertise which cannot simply be syphoned into the state sector by pricing parents out, but there need to be options out there that are less ruinously expensive than the current set up.
My daughter is sitting an entrance exam today (my son is in upper sixth at a private school) so we are on the cusp of renewing that eye-watering cost for another 7 years.
The current position is 93% state provision, so you’re not far off already!
(Edit) Even *if* Musk has a point about Starmer's involvement in the cases as DPP....
*If* you believe that, Musk has won.
I don't believe it. I haven't looked into it, but you would have to be quite a puppeteer to arrange things at such low levels, in so many places, over such a long period. My own view (having read a couple of the reports yonks ago), was that the decisions were made on an individual, and small group basis. Would decisions have got to the DPP's level?
Though having said that, Musk's statements are so wild that I'm not actually sure what he thinks Starmer did...
Suggestion by Starmer that threats have been made on Phillips.
She has already said she is resigned to death threats for the rest of her life and a man was jailed for threatening the most awful violence at her.
How does he know it is down to Musk ?
It's hard to see Musk as having helped the situation.
Agreed but by the same token you cannot blame Musk for abuse aimed at a politician who gets it regularly.
What would be interesting would be to see if it has increased markedly and if any comes from the US.
It doesn't have to come from the US.
She is more likely to be assassinated by an outraged Brummie than a US citizen who is outraged at Phillips after reading Liz Truss's response to Musk's lie
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss wrote, "This is Jess Phillips, the same Home Office Minister who excused masked Islamist thugs".
I saw you ranting about me earlier. I just want to point out that 1. I was absent for at least two weeks over Christmas, during which you all managed to have a bitter row about gangs by yourselves (so it’s really not me). 2. I’m not even allowed to mention “that thing” so I can hardly “bang on” about it and 3. I’m a MEMBER of the Groucho, not a guest
Thanks
There were a few family punch ups but it was a lot more agreeable on here over Christmas. I knew point 3 would wind you the f*** up. Over and out.
I’m not remotely wound up. I’m trying to calm you down
Nah, you're just a narcissistic wind-up merchant.
That’s clearly true, but I am ALSO trying to calm down @Mexicanpete
I somehow doubt you have ever gone anywhere and calmed anything down. I'm just glad you never tried bomb-disposal or hostage negotiation as careers...
… or indeed anything that requires judgement, responsibility, decision-making, common sense, thoughtful reflection, awareness and sensitivity to other people’s views and needs, accountability, respect for rules or social norms, or any kind of maturity.
This is just the sort of thing we were talking about. The amount of abuse Leon gets, even at one or two removes - even when he's not here - is out of all proportion to his contribution on the site. It's just odd.
Not really. It’s just that you aren’t appreciating the extent of the damage he is doing.
Can you explain this? I’d like to know before PB is finally closed down thanks to this insane Tory law
Get the editor of The Spectator to raise this insane law.
Oh wait, he was one of the architects of this bill and voted for it.
I'm genuinely surprised it didn't get dissected at the time by PB given its collective expertise and cynicism. Can't be because it was a Tory bill. Or can it?
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
The current government are not unique in having a shit understanding of the most basic concepts around the internet or technology generally, but it's a shame they're inflicting their shit understanding on the rest of us.
The current government?
The only criticism you can make of them is not binning this Conservative policy.
Labour supported the Bill. And at one point wanted to make it even stronger. Labour have IMV no instinctive support for free speech at all.
(Edit) Even *if* Musk has a point about Starmer's involvement in the cases as DPP....
*If* you believe that, Musk has won.
I don't believe it. I haven't looked into it, but you would have to be quite a puppeteer to arrange things at such low levels, in so many places, over such a long period. My own view (having read a couple of the reports yonks ago), was that the decisions were made on an individual, and small group basis. Would decisions have got to the DPP's level?
Though having said that, Musk's statements are so wild that I'm not actually sure what he thinks Starmer did...
Suggestion by Starmer that threats have been made on Phillips.
She has already said she is resigned to death threats for the rest of her life and a man was jailed for threatening the most awful violence at her.
How does he know it is down to Musk ?
It's hard to see Musk as having helped the situation.
Agreed but by the same token you cannot blame Musk for abuse aimed at a politician who gets it regularly.
What would be interesting would be to see if it has increased markedly and if any comes from the US.
It doesn't have to come from the US.
She is more likely to be assassinated by an outraged Brummie than a US citizen who is outraged at Phillips after reading Liz Truss's response to Musk's lie
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss wrote, "This is Jess Phillips, the same Home Office Minister who excused masked Islamist thugs".
I saw you ranting about me earlier. I just want to point out that 1. I was absent for at least two weeks over Christmas, during which you all managed to have a bitter row about gangs by yourselves (so it’s really not me). 2. I’m not even allowed to mention “that thing” so I can hardly “bang on” about it and 3. I’m a MEMBER of the Groucho, not a guest
Thanks
There were a few family punch ups but it was a lot more agreeable on here over Christmas. I knew point 3 would wind you the f*** up. Over and out.
I’m not remotely wound up. I’m trying to calm you down
Nah, you're just a narcissistic wind-up merchant.
That’s clearly true, but I am ALSO trying to calm down @Mexicanpete
I somehow doubt you have ever gone anywhere and calmed anything down. I'm just glad you never tried bomb-disposal or hostage negotiation as careers...
… or indeed anything that requires judgement, responsibility, decision-making, common sense, thoughtful reflection, awareness and sensitivity to other people’s views and needs, accountability, respect for rules or social norms, or any kind of maturity.
This is just the sort of thing we were talking about. The amount of abuse Leon gets, even at one or two removes - even when he's not here - is out of all proportion to his contribution on the site. It's just odd.
Not really. It’s just that you aren’t appreciating the extent of the damage he is doing.
Can you explain this? I’d like to know before PB is finally closed down thanks to this insane Tory law
Get the editor of The Spectator to raise this insane law.
Oh wait, he was one of the architects of this bill and voted for it.
Presumably this will also impact the Below the line comments on videos on sites like Youtube or under podcasts on sites like Spotify.
Surely for some providers, especially smaller ones, it will be far easier for them just to withdraw from the UK market.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
The current government are not unique in having a shit understanding of the most basic concepts around the internet or technology generally, but it's a shame they're inflicting their shit understanding on the rest of us.
The bill was introduced by the Tories.
Which I also opposed.
These thinks always have lots of unintended consequences that performing politicians are remarkably ill-equipped to think through.
Even the Lib Dems wanted the Online Safety Bill to go even further. It's pretty much a consensus across all major parties. Not good.
I think it reflects the level of online abuse that politicians get, as well as the malign impact of social media on children. A disproportionate backlash against a real problem.
One to watch - Mumsnet. If that closes down (or threatens to do so) then things will really kick off.
Mumsnet should close down - the acronyms used there have previously caused me “psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress”
Comments
Education is a public good. In any form.
That's why it's been charitable for decades, including under all Labour governments, until this lot took over.
Incidentally @malcolmg would make an outstanding MAGA representative. No nonsense with him in Congress.
At Basque Roads, Cochrane had a chance at wiping out the opposing fleet, Nelson style. For far less loss.
In my view it depends on whether the charity is providing a service that we should collectively agree to provide to each other eg provide affordable food. In this case the charity should not exist.
On the other hand some services are outside what we have agreed collectively as a society to provide e.g. disaster relief in foreign countries (yes I know we do some of it but it's a token effort). Charities are appropriate in this space.
There are grey areas - Macmillan cancer nurses are probably the best example.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
The Elgin marbles could be removed to the Met in New York.
Better off remaining as one state and being a bigger hitter than watering down influence and diverging.
I’m so excited about us becoming a US state. Always liked the idea of Thanksgiving and 4th July.
1) VAT - prices immediately go up and people buy less
2) employer ni - costs increase so prices go up to reflect the additional costs
3) employee NI / income tax - people have less money so people spend less
So you can see why politicians like option 2 it’s less obvious to voters than the other options but more work for businesses who need to redo their budgets and prices
Yes very needy here as well. We can't leave him. Spent a fortune on separation anxiety training, all to no avail. He sleeps in a basket at the end of our bed as we can't leave him downstairs (Again loads of training and sleepless nights and we just gave up). If my wife and I go out together we can't then go in different directions at any point as he will pull on the lead to get us back together.
He got expelled from puppy training school for being quote 'belligerent'. The class would start with 7 owners with their dogs sitting next to them. As soon as our dog turned up there were 7 dogs running around being chased by 7 owners. He is, believe or not, well trained. He knows dozens of commands and will perform lots of tricks. But it is entirely his decision whether to obey or do them or not. We have little say in the matter other than the use of treats.
The dishwasher (every dogs favourite) is a typical example. He hears it being opened from anywhere. We give him the commands 'sit' then 'wait' and he dutifully obeys, staring at the dirty plates. 10 seconds later he has forgotten and you have to repeat. Interesting though when we feed him he won't eat until he has been given the command to do so, but if we left food lying around he would steal it.
It has been so mangled that working out the full implications will take multiple court cases.
One comic effect maybe to make participation in some of the Twatter alternatives legally non-viable for UKians.
Suella Braverman
JD Vance
Gerald Ford
Bill Clinton
Bill de Blasio
How about people substituting a second name for a first name?
Boris Johnson
Nikki Haley
Keir Hardie
Mitt Romney
Mitch McConnell
Ted Cruz
Liz Truss
Gordon Brown
James Callaghan
Harold Wilson
If the Bill is this bad, it sounds catastrophic
I'd also argue private education lacks some of the public good attributes of state education, specifically the social mixing that occurs at state schools.
Nevertheless I do concede education of any form retains some of the facets of a public good and, if it turns out the impact of the VAT on private schools thing is just to reduce the amount of education available then it will have failed as a policy.
Criminal Offences
The OSB also introduces four new criminal
offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises
sending a message if at the time of the
sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk
that it would cause harm to a likely audience’
and the sender of the message ‘intended to
cause harm to a likely audience’.31
The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes
those who might see the content after it
has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is
defined as ‘psychological harm amounting
to at least serious distress’. As the Centre
for Policy Studies and others have warned,
this potentially allows for someone to be
prosecuted for online content that ‘goes
viral’ and causes psychological distress even
if neither the spread of the content nor the
distress caused by the content was intended
by its creator.32
Even if no one is distressed
by the content, its sender could still be in
violation of the law if someone could in theory
have been distressed by the content.
https://cps.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/CPS_ONLINE_SAFETY_BILL-Final.pdf
What is it that gets some people, particularly on the left so angry about people wanting to pay for their children's education? It really is quite pathetic. No body complains about someone wanting a bigger house or garden for their kids, or maybe taking them on holiday to some ridiculously expensive location or ensuring they have better quality food than those who are less well off.
Educational envy is definitely a very British disease. A very negative one.
My contempt for them grows daily
I have no objection to people substituting a second name for a first name, assuming they do so bloody early in life. It's only relatively recently that doing so seemed odd. A generation or two back it was moderately common for a person to have been called Alfred Brian Cook but to have gone through his whole life since infancy, including by his parents, being known as Brian.
The only criticism you can make of them is not binning this Conservative policy.
One of my favourites is of a door without any glass in it, but the dog waits outside because it is closed and the human walks through where the glass should be in the closed door and the dog still won't move until the door is opened when it then walks through.
Violent criminal given ‘final chance’ after leaving victim disabled spared jail again for assault
Michael Murray handed a suspended sentence for a glassing attack despite 13 prior convictions
...
Murray was also handed back his XL bully dog that had been seized by police after his lawyer successfully argued at his sentencing hearing on Tuesday that he was “a fit and proper person” to own one.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/05/violent-criminal-spared-jail-final-student-brain-damage/ (£££)
Three cheers for that lawyer who not only kept his client out of prison but also got his dog back despite the seeming handicap that Murray pleaded guilty to two offences of affray, one of criminal damage, one of possessing a fighting dog and breach of an SSO
More seriously, it is not just about child sex. It is sentencing like this that does lead to complaints of two-tier justice and contrasts violent physical attacks leading to life-changing injuries with posting hurty words on social media. Otoh, rentaquote would-be LotO Bob Jenrick has weighed in.
My dog can be a pain, barking, getting het up over nothing. But she's super reluctant to take toys out of her own (open) toy box and will try and get other people to retrieve things for her.
It’s perfectly rational for parents who can afford it to pay for their children’s education. I do, and I don’t think that makes me complicit in social immobility. Though I do sometimes wonder if it’s really worth it. The state schools round here are pretty good at teaching. The biggest gap is in facilities and extra-curricular activities.
It’s also true that Britain has a problem with an entrenched 2-tier education system which also plays out in a rigid class system, something almost no other developed countries suffer.
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/nadine-dorries-michelle-donelan-doesnt-understand-online-safety-bill
to at least serious distress.
The US for example with the free speech protections (maybe Elon can host it for you?).
2. No one should think they have fulfilled their ethical obligations towards those less fortunate, simply by paying taxes.
How would a post on a forum go viral? That would require a third party to explicitly repost it on a different social media platform. At which point it isn’t anyone on this site doing it.
I remember saying at the time that he should have Tesla devs set his phone up with a custom app that refers all of his Tweets to a company lawyer to moderate before they went live.
As others have observed, it does appear that he exists on very little sleep, and that most of the more problematic posts occur very late in the evening or in the middle of the night.
If you knowingly post that or anything similar after the Online Safety Bill's provisions come into effect you will be committing a criminal offence.
It's almost as if the Conservative cretins wrote a completely ridiculous piece of legislation. We'll see if Labour get rid of it.
Anyway, I must be off to try and recover my psychological equilibrium.
Having a clear, distinct line on what is and what isn't acceptable is really important, lest we end up equating that kind of obviously dangerous behaviour with something frivolous like saying some dog owners are arseholes.
"I think only a few months ago it would have been unthinkable for the things that have been said about Jess Philips without all political parties and the leader of the opposition to call it out in terms...to condemn it...if you're not prepared to stand up as a Tory MP and denounce what's been said about her, then you need to seriously think about why you're in politics in my view."
All good stuff. And then I remember Tom Watson and his outrageous behaviour in Operation Midland and the things he said about various prominent people, including one ex-Tory MP, none of which - AFAICR - were criticised by fellow Labour MPs or his leader at the time. Plus the fact that it was the very same Starmer who nominated him in 2022 to the Lords. It was appallingly poor judgment by Starmer and, frankly, rather undercuts his criticism today. If an ex-DPP cannot understand why Watson should not have been elevated to the Lords after his conduct, then he has no business lecturing others about their similarly poor judgment.
One former Tory Advised who pops up on GMB to chat about politics in the morning said she was proud of her part in drafting it when it went into law. Salma Shah IIRC.
Okay, maybe the one about biting into a pus-filled chicken leg.
Does that mean it is illegal to post the new bill anywhere online?
to at least serious distress"
How on earth did this bill make it through the committee stage and through the Lords.
Sorry, been away for a few days. Here's my belated predictions, hopefully in time for inclusion:
1. Lab 37%
Con 37%
LD 25%
Reform 25%
2. Lab 19%
Con 22%
LD 12%
Reform 3%
3. 5
4. 0
5. 2
6. 3
7. 120
8. 3.4%
9. £105bn
10. 0.2%
11. 4%
12. 0.5%
13. 212 RUB to 1 USD
14. 4-0 to Australia
Edited extra bit: and now I must be off properly.
Education is in part a sorting mechanism - high grades give you status and access to more choices about your future. Buying access to higher grades through better education messes up that sorting mechanism.
The counterpoint is that the sorting mechanism is godawful anyway because school quality varies so much. But one can still argue that private education makes it even worse.
I think private education makes sense if you believe fundamentally that the state's attempt to provide a decent education to our children has failed. In my view it is that implicit belief buried within the individual parental choice that gets those on the left so riled up, because those on the left believe so deeply in the collective experience of state education.
The point is that private schools aren't making commercial profits to shareholders (so aren't businesses) and the education they do deliver is not only for the benefit of the children individually but for society as a whole.
A good, well-educated populace with diverse education provision in place is in all our interests.
I think it reflects the level of online abuse that politicians get, as well as the malign impact of social media on children. A disproportionate backlash against a real problem.
One to watch - Mumsnet. If that closes down (or threatens to do so) then things will really kick off.
Oh wait, he was one of the architects of this bill and voted for it.
I’d better say that now before it becomes illegal
be, once he gers into office.
He may regard him as a challenge that needs to he thrown off early, or simply too powerful to jettison. If the latter, we might actually have to genuinely prepare for issues like attempts to exercise greater day-to-day control of the U.K. Our nuclear deterrent and ultimate defence is already effectively in U.S. hands, thanks to incredible short-sightedness.
Surely for some providers, especially smaller ones, it will be far easier for them just to withdraw from the UK market.
These thinks always have lots of unintended consequences that performing politicians are remarkably ill-equipped to think through.
Britain is going to the dogs, and not for the alleged reasons Musk is wanking on about.