You could also ask when was the last time we had a purely capitalist government in Europe?
That's easy. Never. Nobody has ever tried capitalism in its pure form for a very good reason - the potential social costs are far too high and the risk of revolution would therefore be too great.
Also, of course, in theory at least pure capitalism requires that nobody ever raise taxes - therefore a capitalist government is technically as much of an oxymoron as a communist one.
You always end up therefore with a hybrid economy of some sort in a sane system (War Communism in Russia, complete with the famous moneyless budget, being disqualified for not being sane) - it's just a question of where you put the emphasis on the different parts.
Indeed the only nations which come close are perhaps Singapore and the UAE
If you're talking about surds and quadratics then we aren't talking about Grade C students anymore. The relevant discussion here is students at the D/C borderline, or equivalent, since C seems to be the starting point for job entry or university. No student taking the current foundation tier is even going to encounter those subjects.
Not that those topics aren't important - and if you want to go on to do a technical/quantitative subject then grade C isn't good enough. But changes to the current foundation paper are a separate issue.
One further thought - in 2017, the maths foundation paper is effectively being abolished. The new 'foundation' tier will be the current 'intermediate' tier. That's going to have a big impact on results unless something drastic happens. It's all worth pointing out that as it is nearly impossible to get a half-decent job (and totally impossible to get a university place) without GCSE maths, it's going to have a serious knock-on effect down the line.
Flip side to this: the Intermediate Tier was a good choice of paper for students trying to get a C but who had some chance of getting a B. Ideal for a lot of adult education students for instance (as an adult ed lecturer I was gutted when they scrapped it.)
Also, the half-decent jobs tend to require not just a basic pass (like a D or E) but a C or a B. In fact there seems almost no demand from employers for grades D-G, even though they exist, and even though they are useful at showing the range in skills. (Not that the letter grades will exist for much longer of course!)
Forcing people to take an intermediate-equivalent paper in order to get a C-equivalent isn't going to have much knock-on effect, since those who were going to get a C-equivalent on a foundation-equivalent paper would likely get one on an intermediate-equivalent paper anyway. In fact for a lot of students, it was easier on intermediate, because there are many students who are able to do things like basic algebra but had gaps in fundamental areas, particularly laying out arithmetic neatly and knowing their times table. The intermediate got straight on to their preferred level of difficulty whereas the foundation required them to score very highly on the "basic" questions that in theory they should have romped through, but in practice often caught them out.
Note also that there are going to be more people retaking GCSE during sixth form or (more likely) FE college, now that education/training is compulsory to 18 and that ongoing maths is going to be required. That gives people two more years to drag themselves up to C standard.
I've found that it's not basic stuff that is the issue e.g. times table, but the more advanced stuff such as Quadratics, or Surds that messes quite a few people up.
OMG- Donald Trump on C4. He is a complete loon. He's as mad as box of frogs. He makes old boy Jezza seem like a sane moderate in comparison.
Someone needs to be making contingency plans for a military junta to have a coup if that crazy, crazy man comes anywhere close to winning.
Calm down, he might be even better than George W. At least under President Trump america will be too bothered with war on Mexico to do any harm in the rest of the world.
Also, the half-decent jobs tend to require not just a basic pass (like a D or E) but a C or a B. In fact there seems almost no demand from employers for grades D-G, even though they exist, and even though they are useful at showing the range in skills. (Not that the letter grades will exist for much longer of course!)
Replacement, 1-9, where 9 is the highest and 5 is considered a 'pass' (for whatever reason - as you say, D and E are technically passes, but because the Govt. does not value them for league tables I think employers have come to think of them as somehow not 'proper' passes).
This is not of course going to cause massive confusion and head scratching when it works through to the job market or even to UCAS...
You could also ask when was the last time we had a purely capitalist government in Europe?
That's easy. Never. Nobody has ever tried capitalism in its pure form for a very good reason - the potential social costs are far too high and the risk of revolution would therefore be too great.
Also, of course, in theory at least pure capitalism requires that nobody ever raise taxes - therefore a capitalist government is technically as much of an oxymoron as a communist one.
You always end up therefore with a hybrid economy of some sort in a sane system (War Communism in Russia, complete with the famous moneyless budget, being disqualified for not being sane) - it's just a question of where you put the emphasis on the different parts.
Indeed the only nations which come close are perhaps Singapore and the UAE
Arguably they don't really come close either, although they are the closest nations. Some of the tax havens might just qualify, e.g. the Virgin Islands. (I don't know much about such places, if I'm wrong, would some kind person please put me right?)
You could also ask when was the last time we had a purely capitalist government in Europe?
That's easy. Never. Nobody has ever tried capitalism in its pure form for a very good reason - the potential social costs are far too high and the risk of revolution would therefore be too great.
Also, of course, in theory at least pure capitalism requires that nobody ever raise taxes - therefore a capitalist government is technically as much of an oxymoron as a communist one.
You always end up therefore with a hybrid economy of some sort in a sane system (War Communism in Russia, complete with the famous moneyless budget, being disqualified for not being sane) - it's just a question of where you put the emphasis on the different parts.
Indeed the only nations which come close are perhaps Singapore and the UAE
Singapore is almost the opposite of capitalism; it is a free-market economy but investment is intricately planned in almost every detail by the government so capital is subjugated to clever bureaucrats.
You probably need to go back to the pre-War, I mean the first one, to get proper capitalism in some places.
Also, the half-decent jobs tend to require not just a basic pass (like a D or E) but a C or a B. In fact there seems almost no demand from employers for grades D-G, even though they exist, and even though they are useful at showing the range in skills. (Not that the letter grades will exist for much longer of course!)
Replacement, 1-9, where 9 is the highest and 5 is considered a 'pass' (for whatever reason - as you say, D and E are technically passes, but because the Govt. does not value them for league tables I think employers have come to think of them as somehow not 'proper' passes).
This is not of course going to cause massive confusion and head scratching when it works through to the job market or even to UCAS...
Hardly the first such change.
To the unknowledgeable, it looks like I suddenly improved between my AS and A2 years - because in the former the highest grade was an A whilst in the latter it was A*.
OMG- Donald Trump on C4. He is a complete loon. He's as mad as box of frogs. He makes old boy Jezza seem like a sane moderate in comparison.
Someone needs to be making contingency plans for a military junta to have a coup if that crazy, crazy man comes anywhere close to winning.
He hits the populist button though, a battle between Trump and Sanders would be fascinating though Bloomberg might fancy his chances as an independent. Hillary should beat Trump without too many problems
The emphasis on "having to get a C to pass" is odd, really. There are "Level 1 Numeracy" qualifications which are pitched at approximately grade E, which sometimes get taken half-seriously by employers and colleges. But grade E itself does not - in fact it's often regarded as a fail rather than a pass, which is technically incorrect. Obviously it would be nice if people aimed higher, and for a lot of teenagers the problem was effort or application or possibly quality teaching, or even lack of home support (very useful for things like mastering times tables) rather than innate ability.
Certainly there are higher level jobs where it makes more sense to say "You need a B", and beyond that point you need to demand AS or A level rather than GCSE, but there are more basic jobs where a grade D or E would actually imply the person has the required skills (enough to count money and judge the time, for example, in a way a grade G or U student can't).
The Jezza meetings, including this one, remind me of religious revivalist meetings, with which I have some acquaintance from the past.
Note - not religious meetings - specifically revivalist in the American Camp tradition, swapping tropes and excitement while expecting a resurgence of their tribe.
Will there be any "I didn't know it was like this" testimonies of newly minted converts?
If you're talking about surds and quadratics then we aren't talking about Grade C students anymore. The relevant discussion here is students at the D/C borderline, or equivalent, since C seems to be the starting point for job entry or university. No student taking the current foundation tier is even going to encounter those subjects.
Not that those topics aren't important - and if you want to go on to do a technical/quantitative subject then grade C isn't good enough. But changes to the current foundation paper are a separate issue.
Hmmm, I guess I was thinking of the Higher Paper as the people who I knew had trouble with Maths, and didn't pass took that paper rather than the Foundation.
I think the jobs which tend to ask for a B (from what I've seen) are grad scheme jobs, where I get the sense they are often looking for ways to filter people out, like asking for 340 UCAS points! But I'm a passionate believer in that no matter what low point you come up, with all the resources available today, anyone can get re-educated and add to their skills and qualifications, even if they don't initially do well at school.
OMG- Donald Trump on C4. He is a complete loon. He's as mad as box of frogs. He makes old boy Jezza seem like a sane moderate in comparison.
Someone needs to be making contingency plans for a military junta to have a coup if that crazy, crazy man comes anywhere close to winning.
He hits the populist button though, a battle between Trump and Sanders would be fascinating though Bloomberg might fancy his chances as an independent. Hillary should beat Trump without too many problems
True, though there are people who might be really troubled by Trump's rise, like those who have put money on Jeb Bush. Kidding aside when George W. was selected by the Supreme Court to be President I was afraid that he might find and push a big red button in the oval office, only after a few months I realised that Bush was a stooge, a stupid frontman that did whatever his cabinet told him to do and was completely under his VP control.
A lot of candidates get put onto the Higher for the reason I explained earlier about the Intermediate: teachers think it raises their chance of getting the all-important C, for example because it minimises the amount of basic questions on fractions/arithmetic/dealing with time which you think they are going to stumble on, or because they work slowly and taking Higher means they really only have to do half an exam compared to a Foundation paper they'd have to rush through to complete. Of course they are going to score zero on the A and A* questions, and it hardly matters if they don't even look at the non-accessible questions, but that's fine: you can't blag a maths exam, and the mark scheme and grade boundary budgets for weaker students not getting those questions right. The issue is whether they can take home enough marks on the first half of the paper, where the questions pitched at their level are.
The jeopardy on a higher tier paper is that if you don't get the bottom end mark required, you fall off the cliff and fail entirely. The advantage of the old intermediate paper is that this strategy of "try the next paper up", compared to the higher, was that a higher proportion of the paper would be accessible, so it would take more than a couple of unfamiliar questions or silly mistakes early on for this to happen.
(There is another reason to put a C candidate onto Higher, which is if you think they are C/B borderline, would be almost guaranteed - bad hair day problems notwithstanding - a C on whatever paper they took, but if they have an unusually good day they might pull a B out of the bag on the higher paper. Again this used to be a reason to put folk into intermediate tier and is still a decent one to put them onto the higher tier.)
If you're talking about surds and quadratics then we aren't talking about Grade C students anymore. The relevant discussion here is students at the D/C borderline, or equivalent, since C seems to be the starting point for job entry or university. No student taking the current foundation tier is even going to encounter those subjects.
Not that those topics aren't important - and if you want to go on to do a technical/quantitative subject then grade C isn't good enough. But changes to the current foundation paper are a separate issue.
Hmmm, I guess I was thinking of the Higher Paper as the people who I knew had trouble with Maths, and didn't pass took that paper rather than the Foundation.
Incidentally, the "throw them in for Higher tier" gamble now basically makes sense if you take the binary view that "below a C is worth nothing at all, so you might as well go all-out for a C". A point of view encouraged by league tables, cynically, but which is also permeated by employers not really looking at D or E as "acceptable" grades.
If someone fails the higher tier, it isn't the latter third of the test they scored approximately 0% on which was the problem, it's a first section they scored - say - 50% on when they should have got 70-80%.
You could also ask when was the last time we had a purely capitalist government in Europe?
That's easy. Never. Nobody has ever tried capitalism in its pure form for a very good reason - the potential social costs are far too high and the risk of revolution would therefore be too great.
Also, of course, in theory at least pure capitalism requires that nobody ever raise taxes - therefore a capitalist government is technically as much of an oxymoron as a communist one.
You always end up therefore with a hybrid economy of some sort in a sane system (War Communism in Russia, complete with the famous moneyless budget, being disqualified for not being sane) - it's just a question of where you put the emphasis on the different parts.
Indeed the only nations which come close are perhaps Singapore and the UAE
Arguably they don't really come close either, although they are the closest nations. Some of the tax havens might just qualify, e.g. the Virgin Islands. (I don't know much about such places, if I'm wrong, would some kind person please put me right?)
Yet, but social welfare provision does not really matter for tax havens as they are mainly populated by the rich anyway
OMG- Donald Trump on C4. He is a complete loon. He's as mad as box of frogs. He makes old boy Jezza seem like a sane moderate in comparison.
Someone needs to be making contingency plans for a military junta to have a coup if that crazy, crazy man comes anywhere close to winning.
He hits the populist button though, a battle between Trump and Sanders would be fascinating though Bloomberg might fancy his chances as an independent. Hillary should beat Trump without too many problems
True, though there are people who might be really troubled by Trump's rise, like those who have put money on Jeb Bush. Kidding aside when George W. was selected by the Supreme Court to be President I was afraid that he might find and push a big red button in the oval office, only after a few months I realised that Bush was a stooge, a stupid frontman that did whatever his cabinet told him to do and was completely under his VP control.
Cheney was certainly the most powerful VP in history
You could also ask when was the last time we had a purely capitalist government in Europe?
That's easy. Never. Nobody has ever tried capitalism in its pure form for a very good reason - the potential social costs are far too high and the risk of revolution would therefore be too great.
Also, of course, in theory at least pure capitalism requires that nobody ever raise taxes - therefore a capitalist government is technically as much of an oxymoron as a communist one.
You always end up therefore with a hybrid economy of some sort in a sane system (War Communism in Russia, complete with the famous moneyless budget, being disqualified for not being sane) - it's just a question of where you put the emphasis on the different parts.
Indeed the only nations which come close are perhaps Singapore and the UAE
Singapore is almost the opposite of capitalism; it is a free-market economy but investment is intricately planned in almost every detail by the government so capital is subjugated to clever bureaucrats.
You probably need to go back to the pre-War, I mean the first one, to get proper capitalism in some places.
Singapore has a tax rate and government spending rate both under 20% of gdp, those few workers who do work for the government are just extremely able and well organised and selected by very conmpetitive exams
For those who are not convinced that the email scandal is having any real effect on Hillary's chances, I recommend you take a gander at the charts towards the end of this article from the Washington Post:
For those who are not convinced that the email scandal is having any real effect on Hillary's chances, I recommend you take a gander at the charts towards the end of this article from the Washington Post:
CNN had her still leading national polls even despite the email scandal, her chances are probably more linked to whether or not she faces Donald Trump than the email scandal unless there are any more developments
OMG- Donald Trump on C4. He is a complete loon. He's as mad as box of frogs. He makes old boy Jezza seem like a sane moderate in comparison.
Someone needs to be making contingency plans for a military junta to have a coup if that crazy, crazy man comes anywhere close to winning.
He hits the populist button though, a battle between Trump and Sanders would be fascinating though Bloomberg might fancy his chances as an independent. Hillary should beat Trump without too many problems
True, though there are people who might be really troubled by Trump's rise, like those who have put money on Jeb Bush. Kidding aside when George W. was selected by the Supreme Court to be President I was afraid that he might find and push a big red button in the oval office, only after a few months I realised that Bush was a stooge, a stupid frontman that did whatever his cabinet told him to do and was completely under his VP control.
Cheney was certainly the most powerful VP in history
"Outwardly everything seemed equitable, a part of Poland for Hitler and a part for Stalin. However, just one week after the signing of the Pact, Stalin played his first dirty trick. Hitler began the war against Poland, while Stalin stated that his troops were not yet ready. He could have told Ribbentrop that before the Pact was signed, but he did not do so. Hitler began the war and found himself on his own. The result? He, and he alone, was branded the perpetrator of the Second World War.
Once he had begun the war against Poland, Hitler immediately found himself at war with France, that is, at war on two fronts. Every German schoolboy knew how a war on two fronts would turn out in the end for Germany.
As far as Stalin was concerned, Poland had been partitioned, not in the Chancellery in Berlin, but in the Kremlin in Moscow. In effect, Stalin got the war he wanted, with a western nation destroying others around it, while Stalin remained neutral, biding his time. When, later, he got into serious difficulties, Stalin at once received help from the West.
In the end, however, Poland, for whose liberty the West had gone to war, ended up with none at all. On the contrary, she was handed over to Stalin, along with the whole of Eastern Europe, including a part of Germany. Even so, there are some people in the West who continue to believe that the West won the Second World War.
Hitler committed suicide; Stalin became the absolute ruler of a vast empire hostile to the West, which had been created with the help of the West. For all that, Stalin was able to preserve his reputation as naive and trusting, while Hitler went down in history as the ultimate aggressor. A multitude of books have been published in the West based on the idea that Stalin was not ready for war while Hitler was. In my view, the man who is ready for war is not the one who loudly proclaims himself prepared for it, but the man who wins it — by dividing his enemies and knocking their heads together." Icebreaker, by Viktor Suvorov, 1990
I don't see that as a dirty trick. Each side got what it wanted. Half of Poland, plus food and raw materials for the Germans, access to German military technology for the Soviets. Obviously, Stalin and Hitler were each planning to double-cross the other eventually.
Evening all. I think Labour's fundamental issue is that many of the issues it was created to be solved have...been solved.
We still talk about poverty, but compared to the 50s and 60s, we're collectively incredibly wealthy. I was _poor_ as a child. Outside loo, hiding from the rent man, hand-me-down clothes, not barefoot, but certainly threadbare and run down etc. We weren't the poorest in our village either.
I know this is shades of the four Yorkshireman sketch, but think how far we've progressed in every single sphere since then; single mothers, LGBT rights, workers' rights, housing quality and so on and so forth.
I find it disconcerting that many on the left still use language that harks back to the slums and rookeries of the early twentieth century. That immoderate language just makes them seem mad or at least, unbalanced.
OMG- Donald Trump on C4. He is a complete loon. He's as mad as box of frogs. He makes old boy Jezza seem like a sane moderate in comparison.
Someone needs to be making contingency plans for a military junta to have a coup if that crazy, crazy man comes anywhere close to winning.
He hits the populist button though, a battle between Trump and Sanders would be fascinating though Bloomberg might fancy his chances as an independent. Hillary should beat Trump without too many problems
True, though there are people who might be really troubled by Trump's rise, like those who have put money on Jeb Bush. Kidding aside when George W. was selected by the Supreme Court to be President I was afraid that he might find and push a big red button in the oval office, only after a few months I realised that Bush was a stooge, a stupid frontman that did whatever his cabinet told him to do and was completely under his VP control.
You realised wrong, my friend.
John Kerr, our man in Washington at the time, described him to me as one of the smartest politicians he had ever met. The whole folksy charm thing was a perfectly crafted act
Summarising the western scholars' opinion on Icebreaker Hugh Ragsdale concludes that the book is "generally considered discredited" by now,[7] whereas Jonathan Haslam notes that Suvorov's claims "would be comical were it not taken so seriously".[8]
Comments
Not that those topics aren't important - and if you want to go on to do a technical/quantitative subject then grade C isn't good enough. But changes to the current foundation paper are a separate issue.
Is the YouGov poll about to break?
At least under President Trump america will be too bothered with war on Mexico to do any harm in the rest of the world.
This is not of course going to cause massive confusion and head scratching when it works through to the job market or even to UCAS...
But they couldn't tell you what VIII less IV was.
You probably need to go back to the pre-War, I mean the first one, to get proper capitalism in some places.
To the unknowledgeable, it looks like I suddenly improved between my AS and A2 years - because in the former the highest grade was an A whilst in the latter it was A*.
Certainly there are higher level jobs where it makes more sense to say "You need a B", and beyond that point you need to demand AS or A level rather than GCSE, but there are more basic jobs where a grade D or E would actually imply the person has the required skills (enough to count money and judge the time, for example, in a way a grade G or U student can't).
Note - not religious meetings - specifically revivalist in the American Camp tradition, swapping tropes and excitement while expecting a resurgence of their tribe.
Will there be any "I didn't know it was like this" testimonies of newly minted converts?
(Update: Gah. Missed out any Final Trump puns)
The Tory 1997 party election broadcast which was never shown after being vetoed by John Major:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcxzBr-Wihg
Kidding aside when George W. was selected by the Supreme Court to be President I was afraid that he might find and push a big red button in the oval office, only after a few months I realised that Bush was a stooge, a stupid frontman that did whatever his cabinet told him to do and was completely under his VP control.
The jeopardy on a higher tier paper is that if you don't get the bottom end mark required, you fall off the cliff and fail entirely. The advantage of the old intermediate paper is that this strategy of "try the next paper up", compared to the higher, was that a higher proportion of the paper would be accessible, so it would take more than a couple of unfamiliar questions or silly mistakes early on for this to happen.
(There is another reason to put a C candidate onto Higher, which is if you think they are C/B borderline, would be almost guaranteed - bad hair day problems notwithstanding - a C on whatever paper they took, but if they have an unusually good day they might pull a B out of the bag on the higher paper. Again this used to be a reason to put folk into intermediate tier and is still a decent one to put them onto the higher tier.)
If someone fails the higher tier, it isn't the latter third of the test they scored approximately 0% on which was the problem, it's a first section they scored - say - 50% on when they should have got 70-80%.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/08/20/yes-its-a-major-problem-that-two-thirds-of-voters-dont-think-hillary-clinton-is-honest-or-trustworthy/
http://www.ng-digital.co.uk/
We still talk about poverty, but compared to the 50s and 60s, we're collectively incredibly wealthy. I was _poor_ as a child. Outside loo, hiding from the rent man, hand-me-down clothes, not barefoot, but certainly threadbare and run down etc. We weren't the poorest in our village either.
I know this is shades of the four Yorkshireman sketch, but think how far we've progressed in every single sphere since then; single mothers, LGBT rights, workers' rights, housing quality and so on and so forth.
I find it disconcerting that many on the left still use language that harks back to the slums and rookeries of the early twentieth century. That immoderate language just makes them seem mad or at least, unbalanced.
John Kerr, our man in Washington at the time, described him to me as one of the smartest politicians he had ever met. The whole folksy charm thing was a perfectly crafted act
Summarising the western scholars' opinion on Icebreaker Hugh Ragsdale concludes that the book is "generally considered discredited" by now,[7] whereas Jonathan Haslam notes that Suvorov's claims "would be comical were it not taken so seriously".[8]
Which bit of none of Burnham, Kendall or Cooper would become PM do you not get??