The maths for a sitting Labour MP goes something like this: Labour seats in 2015: 232 Consequence of boundary changes on Labour seats -32 say = 200 Consequence of dire polling under Corbyn in GE campaign if party held together (-15% seats best case) -30 = 170 Consequence of further deterioration in polling following minimal split or defections only (-20% best case) -34 = 136 Likelihood of deselection (33% best case) -45 = 91
So, if you're an MP hostile to Corbyn on a best case scenario you have perhaps a 40% chance of being around (i.e. 91/232) after the next general election as things stand under a keep calm and carry on scenario. I think that is too optimistic and a realistic chance would be around 25%.
The maths for a sitting Labour MP goes something like this: Labour seats in 2015: 232 Consequence of boundary changes on Labour seats -32 say = 200 Consequence of dire polling under Corbyn in GE campaign if party held together (-15% seats best case) -30 = 170 Consequence of further deterioration in polling following minimal split or defections only (-20% best case) -34 = 136 Likelihood of deselection (33% best case) -45 = 91
So, if you're an MP hostile to Corbyn on a best case scenario you have perhaps a 40% chance of being around (i.e. 91/232) after the next general election as things stand under a keep calm and carry on scenario. I think that is too optimistic and a realistic chance would be around 25%.
Why not take a punt in those circumstances?
Likleyhood of deselection is close to 100% for some and 0% for others.
So in your scenario some current Labour MPs have a close to zero chance of survival
Don has it back-to-front. Corbyn's 'wish list' is little more than a set of aspirations and values, which the public will generally look at with a degree of approval and scepticism. The borrowing apart, there's no meat to the bones so while the statements might meet with accord, the public will reserve judgement until the detail's filled in. The wish list won't, however, undermine existing hard policy.
By contrast, MacDonnell cannot ride the two horses that he's trying to. You cannot be 'anti-austerity' unless you either reject economic reality altogether or plan swinging tax rises. It's one or the other: the spending has to be paid for somehow. It's easy to talk of 'boosting private industry' but what does that mean - and how can it be done without ultimately imposing more taxes and regulation either directly or indirectly on business or people? If there's one thing Labour's good at, it's adding to paperwork and regulation and on that score at least, Corbyn and MacDonnell are right out of Labour's tradition.
As an aside, the Tories will be delighted to fight the election on boosting private industry, when millions of jobs have been created in the private sector since 2010, contrary to the predictions of at least some of those who make up Labour's "impressive Economic Advisory Committee".
Don is right that MacDonnell is at least nominally trying to put forward a credible alternative but he will always be caught by the contradictions of the Momentum movement; the desire to have cake and eat it. Corbyn, by contrast, is not undermining the policy; he's simply lifting the veil on it.
The policy would work if people liked each other enough. They don't: in a multicultural society they never will.
Planning to borrow money faster than the economy can sustain it (which is effectively the growth rate), indefinitely, can never work.
Is anyone planning anything "indefinitely"? By your argument, David, the NHS was always unfundable.
Don't be silly. As long as spending commitments can be met by taxation or borrowing at a rate lower than long-term growth (so debt:GDP declines or is stable), then it can be maintained indefinitely.
"For some reason, we think it’s OK for an athletic child like Adam Peaty to be singled out, drilled relentlessly and pushed to the very limit of his capability, and that specialness is then a cause for national celebration. (What else are these Olympic Games if not a triumphant endorsement of such natural selection, the survival and the garlanding of the world’s fittest?)
By contrast, if you’re a brainy British kid who could seriously do with being plucked from their background, selection is a dirty word. Mums who drive their future Olympians to daily sports training are unsung heroines. Mums who drive their kids to tutoring are “pushy”. Grammar schools may turn out gold medallists of the mind who enrich our society a thousandfold, they may still hold an astonishing eleven places in the Top 20 schools, but they make the people who don’t get into them feel bad so, sorry, we can’t build any more of them."
Yes it's an interesting dissonance which I assume results in part from middle class left wingers not being terribly interested in sport.
Notably, we have had some whingeing of late from such people about the supposed dominance of public school educated actors though and faux concern about the lack of 'working class' ones. I doubt they will call for RADA or the RSC to be closed down though.
The maths for a sitting Labour MP goes something like this: Labour seats in 2015: 232 Consequence of boundary changes on Labour seats -32 say = 200 Consequence of dire polling under Corbyn in GE campaign if party held together (-15% seats best case) -30 = 170 Consequence of further deterioration in polling following minimal split or defections only (-20% best case) -34 = 136 Likelihood of deselection (33% best case) -45 = 91
So, if you're an MP hostile to Corbyn on a best case scenario you have perhaps a 40% chance of being around (i.e. 91/232) after the next general election as things stand under a keep calm and carry on scenario. I think that is too optimistic and a realistic chance would be around 25%.
Why not take a punt in those circumstances?
Likleyhood of deselection is close to 100% for some and 0% for others.
So in your scenario some current Labour MPs have a close to zero chance of survival
The maths for a sitting Labour MP goes something like this: Labour seats in 2015: 232 Consequence of boundary changes on Labour seats -32 say = 200 Consequence of dire polling under Corbyn in GE campaign if party held together (-15% seats best case) -30 = 170 Consequence of further deterioration in polling following minimal split or defections only (-20% best case) -34 = 136 Likelihood of deselection (33% best case) -45 = 91
So, if you're an MP hostile to Corbyn on a best case scenario you have perhaps a 40% chance of being around (i.e. 91/232) after the next general election as things stand under a keep calm and carry on scenario. I think that is too optimistic and a realistic chance would be around 25%.
Why not take a punt in those circumstances?
You and I look at it from the viewpoint of a dispassionate outsider, that's the problem. The MPs are too attached to the Labour brand, probably won't believe the deselections are coming until after they start (with the boundary changes, this is easy to engineer) and will probably think that the polls showing 20% in 2019 will somehow bounce back during the campaign. If the split doesn't happen in the next three months (in the aftermath of Conference) it's very unlikely to happen before 2020.
The policy would work if people liked each other enough. They don't: in a multicultural society they never will.
Planning to borrow money faster than the economy can sustain it (which is effectively the growth rate), indefinitely, can never work.
If you accept there is a need for investment... Then surely the time to do it is when interest rates are at a record low?
Government borrowing is not akin to household, personal or corporate borrowing. Partly that is the nature of the scale of it. Were the govt to borrow £500bn, it would crowd out a lot of money from being spent on other, potentially productive, causes (though not necessarily), and would certainly distort the borrowing markets.
But two other points are more important. Firstly, government borrowing is not paid off in the same way so is likely to need refinancing at some future point. Expanding the national debt has long-term consequences.
Even more important, governments are dreadful for accurately defining investment and use the word to include all sorts of ongoing whim spending - see Don's comment about childcare. Now, there might be a case to be made that subsidising childcare is a form of investment but if there is (and some aspects tend in that direction), you could say the same about the entire education budget. Should that be funded by borrowing too? Once an ongoing spending commitment is made, it becomes extremely difficult to reverse - as with the austerity attempts over the last six years. And ongoing spending should be met by general taxation.
The Cross Curricula Brexit essay prize goes to The Guardian. Next up why the Music of Peter Maxwell Davies influenced The No Vote on Orkney.
What a peculiar contribution by Chaudhuri. – As niche views go, and there are plenty of those within the pages of Guardian’s CIF, he’s certainly cornered the market with that one.
"For some reason, we think it’s OK for an athletic child like Adam Peaty to be singled out, drilled relentlessly and pushed to the very limit of his capability, and that specialness is then a cause for national celebration. (What else are these Olympic Games if not a triumphant endorsement of such natural selection, the survival and the garlanding of the world’s fittest?)
By contrast, if you’re a brainy British kid who could seriously do with being plucked from their background, selection is a dirty word. Mums who drive their future Olympians to daily sports training are unsung heroines. Mums who drive their kids to tutoring are “pushy”. Grammar schools may turn out gold medallists of the mind who enrich our society a thousandfold, they may still hold an astonishing eleven places in the Top 20 schools, but they make the people who don’t get into them feel bad so, sorry, we can’t build any more of them."
"For some reason, we think it’s OK for an athletic child like Adam Peaty to be singled out, drilled relentlessly and pushed to the very limit of his capability, and that specialness is then a cause for national celebration. (What else are these Olympic Games if not a triumphant endorsement of such natural selection, the survival and the garlanding of the world’s fittest?)
By contrast, if you’re a brainy British kid who could seriously do with being plucked from their background, selection is a dirty word. Mums who drive their future Olympians to daily sports training are unsung heroines. Mums who drive their kids to tutoring are “pushy”. Grammar schools may turn out gold medallists of the mind who enrich our society a thousandfold, they may still hold an astonishing eleven places in the Top 20 schools, but they make the people who don’t get into them feel bad so, sorry, we can’t build any more of them."
Some commentators like Alison Pearson do seem to believe that being "drilled relentlessly" is necessarily a good thing. I'm unconvinced.
Depends on your value of "good"
High school students in China leave their schools on average two years ahead of students from the UK, and up to four years ahead at the better schools. Are we to believe that Chinese students are intrinsically 20% more intelligent that British students (they are not by any known measure) or that working damn hard pays dividends in demonstrable real world abilities.
I am sick of attempts in the UK to justify laziness, sloth and lack of ambition while our international competitors work hard and increasingly run away with the prizes.
The policy would work if people liked each other enough. They don't: in a multicultural society they never will.
Planning to borrow money faster than the economy can sustain it (which is effectively the growth rate), indefinitely, can never work.
If you accept there is a need for investment... Then surely the time to do it is when interest rates are at a record low?
Government borrowing is not akin to household, personal or corporate borrowing. Partly that is the nature of the scale of it. Were the govt to borrow £500bn, it would crowd out a lot of money from being spent on other, potentially productive, causes (though not necessarily), and would certainly distort the borrowing markets.
But two other points are more important. Firstly, government borrowing is not paid off in the same way so is likely to need refinancing at some future point. Expanding the national debt has long-term consequences.
Even more important, governments are dreadful for accurately defining investment and use the word to include all sorts of ongoing whim spending - see Don's comment about childcare. Now, there might be a case to be made that subsidising childcare is a form of investment but if there is (and some aspects tend in that direction), you could say the same about the entire education budget. Should that be funded by borrowing too? Once an ongoing spending commitment is made, it becomes extremely difficult to reverse - as with the austerity attempts over the last six years. And ongoing spending should be met by general taxation.
Well said. There's a case to be made for taking advantage of low interest rates for genuine investment - which needs to be project based, with a definable end point such as a road, railway line, power station or a bloody airport runway.
Characterising any increase in govt spending as 'investment' is what got us into this damn mess in the first place!
Mr. Dugarbandier, learning by rote has a bad name these days, but there is a place for it.
I'm all for it. But that's not all there is. Aren't there at least 6 identified components of intelligence, of which memory is but one?
Unfortunately it seems that exams are increasingly being geared to testing memory more than other components. (partly because essays are difficult to mark by computer and thus expensive).
The goverment has a fetish for Asian education and Singapore in particular. In my experience, it ain't all its cracked up to be (in Japan, don't know about Singapore)
"For some reason, we think it’s OK for an athletic child like Adam Peaty to be singled out, drilled relentlessly and pushed to the very limit of his capability, and that specialness is then a cause for national celebration. (What else are these Olympic Games if not a triumphant endorsement of such natural selection, the survival and the garlanding of the world’s fittest?)
By contrast, if you’re a brainy British kid who could seriously do with being plucked from their background, selection is a dirty word. Mums who drive their future Olympians to daily sports training are unsung heroines. Mums who drive their kids to tutoring are “pushy”. Grammar schools may turn out gold medallists of the mind who enrich our society a thousandfold, they may still hold an astonishing eleven places in the Top 20 schools, but they make the people who don’t get into them feel bad so, sorry, we can’t build any more of them."
Yes it's an interesting dissonance which I assume results in part from middle class left wingers not being terribly interested in sport.
Notably, we have had some whingeing of late from such people about the supposed dominance of public school educated actors though and faux concern about the lack of 'working class' ones. I doubt they will call for RADA or the RSC to be closed down though.
There was also a lot of gnashing of teeth about the disproportionate amount of medalists in 2012 who had gone to private school. My school cricket team was drawn away at Charterhouse in the Surrey County Cup and what struck me about the place was just what wonderful facilities and coaching staff (from Surrey CCC) that they had at their disposal. I was always asking for us to have winter nets at our school, but we were never allowed because you have to have supervision.
Adam Bleinkov On one hand Corbyn's critics claim he's an idiot. On other hand he's masterminded the total takeover of his party https://t.co/webqiH2gwA
Although, I guess, the contention is whether selective schooling is the tool by which you get trained.
Secondly, and this is why the policy a dead-end, everyone has to go through education and get to some level of competetence. Sport is something on top of that - if Adam C practically drowns in the pool and is OK at school, then, yeah, its all OK, isn't it?
"What is a "gold medallist of the mind"? Someone who can get the best test scores? "
This, however, really annoys me - to get to the point where you can be creative with science, you need to (a) know what's come before and (b) understand what you're doing. The best test scores aren't the be all and end all but having the tools to do the job at hand is.
And up to, what, your early 20s, that's the only way you're going to demonstrate any ability.
It infuriates me that teaching, especially at SE, bang on about creativity, at an age when you're still trying to get the basics put into place. Taking the sports analogy, you wouldn't expect someone to do a pommel horse routine at the first, tenth, hundredth or even a thousandth attempt. You get the basics in place - the handstands and the core strength, the planche and then maybe, just maybe you get up onto the horse.
The goverment has a fetish for Asian education and Singapore in particular. In my experience, it ain't all its cracked up to be (in Japan, don't know about Singapore)
You are having a laugh. Check the world education rankings
1 China 2 Singapore 3 Hong Kong 4 Taiwan 5 South Korea 6 Macau, China 7 Japan
26 United Kingdom
Nope, can't see why the government thinks asian educations works at all, not the slightest idea on that one.
The policy would work if people liked each other enough. They don't: in a multicultural society they never will.
Planning to borrow money faster than the economy can sustain it (which is effectively the growth rate), indefinitely, can never work.
If you accept there is a need for investment... Then surely the time to do it is when interest rates are at a record low?
Government borrowing is not akin to household, personal or corporate borrowing. Partly that is the nature of the scale of it. Were the govt to borrow £500bn, it would crowd out a lot of money from being spent on other, potentially productive, causes (though not necessarily), and would certainly distort the borrowing markets.
But two other points are more important. Firstly, government borrowing is not paid off in the same way so is likely to need refinancing at some future point. Expanding the national debt has long-term consequences.
Even more important, governments are dreadful for accurately defining investment and use the word to include all sorts of ongoing whim spending - see Don's comment about childcare. Now, there might be a case to be made that subsidising childcare is a form of investment but if there is (and some aspects tend in that direction), you could say the same about the entire education budget. Should that be funded by borrowing too? Once an ongoing spending commitment is made, it becomes extremely difficult to reverse - as with the austerity attempts over the last six years. And ongoing spending should be met by general taxation.
Well said. There's a case to be made for taking advantage of low interest rates for genuine investment - which needs to be project based, with a definable end point such as a road, railway line, power station or a bloody airport runway.
Characterising any increase in govt spending as 'investment' is what got us into this damn mess in the first place!
Good morning all.
I would believe government cant about investment if it used the same metrics as a private sector business case. Without a concrete, measurable return (irrespective of your preferred metric), it's spending, not investment.
Mr. Dugarbandier, I'd argue memory is the single critical aspect (hard to teach someone who forgets everything), the point I was making, although I can see why this wasn't perhaps apparent, was that learning by rote is a valid method of memorising things. Other approaches can work too.
Miss Plato, the idiots were the PLP who supported someone they didn't want as leader and have a rulebook that makes it nigh on impossible to shift a leader.
Some commentators like Alison Pearson do seem to believe that being "drilled relentlessly" is necessarily a good thing. I'm unconvinced.
Depends on your value of "good"
High school students in China leave their schools on average two years ahead of students from the UK, and up to four years ahead at the better schools. Are we to believe that Chinese students are intrinsically 20% more intelligent that British students (they are not by any known measure) or that working damn hard pays dividends in demonstrable real world abilities.
I am sick of attempts in the UK to justify laziness, sloth and lack of ambition while our international competitors work hard and increasingly run away with the prizes.
why is leaving school earlier good?
if you want to measure prizes, count the Nobels from China
The policy would work if people liked each other enough. They don't: in a multicultural society they never will.
Planning to borrow money faster than the economy can sustain it (which is effectively the growth rate), indefinitely, can never work.
If you accept there is a need for investment... Then surely the time to do it is when interest rates are at a record low?
Government borrowing is not akin to household, personal or corporate borrowing. Partly that is the nature of the scale of it. Were the govt to borrow £500bn, it would crowd out a lot of money from being spent on other, potentially productive, causes (though not necessarily), and would certainly distort the borrowing markets.
But two other points are more important. Firstly, government borrowing is not paid off in the same way so is likely to need refinancing at some future point. Expanding the national debt has long-term consequences.
Even more important, governments are dreadful for accurately defining investment and use the word to include all sorts of ongoing whim spending - see Don's comment about childcare. Now, there might be a case to be made that subsidising childcare is a form of investment but if there is (and some aspects tend in that direction), you could say the same about the entire education budget. Should that be funded by borrowing too? Once an ongoing spending commitment is made, it becomes extremely difficult to reverse - as with the austerity attempts over the last six years. And ongoing spending should be met by general taxation.
Well said. There's a case to be made for taking advantage of low interest rates for genuine investment - which needs to be project based, with a definable end point such as a road, railway line, power station or a bloody airport runway.
Characterising any increase in govt spending as 'investment' is what got us into this damn mess in the first place!
Good morning all.
I would believe government cant about investment if it used the same metrics as a private sector business case. Without a concrete, measurable return (irrespective of your preferred metric), it's spending, not investment.
One thing the Gov't could genuinely invest in is housing (rental return).
The goverment has a fetish for Asian education and Singapore in particular. In my experience, it ain't all its cracked up to be (in Japan, don't know about Singapore)
You are having a laugh. Check the world education rankings
1 China 2 Singapore 3 Hong Kong 4 Taiwan 5 South Korea 6 Macau, China 7 Japan
26 United Kingdom
Nope, can't see why the government thinks asian educations works at all, not the slightest idea on that one.
Are we sure it's the schools doing that though? How would the UK look if you limited the sample to children growing up in East-Asian families?
Surely we;re looking at this education debate the wrong way around. Its not that important whether grammar schools come back or not. What is important is that secondary moderns DON'T come back.
We should retain the choice for parents of capable children to have their kids mix with people of all abilities and classes if they wish.
That's what labour supporting parents would want, isn;t it?
Mr. Dugarbandier, I'd argue memory is the single critical aspect (hard to teach someone who forgets everything), the point I was making, although I can see why this wasn't perhaps apparent, was that learning by rote is a valid method of memorising things. Other approaches can work too.
I am currently tutoring a 12 year old with an appallingly bad memory, despite endless attempts to develop her memory skills. Its crippling an otherwise perfectly able child as she can't remember her times tables a week after she was able to do them perfectly (with daily drilling), she can't tell the time properly after previously being able to do it and so forth. It took me almost four months to get her able to do addition, and even now works the column totals out on her fingers because she is unable to remember the sums of single digit numbers. We were doing large long divisions a couple of months ago, and today she could not remember how to do it, although to be fair it came back faster this time than previously.
"For some reason, we think it’s OK for an athletic child like Adam Peaty to be singled out, drilled relentlessly and pushed to the very limit of his capability, and that specialness is then a cause for national celebration. (What else are these Olympic Games if not a triumphant endorsement of such natural selection, the survival and the garlanding of the world’s fittest?)
By contrast, if you’re a brainy British kid who could seriously do with being plucked from their background, selection is a dirty word. Mums who drive their future Olympians to daily sports training are unsung heroines. Mums who drive their kids to tutoring are “pushy”. Grammar schools may turn out gold medallists of the mind who enrich our society a thousandfold, they may still hold an astonishing eleven places in the Top 20 schools, but they make the people who don’t get into them feel bad so, sorry, we can’t build any more of them."
Yes it's an interesting dissonance which I assume results in part from middle class left wingers not being terribly interested in sport.
Notably, we have had some whingeing of late from such people about the supposed dominance of public school educated actors though and faux concern about the lack of 'working class' ones. I doubt they will call for RADA or the RSC to be closed down though.
There was also a lot of gnashing of teeth about the disproportionate amount of medalists in 2012 who had gone to private school. My school cricket team was drawn away at Charterhouse in the Surrey County Cup and what struck me about the place was just what wonderful facilities and coaching staff (from Surrey CCC) that they had at their disposal. I was always asking for us to have winter nets at our school, but we were never allowed because you have to have supervision.
Yes, some whining here and there about that I agree.
But no proposals for destroying the sports infrastructure that created these champions.
It all goes back to what really scared the middle class opponents of grammar schools - that their pampered brats might not have all the prizes in life reserved for them and that, shock horror, some hard-working kids from the scruffier parts of town might outstrip them (which was exactly what was happening in the 1950s and 1960s).
If it's football, they can live with that as they only pretend to like it anyway. But if it's the professions....oh no.
The policy would work if people liked each other enough. They don't: in a multicultural society they never will.
Planning to borrow money faster than the economy can sustain it (which is effectively the growth rate), indefinitely, can never work.
If you accept there is a need for investment... Then surely the time to do it is when interest rates are at a record low?
Government borrowing is not akin to household, personal or corporate borrowing. Partly that is the nature of the scale of it. Were the govt to borrow £500bn, it would crowd out a lot of money from being spent on other, potentially productive, causes (though not necessarily), and would certainly distort the borrowing markets.
But two other points are more important. Firstly, government borrowing is not paid off in the same way so is likely to need refinancing at some future point. Expanding the national debt has long-term consequences.
Even more important, governments are dreadful for accurately defining investment and use the word to include all sorts of ongoing whim spending - see Don's comment about childcare. Now, there might be a case to be made that subsidising childcare is a form of investment but if there is (and some aspects tend in that direction), you could say the same about the entire education budget. Should that be funded by borrowing too? Once an ongoing spending commitment is made, it becomes extremely difficult to reverse - as with the austerity attempts over the last six years. And ongoing spending should be met by general taxation.
Well said. There's a case to be made for taking advantage of low interest rates for genuine investment - which needs to be project based, with a definable end point such as a road, railway line, power station or a bloody airport runway.
Characterising any increase in govt spending as 'investment' is what got us into this damn mess in the first place!
Good morning all.
I would believe government cant about investment if it used the same metrics as a private sector business case. Without a concrete, measurable return (irrespective of your preferred metric), it's spending, not investment.
One thing the Gov't could genuinely invest in is housing (rental return).
Some commentators like Alison Pearson do seem to believe that being "drilled relentlessly" is necessarily a good thing. I'm unconvinced.
Depends on your value of "good"
High school students in China leave their schools on average two years ahead of students from the UK, and up to four years ahead at the better schools. Are we to believe that Chinese students are intrinsically 20% more intelligent that British students (they are not by any known measure) or that working damn hard pays dividends in demonstrable real world abilities.
I am sick of attempts in the UK to justify laziness, sloth and lack of ambition while our international competitors work hard and increasingly run away with the prizes.
why is leaving school earlier good?
if you want to measure prizes, count the Nobels from China
Not leaving school earlier, level of achievement of leaving school at the usual age. Chinese student rank 613 ability points in Maths at school leaving age on average, UK students rank 494 points.
Nobel prizes is a meaningless measure, how long has China been a candidate for such compared to the US or the UK ?
Eddie Izzard: - “the comedian and activist pulled in an impressive 71,000 votes, it wasn’t enough to sway members from those most vocal Corbynistas who stood.”
Perfect timing by Eddie Izzard, even within Labour's NEC, he’s found himself yet again on the wrong side of the majority. #HeartofStone
The goverment has a fetish for Asian education and Singapore in particular. In my experience, it ain't all its cracked up to be (in Japan, don't know about Singapore)
You are having a laugh. Check the world education rankings
1 China 2 Singapore 3 Hong Kong 4 Taiwan 5 South Korea 6 Macau, China 7 Japan
26 United Kingdom
Nope, can't see why the government thinks asian educations works at all, not the slightest idea on that one.
Are we sure it's the schools doing that though? How would the UK look if you limited the sample to children growing up in East-Asian families?
Well, because say the Philippines in below 100 on the ranking, and the parents here are just as interesting in the education of their children, it just their system is like the US system (36th) only without the money.
This is a pointless anyway, seems opponents are apparently going to throw around whataboutery in the absence of evidence, and frankly life is too short. See you later, places to go, people to teach
Sure, call it what you like. I'm looking at this from a genuine 'zero' viewpoint - what do we need in this country (housing), can we get a return (yes, demand outstrips supply). No need to create just shit homes either, build some nice 5 bed detached ones etc - and market at the market rent. Increase the supply...
The takeover is nearly complete. Just the Tory MPs in red rosettes to get rid of now.
Why are they so quiet though? They an see their party being destroyed in front of them yet not a squeal from any. Perhaps they have accepted the court of public Islington opinion?
They all seem to have the spine of Andy Burnham unfortunately, from what we've seen so far. Maybe they will split once Corbyn is re-elected with a larger majority than before? If they're sensible (yes, I know!) then they're looking at moderate unions and financial backers over the summer, as others have suggested maybe the existing Co-Operative Party brand works better for the MPs than a new SDP2 structure.
What's clear to me is that if they wait until the deselections start it will be too late, the split needs to happen from a position of power and in such numbers to make them the official Opposition in Parliament. I remember the night James Purnell resigned in 2009, it was expected that David Miliband and others would follow him out, but he got hung out to dry on his own by a spineless cabinet.
I'm generally supportive of the government, but the Opposition plays an important role in democracy - they need to look and act like a government in waiting, Corbyn and his mob are no such thing.
There would be a certain irony in un-cooperative MPs using the Co-Operative Party as the vehicle of choice.
I'm not sure how viable it would be though. The Co-Op had arcane, cumbersome and complex governance arrangements before its crisis, and I doubt that the associated party is much different. Could defecting MPs gain hold of its levers of power sufficiently quickly to launch a challenger party?
Mr. Herdson, how closely is the Co-op Party linked to the Co-op business? The latter may be wary of courting political controversy as a safe haven for a splitter group of Labour MPs.
Some commentators like Alison Pearson do seem to believe that being "drilled relentlessly" is necessarily a good thing. I'm unconvinced.
Depends on your value of "good"
High school students in China leave their schools on average two years ahead of students from the UK, and up to four years ahead at the better schools. Are we to believe that Chinese students are intrinsically 20% more intelligent that British students (they are not by any known measure) or that working damn hard pays dividends in demonstrable real world abilities.
I am sick of attempts in the UK to justify laziness, sloth and lack of ambition while our international competitors work hard and increasingly run away with the prizes.
why is leaving school earlier good?
if you want to measure prizes, count the Nobels from China
Not leaving school earlier, level of achievement of leaving school at the usual age. Chinese student rank 613 ability points in Maths at school leaving age on average, UK students rank 494 points.
Nobel prizes is a meaningless measure, how long has China been a candidate for such compared to the US or the UK ?
Yeah, I know, i was being facetious. But Japan is pretty bad in the Nobel list too, I think.
The reality here, as experienced first hand (well second hand, as it's my kids, I guess), is that pre school and primary is totally fantastic (apart from english teaching which is utter shite).
secondary is a boring boring list memorizing for 2 1/2 years followed by tests of how well you remembered the lists. then you enter high school (via exam) where you'll do some more list memorization. Finally you'll enter university totally devoid of any enthusiasm for learning, and if you're succesful you'll get a comfy job in the japanese civil service obstructing progress of any kind....
(haha, something of a rant there. I am a little exercised by these matters currently )
I make no claims for UK education, mine was pretty good but it was a good while ago
Miss Plato, the idiots were the PLP who supported someone they didn't want as leader and have a rulebook that makes it nigh on impossible to shift a leader.
Labour's downfall was caused by the Aw, Bless Tendency, who in an outbreak of patronising pity, lent their votes to get Corbyn heard. They could never have guessed the level of decibls he would achieve. But if there is one lesson that comes out of this, it is never, ever, EVER take pity on your political opponents. To be fair, it's a lesson the Hard Left didn't need to learn.
Mr. Herdson, how closely is the Co-op Party linked to the Co-op business? The latter may be wary of courting political controversy as a safe haven for a splitter group of Labour MPs.
they've already done the crystal meth and rent boys. how much worse could it get? (the bank, admittedly, but still..)
Some commentators like Alison Pearson do seem to believe that being "drilled relentlessly" is necessarily a good thing. I'm unconvinced.
Depends on your value of "good"
High school students in China leave their schools on average two years ahead of students from the UK, and up to four years ahead at the better schools. Are we to believe that Chinese students are intrinsically 20% more intelligent that British students (they are not by any known measure) or that working damn hard pays dividends in demonstrable real world abilities.
I am sick of attempts in the UK to justify laziness, sloth and lack of ambition while our international competitors work hard and increasingly run away with the prizes.
why is leaving school earlier good?
if you want to measure prizes, count the Nobels from China
Not leaving school earlier, level of achievement of leaving school at the usual age. Chinese student rank 613 ability points in Maths at school leaving age on average, UK students rank 494 points.
Nobel prizes is a meaningless measure, how long has China been a candidate for such compared to the US or the UK ?
Having strong family connections with China and having seen the childhoods of a generation of Chinese stolen by the education factory, I am not sure I agree. Chinese children are actual zombies thanks to study that starts at 7 in the morning and goes on until 11 at night six days a week, with maybe a few hours off on Sunday if you are lucky. Parents can't partially opt out as teachers, under pressure from other parents, won't allow it.
There surely must be a happy medium where education is respected but you are not made a slave to it.
Eddie Izzard: - “the comedian and activist pulled in an impressive 71,000 votes, it wasn’t enough to sway members from those most vocal Corbynistas who stood.”
Perfect timing by Eddie Izzard, even within Labour's NEC, he’s found himself yet again on the wrong side of the majority. #HeartofStone
It's a remarkable record - he's very high profile/been around forever and still can't win the right-on vote.
Mr. Dugarbandier, I'd argue memory is the single critical aspect (hard to teach someone who forgets everything), the point I was making, although I can see why this wasn't perhaps apparent, was that learning by rote is a valid method of memorising things. Other approaches can work too.
I am currently tutoring a 12 year old with an appallingly bad memory, despite endless attempts to develop her memory skills. Its crippling an otherwise perfectly able child as she can't remember her times tables a week after she was able to do them perfectly (with daily drilling), she can't tell the time properly after previously being able to do it and so forth. It took me almost four months to get her able to do addition, and even now works the column totals out on her fingers because she is unable to remember the sums of single digit numbers. We were doing large long divisions a couple of months ago, and today she could not remember how to do it, although to be fair it came back faster this time than previously.
Some commentators like Alison Pearson do seem to believe that being "drilled relentlessly" is necessarily a good thing. I'm unconvinced.
Depends on your value of "good"
High school students in China leave their schools on average two years ahead of students from the UK, and up to four years ahead at the better schools. Are we to believe that Chinese students are intrinsically 20% more intelligent that British students (they are not by any known measure) or that working damn hard pays dividends in demonstrable real world abilities.
I am sick of attempts in the UK to justify laziness, sloth and lack of ambition while our international competitors work hard and increasingly run away with the prizes.
why is leaving school earlier good?
if you want to measure prizes, count the Nobels from China
Not leaving school earlier, level of achievement of leaving school at the usual age. Chinese student rank 613 ability points in Maths at school leaving age on average, UK students rank 494 points.
Nobel prizes is a meaningless measure, how long has China been a candidate for such compared to the US or the UK ?
Yeah, I know, i was being facetious. But Japan is pretty bad in the Nobel list too, I think.
The reality here, as experienced first hand (well second hand, as it's my kids, I guess), is that pre school and primary is totally fantastic (apart from english teaching which is utter shite).
secondary is a boring boring list memorizing for 2 1/2 years followed by tests of how well you remembered the lists. then you enter high school (via exam) where you'll do some more list memorization. Finally you'll enter university totally devoid of any enthusiasm for learning, and if you're succesful you'll get a comfy job in the japanese civil service obstructing progress of any kind....
(haha, something of a rant there. I am a little exercised by these matters currently )
I make no claims for UK education, mine was pretty good but it was a good while ago
Haha a lot of that sounds rather familiar... I haven't yet had the pleasure of Japan, but I have tried to educate kids, or get my kids educated at various places in Asia and it hasn't been unalloyed joy for sure!
As regards UK education I am shocked at how little my son appears to be doing to get his GCSEs, possibly why the UK ranks in the mid 20s for most subjects now, and was between 1st and 4th for subjects when I was at high school 35 years ago.
"For some reason, we think it’s OK for an athletic child like Adam Peaty to be singled out, drilled relentlessly and pushed to the very limit of his capability, and that specialness is then a cause for national celebration. (What else are these Olympic Games if not a triumphant endorsement of such natural selection, the survival and the garlanding of the world’s fittest?)
By contrast, if you’re a brainy British kid who could seriously do with being plucked from their background, selection is a dirty word. Mums who drive their future Olympians to daily sports training are unsung heroines. Mums who drive their kids to tutoring are “pushy”. Grammar schools may turn out gold medallists of the mind who enrich our society a thousandfold, they may still hold an astonishing eleven places in the Top 20 schools, but they make the people who don’t get into them feel bad so, sorry, we can’t build any more of them."
Yes it's an interesting dissonance which I assume results in part from middle class left wingers not being terribly interested in sport.
Notably, we have had some whingeing of late from such people about the supposed dominance of public school educated actors though and faux concern about the lack of 'working class' ones. I doubt they will call for RADA or the RSC to be closed down though.
There was also a lot of gnashing of teeth about the disproportionate amount of medalists in 2012 who had gone to private school. My school cricket team was drawn away at Charterhouse in the Surrey County Cup and what struck me about the place was just what wonderful facilities and coaching staff (from Surrey CCC) that they had at their disposal. I was always asking for us to have winter nets at our school, but we were never allowed because you have to have supervision.
My experience comparing my timeteaching at a Kent grammar with my earlier experience at other state schools - was that the students at the grammar tended to perform better at everything including sport, art, music, etc as well as the more traditional academic subjects. I believe that they were more generally highly motivated and better supported by their parents [irrespective of income levels, etc] in every suspect. It was difficult not to conclude that success bred success and that those from poorer social background benefited especially from the environment of a good grammar school. In the case of my school it drew heavily from Se London/Nw Kent and there was a strong social/ethnic mix.
Mr. Dugarbandier, I'd argue memory is the single critical aspect (hard to teach someone who forgets everything), the point I was making, although I can see why this wasn't perhaps apparent, was that learning by rote is a valid method of memorising things. Other approaches can work too.
Rote is very handy because it is generally a quick way to acquire a lot of knowledge and sometimes the why is rather less important than the what..
The goverment has a fetish for Asian education and Singapore in particular. In my experience, it ain't all its cracked up to be (in Japan, don't know about Singapore)
You are having a laugh. Check the world education rankings
1 China 2 Singapore 3 Hong Kong 4 Taiwan 5 South Korea 6 Macau, China 7 Japan
26 United Kingdom
Nope, can't see why the government thinks asian educations works at all, not the slightest idea on that one.
Are we sure it's the schools doing that though? How would the UK look if you limited the sample to children growing up in East-Asian families?
Well, because say the Philippines in below 100 on the ranking, and the parents here are just as interesting in the education of their children, it just their system is like the US system (36th) only without the money.
This is a pointless anyway, seems opponents are apparently going to throw around whataboutery in the absence of evidence, and frankly life is too short. See you later, places to go, people to teach
The Philippines is a poor country, it's no surprise that they'd be lower down the rankings. That doesn't tell you much about whether UK schools acting like Chinese or Singapore schools would get you results like China or Singapore.
Eddie Izzard: - “the comedian and activist pulled in an impressive 71,000 votes, it wasn’t enough to sway members from those most vocal Corbynistas who stood.”
Perfect timing by Eddie Izzard, even within Labour's NEC, he’s found himself yet again on the wrong side of the majority. #HeartofStone
It's a remarkable record - he's very high profile/been around forever and still can't win the right-on vote.
Be interesting to see what he does next. He could dig in for the long haul. In which case Labour is fecked.
Or he could join any new grouping. In which case it is fecked.
Or he could just go back to being the funniest stand up comedian I've ever seen (and many times at that). You really don't have to do all this political stuff to validate your comedy, Eddie.
Jezza's economics aren't the turn-off for many. The multiplier system or whatever the magic money tree is called has attractions. But his foreign policy is based on hatred and a guilt complex for being born in the UK.
That will be ruthlessly exposed in a GE campaign. Owen Smith would have a chance. Even you might, but Jezza would have none - he can't rely on middle class, virtue signallers to spread the message. They may as well elect Emily Thornberry as his successor.
I struggle to see how Corbyn can go through a 6 week general election campaign without seriously putting his foot in it. He'll have to do debates with the other parties and engage with members of the public!
Corbyn has the endearing quality of saying what he thinks as if he's chatting down the pub. The media won't need to 'catch him out'; they just need to ask him what he thinks.
My experience comparing my timeteaching at a Kent grammar with my earlier experience at other state schools - was that the students at the grammar tended to perform better at everything including sport, art, music, etc as well as the more traditional academic subjects. I believe that they were more generally highly motivated and better supported by their parents [irrespective of income levels, etc] in every suspect. It was difficult not to conclude that success bred success and that those from poorer social background benefited especially from the environment of a good grammar school. In the case of my school it drew heavily from Se London/Nw Kent and there was a strong social/ethnic mix.
-------------------------------------
I think this is the point: the discussion on 'drilling' and Asian rote learning is a distraction. Bright kids benefit from being around other bright ones - especially those from poorer backgrounds who in many comps might be inclined to hide their light under a bushel.
These kids really gain from being at a school where there is 100% emphasis on, and enthusiasm for, learning - in all its dimensions.
Yes it's an interesting dissonance which I assume results in part from middle class left wingers not being terribly interested in sport.
Notably, we have had some whingeing of late from such people about the supposed dominance of public school educated actors though and faux concern about the lack of 'working class' ones. I doubt they will call for RADA or the RSC to be closed down though.
There was also a lot of gnashing of teeth about the disproportionate amount of medalists in 2012 who had gone to private school. My school cricket team was drawn away at Charterhouse in the Surrey County Cup and what struck me about the place was just what wonderful facilities and coaching staff (from Surrey CCC) that they had at their disposal. I was always asking for us to have winter nets at our school, but we were never allowed because you have to have supervision.
My experience comparing my timeteaching at a Kent grammar with my earlier experience at other state schools - was that the students at the grammar tended to perform better at everything including sport, art, music, etc as well as the more traditional academic subjects. I believe that they were more generally highly motivated and better supported by their parents [irrespective of income levels, etc] in every suspect. It was difficult not to conclude that success bred success and that those from poorer social background benefited especially from the environment of a good grammar school. In the case of my school it drew heavily from Se London/Nw Kent and there was a strong social/ethnic mix.
Whether grammar, comprehensive, free, acadamy or private, they key to school achievement is the environment and ethos of the school, the willingness of everyone there to excel, the tolerance (or not) of bad behaviour, and the engagement of parents in the educational process.
Where any of these are missing, the results tend to reflect that - in a way that's not accurately reflected by the percentage of pupils getting 5 A-C grade GCSEs, but rather in the way their pupils relate to others and have skills to take them into the wider world.
Mr. Dugarbandier, I'd argue memory is the single critical aspect (hard to teach someone who forgets everything), the point I was making, although I can see why this wasn't perhaps apparent, was that learning by rote is a valid method of memorising things. Other approaches can work too.
Rote is very handy because it is generally a quick way to acquire a lot of knowledge and sometimes the why is rather less important than the what..
Not only that but the what can combine with the why. In every day work life I use my 12 times tables etc regularly to do quick mental arithmetic. The knowledge of rules of arithmetic (why) combines well with the knowledge of times tables (what, rote) to be more effective and not need a calculator for the most basic of tasks.
Briefly, though, most Labour MPs don't especially disagree with the direction of the Corbyn agenda; they are simply doubtful if he can win. They act when they think that action will produce a better chance of winning (as they thought the no-conidence letter seemed to), but neither the Smith candidacy nor splitting into a sub-SDP looks likely to produce that nor fronting a failed rebellion, so they don't see any point in championing any of these.
Seems to me, Nick that they have already had their rebellion and that failed once Corbyn declined to step down after the vote of no confidence. They've already played all their cards and lost. They fell into the trap of underestimating their opponent. Corbyn showed great strength and courage ( if viewed through the eyes of his supporters) or stubborn obstinacy (if viewed through the eyes of the PLP) and faced them down.
It does beg the question though, if they do not see the Smith candidacy as being likely to produce a better chance of winning, why did they give him their support at the nomination stage and why could they not have come up with a candidate who they thought WOULD produce a better chance of winning?
Presumably because the bigger names expected that they be defeated again and weren't willing to take the reputational damage. But a challenge of some nature had to go ahead, if only so as to give the membership one last chance and do the 'I am not leaving the party; the party has left me' line, if necessary.
Mr. Sandpit, I remember that and the by-election [well, I think there was one] but how did that change the rules? Or was it his successor who backed Corbyn?
There is loads of evidence that 'braininess' can be trained, metric, metric tonnes of it.
evidence that the best way to train it is by relentless drilling and selective education?
Yeah, you see, that's not what I said. And the wonderful thing about it being in text form is that we can both see that that's not what I said.
However, the first part of it does work, yes. That's what training - at the very top levels - actually is.
no, but that's the point I was making re Alison Pearson. I'm not disputing that practicing brain stuff makes you better at it.
But that's the 'drilled relentlessly' part - maybe relentlessly is the emotive word.
But yeah, drilled. And the military image being picked up is especially relevent - trained until you no longer consciously think about it.
I'm not a fan of adjectives in social sciences. We were drilled in primary school. Some of those drills were useful (in a personal sense) - my facility with mental arithmetic is due to memorising times tables. Others, less so - I doubt my ability to recite the English monarchs in order has changed my life in a significant way.
Practice makes perfect. But it doesn't necessarily lead you anywhere. My love of maths came from my teacher (Miss Podmore pbuh) pointing out the patterns in the times tables - obvious to an adult, but captivating to a child. Then she showed us some of the tricks for extending beyond the twelve times table without memorisation and so on.
Yes it's an interesting dissonance which I assume results in part from middle class left wingers not being terribly interested in sport.
Notably, we have had some whingeing of late from such people about the supposed dominance of public school educated actors though and faux concern about the lack of 'working class' ones. I doubt they will call for RADA or the RSC to be closed down though.
There was also a lot of gnashing of teeth about the disproportionate amount of medalists in 2012 who had gone to private school. My school cricket team was drawn away at Charterhouse in the Surrey County Cup and what struck me about the place was just what wonderful facilities and coaching staff (from Surrey CCC) that they had at their disposal. I was always asking for us to have winter nets at our school, but we were never allowed because you have to have supervision.
My experience comparing my timeteaching at a Kent grammar with my earlier experience at other state schools - was that the students at the grammar tended to perform better at everything including sport, art, music, etc as well as the more traditional academic subjects. I believe that they were more generally highly motivated and better supported by their parents [irrespective of income levels, etc] in every suspect. It was difficult not to conclude that success bred success and that those from poorer social background benefited especially from the environment of a good grammar school. In the case of my school it drew heavily from Se London/Nw Kent and there was a strong social/ethnic mix.
Whether grammar, comprehensive, free, acadamy or private, they key to school achievement is the environment and ethos of the school, the willingness of everyone there to excel, the tolerance (or not) of bad behaviour, and the engagement of parents in the educational process.
Where any of these are missing, the results tend to reflect that - in a way that's not accurately reflected by the percentage of pupils getting 5 A-C grade GCSEs, but rather in the way their pupils relate to others and have skills to take them into the wider world.
Let's return to the sports analogy.
If you wanted to train a set of people to form the basis of a top sports team, who would you have them train with?
People with similar talents and abilities?
Or would you throw in a whole bunch of people not very good at sport as well?
Eddie Izzard: - “the comedian and activist pulled in an impressive 71,000 votes, it wasn’t enough to sway members from those most vocal Corbynistas who stood.”
Perfect timing by Eddie Izzard, even within Labour's NEC, he’s found himself yet again on the wrong side of the majority. #HeartofStone
It's a remarkable record - he's very high profile/been around forever and still can't win the right-on vote.
Be interesting to see what he does next. He could dig in for the long haul. In which case Labour is fecked.
Or he could join any new grouping. In which case it is fecked.
Or he could just go back to being the funniest stand up comedian I've ever seen (and many times at that). You really don't have to do all this political stuff to validate your comedy, Eddie.
I was astonished to see him in an episode of the Good Wife. He played a very magisterial snotty London lawyer and was excellent. I've no idea how he got the gig - but I didn't recognise at first. I noticed his voice, and couldn't place it. When the penny dropped, I was so convinced I was mistaken that I Googled it.
He's a very accomplished fellow - the comedy, acting, marathons blah blah - then he makes a complete arse of himself when it comes to politics. And that pink beret...
Latimer, a former speechwriter for George W Bush, argues that Pence could do a Brutus and get backing from establishment figures such as Paul Ryan, from Ted Cruz, and even from much of the Trump faction; take over as the presidential candidate himself; and choose a running-mate who would broaden the ticket. He concludes that the "future of America" is in Mike Pence's hands.
An interesting idea, especially since the aforementioned Pence is on offer at 1000 on Betfair's POTUS market and there's currently £574 available at these odds.
Invest a mere £526.85 of this amount and should the present Governor of Indiana by some dint of fate become the next President of the United States, then you would profit to the tune of half a million pounds, net of Betfair's 5% commission. Naturally I'd expect a modest share, say 10%, for introducing this proposition.
A classic case of looking after the Pence and the pounds will look after themselves.
The goverment has a fetish for Asian education and Singapore in particular. In my experience, it ain't all its cracked up to be (in Japan, don't know about Singapore)
You are having a laugh. Check the world education rankings
1 China 2 Singapore 3 Hong Kong 4 Taiwan 5 South Korea 6 Macau, China 7 Japan
26 United Kingdom
Nope, can't see why the government thinks asian educations works at all, not the slightest idea on that one.
Average IQs are notably higher in East Asia. So this is, in part, simply a reflection of the basic human potential.
The takeover is nearly complete. Just the Tory MPs in red rosettes to get rid of now.
Why are they so quiet though? They an see their party being destroyed in front of them yet not a squeal from any. Perhaps they have accepted the court of public Islington opinion?
He's a very accomplished fellow - the comedy, acting, marathons blah blah - then he makes a complete arse of himself when it comes to politics. And that pink beret...
Why a complete arse? Isn't he a fairly mainstream blairite/moderate a la JK Rowling, sir Alex Ferguson etc.?
they are behaving like the Emerald Jewel Wasp (ampulex compressa) whose extraordinary life-cycle - brain-washing, zombifying, and mutilating a cockroach, and forcing the cockroach to become a living incubator of new wasps
To pursue your analogy, is there any example of an infected cockroach successfully divesting itself of such a a parasite?
''The truly chilling thing is that the much larger cockroach seems to believe that everything will somehow be OK, even as the wasp mind-bends the brain-numbed victim towards an inevitable and horrible death.''
That notion is being fuelled by the electorate. Labour has done OK in most elections it has faced since Corbyn took over.
Mr. Dugarbandier, I'd argue memory is the single critical aspect (hard to teach someone who forgets everything), the point I was making, although I can see why this wasn't perhaps apparent, was that learning by rote is a valid method of memorising things. Other approaches can work too.
Rote is very handy because it is generally a quick way to acquire a lot of knowledge and sometimes the why is rather less important than the what..
Not only that but the what can combine with the why. In every day work life I use my 12 times tables etc regularly to do quick mental arithmetic. The knowledge of rules of arithmetic (why) combines well with the knowledge of times tables (what, rote) to be more effective and not need a calculator for the most basic of tasks.
More importantly in some respects you can front load rote learning. All my kids knew their tables well before they knew how to multiply numbers together - a little judicious bribery worked wonders . Initially they didn't get much use from it, but as soon as they started to study multiplication/fractions/division etc, the facts were at their fingertips and progress was much faster.
The goverment has a fetish for Asian education and Singapore in particular. In my experience, it ain't all its cracked up to be (in Japan, don't know about Singapore)
You are having a laugh. Check the world education rankings
1 China 2 Singapore 3 Hong Kong 4 Taiwan 5 South Korea 6 Macau, China 7 Japan
26 United Kingdom
Nope, can't see why the government thinks asian educations works at all, not the slightest idea on that one.
Average IQs are notably higher in East Asia. So this is, in part, simply a reflection of the basic human potential.
Regarding inherent physical prowess - is there any evidence that those of Jewish extraction are typically poorer at sports?
I read a Giles Coren article about being useless, he blamed being Jewish and no one seemed to think this was controversial.
Mr. Sandpit, I remember that and the by-election [well, I think there was one] but how did that change the rules? Or was it his successor who backed Corbyn?
There was an almighty row about the union interference in the candidate selection, which led to Ed Miliband changing the rules on the union influence over Labour elections. This led to the new rules about the leadership election, which the MPs didn't understand when they nominated JC.
Yes it's an interesting dissonance which I assume results in part from middle class left wingers not being terribly interested in sport.
Notably, we have had some whingeing of late from such people about the supposed dominance of public school educated actors though and faux concern about the lack of 'working class' ones. I doubt they will call for RADA or the RSC to be closed down though.
There was also a lot of gnashing of teeth about the disproportionate amount of medalists in 2012 who had gone to private school. My school cricket team was drawn away at Charterhouse in the Surrey County Cup and what struck me about the place was just what wonderful facilities and coaching staff (from Surrey CCC) that they had at their disposal. I was always asking for us to have winter nets at our school, but we were never allowed because you have to have supervision.
My experience comparing my timeteaching at a Kent grammar with my earlier experience at other state schools - was that the students at the grammar tended to perform better at everything including sport, art, music, etc as well as the more traditional academic subjects. I believe that they were more generally highly motivated and better supported by their parents [irrespective of income levels, etc] in every suspect. It was difficult not to conclude that success bred success and that those from poorer social background benefited especially from the environment of a good grammar school. In the case of my school it drew heavily from Se London/Nw Kent and there was a strong social/ethnic mix.
Whether grammar, comprehensive, free, acadamy or private, they key to school achievement is the environment and ethos of the school, the willingness of everyone there to excel, the tolerance (or not) of bad behaviour, and the engagement of parents in the educational process.
Where any of these are missing, the results tend to reflect that - in a way that's not accurately reflected by the percentage of pupils getting 5 A-C grade GCSEs, but rather in the way their pupils relate to others and have skills to take them into the wider world.
Broadly correct - and in the case of Comprehensives years of dumbing down and some pretty crazy ideas about learning , discipline, etc made things worse. Of course the role of parents is critical and too often they are a negative force when the need for positivity is at its highest..
I'm not sure how viable it would be though. The Co-Op had arcane, cumbersome and complex governance arrangements before its crisis, and I doubt that the associated party is much different. Could defecting MPs gain hold of its levers of power sufficiently quickly to launch a challenger party?
The Co-Op Party tends to have centrist members (since purist leftists are not especially attracted by the Co-op model). But it's very much an article of faith in the party that they never, ever stand against Labour, and it's above all a traditionalist movement enabling MPs with a general sympthy for the ideas to get a little extra support and financial assistance. I think that any move to make it a vehicler for a split would be rejected by the membership - not for ideological reasons, but because it's not the sort of thing the party does.
The party is incidentally effectively distinct from the shop, though I think the retail arm gives some financial support. You can join the party without taking out a retail Co-op shopping card and vice versa. Some people like to buy from the shop in the theory that they're thereby supporting the movement (and my Tory/UKIP-voting uncle refuses to shop there for the same reason), but it's pretty tenuous.
There's something very sinister about the Corbynite takeover of Labour. Something that sends a tiny shiver down the spine. Or my spine, at any rate.
I couldn't work out why, until I realised Corbynites, as a movement, are exhibiting classic parasitical behaviour: to be precise, they are behaving like the Emerald Jewel Wasp (ampulex compressa) whose extraordinary life-cycle - brain-washing, zombifying, and mutilating a cockroach, and forcing the cockroach to become a living incubator of new wasps - was the plotline in a Tom Knox Novel.
The truly chilling thing is that the much larger cockroach seems to believe that everything will somehow be OK, even as the wasp mind-bends the brain-numbed victim towards an inevitable and horrible death.
This is what is happening to Labour. Nick Palmer is the half-amputated antenna.
I wrote about something similar a while back, also as a parable for Labour.
There is a liver fluke that inhabits sheep and cattle (Dicrocoelium dendriticum). The eggs are excreted in the faeces. A snail eats the faeces and becomes infected. The snail encysts the larvae and ejects them. These cysts are eaten by an ant, which is where things become creepy.
The cycts contain hundreds of young flukes. Most just form another cyst in the ant's thorax, but one always moves to the ant's ganglion. It then manipulates the ants behaviour.
When the sun goes down, the fluke forces the ant up a blade of grass, and then locks its mandibles in place. If the ant isn't eaten by a grazing animal by daylight, the fluke forces the ant to the ground, as direct sun will kill the parasite. Rinse and repeat.
When the ant is eventually eaten, the cycle begins again. Evolution, she be freaky.
I'm not sure how viable it would be though. The Co-Op had arcane, cumbersome and complex governance arrangements before its crisis, and I doubt that the associated party is much different. Could defecting MPs gain hold of its levers of power sufficiently quickly to launch a challenger party?
The Co-Op Party tends to have centrist members (since purist leftists are not especially attracted by the Co-op model). But it's very much an article of faith in the party that they never, ever stand against Labour, and it's above all a traditionalist movement enabling MPs with a general sympthy for the ideas to get a little extra support and financial assistance. I think that any move to make it a vehicler for a split would be rejected by the membership - not for ideological reasons, but because it's not the sort of thing the party does.
The party is incidentally effectively distinct from the shop, though I think the retail arm gives some financial support. You can join the party without taking out a retail Co-op shopping card and vice versa. Some people like to buy from the shop in the theory that they're thereby supporting the movement (and my Tory/UKIP-voting uncle refuses to shop there for the same reason), but it's pretty tenuous.
There's something very sinister about the Corbynite takeover of Labour. Something that sends a tiny shiver down the spine. Or my spine, at any rate.
I couldn't work out why, until I realised Corbynites, as a movement, are exhibiting classic parasitical behaviour: to be precise, they are behaving like the Emerald Jewel Wasp (ampulex compressa) whose extraordinary life-cycle - brain-washing, zombifying, and mutilating a cockroach, and forcing the cockroach to become a living incubator of new wasps - was the plotline in a Tom Knox Novel.
The truly chilling thing is that the much larger cockroach seems to believe that everything will somehow be OK, even as the wasp mind-bends the brain-numbed victim towards an inevitable and horrible death.
This is what is happening to Labour. Nick Palmer is the half-amputated antenna.
I wrote about something similar a while back, also as a parable for Labour.
There is a liver fluke that inhabits sheep and cattle (Dicrocoelium dendriticum). The eggs are excreted in the faeces. A snail eats the faeces and becomes infected. The snail encysts the larvae and ejects them. These cysts are eaten by an ant, which is where things become creepy.
The cycts contain hundreds of young flukes. Most just form another cyst in the ant's thorax, but one always moves to the ant's ganglion. It then manipulates the ants behaviour.
When the sun goes down, the fluke forces the ant up a blade of grass, and then locks its mandibles in place. If the ant isn't eaten by a grazing animal by daylight, the fluke forces the ant to the ground, as direct sun will kill the parasite. Rinse and repeat.
When the ant is eventually eaten, the cycle begins again. Evolution, she be freaky.
The goverment has a fetish for Asian education and Singapore in particular. In my experience, it ain't all its cracked up to be (in Japan, don't know about Singapore)
You are having a laugh. Check the world education rankings
1 China 2 Singapore 3 Hong Kong 4 Taiwan 5 South Korea 6 Macau, China 7 Japan
26 United Kingdom
Nope, can't see why the government thinks asian educations works at all, not the slightest idea on that one.
Average IQs are notably higher in East Asia. So this is, in part, simply a reflection of the basic human potential.
Regarding inherent physical prowess - is there any evidence that those of Jewish extraction are typically poorer at sports?
I read a Giles Coren article about being useless, he blamed being Jewish and no one seemed to think this was controversial.
There's something very sinister about the Corbynite takeover of Labour. Something that sends a tiny shiver down the spine. Or my spine, at any rate.
I couldn't work out why, until I realised Corbynites, as a movement, are exhibiting classic parasitical behaviour: to be precise, they are behaving like the Emerald Jewel Wasp (ampulex compressa) whose extraordinary life-cycle - brain-washing, zombifying, and mutilating a cockroach, and forcing the cockroach to become a living incubator of new wasps - was the plotline in a Tom Knox Novel.
The truly chilling thing is that the much larger cockroach seems to believe that everything will somehow be OK, even as the wasp mind-bends the brain-numbed victim towards an inevitable and horrible death.
This is what is happening to Labour. Nick Palmer is the half-amputated antenna.
Pretty much the plot line of Aliens*.
The way it plays to rape (the face hugger) and parasitic horror (the chest burster) is pretty much designed as a plotline to be as terrifying as possible, and dangerously close to nature. Making it even more disturbing.
*Even if Bill Paxton does provide a healthy dose of cheese.
We need more of the basic foundational educational ability in this country. 3Rs and all that. But we do NOT need the Far Eastern 'brutal rote learning until you become a pliant automaton' element of their education systems.
I am not convinced that is a whole lot to do with the education system so much as a complete culture of risk-aversion in most of Asia, especially the poorer bits. Most people seem to be terrified (for economic or 'face' reasons) for losing their jobs, and the tendency to follow process to the exclusion of product becomes endemic as a result. The mindset appears to be that if you follow the rules you can't get sacked no matter how idiotic it might appear in retrospect, whereas if you take a risk on bending the rules and it goes wrong you are out on your ear. In the poor countries it's incredibly hard to find a new job, and in the richer ones its incredibly difficult to find a new job when people find out why you lost your previous one.
I was talking to a prominent local businessman on this very subject a month or two ago and he was of the opinion that the problem at the root is the mentality of (principally) Chinese investors. Who don't on the whole expect fantastic returns but are utterly unforgiving of failure, and as business failure will make it impossible to borrow money from almost anyone else for any future venture, people run their business in an extremely cautious and risk averse way (hence the proliferation of senseless franchise businesses, which give the owner a comfort blanket). Contrast this to the attitude of many western investors who see the right sort of previous business failure as a good indicator because it means you will have learned from it and will be more careful with their money.
The goverment has a fetish for Asian education and Singapore in particular. In my experience, it ain't all its cracked up to be (in Japan, don't know about Singapore)
You are having a laugh. Check the world education rankings
1 China 2 Singapore 3 Hong Kong 4 Taiwan 5 South Korea 6 Macau, China 7 Japan
26 United Kingdom
Nope, can't see why the government thinks asian educations works at all, not the slightest idea on that one.
Average IQs are notably higher in East Asia. So this is, in part, simply a reflection of the basic human potential.
IQ is the ability to do IQ tests
No, it's not. IQ tests are the basis of SAT tests, which almost no one complains about, and which govern admissions into the American university system: the best in the world.
Blind tests are best for universities - non blind universities discriminate against applicants of asian heritage.
''The truly chilling thing is that the much larger cockroach seems to believe that everything will somehow be OK, even as the wasp mind-bends the brain-numbed victim towards an inevitable and horrible death.''
That notion is being fuelled by the electorate. Labour has done OK in most elections it has faced since Corbyn took over.
But there is no evidence to support the idea that they voted as a result of Corbyn rather than in spite of him.
Given the fact that in all the high profile elections, the successful Labour candidates have had to expend significant time and energy in saying that they are not Corbynists, I think we can see a clear direction of travel
The split is real. The NEC result will only accelerate the timetable if they then try and purge the General Secretary and then the regional directors. There are enough QCs in the PLP to have a legal plan already underway.
My assumption is this. We create a new Party called "The Labour Party (2016) Ltd" or similar but trading as "The Labour Party" with the old Labour Party declared defunct. Transferred across are all of the assets and staff of the old party, the MPs, Councillors, etc. Owen Smith is declared the chair of the PLP and becomes leader of the opposition. Membership is automatically transferred to the new entity with the assumption that the Momentum insurgency will leave en masse in protest.
Its now an Extinction Level Event. Either they win or we win. Momentum and the Shiny Happy People insist that anyone who isn't worshipping is a Tory/Progress/Portland/Blairite/MI5 drone. The reality is that the bulk of the party - soft left, centre left, centre, centre right and right - have been united in a way I didn't think possible before.
If the insurgents are allowed to seize power fully then all of us will be purged. A new party would be needed which is very very hard under FPTP. So we will have to launch a counter-insurgency before they have the chance. Electorally we will get smashed but thats a given now anyway. Better to lose one election and rebuild than lose the movement and never compete again.
I'm currently in the process of completing an Australian census form with 55 questions even though I'm not an Australian citizen. Everyone has to fill one in, even tourists staying for a few days. The hotel receptionist is giving them out to guests.
Comments
By voting Brexit.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/08/romance-brexit-philip-larkin-industrial-suburbia-leave-vote-elite-london-working-class?CMP=share_btn_tw
The Cross Curricula Brexit essay prize goes to The Guardian. Next up why the Music of Peter Maxwell Davies influenced The No Vote on Orkney.
Labour seats in 2015: 232
Consequence of boundary changes on Labour seats -32 say = 200
Consequence of dire polling under Corbyn in GE campaign if party held together (-15% seats best case) -30 = 170
Consequence of further deterioration in polling following minimal split or defections only (-20% best case) -34 = 136
Likelihood of deselection (33% best case) -45 = 91
So, if you're an MP hostile to Corbyn on a best case scenario you have perhaps a 40% chance of being around (i.e. 91/232) after the next general election as things stand under a keep calm and carry on scenario. I think that is too optimistic and a realistic chance would be around 25%.
Why not take a punt in those circumstances?
So in your scenario some current Labour MPs have a close to zero chance of survival
Notably, we have had some whingeing of late from such people about the supposed dominance of public school educated actors though and faux concern about the lack of 'working class' ones. I doubt they will call for RADA or the RSC to be closed down though.
Because the tribal loyalty is so strong.
But two other points are more important. Firstly, government borrowing is not paid off in the same way so is likely to need refinancing at some future point. Expanding the national debt has long-term consequences.
Even more important, governments are dreadful for accurately defining investment and use the word to include all sorts of ongoing whim spending - see Don's comment about childcare. Now, there might be a case to be made that subsidising childcare is a form of investment but if there is (and some aspects tend in that direction), you could say the same about the entire education budget. Should that be funded by borrowing too? Once an ongoing spending commitment is made, it becomes extremely difficult to reverse - as with the austerity attempts over the last six years. And ongoing spending should be met by general taxation.
Momentum Walford Retweeted Martin
Questions, questions! Why can't you respect His mandate? Winning isn't important. It's purging opponents that counts
I can't tell what is parody anymore.
there is good hard evidence that if you train your body, you will become better at, for example, swimming faster.
there is considerably less evidence that tutoring or selective schools will help children to perform or reach their potential of "braininess".
What is a "gold medallist of the mind"? Someone who can get the best test scores? How does that enrich society?
Some commentators like Alison Pearson do seem to believe that being "drilled relentlessly" is necessarily a good thing. I'm unconvinced.
http://labourlist.org/2016/08/what-did-we-learn-from-the-nec-results/
She's got a point, *but* sport is exciting. Me being one of the better people out there in my obscure branch of chemistry? Not so much.
High school students in China leave their schools on average two years ahead of students from the UK, and up to four years ahead at the better schools. Are we to believe that Chinese students are intrinsically 20% more intelligent that British students (they are not by any known measure) or that working damn hard pays dividends in demonstrable real world abilities.
I am sick of attempts in the UK to justify laziness, sloth and lack of ambition while our international competitors work hard and increasingly run away with the prizes.
Characterising any increase in govt spending as 'investment' is what got us into this damn mess in the first place!
Unfortunately it seems that exams are increasingly being geared to testing memory more than other components. (partly because essays are difficult to mark by computer and thus expensive).
The goverment has a fetish for Asian education and Singapore in particular. In my experience, it ain't all its cracked up to be (in Japan, don't know about Singapore)
On one hand Corbyn's critics claim he's an idiot. On other hand he's masterminded the total takeover of his party https://t.co/webqiH2gwA
Secondly, and this is why the policy a dead-end, everyone has to go through education and get to some level of competetence. Sport is something on top of that - if Adam C practically drowns in the pool and is OK at school, then, yeah, its all OK, isn't it?
"What is a "gold medallist of the mind"? Someone who can get the best test scores? "
This, however, really annoys me - to get to the point where you can be creative with science, you need to (a) know what's come before and (b) understand what you're doing. The best test scores aren't the be all and end all but having the tools to do the job at hand is.
And up to, what, your early 20s, that's the only way you're going to demonstrate any ability.
It infuriates me that teaching, especially at SE, bang on about creativity, at an age when you're still trying to get the basics put into place. Taking the sports analogy, you wouldn't expect someone to do a pommel horse routine at the first, tenth, hundredth or even a thousandth attempt. You get the basics in place - the handstands and the core strength, the planche and then maybe, just maybe you get up onto the horse.
1 China
2 Singapore
3 Hong Kong
4 Taiwan
5 South Korea
6 Macau, China
7 Japan
26 United Kingdom
Nope, can't see why the government thinks asian educations works at all, not the slightest idea on that one.
I would believe government cant about investment if it used the same metrics as a private sector business case. Without a concrete, measurable return (irrespective of your preferred metric), it's spending, not investment.
if you want to measure prizes, count the Nobels from China
However, the first part of it does work, yes. That's what training - at the very top levels - actually is.
We should retain the choice for parents of capable children to have their kids mix with people of all abilities and classes if they wish.
That's what labour supporting parents would want, isn;t it?
But no proposals for destroying the sports infrastructure that created these champions.
It all goes back to what really scared the middle class opponents of grammar schools - that their pampered brats might not have all the prizes in life reserved for them and that, shock horror, some hard-working kids from the scruffier parts of town might outstrip them (which was exactly what was happening in the 1950s and 1960s).
If it's football, they can live with that as they only pretend to like it anyway. But if it's the professions....oh no.
Nobel prizes is a meaningless measure, how long has China been a candidate for such compared to the US or the UK ?
Perfect timing by Eddie Izzard, even within Labour's NEC, he’s found himself yet again on the wrong side of the majority. #HeartofStone
This is a pointless anyway, seems opponents are apparently going to throw around whataboutery in the absence of evidence, and frankly life is too short. See you later, places to go, people to teach
I'm not sure how viable it would be though. The Co-Op had arcane, cumbersome and complex governance arrangements before its crisis, and I doubt that the associated party is much different. Could defecting MPs gain hold of its levers of power sufficiently quickly to launch a challenger party?
But yeah, drilled. And the military image being picked up is especially relevent - trained until you no longer consciously think about it.
The reality here, as experienced first hand (well second hand, as it's my kids, I guess), is that pre school and primary is totally fantastic (apart from english teaching which is utter shite).
secondary is a boring boring list memorizing for 2 1/2 years followed by tests of how well you remembered the lists. then you enter high school (via exam) where you'll do some more list memorization. Finally you'll enter university totally devoid of any enthusiasm for learning, and if you're succesful you'll get a comfy job in the japanese civil service obstructing progress of any kind....
(haha, something of a rant there. I am a little exercised by these matters currently
I make no claims for UK education, mine was pretty good but it was a good while ago
There surely must be a happy medium where education is respected but you are not made a slave to it.
As regards UK education I am shocked at how little my son appears to be doing to get his GCSEs, possibly why the UK ranks in the mid 20s for most subjects now, and was between 1st and 4th for subjects when I was at high school 35 years ago.
Or he could join any new grouping. In which case it is fecked.
Or he could just go back to being the funniest stand up comedian I've ever seen (and many times at that). You really don't have to do all this political stuff to validate your comedy, Eddie.
My experience comparing my timeteaching at a Kent grammar with my earlier experience at other state schools - was that the students at the grammar tended to perform better at everything including sport, art, music, etc as well as the more traditional academic subjects. I believe that they were more generally highly motivated and better supported by their parents [irrespective of income levels, etc] in every suspect. It was difficult not to conclude that success bred success and that those from poorer social background benefited especially from the environment of a good grammar school. In the case of my school it drew heavily from Se London/Nw Kent and there was a strong social/ethnic mix.
-------------------------------------
I think this is the point: the discussion on 'drilling' and Asian rote learning is a distraction. Bright kids benefit from being around other bright ones - especially those from poorer backgrounds who in many comps might be inclined to hide their light under a bushel.
These kids really gain from being at a school where there is 100% emphasis on, and enthusiasm for, learning - in all its dimensions.
Where any of these are missing, the results tend to reflect that - in a way that's not accurately reflected by the percentage of pupils getting 5 A-C grade GCSEs, but rather in the way their pupils relate to others and have skills to take them into the wider world.
Practice makes perfect. But it doesn't necessarily lead you anywhere. My love of maths came from my teacher (Miss Podmore pbuh) pointing out the patterns in the times tables - obvious to an adult, but captivating to a child. Then she showed us some of the tricks for extending beyond the twelve times table without memorisation and so on.
If you wanted to train a set of people to form the basis of a top sports team, who would you have them train with?
People with similar talents and abilities?
Or would you throw in a whole bunch of people not very good at sport as well?
He's a very accomplished fellow - the comedy, acting, marathons blah blah - then he makes a complete arse of himself when it comes to politics. And that pink beret...
Invest a mere £526.85 of this amount and should the present Governor of Indiana by some dint of fate become the next President of the United States, then you would profit to the tune of half a million pounds, net of Betfair's 5% commission. Naturally I'd expect a modest share, say 10%, for introducing this proposition.
A classic case of looking after the Pence and the pounds will look after themselves.
I'll get me coat.
I am going to guess not...
That notion is being fuelled by the electorate. Labour has done OK in most elections it has faced since Corbyn took over.
I read a Giles Coren article about being useless, he blamed being Jewish and no one seemed to think this was controversial.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-23176525
The party is incidentally effectively distinct from the shop, though I think the retail arm gives some financial support. You can join the party without taking out a retail Co-op shopping card and vice versa. Some people like to buy from the shop in the theory that they're thereby supporting the movement (and my Tory/UKIP-voting uncle refuses to shop there for the same reason), but it's pretty tenuous.
https://t.co/MURvW4odgH https://t.co/ya7vzrBZvf
There is a liver fluke that inhabits sheep and cattle (Dicrocoelium dendriticum). The eggs are excreted in the faeces. A snail eats the faeces and becomes infected. The snail encysts the larvae and ejects them. These cysts are eaten by an ant, which is where things become creepy.
The cycts contain hundreds of young flukes. Most just form another cyst in the ant's thorax, but one always moves to the ant's ganglion. It then manipulates the ants behaviour.
When the sun goes down, the fluke forces the ant up a blade of grass, and then locks its mandibles in place. If the ant isn't eaten by a grazing animal by daylight, the fluke forces the ant to the ground, as direct sun will kill the parasite. Rinse and repeat.
When the ant is eventually eaten, the cycle begins again. Evolution, she be freaky.
The way it plays to rape (the face hugger) and parasitic horror (the chest burster) is pretty much designed as a plotline to be as terrifying as possible, and dangerously close to nature. Making it even more disturbing.
*Even if Bill Paxton does provide a healthy dose of cheese.
I was talking to a prominent local businessman on this very subject a month or two ago and he was of the opinion that the problem at the root is the mentality of (principally) Chinese investors. Who don't on the whole expect fantastic returns but are utterly unforgiving of failure, and as business failure will make it impossible to borrow money from almost anyone else for any future venture, people run their business in an extremely cautious and risk averse way (hence the proliferation of senseless franchise businesses, which give the owner a comfort blanket). Contrast this to the attitude of many western investors who see the right sort of previous business failure as a good indicator because it means you will have learned from it and will be more careful with their money.
Given the fact that in all the high profile elections, the successful Labour candidates have had to expend significant time and energy in saying that they are not Corbynists, I think we can see a clear direction of travel
My assumption is this. We create a new Party called "The Labour Party (2016) Ltd" or similar but trading as "The Labour Party" with the old Labour Party declared defunct. Transferred across are all of the assets and staff of the old party, the MPs, Councillors, etc. Owen Smith is declared the chair of the PLP and becomes leader of the opposition. Membership is automatically transferred to the new entity with the assumption that the Momentum insurgency will leave en masse in protest.
Its now an Extinction Level Event. Either they win or we win. Momentum and the Shiny Happy People insist that anyone who isn't worshipping is a Tory/Progress/Portland/Blairite/MI5 drone. The reality is that the bulk of the party - soft left, centre left, centre, centre right and right - have been united in a way I didn't think possible before.
If the insurgents are allowed to seize power fully then all of us will be purged. A new party would be needed which is very very hard under FPTP. So we will have to launch a counter-insurgency before they have the chance. Electorally we will get smashed but thats a given now anyway. Better to lose one election and rebuild than lose the movement and never compete again.
I'm currently in the process of completing an Australian census form with 55 questions even though I'm not an Australian citizen. Everyone has to fill one in, even tourists staying for a few days. The hotel receptionist is giving them out to guests.