Is there any reason why Dan Hannan isn't leading the Leave campaign.
I know no politician ticks everyone's box but Hannan is articulate, considered, unfailingly polite and - most importantly of all - very bloody persuasive.
I'd say he's the best informed anti-EU'r I'm the world.
His past comments on the NHS are a hindrance
Hannan almost single handedly cost the Tories the 2010 election and indeed you could argue that his absurd comments did undermine the Tories at a vital pre election time.
George Galloway? The Leave side want to woo Tory waverers with George Galloway???
Quite enough people on the right, and hard left for "Leave" tbh - and alot of Conservative support is reasonably split. It's the moderate left - people like Danny565 that are being totally ignored and neglected by leave - most will default to "remain".
I was surprised to log on here and see people saying Galloway's a disaster. I thought his hat looked a bit odd, but so what - he is one of the best public speakers in the country and is a winner in many demographics the Tories can’t touch. Though Power to the People was a good anthem too.
@Samfr: Farage, Galloway, Cash, Bone on the same bill. Move over Dante we've found the eighth circle of hell...
Don't worry your remain hat on,it will soon turn to camerons sell out.
Christ you are rattled.
I've spent most of the evening praising/cheering Michael Gove's decision.
All of that good work has been undone, just look at the posts of Miss Cyclefree and SeanT on this
Calm down dears - this deal is worth not much and will unravel like a Gordon Brown budget.
The scare stories start tomorrow.
The two pieces of good news for Leave today are Gove choosing to back Brexit and the fact that Cameron's deal really does look as poor as everyone expected it to be. It will unravel very quickly indeed and I suspect the Galloway fiasco will do little real harm. After all we have many on here who I remember being strongly pro Union during the Indy campaign who didn't seem to bat an eyelid to the fact Galloway was one of the big campaigners on the ground on their side.
It was still a stupid, crass self inflicted wound by GO but in the next few weeks it is the lack of any real deal that is going to make the headlines.
Robert Peston on ITV. I never fail to be fascinated by his speaking manner.
Takes me back to the days when we'd do really trippy MDMA and stare at the telly going woooahh.
He is one weird fucking dude.
Peston sounds as though he has a constant conflict going on in his head: "these people are so stupid, why am I even bothering to speak to them?....just walk away...no, no, press on....but everyone is so THICK...."
On planet normal, no one cares about treaty words on Ever Closer Unon,
A couple of days press about how rubbish the welfare and immigration deal is (seven year brake? then back to normal?) will bury any positive sentiment to Cameron. Meanwhile, the disgruntled left - the ones who dislike tax dodgers, wealth hoarding, EU is a neo-lib dream etc - will have Galloway articulating for Out.
Is there any reason why Dan Hannan isn't leading the Leave campaign.
I know no politician ticks everyone's box but Hannan is articulate, considered, unfailingly polite and - most importantly of all - very bloody persuasive.
I'd say he's the best informed anti-EU'r I'm the world.
His past comments on the NHS are a hindrance
Hannan almost single handedly cost the Tories the 2010 election and indeed you could argue that his absurd comments did undermine the Tories at a vital pre election time.
I take the point on his domestic policies but he is undeniably robust on the EU.
I'm a Remainer but if I were trying to convince voters to dislike the EU, he'd be the bloke I'd be sticking on telly.
Cameron has protected our right to keep the pound. Vote Remain!
If Cameron (and Osborne) thought they could get us into Euro they'd do it tomorrow. Who knows, maybe Osborne will eventually dump us into the Euro if he ever becomes PM. I wouldn't put it past him.
A few months back in the first round of the French local elections Le Pen did well. And what happened? In the second round everyone else rallied round to ensure that her party did not win control of regions.
If you pollute a reasonable argument with revolting people, you lose. It's the emotional vs the rational brain, as MTimT explained earlier.
And people generally decide on emotion rather than reason.
Robert Peston on ITV. I never fail to be fascinated by his speaking manner.
Takes me back to the days when we'd do really trippy MDMA and stare at the telly going woooahh.
He is one weird fucking dude.
Peston sounds as though he has a constant conflict going on in his head: "these people are so stupid, why am I even bothering to speak to them?....just walk away...no, no, press on....but everyone is so THICK...."
Peston had a stammer. His speaking style evolved from overcoming it. But I agree it is a bit unique.
Also re maths GCSE: take care with any claims about something being "in the A level" or "Further Maths" or "not even in Further Maths". Sometimes the place where a topic appears isn't especially related to its inherent difficulty. Best viewed in context of what is in the syllabus of International GCSE or old O-level. (Mind you, I've got a 1980s O-level question somewhere which gave the equations for two parabolas, and asked to find the volume of revolution of the area of their intersection... at A-level, this would now be put in the second-year "C4" module, the very hardest pure maths module before you get on to Further Maths. So times have well and truly changed and not necessarily for the benefit of the "it's nonsense to say things have got easier!" brigade).
But for example, one "new" thing in the new GCSE spec is set notation (ways of expressing ideas like "5 is a member of both the set of odd numbers and the set of prime numbers", or "8.5 is not a member of the set of whole numbers"). In principle, this wasn't in the spec before and has come down from A-level: shock, horror, those evil examiners! But really this is just a reappearance of an old staple. And in the IGCSE, it's a topic that never got banished upstairs in the first place. At A-level it's just a piece of notation that students are expected to be able to read and understand, and isn't generally worth any marks in its own right (it's just the Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar of maths).
Moreover, when it was commonly taught lower down the school (it arrived on the wave of the New Math in America) it was something that you'd have done in Year 7 or so, if your school was using the SMP textbook series. (I was taught the ideas, along with everyone else in my class, in my mid-juniors year in my utterly unremarkable state primary school, because the idea of teaching basic concepts from set theory was fashionable at the time.) If one wants to be dramatic, one can can say "now children, we are about to embark on a topic that is so hard it used to only be undertaken at A-level, but now you poor Year 11s are expected to learn it too!" - but on this particular topic, that's really quite disingenuous.
Well of course a big part of modern politics is media management and manipulation. Get a deal so it can be announced on the main evening news bulletins - well, it's pretty basic stuff though being a Friday evening perhaps not quite as many "hard working families" at home as Dave would have liked.
I simply don't see this "great reform of the EU" we were promised. It's tinkering around the edges - reaffirming what we already had (like announcing the same spending twice) and coming up with gems like us never joining the Euro but in essence I don't see our fundamental relationship with the EU having been changed one iota.
If you were unhappy with Britain's relationship with and membership of the EU before, what has Cameron said or agreed to make you happy now ? Nothing.
1 UK will keep the £ and no bailout for eurozone and no eurozone undermining of single market and no forced relocations of financial services firms to eurozone. UK can activate a unilateral safeguard if needed 2 EU will ensure competitiveness and complete single market and completion of global trade agreements
Reminiscent of how Private Eye parodied John Major:
1) Cricket to remain England's national sport. 2) Drinking of tea to be allowed. 3) Err 4) That's it.
Rather more substantively, one could make that argument about basic one-dimensional kinematics with calculus (and by basic I mean considering only constant acceleration, or polynomials in time - no sinusoidal stuff like simple harmonic motion or 2-d things like circular motion). Again that is currently only taught at A-level (depending on your board and module choices, possibly only in Further Maths groups) ... but again, note that this is already taught at IGCSE (where it's really just another of those topics that "never went away"), the expected standard in this topic at A-level is much higher (I think O-level physics arguably had a higher standard too) and it's not something that's going to be inflicted on the equivalent of today's Grade C students, rather for those aiming for the equivalent of A/A* (and it's worth remembering that even on the old spec, there are topics that only got taught to A/A* students because it was too heavy-going for everyone else... it's not something being done at the expense of basic numeracy, because it's not being targetted at the kids who are in need of basic numeracy).
And the stuff that's coming down is at the expense of other stuff going out. Sometimes quite good stuff going out, too. Iteration (an "A-level method") is replacing "trial and improvement" for instance - in truth, two methods almost exactly as "difficult" as each other. But at GCSE level, kids aren't going to be able to (nor are they expected to) derive an iterative formula and check it obeys the conditions (calculus required) to converge. Trial and improvement is a more conceptually basic method and in my opinion gives students a better "number-sense" for solving harder equations; it's certainly clearer how it works, whereas to a Year 11 iteration is always going to be a "black box" approach, without them being able to see all the clever machinery that makes it go.
@Samfr: Farage, Galloway, Cash, Bone on the same bill. Move over Dante we've found the eighth circle of hell...
Don't worry your remain hat on,it will soon turn to camerons sell out.
Christ you are rattled.
I've spent most of the evening praising/cheering Michael Gove's decision.
All of that good work has been undone, just look at the posts of Miss Cyclefree and SeanT on this
Rattled,laughing at the post on here at the pretend out,they always need a soft reason to stay in.
lol
Have I said I'm backing Remain tonight?
No, and I'll trust you won't flounce over the frankly appalling optics of Galloway/Farage.
I shall wait for my colleague/friend to look over the protections for the City of London/The Financial Services industry and give his opinions on them, then and only then will I review my vote.
Cameron has protected our right to keep the pound. Vote Remain!
If Cameron (and Osborne) thought they could get us into Euro they'd do it tomorrow. Who knows, maybe Osborne will eventually dump us into the Euro if he ever becomes PM. I wouldn't put it past him.
If osborne becomes tory leader,I'll vote labour.
We all can play these baby games - lol (Not meant at you Gin)
George Galloway? The Leave side want to woo Tory waverers with George Galloway???
Well he could win Leave some of the Socialist Worker vote!
Well, if you want to gain left wing votes for Leave, you have to be willing to work with left wing people, horrible as it may seem. Leave can't be an exclusively right wing campaign.
BBC news shows GO rally, starts with Peter Bone, ends with Galloway!!
With Bone giving a cheery wave of welcome... It was sad to see Bone giving such a good impersination of Michael Foot.
Fair to say Leave will not be a slick campaign unlike Remain but in some ways that helps them if they become an anti establishment force. I think Remain will win but I still think it will be close
Is there any reason why Dan Hannan isn't leading the Leave campaign.
I know no politician ticks everyone's box but Hannan is articulate, considered, unfailingly polite and - most importantly of all - very bloody persuasive.
I'd say he's the best informed anti-EU'r I'm the world.
His past comments on the NHS are a hindrance
Hannan almost single handedly cost the Tories the 2010 election and indeed you could argue that his absurd comments did undermine the Tories at a vital pre election time.
The Tories did win 100 seats at GE2010.
I doubt Hannan's comments had any material effect at all.
The TV debates cost the Tories a majority. Although I reckon one of the big turning points of the 2010 campaign was The Sun managing to elicit sympathy for Brown after the awful soldiers letters reporting...
Cameron has protected our right to keep the pound. Vote Remain!
If Cameron (and Osborne) thought they could get us into Euro they'd do it tomorrow.
What makes you say that?
Because they (clearly) are died in the wool EU/European lovers. Cameron gave the game away when he said, years ago, that there were NO circumstances he would ever recommend the UK leave the EU.
Of course they have to put on a show of (mild) euroscepticism for their Party but they're up there with Blair, Mandy, Hezza, etc.
I'm sure they both think/hope/wish privately that the UK will eventually join the Euro and be part of the Superstate. It's in their DNA. It's who they are.
1 UK will keep the £ and no bailout for eurozone and no eurozone undermining of single market and no forced relocations of financial services firms to eurozone. UK can activate a unilateral safeguard if needed 2 EU will ensure competitiveness and complete single market and completion of global trade agreements
Reminiscent of how Private Eye parodied John Major:
1) Cricket to remain England's national sport. 2) Drinking of tea to be allowed. 3) Err 4) That's it.
It will play well with the middle ground voter, at least for now
Of course, as we all know Cameron is no good at politics and the Remain side are half-wits.
Or am I getting a bit confused?
We have a Hobson's choice between (probably - since don't know detail) a pisspoor deal (copyright: Mr Meeks) and a Leave campaign where to call them half-wits would be over-generous.
Galloway's no friend of mine, but he was no friend of mine when he campaigned for Scotland to remain in the UK.
the whole point about political campaigning is that sometimes you have to make common cause with people you don't like.
Yes, but the idea usually is to make common cause with the ones who will, you know, help the cause.
Yep. No doubt about it this was an incredibly stupid move by GO. I suppose, in line with my comment before it was announced, my only real surprise is that people were surprised by this. How many times has Farage done this sort of thing now. And Brown with Elvis.
As you know I have a despicably low opinion of politicians but they do still that once in awhile ability to actually manage to make me loath them even more than I thought possible with their utter idiocy.
A "Senior Political Correspondent" at the Telegraph fails to realise who this is... Rather amusingly Aker states that he had a train to catch. Hopefully she wasn't making things up.
Is there any reason why Dan Hannan isn't leading the Leave campaign.
I know no politician ticks everyone's box but Hannan is articulate, considered, unfailingly polite and - most importantly of all - very bloody persuasive.
I'd say he's the best informed anti-EU'r I'm the world.
His past comments on the NHS are a hindrance
Hannan almost single handedly cost the Tories the 2010 election and indeed you could argue that his absurd comments did undermine the Tories at a vital pre election time.
I take the point on his domestic policies but he is undeniably robust on the EU.
I'm a Remainer but if I were trying to convince voters to dislike the EU, he'd be the bloke I'd be sticking on telly.
Whatever happened to Douglas Carswell? Farage can share a platform with Galloway but not with Carswell. I think we can be sure that if Leave win then the fighting will only have just begun.
George Galloway? The Leave side want to woo Tory waverers with George Galloway???
Well he could win Leave some of the Socialist Worker vote!
Well, if you want to gain left wing votes for Leave, you have to be willing to work with left wing people, horrible as it may seem. Leave can't be an exclusively right wing campaign.
Leave's problem is that there is virtually noone from the soft left onboard. Kate Hoey has always seen to be at odds with the Labour leadership anyway and is too low profile. I was wondering if my MP, Natascha Engel might come out for "Leave" (Some of her voting patterns have been euroscpetic before she became Ways and means) but it seems she is remain. The void from moderate Labour is enourmous, and Leave's biggest problem.
Rowena Mason ✔ @rowenamason Labour's Frank Field says he will be campaigning to leave the EU as Cameron has not managed to regain control of borders 10:23 PM - 19 Feb 2016
So if Britain objects to any legislative acts agreed by qualified majority, it gets a discussion by the Council to address it's concerns. That's it, nothing else.
So if Britain objects to any legislative acts agreed by qualified majority, it gets a discussion by the Council to address it's concerns. That's it, nothing else.
Rowena Mason ✔ @rowenamason Labour's Frank Field says he will be campaigning to leave the EU as Cameron has not managed to regain control of borders 10:23 PM - 19 Feb 2016
Bah, GO really should have had him as the final speaker and not bloody Galloway.
George Galloway? The Leave side want to woo Tory waverers with George Galloway???
Well he could win Leave some of the Socialist Worker vote!
Well, if you want to gain left wing votes for Leave, you have to be willing to work with left wing people, horrible as it may seem. Leave can't be an exclusively right wing campaign.
Leave's problem is that there is virtually noone from the soft left onboard. Kate Hoey has always seen to be at odds with the Labour leadership anyway and is too low profile. I was wondering if my MP, Natascha Engel might come out for "Leave" (Some of her voting patterns have been euroscpetic before she became Ways and means) but it seems she is remain. The void from moderate Labour is enourmous, and Leave's biggest problem.
Frank Field has just backed Leave. He is a thoroughly decent man. I have heard many small c conservatives speak very highly of him. Frank Field and Kelvin Hopkins need prominent roles in the campaign as they will appeal to a huge number on the left.
George Galloway? The Leave side want to woo Tory waverers with George Galloway???
Well he could win Leave some of the Socialist Worker vote!
Well, if you want to gain left wing votes for Leave, you have to be willing to work with left wing people, horrible as it may seem. Leave can't be an exclusively right wing campaign.
I would agree like most referendums there will be some odd bedfellows, Cameron campaigning with Sturgeon, John Redwood with Galloway etc
George Galloway? The Leave side want to woo Tory waverers with George Galloway???
Well he could win Leave some of the Socialist Worker vote!
Well, if you want to gain left wing votes for Leave, you have to be willing to work with left wing people, horrible as it may seem. Leave can't be an exclusively right wing campaign.
Leave's problem is that there is virtually noone from the soft left onboard. Kate Hoey has always seen to be at odds with the Labour leadership anyway and is too low profile. I was wondering if my MP, Natascha Engel might come out for "Leave" (Some of her voting patterns have been euroscpetic before she became Ways and means) but it seems she is remain. The void from moderate Labour is enourmous, and Leave's biggest problem.
And they thought someone who is practically a fascist would help, did they? FFS!
So if Britain objects to any legislative acts agreed by qualified majority, it gets a discussion by the Council to address it's concerns. That's it, nothing else.
So if Britain objects to any legislative acts agreed by qualified majority, it gets a discussion by the Council to address it's concerns. That's it, nothing else.
Not worth the paper it's written on... But it will be enough to keep the show on the road and be enough to keep the gravy train rolling.
George Galloway? The Leave side want to woo Tory waverers with George Galloway???
Well he could win Leave some of the Socialist Worker vote!
Well, if you want to gain left wing votes for Leave, you have to be willing to work with left wing people, horrible as it may seem. Leave can't be an exclusively right wing campaign.
Yes but to be fair there are other Eurosceptics they could have chosen. Skinner is supporting LEAVE. Galloway could have supported LEAVE in the streets and townhalls without having to be splashed all over the main stage.
Hang on. I'm confused about the four years and seven years. So it's a four year restriction on claiming benefits, but eventually that rule will end after seven years? Thanks Dave, but no deal.
oncraigSKYVerified account @joncraig Grassroots Out rally ends in chaos & shambles as half of audience of 1,500 walls out in protest at George Galloway being "guest speaker".
Cameron's luck strikes again. Quite incredible really when leave collapses on the first day, the "dream tweet" from Denmark and BBC waxes lyrical about a Tory PM.
George Galloway? The Leave side want to woo Tory waverers with George Galloway???
Well he could win Leave some of the Socialist Worker vote!
Well, if you want to gain left wing votes for Leave, you have to be willing to work with left wing people, horrible as it may seem. Leave can't be an exclusively right wing campaign.
Leave's problem is that there is virtually noone from the soft left onboard. Kate Hoey has always seen to be at odds with the Labour leadership anyway and is too low profile. I was wondering if my MP, Natascha Engel might come out for "Leave" (Some of her voting patterns have been euroscpetic before she became Ways and means) but it seems she is remain. The void from moderate Labour is enourmous, and Leave's biggest problem.
And they thought someone who is practically a fascist would help, did they? FFS!
It shows a complete lack of political awareness about the "left" from GO to my mind.
What elements of further maths A level are they trying to put into the GCSE? Presumably that would mean some calculus coming into GCSE with stuff like simple harmonic motion or damped harmonic motion?
I have no idea Hunchman and anything I say beyond what I have already said could be wrong, as I am no mathematician. Arithmetic I can do, trigonometry I can live with, algebra I will try when needs must. Maths is otherwise something that happens to other people.
All I can tell you is that the new Foundation tier, i.e. the minimum 16 year olds are expected to get, is a beefed up version of the current intermediate tier, and the higher tier goes into stuff currently at A-level. So between complexity, volume and quality control, OFQUAL and the exam boards have a very nasty circle to square (they will at least all be great at geometry). So far, unless they have sorted it very recently, they have been unable to do so. I cannot be more specific than that as I am not a maths teacher and would probably not understand the concepts involved.
My personal view is they are taking the wrong approach. Employers complain about poor basic skills. My time on a PGCE showed that there was merit in their concerns. So surely it would be better to make sure everyone did the simple stuff, like arithmetic, really well rather than calculus very badly.
But, again, unlike you I am no mathematician and there may be a logic I can't access here.
Thanks for that reply.
I've not had a look at educational attainment comparisons between countries for quite a while. When I did last have a look, the Germans seem to be very good at making sure that no one gets left behind, and concentrate attainment within the middle 90% band and maybe the 5% at the top miss out. Finland always seems to stand out in a European context, and I'm not sure personally that I would respond well to the SE Asian conformist way of doing things, I need my freedom to be creative!
As someone fortunate to love maths I was grateful to have a wonderful state sixth form college to do further maths so I was glad to be stretched and challenged, and think the freedom to be creative in today's world is an undervalued strength of our education system for the talented. With the benefit of hindsight I wish I'd done a degree in maths instead of a degree in economics, given the appalling way that I think economics is taught at degree level.......but as they say hindsight is a wonderful thing!
George Galloway? The Leave side want to woo Tory waverers with George Galloway???
Well he could win Leave some of the Socialist Worker vote!
Well, if you want to gain left wing votes for Leave, you have to be willing to work with left wing people, horrible as it may seem. Leave can't be an exclusively right wing campaign.
Leave's problem is that there is virtually noone from the soft left onboard. Kate Hoey has always seen to be at odds with the Labour leadership anyway and is too low profile. I was wondering if my MP, Natascha Engel might come out for "Leave" (Some of her voting patterns have been euroscpetic before she became Ways and means) but it seems she is remain. The void from moderate Labour is enourmous, and Leave's biggest problem.
I don't actually know much about internal Labour divisions and who is left/right etc within the party except for the very obvious ones. But Labour LEAVE supporters include
Gisella Stuart Kelvin Hopkins Jon Cryer Kate Hoey Graham Stringer Roger Godsiff Khalid Mahmood
George Galloway? The Leave side want to woo Tory waverers with George Galloway???
Well he could win Leave some of the Socialist Worker vote!
Well, if you want to gain left wing votes for Leave, you have to be willing to work with left wing people, horrible as it may seem. Leave can't be an exclusively right wing campaign.
Leave's problem is that there is virtually noone from the soft left onboard. Kate Hoey has always seen to be at odds with the Labour leadership anyway and is too low profile. I was wondering if my MP, Natascha Engel might come out for "Leave" (Some of her voting patterns have been euroscpetic before she became Ways and means) but it seems she is remain. The void from moderate Labour is enourmous, and Leave's biggest problem.
And they thought someone who is practically a fascist would help, did they? FFS!
It shows a complete lack of political awareness about the "left" from GO to my mind.
Bone: "We need someone from the left"
Farage: "Oh I know, lets invite Galloway"
Bone: "Great idea ! Lefties love Galloway !"
You'd be thought Hoey would have known a bit about it?
What does George Galloway bring to Leave that Frank Field and Kate Hoey don't?
Make common cause with an apologist for and supporter of muslim terrorists in a campaign predicated on the fear of musim terrorists. Good luck with trying to rationalise that.
Edit Apols for thick fingers... That was a reply to tykejonno.
George Galloway? The Leave side want to woo Tory waverers with George Galloway???
Well he could win Leave some of the Socialist Worker vote!
Well, if you want to gain left wing votes for Leave, you have to be willing to work with left wing people, horrible as it may seem. Leave can't be an exclusively right wing campaign.
Leave's problem is that there is virtually noone from the soft left onboard. Kate Hoey has always seen to be at odds with the Labour leadership anyway and is too low profile. I was wondering if my MP, Natascha Engel might come out for "Leave" (Some of her voting patterns have been euroscpetic before she became Ways and means) but it seems she is remain. The void from moderate Labour is enourmous, and Leave's biggest problem.
I don't actually know much about internal Labour divisions and who is left/right etc within the party except for the very obvious ones. But Labour LEAVE supporters include
Gisella Stuart Kelvin Hopkins Jon Cryer Kate Hoey Graham Stringer Roger Godsiff Khalid Mahmood
Well why couldn't they have got one of those bods on the bloody stage tonight. First impressions and all that. I'm not betting on this one, so can be more objective than normal !
I think we can, with great confidence, conclude that the divisions between Leave.EU/GO and Vote.Leave are not going to heal any time soon.
Half of these people campaigning to LEAVE really want to stay (the likes of Farage for example, who is firmly on the EU gravy train, while hating every minute of it )
We need a huge, popular personality who really wants to leave and isn't concerned about anything else, to come on the scene and take the LEAVE campaign by the scruff of the neck.
Unfortunately I don't think there's anybody who can do it. So, REMAIN probably wins narrowly, and Cameron and Osborne (and whoever comes after them) will see it as the green light to go "further and faster" into the Superstate.
George Galloway? The Leave side want to woo Tory waverers with George Galloway???
Well he could win Leave some of the Socialist Worker vote!
Well, if you want to gain left wing votes for Leave, you have to be willing to work with left wing people, horrible as it may seem. Leave can't be an exclusively right wing campaign.
Yes but to be fair there are other Eurosceptics they could have chosen. Skinner is supporting LEAVE. Galloway could have supported LEAVE in the streets and townhalls without having to be splashed all over the main stage.
It was certainly pretty damned stupid to have bigged up his "surprise speaker" status at the top of the bill. How many of those who walked thought it was going to be Boris?
oncraigSKYVerified account @joncraig Grassroots Out rally ends in chaos & shambles as half of audience of 1,500 walls out in protest at George Galloway being "guest speaker".
Cameron's luck strikes again. Quite incredible really when leave collapses on the first day, the "dream tweet" from Denmark and BBC waxes lyrical about a Tory PM.
Next Cameron walks across the serpentine unaided.
Hmm. Let's wait. The deal may unravel, badly.
The winning side will be the one that screws up least.
George Galloway? The Leave side want to woo Tory waverers with George Galloway???
Well he could win Leave some of the Socialist Worker vote!
Well, if you want to gain left wing votes for Leave, you have to be willing to work with left wing people, horrible as it may seem. Leave can't be an exclusively right wing campaign.
Leave's problem is that there is virtually noone from the soft left onboard. Kate Hoey has always seen to be at odds with the Labour leadership anyway and is too low profile. I was wondering if my MP, Natascha Engel might come out for "Leave" (Some of her voting patterns have been euroscpetic before she became Ways and means) but it seems she is remain. The void from moderate Labour is enourmous, and Leave's biggest problem.
And they thought someone who is practically a fascist would help, did they? FFS!
It shows a complete lack of political awareness about the "left" from GO to my mind.
Bone: "We need someone from the left"
Farage: "Oh I know, lets invite Galloway"
Bone: "Great idea ! Lefties love Galloway !"
You'd be thought Hoey would have known a bit about it?
Hmm I reckon Farage is calling the shots, Bone 2nd in command there.
Comments
It was down to Dave
It was still a stupid, crass self inflicted wound by GO but in the next few weeks it is the lack of any real deal that is going to make the headlines.
the whole point about political campaigning is that sometimes you have to make common cause with people you don't like.
A couple of days press about how rubbish the welfare and immigration deal is (seven year brake? then back to normal?) will bury any positive sentiment to Cameron. Meanwhile, the disgruntled left - the ones who dislike tax dodgers, wealth hoarding, EU is a neo-lib dream etc - will have Galloway articulating for Out.
Whose bright idea was it?
I'm a Remainer but if I were trying to convince voters to dislike the EU, he'd be the bloke I'd be sticking on telly.
A few months back in the first round of the French local elections Le Pen did well. And what happened? In the second round everyone else rallied round to ensure that her party did not win control of regions.
If you pollute a reasonable argument with revolting people, you lose. It's the emotional vs the rational brain, as MTimT explained earlier.
And people generally decide on emotion rather than reason.
Or am I getting a bit confused?
But for example, one "new" thing in the new GCSE spec is set notation (ways of expressing ideas like "5 is a member of both the set of odd numbers and the set of prime numbers", or "8.5 is not a member of the set of whole numbers"). In principle, this wasn't in the spec before and has come down from A-level: shock, horror, those evil examiners! But really this is just a reappearance of an old staple. And in the IGCSE, it's a topic that never got banished upstairs in the first place. At A-level it's just a piece of notation that students are expected to be able to read and understand, and isn't generally worth any marks in its own right (it's just the Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar of maths).
Moreover, when it was commonly taught lower down the school (it arrived on the wave of the New Math in America) it was something that you'd have done in Year 7 or so, if your school was using the SMP textbook series. (I was taught the ideas, along with everyone else in my class, in my mid-juniors year in my utterly unremarkable state primary school, because the idea of teaching basic concepts from set theory was fashionable at the time.) If one wants to be dramatic, one can can say "now children, we are about to embark on a topic that is so hard it used to only be undertaken at A-level, but now you poor Year 11s are expected to learn it too!" - but on this particular topic, that's really quite disingenuous.
I simply don't see this "great reform of the EU" we were promised. It's tinkering around the edges - reaffirming what we already had (like announcing the same spending twice) and coming up with gems like us never joining the Euro but in essence I don't see our fundamental relationship with the EU having been changed one iota.
If you were unhappy with Britain's relationship with and membership of the EU before, what has Cameron said or agreed to make you happy now ? Nothing.
1) Cricket to remain England's national sport.
2) Drinking of tea to be allowed.
3) Err
4) That's it.
Rather more substantively, one could make that argument about basic one-dimensional kinematics with calculus (and by basic I mean considering only constant acceleration, or polynomials in time - no sinusoidal stuff like simple harmonic motion or 2-d things like circular motion). Again that is currently only taught at A-level (depending on your board and module choices, possibly only in Further Maths groups) ... but again, note that this is already taught at IGCSE (where it's really just another of those topics that "never went away"), the expected standard in this topic at A-level is much higher (I think O-level physics arguably had a higher standard too) and it's not something that's going to be inflicted on the equivalent of today's Grade C students, rather for those aiming for the equivalent of A/A* (and it's worth remembering that even on the old spec, there are topics that only got taught to A/A* students because it was too heavy-going for everyone else... it's not something being done at the expense of basic numeracy, because it's not being targetted at the kids who are in need of basic numeracy).
And the stuff that's coming down is at the expense of other stuff going out. Sometimes quite good stuff going out, too. Iteration (an "A-level method") is replacing "trial and improvement" for instance - in truth, two methods almost exactly as "difficult" as each other. But at GCSE level, kids aren't going to be able to (nor are they expected to) derive an iterative formula and check it obeys the conditions (calculus required) to converge. Trial and improvement is a more conceptually basic method and in my opinion gives students a better "number-sense" for solving harder equations; it's certainly clearer how it works, whereas to a Year 11 iteration is always going to be a "black box" approach, without them being able to see all the clever machinery that makes it go.
It was sad to see Bone giving such a good impersination of Michael Foot.
We all can play these baby games - lol (Not meant at you Gin)
https://t.co/J2mDKieWFF
I doubt Hannan's comments had any material effect at all.
The TV debates cost the Tories a majority. Although I reckon one of the big turning points of the 2010 campaign was The Sun managing to elicit sympathy for Brown after the awful soldiers letters reporting...
Of course they have to put on a show of (mild) euroscepticism for their Party but they're up there with Blair, Mandy, Hezza, etc.
I'm sure they both think/hope/wish privately that the UK will eventually join the Euro and be part of the Superstate. It's in their DNA. It's who they are.
Bah! Back to my documentary on Constable.
As you know I have a despicably low opinion of politicians but they do still that once in awhile ability to actually manage to make me loath them even more than I thought possible with their utter idiocy.
https://twitter.com/KateEMcCann/status/700795576632348677
Farage can share a platform with Galloway but not with Carswell.
I think we can be sure that if Leave win then the fighting will only have just begun.
Labour's Frank Field says he will be campaigning to leave the EU as Cameron has not managed to regain control of borders
10:23 PM - 19 Feb 2016
If Cameron really has got a better a deal, including real protections for the city, then Remain is going to win.
The EU has not reformed in any meaningful sense, but it will probably be enough for victory.
*waits to see actual deal*
https://twitter.com/alexebarker/status/700795501726343168
So if Britain objects to any legislative acts agreed by qualified majority, it gets a discussion by the Council to address it's concerns.
That's it, nothing else.
Probably.
https://twitter.com/alexebarker/status/700796357636968453
Ideally, of course, the anti-EU campaign would be made up exclusively of socially liberal people, who were only concerned about economics.
But, we don't live in Plato's Republic.
Next Cameron walks across the serpentine unaided.
H*LL NO!
Bone: "We need someone from the left"
Farage: "Oh I know, lets invite Galloway"
Bone: "Great idea ! Lefties love Galloway !"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland_Decides:_The_Big,_Big_Debate
I've not had a look at educational attainment comparisons between countries for quite a while. When I did last have a look, the Germans seem to be very good at making sure that no one gets left behind, and concentrate attainment within the middle 90% band and maybe the 5% at the top miss out. Finland always seems to stand out in a European context, and I'm not sure personally that I would respond well to the SE Asian conformist way of doing things, I need my freedom to be creative!
As someone fortunate to love maths I was grateful to have a wonderful state sixth form college to do further maths so I was glad to be stretched and challenged, and think the freedom to be creative in today's world is an undervalued strength of our education system for the talented. With the benefit of hindsight I wish I'd done a degree in maths instead of a degree in economics, given the appalling way that I think economics is taught at degree level.......but as they say hindsight is a wonderful thing!
Gisella Stuart
Kelvin Hopkins
Jon Cryer
Kate Hoey
Graham Stringer
Roger Godsiff
Khalid Mahmood
Good luck with trying to rationalise that.
Edit
Apols for thick fingers... That was a reply to tykejonno.
We need a huge, popular personality who really wants to leave and isn't concerned about anything else, to come on the scene and take the LEAVE campaign by the scruff of the neck.
Unfortunately I don't think there's anybody who can do it. So, REMAIN probably wins narrowly, and Cameron and Osborne (and whoever comes after them) will see it as the green light to go "further and faster" into the Superstate.
UK in the Euro by 2030?
https://twitter.com/DanHannanMEP/status/700809830412460032
I think I have to remind a bit that indeed the deal says that even the "ever closer union" still applies for the UK until there is a treaty change.
The winning side will be the one that screws up least.
Yes, complete cr*p