Reform's candidate in Runcorn and Helsby seems pretty good. A lady (in a very male party) and a local magistrate who is giving up to run. The one to beat I think. Reminds me of Suzanne Evans the former UKIP leader (hopefully not a portent of her future relationship with Nige).
That story is completely nuts. In a normal country mulitple heads would roll as a result.
Astonishing. It lays bare the transactional nature of this group.
A few minutes later, the “Michael Waltz” account posted a lengthy note about trade figures, and the limited capabilities of European navies. “Whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes. Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.”
The account identified as “JD Vance” addressed a message at 8:45 to @Pete Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” (The administration has argued that America’s European allies benefit economically from the U.S. Navy’s protection of international shipping lanes.)
The user identified as Hegseth responded three minutes later: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.”
At this point, the previously silent “S M” joined the conversation. “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”
Trouble is, they are right in the strict terms of American cost/benefit
Why should American taxpayers fork out for defence that benefits, say, Ireland, which is now a really rich country which refuses to spend more than three euro on a navy coz it is “neutral”
In this case America *does* benefit from clear shipping lanes, though (like practically everybody else on the planet). They're also correct that nobody else is close to being able to do the job. Given that, it seems a bit optimistic to expect Europe to pony up for the whole cost, especially if you haven't agreed it in advance and don't have any idea how you'd enforce payment...
You do what they’re doing, tell Europe to go fuck itself unless it coughs up, like Poland
The problem with this strategy is that once Europe has paid up for its own planes and ships it may not want to dance to America's tune any longer. MAGA is hugely underestimating the value America gets out of being the default Western leading nation. By pushing Europe into rearmament they are creating competitors where previously there was nothing.
It is American military leadership that forced Taiwan into investing in the US for advanced semiconductors but the company that makes the machines to make the chips is European. What if in the future an armed to the teeth Europe says "actually fuck that noise, we're going to sell our wares to whoever wants them" and ignores US sanctions on China and other hostile states? The only reason we give any fucks about what the US wants us to do is because we're so hugely dependent on their military so their foreign policy objectives become our foreign policy objectives, sometimes to the detriment of our domestic economy.
I see that logic; indeed. I kind of agree
But confronted by China and China’s incredible surge to near tech-supremacy, i don’t think America gives a fuck any more. The superpower of the future will be the nation that masters robotics, ML, all of it, and for that you need total focus on the job and defending Europe’s eastern border or “being global policeman” or whatever are utterly second or third tier issues
Also, the Yanks rightly reckon that in the end Europe will side with America, whatever
I don't think Europe will, in the end. The EU is a technocratic empire, I think it probably feels pretty comfortable with China as it is and will quite happily sing to China's tune if it suits them, especially in the face of the US which is no longer committed to freedom and security for Europe.
As I said, they're trading in reliable global allies for unreliable global competitors, Europe that spends €500bn on defence isn't going to be happy being supplicant to US interests.
I now know three people from completely different backgrounds who have moved to China and each of them love it and have no intention of coming back. New Zealand used to be a place where people visited and then decided to stay. Now it seems to be China. I should say that all three were successful here (two from England one from France) But China now seems to be the place to live
The Chinese equivalent of PoliticalBetting.com must be completely and utterly BORING!
"In this week's opinion poll, the Chinese Communist Party achieved 99.9% approval, unchanged from last week!"
The outcome for saying something inappropriate would also be a little worse than being banished to ConHome!
14 years and 22 billion black hole recited ad infinitum by Starmer, Reeves and others is beginning to make the nation groan, and the problems in the economy largely now come from Reeves choices and a lack of understanding of business
I do not expect Labour to recover anytime soon and 1st May could be very difficult for them
The problems of the country were built over the last three or four decades. Reeves might have exacerbated them slightly, in her brief time in office, but your characterisation is a bit silly.
Whatever economic policies are adopted, and even with a near perfect government in place (which I don't expect from any of our current parties) it's going to be a hard slog for the next decade.
The polling in the header - no tax increases; no more borrowing, etc - is indicative of the unreal expectations of the electorate.
Actually, I don't disagree with you but the problem is now labour's and as time passes they will have to have answers otherwise they will struggle for a second term
I did comment yesterday that I do not believe any political party has the courage or commitment to address the real probems of spending and borrowing far too much, as it involves reducing debt and debt interest payments, but also fundamental changes across all benefits including the absurd triple lock, extending retirement age to 70+, and a form of means testing on pensions and even the NHS for the wealthy
Yes, we all knew the party was over on July 5th 2024. Had Sunak or Kwarteng gone for a one off COVID tax to try to recover the billions spent on furlough and other measures needed (at the time) to prevent an economic collapse in 2022 we'd be in a better position now. Instead, everyone who had accumulated cash during the pandemic indulged in a spending splurge - great for the growth numbers and the imports but dreadful for inflation.
Once the splurge was over, all that was left was paying the bill and here we are.
You're right inasmuch as political parties, desperate not to offend the voters, backed off the truth but you can't tell people what they don't want to hear - actually you can if you have a position of strength and a thick skin.
Those aged 65+ are now as much voting Reform as Conservative - it's the LDs strongest group but Labour's weakest so they can take the unpopular measures on pensions without losing much political capital.
Unfortunately, Starmer and Reeves seem more interested in Local Government Reorganisation for example than adequately funsing social care, SEN provision and temporary accommodation costs all of which are crippling local councils of all political stripes and none.
Since the government is dictating/paying for SEN centrally anyway abolishing local councils and funding it directly from the centre could be a way to go. Cut out the middle man.
Abolish local elections, local councils and all that other layer of bureaucracy. Let people choose who empties their bins and pay privately for that without needing to pay Council Tax. Let SEN needs be paid directly to schools etc that need it.
"Let people choose who empties their bins" - well, I imagine the people of Birmingham would currently support someone and anyone but seriously I do know some councils are trialling options whereby people get their bins emptied as much as they want and a sensor on the bin tells the bin men whether it should be emptied this week or not.
Walking through your ideas a little, you'd end up with each household having a network of contracts covering all the council functions from education (vouchers presumably) to refuse collection to street maintenance to library provision to perhaps even fire services (if you don't have a contract with the local fire station and your house catches fire, good luck).
Fine, in theory, if you have an ordered and organised population but in the real world you and I both know that wouldn't happen. People, faced with having to pay to have their bin cleared, wouldn't bother and it would be Birmingham every week on some streets.
I know you're a centraliser and despise any kind of local accountability or even local democracy, but seriously? Would you be happy to hand it all to a Labour Government to manage? About as happy as I would handing it to a Conservative Government
I'm not a centraliser, I'm a decentraliser as much as possible.
Let the individual decide what they want to do.
If something is mandated on a national level, then it should be dealt with there in a framework that leaves the individual in as much control as possible.
The BS I object to is central government mandating policies (SEN, care etc) then insisting local government pays the tab and deals with it.
If SEN policies are national, so should be its funding etc.
@ChrisCoons · 1h Every single one of the government officials on this text chain have now committed a crime – even if accidentally – that would normally involve a jail sentence. We can’t trust anyone in this dangerous administration to keep Americans safe.
Ah it's just minor government officials like the Vice President, Defense Secretary, Director of National Intelligence, CIA Director, National Security Advisor, Secretary of State, Treasury Secretary, and the White House Chief of Staff, so does it really matter?
I suspect that Chinese and Russian intelligence officers are really wishing they'd burnt a few zero day vulnerabilities on taking over Goldberg's phone.
It looks to me that voters want to reduce taxes, reduce borrowing and increase spending.
Who can spot the tiny flaw in that combination.
All viable with growth.
In the long term yes, but it won't butter any parsnips this year.
This year, maybe not.
Next year, definitely plausible.
By the end of this Parliament? Absolutely possible.
The Government were elected for a five year term. They should have come in with serious, supply side reforms in year one.
There could be a whole array of buttered parsnips by the end.
I had a quick check today, and George Osborne's satisfaction ratings were almost as poor as Reeves, at a time when satisfaction ratings were generally a bit higher, and it was a lot nearer to the next election as well.
I've no idea if Labour have already messed things up, and frankly it may well rely on what happens elsewhere in the world, but the big ticket items (NHS waiting lists, new houses, infrastructure spending, net zero, reduced migration) are only going to really show up later in the parliament. Still a huge amount of time before deciding what will happen next. Certainly those looking at a Reform government or even Tory/Reform coalition as a done deal, should probably ask Ed Milliband where he keeps all the chickens he counted.
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
If you have a genuinely open mind on this issue you might be interested in this interview with Abigail Shrier on the therapisation of childhood: https://youtu.be/SVvkO8CsYPA?feature=shared
It looks to me that voters want to reduce taxes, reduce borrowing and increase spending.
Who can spot the tiny flaw in that combination.
All viable with growth.
In the long term yes, but it won't butter any parsnips this year.
This year, maybe not.
Next year, definitely plausible.
By the end of this Parliament? Absolutely possible.
The Government were elected for a five year term. They should have come in with serious, supply side reforms in year one.
There could be a whole array of buttered parsnips by the end.
I had a quick check today, and George Osborne's satisfaction ratings were almost as poor as Reeves, at a time when satisfaction ratings were generally a bit higher, and it was a lot nearer to the next election as well.
I've no idea if Labour have already messed things up, and frankly it may well rely on what happens elsewhere in the world, but the big ticket items (NHS waiting lists, new houses, infrastructure spending, net zero, reduced migration) are only going to really show up later in the parliament. Still a huge amount of time before deciding what will happen next. Certainly those looking at a Reform government or even Tory/Reform coalition as a done deal, should probably ask Ed Milliband where he keeps all the chickens he counted.
What policies have Labour implemented to deal with these big ticket problems that will show up later?
They have a mammoth majority and five years. They should be implementing credible supply side reform, even if it's unpopular.
Trump on his cabinet members using Signal to text war plans to a reporter: "I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic. To be it's a magazine that's going out of business. But I know nothing about it. You're saying that they had what?"
Trump on his cabinet members using Signal to text war plans to a reporter: "I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic. To be it's a magazine that's going out of business. But I know nothing about it. You're saying that they had what?"
This is someone much more demented than Biden ever was.
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
There's a definite issue though. At least some psychiatrists are saying that so many people are saying they have mental health issues that the real sick people are not being properly dealt with because of the wave of other cases. How many celebs these days are "opening up" about their mental issues etc etc.
An unintended consequence of the good thing that was mental health being something people could openly talk about is the case load is exploded.
The line between a genuine pathology and something that is within some kind of acceptable normal range of sadness or fear for the future or concentration or sleep issues will have to be firmed up imho.
A lot of it is driven by the American DSM. A document which will soon by longer than the tax code.
Much/some of mental health "diagnosis" is cultural in any society. For instance, in Germany it used to be the case that if you went to the GP with mildly depressive symptoms they would give herbal St John's Wort. They may still do that. Here and in the US we reach for the SSRIs almost as soon as the words 'I've been feeling a bit low recently, doc' are spoken.
Not blaming the docs by the way. Patients want this. An alternatives are more expensive (except Wort - which is just not used iirc by NHS).
There's at least a discussion to be had about whether an anti-depressant given for a couple of months made any real difference or whether the patient reacted to placebo or just got better by nature.
I could go on at length about this for various family reasons but I will leave it there.
That story is completely nuts. In a normal country mulitple heads would roll as a result.
Astonishing. It lays bare the transactional nature of this group.
A few minutes later, the “Michael Waltz” account posted a lengthy note about trade figures, and the limited capabilities of European navies. “Whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes. Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.”
The account identified as “JD Vance” addressed a message at 8:45 to @Pete Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” (The administration has argued that America’s European allies benefit economically from the U.S. Navy’s protection of international shipping lanes.)
The user identified as Hegseth responded three minutes later: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.”
At this point, the previously silent “S M” joined the conversation. “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”
Trouble is, they are right in the strict terms of American cost/benefit
Why should American taxpayers fork out for defence that benefits, say, Ireland, which is now a really rich country which refuses to spend more than three euro on a navy coz it is “neutral”
In this case America *does* benefit from clear shipping lanes, though (like practically everybody else on the planet). They're also correct that nobody else is close to being able to do the job. Given that, it seems a bit optimistic to expect Europe to pony up for the whole cost, especially if you haven't agreed it in advance and don't have any idea how you'd enforce payment...
You do what they’re doing, tell Europe to go fuck itself unless it coughs up, like Poland
The problem with this strategy is that once Europe has paid up for its own planes and ships it may not want to dance to America's tune any longer. MAGA is hugely underestimating the value America gets out of being the default Western leading nation. By pushing Europe into rearmament they are creating competitors where previously there was nothing.
It is American military leadership that forced Taiwan into investing in the US for advanced semiconductors but the company that makes the machines to make the chips is European. What if in the future an armed to the teeth Europe says "actually fuck that noise, we're going to sell our wares to whoever wants them" and ignores US sanctions on China and other hostile states? The only reason we give any fucks about what the US wants us to do is because we're so hugely dependent on their military so their foreign policy objectives become our foreign policy objectives, sometimes to the detriment of our domestic economy.
I see that logic; indeed. I kind of agree
But confronted by China and China’s incredible surge to near tech-supremacy, i don’t think America gives a fuck any more. The superpower of the future will be the nation that masters robotics, ML, all of it, and for that you need total focus on the job and defending Europe’s eastern border or “being global policeman” or whatever are utterly second or third tier issues
Also, the Yanks rightly reckon that in the end Europe will side with America, whatever
I don't think Europe will, in the end. The EU is a technocratic empire, I think it probably feels pretty comfortable with China as it is and will quite happily sing to China's tune if it suits them, especially in the face of the US which is no longer committed to freedom and security for Europe.
As I said, they're trading in reliable global allies for unreliable global competitors, Europe that spends €500bn on defence isn't going to be happy being supplicant to US interests.
I now know three people from completely different backgrounds who have moved to China and each of them love it and have no intention of coming back. New Zealand used to be a place where people visited and then decided to stay. Now it seems to be China. I should say that all three were successful here (two from England one from France) But China now seems to be the place to live
The Chinese equivalent of PoliticalBetting.com must be completely and utterly BORING!
"In this week's opinion poll, the Chinese Communist Party achieved 99.9% approval, unchanged from last week!"
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
I'm all in favour of bringing back the mental asylum/loony bin for tough cases instead of PIP. Maybe that's the solution, if you are mentally disabled you don't get free money, you get actual treatment by professionals in a residential setting where you can't leave until the psychiatrist says you can. I wonder how many of the current PIP claims relating to mental health would disappear in those circumstances? I'd be willing to say at least 90%.
14 years and 22 billion black hole recited ad infinitum by Starmer, Reeves and others is beginning to make the nation groan, and the problems in the economy largely now come from Reeves choices and a lack of understanding of business
I do not expect Labour to recover anytime soon and 1st May could be very difficult for them
The problems of the country were built over the last three or four decades. Reeves might have exacerbated them slightly, in her brief time in office, but your characterisation is a bit silly.
Whatever economic policies are adopted, and even with a near perfect government in place (which I don't expect from any of our current parties) it's going to be a hard slog for the next decade.
The polling in the header - no tax increases; no more borrowing, etc - is indicative of the unreal expectations of the electorate.
Actually, I don't disagree with you but the problem is now labour's and as time passes they will have to have answers otherwise they will struggle for a second term
I did comment yesterday that I do not believe any political party has the courage or commitment to address the real probems of spending and borrowing far too much, as it involves reducing debt and debt interest payments, but also fundamental changes across all benefits including the absurd triple lock, extending retirement age to 70+, and a form of means testing on pensions and even the NHS for the wealthy
Yes, we all knew the party was over on July 5th 2024. Had Sunak or Kwarteng gone for a one off COVID tax to try to recover the billions spent on furlough and other measures needed (at the time) to prevent an economic collapse in 2022 we'd be in a better position now. Instead, everyone who had accumulated cash during the pandemic indulged in a spending splurge - great for the growth numbers and the imports but dreadful for inflation.
Once the splurge was over, all that was left was paying the bill and here we are.
You're right inasmuch as political parties, desperate not to offend the voters, backed off the truth but you can't tell people what they don't want to hear - actually you can if you have a position of strength and a thick skin.
Those aged 65+ are now as much voting Reform as Conservative - it's the LDs strongest group but Labour's weakest so they can take the unpopular measures on pensions without losing much political capital.
Unfortunately, Starmer and Reeves seem more interested in Local Government Reorganisation for example than adequately funsing social care, SEN provision and temporary accommodation costs all of which are crippling local councils of all political stripes and none.
Since the government is dictating/paying for SEN centrally anyway abolishing local councils and funding it directly from the centre could be a way to go. Cut out the middle man.
Abolish local elections, local councils and all that other layer of bureaucracy. Let people choose who empties their bins and pay privately for that without needing to pay Council Tax. Let SEN needs be paid directly to schools etc that need it.
"Let people choose who empties their bins" - well, I imagine the people of Birmingham would currently support someone and anyone but seriously I do know some councils are trialling options whereby people get their bins emptied as much as they want and a sensor on the bin tells the bin men whether it should be emptied this week or not.
Walking through your ideas a little, you'd end up with each household having a network of contracts covering all the council functions from education (vouchers presumably) to refuse collection to street maintenance to library provision to perhaps even fire services (if you don't have a contract with the local fire station and your house catches fire, good luck).
Fine, in theory, if you have an ordered and organised population but in the real world you and I both know that wouldn't happen. People, faced with having to pay to have their bin cleared, wouldn't bother and it would be Birmingham every week on some streets.
I know you're a centraliser and despise any kind of local accountability or even local democracy, but seriously? Would you be happy to hand it all to a Labour Government to manage? About as happy as I would handing it to a Conservative Government
I'm not a centraliser, I'm a decentraliser as much as possible.
Let the individual decide what they want to do.
If something is mandated on a national level, then it should be dealt with there in a framework that leaves the individual in as much control as possible.
The BS I object to is central government mandating policies (SEN, care etc) then insisting local government pays the tab and deals with it.
If SEN policies are national, so should be its funding etc.
Well, yes, but as far as collecting the rubbish is concerned, the only absolute rule seems to be around public health.
I don't object to the idea of people being allowed to decide for themselves how often their bins are emptied but I don't know how, on that basis, a service could or would be provided nor how it would deal with those who can't or won't engage with the process.
Currently in Newham we get our bins emptied every week - they tried fortnightly collection but that caused an epidemic of fly tipping as households with a lot of people generated a lot more rubbish (surprisingly). In the end, the local council for an area mandates how often the service is to be provides and contracts out the provision on that basis in the tender document.
I also agree there's an argument for national provision of nationally regulated services and the idea of a National Care Agency to cover domiciliary and residential (including dementia) care has been floated and a National Special Educational Needs Service could well be a starter but that would mean moving part of Council Tax funding to general taxation (which could be done).
There are nationally mandated standards for food in schools - should we then have a National School Meals Service which delivers meals every day to all schools from huge central kitchens? They tried that in New Zealand - ended up a disaster. Sometimes doing it locally has its advantages.
Reform's candidate in Runcorn and Helsby seems pretty good. A lady (in a very male party) and a local magistrate who is giving up to run. The one to beat I think. Reminds me of Suzanne Evans the former UKIP leader (hopefully not a portent of her future relationship with Nige).
I suspect Wikipedia has had a naughty edit, as none of this sounds much like a Reform candidate and the Daily Express reference makes no mention:
On 24 March 2025, Reform UK announced Sarah Pochin, a former Conservative turned Labour-backed independent councillor, and pro-LGBTQ activist and campaigner for Afghan and Syrian refugees, as their candidate.
Trouble is, they are right in the strict terms of American cost/benefit
Why should American taxpayers fork out for defence that benefits, say, Ireland, which is now a really rich country which refuses to spend more than three euro on a navy coz it is “neutral”
Well, the US does gain commercial benefit from safe ocean transport just like everyone else. They're quite right to criticise Europe for not pulling its weight in terms of defence, but bizarrely seem to expect this remedied instantly.
Increases in defence spending take time to result in extra capabilities, particularly in cases like this where we're taking naval power. The UK could double spending on the Royal Navy right now and it would be at least a decade before that resulted in a single new ship being commissioned. Even longer for some other countries as the UK is lucky enough to have existing decently capable shipbuilding facilities to build out, something quite rare in Europe now.
And, yes, Ireland are miserable parasites. Their population is similar to Norway, which manages to maintain a decent military (particularly their air force, which operates F-35s). For a wealthy EU nation to have essentially zero credible armed forces is not viable now and the Irish government needs to be told that in robust terms.
Oh, and also I think there is a difference between 1 "we aren't going to bail you out any more, so get your own defence capability" and 2 "if you can't help militarily with this action which benefits both of us then this is our proposal for how you should contribute economically or whatever" and 3 "we have unilaterally taken this action which benefits both of us and now we are going to somehow enforce that you pay for it". The US may or may not have the weight to make option 3 stick; either way it is definitely a further step beyond 1 and 2.
There are ships from multiple NATO countries committed to this, under NATO Operation Prosperity Guardian.
That's the type of attack that traditionally they would have asked allies to contribute to in some way to give them some cover - as the Royal Navy did multiple times in the last 2 years, and other NATO navies supported operationally.
As I understand it, this was USA only. I think the US doing the attacks on Yemen alone is indicative of the policy of isolationism, and a deliberate contrast with Mr Biden's administration, which is combined with "we are protecting you; give us some economic benefits". It's not exactly a protection racket, but that's the grain of it.
I don't think "no one else could do this" means very much - that's based on a possibly false assumption that Hegseth's belief that only hard power works, and they want to prove that.
I think most of their allies don't concur with that view, and would not have co-operated with major air strikes anyway - which is why we may not even have been informed. The US Govt want to put a clear gap between themselves and their allies.
IMO it may work this year or for a few years - which is all Mr Trump needs for some weasel-words on his tombstone, but it won't work in the long term.
It looks to me that voters want to reduce taxes, reduce borrowing and increase spending.
Who can spot the tiny flaw in that combination.
All viable with growth.
I guess that depends on what sort "growth" we're talking about. My utility bills are all substantially higher than they were last year so I'm not growing economically, even while the energy, water and telecoms companies that supply me are growing richer and paying their share holders millions. My grocery shop is more expensive, so Tesco and the gang are all growing, but I'm not. You'll say that making the transnational corporations richer trickles down the wealth to the lower orders, but I think that's not true anymore. The rich are always experiencing "growth", but mostly on the back of everyone else.
Trump on his cabinet members using Signal to text war plans to a reporter: "I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic. To be it's a magazine that's going out of business. But I know nothing about it. You're saying that they had what?"
This is someone much more demented than Biden ever was.
The end of the world is nigh, the Telegraph are singing the praises of the ECHR.
Also contains this shocking tautology.
Next week some of the finest lawyers in the land will appear before the High Court in a case which could shake the Government to its core. While the case focuses on whether it is wrong to put VAT on education, much bigger issues are also at stake: the sovereignty of Parliament, the place of education in society and the rights of children.
Speaking as somebody who thinks VAT on private school fees is addressing the wrong problem in the wrong way, this case is the stupidest idea in education since Morgan decided to appoint that total loser Spielman as HMCIS.
The ISA would have been much better off negotiating a continuing exemption from OFSTED and the National Curriculum, particularly since one is collapsing in an embarrassing heap and the second on the interim report appears to be a disaster looking for somewhere to happen.
As it is, they've pissed the government off so much they might lose both - and with it, the actual reason for having a private education.
Reform's candidate in Runcorn and Helsby seems pretty good. A lady (in a very male party) and a local magistrate who is giving up to run. The one to beat I think. Reminds me of Suzanne Evans the former UKIP leader (hopefully not a portent of her future relationship with Nige).
I think she's going to win. If they'd selected an Alf Garnett type it might have been closer.
Trump on his cabinet members using Signal to text war plans to a reporter: "I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic. To be it's a magazine that's going out of business. But I know nothing about it. You're saying that they had what?"
There's a lot he knows nothing about.
He has never heard of Project 2025 yet every other member of the administration is using it as the implementation handbook.
14 years and 22 billion black hole recited ad infinitum by Starmer, Reeves and others is beginning to make the nation groan, and the problems in the economy largely now come from Reeves choices and a lack of understanding of business
I do not expect Labour to recover anytime soon and 1st May could be very difficult for them
The problems of the country were built over the last three or four decades. Reeves might have exacerbated them slightly, in her brief time in office, but your characterisation is a bit silly.
Whatever economic policies are adopted, and even with a near perfect government in place (which I don't expect from any of our current parties) it's going to be a hard slog for the next decade.
The polling in the header - no tax increases; no more borrowing, etc - is indicative of the unreal expectations of the electorate.
Actually, I don't disagree with you but the problem is now labour's and as time passes they will have to have answers otherwise they will struggle for a second term
I did comment yesterday that I do not believe any political party has the courage or commitment to address the real probems of spending and borrowing far too much, as it involves reducing debt and debt interest payments, but also fundamental changes across all benefits including the absurd triple lock, extending retirement age to 70+, and a form of means testing on pensions and even the NHS for the wealthy
Yes, we all knew the party was over on July 5th 2024. Had Sunak or Kwarteng gone for a one off COVID tax to try to recover the billions spent on furlough and other measures needed (at the time) to prevent an economic collapse in 2022 we'd be in a better position now. Instead, everyone who had accumulated cash during the pandemic indulged in a spending splurge - great for the growth numbers and the imports but dreadful for inflation.
Once the splurge was over, all that was left was paying the bill and here we are.
You're right inasmuch as political parties, desperate not to offend the voters, backed off the truth but you can't tell people what they don't want to hear - actually you can if you have a position of strength and a thick skin.
Those aged 65+ are now as much voting Reform as Conservative - it's the LDs strongest group but Labour's weakest so they can take the unpopular measures on pensions without losing much political capital.
Unfortunately, Starmer and Reeves seem more interested in Local Government Reorganisation for example than adequately funsing social care, SEN provision and temporary accommodation costs all of which are crippling local councils of all political stripes and none.
Since the government is dictating/paying for SEN centrally anyway abolishing local councils and funding it directly from the centre could be a way to go. Cut out the middle man.
Abolish local elections, local councils and all that other layer of bureaucracy. Let people choose who empties their bins and pay privately for that without needing to pay Council Tax. Let SEN needs be paid directly to schools etc that need it.
"Let people choose who empties their bins" - well, I imagine the people of Birmingham would currently support someone and anyone but seriously I do know some councils are trialling options whereby people get their bins emptied as much as they want and a sensor on the bin tells the bin men whether it should be emptied this week or not.
Walking through your ideas a little, you'd end up with each household having a network of contracts covering all the council functions from education (vouchers presumably) to refuse collection to street maintenance to library provision to perhaps even fire services (if you don't have a contract with the local fire station and your house catches fire, good luck).
Fine, in theory, if you have an ordered and organised population but in the real world you and I both know that wouldn't happen. People, faced with having to pay to have their bin cleared, wouldn't bother and it would be Birmingham every week on some streets.
I know you're a centraliser and despise any kind of local accountability or even local democracy, but seriously? Would you be happy to hand it all to a Labour Government to manage? About as happy as I would handing it to a Conservative Government
I'm not a centraliser, I'm a decentraliser as much as possible.
Let the individual decide what they want to do.
If something is mandated on a national level, then it should be dealt with there in a framework that leaves the individual in as much control as possible.
The BS I object to is central government mandating policies (SEN, care etc) then insisting local government pays the tab and deals with it.
If SEN policies are national, so should be its funding etc.
Well, yes, but as far as collecting the rubbish is concerned, the only absolute rule seems to be around public health.
I don't object to the idea of people being allowed to decide for themselves how often their bins are emptied but I don't know how, on that basis, a service could or would be provided nor how it would deal with those who can't or won't engage with the process.
Currently in Newham we get our bins emptied every week - they tried fortnightly collection but that caused an epidemic of fly tipping as households with a lot of people generated a lot more rubbish (surprisingly). In the end, the local council for an area mandates how often the service is to be provides and contracts out the provision on that basis in the tender document.
I also agree there's an argument for national provision of nationally regulated services and the idea of a National Care Agency to cover domiciliary and residential (including dementia) care has been floated and a National Special Educational Needs Service could well be a starter but that would mean moving part of Council Tax funding to general taxation (which could be done).
There are nationally mandated standards for food in schools - should we then have a National School Meals Service which delivers meals every day to all schools from huge central kitchens? They tried that in New Zealand - ended up a disaster. Sometimes doing it locally has its advantages.
Why would either a national or local school meals service be necessary?
Just set the standards then let schools decide how they want to meet those standards. Whether it be by making the meals in house, or commissioning.
Reform's candidate in Runcorn and Helsby seems pretty good. A lady (in a very male party) and a local magistrate who is giving up to run. The one to beat I think. Reminds me of Suzanne Evans the former UKIP leader (hopefully not a portent of her future relationship with Nige).
I suspect Wikipedia has had a naughty edit, as none of this sounds much like a Reform candidate and the Daily Express reference makes no mention:
On 24 March 2025, Reform UK announced Sarah Pochin, a former Conservative turned Labour-backed independent councillor, and pro-LGBTQ activist and campaigner for Afghan and Syrian refugees, as their candidate.
Spotted the GB News headline that she "fully supports net zero", but it turned out to be immigration .
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
I'm all in favour of bringing back the mental asylum/loony bin for tough cases instead of PIP. Maybe that's the solution, if you are mentally disabled you don't get free money, you get actual treatment by professionals in a residential setting where you can't leave until the psychiatrist says you can. I wonder how many of the current PIP claims relating to mental health would disappear in those circumstances? I'd be willing to say at least 90%.
That's what you'll get, and the financial cost will be much, much higher. And you wouldn't have support of psychiatrists, who broadly agree that hospital outcomes are worse than non-hospital outcomes.
Reform's candidate in Runcorn and Helsby seems pretty good. A lady (in a very male party) and a local magistrate who is giving up to run. The one to beat I think. Reminds me of Suzanne Evans the former UKIP leader (hopefully not a portent of her future relationship with Nige).
I suspect Wikipedia has had a naughty edit, as none of this sounds much like a Reform candidate and the Daily Express reference makes no mention:
On 24 March 2025, Reform UK announced Sarah Pochin, a former Conservative turned Labour-backed independent councillor, and pro-LGBTQ activist and campaigner for Afghan and Syrian refugees, as their candidate.
Spotted the GB News headline that she "fully supports net zero", but it turned out to be immigration .
Hmm. Wheels within wheels on the Tory side. TBF this is not of Leeanderthal Man complexity. She is Tory -> Labour supported Tory for Mayor -> Independent -> Reform.
That story is completely nuts. In a normal country mulitple heads would roll as a result.
Astonishing. It lays bare the transactional nature of this group.
A few minutes later, the “Michael Waltz” account posted a lengthy note about trade figures, and the limited capabilities of European navies. “Whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes. Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.”
The account identified as “JD Vance” addressed a message at 8:45 to @Pete Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” (The administration has argued that America’s European allies benefit economically from the U.S. Navy’s protection of international shipping lanes.)
The user identified as Hegseth responded three minutes later: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.”
At this point, the previously silent “S M” joined the conversation. “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”
Trouble is, they are right in the strict terms of American cost/benefit
Why should American taxpayers fork out for defence that benefits, say, Ireland, which is now a really rich country which refuses to spend more than three euro on a navy coz it is “neutral”
In this case America *does* benefit from clear shipping lanes, though (like practically everybody else on the planet). They're also correct that nobody else is close to being able to do the job. Given that, it seems a bit optimistic to expect Europe to pony up for the whole cost, especially if you haven't agreed it in advance and don't have any idea how you'd enforce payment...
You do what they’re doing, tell Europe to go fuck itself unless it coughs up, like Poland
The problem with this strategy is that once Europe has paid up for its own planes and ships it may not want to dance to America's tune any longer. MAGA is hugely underestimating the value America gets out of being the default Western leading nation. By pushing Europe into rearmament they are creating competitors where previously there was nothing.
It is American military leadership that forced Taiwan into investing in the US for advanced semiconductors but the company that makes the machines to make the chips is European. What if in the future an armed to the teeth Europe says "actually fuck that noise, we're going to sell our wares to whoever wants them" and ignores US sanctions on China and other hostile states? The only reason we give any fucks about what the US wants us to do is because we're so hugely dependent on their military so their foreign policy objectives become our foreign policy objectives, sometimes to the detriment of our domestic economy.
I see that logic; indeed. I kind of agree
But confronted by China and China’s incredible surge to near tech-supremacy, i don’t think America gives a fuck any more. The superpower of the future will be the nation that masters robotics, ML, all of it, and for that you need total focus on the job and defending Europe’s eastern border or “being global policeman” or whatever are utterly second or third tier issues
Also, the Yanks rightly reckon that in the end Europe will side with America, whatever
I don't think Europe will, in the end. The EU is a technocratic empire, I think it probably feels pretty comfortable with China as it is and will quite happily sing to China's tune if it suits them, especially in the face of the US which is no longer committed to freedom and security for Europe.
As I said, they're trading in reliable global allies for unreliable global competitors, Europe that spends €500bn on defence isn't going to be happy being supplicant to US interests.
I now know three people from completely different backgrounds who have moved to China and each of them love it and have no intention of coming back. New Zealand used to be a place where people visited and then decided to stay. Now it seems to be China. I should say that all three were successful here (two from England one from France) But China now seems to be the place to live
The Chinese equivalent of PoliticalBetting.com must be completely and utterly BORING!
"In this week's opinion poll, the Chinese Communist Party achieved 99.9% approval, unchanged from last week!"
Does anyone have any idea of how fundamental the Uighur issue is to China? It seems to be the one thing that really puts them outside the pale. If they were to defuse that and talk nicely about Hong Kong, they could ease their path to being the replacement of the USA to the liberal West considerably.
14 years and 22 billion black hole recited ad infinitum by Starmer, Reeves and others is beginning to make the nation groan, and the problems in the economy largely now come from Reeves choices and a lack of understanding of business
I do not expect Labour to recover anytime soon and 1st May could be very difficult for them
The problems of the country were built over the last three or four decades. Reeves might have exacerbated them slightly, in her brief time in office, but your characterisation is a bit silly.
Whatever economic policies are adopted, and even with a near perfect government in place (which I don't expect from any of our current parties) it's going to be a hard slog for the next decade.
The polling in the header - no tax increases; no more borrowing, etc - is indicative of the unreal expectations of the electorate.
Actually, I don't disagree with you but the problem is now labour's and as time passes they will have to have answers otherwise they will struggle for a second term
I did comment yesterday that I do not believe any political party has the courage or commitment to address the real probems of spending and borrowing far too much, as it involves reducing debt and debt interest payments, but also fundamental changes across all benefits including the absurd triple lock, extending retirement age to 70+, and a form of means testing on pensions and even the NHS for the wealthy
Yes, we all knew the party was over on July 5th 2024. Had Sunak or Kwarteng gone for a one off COVID tax to try to recover the billions spent on furlough and other measures needed (at the time) to prevent an economic collapse in 2022 we'd be in a better position now. Instead, everyone who had accumulated cash during the pandemic indulged in a spending splurge - great for the growth numbers and the imports but dreadful for inflation.
Once the splurge was over, all that was left was paying the bill and here we are.
You're right inasmuch as political parties, desperate not to offend the voters, backed off the truth but you can't tell people what they don't want to hear - actually you can if you have a position of strength and a thick skin.
Those aged 65+ are now as much voting Reform as Conservative - it's the LDs strongest group but Labour's weakest so they can take the unpopular measures on pensions without losing much political capital.
Unfortunately, Starmer and Reeves seem more interested in Local Government Reorganisation for example than adequately funsing social care, SEN provision and temporary accommodation costs all of which are crippling local councils of all political stripes and none.
Since the government is dictating/paying for SEN centrally anyway abolishing local councils and funding it directly from the centre could be a way to go. Cut out the middle man.
Abolish local elections, local councils and all that other layer of bureaucracy. Let people choose who empties their bins and pay privately for that without needing to pay Council Tax. Let SEN needs be paid directly to schools etc that need it.
"Let people choose who empties their bins" - well, I imagine the people of Birmingham would currently support someone and anyone but seriously I do know some councils are trialling options whereby people get their bins emptied as much as they want and a sensor on the bin tells the bin men whether it should be emptied this week or not.
Walking through your ideas a little, you'd end up with each household having a network of contracts covering all the council functions from education (vouchers presumably) to refuse collection to street maintenance to library provision to perhaps even fire services (if you don't have a contract with the local fire station and your house catches fire, good luck).
Fine, in theory, if you have an ordered and organised population but in the real world you and I both know that wouldn't happen. People, faced with having to pay to have their bin cleared, wouldn't bother and it would be Birmingham every week on some streets.
I know you're a centraliser and despise any kind of local accountability or even local democracy, but seriously? Would you be happy to hand it all to a Labour Government to manage? About as happy as I would handing it to a Conservative Government
I'm not a centraliser, I'm a decentraliser as much as possible.
Let the individual decide what they want to do.
If something is mandated on a national level, then it should be dealt with there in a framework that leaves the individual in as much control as possible.
The BS I object to is central government mandating policies (SEN, care etc) then insisting local government pays the tab and deals with it.
If SEN policies are national, so should be its funding etc.
Well, yes, but as far as collecting the rubbish is concerned, the only absolute rule seems to be around public health.
I don't object to the idea of people being allowed to decide for themselves how often their bins are emptied but I don't know how, on that basis, a service could or would be provided nor how it would deal with those who can't or won't engage with the process.
Currently in Newham we get our bins emptied every week - they tried fortnightly collection but that caused an epidemic of fly tipping as households with a lot of people generated a lot more rubbish (surprisingly). In the end, the local council for an area mandates how often the service is to be provides and contracts out the provision on that basis in the tender document.
I also agree there's an argument for national provision of nationally regulated services and the idea of a National Care Agency to cover domiciliary and residential (including dementia) care has been floated and a National Special Educational Needs Service could well be a starter but that would mean moving part of Council Tax funding to general taxation (which could be done).
There are nationally mandated standards for food in schools - should we then have a National School Meals Service which delivers meals every day to all schools from huge central kitchens? They tried that in New Zealand - ended up a disaster. Sometimes doing it locally has its advantages.
Why would either a national or local school meals service be necessary?
Just set the standards then let schools decide how they want to meet those standards. Whether it be by making the meals in house, or commissioning.
That's not far off how it actually works - larger schools, especially secondaries, usually do their own thing but it's not viable for small primary schools to have their own kitchen, nor are they necessarily able to commission or run a contract.
There are two approaches - one is to have a cluster of primaries work with their secondary school and the latter provides a meals service for the former while the other is for all the primaries to go through the local council who then tenders for school meals provision on their behalf.
The schools provide information to the council on, for example how many meals need to be halal or kosher and the local authority manages the contract to ensure the provider is meeting those dietary standards as well as delivering on time to schools as well as monitoring the menus offered by the supplier.
Even for those schools not directly signed up to a council-run contract, the council maintains an overarching quality control function to ensure the schools are meeting dietary standards however their food is sourced.
Trump on his cabinet members using Signal to text war plans to a reporter: "I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic. To be it's a magazine that's going out of business. But I know nothing about it. You're saying that they had what?"
Of course he doesn’t - The Atlantic uses big words.
Trump on his cabinet members using Signal to text war plans to a reporter: "I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic. To be it's a magazine that's going out of business. But I know nothing about it. You're saying that they had what?"
Of course he doesn’t - The Atlantic uses big words.
Their title is a problem as well.
The American Bigly Sea is the correct term for the Atlantic.
Trump on his cabinet members using Signal to text war plans to a reporter: "I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic. To be it's a magazine that's going out of business. But I know nothing about it. You're saying that they had what?"
Of course he doesn’t - The Atlantic uses big words.
Their title is a problem as well.
The American Bigly Sea is the correct term for the Atlantic.
That story is completely nuts. In a normal country mulitple heads would roll as a result.
Astonishing. It lays bare the transactional nature of this group.
A few minutes later, the “Michael Waltz” account posted a lengthy note about trade figures, and the limited capabilities of European navies. “Whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes. Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.”
The account identified as “JD Vance” addressed a message at 8:45 to @Pete Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” (The administration has argued that America’s European allies benefit economically from the U.S. Navy’s protection of international shipping lanes.)
The user identified as Hegseth responded three minutes later: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.”
At this point, the previously silent “S M” joined the conversation. “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”
Trouble is, they are right in the strict terms of American cost/benefit
Why should American taxpayers fork out for defence that benefits, say, Ireland, which is now a really rich country which refuses to spend more than three euro on a navy coz it is “neutral”
In this case America *does* benefit from clear shipping lanes, though (like practically everybody else on the planet). They're also correct that nobody else is close to being able to do the job. Given that, it seems a bit optimistic to expect Europe to pony up for the whole cost, especially if you haven't agreed it in advance and don't have any idea how you'd enforce payment...
You do what they’re doing, tell Europe to go fuck itself unless it coughs up, like Poland
The problem with this strategy is that once Europe has paid up for its own planes and ships it may not want to dance to America's tune any longer. MAGA is hugely underestimating the value America gets out of being the default Western leading nation. By pushing Europe into rearmament they are creating competitors where previously there was nothing.
It is American military leadership that forced Taiwan into investing in the US for advanced semiconductors but the company that makes the machines to make the chips is European. What if in the future an armed to the teeth Europe says "actually fuck that noise, we're going to sell our wares to whoever wants them" and ignores US sanctions on China and other hostile states? The only reason we give any fucks about what the US wants us to do is because we're so hugely dependent on their military so their foreign policy objectives become our foreign policy objectives, sometimes to the detriment of our domestic economy.
I see that logic; indeed. I kind of agree
But confronted by China and China’s incredible surge to near tech-supremacy, i don’t think America gives a fuck any more. The superpower of the future will be the nation that masters robotics, ML, all of it, and for that you need total focus on the job and defending Europe’s eastern border or “being global policeman” or whatever are utterly second or third tier issues
Also, the Yanks rightly reckon that in the end Europe will side with America, whatever
I don't think Europe will, in the end. The EU is a technocratic empire, I think it probably feels pretty comfortable with China as it is and will quite happily sing to China's tune if it suits them, especially in the face of the US which is no longer committed to freedom and security for Europe.
As I said, they're trading in reliable global allies for unreliable global competitors, Europe that spends €500bn on defence isn't going to be happy being supplicant to US interests.
I now know three people from completely different backgrounds who have moved to China and each of them love it and have no intention of coming back. New Zealand used to be a place where people visited and then decided to stay. Now it seems to be China. I should say that all three were successful here (two from England one from France) But China now seems to be the place to live
The Chinese equivalent of PoliticalBetting.com must be completely and utterly BORING!
"In this week's opinion poll, the Chinese Communist Party achieved 99.9% approval, unchanged from last week!"
Does anyone have any idea of how fundamental the Uighur issue is to China? It seems to be the one thing that really puts them outside the pale. If they were to defuse that and talk nicely about Hong Kong, they could ease their path to being the replacement of the USA to the liberal West considerably.
Hardly, even Trump's US isn't a one party state and has less pre determined criminal trials and Chinese goods are hitting western industries everywhere not just the US.
The end of the world is nigh, the Telegraph are singing the praises of the ECHR.
Also contains this shocking tautology.
Next week some of the finest lawyers in the land will appear before the High Court in a case which could shake the Government to its core. While the case focuses on whether it is wrong to put VAT on education, much bigger issues are also at stake: the sovereignty of Parliament, the place of education in society and the rights of children.
Speaking as somebody who thinks VAT on private school fees is addressing the wrong problem in the wrong way, this case is the stupidest idea in education since Morgan decided to appoint that total loser Spielman as HMCIS.
The ISA would have been much better off negotiating a continuing exemption from OFSTED and the National Curriculum, particularly since one is collapsing in an embarrassing heap and the second on the interim report appears to be a disaster looking for somewhere to happen.
As it is, they've pissed the government off so much they might lose both - and with it, the actual reason for having a private education.
Above average school results and outstanding sport and extra curricular activities will stay regardless
Trump on his cabinet members using Signal to text war plans to a reporter: "I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic. To be it's a magazine that's going out of business. But I know nothing about it. You're saying that they had what?"
Of course he doesn’t - The Atlantic uses big words.
Their title is a problem as well.
The American Bigly Sea is the correct term for the Atlantic.
“But Hillary’s emails !”
Lock her up. Her and John Bolton can share a cell and swap memories of when America was the leader of the free world and not a fast food eating and shite version of Hungary.
Trump on his cabinet members using Signal to text war plans to a reporter: "I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic. To be it's a magazine that's going out of business. But I know nothing about it. You're saying that they had what?"
He's lying ie it's a day with D in it. The Chief Editor of the Atlantic put it to about 5 Cabinet Members, and JD Vance's spokesman confirmed that JD Vance has discussed it with President Trump.
It's literally explained in the article. It will be interesting to see what his Press Sec says - I predict she will obfuscate and slope her soldiers, and attack The Atlantic.
Earlier today, I emailed Waltz and sent him a message on his Signal account. I also wrote to Pete Hegseth, John Ratcliffe, Tulsi Gabbard, and other officials. In an email, I outlined some of my questions: Is the “Houthi PC small group” a genuine Signal thread? Did they know that I was included in this group? Was I (on the off chance) included on purpose? If not, who did they think I was? Did anyone realize who I was when I was added, or when I removed myself from the group? Do senior Trump-administration officials use Signal regularly for sensitive discussions? Do the officials believe that the use of such a channel could endanger American personnel?
Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security Council, responded two hours later, confirming the veracity of the Signal group. “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” Hughes wrote. “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security.”
William Martin, a spokesperson for Vance, said that despite the impression created by the texts, the vice president is fully aligned with the president. “The Vice President’s first priority is always making sure that the President’s advisers are adequately briefing him on the substance of their internal deliberations,” he said. “Vice President Vance unequivocally supports this administration’s foreign policy. The President and the Vice President have had subsequent conversations about this matter and are in complete agreement.”
That story is completely nuts. In a normal country mulitple heads would roll as a result.
Astonishing. It lays bare the transactional nature of this group.
A few minutes later, the “Michael Waltz” account posted a lengthy note about trade figures, and the limited capabilities of European navies. “Whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes. Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.”
The account identified as “JD Vance” addressed a message at 8:45 to @Pete Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” (The administration has argued that America’s European allies benefit economically from the U.S. Navy’s protection of international shipping lanes.)
The user identified as Hegseth responded three minutes later: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.”
At this point, the previously silent “S M” joined the conversation. “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”
Trouble is, they are right in the strict terms of American cost/benefit
Why should American taxpayers fork out for defence that benefits, say, Ireland, which is now a really rich country which refuses to spend more than three euro on a navy coz it is “neutral”
In this case America *does* benefit from clear shipping lanes, though (like practically everybody else on the planet). They're also correct that nobody else is close to being able to do the job. Given that, it seems a bit optimistic to expect Europe to pony up for the whole cost, especially if you haven't agreed it in advance and don't have any idea how you'd enforce payment...
You do what they’re doing, tell Europe to go fuck itself unless it coughs up, like Poland
The problem with this strategy is that once Europe has paid up for its own planes and ships it may not want to dance to America's tune any longer. MAGA is hugely underestimating the value America gets out of being the default Western leading nation. By pushing Europe into rearmament they are creating competitors where previously there was nothing.
It is American military leadership that forced Taiwan into investing in the US for advanced semiconductors but the company that makes the machines to make the chips is European. What if in the future an armed to the teeth Europe says "actually fuck that noise, we're going to sell our wares to whoever wants them" and ignores US sanctions on China and other hostile states? The only reason we give any fucks about what the US wants us to do is because we're so hugely dependent on their military so their foreign policy objectives become our foreign policy objectives, sometimes to the detriment of our domestic economy.
I see that logic; indeed. I kind of agree
But confronted by China and China’s incredible surge to near tech-supremacy, i don’t think America gives a fuck any more. The superpower of the future will be the nation that masters robotics, ML, all of it, and for that you need total focus on the job and defending Europe’s eastern border or “being global policeman” or whatever are utterly second or third tier issues
Also, the Yanks rightly reckon that in the end Europe will side with America, whatever
I don't think Europe will, in the end. The EU is a technocratic empire, I think it probably feels pretty comfortable with China as it is and will quite happily sing to China's tune if it suits them, especially in the face of the US which is no longer committed to freedom and security for Europe.
As I said, they're trading in reliable global allies for unreliable global competitors, Europe that spends €500bn on defence isn't going to be happy being supplicant to US interests.
I now know three people from completely different backgrounds who have moved to China and each of them love it and have no intention of coming back. New Zealand used to be a place where people visited and then decided to stay. Now it seems to be China. I should say that all three were successful here (two from England one from France) But China now seems to be the place to live
The Chinese equivalent of PoliticalBetting.com must be completely and utterly BORING!
"In this week's opinion poll, the Chinese Communist Party achieved 99.9% approval, unchanged from last week!"
Does anyone have any idea of how fundamental the Uighur issue is to China? It seems to be the one thing that really puts them outside the pale. If they were to defuse that and talk nicely about Hong Kong, they could ease their path to being the replacement of the USA to the liberal West considerably.
It’s fundamental to the system. Which is One People, One Culture, One Party, One Leader.
So all Chinese are part of Han culture - well, a plastic version of this that resembles GA Henry on the British Empire.
Multiculturalism is explicitly bad, in the Chinese leaderships view.
If you are politically amoral and like the money - it’s like living in the Arab Gulf States. Awesome until you upset a local princeling and discover that the law is there to defend him in all circumstances.
The end of the world is nigh, the Telegraph are singing the praises of the ECHR.
Also contains this shocking tautology.
Next week some of the finest lawyers in the land will appear before the High Court in a case which could shake the Government to its core. While the case focuses on whether it is wrong to put VAT on education, much bigger issues are also at stake: the sovereignty of Parliament, the place of education in society and the rights of children.
Speaking as somebody who thinks VAT on private school fees is addressing the wrong problem in the wrong way, this case is the stupidest idea in education since Morgan decided to appoint that total loser Spielman as HMCIS.
The ISA would have been much better off negotiating a continuing exemption from OFSTED and the National Curriculum, particularly since one is collapsing in an embarrassing heap and the second on the interim report appears to be a disaster looking for somewhere to happen.
As it is, they've pissed the government off so much they might lose both - and with it, the actual reason for having a private education.
Above average school results and outstanding sport and extra curricular activities will stay regardless
The whole reason anyone can get 'above average results' (insofar as they mean anything due to the quality of our exams) is twofold:
1) Smaller class sizes. They may stay, although cost pressures may play a part here;
2) Not needing to follow the national curriculum so you can build up a much more carefully tailored programme.
As for 'outstanding sport and extracurricular programmes' a great many state schools offer those too. Private schools won't survive just on that.
The end of the world is nigh, the Telegraph are singing the praises of the ECHR.
Also contains this shocking tautology.
Next week some of the finest lawyers in the land will appear before the High Court in a case which could shake the Government to its core. While the case focuses on whether it is wrong to put VAT on education, much bigger issues are also at stake: the sovereignty of Parliament, the place of education in society and the rights of children.
Speaking as somebody who thinks VAT on private school fees is addressing the wrong problem in the wrong way, this case is the stupidest idea in education since Morgan decided to appoint that total loser Spielman as HMCIS.
The ISA would have been much better off negotiating a continuing exemption from OFSTED and the National Curriculum, particularly since one is collapsing in an embarrassing heap and the second on the interim report appears to be a disaster looking for somewhere to happen.
As it is, they've pissed the government off so much they might lose both - and with it, the actual reason for having a private education.
Above average school results and outstanding sport and extra curricular activities will stay regardless
The whole reason anyone can get 'above average results' (insofar as they mean anything due to the quality of our exams) is twofold:
1) Smaller class sizes. They may stay, although cost pressures may play a part here;
2) Not needing to follow the national curriculum so you can build up a much more carefully tailored programme.
As for 'outstanding sport and extracurricular programmes' a great many state schools offer those too. Private schools won't survive just on that.
The intake is even more key, especially for the most academically selective private schools which filter by parental wealth and passing entrance exams and feed into Oxbridge and the professions, fewer scholarships though with VAT on fees.
Barely any state schools offer the theatres, concert halls, chapels, cricket and rugby pitches and professional coaches top private schools offer either, hence so many rugby union and cricket professionals and Oscar winners were educated privately
The end of the world is nigh, the Telegraph are singing the praises of the ECHR.
Also contains this shocking tautology.
Next week some of the finest lawyers in the land will appear before the High Court in a case which could shake the Government to its core. While the case focuses on whether it is wrong to put VAT on education, much bigger issues are also at stake: the sovereignty of Parliament, the place of education in society and the rights of children.
Speaking as somebody who thinks VAT on private school fees is addressing the wrong problem in the wrong way, this case is the stupidest idea in education since Morgan decided to appoint that total loser Spielman as HMCIS.
The ISA would have been much better off negotiating a continuing exemption from OFSTED and the National Curriculum, particularly since one is collapsing in an embarrassing heap and the second on the interim report appears to be a disaster looking for somewhere to happen.
As it is, they've pissed the government off so much they might lose both - and with it, the actual reason for having a private education.
Above average school results and outstanding sport and extra curricular activities will stay regardless
The whole reason anyone can get 'above average results' (insofar as they mean anything due to the quality of our exams) is twofold:
1) Smaller class sizes. They may stay, although cost pressures may play a part here;
2) Not needing to follow the national curriculum so you can build up a much more carefully tailored programme.
As for 'outstanding sport and extracurricular programmes' a great many state schools offer those too. Private schools won't survive just on that.
The intake is even more key
No it isn't. There are plenty of utter thickos who attend private schools and do well there. Mogg, for example, or Johnson, or Cummings.
Barely any state schools offer the theatres, concert halls, chapels, cricket and rugby pitches and professional coaches top private schools offer either, hence so many rugby union and cricket professionals were educated privately
Leaving aside the fact I was talking about private schools in general, of which Eton, Harrow and Clifton are an unrepresentative example and not at all germane to my point, plenty of state schools do actually have facilities that can be used for those things. They sometimes don't have the money to use them properly, or advertise them well, but I assure you they are there. I even know of one state school with its own rifle range.
This is a red herring you seem determined to swallow.
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
That story is completely nuts. In a normal country mulitple heads would roll as a result.
Astonishing. It lays bare the transactional nature of this group.
A few minutes later, the “Michael Waltz” account posted a lengthy note about trade figures, and the limited capabilities of European navies. “Whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes. Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.”
The account identified as “JD Vance” addressed a message at 8:45 to @Pete Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” (The administration has argued that America’s European allies benefit economically from the U.S. Navy’s protection of international shipping lanes.)
The user identified as Hegseth responded three minutes later: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.”
At this point, the previously silent “S M” joined the conversation. “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”
Trouble is, they are right in the strict terms of American cost/benefit
Why should American taxpayers fork out for defence that benefits, say, Ireland, which is now a really rich country which refuses to spend more than three euro on a navy coz it is “neutral”
In this case America *does* benefit from clear shipping lanes, though (like practically everybody else on the planet). They're also correct that nobody else is close to being able to do the job. Given that, it seems a bit optimistic to expect Europe to pony up for the whole cost, especially if you haven't agreed it in advance and don't have any idea how you'd enforce payment...
You do what they’re doing, tell Europe to go fuck itself unless it coughs up, like Poland
The problem with this strategy is that once Europe has paid up for its own planes and ships it may not want to dance to America's tune any longer. MAGA is hugely underestimating the value America gets out of being the default Western leading nation. By pushing Europe into rearmament they are creating competitors where previously there was nothing.
It is American military leadership that forced Taiwan into investing in the US for advanced semiconductors but the company that makes the machines to make the chips is European. What if in the future an armed to the teeth Europe says "actually fuck that noise, we're going to sell our wares to whoever wants them" and ignores US sanctions on China and other hostile states? The only reason we give any fucks about what the US wants us to do is because we're so hugely dependent on their military so their foreign policy objectives become our foreign policy objectives, sometimes to the detriment of our domestic economy.
I see that logic; indeed. I kind of agree
But confronted by China and China’s incredible surge to near tech-supremacy, i don’t think America gives a fuck any more. The superpower of the future will be the nation that masters robotics, ML, all of it, and for that you need total focus on the job and defending Europe’s eastern border or “being global policeman” or whatever are utterly second or third tier issues
Also, the Yanks rightly reckon that in the end Europe will side with America, whatever
I don't think Europe will, in the end. The EU is a technocratic empire, I think it probably feels pretty comfortable with China as it is and will quite happily sing to China's tune if it suits them, especially in the face of the US which is no longer committed to freedom and security for Europe.
As I said, they're trading in reliable global allies for unreliable global competitors, Europe that spends €500bn on defence isn't going to be happy being supplicant to US interests.
I now know three people from completely different backgrounds who have moved to China and each of them love it and have no intention of coming back. New Zealand used to be a place where people visited and then decided to stay. Now it seems to be China. I should say that all three were successful here (two from England one from France) But China now seems to be the place to live
The Chinese equivalent of PoliticalBetting.com must be completely and utterly BORING!
"In this week's opinion poll, the Chinese Communist Party achieved 99.9% approval, unchanged from last week!"
Does anyone have any idea of how fundamental the Uighur issue is to China? It seems to be the one thing that really puts them outside the pale. If they were to defuse that and talk nicely about Hong Kong, they could ease their path to being the replacement of the USA to the liberal West considerably.
China has tried to pitch its Uigher issue as stamping down on dangerous Islamist extremism. There might even be a strand of truth in it, but even our most Islamophobic politicians don't seem to have taken the bait.
That story is completely nuts. In a normal country mulitple heads would roll as a result.
Astonishing. It lays bare the transactional nature of this group.
A few minutes later, the “Michael Waltz” account posted a lengthy note about trade figures, and the limited capabilities of European navies. “Whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes. Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.”
The account identified as “JD Vance” addressed a message at 8:45 to @Pete Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” (The administration has argued that America’s European allies benefit economically from the U.S. Navy’s protection of international shipping lanes.)
The user identified as Hegseth responded three minutes later: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.”
At this point, the previously silent “S M” joined the conversation. “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”
Trouble is, they are right in the strict terms of American cost/benefit
Why should American taxpayers fork out for defence that benefits, say, Ireland, which is now a really rich country which refuses to spend more than three euro on a navy coz it is “neutral”
In this case America *does* benefit from clear shipping lanes, though (like practically everybody else on the planet). They're also correct that nobody else is close to being able to do the job. Given that, it seems a bit optimistic to expect Europe to pony up for the whole cost, especially if you haven't agreed it in advance and don't have any idea how you'd enforce payment...
You do what they’re doing, tell Europe to go fuck itself unless it coughs up, like Poland
The problem with this strategy is that once Europe has paid up for its own planes and ships it may not want to dance to America's tune any longer. MAGA is hugely underestimating the value America gets out of being the default Western leading nation. By pushing Europe into rearmament they are creating competitors where previously there was nothing.
It is American military leadership that forced Taiwan into investing in the US for advanced semiconductors but the company that makes the machines to make the chips is European. What if in the future an armed to the teeth Europe says "actually fuck that noise, we're going to sell our wares to whoever wants them" and ignores US sanctions on China and other hostile states? The only reason we give any fucks about what the US wants us to do is because we're so hugely dependent on their military so their foreign policy objectives become our foreign policy objectives, sometimes to the detriment of our domestic economy.
I see that logic; indeed. I kind of agree
But confronted by China and China’s incredible surge to near tech-supremacy, i don’t think America gives a fuck any more. The superpower of the future will be the nation that masters robotics, ML, all of it, and for that you need total focus on the job and defending Europe’s eastern border or “being global policeman” or whatever are utterly second or third tier issues
Also, the Yanks rightly reckon that in the end Europe will side with America, whatever
I don't think Europe will, in the end. The EU is a technocratic empire, I think it probably feels pretty comfortable with China as it is and will quite happily sing to China's tune if it suits them, especially in the face of the US which is no longer committed to freedom and security for Europe.
As I said, they're trading in reliable global allies for unreliable global competitors, Europe that spends €500bn on defence isn't going to be happy being supplicant to US interests.
I now know three people from completely different backgrounds who have moved to China and each of them love it and have no intention of coming back. New Zealand used to be a place where people visited and then decided to stay. Now it seems to be China. I should say that all three were successful here (two from England one from France) But China now seems to be the place to live
The Chinese equivalent of PoliticalBetting.com must be completely and utterly BORING!
"In this week's opinion poll, the Chinese Communist Party achieved 99.9% approval, unchanged from last week!"
Does anyone have any idea of how fundamental the Uighur issue is to China? It seems to be the one thing that really puts them outside the pale. If they were to defuse that and talk nicely about Hong Kong, they could ease their path to being the replacement of the USA to the liberal West considerably.
We can all look forward to nipping down to the pub in downtown Jinchang and discussing Tiananmen, pre 1950 Tibet and the Dalai Lama over a pint of Uighur Old Peculiar.
The end of the world is nigh, the Telegraph are singing the praises of the ECHR.
Also contains this shocking tautology.
Next week some of the finest lawyers in the land will appear before the High Court in a case which could shake the Government to its core. While the case focuses on whether it is wrong to put VAT on education, much bigger issues are also at stake: the sovereignty of Parliament, the place of education in society and the rights of children.
Speaking as somebody who thinks VAT on private school fees is addressing the wrong problem in the wrong way, this case is the stupidest idea in education since Morgan decided to appoint that total loser Spielman as HMCIS.
The ISA would have been much better off negotiating a continuing exemption from OFSTED and the National Curriculum, particularly since one is collapsing in an embarrassing heap and the second on the interim report appears to be a disaster looking for somewhere to happen.
As it is, they've pissed the government off so much they might lose both - and with it, the actual reason for having a private education.
Above average school results and outstanding sport and extra curricular activities will stay regardless
The whole reason anyone can get 'above average results' (insofar as they mean anything due to the quality of our exams) is twofold:
1) Smaller class sizes. They may stay, although cost pressures may play a part here;
2) Not needing to follow the national curriculum so you can build up a much more carefully tailored programme.
As for 'outstanding sport and extracurricular programmes' a great many state schools offer those too. Private schools won't survive just on that.
The intake is even more key
No it isn't. There are plenty of utter thickos who attend private schools and do well there. Mogg, for example, or Johnson, or Cummings.
Barely any state schools offer the theatres, concert halls, chapels, cricket and rugby pitches and professional coaches top private schools offer either, hence so many rugby union and cricket professionals were educated privately
Leaving aside the fact I was talking about private schools in general, of which Eton, Harrow and Clifton are an unrepresentative example and not at all germane to my point, plenty of state schools do actually have facilities that can be used for those things. They sometimes don't have the money to use them properly, or advertise them well, but I assure you they are there. I even know of one state school with its own rifle range.
This is a red herring you seem determined to swallow.
If you think Angela Rayner and Prescott and Reeves for instance are brighter and more intellectual than Johnson, Rees Mogg and Cummings that just reflects your inverse snobbery rather than reality.
State schools might have a football pitch or a track and a hall and if a grammar maybe a rugby and cricket pitch too.
They won't have the vast number of pitches, equipment, pavillions, professional coaches, state of the art theatres, vast libraries and chapels and Olympic sized swimming pools the top public schools have, many of which are also shared with the local community
That story is completely nuts. In a normal country mulitple heads would roll as a result.
Astonishing. It lays bare the transactional nature of this group.
A few minutes later, the “Michael Waltz” account posted a lengthy note about trade figures, and the limited capabilities of European navies. “Whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes. Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.”
The account identified as “JD Vance” addressed a message at 8:45 to @Pete Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” (The administration has argued that America’s European allies benefit economically from the U.S. Navy’s protection of international shipping lanes.)
The user identified as Hegseth responded three minutes later: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.”
At this point, the previously silent “S M” joined the conversation. “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”
Trouble is, they are right in the strict terms of American cost/benefit
Why should American taxpayers fork out for defence that benefits, say, Ireland, which is now a really rich country which refuses to spend more than three euro on a navy coz it is “neutral”
In this case America *does* benefit from clear shipping lanes, though (like practically everybody else on the planet). They're also correct that nobody else is close to being able to do the job. Given that, it seems a bit optimistic to expect Europe to pony up for the whole cost, especially if you haven't agreed it in advance and don't have any idea how you'd enforce payment...
You do what they’re doing, tell Europe to go fuck itself unless it coughs up, like Poland
The problem with this strategy is that once Europe has paid up for its own planes and ships it may not want to dance to America's tune any longer. MAGA is hugely underestimating the value America gets out of being the default Western leading nation. By pushing Europe into rearmament they are creating competitors where previously there was nothing.
It is American military leadership that forced Taiwan into investing in the US for advanced semiconductors but the company that makes the machines to make the chips is European. What if in the future an armed to the teeth Europe says "actually fuck that noise, we're going to sell our wares to whoever wants them" and ignores US sanctions on China and other hostile states? The only reason we give any fucks about what the US wants us to do is because we're so hugely dependent on their military so their foreign policy objectives become our foreign policy objectives, sometimes to the detriment of our domestic economy.
I see that logic; indeed. I kind of agree
But confronted by China and China’s incredible surge to near tech-supremacy, i don’t think America gives a fuck any more. The superpower of the future will be the nation that masters robotics, ML, all of it, and for that you need total focus on the job and defending Europe’s eastern border or “being global policeman” or whatever are utterly second or third tier issues
Also, the Yanks rightly reckon that in the end Europe will side with America, whatever
I don't think Europe will, in the end. The EU is a technocratic empire, I think it probably feels pretty comfortable with China as it is and will quite happily sing to China's tune if it suits them, especially in the face of the US which is no longer committed to freedom and security for Europe.
As I said, they're trading in reliable global allies for unreliable global competitors, Europe that spends €500bn on defence isn't going to be happy being supplicant to US interests.
I now know three people from completely different backgrounds who have moved to China and each of them love it and have no intention of coming back. New Zealand used to be a place where people visited and then decided to stay. Now it seems to be China. I should say that all three were successful here (two from England one from France) But China now seems to be the place to live
The Chinese equivalent of PoliticalBetting.com must be completely and utterly BORING!
"In this week's opinion poll, the Chinese Communist Party achieved 99.9% approval, unchanged from last week!"
Does anyone have any idea of how fundamental the Uighur issue is to China? It seems to be the one thing that really puts them outside the pale. If they were to defuse that and talk nicely about Hong Kong, they could ease their path to being the replacement of the USA to the liberal West considerably.
We can all look forward to nipping down to the pub in downtown Jinchang and discussing Tiananmen, pre 1950 Tibet and the Dalai Lama over a pint of Uighur Old Peculiar.
It depends if you are the kind of person who thought that the Ukraine war was tough because so many good people lost their yachts in the sanctions.
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
But so much better for the parents if dim little Johnny has an actual diagnosis of why he is dim. I tend to agree with you on this. A bit like EDI the danger is of good things being pushed far too far. Just as you can end up with a man simply asserting he is a woman and others being forced to agree with this so too the range and diversity of intelligence and comprehension can be medicalised to make the parents feel better.
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
Let's say we do as you suggest and go back to seeing people as 'a bit dim' or a 'bit slow '. Do you still intend to help these pupils and provide support or does it mean that you can just shrug your shoulders and leave them to struggle?
That story is completely nuts. In a normal country mulitple heads would roll as a result.
Astonishing. It lays bare the transactional nature of this group.
A few minutes later, the “Michael Waltz” account posted a lengthy note about trade figures, and the limited capabilities of European navies. “Whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes. Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.”
The account identified as “JD Vance” addressed a message at 8:45 to @Pete Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” (The administration has argued that America’s European allies benefit economically from the U.S. Navy’s protection of international shipping lanes.)
The user identified as Hegseth responded three minutes later: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.”
At this point, the previously silent “S M” joined the conversation. “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”
Trouble is, they are right in the strict terms of American cost/benefit
Why should American taxpayers fork out for defence that benefits, say, Ireland, which is now a really rich country which refuses to spend more than three euro on a navy coz it is “neutral”
In this case America *does* benefit from clear shipping lanes, though (like practically everybody else on the planet). They're also correct that nobody else is close to being able to do the job. Given that, it seems a bit optimistic to expect Europe to pony up for the whole cost, especially if you haven't agreed it in advance and don't have any idea how you'd enforce payment...
You do what they’re doing, tell Europe to go fuck itself unless it coughs up, like Poland
The problem with this strategy is that once Europe has paid up for its own planes and ships it may not want to dance to America's tune any longer. MAGA is hugely underestimating the value America gets out of being the default Western leading nation. By pushing Europe into rearmament they are creating competitors where previously there was nothing.
It is American military leadership that forced Taiwan into investing in the US for advanced semiconductors but the company that makes the machines to make the chips is European. What if in the future an armed to the teeth Europe says "actually fuck that noise, we're going to sell our wares to whoever wants them" and ignores US sanctions on China and other hostile states? The only reason we give any fucks about what the US wants us to do is because we're so hugely dependent on their military so their foreign policy objectives become our foreign policy objectives, sometimes to the detriment of our domestic economy.
I see that logic; indeed. I kind of agree
But confronted by China and China’s incredible surge to near tech-supremacy, i don’t think America gives a fuck any more. The superpower of the future will be the nation that masters robotics, ML, all of it, and for that you need total focus on the job...
So why are they currently attacking the US science base ?
The problem with your analysis is that you're seeing competence rather than kludge.
This site is so ridiculous I’m not even allowed to argue this point in a way that make sense, nor adduce evidence thereto
So I shall devolve to enthusing about the steak
Perhaps at some future point you can do a review of lab grown steak (somewhat pointless in Uruguay of course)?
Right now there will be thousands of parents of year 6 children with offers from private schools and state schools, worrying about the cost. Then watching Adolescence and having their worst fears triggered, largely irrationally. And signing up to the fees.
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
Let's say we do as you suggest and go back to seeing people as 'a bit dim' or a 'bit slow '. Do you still intend to help these pupils and provide support or does it mean that you can just shrug your shoulders and leave them to struggle?
At the private school I attended, every subject was streamed. A, B and C (sometimes there wasn't a C class, due to lack of demand). The jobs of the teachers was to keep the kids at that level, or better yet, move them up. Kids dropping a level in the next year was noticed and subject to action - help for the pupil, mostly.
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
But so much better for the parents if dim little Johnny has an actual diagnosis of why he is dim. I tend to agree with you on this. A bit like EDI the danger is of good things being pushed far too far. Just as you can end up with a man simply asserting he is a woman and others being forced to agree with this so too the range and diversity of intelligence and comprehension can be medicalised to make the parents feel better.
Why not blame the system that only provides the learning support people need if they have a medical diagnosis rather than the parents?
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
There was a time when those displaying "abnormal" behaviour were at best stigmatised and at worst routinely abused - if you were left handed you were beaten until you used your right hand to write.
Thankfully, we've moved beyond such crude behaviour and are trying to understand we are all different and unique. Are there those playing the SEN system? Undoubtedly but to demonise everyone who is concerned by aspects of their child's behaviour is equally wrong.
Did the pandemic cause mental health problems? Undoubtedly - it was an unusual situation and we can all critique the response with the benefit of hindsight but five years on the impacts of what was done still resonate.
The promotion of good mental health has clear economic and social benefits - the much maligned Coalition was starting to get a grip on this and we could do a lot worse than ask Sir Norman Lamb to get back involved.
Goldberg says the Signal group chat started on March 13. Gabbard appeared to write in that chat minutes later Gabbard sent this tweet the next day The Houthi strikes happened two days later.
But for the plutocratic gangster Russophile fascist coup in the USA, the government coup in Turkey would be a gigantic story.
Except that the takeover of the government there happened a while back. This is a the "popular candidate against the oligarchy gets put down" phase. But like Iran.
“Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.”
The end of the world is nigh, the Telegraph are singing the praises of the ECHR.
Also contains this shocking tautology.
Next week some of the finest lawyers in the land will appear before the High Court in a case which could shake the Government to its core. While the case focuses on whether it is wrong to put VAT on education, much bigger issues are also at stake: the sovereignty of Parliament, the place of education in society and the rights of children.
Speaking as somebody who thinks VAT on private school fees is addressing the wrong problem in the wrong way, this case is the stupidest idea in education since Morgan decided to appoint that total loser Spielman as HMCIS.
The ISA would have been much better off negotiating a continuing exemption from OFSTED and the National Curriculum, particularly since one is collapsing in an embarrassing heap and the second on the interim report appears to be a disaster looking for somewhere to happen.
As it is, they've pissed the government off so much they might lose both - and with it, the actual reason for having a private education.
Above average school results and outstanding sport and extra curricular activities will stay regardless
The whole reason anyone can get 'above average results' (insofar as they mean anything due to the quality of our exams) is twofold:
1) Smaller class sizes. They may stay, although cost pressures may play a part here;
2) Not needing to follow the national curriculum so you can build up a much more carefully tailored programme.
As for 'outstanding sport and extracurricular programmes' a great many state schools offer those too. Private schools won't survive just on that.
The intake is even more key
No it isn't. There are plenty of utter thickos who attend private schools and do well there. Mogg, for example, or Johnson, or Cummings.
Barely any state schools offer the theatres, concert halls, chapels, cricket and rugby pitches and professional coaches top private schools offer either, hence so many rugby union and cricket professionals were educated privately
Leaving aside the fact I was talking about private schools in general, of which Eton, Harrow and Clifton are an unrepresentative example and not at all germane to my point, plenty of state schools do actually have facilities that can be used for those things. They sometimes don't have the money to use them properly, or advertise them well, but I assure you they are there. I even know of one state school with its own rifle range.
This is a red herring you seem determined to swallow.
If you think Angela Rayner and Prescott and Reeves for instance are brighter and more intellectual than Johnson, Rees Mogg and Cummings that just reflects your inverse snobbery rather than reality.
State schools might have a football pitch or a track and a hall and if a grammar maybe a rugby and cricket pitch too.
They won't have the vast number of pitches, equipment, pavillions, professional coaches, state of the art theatres, vast libraries and chapels and Olympic sized swimming pools the top public schools have, many of which are also shared with the local community
Sigh.
No, I do not *think* many of them do. I *know* many of them do. Not all of them - just as not all private schools have those things. But many.
This is based on 38 years' associate attending, teaching in, inspecting and supporting state schools. And, for the matter of that, private schools.
You, as I understand it, have never actually set foot in one except maybe as a tourist.
I have not referred to Rayner, Prescott or Reeves. They are not relevant. I do not care whether they are stupid or not (and being cleverer than Cummings doesn't make the moss on my garden wall intelligent, by the by). The three I mention are all so dimwitted it's a source of constant amazement to everyone who looks at them that they can actually breathe and walk at the same time. They got where they are through small class sizes and tailored curriculums. Not intellect. They should not be used as an example of 'intake' being important.
You might just allow for the possibility that being rather more knowledgeable and - dare I say it - somewhat more open minded than you, the reason I'm telling you you're wrong is because you are. Maybe just listen, learn and inform yourself?
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
Let's say we do as you suggest and go back to seeing people as 'a bit dim' or a 'bit slow '. Do you still intend to help these pupils and provide support or does it mean that you can just shrug your shoulders and leave them to struggle?
Of course not. That's why we have compulsory full time education for all from the age of 5. The range of normal for humans is huge. None of the teachers I know (there are lots including in my family) leave people to struggle, or shrug their shoulders.
The end of the world is nigh, the Telegraph are singing the praises of the ECHR.
Also contains this shocking tautology.
Next week some of the finest lawyers in the land will appear before the High Court in a case which could shake the Government to its core. While the case focuses on whether it is wrong to put VAT on education, much bigger issues are also at stake: the sovereignty of Parliament, the place of education in society and the rights of children.
Speaking as somebody who thinks VAT on private school fees is addressing the wrong problem in the wrong way, this case is the stupidest idea in education since Morgan decided to appoint that total loser Spielman as HMCIS.
The ISA would have been much better off negotiating a continuing exemption from OFSTED and the National Curriculum, particularly since one is collapsing in an embarrassing heap and the second on the interim report appears to be a disaster looking for somewhere to happen.
As it is, they've pissed the government off so much they might lose both - and with it, the actual reason for having a private education.
Above average school results and outstanding sport and extra curricular activities will stay regardless
The whole reason anyone can get 'above average results' (insofar as they mean anything due to the quality of our exams) is twofold:
1) Smaller class sizes. They may stay, although cost pressures may play a part here;
2) Not needing to follow the national curriculum so you can build up a much more carefully tailored programme.
As for 'outstanding sport and extracurricular programmes' a great many state schools offer those too. Private schools won't survive just on that.
The intake is even more key
No it isn't. There are plenty of utter thickos who attend private schools and do well there. Mogg, for example, or Johnson, or Cummings.
Barely any state schools offer the theatres, concert halls, chapels, cricket and rugby pitches and professional coaches top private schools offer either, hence so many rugby union and cricket professionals were educated privately
Leaving aside the fact I was talking about private schools in general, of which Eton, Harrow and Clifton are an unrepresentative example and not at all germane to my point, plenty of state schools do actually have facilities that can be used for those things. They sometimes don't have the money to use them properly, or advertise them well, but I assure you they are there. I even know of one state school with its own rifle range.
This is a red herring you seem determined to swallow.
If you think Angela Rayner and Prescott and Reeves for instance are brighter and more intellectual than Johnson, Rees Mogg and Cummings that just reflects your inverse snobbery rather than reality.
State schools might have a football pitch or a track and a hall and if a grammar maybe a rugby and cricket pitch too.
They won't have the vast number of pitches, equipment, pavillions, professional coaches, state of the art theatres, vast libraries and chapels and Olympic sized swimming pools the top public schools have, many of which are also shared with the local community
Sigh.
No, I do not *think* many of them do. I *know* many of them do. Not all of them - just as not all private schools have those things. But many.
This is based on 38 years' associate attending, teaching in, inspecting and supporting state schools. And, for the matter of that, private schools.
You, as I understand it, have never actually set foot in one except maybe as a tourist.
I have not referred to Rayner, Prescott or Reeves. They are not relevant. I do not care whether they are stupid or not (and being cleverer than Cummings doesn't make the moss on my garden wall intelligent, by the by). The three I mention are all so dimwitted it's a source of constant amazement to everyone who looks at them that they can actually breathe and walk at the same time. They got where they are through small class sizes and tailored curriculums. Not intellect. They should not be used as an example of 'intake' being important.
You might just allow for the possibility that being rather more knowledgeable and - dare I say it - somewhat more open minded than you, the reason I'm telling you you're wrong is because you are. Maybe just listen, learn and inform yourself?
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
But so much better for the parents if dim little Johnny has an actual diagnosis of why he is dim. I tend to agree with you on this. A bit like EDI the danger is of good things being pushed far too far. Just as you can end up with a man simply asserting he is a woman and others being forced to agree with this so too the range and diversity of intelligence and comprehension can be medicalised to make the parents feel better.
Yes, I think there are a group of people who disable themselves with a diagnosis, saying " I can't do that because I am dyslexic" rather than "I need to work very hard at that because of my dyslexia".
Over all though recognition of neurodiversity is helpful in self actualization and personal development. So finding learning and studying styles that work well for a particular individual. 15% of our medical students have one or other forms of neurodiversity, and I think the rate is probably significantly higher on PB. Not everyone needs medication, and if matched well to the task then it can be an advantage. ASD people are particularly good at repetitive tasks as they can maintain focus, and spot patterns. Ideal histopathologists perhaps.
As 1 in 5 have suicidal thoughts and 1 in 15 attempt suicide in their lifetime, mental health issues are not rare amongst us. Once again we have had people volunteer similar feelings on PB.
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
Let's say we do as you suggest and go back to seeing people as 'a bit dim' or a 'bit slow '. Do you still intend to help these pupils and provide support or does it mean that you can just shrug your shoulders and leave them to struggle?
At the private school I attended, every subject was streamed. A, B and C (sometimes there wasn't a C class, due to lack of demand). The jobs of the teachers was to keep the kids at that level, or better yet, move them up. Kids dropping a level in the next year was noticed and subject to action - help for the pupil, mostly.
Seemed to work. Probably evil or insane, though.
I went to a state school that streamed in a similar manner; A was the bright kids, B was the thick kids, and C was for the ones that would probably end up dead or in prison.
The end of the world is nigh, the Telegraph are singing the praises of the ECHR.
Also contains this shocking tautology.
Next week some of the finest lawyers in the land will appear before the High Court in a case which could shake the Government to its core. While the case focuses on whether it is wrong to put VAT on education, much bigger issues are also at stake: the sovereignty of Parliament, the place of education in society and the rights of children.
Speaking as somebody who thinks VAT on private school fees is addressing the wrong problem in the wrong way, this case is the stupidest idea in education since Morgan decided to appoint that total loser Spielman as HMCIS.
The ISA would have been much better off negotiating a continuing exemption from OFSTED and the National Curriculum, particularly since one is collapsing in an embarrassing heap and the second on the interim report appears to be a disaster looking for somewhere to happen.
As it is, they've pissed the government off so much they might lose both - and with it, the actual reason for having a private education.
Above average school results and outstanding sport and extra curricular activities will stay regardless
The whole reason anyone can get 'above average results' (insofar as they mean anything due to the quality of our exams) is twofold:
1) Smaller class sizes. They may stay, although cost pressures may play a part here;
2) Not needing to follow the national curriculum so you can build up a much more carefully tailored programme.
As for 'outstanding sport and extracurricular programmes' a great many state schools offer those too. Private schools won't survive just on that.
The intake is even more key
No it isn't. There are plenty of utter thickos who attend private schools and do well there. Mogg, for example, or Johnson, or Cummings.
Barely any state schools offer the theatres, concert halls, chapels, cricket and rugby pitches and professional coaches top private schools offer either, hence so many rugby union and cricket professionals were educated privately
Leaving aside the fact I was talking about private schools in general, of which Eton, Harrow and Clifton are an unrepresentative example and not at all germane to my point, plenty of state schools do actually have facilities that can be used for those things. They sometimes don't have the money to use them properly, or advertise them well, but I assure you they are there. I even know of one state school with its own rifle range.
This is a red herring you seem determined to swallow.
If you think Angela Rayner and Prescott and Reeves for instance are brighter and more intellectual than Johnson, Rees Mogg and Cummings that just reflects your inverse snobbery rather than reality.
State schools might have a football pitch or a track and a hall and if a grammar maybe a rugby and cricket pitch too.
They won't have the vast number of pitches, equipment, pavillions, professional coaches, state of the art theatres, vast libraries and chapels and Olympic sized swimming pools the top public schools have, many of which are also shared with the local community
Sigh.
No, I do not *think* many of them do. I *know* many of them do. Not all of them - just as not all private schools have those things. But many.
This is based on 38 years' associate attending, teaching in, inspecting and supporting state schools. And, for the matter of that, private schools.
You, as I understand it, have never actually set foot in one except maybe as a tourist.
I have not referred to Rayner, Prescott or Reeves. They are not relevant. I do not care whether they are stupid or not (and being cleverer than Cummings doesn't make the moss on my garden wall intelligent, by the by). The three I mention are all so dimwitted it's a source of constant amazement to everyone who looks at them that they can actually breathe and walk at the same time. They got where they are through small class sizes and tailored curriculums. Not intellect. They should not be used as an example of 'intake' being important.
You might just allow for the possibility that being rather more knowledgeable and - dare I say it - somewhat more open minded than you, the reason I'm telling you you're wrong is because you are. Maybe just listen, learn and inform yourself?
Except I'm not, Oxbridge entrants, the law, medicine, the Cabinet and Prime Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, CEOs and Chairs if FTSE 100 companies, top actors, Olympic rowers, rugby union and cricket professionals are all far more likely to be privately educated than the average person.
If you want to get one of those elite places or jobs a private school education remains the best option with only a handful of state grammars and free schools really in the same league
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
But so much better for the parents if dim little Johnny has an actual diagnosis of why he is dim. I tend to agree with you on this. A bit like EDI the danger is of good things being pushed far too far. Just as you can end up with a man simply asserting he is a woman and others being forced to agree with this so too the range and diversity of intelligence and comprehension can be medicalised to make the parents feel better.
Yes, I think there are a group of people who disable themselves with a diagnosis, saying " I can't do that because I am dyslexic" rather than "I need to work very hard at that because of my dyslexia".
Over all though recognition of neurodiversity is helpful in self actualization and personal development. So finding learning and studying styles that work well for a particular individual. 15% of our medical students have one or other forms of neurodiversity, and I think the rate is probably significantly higher on PB. Not everyone needs medication, and if matched well to the task then it can be an advantage. ASD people are particularly good at repetitive tasks as they can maintain focus, and spot patterns. Ideal histopathologists perhaps.
As 1 in 5 have suicidal thoughts and 1 in 15 attempt suicide in their lifetime, mental health issues are not rare amongst us. Once again we have had people volunteer similar feelings on PB.
These things are not rare.
Nobody is suggesting that these things are rare, just that they shouldn't be counted for £10k per year PIP and in most cases opting out of work entirely.
The end of the world is nigh, the Telegraph are singing the praises of the ECHR.
Also contains this shocking tautology.
Next week some of the finest lawyers in the land will appear before the High Court in a case which could shake the Government to its core. While the case focuses on whether it is wrong to put VAT on education, much bigger issues are also at stake: the sovereignty of Parliament, the place of education in society and the rights of children.
Speaking as somebody who thinks VAT on private school fees is addressing the wrong problem in the wrong way, this case is the stupidest idea in education since Morgan decided to appoint that total loser Spielman as HMCIS.
The ISA would have been much better off negotiating a continuing exemption from OFSTED and the National Curriculum, particularly since one is collapsing in an embarrassing heap and the second on the interim report appears to be a disaster looking for somewhere to happen.
As it is, they've pissed the government off so much they might lose both - and with it, the actual reason for having a private education.
Above average school results and outstanding sport and extra curricular activities will stay regardless
The whole reason anyone can get 'above average results' (insofar as they mean anything due to the quality of our exams) is twofold:
1) Smaller class sizes. They may stay, although cost pressures may play a part here;
2) Not needing to follow the national curriculum so you can build up a much more carefully tailored programme.
As for 'outstanding sport and extracurricular programmes' a great many state schools offer those too. Private schools won't survive just on that.
The intake is even more key
No it isn't. There are plenty of utter thickos who attend private schools and do well there. Mogg, for example, or Johnson, or Cummings.
Barely any state schools offer the theatres, concert halls, chapels, cricket and rugby pitches and professional coaches top private schools offer either, hence so many rugby union and cricket professionals were educated privately
Leaving aside the fact I was talking about private schools in general, of which Eton, Harrow and Clifton are an unrepresentative example and not at all germane to my point, plenty of state schools do actually have facilities that can be used for those things. They sometimes don't have the money to use them properly, or advertise them well, but I assure you they are there. I even know of one state school with its own rifle range.
This is a red herring you seem determined to swallow.
If you think Angela Rayner and Prescott and Reeves for instance are brighter and more intellectual than Johnson, Rees Mogg and Cummings that just reflects your inverse snobbery rather than reality.
State schools might have a football pitch or a track and a hall and if a grammar maybe a rugby and cricket pitch too.
They won't have the vast number of pitches, equipment, pavillions, professional coaches, state of the art theatres, vast libraries and chapels and Olympic sized swimming pools the top public schools have, many of which are also shared with the local community
Sigh.
No, I do not *think* many of them do. I *know* many of them do. Not all of them - just as not all private schools have those things. But many.
This is based on 38 years' associate attending, teaching in, inspecting and supporting state schools. And, for the matter of that, private schools.
You, as I understand it, have never actually set foot in one except maybe as a tourist.
I have not referred to Rayner, Prescott or Reeves. They are not relevant. I do not care whether they are stupid or not (and being cleverer than Cummings doesn't make the moss on my garden wall intelligent, by the by). The three I mention are all so dimwitted it's a source of constant amazement to everyone who looks at them that they can actually breathe and walk at the same time. They got where they are through small class sizes and tailored curriculums. Not intellect. They should not be used as an example of 'intake' being important.
You might just allow for the possibility that being rather more knowledgeable and - dare I say it - somewhat more open minded than you, the reason I'm telling you you're wrong is because you are. Maybe just listen, learn and inform yourself?
You need to set @HYUFD to Read/Write. The default mode is Read only.
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
But so much better for the parents if dim little Johnny has an actual diagnosis of why he is dim. I tend to agree with you on this. A bit like EDI the danger is of good things being pushed far too far. Just as you can end up with a man simply asserting he is a woman and others being forced to agree with this so too the range and diversity of intelligence and comprehension can be medicalised to make the parents feel better.
Yes, I think there are a group of people who disable themselves with a diagnosis, saying " I can't do that because I am dyslexic" rather than "I need to work very hard at that because of my dyslexia".
Over all though recognition of neurodiversity is helpful in self actualization and personal development. So finding learning and studying styles that work well for a particular individual. 15% of our medical students have one or other forms of neurodiversity, and I think the rate is probably significantly higher on PB. Not everyone needs medication, and if matched well to the task then it can be an advantage. ASD people are particularly good at repetitive tasks as they can maintain focus, and spot patterns. Ideal histopathologists perhaps.
As 1 in 5 have suicidal thoughts and 1 in 15 attempt suicide in their lifetime, mental health issues are not rare amongst us. Once again we have had people volunteer similar feelings on PB.
These things are not rare.
Nobody is suggesting that these things are rare, just that they shouldn't be counted for £10k per year PIP and in most cases opting out of work entirely.
They need to be properly assessed, but there certainly are people disabled by psychiatric disease to the point of needing PIP to live independently.
If finance is driving assessment then the cart is before the horse.
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
But so much better for the parents if dim little Johnny has an actual diagnosis of why he is dim. I tend to agree with you on this. A bit like EDI the danger is of good things being pushed far too far. Just as you can end up with a man simply asserting he is a woman and others being forced to agree with this so too the range and diversity of intelligence and comprehension can be medicalised to make the parents feel better.
Yes, I think there are a group of people who disable themselves with a diagnosis, saying " I can't do that because I am dyslexic" rather than "I need to work very hard at that because of my dyslexia".
Over all though recognition of neurodiversity is helpful in self actualization and personal development. So finding learning and studying styles that work well for a particular individual. 15% of our medical students have one or other forms of neurodiversity, and I think the rate is probably significantly higher on PB. Not everyone needs medication, and if matched well to the task then it can be an advantage. ASD people are particularly good at repetitive tasks as they can maintain focus, and spot patterns. Ideal histopathologists perhaps.
As 1 in 5 have suicidal thoughts and 1 in 15 attempt suicide in their lifetime, mental health issues are not rare amongst us. Once again we have had people volunteer similar feelings on PB.
These things are not rare.
A really excellent post. I think that there is a perception taking hold that if we stop diagnosing people as dyslexic or suffering from depression then the problem will go away. It won't as people will still feel the same way or be the same way whatever we call it.
Right now there will be thousands of parents of year 6 children with offers from private schools and state schools, worrying about the cost. Then watching Adolescence and having their worst fears triggered, largely irrationally. And signing up to the fees.
The end of the world is nigh, the Telegraph are singing the praises of the ECHR.
Also contains this shocking tautology.
Next week some of the finest lawyers in the land will appear before the High Court in a case which could shake the Government to its core. While the case focuses on whether it is wrong to put VAT on education, much bigger issues are also at stake: the sovereignty of Parliament, the place of education in society and the rights of children.
Speaking as somebody who thinks VAT on private school fees is addressing the wrong problem in the wrong way, this case is the stupidest idea in education since Morgan decided to appoint that total loser Spielman as HMCIS.
The ISA would have been much better off negotiating a continuing exemption from OFSTED and the National Curriculum, particularly since one is collapsing in an embarrassing heap and the second on the interim report appears to be a disaster looking for somewhere to happen.
As it is, they've pissed the government off so much they might lose both - and with it, the actual reason for having a private education.
Above average school results and outstanding sport and extra curricular activities will stay regardless
The whole reason anyone can get 'above average results' (insofar as they mean anything due to the quality of our exams) is twofold:
1) Smaller class sizes. They may stay, although cost pressures may play a part here;
2) Not needing to follow the national curriculum so you can build up a much more carefully tailored programme.
As for 'outstanding sport and extracurricular programmes' a great many state schools offer those too. Private schools won't survive just on that.
The intake is even more key
No it isn't. There are plenty of utter thickos who attend private schools and do well there. Mogg, for example, or Johnson, or Cummings.
Barely any state schools offer the theatres, concert halls, chapels, cricket and rugby pitches and professional coaches top private schools offer either, hence so many rugby union and cricket professionals were educated privately
Leaving aside the fact I was talking about private schools in general, of which Eton, Harrow and Clifton are an unrepresentative example and not at all germane to my point, plenty of state schools do actually have facilities that can be used for those things. They sometimes don't have the money to use them properly, or advertise them well, but I assure you they are there. I even know of one state school with its own rifle range.
This is a red herring you seem determined to swallow.
If you think Angela Rayner and Prescott and Reeves for instance are brighter and more intellectual than Johnson, Rees Mogg and Cummings that just reflects your inverse snobbery rather than reality.
State schools might have a football pitch or a track and a hall and if a grammar maybe a rugby and cricket pitch too.
They won't have the vast number of pitches, equipment, pavillions, professional coaches, state of the art theatres, vast libraries and chapels and Olympic sized swimming pools the top public schools have, many of which are also shared with the local community
Sigh.
No, I do not *think* many of them do. I *know* many of them do. Not all of them - just as not all private schools have those things. But many.
This is based on 38 years' associate attending, teaching in, inspecting and supporting state schools. And, for the matter of that, private schools.
You, as I understand it, have never actually set foot in one except maybe as a tourist.
I have not referred to Rayner, Prescott or Reeves. They are not relevant. I do not care whether they are stupid or not (and being cleverer than Cummings doesn't make the moss on my garden wall intelligent, by the by). The three I mention are all so dimwitted it's a source of constant amazement to everyone who looks at them that they can actually breathe and walk at the same time. They got where they are through small class sizes and tailored curriculums. Not intellect. They should not be used as an example of 'intake' being important.
You might just allow for the possibility that being rather more knowledgeable and - dare I say it - somewhat more open minded than you, the reason I'm telling you you're wrong is because you are. Maybe just listen, learn and inform yourself?
Except I'm not, Oxbridge entrants, the law, medicine, the Cabinet and Prime Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, CEOs and Chairs if FTSE 100 companies, top actors, Olympic rowers, rugby union and cricket professionals are all far more likely to be privately educated than the average person.
If you want to get one of those elite places or jobs a private school education remains the best option with only a handful of state grammars and free schools really in the same league
Yes, but that is as likely to be due to nepotism, class bias and the stranglehold that the privately educated have on many professions than anything relating to intelligence.
A large part of the reason that people educate their children privately is buying access to the inner sanctum of our society, and probably the next reason for many is to avoid contact with those lower down the pyramid too.
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
Let's say we do as you suggest and go back to seeing people as 'a bit dim' or a 'bit slow '. Do you still intend to help these pupils and provide support or does it mean that you can just shrug your shoulders and leave them to struggle?
At the private school I attended, every subject was streamed. A, B and C (sometimes there wasn't a C class, due to lack of demand). The jobs of the teachers was to keep the kids at that level, or better yet, move them up. Kids dropping a level in the next year was noticed and subject to action - help for the pupil, mostly.
Seemed to work. Probably evil or insane, though.
I went to a state school that streamed in a similar manner; A was the bright kids, B was the thick kids, and C was for the ones that would probably end up dead or in prison.
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
Let's say we do as you suggest and go back to seeing people as 'a bit dim' or a 'bit slow '. Do you still intend to help these pupils and provide support or does it mean that you can just shrug your shoulders and leave them to struggle?
At the private school I attended, every subject was streamed. A, B and C (sometimes there wasn't a C class, due to lack of demand). The jobs of the teachers was to keep the kids at that level, or better yet, move them up. Kids dropping a level in the next year was noticed and subject to action - help for the pupil, mostly.
Seemed to work. Probably evil or insane, though.
I went to a state school that streamed in a similar manner; A was the bright kids, B was the thick kids, and C was for the ones that would probably end up dead or in prison.
Was the C stream abandoned or helped?
Mostly just contained until they leave. @dixiedean has eloquently posted many times on his work with this stream.
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
Let's say we do as you suggest and go back to seeing people as 'a bit dim' or a 'bit slow '. Do you still intend to help these pupils and provide support or does it mean that you can just shrug your shoulders and leave them to struggle?
At the private school I attended, every subject was streamed. A, B and C (sometimes there wasn't a C class, due to lack of demand). The jobs of the teachers was to keep the kids at that level, or better yet, move them up. Kids dropping a level in the next year was noticed and subject to action - help for the pupil, mostly.
Seemed to work. Probably evil or insane, though.
I went to a state school that streamed in a similar manner; A was the bright kids, B was the thick kids, and C was for the ones that would probably end up dead or in prison.
Was the C stream abandoned or helped?
My school had a 'C' stream - and they were mostly just tolerated until they were dead or carted of to prison. So 'helped' in some sense, if you squint or have a certain slant of faith. Quite a few of the 'A' and 'B' stream ended up dead too mind you. Lot of heroin and glue back in the day.
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
But so much better for the parents if dim little Johnny has an actual diagnosis of why he is dim. I tend to agree with you on this. A bit like EDI the danger is of good things being pushed far too far. Just as you can end up with a man simply asserting he is a woman and others being forced to agree with this so too the range and diversity of intelligence and comprehension can be medicalised to make the parents feel better.
Why not blame the system that only provides the learning support people need if they have a medical diagnosis rather than the parents?
To give some context in why I feel this way - I teach relatively bright (AAB at A level) pharmacy students, an astonishingly high number of which claim extra time in exams and other adaptations. A 10 minute exercise becomes 12 minutes 30 seconds for them.
In almost all cases there is no evidence of why this is needed other than that they are gaming the system.
The real world tends not to tolerate such adaptation, but we cosset at school and Uni like crazy to keep them happy.
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
Let's say we do as you suggest and go back to seeing people as 'a bit dim' or a 'bit slow '. Do you still intend to help these pupils and provide support or does it mean that you can just shrug your shoulders and leave them to struggle?
At the private school I attended, every subject was streamed. A, B and C (sometimes there wasn't a C class, due to lack of demand). The jobs of the teachers was to keep the kids at that level, or better yet, move them up. Kids dropping a level in the next year was noticed and subject to action - help for the pupil, mostly.
Seemed to work. Probably evil or insane, though.
I went to a state school that streamed in a similar manner; A was the bright kids, B was the thick kids, and C was for the ones that would probably end up dead or in prison.
Was the C stream abandoned or helped?
They mostly didn't turn up. Though one did almost break one of my fingers.
The end of the world is nigh, the Telegraph are singing the praises of the ECHR.
Also contains this shocking tautology.
Next week some of the finest lawyers in the land will appear before the High Court in a case which could shake the Government to its core. While the case focuses on whether it is wrong to put VAT on education, much bigger issues are also at stake: the sovereignty of Parliament, the place of education in society and the rights of children.
Speaking as somebody who thinks VAT on private school fees is addressing the wrong problem in the wrong way, this case is the stupidest idea in education since Morgan decided to appoint that total loser Spielman as HMCIS.
The ISA would have been much better off negotiating a continuing exemption from OFSTED and the National Curriculum, particularly since one is collapsing in an embarrassing heap and the second on the interim report appears to be a disaster looking for somewhere to happen.
As it is, they've pissed the government off so much they might lose both - and with it, the actual reason for having a private education.
Above average school results and outstanding sport and extra curricular activities will stay regardless
The whole reason anyone can get 'above average results' (insofar as they mean anything due to the quality of our exams) is twofold:
1) Smaller class sizes. They may stay, although cost pressures may play a part here;
2) Not needing to follow the national curriculum so you can build up a much more carefully tailored programme.
As for 'outstanding sport and extracurricular programmes' a great many state schools offer those too. Private schools won't survive just on that.
The intake is even more key
No it isn't. There are plenty of utter thickos who attend private schools and do well there. Mogg, for example, or Johnson, or Cummings.
Barely any state schools offer the theatres, concert halls, chapels, cricket and rugby pitches and professional coaches top private schools offer either, hence so many rugby union and cricket professionals were educated privately
Leaving aside the fact I was talking about private schools in general, of which Eton, Harrow and Clifton are an unrepresentative example and not at all germane to my point, plenty of state schools do actually have facilities that can be used for those things. They sometimes don't have the money to use them properly, or advertise them well, but I assure you they are there. I even know of one state school with its own rifle range.
This is a red herring you seem determined to swallow.
If you think Angela Rayner and Prescott and Reeves for instance are brighter and more intellectual than Johnson, Rees Mogg and Cummings that just reflects your inverse snobbery rather than reality.
State schools might have a football pitch or a track and a hall and if a grammar maybe a rugby and cricket pitch too.
They won't have the vast number of pitches, equipment, pavillions, professional coaches, state of the art theatres, vast libraries and chapels and Olympic sized swimming pools the top public schools have, many of which are also shared with the local community
Sigh.
No, I do not *think* many of them do. I *know* many of them do. Not all of them - just as not all private schools have those things. But many.
This is based on 38 years' associate attending, teaching in, inspecting and supporting state schools. And, for the matter of that, private schools.
You, as I understand it, have never actually set foot in one except maybe as a tourist.
I have not referred to Rayner, Prescott or Reeves. They are not relevant. I do not care whether they are stupid or not (and being cleverer than Cummings doesn't make the moss on my garden wall intelligent, by the by). The three I mention are all so dimwitted it's a source of constant amazement to everyone who looks at them that they can actually breathe and walk at the same time. They got where they are through small class sizes and tailored curriculums. Not intellect. They should not be used as an example of 'intake' being important.
You might just allow for the possibility that being rather more knowledgeable and - dare I say it - somewhat more open minded than you, the reason I'm telling you you're wrong is because you are. Maybe just listen, learn and inform yourself?
Except I'm not, Oxbridge entrants, the law, medicine, the Cabinet and Prime Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, CEOs and Chairs if FTSE 100 companies, top actors, Olympic rowers, rugby union and cricket professionals are all far more likely to be privately educated than the average person.
If you want to get one of those elite places or jobs a private school education remains the best option with only a handful of state grammars and free schools really in the same league
And that sums up the problem of where we are. We are restricting ourselves by choosing from a very small talent pool. Both the performance of the country, and the England cricket team bear testament to this. How much better would both be if we were truly selecting from the best in the country, because a large number of talented people were not able to shine at an early age, and did something else instead?
Goldberg says the Signal group chat started on March 13. Gabbard appeared to write in that chat minutes later Gabbard sent this tweet the next day The Houthi strikes happened two days later.
The best line from Adolescence and I paraphrase somewhat . “ I thought he was safe , he was in his bedroom on the internet and playing games “ .
That line alone will strike terror into many parents .
It is a brilliant piece of drama, the third part in particular.
My only criticism is that the focus is on the killer and family rather than the victim. An episode on her family coming to terms with it all would have been a positive. It's not just about men.
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
Let's say we do as you suggest and go back to seeing people as 'a bit dim' or a 'bit slow '. Do you still intend to help these pupils and provide support or does it mean that you can just shrug your shoulders and leave them to struggle?
At the private school I attended, every subject was streamed. A, B and C (sometimes there wasn't a C class, due to lack of demand). The jobs of the teachers was to keep the kids at that level, or better yet, move them up. Kids dropping a level in the next year was noticed and subject to action - help for the pupil, mostly.
Seemed to work. Probably evil or insane, though.
I went to a state school that streamed in a similar manner; A was the bright kids, B was the thick kids, and C was for the ones that would probably end up dead or in prison.
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
But so much better for the parents if dim little Johnny has an actual diagnosis of why he is dim. I tend to agree with you on this. A bit like EDI the danger is of good things being pushed far too far. Just as you can end up with a man simply asserting he is a woman and others being forced to agree with this so too the range and diversity of intelligence and comprehension can be medicalised to make the parents feel better.
Why not blame the system that only provides the learning support people need if they have a medical diagnosis rather than the parents?
To give some context in why I feel this way - I teach relatively bright (AAB at A level) pharmacy students, an astonishingly high number of which claim extra time in exams and other adaptations. A 10 minute exercise becomes 12 minutes 30 seconds for them.
In almost all cases there is no evidence of why this is needed other than that they are gaming the system.
The real world tends not to tolerate such adaptation, but we cosset at school and Uni like crazy to keep them happy.
Thanks that's really interesting context. My viewpoint comes from my husband who struggled for years with undiagnosed dyslexia. He was put shoved into English as a Foreign Language classes in school despite speaking English since birth (he was born in Hong Kong but left when he was a small child). At University he wasn't helped at all because the welfare officer thought he "was probably just ethnic". He worked low paying retail jobs for years until a good employer recognised the symptoms and put support and training in place for him. Now he's thriving at work and is so much happier.
'But while all that may be true, we still carry the torch for social justice higher than most nations. We just seem to have forgotten that someone, somewhere has to pay for it. As my American siblings soberly remind me: “Never let your mouth write a cheque your ass can’t cover.”
Rachel Reeves, as she contemplates her spring statement, must be wondering why no one foresaw that the huge IOU the last Labour administration wrote to disabled people would one day be called in. The size of the disability benefits bill is running at £39.1 billion; it will rise to at least £58 billion by the end of the parliament — more than we spend on primary schools or the army. And we can’t say we weren’t warned that social justice costs.'
'In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act marked a transition from what used to be called the “medical” model of disability to the “social” model. In summary, the old idea was that any impairment was regarded as a deficiency in the person to whom it was attached. The new claim was that people come in all shapes and sizes: what we used to called a disability or deformity wasn’t a deficiency, merely another manifestation of human diversity. It was down to employers, architects, retailers, transport providers and the like to adjust to a new normal.'
'More broadly, my guess is that experiences common to the human condition — sadness, lapses in concentration, periods of exhaustion — are now being pathologised to an extent that makes the impairment unremarkable and not in any sense a true disability. In short, if everyone becomes disabled, then no one is disabled. In practice those who most need help are being pushed to the back of the queue by people whose claims are dubious.'
The whole piece is worth reading and one of the reasons I still pay for a subscription to The Times. He's articulating what many of us have said many times on here perfectly. We've medicalised "disability" to such an extend that people are using "mental health" as a catch all for signing up to a £10k pa UBI if you can convince the assessor that you are "deserving". It's time to end the PIP for all mental health claims and shit can UC and move back to JSA and ESA with only in person assessments of disability eligible for enhanced support. Yes it will make a lot of people poorer and yes there will be edge cases that will need resolving, yet if we do nothing the country is heading for the poor house as more and more people decide that they too can sign up for an easy life on PIP.
Either that or we could address the mental health epidemic that is disabling people left right and centre.
One of my team handed in her notice this week. She is quitting her post so she can look after her teenage daughter with ADHD, anxiety, eating disorders and deliberate self harm. I don't blame her at all, and would have done so myself in her circumstances. Hopefully my colleague be back in a few years time.
A mental health epidemic will have causes. Like epidemics of lung cancer they don't happen randomly. In the long run addressing those will both do more good and be better value for money.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
Let's say we do as you suggest and go back to seeing people as 'a bit dim' or a 'bit slow '. Do you still intend to help these pupils and provide support or does it mean that you can just shrug your shoulders and leave them to struggle?
At the private school I attended, every subject was streamed. A, B and C (sometimes there wasn't a C class, due to lack of demand). The jobs of the teachers was to keep the kids at that level, or better yet, move them up. Kids dropping a level in the next year was noticed and subject to action - help for the pupil, mostly.
Seemed to work. Probably evil or insane, though.
I went to a state school that streamed in a similar manner; A was the bright kids, B was the thick kids, and C was for the ones that would probably end up dead or in prison.
Was the C stream abandoned or helped?
My school had a 'C' stream - and they were mostly just tolerated until they were dead or carted of to prison. So 'helped' in some sense, if you squint or have a certain slant of faith. Quite a few of the 'A' and 'B' stream ended up dead too mind you. Lot of heroin and glue back in the day.
I believe the actual term is "back when Britain was truly Great."
The end of the world is nigh, the Telegraph are singing the praises of the ECHR.
Also contains this shocking tautology.
Next week some of the finest lawyers in the land will appear before the High Court in a case which could shake the Government to its core. While the case focuses on whether it is wrong to put VAT on education, much bigger issues are also at stake: the sovereignty of Parliament, the place of education in society and the rights of children.
Speaking as somebody who thinks VAT on private school fees is addressing the wrong problem in the wrong way, this case is the stupidest idea in education since Morgan decided to appoint that total loser Spielman as HMCIS.
The ISA would have been much better off negotiating a continuing exemption from OFSTED and the National Curriculum, particularly since one is collapsing in an embarrassing heap and the second on the interim report appears to be a disaster looking for somewhere to happen.
As it is, they've pissed the government off so much they might lose both - and with it, the actual reason for having a private education.
Above average school results and outstanding sport and extra curricular activities will stay regardless
The whole reason anyone can get 'above average results' (insofar as they mean anything due to the quality of our exams) is twofold:
1) Smaller class sizes. They may stay, although cost pressures may play a part here;
2) Not needing to follow the national curriculum so you can build up a much more carefully tailored programme.
As for 'outstanding sport and extracurricular programmes' a great many state schools offer those too. Private schools won't survive just on that.
The intake is even more key
No it isn't. There are plenty of utter thickos who attend private schools and do well there. Mogg, for example, or Johnson, or Cummings.
Barely any state schools offer the theatres, concert halls, chapels, cricket and rugby pitches and professional coaches top private schools offer either, hence so many rugby union and cricket professionals were educated privately
Leaving aside the fact I was talking about private schools in general, of which Eton, Harrow and Clifton are an unrepresentative example and not at all germane to my point, plenty of state schools do actually have facilities that can be used for those things. They sometimes don't have the money to use them properly, or advertise them well, but I assure you they are there. I even know of one state school with its own rifle range.
This is a red herring you seem determined to swallow.
If you think Angela Rayner and Prescott and Reeves for instance are brighter and more intellectual than Johnson, Rees Mogg and Cummings that just reflects your inverse snobbery rather than reality.
State schools might have a football pitch or a track and a hall and if a grammar maybe a rugby and cricket pitch too.
They won't have the vast number of pitches, equipment, pavillions, professional coaches, state of the art theatres, vast libraries and chapels and Olympic sized swimming pools the top public schools have, many of which are also shared with the local community
Sigh.
No, I do not *think* many of them do. I *know* many of them do. Not all of them - just as not all private schools have those things. But many.
This is based on 38 years' associate attending, teaching in, inspecting and supporting state schools. And, for the matter of that, private schools.
You, as I understand it, have never actually set foot in one except maybe as a tourist.
I have not referred to Rayner, Prescott or Reeves. They are not relevant. I do not care whether they are stupid or not (and being cleverer than Cummings doesn't make the moss on my garden wall intelligent, by the by). The three I mention are all so dimwitted it's a source of constant amazement to everyone who looks at them that they can actually breathe and walk at the same time. They got where they are through small class sizes and tailored curriculums. Not intellect. They should not be used as an example of 'intake' being important.
You might just allow for the possibility that being rather more knowledgeable and - dare I say it - somewhat more open minded than you, the reason I'm telling you you're wrong is because you are. Maybe just listen, learn and inform yourself?
Except I'm not, Oxbridge entrants, the law, medicine, the Cabinet and Prime Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, CEOs and Chairs if FTSE 100 companies, top actors, Olympic rowers, rugby union and cricket professionals are all far more likely to be privately educated than the average person.
If you want to get one of those elite places or jobs a private school education remains the best option with only a handful of state grammars and free schools really in the same league
And that sums up the problem of where we are. We are restricting ourselves by choosing from a very small talent pool. Both the performance of the country, and the England cricket team bear testament to this. How much better would both be if we were truly selecting from the best in the country, because a large number of talented people were not able to shine at an early age, and did something else instead?
We were when we had more grammar schools.
Of course most footballers and entrepreneurs and pop stars and soap and reality stars and influencers are state educated
Comments
Let the individual decide what they want to do.
If something is mandated on a national level, then it should be dealt with there in a framework that leaves the individual in as much control as possible.
The BS I object to is central government mandating policies (SEN, care etc) then insisting local government pays the tab and deals with it.
If SEN policies are national, so should be its funding etc.
I suspect that Chinese and Russian intelligence officers are really wishing they'd burnt a few zero day vulnerabilities on taking over Goldberg's phone.
I've no idea if Labour have already messed things up, and frankly it may well rely on what happens elsewhere in the world, but the big ticket items (NHS waiting lists, new houses, infrastructure spending, net zero, reduced migration) are only going to really show up later in the parliament. Still a huge amount of time before deciding what will happen next. Certainly those looking at a Reform government or even Tory/Reform coalition as a done deal, should probably ask Ed Milliband where he keeps all the chickens he counted.
They have a mammoth majority and five years. They should be implementing credible supply side reform, even if it's unpopular.
But ... crickets.
Trump on his cabinet members using Signal to text war plans to a reporter: "I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic. To be it's a magazine that's going out of business. But I know nothing about it. You're saying that they had what?"
An unintended consequence of the good thing that was mental health being something people could openly talk about is the case load is exploded.
The line between a genuine pathology and something that is within some kind of acceptable normal range of sadness or fear for the future or concentration or sleep issues will have to be firmed up imho.
A lot of it is driven by the American DSM. A document which will soon by longer than the tax code.
Much/some of mental health "diagnosis" is cultural in any society. For instance, in Germany it used to be the case that if you went to the GP with mildly depressive symptoms they would give herbal St John's Wort. They may still do that. Here and in the US we reach for the SSRIs almost as soon as the words 'I've been feeling a bit low recently, doc' are spoken.
Not blaming the docs by the way. Patients want this. An alternatives are more expensive (except Wort - which is just not used iirc by NHS).
There's at least a discussion to be had about whether an anti-depressant given for a couple of months made any real difference or whether the patient reacted to placebo or just got better by nature.
I could go on at length about this for various family reasons but I will leave it there.
I don't object to the idea of people being allowed to decide for themselves how often their bins are emptied but I don't know how, on that basis, a service could or would be provided nor how it would deal with those who can't or won't engage with the process.
Currently in Newham we get our bins emptied every week - they tried fortnightly collection but that caused an epidemic of fly tipping as households with a lot of people generated a lot more rubbish (surprisingly). In the end, the local council for an area mandates how often the service is to be provides and contracts out the provision on that basis in the tender document.
I also agree there's an argument for national provision of nationally regulated services and the idea of a National Care Agency to cover domiciliary and residential (including dementia) care has been floated and a National Special Educational Needs Service could well be a starter but that would mean moving part of Council Tax funding to general taxation (which could be done).
There are nationally mandated standards for food in schools - should we then have a National School Meals Service which delivers meals every day to all schools from huge central kitchens? They tried that in New Zealand - ended up a disaster. Sometimes doing it locally has its advantages.
On 24 March 2025, Reform UK announced Sarah Pochin, a former Conservative turned Labour-backed independent councillor, and pro-LGBTQ activist and campaigner for Afghan and Syrian refugees, as their candidate.
That's the type of attack that traditionally they would have asked allies to contribute to in some way to give them some cover - as the Royal Navy did multiple times in the last 2 years, and other NATO navies supported operationally.
As I understand it, this was USA only. I think the US doing the attacks on Yemen alone is indicative of the policy of isolationism, and a deliberate contrast with Mr Biden's administration, which is combined with "we are protecting you; give us some economic benefits". It's not exactly a protection racket, but that's the grain of it.
I don't think "no one else could do this" means very much - that's based on a possibly false assumption that Hegseth's belief that only hard power works, and they want to prove that.
I think most of their allies don't concur with that view, and would not have co-operated with major air strikes anyway - which is why we may not even have been informed. The US Govt want to put a clear gap between themselves and their allies.
IMO it may work this year or for a few years - which is all Mr Trump needs for some weasel-words on his tombstone, but it won't work in the long term.
We'll see what happens.
My utility bills are all substantially higher than they were last year so I'm not growing economically, even while the energy, water and telecoms companies that supply me are growing richer and paying their share holders millions.
My grocery shop is more expensive, so Tesco and the gang are all growing, but I'm not.
You'll say that making the transnational corporations richer trickles down the wealth to the lower orders, but I think that's not true anymore. The rich are always experiencing "growth", but mostly on the back of everyone else.
England 1.03
Latvia 120
Draw 36
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/en/football/fifa-world-cup-qualifiers-europe/england-v-latvia-betting-34147483
@Number10cat
·
1h
We've come a long way from Hilary Clinton's emails...
The ISA would have been much better off negotiating a continuing exemption from OFSTED and the National Curriculum, particularly since one is collapsing in an embarrassing heap and the second on the interim report appears to be a disaster looking for somewhere to happen.
As it is, they've pissed the government off so much they might lose both - and with it, the actual reason for having a private education.
He has never heard of Project 2025 yet every other member of the administration is using it as the implementation handbook.
Just set the standards then let schools decide how they want to meet those standards. Whether it be by making the meals in house, or commissioning.
We want options for:
- QE to the max
- Devalue Stirling
- Default
- Set the knob on the printing presses to 11
https://www.cheshire-live.co.uk/news/chester-cheshire-news/councillor-expelled-cheshire-east-conservative-17911826
There are two approaches - one is to have a cluster of primaries work with their secondary school and the latter provides a meals service for the former while the other is for all the primaries to go through the local council who then tenders for school meals provision on their behalf.
The schools provide information to the council on, for example how many meals need to be halal or kosher and the local authority manages the contract to ensure the provider is meeting those dietary standards as well as delivering on time to schools as well as monitoring the menus offered by the supplier.
Even for those schools not directly signed up to a council-run contract, the council maintains an overarching quality control function to ensure the schools are meeting dietary standards however their food is sourced.
The American Bigly Sea is the correct term for the Atlantic.
US.
Singapore and India are more likely alternatives
"I don't know anything about it."
It's literally explained in the article. It will be interesting to see what his Press Sec says - I predict she will obfuscate and slope her soldiers, and attack The Atlantic.
Earlier today, I emailed Waltz and sent him a message on his Signal account. I also wrote to Pete Hegseth, John Ratcliffe, Tulsi Gabbard, and other officials. In an email, I outlined some of my questions: Is the “Houthi PC small group” a genuine Signal thread? Did they know that I was included in this group? Was I (on the off chance) included on purpose? If not, who did they think I was? Did anyone realize who I was when I was added, or when I removed myself from the group? Do senior Trump-administration officials use Signal regularly for sensitive discussions? Do the officials believe that the use of such a channel could endanger American personnel?
Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security Council, responded two hours later, confirming the veracity of the Signal group. “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” Hughes wrote. “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security.”
William Martin, a spokesperson for Vance, said that despite the impression created by the texts, the vice president is fully aligned with the president. “The Vice President’s first priority is always making sure that the President’s advisers are adequately briefing him on the substance of their internal deliberations,” he said. “Vice President Vance unequivocally supports this administration’s foreign policy. The President and the Vice President have had subsequent conversations about this matter and are in complete agreement.”
https://archive.is/20250324165426/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/#selection-877.0-889.432
So all Chinese are part of Han culture - well, a plastic version of this that resembles GA Henry on the British Empire.
Multiculturalism is explicitly bad, in the Chinese leaderships view.
If you are politically amoral and like the money - it’s like living in the Arab Gulf States. Awesome until you upset a local princeling and discover that the law is there to defend him in all circumstances.
Not least because the chances of your dying while doing it are notably high
DNI Tulsi Gabbard
@DNIGabbard
Any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such.
1) Smaller class sizes. They may stay, although cost pressures may play a part here;
2) Not needing to follow the national curriculum so you can build up a much more carefully tailored programme.
As for 'outstanding sport and extracurricular programmes' a great many state schools offer those too. Private schools won't survive just on that.
Consett born Darren Grimes is set to stand for election [for Reform] in Tanfield and Annfield Plain in the upcoming May local elections.
https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/25033792.darren-grimes-gb-news-fame-stand-county-durham/
with VAT on fees.
Barely any state schools offer the theatres, concert halls, chapels, cricket and rugby pitches and professional coaches top private schools offer either, hence so many rugby union and cricket professionals and Oscar winners were educated privately
This is a red herring you seem determined to swallow.
But additionally (following on from Trevor Phillips above) it is essential for NHS and education system survival to demedicalise all sorts of conditions like naughty boy syndrome, and for the economy to disbenefit all sorts of bogus conditions.
Currently between 11 and 18% of all pupils (depends what you count exactly) suffers form some sort of special educational need. This is nonsense and untrue. When the figures are at that scale what you are doing is abnormalising normal aspects of the human condition (being dim, being a bit slow, being annoyingly restless, preferring football to learning to read and so on).
State schools might have a football pitch or a track and a hall and if a grammar maybe a rugby and cricket pitch too.
They won't have the vast number of pitches, equipment, pavillions, professional coaches, state of the art theatres, vast libraries and chapels and Olympic sized swimming pools the top public schools have, many of which are also shared with the local community
I tend to agree with you on this. A bit like EDI the danger is of good things being pushed far too far. Just as you can end up with a man simply asserting he is a woman and others being forced to agree with this so too the range and diversity of intelligence and comprehension can be medicalised to make the parents feel better.
Right now there will be thousands of parents of year 6 children with offers from private schools and state schools, worrying about the cost. Then watching Adolescence and having their worst fears triggered, largely irrationally. And signing up to the fees.
New phone, Houthis
Seemed to work. Probably evil or insane, though.
Thankfully, we've moved beyond such crude behaviour and are trying to understand we are all different and unique. Are there those playing the SEN system? Undoubtedly but to demonise everyone who is concerned by aspects of their child's behaviour is equally wrong.
Did the pandemic cause mental health problems? Undoubtedly - it was an unusual situation and we can all critique the response with the benefit of hindsight but five years on the impacts of what was done still resonate.
The promotion of good mental health has clear economic and social benefits - the much maligned Coalition was starting to get a grip on this and we could do a lot worse than ask Sir Norman Lamb to get back involved.
Goldberg says the Signal group chat started on March 13.
Gabbard appeared to write in that chat minutes later
Gabbard sent this tweet the next day
The Houthi strikes happened two days later.
@DNIGabbard
Any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such.
@acosta32jp.bsky.social
It’s pretty crazy how the dumbest people alive are running the country
“Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.”
No, I do not *think* many of them do. I *know* many of them do. Not all of them - just as not all private schools have those things. But many.
This is based on 38 years' associate attending, teaching in, inspecting and supporting state schools. And, for the matter of that, private schools.
You, as I understand it, have never actually set foot in one except maybe as a tourist.
I have not referred to Rayner, Prescott or Reeves. They are not relevant. I do not care whether they are stupid or not (and being cleverer than Cummings doesn't make the moss on my garden wall intelligent, by the by). The three I mention are all so dimwitted it's a source of constant amazement to everyone who looks at them that they can actually breathe and walk at the same time. They got where they are through small class sizes and tailored curriculums. Not intellect. They should not be used as an example of 'intake' being important.
You might just allow for the possibility that being rather more knowledgeable and - dare I say it - somewhat more open minded than you, the reason I'm telling you you're wrong is because you are. Maybe just listen, learn and inform yourself?
Over all though recognition of neurodiversity is helpful in self actualization and personal development. So finding learning and studying styles that work well for a particular individual. 15% of our medical students have one or other forms of neurodiversity, and I think the rate is probably significantly higher on PB. Not everyone needs medication, and if matched well to the task then it can be an advantage. ASD people are particularly good at repetitive tasks as they can maintain focus, and spot patterns. Ideal histopathologists perhaps.
As 1 in 5 have suicidal thoughts and 1 in 15 attempt suicide in their lifetime, mental health issues are not rare amongst us. Once again we have had people volunteer similar feelings on PB.
These things are not rare.
Very serious administration
union and cricket professionals
are all far more likely to be privately educated than the average person.
If you want to get one of those elite places or jobs a private school education remains the best option with only a handful of state grammars and free schools really in the same league
There’s a handy instructional video on this, here - https://youtu.be/2t_wrtyxFp8?si=BwegB09pVxytskdq
If finance is driving assessment then the cart is before the horse.
“President Trump continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.”
A large part of the reason that people educate their children privately is buying access to the inner sanctum of our society, and probably the next reason for many is to avoid contact with those lower down the pyramid too.
That line alone will strike terror into many parents .
In almost all cases there is no evidence of why this is needed other than that they are gaming the system.
The real world tends not to tolerate such adaptation, but we cosset at school and Uni like crazy to keep them happy.
My only criticism is that the focus is on the killer and family rather than the victim. An episode on her family coming to terms with it all would have been a positive. It's not just about men.
Of course most footballers and entrepreneurs and pop stars and soap and reality stars and influencers are state educated