If the Iranian allegations are right, and America is planning a broad ground offensive on Iran, allying with the Kurds, then fucking hell. God help us all. It has OBVIOUS TOTAL CATASTROPHE tattooed on its forehead
They might just be able to prevail, for a while, but as the Iranian mullahs fall - if they fall - they will take out every single oil refinery they can hit, within 1500 miles, and every tanker and every port and every airport, and the whole of Dubai and God help us
It will quite shortly lead to fairly apocalyptic scenes, worldwide
There will be fuel rationing you would think. The supply of diesel for tractors, trains and HGVs would need to be prioritised.
I did see an Instagram video where a farmer in the US had been told by his oil delivery guy that he was limited to 100 gallons for the next 30 days.
The experience of Covid may have given some governments a false sense of confidence about how manageable this will be. You can't fix real shortages with financial engineering and paying people to stay at home.
I think it's more that the initial assumption was that this would be ~fortnight of bombing like the last time, and so only temporary disruption.
Obviously we're into week five now, but the roof hasn't fallen in yet, so there's simple denial that it will get that much worse.
And then, we all know that Trump chickens out before too much damage is done to share prices, right? Any day now.
And then, politicians seem to generally lack the imagination or courage to take bold steps until it's too late, so they're just rabbits in the headlights now, waiting for the disaster to hit before they react. With the exception of truly useless governments - like the Irish government - who are wasting their money subsidising fuel prices. They're going to look really stupid when there are shortages and they've thrown money away encouraging people to buy more fuel.
We are seriously staring into the abyss, here
Is it time to brace?
I am verily afraid to inform the forum, that the much-afeared time has indeed come upon us, when we are all obliged by quite fateful global events, to...
BRACE
Freestyle into the 'pocalypse. Bracing is for weak, broken men
Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.
In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089
He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.
The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"
Included, or only included?
From page 25
"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained, mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools (10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."
Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.
From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.
Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.
Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"
Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.
I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.
Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.
So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.
Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.
The report is interesting, and worth reading.
And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.
13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.
Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.
So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.
(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)
My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there. I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.
However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically: - from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active - living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house - from families where education is in no way value - from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other. They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.
In these conditions education is challenging.
Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.
So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.
These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.
People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.
There's a contradiction between saying that "people are people" on the one hand, and decrying a large chunk of our own people as bigots on the other. If we're all basically the same, then the people you are embracing are just as capable of failing to live up to your expectations.
Look, I know he won the Trojan war but surely there is a better name for a defensive system, if only this name wasn't synonomous with weakness despite overall strength.
Greece has approved a €3 billion defense program to build “Achilles Shield,” a multi-layered air defense system designed to counter missiles and drones. The project is expected to include advanced Israeli technology, with Israeli firms likely playing a central role.
Hoping someone on here can help out - I thought only about 20% of the world's oil still went through Hormuz and Britain could get enough fuel for petrol from other sources.
I appreciate there may well be supply issues with diesel and that could cause a lot of other problems but are we likely to run out of petrol or simplyhave to function on 75-80% of current supply which will cause some issues especially if people (as they will once this seeps into the public domain) start panic buying?
Happy to once again wallow in the depths of my ignorance on these matters.
OK.
When you say 'only' 20%, that's an astonishing number. That means the world needs to reduce oil consumption by 20%. And gas consumption by -say- 10-15%.
Now... it is fortunate indeed that the US has chose now to attack. We're going into a seasonally weaker period for energy demand, and a seasonally stronger period for renewable production. But that doesn't stop the fact that reducing oil demand by 20% is a massive ask, that leads to all goods becoming much more expensive, and to a horrendous worldwide recession.
My customers in Arizona and Nevada are already being crushed. If the oil price were to double from here, it would be an absolute disaster for them.
Absolutely remarkable. "Iran is now earning nearly twice as much from oil sales each day as it did before American and Israeli bombs started falling on February 28th. It may be pummelled on the battlefield, but the regime is winning the energy war."
Hoping someone on here can help out - I thought only about 20% of the world's oil still went through Hormuz and Britain could get enough fuel for petrol from other sources.
I appreciate there may well be supply issues with diesel and that could cause a lot of other problems but are we likely to run out of petrol or simplyhave to function on 75-80% of current supply which will cause some issues especially if people (as they will once this seeps into the public domain) start panic buying?
Happy to once again wallow in the depths of my ignorance on these matters.
As @rcs1000 often says, refined hydrocarbon energy is fungible. So at the very least, if the world suddenly loses 20% of its energy supply, you can expect huge price spikes worldwide, for energy, which will very quickly lead to massive global inflation. This is not good, to put it mildly (and will hit America as much as anywhere)
PLUS there is all the nightmare of global fertiliser production being decimated, and much else - eg famine springing therefrom
Add in the imponderables. China relies on ME oil in a way the USA does not. It might come to Iran's aid and give America a brutal kicking to get them out
I did see an analysis which said that China had long recognised its reliance on ME oil was a strategic weakness and had prepared for this contingency.
Obviously it would be cheaper to have the flow of oil from the ME restored, but I think it can exercise strategic patience to an extent that most other countries cannot.
The only way Israel can govern the Gaza Strip without becoming an external oppressor of “another people” is to remove “the other people” from the confines of the Gaza Strip itself. https://x.com/Jerusalem_Post/status/2037794771058495738
Once all other solutions have been eliminated, then whatever is left ...
The good news is there are plenty of Muslim countries in the region people could go to. The bad news, is none of them want them.
So you’re saying this is the final solution to the Palestine question ?
No, I would not accept your implied gas chambers or executing of innocents.
But the movement of people has successfully ended many a conflict. Including the movement of Germans post WWII, and recently the exodus of Nagorno-Karabakh.
If it could be done peacefully, it might be the least worst option, considering the lack of stomach to eliminate Hamas.
I agree with the Op Ed in the Jerusalem Post. There's no future in Gaza for the Palestinians, and Israel cannot really have a deeply resentful armed enclave like that.
BUT the corollary to that must be that Gaza residents are moved to the West Bank, and Israeli settlers moved out, never to return. That way, the Israelis no longer have a Gaza problem, and the Palestinians no longer have a settler problem. Everyone gets something good, nobody gets everything they want.
Yes.
Unfortunately, the current Israeli government is dependent on the votes of the Settler parties. That means that Israeli government policy is to continue the creeping annexation/invasion of the West Bank, with the Palestinians being squeezed into ever smaller spaces.
Yes. And that should be opposed by the UK (not that we can do anything about it). But if I were PM I would gear UK policy in that direction. Recognise Palestine but only in the West Bank, not Gaza. Ostracise the settlers and their networks of support, but defend Israel's sovereignty within its legal borders. I think that would be a wise, distinctive and principled policy.
Your West Bank solution is noble, but would not work. After October 7, Israel will not tolerate a large anti-Semitic population within a few yards of Israel itself. Everything Israel has done since indicates that it is working towards a more drastic and final solution (sorry) to the Palestinian "problem"
There is no future for the Palestinians in Palestine. This is a dismal fact, but it is a fact. Ironically the crazy Trump had the best idea. Stuff their hungry mouths with gold and give them lovely land somewhere else, a distance from Jerusalem. Buy them condos and limos. Let the whole world pay as the whole world will benefit. Then develop Gaza into a new Dubai on the Med
Fundamentally your premise is:
Israeli Jews should have more rights that Palestinians.
And it also gives Israel a pass for its behaviour over the years; don't you think the creeping invasion of the West Bank increased hostility to Israel and to Jews? And don't you think there is so culpability because the Israeli government chose to fund Hamas, because Netanyahu wanted an implacable opponent?
No it's not, and I object to your construal
I made no moral case at all (and indeed, if asked, I would morally side with the Palestinians, quite probably)
I am stating realpolitik. Israel is a nuclear state. It is prepared to go to extreme lengths to prevent itself, and the Jewish people, from being wiped out. It has decided - I believe - that following October 7 it will no longer tolerate Palestinians who often want to slaughter Jews, to live anywhere near Israel. It is thus making Gaza (and less briskly the West Bank) uninhabitable for Palestinians
The Palestinians do not have nukes, and they don't have any Arab country willing to seriously fight Israel on their behalf. Ergo, unless they want to spend another 70 years in total misery, the best solution is for them to move
Utterly disgusting.
Forced repatriation from their homeland.
Why is this happening
NETANYAHU
Maybe it's time to move the Jewish State to a more suitable location.
Ethiopia might suit.
The industry and work ethic of Jewish people could revitalise Africa.
Leaving Palestine to the Palestinians.
Should Constantinople be given back to the Greeks?
Should we have acquiesced to the German occupation of Paris?
Are irrelevant analogies ever helpful?
I don't think it's irrelevant. The reason that people think there is somthing fundamentally illegitimate about Israel is that it's on 'Arab' land, but you could make a similar argument about European Turkey.
Personally I think Turkey (Erdogan's Turkey) should get a massive kick in the bollocks. They need to be shown firmly that the days of The Ottoman Empire are passed.
Any other imperial nostalgists that need a kick in the bollocks?
Remainers. Their longing for great power politics and insistence that the UK needs to be 'at the table', to 'retain world influence' is enough to keep psychoanalysts in work for years. It's deeply illiberal to want to be part of the big boys gang so we can tell people how to behave. We should be looking after the safety, and if we're lucky the prosperity of our own people.
One of the big vulnerabilities is that the Iran crisis is happening at the same time as a monster El-Niño is developing, and the Ukraine war continuing, so the risk of the world plunging into an absolute food deficit is the highest for a very long time.
The UK, as a trading nation with a large food deficit, is somewhat exposed.
I wonder if, in Trump's weird head, there's a little voice saying "America is self sufficient in fuel, China is not, if there's a massive war that shuts down 20% of global oil and gas and associated exports, America will be fine and China will be fucked"
I'd wager money at evens that there is such a voice. And it comes from his amygdala or somewhere, because his frontal lobe ability to think more than one move ahead is gone, and he doesn't see that there will be calamitous second and third order effects on the USA, as much as anywhere else
This podcast from earlier in the year anticipated a US-Iran conflict on the basis of the US seeking to control China's access to oil. It's not that outlandish given that it was the US strategy for containing Japan before WWII.
Past Present Future: Talking Geopolitics with Helen Thompson: The Weirdness of American Power Part 2
In 1940, the US economy was over four times larger than Japan's (with an equal disparity in industrial might). Even if you include the Japanese Empire, America was still more than three times the size of Japan. That's why Pearl Harbour was always a pretty reckless gamble, likely to lose (and many Japanese knew this)
Right now, China is LARGER than America by GDP PPP, and is definitely a greater industrial power, also bigger in terms of trade
China is too big for America to prevail, China has supplanted America in too many areas. If America really is trying to strangle China via energy supplies, it is lunacy (absent the possible exception of technological advances I cannot mention)
I wonder if, in Trump's weird head, there's a little voice saying "America is self sufficient in fuel, China is not, if there's a massive war that shuts down 20% of global oil and gas and associated exports, America will be fine and China will be fucked"
I'd wager money at evens that there is such a voice. And it comes from his amygdala or somewhere, because his frontal lobe ability to think more than one move ahead is gone, and he doesn't see that there will be calamitous second and third order effects on the USA, as much as anywhere else
Absolutely remarkable. "Iran is now earning nearly twice as much from oil sales each day as it did before American and Israeli bombs started falling on February 28th. It may be pummelled on the battlefield, but the regime is winning the energy war."
Though I'm sure they'd rather not have to rebuild 100s of homes, medical facilities, schools and bury 1000s of dead civilians. Well the majority of the population, the leaders getting rich off oil might be happy. Almost like the US has achieved the opposite of it's aims.
And this hollowing out of the civil service, to be replaced by political appointees, is Reform’s policy for the UK.
The public have had enough of experts, they want instinctive feelz.......until that hits reality, by when they still don't want experts, just someone else's instinctive feelz.
If you bothered yourself to acquire some actual knowledge rather than 'instinctive feelz', you would know that the civil service has a deliberate policy of moving people from department to department too frequently to develop any expertise. Meaning not only are civil servants obstructionist and ideologically captured, they are are also not experts. Bringing outsiders in from the world of business would probably improve expertise as well as getting things done.
That’s a simplification, at best. The civil service moves some people around, not to prevent them developing expertise, but to produce people with broad skills. However, other civil service posts are filled by experts who stay in one department/quango.
The Trump administration shows us what happens when you replace civil servants and existing expertise with political appointees.
No it doesn't - every US administration replaces hundreds of civil servants with political appointees - probably to a far greater degree than Farage plans. That's the US system. That's what Obama and Clinton did. And their country happens to be the biggest and most powerful in the world. So obviously our 'experts' aren't doing that well are they.
The US does have a different system, and one with far more political appointees. However, the Trump administration have gone beyond the usual, as for example with how it’s replaced health experts with friends of RFK Jnr. or how they’ve gutted the expertise in the state department and DoD. The result is plain to see. Yet Farage wants to emulate Trump!
By the way, I recall you recently saying you wanted to restore Britain’s constitutional norms. Are you now saying you want to rip them up?
Hoping someone on here can help out - I thought only about 20% of the world's oil still went through Hormuz and Britain could get enough fuel for petrol from other sources.
I appreciate there may well be supply issues with diesel and that could cause a lot of other problems but are we likely to run out of petrol or simplyhave to function on 75-80% of current supply which will cause some issues especially if people (as they will once this seeps into the public domain) start panic buying?
Happy to once again wallow in the depths of my ignorance on these matters.
OK.
When you say 'only' 20%, that's an astonishing number. That means the world needs to reduce oil consumption by 20%. And gas consumption by -say- 10-15%.
Now... it is fortunate indeed that the US has chose now to attack. We're going into a seasonally weaker period for energy demand, and a seasonally stronger period for renewable production. But that doesn't stop the fact that reducing oil demand by 20% is a massive ask, that leads to all goods becoming much more expensive, and to a horrendous worldwide recession.
My customers in Arizona and Nevada are already being crushed. If the oil price were to double from here, it would be an absolute disaster for them.
Yes, I realise surviving on 80% of our pre-existing oil supplies is going to cause extreme problems and as others have said lead to global recession if not worse.
There are the medium and long term impacts and then there are the short term ones. For many, it won't be economic growth or inflation in 2027 that will be the concern but whether there's going to be enough petrol to fill the car next week.
We will doubtless panic ourselves into a crisis as we did in 2022 and the map shown earlier "suggests" the cut off in oil supplies may be just after Easter but the question then is whether we have reserves or whether oil is obtainable (albeit at $150 per barrel or whatever) from elsewhere or whether the "crunch" in petrol and diesel (as well as gas, heating oil etc) will be then or later in April and into May and what happens beyond that as we face a new and challenging world.
If the Iranian allegations are right, and America is planning a broad ground offensive on Iran, allying with the Kurds, then fucking hell. God help us all. It has OBVIOUS TOTAL CATASTROPHE tattooed on its forehead
They might just be able to prevail, for a while, but as the Iranian mullahs fall - if they fall - they will take out every single oil refinery they can hit, within 1500 miles, and every tanker and every port and every airport, and the whole of Dubai and God help us
It will quite shortly lead to fairly apocalyptic scenes, worldwide
There will be fuel rationing you would think. The supply of diesel for tractors, trains and HGVs would need to be prioritised.
I did see an Instagram video where a farmer in the US had been told by his oil delivery guy that he was limited to 100 gallons for the next 30 days.
The experience of Covid may have given some governments a false sense of confidence about how manageable this will be. You can't fix real shortages with financial engineering and paying people to stay at home.
I think it's more that the initial assumption was that this would be ~fortnight of bombing like the last time, and so only temporary disruption.
Obviously we're into week five now, but the roof hasn't fallen in yet, so there's simple denial that it will get that much worse.
And then, we all know that Trump chickens out before too much damage is done to share prices, right? Any day now.
And then, politicians seem to generally lack the imagination or courage to take bold steps until it's too late, so they're just rabbits in the headlights now, waiting for the disaster to hit before they react. With the exception of truly useless governments - like the Irish government - who are wasting their money subsidising fuel prices. They're going to look really stupid when there are shortages and they've thrown money away encouraging people to buy more fuel.
What doesn't seem to have been factored in, is that this War now ends at a time of Iran's choosing, not Trump's. Unless it is invasion and occupation.
As I posted earlier in the thread, the Iranians want to toll the Straight. That looks like where we're heading.
Some discussion about this on the O&G traders threads. They reckon America needs to clear out if you want Hormuz open. As long as the Americans are there, bad stuff happens - some US and Israeli bad stuff; some Iranian bad stuff. Hormuz stays closed.
But if the Americans go, you know where you stand. You need to do a deal with Iran. $2 million bribe to the Iranians, a couple of dollars per barrel - it's a relatively minor business expense. Insurance and crew danger money up a bit, but all within the operating margins. O&G are used to buying off parties that get in their way. It's all normal. The main thing is the oil is now flowing.
It helps the Gulf States in the same way. Their illusions about Pax Americana fall away. They have no choice but deal with the Iranians, which reduces tensions.
Look, I know he won the Trojan war but surely there is a better name for a defensive system, if only this name wasn't synonomous with weakness despite overall strength.
Greece has approved a €3 billion defense program to build “Achilles Shield,” a multi-layered air defense system designed to counter missiles and drones. The project is expected to include advanced Israeli technology, with Israeli firms likely playing a central role.
Hoping someone on here can help out - I thought only about 20% of the world's oil still went through Hormuz and Britain could get enough fuel for petrol from other sources.
I appreciate there may well be supply issues with diesel and that could cause a lot of other problems but are we likely to run out of petrol or simplyhave to function on 75-80% of current supply which will cause some issues especially if people (as they will once this seeps into the public domain) start panic buying?
Happy to once again wallow in the depths of my ignorance on these matters.
OK.
When you say 'only' 20%, that's an astonishing number. That means the world needs to reduce oil consumption by 20%. And gas consumption by -say- 10-15%.
Now... it is fortunate indeed that the US has chose now to attack. We're going into a seasonally weaker period for energy demand, and a seasonally stronger period for renewable production. But that doesn't stop the fact that reducing oil demand by 20% is a massive ask, that leads to all goods becoming much more expensive, and to a horrendous worldwide recession.
My customers in Arizona and Nevada are already being crushed. If the oil price were to double from here, it would be an absolute disaster for them.
Yes, I realise surviving on 80% of our pre-existing oil supplies is going to cause extreme problems and as others have said lead to global recession if not worse.
There are the medium and long term impacts and then there are the short term ones. For many, it won't be economic growth or inflation in 2027 that will be the concern but whether there's going to be enough petrol to fill the car next week.
We will doubtless panic ourselves into a crisis as we did in 2022 and the map shown earlier "suggests" the cut off in oil supplies may be just after Easter but the question then is whether we have reserves or whether oil is obtainable (albeit at $150 per barrel or whatever) from elsewhere or whether the "crunch" in petrol and diesel (as well as gas, heating oil etc) will be then or later in April and into May and what happens beyond that as we face a new and challenging world.
TL;DR: a serious American ground invasion of Iran is the total global clusterfuck of clusterfucks
It almost certainly won't succeed, it almost certainly will cause worldwide turmoil
Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.
In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089
He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.
The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"
Included, or only included?
From page 25
"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained, mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools (10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."
Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.
From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.
Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.
Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"
Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.
I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.
Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.
So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.
Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.
The report is interesting, and worth reading.
And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.
13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.
Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.
So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.
(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)
My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there. I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.
However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically: - from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active - living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house - from families where education is in no way value - from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other. They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.
In these conditions education is challenging.
Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.
So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.
These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.
People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.
Our own gypsies seem to go counter to the children and grandchildren theory.
My cousin married someone of Roma heritage. She’s a successful big time lawyer. She doesn’t live in a caravan making tin cups.
Now, some of you might think that making tin cups is a greater contribution to society…
If the Iranian allegations are right, and America is planning a broad ground offensive on Iran, allying with the Kurds, then fucking hell. God help us all. It has OBVIOUS TOTAL CATASTROPHE tattooed on its forehead
They might just be able to prevail, for a while, but as the Iranian mullahs fall - if they fall - they will take out every single oil refinery they can hit, within 1500 miles, and every tanker and every port and every airport, and the whole of Dubai and God help us
It will quite shortly lead to fairly apocalyptic scenes, worldwide
There will be fuel rationing you would think. The supply of diesel for tractors, trains and HGVs would need to be prioritised.
I did see an Instagram video where a farmer in the US had been told by his oil delivery guy that he was limited to 100 gallons for the next 30 days.
The experience of Covid may have given some governments a false sense of confidence about how manageable this will be. You can't fix real shortages with financial engineering and paying people to stay at home.
I think it's more that the initial assumption was that this would be ~fortnight of bombing like the last time, and so only temporary disruption.
Obviously we're into week five now, but the roof hasn't fallen in yet, so there's simple denial that it will get that much worse.
And then, we all know that Trump chickens out before too much damage is done to share prices, right? Any day now.
And then, politicians seem to generally lack the imagination or courage to take bold steps until it's too late, so they're just rabbits in the headlights now, waiting for the disaster to hit before they react. With the exception of truly useless governments - like the Irish government - who are wasting their money subsidising fuel prices. They're going to look really stupid when there are shortages and they've thrown money away encouraging people to buy more fuel.
What doesn't seem to have been factored in, is that this War now ends at a time of Iran's choosing, not Trump's. Unless it is invasion and occupation.
As I posted earlier in the thread, the Iranians want to toll the Straight. That looks like where we're heading.
Some discussion about this on the O&G traders threads. They reckon America needs to clear out if you want Hormuz open. As long as the Americans are there, bad stuff happens - some US and Israeli bad stuff; some Iranian bad stuff. Hormuz stays closed.
But if the Americans go, you know where you stand. You need to do a deal with Iran. $2 million bribe to the Iranians, a couple of dollars per barrel - it's a relatively minor business expense. Insurance and crew danger money up a bit, but all within the operating margins. O&G are used to buying off parties that get in their way. It's all normal. The main thing is the oil is now flowing.
It helps the Gulf States in the same way. Their illusions about Pax Americana fall away. They have no choice but deal with the Iranians, which reduces tensions.
And the Hormuz tolls only have to be paid until the pipelines taking oil and gas to terminals elsewhere are built.
Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.
In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089
He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.
The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"
Included, or only included?
From page 25
"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained, mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools (10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."
Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.
From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.
Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.
Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"
Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.
I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.
Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.
So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.
Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.
The report is interesting, and worth reading.
And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.
13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.
Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.
So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.
(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)
My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there. I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.
However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically: - from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active - living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house - from families where education is in no way value - from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other. They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.
In these conditions education is challenging.
Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.
So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.
These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.
People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.
There's a contradiction between saying that "people are people" on the one hand, and decrying a large chunk of our own people as bigots on the other. If we're all basically the same, then the people you are embracing are just as capable of failing to live up to your expectations.
Prejudice is wrong. You shouldn’t pre-judge someone based on who their grandparents were. If someone demonstrates themself to be an ignorant bigot, it is fine and appropriate to treat them as such.
Hoping someone on here can help out - I thought only about 20% of the world's oil still went through Hormuz and Britain could get enough fuel for petrol from other sources.
I appreciate there may well be supply issues with diesel and that could cause a lot of other problems but are we likely to run out of petrol or simplyhave to function on 75-80% of current supply which will cause some issues especially if people (as they will once this seeps into the public domain) start panic buying?
Happy to once again wallow in the depths of my ignorance on these matters.
OK.
When you say 'only' 20%, that's an astonishing number. That means the world needs to reduce oil consumption by 20%. And gas consumption by -say- 10-15%.
Now... it is fortunate indeed that the US has chose now to attack. We're going into a seasonally weaker period for energy demand, and a seasonally stronger period for renewable production. But that doesn't stop the fact that reducing oil demand by 20% is a massive ask, that leads to all goods becoming much more expensive, and to a horrendous worldwide recession.
My customers in Arizona and Nevada are already being crushed. If the oil price were to double from here, it would be an absolute disaster for them.
Yes, I realise surviving on 80% of our pre-existing oil supplies is going to cause extreme problems and as others have said lead to global recession if not worse.
There are the medium and long term impacts and then there are the short term ones. For many, it won't be economic growth or inflation in 2027 that will be the concern but whether there's going to be enough petrol to fill the car next week.
We will doubtless panic ourselves into a crisis as we did in 2022 and the map shown earlier "suggests" the cut off in oil supplies may be just after Easter but the question then is whether we have reserves or whether oil is obtainable (albeit at $150 per barrel or whatever) from elsewhere or whether the "crunch" in petrol and diesel (as well as gas, heating oil etc) will be then or later in April and into May and what happens beyond that as we face a new and challenging world.
I don't think it will be a case of "panicking ourselves into a crisis", there will literally be a crisis
Indeed I am surprised, to an extent, that we haven't seen massive petrol station queues in the UK. Yet
It is either a credit to our continuing national stoicism or a comment on the relative inability of most people to extrapolate events. Or both
The only way Israel can govern the Gaza Strip without becoming an external oppressor of “another people” is to remove “the other people” from the confines of the Gaza Strip itself. https://x.com/Jerusalem_Post/status/2037794771058495738
Once all other solutions have been eliminated, then whatever is left ...
The good news is there are plenty of Muslim countries in the region people could go to. The bad news, is none of them want them.
So you’re saying this is the final solution to the Palestine question ?
No, I would not accept your implied gas chambers or executing of innocents.
But the movement of people has successfully ended many a conflict. Including the movement of Germans post WWII, and recently the exodus of Nagorno-Karabakh.
If it could be done peacefully, it might be the least worst option, considering the lack of stomach to eliminate Hamas.
I agree with the Op Ed in the Jerusalem Post. There's no future in Gaza for the Palestinians, and Israel cannot really have a deeply resentful armed enclave like that.
BUT the corollary to that must be that Gaza residents are moved to the West Bank, and Israeli settlers moved out, never to return. That way, the Israelis no longer have a Gaza problem, and the Palestinians no longer have a settler problem. Everyone gets something good, nobody gets everything they want.
Yes.
Unfortunately, the current Israeli government is dependent on the votes of the Settler parties. That means that Israeli government policy is to continue the creeping annexation/invasion of the West Bank, with the Palestinians being squeezed into ever smaller spaces.
Yes. And that should be opposed by the UK (not that we can do anything about it). But if I were PM I would gear UK policy in that direction. Recognise Palestine but only in the West Bank, not Gaza. Ostracise the settlers and their networks of support, but defend Israel's sovereignty within its legal borders. I think that would be a wise, distinctive and principled policy.
Your West Bank solution is noble, but would not work. After October 7, Israel will not tolerate a large anti-Semitic population within a few yards of Israel itself. Everything Israel has done since indicates that it is working towards a more drastic and final solution (sorry) to the Palestinian "problem"
There is no future for the Palestinians in Palestine. This is a dismal fact, but it is a fact. Ironically the crazy Trump had the best idea. Stuff their hungry mouths with gold and give them lovely land somewhere else, a distance from Jerusalem. Buy them condos and limos. Let the whole world pay as the whole world will benefit. Then develop Gaza into a new Dubai on the Med
Fundamentally your premise is:
Israeli Jews should have more rights that Palestinians.
And it also gives Israel a pass for its behaviour over the years; don't you think the creeping invasion of the West Bank increased hostility to Israel and to Jews? And don't you think there is so culpability because the Israeli government chose to fund Hamas, because Netanyahu wanted an implacable opponent?
No it's not, and I object to your construal
I made no moral case at all (and indeed, if asked, I would morally side with the Palestinians, quite probably)
I am stating realpolitik. Israel is a nuclear state. It is prepared to go to extreme lengths to prevent itself, and the Jewish people, from being wiped out. It has decided - I believe - that following October 7 it will no longer tolerate Palestinians who often want to slaughter Jews, to live anywhere near Israel. It is thus making Gaza (and less briskly the West Bank) uninhabitable for Palestinians
The Palestinians do not have nukes, and they don't have any Arab country willing to seriously fight Israel on their behalf. Ergo, unless they want to spend another 70 years in total misery, the best solution is for them to move
Utterly disgusting.
Forced repatriation from their homeland.
Why is this happening
NETANYAHU
Maybe it's time to move the Jewish State to a more suitable location.
Ethiopia might suit.
The industry and work ethic of Jewish people could revitalise Africa.
Leaving Palestine to the Palestinians.
Should Constantinople be given back to the Greeks?
Should we have acquiesced to the German occupation of Paris?
Are irrelevant analogies ever helpful?
I don't think it's irrelevant. The reason that people think there is somthing fundamentally illegitimate about Israel is that it's on 'Arab' land, but you could make a similar argument about European Turkey.
Personally I think Turkey (Erdogan's Turkey) should get a massive kick in the bollocks. They need to be shown firmly that the days of The Ottoman Empire are passed.
Any other imperial nostalgists that need a kick in the bollocks?
Remainers. Their longing for great power politics and insistence that the UK needs to be 'at the table', to 'retain world influence' is enough to keep psychoanalysts in work for years. It's deeply illiberal to want to be part of the big boys gang so we can tell people how to behave. We should be looking after the safety, and if we're lucky the prosperity of our own people.
I never saw Remainerdom as an imperial project but if you say so. Great though to see you on board with getting out of the big boys’ gang of the UK and concentrating on the safety and prosperity of our own people. Or our ain folk as we say up here.
If the Iranian allegations are right, and America is planning a broad ground offensive on Iran, allying with the Kurds, then fucking hell. God help us all. It has OBVIOUS TOTAL CATASTROPHE tattooed on its forehead
They might just be able to prevail, for a while, but as the Iranian mullahs fall - if they fall - they will take out every single oil refinery they can hit, within 1500 miles, and every tanker and every port and every airport, and the whole of Dubai and God help us
It will quite shortly lead to fairly apocalyptic scenes, worldwide
There will be fuel rationing you would think. The supply of diesel for tractors, trains and HGVs would need to be prioritised.
I did see an Instagram video where a farmer in the US had been told by his oil delivery guy that he was limited to 100 gallons for the next 30 days.
The experience of Covid may have given some governments a false sense of confidence about how manageable this will be. You can't fix real shortages with financial engineering and paying people to stay at home.
I think it's more that the initial assumption was that this would be ~fortnight of bombing like the last time, and so only temporary disruption.
Obviously we're into week five now, but the roof hasn't fallen in yet, so there's simple denial that it will get that much worse.
And then, we all know that Trump chickens out before too much damage is done to share prices, right? Any day now.
And then, politicians seem to generally lack the imagination or courage to take bold steps until it's too late, so they're just rabbits in the headlights now, waiting for the disaster to hit before they react. With the exception of truly useless governments - like the Irish government - who are wasting their money subsidising fuel prices. They're going to look really stupid when there are shortages and they've thrown money away encouraging people to buy more fuel.
What doesn't seem to have been factored in, is that this War now ends at a time of Iran's choosing, not Trump's. Unless it is invasion and occupation.
As I posted earlier in the thread, the Iranians want to toll the Straight. That looks like where we're heading.
Some discussion about this on the O&G traders threads. They reckon America needs to clear out if you want Hormuz open. As long as the Americans are there, bad stuff happens - some US and Israeli bad stuff; some Iranian bad stuff. Hormuz stays closed.
But if the Americans go, you know where you stand. You need to do a deal with Iran. $2 million bribe to the Iranians, a couple of dollars per barrel - it's a relatively minor business expense. Insurance and crew danger money up a bit, but all within the operating margins. O&G are used to buying off parties that get in their way. It's all normal. The main thing is the oil is now flowing.
It helps the Gulf States in the same way. Their illusions about Pax Americana fall away. They have no choice but deal with the Iranians, which reduces tensions.
And the Hormuz tolls only have to be paid until the pipelines taking oil and gas to terminals elsewhere are built.
AIUI, and on this (unlike comparisons between Ukraine and Gaza) I am happy to be schooled by @rcs1000 and @Richard_Tyndall - it takes more than a few weeks to "build a pipeline linking continents"
Which is why the inception then demolition of Nordstream was such big news
Hoping someone on here can help out - I thought only about 20% of the world's oil still went through Hormuz and Britain could get enough fuel for petrol from other sources.
I appreciate there may well be supply issues with diesel and that could cause a lot of other problems but are we likely to run out of petrol or simplyhave to function on 75-80% of current supply which will cause some issues especially if people (as they will once this seeps into the public domain) start panic buying?
Happy to once again wallow in the depths of my ignorance on these matters.
OK.
When you say 'only' 20%, that's an astonishing number. That means the world needs to reduce oil consumption by 20%. And gas consumption by -say- 10-15%.
Now... it is fortunate indeed that the US has chose now to attack. We're going into a seasonally weaker period for energy demand, and a seasonally stronger period for renewable production. But that doesn't stop the fact that reducing oil demand by 20% is a massive ask, that leads to all goods becoming much more expensive, and to a horrendous worldwide recession.
My customers in Arizona and Nevada are already being crushed. If the oil price were to double from here, it would be an absolute disaster for them.
Yes, I realise surviving on 80% of our pre-existing oil supplies is going to cause extreme problems and as others have said lead to global recession if not worse.
There are the medium and long term impacts and then there are the short term ones. For many, it won't be economic growth or inflation in 2027 that will be the concern but whether there's going to be enough petrol to fill the car next week.
We will doubtless panic ourselves into a crisis as we did in 2022 and the map shown earlier "suggests" the cut off in oil supplies may be just after Easter but the question then is whether we have reserves or whether oil is obtainable (albeit at $150 per barrel or whatever) from elsewhere or whether the "crunch" in petrol and diesel (as well as gas, heating oil etc) will be then or later in April and into May and what happens beyond that as we face a new and challenging world.
I don't think it will be a case of "panicking ourselves into a crisis", there will literally be a crisis
Indeed I am surprised, to an extent, that we haven't seen massive petrol station queues in the UK. Yet
It is either a credit to our continuing national stoicism or a comment on the relative inability of most people to extrapolate events. Or both
The very high prices will deter people from rushing to fill up their tanks.
Hoping someone on here can help out - I thought only about 20% of the world's oil still went through Hormuz and Britain could get enough fuel for petrol from other sources.
I appreciate there may well be supply issues with diesel and that could cause a lot of other problems but are we likely to run out of petrol or simplyhave to function on 75-80% of current supply which will cause some issues especially if people (as they will once this seeps into the public domain) start panic buying?
Happy to once again wallow in the depths of my ignorance on these matters.
OK.
When you say 'only' 20%, that's an astonishing number. That means the world needs to reduce oil consumption by 20%. And gas consumption by -say- 10-15%.
Now... it is fortunate indeed that the US has chose now to attack. We're going into a seasonally weaker period for energy demand, and a seasonally stronger period for renewable production. But that doesn't stop the fact that reducing oil demand by 20% is a massive ask, that leads to all goods becoming much more expensive, and to a horrendous worldwide recession.
My customers in Arizona and Nevada are already being crushed. If the oil price were to double from here, it would be an absolute disaster for them.
Yes, I realise surviving on 80% of our pre-existing oil supplies is going to cause extreme problems and as others have said lead to global recession if not worse.
There are the medium and long term impacts and then there are the short term ones. For many, it won't be economic growth or inflation in 2027 that will be the concern but whether there's going to be enough petrol to fill the car next week.
We will doubtless panic ourselves into a crisis as we did in 2022 and the map shown earlier "suggests" the cut off in oil supplies may be just after Easter but the question then is whether we have reserves or whether oil is obtainable (albeit at $150 per barrel or whatever) from elsewhere or whether the "crunch" in petrol and diesel (as well as gas, heating oil etc) will be then or later in April and into May and what happens beyond that as we face a new and challenging world.
I don't think it will be a case of "panicking ourselves into a crisis", there will literally be a crisis
Indeed I am surprised, to an extent, that we haven't seen massive petrol station queues in the UK. Yet
It is either a credit to our continuing national stoicism or a comment on the relative inability of most people to extrapolate events. Or both
The very high prices will deter people from rushing to fill up their tanks.
Hoping someone on here can help out - I thought only about 20% of the world's oil still went through Hormuz and Britain could get enough fuel for petrol from other sources.
I appreciate there may well be supply issues with diesel and that could cause a lot of other problems but are we likely to run out of petrol or simplyhave to function on 75-80% of current supply which will cause some issues especially if people (as they will once this seeps into the public domain) start panic buying?
Happy to once again wallow in the depths of my ignorance on these matters.
OK.
When you say 'only' 20%, that's an astonishing number. That means the world needs to reduce oil consumption by 20%. And gas consumption by -say- 10-15%.
Now... it is fortunate indeed that the US has chose now to attack. We're going into a seasonally weaker period for energy demand, and a seasonally stronger period for renewable production. But that doesn't stop the fact that reducing oil demand by 20% is a massive ask, that leads to all goods becoming much more expensive, and to a horrendous worldwide recession.
My customers in Arizona and Nevada are already being crushed. If the oil price were to double from here, it would be an absolute disaster for them.
Yes, I realise surviving on 80% of our pre-existing oil supplies is going to cause extreme problems and as others have said lead to global recession if not worse.
There are the medium and long term impacts and then there are the short term ones. For many, it won't be economic growth or inflation in 2027 that will be the concern but whether there's going to be enough petrol to fill the car next week.
We will doubtless panic ourselves into a crisis as we did in 2022 and the map shown earlier "suggests" the cut off in oil supplies may be just after Easter but the question then is whether we have reserves or whether oil is obtainable (albeit at $150 per barrel or whatever) from elsewhere or whether the "crunch" in petrol and diesel (as well as gas, heating oil etc) will be then or later in April and into May and what happens beyond that as we face a new and challenging world.
TL;DR: a serious American ground invasion of Iran is the total global clusterfuck of clusterfucks
It almost certainly won't succeed, it almost certainly will cause worldwide turmoil
Honestly, who knows. I am of the mind to think it will make Vietnam look like a ridiculously successful and short US intervention but actually who knows?
What we can be sure of is it a bloody mental idea and has no actual strategic end goal.
If the Iranian allegations are right, and America is planning a broad ground offensive on Iran, allying with the Kurds, then fucking hell. God help us all. It has OBVIOUS TOTAL CATASTROPHE tattooed on its forehead
They might just be able to prevail, for a while, but as the Iranian mullahs fall - if they fall - they will take out every single oil refinery they can hit, within 1500 miles, and every tanker and every port and every airport, and the whole of Dubai and God help us
It will quite shortly lead to fairly apocalyptic scenes, worldwide
There will be fuel rationing you would think. The supply of diesel for tractors, trains and HGVs would need to be prioritised.
I did see an Instagram video where a farmer in the US had been told by his oil delivery guy that he was limited to 100 gallons for the next 30 days.
The experience of Covid may have given some governments a false sense of confidence about how manageable this will be. You can't fix real shortages with financial engineering and paying people to stay at home.
I think it's more that the initial assumption was that this would be ~fortnight of bombing like the last time, and so only temporary disruption.
Obviously we're into week five now, but the roof hasn't fallen in yet, so there's simple denial that it will get that much worse.
And then, we all know that Trump chickens out before too much damage is done to share prices, right? Any day now.
And then, politicians seem to generally lack the imagination or courage to take bold steps until it's too late, so they're just rabbits in the headlights now, waiting for the disaster to hit before they react. With the exception of truly useless governments - like the Irish government - who are wasting their money subsidising fuel prices. They're going to look really stupid when there are shortages and they've thrown money away encouraging people to buy more fuel.
What doesn't seem to have been factored in, is that this War now ends at a time of Iran's choosing, not Trump's. Unless it is invasion and occupation.
As I posted earlier in the thread, the Iranians want to toll the Straight. That looks like where we're heading.
Some discussion about this on the O&G traders threads. They reckon America needs to clear out if you want Hormuz open. As long as the Americans are there, bad stuff happens - some US and Israeli bad stuff; some Iranian bad stuff. Hormuz stays closed.
But if the Americans go, you know where you stand. You need to do a deal with Iran. $2 million bribe to the Iranians, a couple of dollars per barrel - it's a relatively minor business expense. Insurance and crew danger money up a bit, but all within the operating margins. O&G are used to buying off parties that get in their way. It's all normal. The main thing is the oil is now flowing.
It helps the Gulf States in the same way. Their illusions about Pax Americana fall away. They have no choice but deal with the Iranians, which reduces tensions.
And the Hormuz tolls only have to be paid until the pipelines taking oil and gas to terminals elsewhere are built.
AIUI, and on this (unlike comparisons between Ukraine and Gaza) I am happy to be schooled by @rcs1000 and @Richard_Tyndall - it takes more than a few weeks to "build a pipeline linking continents"
Which is why the inception then demolition of Nordstream was such big news
Sure. I didn't say anything about weeks.
It's still the case that tolls to export oil via the Strait of Hormuz will not be paid in the 2030s. So although they would be a definite loss as a result of this war, they would only be a temporary loss.
The only way Israel can govern the Gaza Strip without becoming an external oppressor of “another people” is to remove “the other people” from the confines of the Gaza Strip itself. https://x.com/Jerusalem_Post/status/2037794771058495738
Once all other solutions have been eliminated, then whatever is left ...
The good news is there are plenty of Muslim countries in the region people could go to. The bad news, is none of them want them.
So you’re saying this is the final solution to the Palestine question ?
No, I would not accept your implied gas chambers or executing of innocents.
But the movement of people has successfully ended many a conflict. Including the movement of Germans post WWII, and recently the exodus of Nagorno-Karabakh.
If it could be done peacefully, it might be the least worst option, considering the lack of stomach to eliminate Hamas.
I agree. If the settlers in the West Bank would agree to move to Gaza (very nice seaside location) and the Gazaians move to the West Bank to live unmolested with their brother Palestinians, it would be a good solution.
That is not a good solution. Why should the Palestinians give up more territory? A good solution is Israel withdrawing from Gaza, the West Bank, Syria and Lebanon.
It's not the perfect solution but often the perfect is the enemy of the good.
If the Iranian allegations are right, and America is planning a broad ground offensive on Iran, allying with the Kurds, then fucking hell. God help us all. It has OBVIOUS TOTAL CATASTROPHE tattooed on its forehead
They might just be able to prevail, for a while, but as the Iranian mullahs fall - if they fall - they will take out every single oil refinery they can hit, within 1500 miles, and every tanker and every port and every airport, and the whole of Dubai and God help us
It will quite shortly lead to fairly apocalyptic scenes, worldwide
There will be fuel rationing you would think. The supply of diesel for tractors, trains and HGVs would need to be prioritised.
I did see an Instagram video where a farmer in the US had been told by his oil delivery guy that he was limited to 100 gallons for the next 30 days.
The experience of Covid may have given some governments a false sense of confidence about how manageable this will be. You can't fix real shortages with financial engineering and paying people to stay at home.
I think it's more that the initial assumption was that this would be ~fortnight of bombing like the last time, and so only temporary disruption.
Obviously we're into week five now, but the roof hasn't fallen in yet, so there's simple denial that it will get that much worse.
And then, we all know that Trump chickens out before too much damage is done to share prices, right? Any day now.
And then, politicians seem to generally lack the imagination or courage to take bold steps until it's too late, so they're just rabbits in the headlights now, waiting for the disaster to hit before they react. With the exception of truly useless governments - like the Irish government - who are wasting their money subsidising fuel prices. They're going to look really stupid when there are shortages and they've thrown money away encouraging people to buy more fuel.
What doesn't seem to have been factored in, is that this War now ends at a time of Iran's choosing, not Trump's. Unless it is invasion and occupation.
As I posted earlier in the thread, the Iranians want to toll the Straight. That looks like where we're heading.
Some discussion about this on the O&G traders threads. They reckon America needs to clear out if you want Hormuz open. As long as the Americans are there, bad stuff happens - some US and Israeli bad stuff; some Iranian bad stuff. Hormuz stays closed.
But if the Americans go, you know where you stand. You need to do a deal with Iran. $2 million bribe to the Iranians, a couple of dollars per barrel - it's a relatively minor business expense. Insurance and crew danger money up a bit, but all within the operating margins. O&G are used to buying off parties that get in their way. It's all normal. The main thing is the oil is now flowing.
It helps the Gulf States in the same way. Their illusions about Pax Americana fall away. They have no choice but deal with the Iranians, which reduces tensions.
And the Hormuz tolls only have to be paid until the pipelines taking oil and gas to terminals elsewhere are built.
You won't pipe refined fuel or fertilizer and you won't truck it either. You might build pipelines and new port terminals for crude oil and LNG. But I'm guessing it won't be cheaper than shipping through Hormuz even with Iranian tolls and some of those terminals are still vulnerable to Iranian missiles as we're seeing with Fujairah and Salalah on the Gulf of Oman.
Hoping someone on here can help out - I thought only about 20% of the world's oil still went through Hormuz and Britain could get enough fuel for petrol from other sources.
I appreciate there may well be supply issues with diesel and that could cause a lot of other problems but are we likely to run out of petrol or simplyhave to function on 75-80% of current supply which will cause some issues especially if people (as they will once this seeps into the public domain) start panic buying?
Happy to once again wallow in the depths of my ignorance on these matters.
OK.
When you say 'only' 20%, that's an astonishing number. That means the world needs to reduce oil consumption by 20%. And gas consumption by -say- 10-15%.
Now... it is fortunate indeed that the US has chose now to attack. We're going into a seasonally weaker period for energy demand, and a seasonally stronger period for renewable production. But that doesn't stop the fact that reducing oil demand by 20% is a massive ask, that leads to all goods becoming much more expensive, and to a horrendous worldwide recession.
My customers in Arizona and Nevada are already being crushed. If the oil price were to double from here, it would be an absolute disaster for them.
Yes, I realise surviving on 80% of our pre-existing oil supplies is going to cause extreme problems and as others have said lead to global recession if not worse.
There are the medium and long term impacts and then there are the short term ones. For many, it won't be economic growth or inflation in 2027 that will be the concern but whether there's going to be enough petrol to fill the car next week.
We will doubtless panic ourselves into a crisis as we did in 2022 and the map shown earlier "suggests" the cut off in oil supplies may be just after Easter but the question then is whether we have reserves or whether oil is obtainable (albeit at $150 per barrel or whatever) from elsewhere or whether the "crunch" in petrol and diesel (as well as gas, heating oil etc) will be then or later in April and into May and what happens beyond that as we face a new and challenging world.
I don't think it will be a case of "panicking ourselves into a crisis", there will literally be a crisis
Indeed I am surprised, to an extent, that we haven't seen massive petrol station queues in the UK. Yet
It is either a credit to our continuing national stoicism or a comment on the relative inability of most people to extrapolate events. Or both
The very high prices will deter people from rushing to fill up their tanks.
lol
isn't fuel one of economics 101 inelastic demand types?
Hoping someone on here can help out - I thought only about 20% of the world's oil still went through Hormuz and Britain could get enough fuel for petrol from other sources.
I appreciate there may well be supply issues with diesel and that could cause a lot of other problems but are we likely to run out of petrol or simplyhave to function on 75-80% of current supply which will cause some issues especially if people (as they will once this seeps into the public domain) start panic buying?
Happy to once again wallow in the depths of my ignorance on these matters.
OK.
When you say 'only' 20%, that's an astonishing number. That means the world needs to reduce oil consumption by 20%. And gas consumption by -say- 10-15%.
Now... it is fortunate indeed that the US has chose now to attack. We're going into a seasonally weaker period for energy demand, and a seasonally stronger period for renewable production. But that doesn't stop the fact that reducing oil demand by 20% is a massive ask, that leads to all goods becoming much more expensive, and to a horrendous worldwide recession.
My customers in Arizona and Nevada are already being crushed. If the oil price were to double from here, it would be an absolute disaster for them.
Yes, I realise surviving on 80% of our pre-existing oil supplies is going to cause extreme problems and as others have said lead to global recession if not worse.
There are the medium and long term impacts and then there are the short term ones. For many, it won't be economic growth or inflation in 2027 that will be the concern but whether there's going to be enough petrol to fill the car next week.
We will doubtless panic ourselves into a crisis as we did in 2022 and the map shown earlier "suggests" the cut off in oil supplies may be just after Easter but the question then is whether we have reserves or whether oil is obtainable (albeit at $150 per barrel or whatever) from elsewhere or whether the "crunch" in petrol and diesel (as well as gas, heating oil etc) will be then or later in April and into May and what happens beyond that as we face a new and challenging world.
TL;DR: a serious American ground invasion of Iran is the total global clusterfuck of clusterfucks
It almost certainly won't succeed, it almost certainly will cause worldwide turmoil
Honestly, who knows. I am of the mind to think it will make Vietnam look like a ridiculously successful and short US intervention but actually who knows?
What we can be sure of is it a bloody mental idea and has no actual strategic end goal.
We can pray that the Israelis in their djinn-like, Hezbollah-pager-exploding genius, have some fantastic plan that will enable the US and Israel to overthrow the mullahs with just 10,000 US Marines and a lot of bombs, without Iran reacting by destroying all energy infra within missile range, but I err on the pessimistic side and think
1. Israel just wants to see Iran fucked up
and
2. The Americans have been suckered by the Israelis into all this, hence J D Vance angrily belling Tel Aviv to say "you promised us Iranian regime change, you lying fucks"
Hoping someone on here can help out - I thought only about 20% of the world's oil still went through Hormuz and Britain could get enough fuel for petrol from other sources.
I appreciate there may well be supply issues with diesel and that could cause a lot of other problems but are we likely to run out of petrol or simplyhave to function on 75-80% of current supply which will cause some issues especially if people (as they will once this seeps into the public domain) start panic buying?
Happy to once again wallow in the depths of my ignorance on these matters.
OK.
When you say 'only' 20%, that's an astonishing number. That means the world needs to reduce oil consumption by 20%. And gas consumption by -say- 10-15%.
Now... it is fortunate indeed that the US has chose now to attack. We're going into a seasonally weaker period for energy demand, and a seasonally stronger period for renewable production. But that doesn't stop the fact that reducing oil demand by 20% is a massive ask, that leads to all goods becoming much more expensive, and to a horrendous worldwide recession.
My customers in Arizona and Nevada are already being crushed. If the oil price were to double from here, it would be an absolute disaster for them.
Yes, I realise surviving on 80% of our pre-existing oil supplies is going to cause extreme problems and as others have said lead to global recession if not worse.
There are the medium and long term impacts and then there are the short term ones. For many, it won't be economic growth or inflation in 2027 that will be the concern but whether there's going to be enough petrol to fill the car next week.
We will doubtless panic ourselves into a crisis as we did in 2022 and the map shown earlier "suggests" the cut off in oil supplies may be just after Easter but the question then is whether we have reserves or whether oil is obtainable (albeit at $150 per barrel or whatever) from elsewhere or whether the "crunch" in petrol and diesel (as well as gas, heating oil etc) will be then or later in April and into May and what happens beyond that as we face a new and challenging world.
I don't think it will be a case of "panicking ourselves into a crisis", there will literally be a crisis
Indeed I am surprised, to an extent, that we haven't seen massive petrol station queues in the UK. Yet
It is either a credit to our continuing national stoicism or a comment on the relative inability of most people to extrapolate events. Or both
The very high prices will deter people from rushing to fill up their tanks.
lol
isn't fuel one of economics 101 inelastic demand types?
Yes. But loss aversion will mean that people won't want to risk buying at the peak of fuel prices and throw away £20, so the high prices will act as a slight dampening effect to fuel panic-buying.
The only way Israel can govern the Gaza Strip without becoming an external oppressor of “another people” is to remove “the other people” from the confines of the Gaza Strip itself. https://x.com/Jerusalem_Post/status/2037794771058495738
Once all other solutions have been eliminated, then whatever is left ...
The good news is there are plenty of Muslim countries in the region people could go to. The bad news, is none of them want them.
So you’re saying this is the final solution to the Palestine question ?
No, I would not accept your implied gas chambers or executing of innocents.
But the movement of people has successfully ended many a conflict. Including the movement of Germans post WWII, and recently the exodus of Nagorno-Karabakh.
If it could be done peacefully, it might be the least worst option, considering the lack of stomach to eliminate Hamas.
I agree. If the settlers in the West Bank would agree to move to Gaza (very nice seaside location) and the Gazaians move to the West Bank to live unmolested with their brother Palestinians, it would be a good solution.
That is not a good solution. Why should the Palestinians give up more territory? A good solution is Israel withdrawing from Gaza, the West Bank, Syria and Lebanon.
It's not the perfect solution but often the perfect is the enemy of the good.
Saying it’s not a perfect solution is an understatement. It would be opposed by the Palestinians and the Israelis. If there’s a solution where you give more Palestinian territory to Israel in return for a lasting peace, it will be around giving Israel a chunk of the West Bank, not uprooting all the settlers AND all the Gazans.
Hoping someone on here can help out - I thought only about 20% of the world's oil still went through Hormuz and Britain could get enough fuel for petrol from other sources.
I appreciate there may well be supply issues with diesel and that could cause a lot of other problems but are we likely to run out of petrol or simplyhave to function on 75-80% of current supply which will cause some issues especially if people (as they will once this seeps into the public domain) start panic buying?
Happy to once again wallow in the depths of my ignorance on these matters.
OK.
When you say 'only' 20%, that's an astonishing number. That means the world needs to reduce oil consumption by 20%. And gas consumption by -say- 10-15%.
Now... it is fortunate indeed that the US has chose now to attack. We're going into a seasonally weaker period for energy demand, and a seasonally stronger period for renewable production. But that doesn't stop the fact that reducing oil demand by 20% is a massive ask, that leads to all goods becoming much more expensive, and to a horrendous worldwide recession.
My customers in Arizona and Nevada are already being crushed. If the oil price were to double from here, it would be an absolute disaster for them.
Yes, I realise surviving on 80% of our pre-existing oil supplies is going to cause extreme problems and as others have said lead to global recession if not worse.
There are the medium and long term impacts and then there are the short term ones. For many, it won't be economic growth or inflation in 2027 that will be the concern but whether there's going to be enough petrol to fill the car next week.
We will doubtless panic ourselves into a crisis as we did in 2022 and the map shown earlier "suggests" the cut off in oil supplies may be just after Easter but the question then is whether we have reserves or whether oil is obtainable (albeit at $150 per barrel or whatever) from elsewhere or whether the "crunch" in petrol and diesel (as well as gas, heating oil etc) will be then or later in April and into May and what happens beyond that as we face a new and challenging world.
TL;DR: a serious American ground invasion of Iran is the total global clusterfuck of clusterfucks
It almost certainly won't succeed, it almost certainly will cause worldwide turmoil
Honestly, who knows. I am of the mind to think it will make Vietnam look like a ridiculously successful and short US intervention but actually who knows?
What we can be sure of is it a bloody mental idea and has no actual strategic end goal.
We can pray that the Israelis in their djinn-like, Hezbollah-pager-exploding genius, have some fantastic plan that will enable the US and Israel to overthrow the mullahs with just 10,000 US Marines and a lot of bombs, without Iran reacting by destroying all energy infra within missile range, but I err on the pessimistic side and think
1. Israel just wants to see Iran fucked up
and
2. The Americans have been suckered by the Israelis into all this, hence J D Vance angrily belling Tel Aviv to say "you promised us Iranian regime change, you lying fucks"
Thoughts and prayers to Vance who must be finding it a tad difficult to sleep at night given the number one thing he raged and campaigned against is now happening and may well make Iraq look like a tea party.
Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.
In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089
He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.
The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"
Included, or only included?
From page 25
"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained, mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools (10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."
Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.
From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.
Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.
Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"
Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.
I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.
Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.
So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.
Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.
The report is interesting, and worth reading.
And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.
13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.
Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.
So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.
(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)
My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there. I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.
However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically: - from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active - living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house - from families where education is in no way value - from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other. They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.
In these conditions education is challenging.
Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.
So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.
These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.
People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.
You live in London, don't you? I don't have too much recent first hand experience of London, but from what I understand I can see how you arrive at your conclusion - the melting pot there is more common than the ghetto. But across much of the north, things are not like that. There isn't a lovely blending of races all eventually taking on British mores and values*, there are entirely separate subcultures which do not integrate. I am pessimistic about integration. Different levels of pessimism, mind. The majority will be fine. But there are enough who will not be fine that I think a belief in integration to solveour problems is misplaced. The HK, Carribeans and Eastern Europeans will integrate quickly. The West Africans and Indians within a generation or two. Some others may not integrate but might thrive separately. And some, like the Roma, will neither integrate nor thrive. FWIW, I spent some time last week helping Eritrean immigrants trying to put CVs together. On one level, it was encouraging that they were at least trying. But they were so far from employability - like not actually speaking English (much use was made of Google translate) - that it felt pretty hopeless. Still, we tried.
*Actually, there are melting pots - areas like the one I live in - but more common are the paralell and separate cultures.
One of the big vulnerabilities is that the Iran crisis is happening at the same time as a monster El-Niño is developing, and the Ukraine war continuing, so the risk of the world plunging into an absolute food deficit is the highest for a very long time.
The UK, as a trading nation with a large food deficit, is somewhat exposed.
Strangely unremarked in the news so far. We are looking at the most power Westerly Wind Burst for at least a couple if decades this week. We were already on course for a significant El Niño. This is going to take things beyond.
Global temperatures have been rising rapidly despite cold phase La Niña conditions in the past 2-3 years. This will take them a good 0.2-0.3C above trend for a year or so.
Unfortunately this exacerbates all the things the Iran war is already doing to prices: wheat, rice, soy, therefore also meat. 2027 is going to be worse than 2025 or 2026.
Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.
In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089
He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.
The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"
Included, or only included?
From page 25
"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained, mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools (10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."
Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.
From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.
Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.
Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"
Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.
I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.
Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.
So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.
Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.
The report is interesting, and worth reading.
And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.
13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.
Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.
So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.
(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)
My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there. I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.
However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically: - from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active - living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house - from families where education is in no way value - from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other. They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.
In these conditions education is challenging.
Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.
So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.
These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.
People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.
You live in London, don't you? I don't have too much recent first hand experience of London, but from what I understand I can see how you arrive at your conclusion - the melting pot there is more common than the ghetto. But across much of the north, things are not like that. There isn't a lovely blending of races all eventually taking on British mores and values*, there are entirely separate subcultures which do not integrate. I am pessimistic about integration. Different levels of pessimism, mind. The majority will be fine. But there are enough who will not be fine that I think a belief in integration to solveour problems is misplaced. The HK, Carribeans and Eastern Europeans will integrate quickly. The West Africans and Indians within a generation or two. Some others may not integrate but might thrive separately. And some, like the Roma, will neither integrate nor thrive. FWIW, I spent some time last week helping Eritrean immigrants trying to put CVs together. On one level, it was encouraging that they were at least trying. But they were so far from employability - like not actually speaking English (much use was made of Google translate) - that it felt pretty hopeless. Still, we tried.
*Actually, there are melting pots - areas like the one I live in - but more common are the paralell and separate cultures.
Yet everyone - on the right at any rate - lauds Dubai, where people from across Europe, the Middle East and South Asia come together in a state of non-integrated, virtual racial apartheid to run one of the richest economies in the Gulf.
Not to my taste, but it seems to be beloved of the same people who berate non-integration in Britain.
I sometimes think what we need is an alien invasion to make humans appreciate how similar we all are to each other, and that we’re all in this together.
WW3 risk, even with a situation like this, ought to be near zero but imo it's well above that because of one specific factor. Donald Trump. A person so intellectually stunted and emotionally immature has never before led America at a time of grave international crisis. He might greenlight something 'kinetic', it might go wrong, there might be significant American casualties, his response to the clear setback and humiliation might be something beyond rash, driven by anger and pique, something off the scale, then others might do 'kinetic' things, either in direct response or to further their own agendas with this as cover and justification, and now the escalator is up and running and very soon hurtles past the point of no return. At which juncture it won't matter a great deal that I still haven't found any sardines.
Look, I know he won the Trojan war but surely there is a better name for a defensive system, if only this name wasn't synonomous with weakness despite overall strength.
Greece has approved a €3 billion defense program to build “Achilles Shield,” a multi-layered air defense system designed to counter missiles and drones. The project is expected to include advanced Israeli technology, with Israeli firms likely playing a central role.
WW3 risk, even with a situation like this, ought to be near zero but imo it's well above that because of one specific factor. Donald Trump. A person so intellectually stunted and emotionally immature has never before led America at a time of grave international crisis. He might greenlight something 'kinetic', it might go wrong, there might be significant American casualties, his response to perceived setback and humiliation might be something beyond rash, driven by anger and pique, something off the scale, then others might do 'kinetic' things, either in direct response or to further their own agendas with this as cover and justification, and then the escalator is up and running and very soon past the point of no return. At which juncture it won't matter a great deal that I still haven't found any sardines.
Though one could argue WW3 risk is reduced because nobody’s going to follow the USA into the abyss.
The nightmare scenario - a US-Russia pact against Europe - is another matter.
Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.
In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089
He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.
The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"
Included, or only included?
From page 25
"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained, mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools (10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."
Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.
From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.
Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.
Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"
Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.
I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.
Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.
So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.
Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.
The report is interesting, and worth reading.
And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.
13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.
Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.
So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.
(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)
My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there. I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.
However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically: - from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active - living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house - from families where education is in no way value - from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other. They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.
In these conditions education is challenging.
Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.
So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.
These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.
People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.
You live in London, don't you? I don't have too much recent first hand experience of London, but from what I understand I can see how you arrive at your conclusion - the melting pot there is more common than the ghetto. But across much of the north, things are not like that. There isn't a lovely blending of races all eventually taking on British mores and values*, there are entirely separate subcultures which do not integrate. I am pessimistic about integration. Different levels of pessimism, mind. The majority will be fine. But there are enough who will not be fine that I think a belief in integration to solveour problems is misplaced. The HK, Carribeans and Eastern Europeans will integrate quickly. The West Africans and Indians within a generation or two. Some others may not integrate but might thrive separately. And some, like the Roma, will neither integrate nor thrive. FWIW, I spent some time last week helping Eritrean immigrants trying to put CVs together. On one level, it was encouraging that they were at least trying. But they were so far from employability - like not actually speaking English (much use was made of Google translate) - that it felt pretty hopeless. Still, we tried.
*Actually, there are melting pots - areas like the one I live in - but more common are the paralell and separate cultures.
Yet everyone - on the right at any rate - lauds Dubai, where people from across Europe, the Middle East and South Asia come together in a state of non-integrated, virtual racial apartheid to run one of the richest economies in the Gulf.
Not to my taste, but it seems to be beloved of the same people who berate non-integration in Britain.
I sometimes think what we need is an alien invasion to make humans appreciate how similar we all are to each other, and his we’re all in this together.
Everyone ???
I suppose its generally accepted that Dubai is better than Saudi or Iran and has done well from its limited resources.
Hoping someone on here can help out - I thought only about 20% of the world's oil still went through Hormuz and Britain could get enough fuel for petrol from other sources.
I appreciate there may well be supply issues with diesel and that could cause a lot of other problems but are we likely to run out of petrol or simplyhave to function on 75-80% of current supply which will cause some issues especially if people (as they will once this seeps into the public domain) start panic buying?
Happy to once again wallow in the depths of my ignorance on these matters.
OK.
When you say 'only' 20%, that's an astonishing number. That means the world needs to reduce oil consumption by 20%. And gas consumption by -say- 10-15%.
Now... it is fortunate indeed that the US has chose now to attack. We're going into a seasonally weaker period for energy demand, and a seasonally stronger period for renewable production. But that doesn't stop the fact that reducing oil demand by 20% is a massive ask, that leads to all goods becoming much more expensive, and to a horrendous worldwide recession.
My customers in Arizona and Nevada are already being crushed. If the oil price were to double from here, it would be an absolute disaster for them.
Yes, I realise surviving on 80% of our pre-existing oil supplies is going to cause extreme problems and as others have said lead to global recession if not worse.
There are the medium and long term impacts and then there are the short term ones. For many, it won't be economic growth or inflation in 2027 that will be the concern but whether there's going to be enough petrol to fill the car next week.
We will doubtless panic ourselves into a crisis as we did in 2022 and the map shown earlier "suggests" the cut off in oil supplies may be just after Easter but the question then is whether we have reserves or whether oil is obtainable (albeit at $150 per barrel or whatever) from elsewhere or whether the "crunch" in petrol and diesel (as well as gas, heating oil etc) will be then or later in April and into May and what happens beyond that as we face a new and challenging world.
TL;DR: a serious American ground invasion of Iran is the total global clusterfuck of clusterfucks
It almost certainly won't succeed, it almost certainly will cause worldwide turmoil
Honestly, who knows. I am of the mind to think it will make Vietnam look like a ridiculously successful and short US intervention but actually who knows?
What we can be sure of is it a bloody mental idea and has no actual strategic end goal.
We can pray that the Israelis in their djinn-like, Hezbollah-pager-exploding genius, have some fantastic plan that will enable the US and Israel to overthrow the mullahs with just 10,000 US Marines and a lot of bombs, without Iran reacting by destroying all energy infra within missile range, but I err on the pessimistic side and think
1. Israel just wants to see Iran fucked up
and
2. The Americans have been suckered by the Israelis into all this, hence J D Vance angrily belling Tel Aviv to say "you promised us Iranian regime change, you lying fucks"
Thoughts and prayers to Vance who must be finding it a tad difficult to sleep at night given the number one thing he raged and campaigned against is now happening and may well make Iraq look like a tea party.
Resign or try the 25th?
Hard choices.
Only resign if he has teed up a nail bar to run. No-one else will want him.
25th it is. He'll get some support for the "thank fuck Trump's gone" aspect of moving us forward. But he'll still be reviled.
The only way Israel can govern the Gaza Strip without becoming an external oppressor of “another people” is to remove “the other people” from the confines of the Gaza Strip itself. https://x.com/Jerusalem_Post/status/2037794771058495738
Once all other solutions have been eliminated, then whatever is left ...
The good news is there are plenty of Muslim countries in the region people could go to. The bad news, is none of them want them.
So you’re saying this is the final solution to the Palestine question ?
No, I would not accept your implied gas chambers or executing of innocents.
But the movement of people has successfully ended many a conflict. Including the movement of Germans post WWII, and recently the exodus of Nagorno-Karabakh.
If it could be done peacefully, it might be the least worst option, considering the lack of stomach to eliminate Hamas.
I agree. If the settlers in the West Bank would agree to move to Gaza (very nice seaside location) and the Gazaians move to the West Bank to live unmolested with their brother Palestinians, it would be a good solution.
That is not a good solution. Why should the Palestinians give up more territory? A good solution is Israel withdrawing from Gaza, the West Bank, Syria and Lebanon.
Maybe when there are no more bombs from those locations into Israel. I'm sure you forgot that little detail....
Thinking of EASL in the schools me and my family went to:
My primary schools were pretty much all WWC, one black kid who I think was in care was the entirety of the minority ethnicities.
My secondary school was about 25% South Asian, with a slight bias towards Hindus over Muslims. Many were EASL, most had been in England since birth or young, but Urdu and, I think, Hindi, rather than more regional languages, were languages in the home. It was a mild phenomenon, we had banding (that you were in for all subjects) and setting - a lot of the Asian kids tended to be a set lower for English than for other subjects, but were perfectly competent. Looking back, and considering my time in Italy, I can understand there being a mix of languages in the home - operating entirely in a second language is tiring and being able to relax back into your own language in your own house can be as relaxing as putting on a pair of slippers.
My siblings went to a different secondary, some Bengali kids had come from a heavy majority EASL primary and were less established in their locality. I think the language difficulties were somewhat more apparent in that setting.
Thinking of my kids, there were a small number of South Asians in their primary, some Sikhs, and some third generation immigrants and some quarter Asian kids but I'm not sure any would be classed as EASL. A Malaysian kid joined one year with no English at all and had to be helped from scratch.
One of my son's secondaries and for that matter, my youngest's primary, are very mixed, lots of nationalities and with quite a sizeable amount of EASL. The football selection my son's school yard was generally Nazis vs Terrorists, with most white races in the former including Poles and most black Caribbean kids in the latter. There were a couple of, EASL, Bosnian Muslims who could be used on either side.
My middle daughter's selective school was very heavily formed of academically pushed South Asian kids, again with a variety of other nationalities - my kids friends, are heavily varied in ancestry: plenty of Pakistani friends, Poles, said Bosnians, Serbians, white kids in half Caribbean step families, many consider themselves English, many of the Europeans particularly with a more mixed outlook.
I know Cookie has intimated about non mixing in his school and associates this with immigration - post-COVID, my kids are older and forming their own friends not relying on parental organisation, after school clubs hand over in a more front gate way, I do feel the school gate when I'm there is not quite as social as it used to be, eastern Europeans and Africans will seem to ignore you until they know you. I don't disbelieve Cookie's experience, but wonder if it is more complex than he makes out - kids' age, bigger schools, post-COVID, generational changes and initial reservedness of communities whose parents don't quite know the customs and hold back all combining.
Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.
In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089
He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.
The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"
Included, or only included?
From page 25
"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained, mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools (10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."
Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.
From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.
Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.
Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"
Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.
I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.
Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.
So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.
Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.
The report is interesting, and worth reading.
And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.
13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.
Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.
So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.
(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)
My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there. I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.
However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically: - from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active - living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house - from families where education is in no way value - from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other. They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.
In these conditions education is challenging.
Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.
So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.
These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.
People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.
You live in London, don't you? I don't have too much recent first hand experience of London, but from what I understand I can see how you arrive at your conclusion - the melting pot there is more common than the ghetto. But across much of the north, things are not like that. There isn't a lovely blending of races all eventually taking on British mores and values*, there are entirely separate subcultures which do not integrate. I am pessimistic about integration. Different levels of pessimism, mind. The majority will be fine. But there are enough who will not be fine that I think a belief in integration to solveour problems is misplaced. The HK, Carribeans and Eastern Europeans will integrate quickly. The West Africans and Indians within a generation or two. Some others may not integrate but might thrive separately. And some, like the Roma, will neither integrate nor thrive. FWIW, I spent some time last week helping Eritrean immigrants trying to put CVs together. On one level, it was encouraging that they were at least trying. But they were so far from employability - like not actually speaking English (much use was made of Google translate) - that it felt pretty hopeless. Still, we tried.
*Actually, there are melting pots - areas like the one I live in - but more common are the paralell and separate cultures.
Yet everyone - on the right at any rate - lauds Dubai, where people from across Europe, the Middle East and South Asia come together in a state of non-integrated, virtual racial apartheid to run one of the richest economies in the Gulf.
Not to my taste, but it seems to be beloved of the same people who berate non-integration in Britain.
I sometimes think what we need is an alien invasion to make humans appreciate how similar we all are to each other, and his we’re all in this together.
Everyone ???
I suppose its generally accepted that Dubai is better than Saudi or Iran and has done well from its limited resources.
Certainly Tice and Oakeshott are fans. I doubt they make huge efforts to integrate into Emirati culture or learn Arabic.
One third of all French wine is produced in Languedoc-Roussillon
Apparently in 2001, the region produced more wine than the entire USA
It's where I walked to last year, and plan to walk through in two years' time (on the way to Rome!)
It's tiny..
it's really not "tiny"
Because France and the UK seem so broadly equal in many ways - population, contemporary power, imperial histories (tho ours is much more impressive, ahem) - people often forget that France is MUCH bigger than the UK, geographically
Languedoc-Rousillon is considerably larger, in area, than all of Wales
And hasn't existed for 10 years. It was merged with Midi-Pyrenees in 2016 to form Occitanie (Occitania).
It exists as a wine making region
You're thinking of the Languedoc, which is a subset of Languedoc-Roussillon.
Roussillon is the part of Catalonia wot Spain ceded to France by the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, centred on Perpignan.
Hoping someone on here can help out - I thought only about 20% of the world's oil still went through Hormuz and Britain could get enough fuel for petrol from other sources.
I appreciate there may well be supply issues with diesel and that could cause a lot of other problems but are we likely to run out of petrol or simplyhave to function on 75-80% of current supply which will cause some issues especially if people (as they will once this seeps into the public domain) start panic buying?
Happy to once again wallow in the depths of my ignorance on these matters.
OK.
When you say 'only' 20%, that's an astonishing number. That means the world needs to reduce oil consumption by 20%. And gas consumption by -say- 10-15%.
Now... it is fortunate indeed that the US has chose now to attack. We're going into a seasonally weaker period for energy demand, and a seasonally stronger period for renewable production. But that doesn't stop the fact that reducing oil demand by 20% is a massive ask, that leads to all goods becoming much more expensive, and to a horrendous worldwide recession.
My customers in Arizona and Nevada are already being crushed. If the oil price were to double from here, it would be an absolute disaster for them.
Yes, I realise surviving on 80% of our pre-existing oil supplies is going to cause extreme problems and as others have said lead to global recession if not worse.
There are the medium and long term impacts and then there are the short term ones. For many, it won't be economic growth or inflation in 2027 that will be the concern but whether there's going to be enough petrol to fill the car next week.
We will doubtless panic ourselves into a crisis as we did in 2022 and the map shown earlier "suggests" the cut off in oil supplies may be just after Easter but the question then is whether we have reserves or whether oil is obtainable (albeit at $150 per barrel or whatever) from elsewhere or whether the "crunch" in petrol and diesel (as well as gas, heating oil etc) will be then or later in April and into May and what happens beyond that as we face a new and challenging world.
TL;DR: a serious American ground invasion of Iran is the total global clusterfuck of clusterfucks
It almost certainly won't succeed, it almost certainly will cause worldwide turmoil
Honestly, who knows. I am of the mind to think it will make Vietnam look like a ridiculously successful and short US intervention but actually who knows?
What we can be sure of is it a bloody mental idea and has no actual strategic end goal.
We can pray that the Israelis in their djinn-like, Hezbollah-pager-exploding genius, have some fantastic plan that will enable the US and Israel to overthrow the mullahs with just 10,000 US Marines and a lot of bombs, without Iran reacting by destroying all energy infra within missile range, but I err on the pessimistic side and think
1. Israel just wants to see Iran fucked up
and
2. The Americans have been suckered by the Israelis into all this, hence J D Vance angrily belling Tel Aviv to say "you promised us Iranian regime change, you lying fucks"
Thoughts and prayers to Vance who must be finding it a tad difficult to sleep at night given the number one thing he raged and campaigned against is now happening and may well make Iraq look like a tea party.
Resign or try the 25th?
Hard choices.
Only resign if he has teed up a nail bar to run. No-one else will want him.
25th it is. He'll get some support for the "thank fuck Trump's gone" aspect of moving us forward. But he'll still be reviled.
Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.
In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089
He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.
The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"
Included, or only included?
From page 25
"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained, mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools (10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."
Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.
From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.
Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.
Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"
Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.
I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.
Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.
So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.
Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.
The report is interesting, and worth reading.
And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.
13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.
Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.
So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.
(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)
My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there. I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.
However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically: - from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active - living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house - from families where education is in no way value - from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other. They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.
In these conditions education is challenging.
Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.
So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.
These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.
People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.
You live in London, don't you? I don't have too much recent first hand experience of London, but from what I understand I can see how you arrive at your conclusion - the melting pot there is more common than the ghetto. But across much of the north, things are not like that. There isn't a lovely blending of races all eventually taking on British mores and values*, there are entirely separate subcultures which do not integrate. I am pessimistic about integration. Different levels of pessimism, mind. The majority will be fine. But there are enough who will not be fine that I think a belief in integration to solveour problems is misplaced. The HK, Carribeans and Eastern Europeans will integrate quickly. The West Africans and Indians within a generation or two. Some others may not integrate but might thrive separately. And some, like the Roma, will neither integrate nor thrive. FWIW, I spent some time last week helping Eritrean immigrants trying to put CVs together. On one level, it was encouraging that they were at least trying. But they were so far from employability - like not actually speaking English (much use was made of Google translate) - that it felt pretty hopeless. Still, we tried.
*Actually, there are melting pots - areas like the one I live in - but more common are the paralell and separate cultures.
Integration can happen more quickly or more slowly. The earlier comment damned people for 10 generations. I think the examples you give across much of the north are a lot less than 10 generations ago. I think even in the communities you mention, the children are more integrated than their parents were.
But, OK, what can one do to encourage integration rather than ghettoisation? Helping Eritreans with CVs? That sounds good. Saying they all need to be expelled or they’ll bankrupt us for 10 generations? That seems less likely to help integration.
One of the big vulnerabilities is that the Iran crisis is happening at the same time as a monster El-Niño is developing, and the Ukraine war continuing, so the risk of the world plunging into an absolute food deficit is the highest for a very long time.
The UK, as a trading nation with a large food deficit, is somewhat exposed.
Strangely unremarked in the news so far. We are looking at the most power Westerly Wind Burst for at least a couple if decades this week. We were already on course for a significant El Niño. This is going to take things beyond.
Global temperatures have been rising rapidly despite cold phase La Niña conditions in the past 2-3 years. This will take them a good 0.2-0.3C above trend for a year or so.
Unfortunately this exacerbates all the things the Iran war is already doing to prices: wheat, rice, soy, therefore also meat. 2027 is going to be worse than 2025 or 2026.
Brace.
I fear in the medium term that the adverse effect this war has on fertiliser will be even more significant than it is for fuel. The world is seriously overpopulated and we cope with that by having high intensity farming almost everywhere temperate. If agricultural production falls sharply due to the adverse climate changes combined with a major reduction in fertiliser use we are going to have widespread starvation and quite a number of countries may even collapse.
The damage that Trump and Netanyahu has caused threatens to become spectacular.
Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.
In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089
He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.
The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"
Included, or only included?
From page 25
"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained, mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools (10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."
Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.
From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.
Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.
Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"
Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.
I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.
Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.
So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.
Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.
The report is interesting, and worth reading.
And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.
13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.
Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.
So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.
(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)
My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there. I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.
However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically: - from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active - living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house - from families where education is in no way value - from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other. They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.
In these conditions education is challenging.
Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.
So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.
These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.
People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.
WW3 risk, even with a situation like this, ought to be near zero but imo it's well above that because of one specific factor. Donald Trump. A person so intellectually stunted and emotionally immature has never before led America at a time of grave international crisis. He might greenlight something 'kinetic', it might go wrong, there might be significant American casualties, his response to perceived setback and humiliation might be something beyond rash, driven by anger and pique, something off the scale, then others might do 'kinetic' things, either in direct response or to further their own agendas with this as cover and justification, and then the escalator is up and running and very soon past the point of no return. At which juncture it won't matter a great deal that I still haven't found any sardines.
Though one could argue WW3 risk is reduced because nobody’s going to follow the USA into the abyss.
The nightmare scenario - a US-Russia pact against Europe - is another matter.
But the base risk sits at a higher Trumpified level. It's elevated and will remain so until he's gone.
The only way Israel can govern the Gaza Strip without becoming an external oppressor of “another people” is to remove “the other people” from the confines of the Gaza Strip itself. https://x.com/Jerusalem_Post/status/2037794771058495738
Once all other solutions have been eliminated, then whatever is left ...
The good news is there are plenty of Muslim countries in the region people could go to. The bad news, is none of them want them.
So you’re saying this is the final solution to the Palestine question ?
No, I would not accept your implied gas chambers or executing of innocents.
But the movement of people has successfully ended many a conflict. Including the movement of Germans post WWII, and recently the exodus of Nagorno-Karabakh.
If it could be done peacefully, it might be the least worst option, considering the lack of stomach to eliminate Hamas.
I agree. If the settlers in the West Bank would agree to move to Gaza (very nice seaside location) and the Gazaians move to the West Bank to live unmolested with their brother Palestinians, it would be a good solution.
That is not a good solution. Why should the Palestinians give up more territory? A good solution is Israel withdrawing from Gaza, the West Bank, Syria and Lebanon.
Maybe when there are no more bombs from those locations into Israel. I'm sure you forgot that little detail....
Bombs are going both ways. Peace requires both sides to stop, and to move beyond a history in which both sides have done terrible things.
Hoping someone on here can help out - I thought only about 20% of the world's oil still went through Hormuz and Britain could get enough fuel for petrol from other sources.
I appreciate there may well be supply issues with diesel and that could cause a lot of other problems but are we likely to run out of petrol or simplyhave to function on 75-80% of current supply which will cause some issues especially if people (as they will once this seeps into the public domain) start panic buying?
Happy to once again wallow in the depths of my ignorance on these matters.
OK.
When you say 'only' 20%, that's an astonishing number. That means the world needs to reduce oil consumption by 20%. And gas consumption by -say- 10-15%.
Now... it is fortunate indeed that the US has chose now to attack. We're going into a seasonally weaker period for energy demand, and a seasonally stronger period for renewable production. But that doesn't stop the fact that reducing oil demand by 20% is a massive ask, that leads to all goods becoming much more expensive, and to a horrendous worldwide recession.
My customers in Arizona and Nevada are already being crushed. If the oil price were to double from here, it would be an absolute disaster for them.
Yes, I realise surviving on 80% of our pre-existing oil supplies is going to cause extreme problems and as others have said lead to global recession if not worse.
There are the medium and long term impacts and then there are the short term ones. For many, it won't be economic growth or inflation in 2027 that will be the concern but whether there's going to be enough petrol to fill the car next week.
We will doubtless panic ourselves into a crisis as we did in 2022 and the map shown earlier "suggests" the cut off in oil supplies may be just after Easter but the question then is whether we have reserves or whether oil is obtainable (albeit at $150 per barrel or whatever) from elsewhere or whether the "crunch" in petrol and diesel (as well as gas, heating oil etc) will be then or later in April and into May and what happens beyond that as we face a new and challenging world.
TL;DR: a serious American ground invasion of Iran is the total global clusterfuck of clusterfucks
It almost certainly won't succeed, it almost certainly will cause worldwide turmoil
Honestly, who knows. I am of the mind to think it will make Vietnam look like a ridiculously successful and short US intervention but actually who knows?
What we can be sure of is it a bloody mental idea and has no actual strategic end goal.
We can pray that the Israelis in their djinn-like, Hezbollah-pager-exploding genius, have some fantastic plan that will enable the US and Israel to overthrow the mullahs with just 10,000 US Marines and a lot of bombs, without Iran reacting by destroying all energy infra within missile range, but I err on the pessimistic side and think
1. Israel just wants to see Iran fucked up
and
2. The Americans have been suckered by the Israelis into all this, hence J D Vance angrily belling Tel Aviv to say "you promised us Iranian regime change, you lying fucks"
Thoughts and prayers to Vance who must be finding it a tad difficult to sleep at night given the number one thing he raged and campaigned against is now happening and may well make Iraq look like a tea party.
Resign or try the 25th?
Hard choices.
Only resign if he has teed up a nail bar to run. No-one else will want him.
25th it is. He'll get some support for the "thank fuck Trump's gone" aspect of moving us forward. But he'll still be reviled.
He has to persuade the US Cabinet to back him.
Seems hard to imagine that will happen.
Surely a majority of the cabinet quietly hate Trump for humiliating them in those Stalinist praise sessions?
Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.
In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089
He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.
The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"
Included, or only included?
From page 25
"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained, mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools (10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."
Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.
From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.
Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.
Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"
Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.
I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.
Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.
So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.
Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.
The report is interesting, and worth reading.
And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.
13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.
Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.
So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.
(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)
My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there. I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.
However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically: - from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active - living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house - from families where education is in no way value - from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other. They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.
In these conditions education is challenging.
Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.
So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.
These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.
People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.
You live in London, don't you? I don't have too much recent first hand experience of London, but from what I understand I can see how you arrive at your conclusion - the melting pot there is more common than the ghetto. But across much of the north, things are not like that. There isn't a lovely blending of races all eventually taking on British mores and values*, there are entirely separate subcultures which do not integrate. I am pessimistic about integration. Different levels of pessimism, mind. The majority will be fine. But there are enough who will not be fine that I think a belief in integration to solveour problems is misplaced. The HK, Carribeans and Eastern Europeans will integrate quickly. The West Africans and Indians within a generation or two. Some others may not integrate but might thrive separately. And some, like the Roma, will neither integrate nor thrive. FWIW, I spent some time last week helping Eritrean immigrants trying to put CVs together. On one level, it was encouraging that they were at least trying. But they were so far from employability - like not actually speaking English (much use was made of Google translate) - that it felt pretty hopeless. Still, we tried.
*Actually, there are melting pots - areas like the one I live in - but more common are the paralell and separate cultures.
Yet everyone - on the right at any rate - lauds Dubai, where people from across Europe, the Middle East and South Asia come together in a state of non-integrated, virtual racial apartheid to run one of the richest economies in the Gulf.
Not to my taste, but it seems to be beloved of the same people who berate non-integration in Britain.
I sometimes think what we need is an alien invasion to make humans appreciate how similar we all are to each other, and his we’re all in this together.
Everyone ???
I suppose its generally accepted that Dubai is better than Saudi or Iran and has done well from its limited resources.
Certainly Tice and Oakeshott are fans. I doubt they make huge efforts to integrate into Emirati culture or learn Arabic.
There are plenty of reasons to revile Tice or Oakeshott, I am sure, but this is definitely not one of them
Dubai explicitly and overtly sells itself as a no-place in the desert, there is NO local culture to integrate with, you certainly aren't expected to speak Arabic or behave like a Muslim. It is very sunny (too sunny) and very safe and taxes are minimal and as long as you adhere to universal norms - don't shit on the beach, don't have sex in public, do not steal phones - you will be left alone and respected, and you can make nice money in a faintly boring city with brilliant air connections. That's it
The idea of "integrating" into Emirati culture is the concept of a child
One of the big vulnerabilities is that the Iran crisis is happening at the same time as a monster El-Niño is developing, and the Ukraine war continuing, so the risk of the world plunging into an absolute food deficit is the highest for a very long time.
The UK, as a trading nation with a large food deficit, is somewhat exposed.
Strangely unremarked in the news so far. We are looking at the most power Westerly Wind Burst for at least a couple if decades this week. We were already on course for a significant El Niño. This is going to take things beyond.
Global temperatures have been rising rapidly despite cold phase La Niña conditions in the past 2-3 years. This will take them a good 0.2-0.3C above trend for a year or so.
Unfortunately this exacerbates all the things the Iran war is already doing to prices: wheat, rice, soy, therefore also meat. 2027 is going to be worse than 2025 or 2026.
Brace.
I fear in the medium term that the adverse effect this war has on fertiliser will be even more significant than it is for fuel. The world is seriously overpopulated and we cope with that by having high intensity farming almost everywhere temperate. If agricultural production falls sharply due to the adverse climate changes combined with a major reduction in fertiliser use we are going to have widespread starvation and quite a number of countries may even collapse.
The damage that Trump and Netanyahu has caused threatens to become spectacular.
"Seriously over populated" I thought Ehrlich had just died himself..😏
Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.
In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089
He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.
The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"
Included, or only included?
From page 25
"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained, mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools (10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."
Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.
From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.
Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.
Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"
Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.
I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.
Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.
So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.
Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.
The report is interesting, and worth reading.
And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.
13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.
Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.
So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.
(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)
My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there. I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.
However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically: - from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active - living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house - from families where education is in no way value - from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other. They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.
In these conditions education is challenging.
Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.
So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.
These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.
People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.
You live in London, don't you? I don't have too much recent first hand experience of London, but from what I understand I can see how you arrive at your conclusion - the melting pot there is more common than the ghetto. But across much of the north, things are not like that. There isn't a lovely blending of races all eventually taking on British mores and values*, there are entirely separate subcultures which do not integrate. I am pessimistic about integration. Different levels of pessimism, mind. The majority will be fine. But there are enough who will not be fine that I think a belief in integration to solveour problems is misplaced. The HK, Carribeans and Eastern Europeans will integrate quickly. The West Africans and Indians within a generation or two. Some others may not integrate but might thrive separately. And some, like the Roma, will neither integrate nor thrive. FWIW, I spent some time last week helping Eritrean immigrants trying to put CVs together. On one level, it was encouraging that they were at least trying. But they were so far from employability - like not actually speaking English (much use was made of Google translate) - that it felt pretty hopeless. Still, we tried.
*Actually, there are melting pots - areas like the one I live in - but more common are the paralell and separate cultures.
Integration can happen more quickly or more slowly. The earlier comment damned people for 10 generations. I think the examples you give across much of the north are a lot less than 10 generations ago. I think even in the communities you mention, the children are more integrated than their parents were.
But, OK, what can one do to encourage integration rather than ghettoisation? Helping Eritreans with CVs? That sounds good. Saying they all need to be expelled or they’ll bankrupt us for 10 generations? That seems less likely to help integration.
One third of all French wine is produced in Languedoc-Roussillon
Apparently in 2001, the region produced more wine than the entire USA
It's where I walked to last year, and plan to walk through in two years' time (on the way to Rome!)
It's tiny..
it's really not "tiny"
Because France and the UK seem so broadly equal in many ways - population, contemporary power, imperial histories (tho ours is much more impressive, ahem) - people often forget that France is MUCH bigger than the UK, geographically
Languedoc-Rousillon is considerably larger, in area, than all of Wales
And hasn't existed for 10 years. It was merged with Midi-Pyrenees in 2016 to form Occitanie (Occitania).
It exists as a wine making region
You're thinking of the Languedoc, which is a subset of Languedoc-Roussillon.
Roussillon is the part of Catalonia wot Spain ceded to France by the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, centred on Perpignan.
Twenty years ago I took, with my wife, the french motor-rail down to Languedoc from Calais. Fantastic trip and holiday.
Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.
In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089
He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.
The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"
Included, or only included?
From page 25
"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained, mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools (10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."
Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.
From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.
Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.
Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"
Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.
I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.
Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.
So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.
Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.
The report is interesting, and worth reading.
And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.
13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.
Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.
So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.
(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)
My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there. I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.
However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically: - from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active - living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house - from families where education is in no way value - from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other. They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.
In these conditions education is challenging.
Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.
So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.
These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.
People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.
You live in London, don't you? I don't have too much recent first hand experience of London, but from what I understand I can see how you arrive at your conclusion - the melting pot there is more common than the ghetto. But across much of the north, things are not like that. There isn't a lovely blending of races all eventually taking on British mores and values*, there are entirely separate subcultures which do not integrate. I am pessimistic about integration. Different levels of pessimism, mind. The majority will be fine. But there are enough who will not be fine that I think a belief in integration to solveour problems is misplaced. The HK, Carribeans and Eastern Europeans will integrate quickly. The West Africans and Indians within a generation or two. Some others may not integrate but might thrive separately. And some, like the Roma, will neither integrate nor thrive. FWIW, I spent some time last week helping Eritrean immigrants trying to put CVs together. On one level, it was encouraging that they were at least trying. But they were so far from employability - like not actually speaking English (much use was made of Google translate) - that it felt pretty hopeless. Still, we tried.
*Actually, there are melting pots - areas like the one I live in - but more common are the paralell and separate cultures.
Yet everyone - on the right at any rate - lauds Dubai, where people from across Europe, the Middle East and South Asia come together in a state of non-integrated, virtual racial apartheid to run one of the richest economies in the Gulf.
Not to my taste, but it seems to be beloved of the same people who berate non-integration in Britain.
I sometimes think what we need is an alien invasion to make humans appreciate how similar we all are to each other, and his we’re all in this together.
Everyone ???
I suppose its generally accepted that Dubai is better than Saudi or Iran and has done well from its limited resources.
Certainly Tice and Oakeshott are fans. I doubt they make huge efforts to integrate into Emirati culture or learn Arabic.
The ex-pat attitude was what I hated most about Abu Dhabi back in the late 80s. Bars with 'Western Dress Only' on the doors. Even amongst those working in the desert the attitude was; don't mix with the Arabs, don't speak their language, they are dirty, dishonest and lazy.
They weren't of course. Well, not any more than any of the people making the accusations. I absolutely loved the desert but the ex-pat attitudes and lifestyle stank.
Hoping someone on here can help out - I thought only about 20% of the world's oil still went through Hormuz and Britain could get enough fuel for petrol from other sources.
I appreciate there may well be supply issues with diesel and that could cause a lot of other problems but are we likely to run out of petrol or simplyhave to function on 75-80% of current supply which will cause some issues especially if people (as they will once this seeps into the public domain) start panic buying?
Happy to once again wallow in the depths of my ignorance on these matters.
OK.
When you say 'only' 20%, that's an astonishing number. That means the world needs to reduce oil consumption by 20%. And gas consumption by -say- 10-15%.
Now... it is fortunate indeed that the US has chose now to attack. We're going into a seasonally weaker period for energy demand, and a seasonally stronger period for renewable production. But that doesn't stop the fact that reducing oil demand by 20% is a massive ask, that leads to all goods becoming much more expensive, and to a horrendous worldwide recession.
My customers in Arizona and Nevada are already being crushed. If the oil price were to double from here, it would be an absolute disaster for them.
Yes, I realise surviving on 80% of our pre-existing oil supplies is going to cause extreme problems and as others have said lead to global recession if not worse.
There are the medium and long term impacts and then there are the short term ones. For many, it won't be economic growth or inflation in 2027 that will be the concern but whether there's going to be enough petrol to fill the car next week.
We will doubtless panic ourselves into a crisis as we did in 2022 and the map shown earlier "suggests" the cut off in oil supplies may be just after Easter but the question then is whether we have reserves or whether oil is obtainable (albeit at $150 per barrel or whatever) from elsewhere or whether the "crunch" in petrol and diesel (as well as gas, heating oil etc) will be then or later in April and into May and what happens beyond that as we face a new and challenging world.
TL;DR: a serious American ground invasion of Iran is the total global clusterfuck of clusterfucks
It almost certainly won't succeed, it almost certainly will cause worldwide turmoil
Honestly, who knows. I am of the mind to think it will make Vietnam look like a ridiculously successful and short US intervention but actually who knows?
What we can be sure of is it a bloody mental idea and has no actual strategic end goal.
We can pray that the Israelis in their djinn-like, Hezbollah-pager-exploding genius, have some fantastic plan that will enable the US and Israel to overthrow the mullahs with just 10,000 US Marines and a lot of bombs, without Iran reacting by destroying all energy infra within missile range, but I err on the pessimistic side and think
1. Israel just wants to see Iran fucked up
and
2. The Americans have been suckered by the Israelis into all this, hence J D Vance angrily belling Tel Aviv to say "you promised us Iranian regime change, you lying fucks"
Thoughts and prayers to Vance who must be finding it a tad difficult to sleep at night given the number one thing he raged and campaigned against is now happening and may well make Iraq look like a tea party.
Resign or try the 25th?
Hard choices.
Only resign if he has teed up a nail bar to run. No-one else will want him.
25th it is. He'll get some support for the "thank fuck Trump's gone" aspect of moving us forward. But he'll still be reviled.
He has to persuade the US Cabinet to back him.
Seems hard to imagine that will happen.
Surely a majority of the cabinet quietly hate Trump for humiliating them in those Stalinist praise sessions?
If they hated it that much, they could always resign. They don't need to diss Trump on the way out. Just wanting to spend more time with their family.
One of the challenges of dealing with cults is persuading the victims that they are victims.
Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.
In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089
He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.
The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"
Included, or only included?
From page 25
"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained, mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools (10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."
Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.
From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.
Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.
Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"
Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.
I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.
Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.
So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.
Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.
The report is interesting, and worth reading.
And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.
13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.
Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.
So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.
(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)
My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there. I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.
However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically: - from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active - living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house - from families where education is in no way value - from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other. They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.
In these conditions education is challenging.
Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.
So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.
These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.
People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.
You live in London, don't you? I don't have too much recent first hand experience of London, but from what I understand I can see how you arrive at your conclusion - the melting pot there is more common than the ghetto. But across much of the north, things are not like that. There isn't a lovely blending of races all eventually taking on British mores and values*, there are entirely separate subcultures which do not integrate. I am pessimistic about integration. Different levels of pessimism, mind. The majority will be fine. But there are enough who will not be fine that I think a belief in integration to solveour problems is misplaced. The HK, Carribeans and Eastern Europeans will integrate quickly. The West Africans and Indians within a generation or two. Some others may not integrate but might thrive separately. And some, like the Roma, will neither integrate nor thrive. FWIW, I spent some time last week helping Eritrean immigrants trying to put CVs together. On one level, it was encouraging that they were at least trying. But they were so far from employability - like not actually speaking English (much use was made of Google translate) - that it felt pretty hopeless. Still, we tried.
*Actually, there are melting pots - areas like the one I live in - but more common are the paralell and separate cultures.
Yet everyone - on the right at any rate - lauds Dubai, where people from across Europe, the Middle East and South Asia come together in a state of non-integrated, virtual racial apartheid to run one of the richest economies in the Gulf.
Not to my taste, but it seems to be beloved of the same people who berate non-integration in Britain.
I sometimes think what we need is an alien invasion to make humans appreciate how similar we all are to each other, and his we’re all in this together.
Everyone ???
I suppose its generally accepted that Dubai is better than Saudi or Iran and has done well from its limited resources.
Certainly Tice and Oakeshott are fans. I doubt they make huge efforts to integrate into Emirati culture or learn Arabic.
The ex-pat attitude was what I hated most about Abu Dhabi back in the late 80s. Bars with 'Western Dress Only' on the doors. Even amongst those working in the desert the attitude was; don't mix with the Arabs, don't speak their language, they are dirty, dishonest and lazy.
They weren't of course. Well, not any more than any of the people making the accusations. I absolutely loved the desert but the ex-pat attitudes and lifestyle stank.
Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.
In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089
He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.
The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"
Included, or only included?
From page 25
"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained, mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools (10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."
Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.
From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.
Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.
Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"
Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.
I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.
Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.
So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.
Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.
The report is interesting, and worth reading.
And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.
13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.
Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.
So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.
(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)
My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there. I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.
However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically: - from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active - living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house - from families where education is in no way value - from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other. They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.
In these conditions education is challenging.
Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.
So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.
These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.
People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.
You live in London, don't you? I don't have too much recent first hand experience of London, but from what I understand I can see how you arrive at your conclusion - the melting pot there is more common than the ghetto. But across much of the north, things are not like that. There isn't a lovely blending of races all eventually taking on British mores and values*, there are entirely separate subcultures which do not integrate. I am pessimistic about integration. Different levels of pessimism, mind. The majority will be fine. But there are enough who will not be fine that I think a belief in integration to solveour problems is misplaced. The HK, Carribeans and Eastern Europeans will integrate quickly. The West Africans and Indians within a generation or two. Some others may not integrate but might thrive separately. And some, like the Roma, will neither integrate nor thrive. FWIW, I spent some time last week helping Eritrean immigrants trying to put CVs together. On one level, it was encouraging that they were at least trying. But they were so far from employability - like not actually speaking English (much use was made of Google translate) - that it felt pretty hopeless. Still, we tried.
*Actually, there are melting pots - areas like the one I live in - but more common are the paralell and separate cultures.
Yet everyone - on the right at any rate - lauds Dubai, where people from across Europe, the Middle East and South Asia come together in a state of non-integrated, virtual racial apartheid to run one of the richest economies in the Gulf.
Not to my taste, but it seems to be beloved of the same people who berate non-integration in Britain.
I sometimes think what we need is an alien invasion to make humans appreciate how similar we all are to each other, and his we’re all in this together.
Everyone ???
I suppose its generally accepted that Dubai is better than Saudi or Iran and has done well from its limited resources.
Certainly Tice and Oakeshott are fans. I doubt they make huge efforts to integrate into Emirati culture or learn Arabic.
So we've narrowed down from 'everyone on the right' to Tice and Oakeshott.
Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.
In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089
He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.
The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"
Included, or only included?
From page 25
"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained, mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools (10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."
Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.
From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.
Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.
Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"
Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.
I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.
Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.
So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.
Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.
The report is interesting, and worth reading.
And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.
13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.
Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.
So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.
(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)
My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there. I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.
However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically: - from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active - living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house - from families where education is in no way value - from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other. They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.
In these conditions education is challenging.
Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.
So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.
These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.
People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.
You live in London, don't you? I don't have too much recent first hand experience of London, but from what I understand I can see how you arrive at your conclusion - the melting pot there is more common than the ghetto. But across much of the north, things are not like that. There isn't a lovely blending of races all eventually taking on British mores and values*, there are entirely separate subcultures which do not integrate. I am pessimistic about integration. Different levels of pessimism, mind. The majority will be fine. But there are enough who will not be fine that I think a belief in integration to solveour problems is misplaced. The HK, Carribeans and Eastern Europeans will integrate quickly. The West Africans and Indians within a generation or two. Some others may not integrate but might thrive separately. And some, like the Roma, will neither integrate nor thrive. FWIW, I spent some time last week helping Eritrean immigrants trying to put CVs together. On one level, it was encouraging that they were at least trying. But they were so far from employability - like not actually speaking English (much use was made of Google translate) - that it felt pretty hopeless. Still, we tried.
*Actually, there are melting pots - areas like the one I live in - but more common are the paralell and separate cultures.
Yet everyone - on the right at any rate - lauds Dubai, where people from across Europe, the Middle East and South Asia come together in a state of non-integrated, virtual racial apartheid to run one of the richest economies in the Gulf.
Not to my taste, but it seems to be beloved of the same people who berate non-integration in Britain.
I sometimes think what we need is an alien invasion to make humans appreciate how similar we all are to each other, and his we’re all in this together.
Everyone ???
I suppose its generally accepted that Dubai is better than Saudi or Iran and has done well from its limited resources.
Certainly Tice and Oakeshott are fans. I doubt they make huge efforts to integrate into Emirati culture or learn Arabic.
The ex-pat attitude was what I hated most about Abu Dhabi back in the late 80s. Bars with 'Western Dress Only' on the doors. Even amongst those working in the desert the attitude was; don't mix with the Arabs, don't speak their language, they are dirty, dishonest and lazy.
They weren't of course. Well, not any more than any of the people making the accusations. I absolutely loved the desert but the ex-pat attitudes and lifestyle stank.
They are immigrants. Not “ex-pats”
I think you missed the point there. Thinking of yourself as an ex pat and not an immigrant is part of the ex-pat attitude.
Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.
In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089
He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.
The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"
Included, or only included?
From page 25
"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained, mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools (10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."
Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.
From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.
Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.
Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"
Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.
I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.
Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.
So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.
Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.
The report is interesting, and worth reading.
And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.
13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.
Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.
So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.
(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)
My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there. I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.
However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically: - from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active - living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house - from families where education is in no way value - from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other. They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.
In these conditions education is challenging.
Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.
So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.
These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.
People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.
You live in London, don't you? I don't have too much recent first hand experience of London, but from what I understand I can see how you arrive at your conclusion - the melting pot there is more common than the ghetto. But across much of the north, things are not like that. There isn't a lovely blending of races all eventually taking on British mores and values*, there are entirely separate subcultures which do not integrate. I am pessimistic about integration. Different levels of pessimism, mind. The majority will be fine. But there are enough who will not be fine that I think a belief in integration to solveour problems is misplaced. The HK, Carribeans and Eastern Europeans will integrate quickly. The West Africans and Indians within a generation or two. Some others may not integrate but might thrive separately. And some, like the Roma, will neither integrate nor thrive. FWIW, I spent some time last week helping Eritrean immigrants trying to put CVs together. On one level, it was encouraging that they were at least trying. But they were so far from employability - like not actually speaking English (much use was made of Google translate) - that it felt pretty hopeless. Still, we tried.
*Actually, there are melting pots - areas like the one I live in - but more common are the paralell and separate cultures.
Integration can happen more quickly or more slowly. The earlier comment damned people for 10 generations. I think the examples you give across much of the north are a lot less than 10 generations ago. I think even in the communities you mention, the children are more integrated than their parents were.
But, OK, what can one do to encourage integration rather than ghettoisation? Helping Eritreans with CVs? That sounds good. Saying they all need to be expelled or they’ll bankrupt us for 10 generations? That seems less likely to help integration.
Yes, I agree - generally, the next generation integrates much more. The Danish social democrat experiment is interesting, though - new immigrants required to settle outside the traditional areas, to prevent the kind of ghetto culture emerging. It wasn't electorally popular last week - people worried about immigrants voted for an anti-immigrant party, people not worried were put off the social democrats and stressed the natural appeal of settling near others with the same background. But there's a case for it.
Look, I know he won the Trojan war but surely there is a better name for a defensive system, if only this name wasn't synonomous with weakness despite overall strength.
Greece has approved a €3 billion defense program to build “Achilles Shield,” a multi-layered air defense system designed to counter missiles and drones. The project is expected to include advanced Israeli technology, with Israeli firms likely playing a central role.
"To predict what will happen, let’s start by ruling out a few scenarios:
1. We are unlikely to see the use of nuclear weapons. First, Israel is unlikely to use them; the U.S. wouldn’t allow it, and more importantly, nukes wouldn’t completely eliminate Iran. Instead, it would risk a counter-strike from Iranian nuclear weapons (which they likely already possess). As for Iran, they won’t be the first to use them. There’s simply no need. We can likely rule out this worst-case, unpredictable risk.
2. The U.S. will not launch a large-scale war on Iranian mainland. They simply can’t afford it.
3. The U.S. will not retreat just yet. Many are anticipating a TACO, but taco now is meaningless. A true "TACO” would mean handing control of the Strait of Hormuz over to Iran—a "Grand TACO," if you will. It’s too early to give up.
4. Israel will not back down. Stopping now would mean all previous efforts were in vain; they won’t get another chance.
5. As long as there is no regime change, Iran will not back down either. As I’ve discussed before, since they’ve already played their biggest card—Hormuz—they won’t fold easily. Folding means certain death for top IRGC people; staying in the game at least offers a chance at survival.
Once we exclude these five possibilities and establish these constraints, the path forward becomes relatively clear.
First, the U.S. will likely engage in island-seizing operations, hoping to control the situation through small-scale, high-leverage ground combat.
From there, three possibilities emerge:
• Scenario 1: The battle goes smoothly and concludes in days. Iran is forced to the negotiating table, or regime change occurs. The U.S. quickly gains control of the situation.
• Scenario 2: The fighting is grueling and protracted, but the U.S. eventually secures the objective and stabilizes the situation.
• Scenario 3: The fighting is exceptionally difficult. The U.S. either fails to take the objective or takes it but finds it impossible to defend, eventually forcing a withdrawal. This would complete the "Grand TACO." Trump would shrug his shoulders and take the exit, claiming the battle was simply unwinnable.
Aside from Scenario 1, both Scenarios 2 and 3 would inflict massive pain on the global economic order.
One third of all French wine is produced in Languedoc-Roussillon
Apparently in 2001, the region produced more wine than the entire USA
It's where I walked to last year, and plan to walk through in two years' time (on the way to Rome!)
It's tiny..
it's really not "tiny"
Because France and the UK seem so broadly equal in many ways - population, contemporary power, imperial histories (tho ours is much more impressive, ahem) - people often forget that France is MUCH bigger than the UK, geographically
Languedoc-Rousillon is considerably larger, in area, than all of Wales
And hasn't existed for 10 years. It was merged with Midi-Pyrenees in 2016 to form Occitanie (Occitania).
It exists as a wine making region
You're thinking of the Languedoc, which is a subset of Languedoc-Roussillon.
Roussillon is the part of Catalonia wot Spain ceded to France by the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, centred on Perpignan.
Twenty years ago I took, with my wife, the french motor-rail down to Languedoc from Calais. Fantastic trip and holiday.
Do they still run that service?
I was taught in school that langue d'oc literally means 'the language whose speakers say Oc instead of Oui'. I wonder if they still do. Or maybe nowadays they say okay.
Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.
In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089
He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.
The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"
Included, or only included?
From page 25
"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained, mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools (10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."
Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.
From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.
Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.
Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"
Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.
I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.
Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.
So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.
Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.
The report is interesting, and worth reading.
And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.
13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.
Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.
So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.
(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)
My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there. I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.
However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically: - from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active - living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house - from families where education is in no way value - from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other. They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.
In these conditions education is challenging.
Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.
So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.
These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.
People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.
You live in London, don't you? I don't have too much recent first hand experience of London, but from what I understand I can see how you arrive at your conclusion - the melting pot there is more common than the ghetto. But across much of the north, things are not like that. There isn't a lovely blending of races all eventually taking on British mores and values*, there are entirely separate subcultures which do not integrate. I am pessimistic about integration. Different levels of pessimism, mind. The majority will be fine. But there are enough who will not be fine that I think a belief in integration to solveour problems is misplaced. The HK, Carribeans and Eastern Europeans will integrate quickly. The West Africans and Indians within a generation or two. Some others may not integrate but might thrive separately. And some, like the Roma, will neither integrate nor thrive. FWIW, I spent some time last week helping Eritrean immigrants trying to put CVs together. On one level, it was encouraging that they were at least trying. But they were so far from employability - like not actually speaking English (much use was made of Google translate) - that it felt pretty hopeless. Still, we tried.
*Actually, there are melting pots - areas like the one I live in - but more common are the paralell and separate cultures.
Yet everyone - on the right at any rate - lauds Dubai, where people from across Europe, the Middle East and South Asia come together in a state of non-integrated, virtual racial apartheid to run one of the richest economies in the Gulf.
Not to my taste, but it seems to be beloved of the same people who berate non-integration in Britain.
I sometimes think what we need is an alien invasion to make humans appreciate how similar we all are to each other, and his we’re all in this together.
Everyone ???
I suppose its generally accepted that Dubai is better than Saudi or Iran and has done well from its limited resources.
Certainly Tice and Oakeshott are fans. I doubt they make huge efforts to integrate into Emirati culture or learn Arabic.
The ex-pat attitude was what I hated most about Abu Dhabi back in the late 80s. Bars with 'Western Dress Only' on the doors. Even amongst those working in the desert the attitude was; don't mix with the Arabs, don't speak their language, they are dirty, dishonest and lazy.
They weren't of course. Well, not any more than any of the people making the accusations. I absolutely loved the desert but the ex-pat attitudes and lifestyle stank.
They are immigrants. Not “ex-pats”
Back then they were ex-pats. No one stayed for any great length of time. 2 Year rotations was about the maximum. I rotated back to the UK on a 6 week on / 2 week off rotation
Back then the first building you reached when you left the airport was the old British fort about half way between the airport and the city. There were no buildings over maybe 10 stories and the whole place (Abu Dhabi) didn't even fully occupy the main island.
Goodwin doubling down on his race baiting dishonesty.
In more than 2,000 schools in England today a majority of children no longer speak English as their main language. My critics might not think that tells us something important about what is happening to our country. But I do. And I will not change my view https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2037792677266162089
He has become the country's leading stand up philosophers.
The study states that they included "maintained, mainstream schools"
Included, or only included?
From page 25
"We used the School Level Database (SLD) from the ASC January 2013 to examine the variation in the proportion of EAL students at the school level. We selected all maintained, mainstream schools in England. Additionally we eliminated 32 very small maintained schools (10 or fewer students on roll). The resulting population contained 20,033 schools."
Ok, thanks. So they don't know the difference between maintained schools and academies. That's a rocky start in terms of their credibility.
From a quick googling around, there were a couple of thousand academies in 2013.
Edit : the report is from 2015 and doesn't seem to have an axe to grind over immigration. More about identifying areas where support is required.
Further Edit: they say - "Almost a quarter of all schools (22.1%) have less than 1% EAL, and over half (54%) have less than 5% of student with EAL. However at the other extreme 1,681 schools (8.4%) have a majority of students with EAL. This does not support headlines such as that in the Daily Telegraph (31/01/14) that "English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils at one in nine schools"
Right, so it's not the survey, it's Goodwin misusing it by presenting out of date material. I withdraw my slur on their credibility.
I think it entirely possible that if a study found 1681 schools were found to have a majority on non-english speakers in 2013, that in 2026 the number is higher.
Given that we have had lots of immigration in the last 13 year, probably inevitable. If you import lots of furriners, then you'll get lots of people talkiin' the furrin.
So we just need to make sure we put enough resources into getting them up to speed in English. Which, according to the report has a direct, definite and completely unsurprising effect on educational attainment.
Edit: Goodwin is still Badfail, of course.
The report is interesting, and worth reading.
And, yes, it is entirely possible -probable even- that the number of schools where English is not the first language has risen since 2013. However, what is likely to have changed significantly is who the parents are. Back in 2013, a lot of those parents (and kids) will have been from the EU Eastern European 8. Because that was where the majority of immigration was from.
13 years later, we've left the EU, and net immigration from Eastern Europe is -IIRC- currently negative.
Instead we've had the Boriswave, bringing mostly people from outside Europe. And I suspect that those immigrants have settled in different parts of the country.
So there might well be an interesting 'switch' in where the majority non-English students are.
(As an aside: I went to a majority non-English speaking school in Bedford. All my friends from there who spoke Urdu/Gujerati/etc at home when kids, speak English at home now. So their kids won't be from English as a second language kids.)
My kids' primary school has gone from negligible EASL to c.50% EASL in the 11 years I have been a parent there. I should stress that they are largely the sort of EASL kids who ate very much tryimg to learn English and to integrate - HK and Indian are the top two nationalities. I live in a comfortable middle class area and realistically *difficult* immigrants are priced out.
However I do know quite a bit about a school with a less favourable experience in a deprived area of South Yorkshire: 60% of the kids there are Roma from Slovakia, typically: - from families where no women and under 10% of men are economically active - living upwards of 12 people to an unfurnished two bedroom house - from families where education is in no way value - from two villages in Slovakia which are functionally at war with each other. They are here living in these conditions because, incredibly, life in Slovakian Roma villages is much, much worse. Seriously. Google them. And because they face much less discrimination here than in Slovakia. But they have no sense of permanence or investment in the UK, and are constantly sparring with the authorities over crime and benefit fraud.
In these conditions education is challenging.
Of the 40% who are not Roma, the next most prominent ethnic group are Somali.
So, the experience of education at majority EASL schools is variable.
These people need to be expelled. They should never have been allowed in, we will bankrupt the country supporting them for the next ten generations
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
It’s hard to escape that conclusion if you’re blindfolded and tied up in a sack, perhaps, but everyone else can see through Leon’s nonsense. Jews fleeing Eastern Europe and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century were talked about in similar terms at the time. We’re two or three generations on from that wave of immigration and their children and grandchildren are integrated and successful, even leading our political parties like Howard, Miliband and Polanski. Are we bankrupting the UK supporting them? The children and grandchildren of Roma and Somali immigrants will be just the same.
People are people. We should help those who have left terrible circumstances, and they will add to our nation. What we don’t need is bigots.
You live in London, don't you? I don't have too much recent first hand experience of London, but from what I understand I can see how you arrive at your conclusion - the melting pot there is more common than the ghetto. But across much of the north, things are not like that. There isn't a lovely blending of races all eventually taking on British mores and values*, there are entirely separate subcultures which do not integrate. I am pessimistic about integration. Different levels of pessimism, mind. The majority will be fine. But there are enough who will not be fine that I think a belief in integration to solveour problems is misplaced. The HK, Carribeans and Eastern Europeans will integrate quickly. The West Africans and Indians within a generation or two. Some others may not integrate but might thrive separately. And some, like the Roma, will neither integrate nor thrive. FWIW, I spent some time last week helping Eritrean immigrants trying to put CVs together. On one level, it was encouraging that they were at least trying. But they were so far from employability - like not actually speaking English (much use was made of Google translate) - that it felt pretty hopeless. Still, we tried.
*Actually, there are melting pots - areas like the one I live in - but more common are the paralell and separate cultures.
Yet everyone - on the right at any rate - lauds Dubai, where people from across Europe, the Middle East and South Asia come together in a state of non-integrated, virtual racial apartheid to run one of the richest economies in the Gulf.
Not to my taste, but it seems to be beloved of the same people who berate non-integration in Britain.
I sometimes think what we need is an alien invasion to make humans appreciate how similar we all are to each other, and that we’re all in this together.
Dubai to my eyes does not look an example to follow - not least because it appears to rely on a massive tier of very-hard-done-by immigrants at the bottom.
"To predict what will happen, let’s start by ruling out a few scenarios:
1. We are unlikely to see the use of nuclear weapons. First, Israel is unlikely to use them; the U.S. wouldn’t allow it, and more importantly, nukes wouldn’t completely eliminate Iran. Instead, it would risk a counter-strike from Iranian nuclear weapons (which they likely already possess). As for Iran, they won’t be the first to use them. There’s simply no need. We can likely rule out this worst-case, unpredictable risk.
2. The U.S. will not launch a large-scale war on Iranian mainland. They simply can’t afford it.
3. The U.S. will not retreat just yet. Many are anticipating a TACO, but taco now is meaningless. A true "TACO” would mean handing control of the Strait of Hormuz over to Iran—a "Grand TACO," if you will. It’s too early to give up.
4. Israel will not back down. Stopping now would mean all previous efforts were in vain; they won’t get another chance.
5. As long as there is no regime change, Iran will not back down either. As I’ve discussed before, since they’ve already played their biggest card—Hormuz—they won’t fold easily. Folding means certain death for top IRGC people; staying in the game at least offers a chance at survival.
Once we exclude these five possibilities and establish these constraints, the path forward becomes relatively clear.
First, the U.S. will likely engage in island-seizing operations, hoping to control the situation through small-scale, high-leverage ground combat.
From there, three possibilities emerge:
• Scenario 1: The battle goes smoothly and concludes in days. Iran is forced to the negotiating table, or regime change occurs. The U.S. quickly gains control of the situation.
• Scenario 2: The fighting is grueling and protracted, but the U.S. eventually secures the objective and stabilizes the situation.
• Scenario 3: The fighting is exceptionally difficult. The U.S. either fails to take the objective or takes it but finds it impossible to defend, eventually forcing a withdrawal. This would complete the "Grand TACO." Trump would shrug his shoulders and take the exit, claiming the battle was simply unwinnable.
Aside from Scenario 1, both Scenarios 2 and 3 would inflict massive pain on the global economic order.
BREAKING: Israeli media reports that if the United States carries out a ground operation in Iran, it would have to go alone, with Israeli forces not participating on the ground.
"To predict what will happen, let’s start by ruling out a few scenarios:
1. We are unlikely to see the use of nuclear weapons. First, Israel is unlikely to use them; the U.S. wouldn’t allow it, and more importantly, nukes wouldn’t completely eliminate Iran. Instead, it would risk a counter-strike from Iranian nuclear weapons (which they likely already possess). As for Iran, they won’t be the first to use them. There’s simply no need. We can likely rule out this worst-case, unpredictable risk.
2. The U.S. will not launch a large-scale war on Iranian mainland. They simply can’t afford it.
3. The U.S. will not retreat just yet. Many are anticipating a TACO, but taco now is meaningless. A true "TACO” would mean handing control of the Strait of Hormuz over to Iran—a "Grand TACO," if you will. It’s too early to give up.
4. Israel will not back down. Stopping now would mean all previous efforts were in vain; they won’t get another chance.
5. As long as there is no regime change, Iran will not back down either. As I’ve discussed before, since they’ve already played their biggest card—Hormuz—they won’t fold easily. Folding means certain death for top IRGC people; staying in the game at least offers a chance at survival.
Once we exclude these five possibilities and establish these constraints, the path forward becomes relatively clear.
First, the U.S. will likely engage in island-seizing operations, hoping to control the situation through small-scale, high-leverage ground combat.
From there, three possibilities emerge:
• Scenario 1: The battle goes smoothly and concludes in days. Iran is forced to the negotiating table, or regime change occurs. The U.S. quickly gains control of the situation.
• Scenario 2: The fighting is grueling and protracted, but the U.S. eventually secures the objective and stabilizes the situation.
• Scenario 3: The fighting is exceptionally difficult. The U.S. either fails to take the objective or takes it but finds it impossible to defend, eventually forcing a withdrawal. This would complete the "Grand TACO." Trump would shrug his shoulders and take the exit, claiming the battle was simply unwinnable.
Aside from Scenario 1, both Scenarios 2 and 3 would inflict massive pain on the global economic order.
BREAKING: Israeli media reports that if the United States carries out a ground operation in Iran, it would have to go alone, with Israeli forces not participating on the ground.
If Netanyahu still gets Trump to agree to that he is a political genius and master manipulator, he will probably use the excuse Israeli troops are already busy removing Hamas from Gaza
And what effect that had on inflation and economies ?
Yes, I do remember there was a big recession in that period but that was caused by bank crashes and overvalued housing.
The biggest peak was early 2008 when the price went over $140 a barrel Then it crashed to about £35 a barrel as the market crash happened. After that it was a lot of smaller factors driving the price rather than one big one. Cold winters in the Northern hemisphere, a bounce back in the economies of the West after the crash and the Arab Spring which had the markets jittery.
Another of my favourite pubs is currently subject to a possible suspension of licence due to sound complaints. Flats above it converted to STLs and the investors are struggling with the negative reviews. The hypocrisy is stunning - if you’ve ever lived in a stairwell with an STL the anti-social behaviour is worse than anything a pub can generate - especially a genteel one like this.
These people will be first against the wall if I come to power.
Hoping someone on here can help out - I thought only about 20% of the world's oil still went through Hormuz and Britain could get enough fuel for petrol from other sources.
I appreciate there may well be supply issues with diesel and that could cause a lot of other problems but are we likely to run out of petrol or simplyhave to function on 75-80% of current supply which will cause some issues especially if people (as they will once this seeps into the public domain) start panic buying?
Happy to once again wallow in the depths of my ignorance on these matters.
OK.
When you say 'only' 20%, that's an astonishing number. That means the world needs to reduce oil consumption by 20%. And gas consumption by -say- 10-15%.
Now... it is fortunate indeed that the US has chose now to attack. We're going into a seasonally weaker period for energy demand, and a seasonally stronger period for renewable production. But that doesn't stop the fact that reducing oil demand by 20% is a massive ask, that leads to all goods becoming much more expensive, and to a horrendous worldwide recession.
My customers in Arizona and Nevada are already being crushed. If the oil price were to double from here, it would be an absolute disaster for them.
Yes, I realise surviving on 80% of our pre-existing oil supplies is going to cause extreme problems and as others have said lead to global recession if not worse.
There are the medium and long term impacts and then there are the short term ones. For many, it won't be economic growth or inflation in 2027 that will be the concern but whether there's going to be enough petrol to fill the car next week.
We will doubtless panic ourselves into a crisis as we did in 2022 and the map shown earlier "suggests" the cut off in oil supplies may be just after Easter but the question then is whether we have reserves or whether oil is obtainable (albeit at $150 per barrel or whatever) from elsewhere or whether the "crunch" in petrol and diesel (as well as gas, heating oil etc) will be then or later in April and into May and what happens beyond that as we face a new and challenging world.
TL;DR: a serious American ground invasion of Iran is the total global clusterfuck of clusterfucks
It almost certainly won't succeed, it almost certainly will cause worldwide turmoil
Honestly, who knows. I am of the mind to think it will make Vietnam look like a ridiculously successful and short US intervention but actually who knows?
What we can be sure of is it a bloody mental idea and has no actual strategic end goal.
We can pray that the Israelis in their djinn-like, Hezbollah-pager-exploding genius, have some fantastic plan that will enable the US and Israel to overthrow the mullahs with just 10,000 US Marines and a lot of bombs, without Iran reacting by destroying all energy infra within missile range, but I err on the pessimistic side and think
1. Israel just wants to see Iran fucked up
and
2. The Americans have been suckered by the Israelis into all this, hence J D Vance angrily belling Tel Aviv to say "you promised us Iranian regime change, you lying fucks"
Thoughts and prayers to Vance who must be finding it a tad difficult to sleep at night given the number one thing he raged and campaigned against is now happening and may well make Iraq look like a tea party.
Resign or try the 25th?
Hard choices.
Only resign if he has teed up a nail bar to run. No-one else will want him.
25th it is. He'll get some support for the "thank fuck Trump's gone" aspect of moving us forward. But he'll still be reviled.
He has to persuade the US Cabinet to back him.
Seems hard to imagine that will happen.
Surely a majority of the cabinet quietly hate Trump for humiliating them in those Stalinist praise sessions?
Interesting point. Rubio has stated that he wouldn't challenge Vance for the Republican nomination so you could easily imagine them, as the two most senior members, co-operating. As for the others, who knows, but as they are all so venal, you could see the herd moving pretty quickly once a tipping point was reached with menaces being threatened by Vance/Rubio. Trump is entirely transactional - no personal loyalty with him - would be ironic if the same attitude was visited upon him. Stranger things have happened, but still, surely, a long shot.
BREAKING: Israeli media reports that if the United States carries out a ground operation in Iran, it would have to go alone, with Israeli forces not participating on the ground.
Gosh. So it isn't just NATO who are chicken? Doubtless the Saudis, those paragons of all that is right, correct and noble about oppressing women, murdering dissidents and spreading Islamic fundamentalist terror will have their backs? No? UAE will be drafting all residents? Don't think so. Well done Donald.
WW3 risk, even with a situation like this, ought to be near zero but imo it's well above that because of one specific factor. Donald Trump. A person so intellectually stunted and emotionally immature has never before led America at a time of grave international crisis. He might greenlight something 'kinetic', it might go wrong, there might be significant American casualties, his response to the clear setback and humiliation might be something beyond rash, driven by anger and pique, something off the scale, then others might do 'kinetic' things, either in direct response or to further their own agendas with this as cover and justification, and now the escalator is up and running and very soon hurtles past the point of no return. At which juncture it won't matter a great deal that I still haven't found any sardines.
World Wars have generally happened when a rising world power seeks to reorder world affairs to better suit them by using force, and the existing world powers resist.
The rise of China as the world's leading industrial economy consequently creates the conditions for a world war, unless they are content to work within the confines of the world as currently ordered by the US, or they can reorder things without a direct military confrontation.
BREAKING: Israeli media reports that if the United States carries out a ground operation in Iran, it would have to go alone, with Israeli forces not participating on the ground.
Gosh. So it isn't just NATO who are chicken? Doubtless the Saudis, those paragons of all that is right, correct and noble about women oppressing, dissident murdering and Islamic fundamentalist terror spreading will have their backs? No? UAE will be drafting all residents? Don't think so. Well done Donald.
To be fair to Israel they have had jets bombing Iran with the US airforce unlike NATO nations and the Gulf states who have engaged only in defensive operations
Russian Pro-Kremlin Blogger Warns of a “New February 1917”
A well-known Russian nationalist blogger and strong supporter of the war in Ukraine, Maxim Kalashnikov (also known as a “Z-patriot”), has issued a strong warning about growing instability inside Russia.
In his recent statements, Kalashnikov says Russia is on the edge of a new February 1917, referring to the revolution that overthrew the Russian Tsar and led to the collapse of the Russian Empire.
He warns that “something bad is happening” and that the country faces “dramatic events” that could threaten its current form.
BREAKING: Israeli media reports that if the United States carries out a ground operation in Iran, it would have to go alone, with Israeli forces not participating on the ground.
https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/2037942291487236236 As a result of the war we are going through, and because our enemy is extensively using the Iranian “Shahed” drone technology, we have developed our own system.
And today, we are sharing what we have developed with countries in the Middle East. Ukraine is highly regarded for this. We have shifted the geopolitical landscape.
Everyone understands that Russia is sharing intelligence with Iran. And everyone understands that, in terms of expertise, no one today can help the way Ukraine can.
We are discussing several areas to ensure mutually beneficial cooperation. The first area is weapons, production, exchange of experience, and the exchange of resources that may not be available in one country or another. The second track concerns long-term energy cooperation.
We're talking about ten-year partnerships. We have already signed a relevant agreement with Saudi Arabia, and we have also signed a ten-year agreement with Qatar.
Over these ten years, we will focus on co-production, building manufacturing facilities—production lines in Ukraine and in these countries. We will also address, for example, how to supply a country with diesel in the event of shortages and major global challenges. Yesterday, I reached an agreement on diesel supplies for at least one year. From there, it becomes a matter for our companies and the local companies...
Given the fact that the supply of oil and gas to the whole world has already been significantly, negatively impacted by the Iran War - and that the threat is that this will worsen considerably, along with a related fertiliser supply problem - it seems surprising to me that global markets are not already in freefall. Why is this?
I don't think that it is based on a belief that Iran will be capitulate. So these are my two suggested answers.
1. The markets believe that some form of a workable, effective TACO will emerge before major and irrevocable economic harm becomes embedded.
2. Maybe the global economy can and will adapt to the crisis in energy and fertiliser supply? Is this possible? I don't know - but are we perhaps overplaying the apocalyptic economic consequences of the war?
BREAKING: Israeli media reports that if the United States carries out a ground operation in Iran, it would have to go alone, with Israeli forces not participating on the ground.
Gosh. So it isn't just NATO who are chicken? Doubtless the Saudis, those paragons of all that is right, correct and noble about women oppressing, dissident murdering and Islamic fundamentalist terror spreading will have their backs? No? UAE will be drafting all residents? Don't think so. Well done Donald.
To be fair to Israel they have had jets bombing Iran with the US airforce unlike NATO nations and the Gulf states who have engaged only in defensive operations
Shrewd observers may note I didn't mention Israel.
Russian Pro-Kremlin Blogger Warns of a “New February 1917”
A well-known Russian nationalist blogger and strong supporter of the war in Ukraine, Maxim Kalashnikov (also known as a “Z-patriot”), has issued a strong warning about growing instability inside Russia.
In his recent statements, Kalashnikov says Russia is on the edge of a new February 1917, referring to the revolution that overthrew the Russian Tsar and led to the collapse of the Russian Empire.
He warns that “something bad is happening” and that the country faces “dramatic events” that could threaten its current form.
"To predict what will happen, let’s start by ruling out a few scenarios:
1. We are unlikely to see the use of nuclear weapons. First, Israel is unlikely to use them; the U.S. wouldn’t allow it, and more importantly, nukes wouldn’t completely eliminate Iran. Instead, it would risk a counter-strike from Iranian nuclear weapons (which they likely already possess). As for Iran, they won’t be the first to use them. There’s simply no need. We can likely rule out this worst-case, unpredictable risk.
2. The U.S. will not launch a large-scale war on Iranian mainland. They simply can’t afford it.
3. The U.S. will not retreat just yet. Many are anticipating a TACO, but taco now is meaningless. A true "TACO” would mean handing control of the Strait of Hormuz over to Iran—a "Grand TACO," if you will. It’s too early to give up.
4. Israel will not back down. Stopping now would mean all previous efforts were in vain; they won’t get another chance.
5. As long as there is no regime change, Iran will not back down either. As I’ve discussed before, since they’ve already played their biggest card—Hormuz—they won’t fold easily. Folding means certain death for top IRGC people; staying in the game at least offers a chance at survival.
Once we exclude these five possibilities and establish these constraints, the path forward becomes relatively clear.
First, the U.S. will likely engage in island-seizing operations, hoping to control the situation through small-scale, high-leverage ground combat.
From there, three possibilities emerge:
• Scenario 1: The battle goes smoothly and concludes in days. Iran is forced to the negotiating table, or regime change occurs. The U.S. quickly gains control of the situation.
• Scenario 2: The fighting is grueling and protracted, but the U.S. eventually secures the objective and stabilizes the situation.
• Scenario 3: The fighting is exceptionally difficult. The U.S. either fails to take the objective or takes it but finds it impossible to defend, eventually forcing a withdrawal. This would complete the "Grand TACO." Trump would shrug his shoulders and take the exit, claiming the battle was simply unwinnable.
Aside from Scenario 1, both Scenarios 2 and 3 would inflict massive pain on the global economic order.
Scenario 1, “Mission Accomplished”, no regime change, Hormuz is still closed.
It’s going to take a lot more than that to provide the kind of security required.
3 but the war continues. each side has lost too much to back down, The GCC are ablaze with desalination and power plants inoperative whilst desperately short of food. Bahrain is rioting, UAE & Saudi retain little production and refining capacity. Qatar is drifting toward the Iranian orbit. And the Bab al-Mandab Strait is blocked so everything takes a month longer to get anywhere.
India, Bangladesh and Pakistan are completely fucked as Iranian tankers can no longer pass the strait unmolested. Globally we're rationing fuel, limited working days and embracing a recession, huge inflation and high unemployment. China is practising hard-ball EV & battery diplomacy.
Trump can't back down, Israel can't, Iran can't and nobody else can tell them to stop.
Russian Pro-Kremlin Blogger Warns of a “New February 1917”
A well-known Russian nationalist blogger and strong supporter of the war in Ukraine, Maxim Kalashnikov (also known as a “Z-patriot”), has issued a strong warning about growing instability inside Russia.
In his recent statements, Kalashnikov says Russia is on the edge of a new February 1917, referring to the revolution that overthrew the Russian Tsar and led to the collapse of the Russian Empire.
He warns that “something bad is happening” and that the country faces “dramatic events” that could threaten its current form.
If that led to the end of Russia's war in Ukraine then it would be a step forwards, confining Russian-sourced instability to within Russia, rather than Russia's neighbours.
WW3 risk, even with a situation like this, ought to be near zero but imo it's well above that because of one specific factor. Donald Trump. A person so intellectually stunted and emotionally immature has never before led America at a time of grave international crisis. He might greenlight something 'kinetic', it might go wrong, there might be significant American casualties, his response to the clear setback and humiliation might be something beyond rash, driven by anger and pique, something off the scale, then others might do 'kinetic' things, either in direct response or to further their own agendas with this as cover and justification, and now the escalator is up and running and very soon hurtles past the point of no return. At which juncture it won't matter a great deal that I still haven't found any sardines.
World Wars have generally happened when a rising world power seeks to reorder world affairs to better suit them by using force, and the existing world powers resist.
The rise of China as the world's leading industrial economy consequently creates the conditions for a world war, unless they are content to work within the confines of the world as currently ordered by the US, or they can reorder things without a direct military confrontation.
At the moment, the US is doing the job for them. They need only watch and wait.
Given the fact that the supply of oil and gas to the whole world has already been significantly, negatively impacted by the Iran War - and that the threat is that this will worsen considerably, along with a related fertiliser supply problem - it seems surprising to me that global markets are not already in freefall. Why is this?
I don't think that it is based on a belief that Iran will be capitulate. So these are my two suggested answers.
1. The markets believe that some form of a workable, effective TACO will emerge before major and irrevocable economic harm becomes embedded.
2. Maybe the global economy can and will adapt to the crisis in energy and fertiliser supply? Is this possible? I don't know - but are we perhaps overplaying the apocalyptic economic consequences of the war?
Because the US and UK, for example, don't depend on products/goods from the Middle East. The price might go up a bit but it isn't that important.
Anne Coulter might be a right wing loon, but she's saner than most of today's MAGA.
Watching Fox News assure viewers the Iran war is going SUPER well and Trump is a total stud is like watching the same network assure viewers that Dominion Voting Systems rigged the 2020 election and Trump was the winner. https://x.com/AnnCoulter/status/2038353158699667813
Given the fact that the supply of oil and gas to the whole world has already been significantly, negatively impacted by the Iran War - and that the threat is that this will worsen considerably, along with a related fertiliser supply problem - it seems surprising to me that global markets are not already in freefall. Why is this?
I don't think that it is based on a belief that Iran will be capitulate. So these are my two suggested answers.
1. The markets believe that some form of a workable, effective TACO will emerge before major and irrevocable economic harm becomes embedded.
2. Maybe the global economy can and will adapt to the crisis in energy and fertiliser supply? Is this possible? I don't know - but are we perhaps overplaying the apocalyptic economic consequences of the war?
Since Trump became President the second time there have been lots of occasions when markets have panicked at something Trump has done, and then Trump has TACO'd, and the markets have bounced back, and then it turns out that someone played the markets at the perfect moment to profit from the wild swings.
So I think there's an element of crying wolf about this. The markets assume he will TACO. And they don't want to lose money to his cronies by being manipulated into panicking and rebounding. So an imminent TACO is priced in. It will happen any day now.
But there are two problems with this. One is that Trump is less likely to TACO if the markets don't suffer a rout (because of an assumption that he will). So the TACO is delayed until the markets lose faith that it will happen.
The second is that Iran has to agree to end the war too. I think the markets are underestimating Iran's determination to continue the war until they secure major concessions from the US, such as the closure of US military bases in the Middle East.
Given the fact that the supply of oil and gas to the whole world has already been significantly, negatively impacted by the Iran War - and that the threat is that this will worsen considerably, along with a related fertiliser supply problem - it seems surprising to me that global markets are not already in freefall. Why is this?
I don't think that it is based on a belief that Iran will be capitulate. So these are my two suggested answers.
1. The markets believe that some form of a workable, effective TACO will emerge before major and irrevocable economic harm becomes embedded.
2. Maybe the global economy can and will adapt to the crisis in energy and fertiliser supply? Is this possible? I don't know - but are we perhaps overplaying the apocalyptic economic consequences of the war?
Because the US and UK, for example, don't depend on products/goods from the Middle East. The price might go up a bit but it isn't that important.
Er....
No
The markets are in the August 1914 stage - praying that something will avert the apocalypse.
Given the fact that the supply of oil and gas to the whole world has already been significantly, negatively impacted by the Iran War - and that the threat is that this will worsen considerably, along with a related fertiliser supply problem - it seems surprising to me that global markets are not already in freefall. Why is this?
I don't think that it is based on a belief that Iran will be capitulate. So these are my two suggested answers.
1. The markets believe that some form of a workable, effective TACO will emerge before major and irrevocable economic harm becomes embedded.
2. Maybe the global economy can and will adapt to the crisis in energy and fertiliser supply? Is this possible? I don't know - but are we perhaps overplaying the apocalyptic economic consequences of the war?
People talk about how much oil passes through Hormuz.
Perhaps a better question is how much of the world's energy passes through Hormuz.
And also how much world energy supply in total would increase in response to higher oil prices.
Anne Coulter might be a right wing loon, but she's saner than most of today's MAGA.
Watching Fox News assure viewers the Iran war is going SUPER well and Trump is a total stud is like watching the same network assure viewers that Dominion Voting Systems rigged the 2020 election and Trump was the winner. https://x.com/AnnCoulter/status/2038353158699667813
We are so far through the looking glass with Trump 2.0 that even the absolute loons are having doubts.
Russian Pro-Kremlin Blogger Warns of a “New February 1917”
A well-known Russian nationalist blogger and strong supporter of the war in Ukraine, Maxim Kalashnikov (also known as a “Z-patriot”), has issued a strong warning about growing instability inside Russia.
In his recent statements, Kalashnikov says Russia is on the edge of a new February 1917, referring to the revolution that overthrew the Russian Tsar and led to the collapse of the Russian Empire.
He warns that “something bad is happening” and that the country faces “dramatic events” that could threaten its current form.
Given the fact that the supply of oil and gas to the whole world has already been significantly, negatively impacted by the Iran War - and that the threat is that this will worsen considerably, along with a related fertiliser supply problem - it seems surprising to me that global markets are not already in freefall. Why is this?
I don't think that it is based on a belief that Iran will be capitulate. So these are my two suggested answers.
1. The markets believe that some form of a workable, effective TACO will emerge before major and irrevocable economic harm becomes embedded.
2. Maybe the global economy can and will adapt to the crisis in energy and fertiliser supply? Is this possible? I don't know - but are we perhaps overplaying the apocalyptic economic consequences of the war?
People talk about how much oil passes through Hormuz.
Perhaps a better question is how much of the world's energy passes through Hormuz.
And also how much world energy supply in total would increase in response to higher oil prices.
I'm sure demand for expanding fracking in the US is off the charts, but it will take time to respond, and the size of the supply drop is so large that it will take time to replace.
If you consider the drop in gas supplies for instance, I have little idea how long it would take for a combination of solar panel production and increased gas output from other regions to close the gap, but I'm guessing at a minimum it would be years rather than months.
Anne Coulter might be a right wing loon, but she's saner than most of today's MAGA.
Watching Fox News assure viewers the Iran war is going SUPER well and Trump is a total stud is like watching the same network assure viewers that Dominion Voting Systems rigged the 2020 election and Trump was the winner. https://x.com/AnnCoulter/status/2038353158699667813
Comments
When you say 'only' 20%, that's an astonishing number. That means the world needs to reduce oil consumption by 20%. And gas consumption by -say- 10-15%.
Now... it is fortunate indeed that the US has chose now to attack. We're going into a seasonally weaker period for energy demand, and a seasonally stronger period for renewable production. But that doesn't stop the fact that reducing oil demand by 20% is a massive ask, that leads to all goods becoming much more expensive, and to a horrendous worldwide recession.
My customers in Arizona and Nevada are already being crushed. If the oil price were to double from here, it would be an absolute disaster for them.
Shashank Joshi
@shashj
Absolutely remarkable. "Iran is now earning nearly twice as much from oil sales each day as it did before American and Israeli bombs started falling on February 28th. It may be pummelled on the battlefield, but the regime is winning the energy war."
https://x.com/shashj/status/2038337988640350271
Obviously it would be cheaper to have the flow of oil from the ME restored, but I think it can exercise strategic patience to an extent that most other countries cannot.
The UK, as a trading nation with a large food deficit, is somewhat exposed.
Right now, China is LARGER than America by GDP PPP, and is definitely a greater industrial power, also bigger in terms of trade
China is too big for America to prevail, China has supplanted America in too many areas. If America really is trying to strangle China via energy supplies, it is lunacy (absent the possible exception of technological advances I cannot mention)
Almost like the US has achieved the opposite of it's aims.
By the way, I recall you recently saying you wanted to restore Britain’s constitutional norms. Are you now saying you want to rip them up?
There are the medium and long term impacts and then there are the short term ones. For many, it won't be economic growth or inflation in 2027 that will be the concern but whether there's going to be enough petrol to fill the car next week.
We will doubtless panic ourselves into a crisis as we did in 2022 and the map shown earlier "suggests" the cut off in oil supplies may be just after Easter but the question then is whether we have reserves or whether oil is obtainable (albeit at $150 per barrel or whatever) from elsewhere or whether the "crunch" in petrol and diesel (as well as gas, heating oil etc) will be then or later in April and into May and what happens beyond that as we face a new and challenging world.
But if the Americans go, you know where you stand. You need to do a deal with Iran. $2 million bribe to the Iranians, a couple of dollars per barrel - it's a relatively minor business expense. Insurance and crew danger money up a bit, but all within the operating margins. O&G are used to buying off parties that get in their way. It's all normal. The main thing is the oil is now flowing.
It helps the Gulf States in the same way. Their illusions about Pax Americana fall away. They have no choice but deal with the Iranians, which reduces tensions.
It almost certainly won't succeed, it almost certainly will cause worldwide turmoil
Now, some of you might think that making tin cups is a greater contribution to society…
Indeed I am surprised, to an extent, that we haven't seen massive petrol station queues in the UK. Yet
It is either a credit to our continuing national stoicism or a comment on the relative inability of most people to extrapolate events. Or both
Great though to see you on board with getting out of the big boys’ gang of the UK and concentrating on the safety and prosperity of our own people. Or our ain folk as we say up here.
Which is why the inception then demolition of Nordstream was such big news
What we can be sure of is it a bloody mental idea and has no actual strategic end goal.
It's still the case that tolls to export oil via the Strait of Hormuz will not be paid in the 2030s. So although they would be a definite loss as a result of this war, they would only be a temporary loss.
1. Israel just wants to see Iran fucked up
and
2. The Americans have been suckered by the Israelis into all this, hence J D Vance angrily belling Tel Aviv to say "you promised us Iranian regime change, you lying fucks"
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-tense-call-vance-knocked-pm-for-overselling-iran-regime-change-likelihood-report/
Resign or try the 25th?
Hard choices.
Different levels of pessimism, mind. The majority will be fine. But there are enough who will not be fine that I think a belief in integration to solveour problems is misplaced. The HK, Carribeans and Eastern Europeans will integrate quickly. The West Africans and Indians within a generation or two. Some others may not integrate but might thrive separately. And some, like the Roma, will neither integrate nor thrive.
FWIW, I spent some time last week helping Eritrean immigrants trying to put CVs together. On one level, it was encouraging that they were at least trying. But they were so far from employability - like not actually speaking English (much use was made of Google translate) - that it felt pretty hopeless. Still, we tried.
*Actually, there are melting pots - areas like the one I live in - but more common are the paralell and separate cultures.
https://x.com/bennollweather/status/2037537628934078851?s=46
Global temperatures have been rising rapidly despite cold phase La Niña conditions in the past 2-3 years. This will take them a good 0.2-0.3C above trend for a year or so.
Unfortunately this exacerbates all the things the Iran war is already doing to prices: wheat, rice, soy, therefore also meat. 2027 is going to be worse than 2025 or 2026.
Brace.
Not to my taste, but it seems to be beloved of the same people who berate non-integration in Britain.
I sometimes think what we need is an alien invasion to make humans appreciate how similar we all are to each other, and that we’re all in this together.
The nightmare scenario - a US-Russia pact against Europe - is another matter.
I suppose its generally accepted that Dubai is better than Saudi or Iran and has done well from its limited resources.
25th it is. He'll get some support for the "thank fuck Trump's gone" aspect of moving us forward. But he'll still be reviled.
My primary schools were pretty much all WWC, one black kid who I think was in care was the entirety of the minority ethnicities.
My secondary school was about 25% South Asian, with a slight bias towards Hindus over Muslims. Many were EASL, most had been in England since birth or young, but Urdu and, I think, Hindi, rather than more regional languages, were languages in the home. It was a mild phenomenon, we had banding (that you were in for all subjects) and setting - a lot of the Asian kids tended to be a set lower for English than for other subjects, but were perfectly competent. Looking back, and considering my time in Italy, I can understand there being a mix of languages in the home - operating entirely in a second language is tiring and being able to relax back into your own language in your own house can be as relaxing as putting on a pair of slippers.
My siblings went to a different secondary, some Bengali kids had come from a heavy majority EASL primary and were less established in their locality. I think the language difficulties were somewhat more apparent in that setting.
Thinking of my kids, there were a small number of South Asians in their primary, some Sikhs, and some third generation immigrants and some quarter Asian kids but I'm not sure any would be classed as EASL. A Malaysian kid joined one year with no English at all and had to be helped from scratch.
One of my son's secondaries and for that matter, my youngest's primary, are very mixed, lots of nationalities and with quite a sizeable amount of EASL. The football selection my son's school yard was generally Nazis vs Terrorists, with most white races in the former including Poles and most black Caribbean kids in the latter. There were a couple of, EASL, Bosnian Muslims who could be used on either side.
My middle daughter's selective school was very heavily formed of academically pushed South Asian kids, again with a variety of other nationalities - my kids friends, are heavily varied in ancestry: plenty of Pakistani friends, Poles, said Bosnians, Serbians, white kids in half Caribbean step families, many consider themselves English, many of the Europeans particularly with a more mixed outlook.
I know Cookie has intimated about non mixing in his school and associates this with immigration - post-COVID, my kids are older and forming their own friends not relying on parental organisation, after school clubs hand over in a more front gate way, I do feel the school gate when I'm there is not quite as social as it used to be, eastern Europeans and Africans will seem to ignore you until they know you. I don't disbelieve Cookie's experience, but wonder if it is more complex than he makes out - kids' age, bigger schools, post-COVID, generational changes and initial reservedness of communities whose parents don't quite know the customs and hold back all combining.
Roussillon is the part of Catalonia wot Spain ceded to France by the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, centred on Perpignan.
Seems hard to imagine that will happen.
But, OK, what can one do to encourage integration rather than ghettoisation? Helping Eritreans with CVs? That sounds good. Saying they all need to be expelled or they’ll bankrupt us for 10 generations? That seems less likely to help integration.
The damage that Trump and Netanyahu has caused threatens to become spectacular.
You and I should get along so awfully?
People are people, so why should it be
You and I should get along so awfully?
So we're different colours and we're different creeds
And different people have different needs
It's obvious you hate me, though I've done nothing wrong
I've never even met you, so what could I have done?
I can't understand
What makes a man
Hate another man
Help me understand
People are people, so why should it be
You and I should get along so awfully?
People are people, so why should it be
You and I should get along so awfully?
Help me understand
Help me understand (help me understand)
Now you're punching, and you're kicking, and you're shouting at me
I'm relying on your common decency
So far, it hasn't surfaced, but I'm sure it exists
It just takes a while to travel from your head to your fist (head to your fist)
I can't understand
What makes a man
Hate another man
Help me understand
People are people, so why should it be
You and I should get along so awfully?
People are people, so why should it be
You and I should get along so awfully?
Dubai explicitly and overtly sells itself as a no-place in the desert, there is NO local culture to integrate with, you certainly aren't expected to speak Arabic or behave like a Muslim. It is very sunny (too sunny) and very safe and taxes are minimal and as long as you adhere to universal norms - don't shit on the beach, don't have sex in public, do not steal phones - you will be left alone and respected, and you can make nice money in a faintly boring city with brilliant air connections. That's it
The idea of "integrating" into Emirati culture is the concept of a child
Do they still run that service?
They weren't of course. Well, not any more than any of the people making the accusations. I absolutely loved the desert but the ex-pat attitudes and lifestyle stank.
One of the challenges of dealing with cults is persuading the victims that they are victims.
"To predict what will happen, let’s start by ruling out a few scenarios:
1. We are unlikely to see the use of nuclear weapons. First, Israel is unlikely to use them; the U.S. wouldn’t allow it, and more importantly, nukes wouldn’t completely eliminate Iran. Instead, it would risk a counter-strike from Iranian nuclear weapons (which they likely already possess). As for Iran, they won’t be the first to use them. There’s simply no need. We can likely rule out this worst-case, unpredictable risk.
2. The U.S. will not launch a large-scale war on Iranian mainland. They simply can’t afford it.
3. The U.S. will not retreat just yet. Many are anticipating a TACO, but taco now is meaningless. A true "TACO” would mean handing control of the Strait of Hormuz over to Iran—a "Grand TACO," if you will. It’s too early to give up.
4. Israel will not back down. Stopping now would mean all previous efforts were in vain; they won’t get another chance.
5. As long as there is no regime change, Iran will not back down either. As I’ve discussed before, since they’ve already played their biggest card—Hormuz—they won’t fold easily. Folding means certain death for top IRGC people; staying in the game at least offers a chance at survival.
Once we exclude these five possibilities and establish these constraints, the path forward becomes relatively clear.
First, the U.S. will likely engage in island-seizing operations, hoping to control the situation through small-scale, high-leverage ground combat.
From there, three possibilities emerge:
• Scenario 1: The battle goes smoothly and concludes in days. Iran is forced to the negotiating table, or regime change occurs. The U.S. quickly gains control of the situation.
• Scenario 2: The fighting is grueling and protracted, but the U.S. eventually secures the objective and stabilizes the situation.
• Scenario 3: The fighting is exceptionally difficult. The U.S. either fails to take the objective or takes it but finds it impossible to defend, eventually forcing a withdrawal. This would complete the "Grand TACO." Trump would shrug his shoulders and take the exit, claiming the battle was simply unwinnable.
Aside from Scenario 1, both Scenarios 2 and 3 would inflict massive pain on the global economic order.
I personally think scenario 3 is the most likely.
Brace for impact, folks"
https://x.com/robert_baiguan/status/2038247537992405430?s=20
Back then the first building you reached when you left the airport was the old British fort about half way between the airport and the city. There were no buildings over maybe 10 stories and the whole place (Abu Dhabi) didn't even fully occupy the main island.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/262860/uk-brent-crude-oil-price-changes-since-1976/?srsltid=AfmBOorMmUEm4JG7lazoKwEqCqiF5JzTptudPqoPlXa_3DdA77iAYR4d
And what effect that had on inflation and economies ?
Yes, I do remember there was a big recession in that period but that was caused by bank crashes and overvalued housing.
It’s going to take a lot more than that to provide the kind of security required.
BREAKING: Israeli media reports that if the United States carries out a ground operation in Iran, it would have to go alone, with Israeli forces not participating on the ground.
https://x.com/GeneralMCNews/status/2038358463059820776?s=20
But that's just me.
These people will be first against the wall if I come to power.
So it isn't just NATO who are chicken?
Doubtless the Saudis, those paragons of all that is right, correct and noble about oppressing women, murdering dissidents and spreading Islamic fundamentalist terror will have their backs?
No?
UAE will be drafting all residents?
Don't think so.
Well done Donald.
The rise of China as the world's leading industrial economy consequently creates the conditions for a world war, unless they are content to work within the confines of the world as currently ordered by the US, or they can reorder things without a direct military confrontation.
https://x.com/brave_romania/status/2038302634667393028
Russian Pro-Kremlin Blogger Warns of a “New February 1917”
A well-known Russian nationalist blogger and strong supporter of the war in Ukraine, Maxim Kalashnikov (also known as a “Z-patriot”), has issued a strong warning about growing instability inside Russia.
In his recent statements, Kalashnikov says Russia is on the edge of a new February 1917, referring to the revolution that overthrew the Russian Tsar and led to the collapse of the Russian Empire.
He warns that “something bad is happening” and that the country faces “dramatic events” that could threaten its current form.
It's now $115+ and rising.
Basic crude has broken the $100 barrier it has flirted with several times.
Now at 102.75.
https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/2037942291487236236
As a result of the war we are going through, and because our enemy is extensively using the Iranian “Shahed” drone technology, we have developed our own system.
And today, we are sharing what we have developed with countries in the Middle East. Ukraine is highly regarded for this. We have shifted the geopolitical landscape.
Everyone understands that Russia is sharing intelligence with Iran. And everyone understands that, in terms of expertise, no one today can help the way Ukraine can.
We are discussing several areas to ensure mutually beneficial cooperation. The first area is weapons, production, exchange of experience, and the exchange of resources that may not be available in one country or another. The second track concerns long-term energy cooperation.
We're talking about ten-year partnerships. We have already signed a relevant agreement with Saudi Arabia, and we have also signed a ten-year agreement with Qatar.
Over these ten years, we will focus on co-production, building manufacturing facilities—production lines in Ukraine and in these countries. We will also address, for example, how to supply a country with diesel in the event of shortages and major global challenges. Yesterday, I reached an agreement on diesel supplies for at least one year. From there, it becomes a matter for our companies and the local companies...
I don't think that it is based on a belief that Iran will be capitulate. So these are my two suggested answers.
1. The markets believe that some form of a workable, effective TACO will emerge before major and irrevocable economic harm becomes embedded.
2. Maybe the global economy can and will adapt to the crisis in energy and fertiliser supply? Is this possible? I don't know - but are we perhaps overplaying the apocalyptic economic consequences of the war?
"Russia collapsed, nobody much noticed"
India, Bangladesh and Pakistan are completely fucked as Iranian tankers can no longer pass the strait unmolested. Globally we're rationing fuel, limited working days and embracing a recession, huge inflation and high unemployment. China is practising hard-ball EV & battery diplomacy.
Trump can't back down, Israel can't, Iran can't and nobody else can tell them to stop.
They need only watch and wait.
Watching Fox News assure viewers the Iran war is going SUPER well and Trump is a total stud is like watching the same network assure viewers that Dominion Voting Systems rigged the 2020 election and Trump was the winner.
https://x.com/AnnCoulter/status/2038353158699667813
So I think there's an element of crying wolf about this. The markets assume he will TACO. And they don't want to lose money to his cronies by being manipulated into panicking and rebounding. So an imminent TACO is priced in. It will happen any day now.
But there are two problems with this. One is that Trump is less likely to TACO if the markets don't suffer a rout (because of an assumption that he will). So the TACO is delayed until the markets lose faith that it will happen.
The second is that Iran has to agree to end the war too. I think the markets are underestimating Iran's determination to continue the war until they secure major concessions from the US, such as the closure of US military bases in the Middle East.
No
The markets are in the August 1914 stage - praying that something will avert the apocalypse.
Perhaps a better question is how much of the world's energy passes through Hormuz.
And also how much world energy supply in total would increase in response to higher oil prices.
US gas prices are set to break above $4.00/gallon this week.
@KobeissiLetter
If you consider the drop in gas supplies for instance, I have little idea how long it would take for a combination of solar panel production and increased gas output from other regions to close the gap, but I'm guessing at a minimum it would be years rather than months.
https://x.com/fmrrepmtg/status/2038384687119221042
Fox News is now the fake news.
Brainwashing boomers to support what we voted against.