At the cycling last night Claire Balding asked Chris Hoy if he knew how Jason Kenny proposed to Laura Trott. He said he thinks it was on Christmas Eve in front of Eastenders.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
True, there has been relatively little growth in the physical network. But it has been growing, unlike in BR times when it was constantly shrinking.
...
I only travelled on BR in the last decade of its existence, but I have little doubt that the current railway is much better for passenger comfort and convenience. As an example: Pacer trains are widely derided, but when they were introduced in the 1980s they were seen as being better than the first-generation DMUs they replaced.
(*) When the adjacent Broad Street station was sadly closed.
First paragraph is not quite fair JJ. Cannock was reconnected to the national network under BR, when the Chase line was promoted from freight only status. It wasn't common, but it happened.
Entirely agree with your second paragraph. BR's record in the provinces was absolutely dismal, especially in terms of punctuality, comfort and service. Things have improved enormously since privatisation. And it's not just where there is no alternative. The Cambrian lines are much more heavily used despite their remoteness and low speeds. In the 1980s you had a one car train every two hours from Mac along the lines. Now they are two car trains every hour, and they are well used.
Oh, indeed it happened. Willington station in South Derbyshire also reopened in late BR times, albeit that was on a passenger line. There was also an abortive first attempt at reopening the station at Corby in 1987, although BR closed it a few years later. It has since reopened again, and passenger numbers have doubled.
In fact, Corby's two reopenings are an indication of privatisation's success. BR could not make the station work. The private companies have.
But think of all the lines we lost, both passenger and freight.
Think of the lucky escape we had when the Settle and Carlisle was saved. The Woodhead line was not so lucky.
The Serpell report is also well worth studying. Imagine if that had gone through!
Some lines make heavy losses, even today, but being led by reports like Serpell would have led to a false economy.
Some subsidy money would have been saved but there'd have then been a heavy call on the public purse for a mass roadbuilding programme to relieve congested roads, many more bus routes, investment and public spending to stimulate the economies of isolated communities and a host of social challenges in linking together those a long way from the remaining network.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
I'd be interested in hearing why those people in the minority think Barack Obama has been so bad. He seems to have been reasonably adequate to me, bearing in mind the very difficult circumstances in which he took office.
I'm cautiously hopeful that machine politician Hillary Clinton will be a machine politician president in the vein of LBJ. That wouldn't be too shabby.
In the event of a Trump defeat, how will the Republican party react? If they are divided, as currently seems probable, will Hillary Clinton be able to form constructive working arrangements with some Republicans for the first time in years?
Not bad, just a nothing President who achieved nothing of value over his eight years. Indeed in that time gun violence, race relations and insurance premiums are worse than ever. He has let things slide domestically in a way that Clinton and Bush never did.
Obama and his empty campaign promise to close Guantanamo Bay - Still there after 8 yrs.
It's not Obama getting in the way of closing Gitmo.
Having looked at it, it is hard to imagine railways could have survived at all. A classic accountant's mentality that assumed passengers went from station to station.
The Waverley route was a loss, but the worst was and remains the Great Central. If we still had that, we wouldn't be arguing over HS2 now. And if it hadn't been sold off for building we could just put it back.
I actually disagree about the Great Central. You'r right about it north of Aylesbury where it was it's own route, but south of there until near Marylebone it shared existing tracks, which are still in use and busy today. It would have done very little to ease congestion into London, as that part of the route's still open.
The real tragedy for me was the closure of my beloved Matlock to Derby line, which AIUI was not in the initial Beeching report. It was closed because the LNWR contingent of BR did not want two alternative routes to Manchester and campaigned for it to be closed instead of the Hope Valley. The Peak Line was used as a diversion during WCML electrification, and then unceremoniously closed.
A typical example of BR's shrinking mindset.
That's just it about nationalised industries: despite the good feeling of public ownership they end up being run in the interests of those employed within them.
Generally, that means making things administratively simple and convenient, and central planning according to internal and political priorities, and not rocking the boat by innovating too much, including provoking the unions, so as to preserve jobs for the long-term and a nice final salary pension.
Obama net +46% ?????? Does not compute! WTF is going on with the British public? Did education standards drop or something? This is the hardest evidence I have ever seen for the triumph of image management over content.
Some Leavers were probably favourable to him because they think he did them a favour!
He's the shittiest president of modern times by a country mile. I really don't get it.
Obama stood (twice) on a platform of healthcare reform and got it through a hostile congress and senate
Getting legislation passed is not a measure of success. Obamacare is an out and out failure. Trump won't even need to repeal it if he gets elected as it is about to implode anyway. Obama lied blatantly to get it passed and now premiums are exploding upwards as (no shit Sherlock) the healthy young are avoiding participation. Obama has profoundly damaged the US health system in an act of pure petulance. Not being able to afford health insurance in the US is a serous serious problem. History will not be kind to him.
The problem is that it has achieved that by making already expensive insurance for the middle classes even more expensive and the coverage worse overall. A system that creates so many losers, vocal ones, is going to get a tough time. I don't think it will be repealed, but they may have to look at a much better single-payer system and establish Medicare for all rather than free substandard insurance people lower down the income scale and substandard expensive insurance for the middle classes with the rich being able to afford the price rises for the best. That's what Obama should have done, been truly radical.
No way could he have got that through Congress.
He didn't try, instead he gave insurance companies a new and better licence to print money.
The cynic in me thinks the BoE delayed cutting rates by one month so as to not dampen the rise in RPI in August which is used to determine the rise in regulated rail fares.
literally impossible to get it through the Senate. Congress would have passed it when they had the Dem majority (single payer was Obama's preffered option) but the Senate would have killed it.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
The factory gate prices are very interesting, weak Sterling beginning to bite, output prices are going to have to start rising to maintain margins which could start the gun for inflation to head back to 2-2.5% over the next year or so. However, oil prices crashed again towards the end of July so price pressure may decrease in August.
Perhaps the Obama favourability ratings show how things can be misread.
There's little doubt that it was precisely this that led Cameron to covet (and take delight in) his intervention in the EU referendum debate, thinking this would be a slam dunk for Remain. Or, as another Remain poster put it, hit Leave in the solar plexus.
But in reality, it had no effect and may have even worked to Leave's advantage given how aloof and condescending he came across (incidentally, a snippet of precisely what his problem in the US is)
So, a warning: these ratings are of interest but they are not necessarily politically decisive.
Mr. 1000, assuming that's true, it highlights another problem with the cover-up/minimising coverage approach I didn't think of yesterday.
Every time there's a knife or gun attack, people will wonder if it's terrorism that's being covered up. That might lead to a larger than accurate picture forming in the public's mind when it comes to the threat/terrorist activity. One more reason we need to be able to trust the media/politicians/the police.
Perhaps the reason that there's not been much on it, is simply that it was local gangland, and therefore it's simply not an exciting story. The British press, as a general rule, doesn't cover stories where there is an altercation in a foreign country and no-one dies.
As an aside, have you seen that the Swiss police have said "the suspect, who also set himself on fire was a Swiss national who was not of immigrant origin and did not have a criminal record." Which suggests the Twitter image doing the rounds may be false.
Perhaps we should all calm down. Every day in Europe there will be a knife attack of some kind. Heck, there are probably a dozen non-terrorist knife attacks.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
We don’t need to rejoin; we just need May to announce that after mature consideration Leaving is actually too difficult, and she won’t be writing the Article 50 letter until after the election, then all parties to campaign on a remain platform.
Obama net +46% ?????? Does not compute! WTF is going on with the British public? Did education standards drop or something? This is the hardest evidence I have ever seen for the triumph of image management over content.
Some Leavers were probably favourable to him because they think he did them a favour!
He's the shittiest president of modern times by a country mile. I really don't get it.
You don't get it because you seem incapable of comprehending that most people have a different opinion to your own.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
We haven't left yet !
We're leaving. Hopefully we'll remain in the customs union
At the cycling last night Claire Balding asked Chris Hoy if he knew how Jason Kenny proposed to Laura Trott. He said he thinks it was on Christmas Eve in front of Eastenders.
Ha! My hubby was totally smashed when he proposed on my 19th birthday - in a very loud nightclub. I told him to ask me again when he was sober
I honestly can't recall the next day when he did, but crystal clear on the evening before.
Generation safe space are going to get a shock in two days according to headteachers. Finally it seems like the government are making exams tougher again. The Labour years of falling standards and lower difficulty were a joke.
But but but the poor little darling . They all had a meltdown this summer because they were asked one hardy wardy question.
There speak people with, I assume, no actual experience of what students going through A-levels have been going through.
My youngest is waiting for his A-level results. He has been working very hard for the last two years, especially so since Xmas and got good results in his mocks with one subject needing extra work, which he has put in. He has scarcely seen daylight. I cannot fault him for effort and really hope that it will prove successful.
Nonetheless he is apprehensive: worried that he did not do enough, worried about the complicated marking scheme (how AS and A-level scores combine to make the overall result is still a mystery to me), worried about errors in the marking (one of his remarks in GCSEs led to him jumping a grade), worried about retakes given that a new curriculum starts this autumn and worried that one day will make or break his life (an absurd view but understandable given how everyone goes on about this). He has good offers from good universities. I hope that he will be successful. But if not we and he will cope and life will go on.
What he and other students don't need is sneering from those who don't know what it's like and think that the more idiotic examples of students sometimes seen in newspapers are representative of all students.
Education is about more than passing exams. In my professional life I have met plenty of people very good at passing exams who do not have an ounce of common sense or much of a moral conscience either. Education is about instilling knowledge and skills. Yes. But it's also about instilling the means to learn for the rest of your life, a love of learning, intellectual curiosity, indeed, curiosity in general and a desire to experience life and the wisdom of ages past in all their variety. It's not about training monkeys. We do our children no favours by turning education into such a narrow and dispiriting experience that they get turned off this wider view of education (and I may be the only one who thinks about education like this. So be it.)
Incidentally, all three of my children have had to put up with endless changes in the curriculum and the rules around marking and exams in the last few years. All three of them do not have a good word to say for Mr Gove. Good intentions are not enough.
I am sure @Ydoethur of this parish will give the teachers' view, if he is around.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
We don’t need to rejoin; we just need May to announce that after mature consideration Leaving is actually too difficult, and she won’t be writing the Article 50 letter until after the election, then all parties to campaign on a remain platform.
're ObamaCare Aetna today pulled out of most of the state's that it writes exchange based insurance. Lost $200m this year - healthy young aren't buying insurance so the risk pool vs capped pricing doesn't work.
At the cycling last night Claire Balding asked Chris Hoy if he knew how Jason Kenny proposed to Laura Trott. He said he thinks it was on Christmas Eve in front of Eastenders.
I was watching Hoy/Balding with Mrs SSC last night and had just said to her Hoy appears to knows every detail of the cycle team, including names of their Mums, Dads and kids you name it. I was not in the least surprised that he knew the background of the proposal – Top chap that Hoy.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
Strange isn't it. The counterfactual for my Leave vote is the UK in the Euro, fuck the rebate (it's peanuts as I've said a zillion times), let's rule Europe in tandem with Germany. I don't think Schengen would be a requirement for rejoining.
He had an absolutely huge and popular mandate in 2008, but his team didn't have the legislation ready to ram through the House and Senate for a single-payer system. Instead he dawdled and let Republican (and Democrat) dissent build until he had to compromise and introduce a system that benefits few people.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
We don’t need to rejoin; we just need May to announce that after mature consideration Leaving is actually too difficult, and she won’t be writing the Article 50 letter until after the election, then all parties to campaign on a remain platform.
UKIP majority, Alistair will be happy.
@Alistair will probably be, as the SNP will win Indy ref 2 very easily under those circumstances (Perhaps even declare UDI).
It's because of the collapse in interest rates. Future liabilities are discounted by the risk free return rate, which is usually set by 10 year government bonds. The collapse in gilt yields sends future liabilities soaring.
At the cycling last night Claire Balding asked Chris Hoy if he knew how Jason Kenny proposed to Laura Trott. He said he thinks it was on Christmas Eve in front of Eastenders.
I was watching Hoy/Balding with Mrs SSC last night and had just said to her Hoy appears to knows every detail of the cycle team, including names of their Mums, Dads and kids you name it. I was not in the least surprised that he knew the background of the proposal – Top chap that Hoy.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
Mr. StClare, as we (I think) discussed yesterday, Hoy's a top chap, and one of the best parts of the BBC's coverage.
Mr. 1000, possibly, or he could just be a second generation. That's the problem the media are creating for themselves by, seemingly, taking a deliberate approach of not reporting or under-reporting/downplaying terrorism.
It's because of the collapse in interest rates. Future liabilities are discounted by the risk free return rate, which is usually set by 10 year government bonds. The collapse in gilt yields sends future liabilities soaring.
Which of the FTSE companies have a wide-ranging final salary/DB scheme (It is fine for a few individuals overall to market cap) and which are on DC ?
All with a mass DB scheme are surely in for a long term mullering. Is there a list anywhere ?
At the cycling last night Claire Balding asked Chris Hoy if he knew how Jason Kenny proposed to Laura Trott. He said he thinks it was on Christmas Eve in front of Eastenders.
I was watching Hoy/Balding with Mrs SSC last night and had just said to her Hoy appears to knows every detail of the cycle team, including names of their Mums, Dads and kids you name it. I was not in the least surprised that he knew the background of the proposal – Top chap that Hoy.
I really hope Hoy goes into the Team GB cycling setup soon and becomes a coach, it's obvious that he has so much to offer. I guess he is waiting for the current crop of his former team mates to retire so he can work with a completely new generation, but even so, it's clear he still loves the sport.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
I'm really struggling to work out what circumstances need to occur before rates start rising....
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
0.25 probably isn't here to stay in perpetuity, but I can see sub 1% rates being around for the next 20 years.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
Unlike;y but who knows what a fickle electorate would do if Brexit proves to be an economic disaster. You are also making assumptions about the terms of rejoining which may or may not apply depending on how much the EU would like the UK back in 10 years time. Right now I'll trade you my sterling for your Euros without hesitation.
Mr. StClare, as we (I think) discussed yesterday, Hoy's a top chap, and one of the best parts of the BBC's coverage.
Mr. 1000, possibly, or he could just be a second generation. That's the problem the media are creating for themselves by, seemingly, taking a deliberate approach of not reporting or under-reporting/downplaying terrorism.
Do the media release names - or do they usually say "a 29 year old man is helping police with enquiries?"
What would you rather they say? "a 29 year old man of Muslim origin is helping police with their enquiries?"
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
I'm really struggling to work out what circumstances need to occur before rates start rising....
Yes. What circumstances ARE needed for rates to rise ?
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
We don’t need to rejoin; we just need May to announce that after mature consideration Leaving is actually too difficult, and she won’t be writing the Article 50 letter until after the election, then all parties to campaign on a remain platform.
If they tried that I'd probably go on my first ever public demonstration... And start voting UKIP!
The Spectator had an interesting piece yesterday about how the elites are conspiring to thwart Brexit;
At the moment I'm taking Theresa May's word for it when she says Brexit is going to happen. We'll see what September brings when I'm hoping the government will have gotten their act together and we'll have a mapped out way forward.
Generation safe space are going to get a shock in two days according to headteachers. Finally it seems like the government are making exams tougher again. The Labour years of falling standards and lower difficulty were a joke.
But but but the poor little darling . They all had a meltdown this summer because they were asked one hardy wardy question.
There speak people with, I assume, no actual experience of what students going through A-levels have been going through.
My youngest is waiting for his A-level results. He has been working very hard for the last two years, especially so since Xmas and got good results in his mocks with one subject needing extra work, which he has put in. He has scarcely seen daylight. I cannot fault him for effort and really hope that it will prove successful.
What he and other students don't need is sneering from those who don't know what it's like and think that the more idiotic examples of students sometimes seen in newspapers are representative of all students.
Education is about more than passing exams. In my professional life I have met plenty of people very good at passing exams who do not have an ounce of common sense or much of a moral conscience either. Education is about instilling knowledge and skills. Yes. But it's also about instilling the means to learn for the rest of your life, a love of learning, intellectual curiosity, indeed, curiosity in general and a desire to experience life and the wisdom of ages past in all their variety. It's not about training monkeys. We do our children no favours by turning education into such a narrow and dispiriting experience that they get turned off this wider view of education (and I may be the only one who thinks about education like this. So be it.)
Incidentally, all three of my children have had to put up with endless changes in the curriculum and the rules around marking and exams in the last few years. All three of them do not have a good word to say for Mr Gove. Good intentions are not enough.
I am sure @Ydoethur of this parish will give the teachers' view, if he is around.
My greatest challenge has been to coax my daughter into signing up for an OU degree after her high-priced school managed to drive every ounce of enthusiasm out of her, due to the experiences you so eloquently describe. Thankfully, I've succeeded. Fingers crossed for your youngest.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
I'm really struggling to work out what circumstances need to occur before rates start rising....
Yes. What circumstances ARE needed for rates to rise ?
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
We don’t need to rejoin; we just need May to announce that after mature consideration Leaving is actually too difficult, and she won’t be writing the Article 50 letter until after the election, then all parties to campaign on a remain platform.
UKIP majority, Alistair will be happy.
@Alistair will probably be, as the SNP will win Indy ref 2 very easily under those circumstances (Perhaps even declare UDI).
I think he's got a decent amount on fairly long odds for UKIP most seats!
It's because of the collapse in interest rates. Future liabilities are discounted by the risk free return rate, which is usually set by 10 year government bonds. The collapse in gilt yields sends future liabilities soaring.
Which of the FTSE companies have a wide-ranging final salary/DB scheme (It is fine for a few individuals overall to market cap) and which are on DC ?
All with a mass DB scheme are surely in for a long term mullering. Is there a list anywhere ?
There are still quite a lot of residual DB schemes out there: they're in decline, but they exist.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
I'm really struggling to work out what circumstances need to occur before rates start rising....
Yes. What circumstances ARE needed for rates to rise ?
Real inflation.
Well surely it's coming, the factory gate prices are up fairly sharply, as soon as that feeds through inflation will start to rise.
Mr. 1000, the response to the stabbing in London was to quickly rush out the police's expert psychiatric evaluation of the suspect whilst not bothering with demographics, and the Swiss have been quick to say he's not an immigrant.
Either give full details or none, but a misleading approach (only to later, in the London case at least, acknowledge it may well have been terrorism) only undermines faith in the authorities.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
It would be like having to go back for your coat at a party where you have made extravagant goodbyes.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
I'm really struggling to work out what circumstances need to occur before rates start rising....
Yes. What circumstances ARE needed for rates to rise ?
Real inflation.
Well surely it's coming, the factory gate prices are up fairly sharply, as soon as that feeds through inflation will start to rise.
Thought the consensus was ~ 2.2% in 2017. It's a sign of the times that we're having hysterics at the prospect.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
I'm really struggling to work out what circumstances need to occur before rates start rising....
Yes. What circumstances ARE needed for rates to rise ?
Real inflation.
Well surely it's coming, the factory gate prices are up fairly sharply, as soon as that feeds through inflation will start to rise.
Let me be more specific. The British government and the Bank of England will accept currency created inflation because it cushions many of the other problems in the UK economy - in particular our current account deficit and the need to import capital. We are all, in effect, taking a small pay cut as the cost of goods is rising, but our incomes are not.
Interest rates will rise if - and when - this leads to wages increasing faster than the underlying improvement in the economy. When, in other words, we start to hit capacity buffers.
This could happen, for example, if we see a substantial shrinkage of the workforce caused by immigrants returning home. That could cause wage pressures, which would lead in turn to increased prices, which would lead to further wage pressures.
Mr. 1000, the response to the stabbing in London was to quickly rush out the police's expert psychiatric evaluation of the suspect whilst not bothering with demographics, and the Swiss have been quick to say he's not an immigrant.
Either give full details or none, but a misleading approach (only to later, in the London case at least, acknowledge it may well have been terrorism) only undermines faith in the authorities.
Of course, at the other end of the spectrum, unarmed Brazilians are shot on the basis they might be terrorists.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
We don’t need to rejoin; we just need May to announce that after mature consideration Leaving is actually too difficult, and she won’t be writing the Article 50 letter until after the election, then all parties to campaign on a remain platform.
Generation safe space are going to get a shock in two days according to headteachers. Finally it seems like the government are making exams tougher again. The Labour years of falling standards and lower difficulty were a joke.
But but but the poor little darling . They all had a meltdown this summer because they were asked one hardy wardy question.
There speak people with, I assume, no actual experience of what students going through A-levels have been going through.
My youngest is waiting for his A-level results. He has been working very hard for the last two years, especially so since Xmas and got good results in his mocks with one subject needing extra work, which he has put in. He has scarcely seen daylight. I cannot fault him for effort and really hope that it will prove successful.
Nonetheless he is apprehensive: worried that he did not do enough, worried about the complicated marking scheme (how AS and A-level scores combine to make the overall result is still a mystery to me), worried about errors in the marking (one of his remarks in GCSEs led to him jumping a grade), worried about retakes given that a new curriculum starts this autumn and worried that one day will make or break his life (an absurd view but understandable given how everyone goes on about this). He has good offers from good universities. I hope that he will be successful. But if not we and he will cope and life will go on.
What he and other students don't need is sneering from those who don't know what it's like and think that the more idiotic examples of students sometimes seen in newspapers are representative of all students.
Education is about more than passing exams. In my professional life I have met plenty of people very good at passing exams who do not have an ounce of common sense or much of a moral conscience either. Education is about instilling knowledge and skills. Yes. But it's also about instilling the means to learn for the rest of your life, a love of learning, intellectual curiosity, indeed, curiosity in general and a desire to experience life and the wisdom of ages past in all their variety. It's not about training monkeys. We do our children no favours by turning education into such a narrow and dispiriting experience that they get turned off this wider view of education (and I may be the only one who thinks about education like this. So be it.)
Incidentally, all three of my children have had to put up with endless changes in the curriculum and the rules around marking and exams in the last few years. All three of them do not have a good word to say for Mr Gove. Good intentions are not enough.
I am sure @Ydoethur of this parish will give the teachers' view, if he is around.
I'd be interested in hearing why those people in the minority think Barack Obama has been so bad. He seems to have been reasonably adequate to me, bearing in mind the very difficult circumstances in which he took office.
I'm cautiously hopeful that machine politician Hillary Clinton will be a machine politician president in the vein of LBJ. That wouldn't be too shabby.
In the event of a Trump defeat, how will the Republican party react? If they are divided, as currently seems probable, will Hillary Clinton be able to form constructive working arrangements with some Republicans for the first time in years?
Not bad, just a nothing President who achieved nothing of value over his eight years. Indeed in that time gun violence, race relations and insurance premiums are worse than ever. He has let things slide domestically in a way that Clinton and Bush never did.
Gun violence is hardly Obama's fault. He has repeatedly tried to enact stricter gun laws that have been invariably blocked by the Republican-controlled Congress, who are in hock to the NRA.
As for healthcare, the uninsured rate is down by a third. Insurance premium rates are a function of the absurd US healthcare system.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
No reason why opting out of one or both couldn't be part of the negotiations. Isn't the rule that EU members have to be members of either Schengen or the CTA?
Even if we were forced to commit to joining the Euro we could always adopt Sweden's trick of making sure we are never eligible to join.
The kids experience today is not really anything new. I did 6 A-Levels back in the day and worked my nuts off. I did the same for a range of undergraduate and postgrad qualifications too. I now regular work 70+ hrs a week. Thats life, if you want to succeed, especially in the globalised world with live in.
I have direct experience for a number of years at several of the countries best unis having to teach undergrads. There is a real problem with the lack of knowledge many are starting their course with, or rather should I say understanding.
I have said on here over the course of a number of years, the kids are definitely better motivated than a generation before, but a lot of knowledge is surface. The government / exam boards say they study x or y and can tick it off the list, but when I have pushed them they have learned one "fact" about it, rather than really understood the fundamentals.
The first question I always used to get was "what's on the exam". Good to see people are motivated, but it isn't motivated to learn, experience, understand and enjoy the subject matter, it is motivated to know what it is they have to do to pass the exam.
Generation safe space are going to get a shock in two days according to headteachers. Finally it seems like the government are making exams tougher again. The Labour years of falling standards and lower difficulty were a joke.
But but but the poor little darling . They all had a meltdown this summer because they were asked one hardy wardy question.
There speak people with, I assume, no actual experience of what students going through A-levels have been going through.
My youngest is waiting for his A-level results. He has been working very hard for the last two years, especially so since Xmas and got good results in his mocks with one subject needing extra work, which he has put in. He has scarcely seen daylight. I cannot fault him for effort and really hope that it will prove successful.
What he and other students don't need is sneering from those who don't know what it's like and think that the more idiotic examples of students sometimes seen in newspapers are representative of all students.
Education is about more than passing exams. In my professional life I have met plenty of people very good at passing exams who do not have an ounce of common sense or much of a moral conscience either. Education is about instilling knowledge and skills. Yes. But it's also about instilling the means to learn for the rest of your life, a love of learning, intellectual curiosity, indeed, curiosity in general and a desire to experience life and the wisdom of ages past in all their variety. It's not about training monkeys. We do our children no favours by turning education into such a narrow and dispiriting experience that they get turned off this wider view of education (and I may be the only one who thinks about education like this. So be it.)
Incidentally, all three of my children have had to put up with endless changes in the curriculum and the rules around marking and exams in the last few years. All three of them do not have a good word to say for Mr Gove. Good intentions are not enough.
I am sure @Ydoethur of this parish will give the teachers' view, if he is around.
My greatest challenge has been to coax my daughter into signing up for an OU degree after her high-priced school managed to drive every ounce of enthusiasm out of her, due to the experiences you so eloquently describe. Thankfully, I've succeeded. Fingers crossed for your youngest.
Results are the end of this week, IIRC Ms Cyclefree. I wish your son all the best and hope he gets what he needs. I have a granddaughter and a (prospective) granddaughter-in-law who are both A level teachers and they are fed up to the back teeth with curriculum changes.
Mr. 1000, one incident a decade ago does not justify covering up terrorism.
Mistakes will always happen, though we must do what we can to minimise them. Deliberately not reporting terrorism or down-playing it is a choice, and one that will only erode trust in the media, police and politicians.
Just on education: just about all my secondary education was during Blair's time. We had Key Skills (there were three, maths, English and IT, basically). They were worthless at the time and nobody ever mentions them now, but were meant to be a sort of additional qualification.
Not sure if this is still the case, but the Maths A-level involved six modules, but it could be any mishmash of Decision (apparently very easy but I never did it), Statistics (reasonably easy, and you got the formulae in exams), Mechanics (trickier, very similar to Physics but I didn't do that) and Pure (hardest, for me anyway).
My A-level was 1 part Statistics, 2 parts Mechanics and 3 parts Pure [I think, Pure/Mechanics might be the other way around]. I got a D. If it had been mostly Decision/Statistics, I would've likely gotten a B. A bit more Stats, I would've got a C. That approach makes the grade effectively meaningless.
As an aside, whilst I'm rambling, my second and third, of six, Religious Studies exams were rampantly mismarked (DE, a resit got BC). This happened for the last two, but resitting would've been rather difficult as I'd left school, obviously, by then.
All the classical history I've learnt since has been completely off my own bat, an interest developed by chance and utterly unrelated to the education system.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
We don’t need to rejoin; we just need May to announce that after mature consideration Leaving is actually too difficult, and she won’t be writing the Article 50 letter until after the election, then all parties to campaign on a remain platform.
UKIP majority, Alistair will be happy.
I just backed most seats!
Looking at 2015, once UKIP get to over turning everything short of 15,000 vote leads they are at 240 ish seats and largest party. If they get everthing sub 20,000 then they are around 410 seats.
The kids experience today is not really anything new. I did 6 A-Levels back in the day and worked my nuts off. I did the same for a range of undergraduate and postgrad qualifications too. Thats life, if you want to succeed.
I have direct experience for a number of years at several of the countries best unis having to teach undergrads. There is a real problem with the lack of knowledge many are starting their course with.
I have said on here over the course of a number of years, the kids are definitely better motivated than a generation before, but a lot of knowledge is surface.
The government / exam boards say they study x or y and can tick it off the list, but when I have pushed them they have learned one "fact" about it, rather than really understood the fundamentals.
Wait.....are you a right wing/centre right lecturer? I didn't think those existed.
Lol even my maths lecturer was making a point about how the right shouldn't complain about eastern European migrants.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
We don’t need to rejoin; we just need May to announce that after mature consideration Leaving is actually too difficult, and she won’t be writing the Article 50 letter until after the election, then all parties to campaign on a remain platform.
I couldn't possibly get my federalist views past the H of C so I've long thought that semi-detached countries (especially UK and Denmark - four opt outs each, more than all other 26 states put together) should accept the inevitable & seek a formal Associate Membership.
But support for the EU has risen in Denmark since June. It strengthens the EU's hand; i.e., just what the UK didn't need after it made the first mistake and held a referendum. It now needs the compromise of all compromises and I can't see an easy way around this.
This is set to consume disastrous amounts of political capital, yet May needs to get on & tackle other serious economic problems; e.g., huge current account deficit, disastrously low investment and R&D, clapped-out industries and a currency which most of my life has been a one-way bet (down, down over the decades).
Incidentally, Denmark opted out of the arrest warrant and related legal moves. Why didn't we? We also place special importance on individual freedom.
The big disconnect between "Your MP" and "MPs generally" is interesting.
Your MP is a person (who half the respondents will have voted for) whereas MPs generally are a bunch of useless crooks.
There’s a similar situation with regard to GP services.
I think we are probably on the verge of a big switch to private GP services. A few years back I had terrible sinusitis. Suffered for a couple of days but managed to get GP appointment.
New doc at GP said it wasnt bad enough to give antibiotics and that I should just steam it.
Went from there to London to work. Pain got worse. Not fancying being laid up for the bank holiday I phoned a private GP service near Bank. Appointment 40 mins later. Thorough unrushed examination by nurse who diagnosed acute sinusitis. Prescribed antibiotics which they promptly supplied. £70. Plus that included the prescription so £61 really when you take off NHS prescription charge.
They also offered an annual season ticket for about £200.
So much better than NHS and pretty reasonable cost.
If everyone goes private then you'll have the same overutilisation problem causing short examination times and long waits.
Private GPs only 'work' at the moments as there are the public GPs taking the strain.
... AND THATS WHY ANTIBIOTICS ARE FAILING.
Er... No antibiotics are failing due to inappropriate prescription for viral infections which they are useless for and people who dont finish the course breeding resistant bugs. Not to mention cattle being constantly pumped with them so they can stay disease free in factory barns.
The kids experience today is not really anything new. I did 6 A-Levels back in the day and worked my nuts off. I did the same for a range of undergraduate and postgrad qualifications too. Thats life, if you want to succeed.
I have direct experience for a number of years at several of the countries best unis having to teach undergrads. There is a real problem with the lack of knowledge many are starting their course with.
I have said on here over the course of a number of years, the kids are definitely better motivated than a generation before, but a lot of knowledge is surface.
The government / exam boards say they study x or y and can tick it off the list, but when I have pushed them they have learned one "fact" about it, rather than really understood the fundamentals.
Wait.....are you a right wing/centre right lecturer? I didn't think those existed.
Lol even my maths lecturer was making a point about how the right shouldn't complain about eastern European migrants.
You shouldn't equate me taking the piss out of Corbyn or lambasting Project Fear during EU referendum with being right wing. You won't have heard me say much positive about Cameron or Osborne on here either.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
We don’t need to rejoin; we just need May to announce that after mature consideration Leaving is actually too difficult, and she won’t be writing the Article 50 letter until after the election, then all parties to campaign on a remain platform.
UKIP majority, Alistair will be happy.
@Alistair will probably be, as the SNP will win Indy ref 2 very easily under those circumstances (Perhaps even declare UDI).
The SNP under the Salmond/Sturgeon guiding principle will never declare UDI.
Generation safe space are going to get a shock in two days according to headteachers. Finally it seems like the government are making exams tougher again. The Labour years of falling standards and lower difficulty were a joke.
But but but the poor little darling . They all had a meltdown this summer because they were asked one hardy wardy question.
There speak people with, I assume, no actual experience of what students going through A-levels have been going through.
My youngest is waiting for his A-level results. He has been working very hard for the last two years, especially so since Xmas and got good results in his mocks with one subject needing extra work, which he has put in. He has scarcely seen daylight. I cannot fault him for effort and really hope that it will prove successful.
Nonetheless he is apprehensive: worried that he did not do enough, worried about the .
An excellent piece. Thank you.
I'm not Ydoethur, but I am a teacher: indeed my form group from last year were Y13 (upper sixth in old money). Most have been working very hard and the skills and understanding I have seen from th best exceed anything I demonstrated when I was at school. People my generation tend to talk about grade inflation, but the flip side of that are eye-wateringly high offers in many cases and the fear that one mistake on a paper or by an exam board could cost them their place.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
We don’t need to rejoin; we just need May to announce that after mature consideration Leaving is actually too difficult, and she won’t be writing the Article 50 letter until after the election, then all parties to campaign on a remain platform.
UKIP majority, Alistair will be happy.
I just backed most seats!
Looking at 2015, once UKIP get to over turning everything short of 15,000 vote leads they are at 240 ish seats and largest party. If they get everthing sub 20,000 then they are around 410 seats.
I have £7 at 500/1 UKIP most seats. Just in case Brexit is delayed/abandoned/watered down and the voters react at the next GE. Placed in mid May 2015
The big disconnect between "Your MP" and "MPs generally" is interesting.
Your MP is a person (who half the respondents will have voted for) whereas MPs generally are a bunch of useless crooks.
There’s a similar situation with regard to GP services.
I think we are probably on the verge of a big switch to private GP services. A few years back I had terrible sinusitis. Suffered for a couple of days but managed to get GP appointment.
New doc at GP said it wasnt bad enough to give antibiotics and that I should just steam it.
Went from there to London to work. Pain got worse. Not fancying being laid up for the bank holiday I phoned a private GP service near Bank. Appointment 40 mins later. Thorough unrushed examination by nurse who diagnosed acute sinusitis. Prescribed antibiotics which they promptly supplied. £70. Plus that included the prescription so £61 really when you take off NHS prescription charge.
They also offered an annual season ticket for about £200.
So much better than NHS and pretty reasonable cost.
If everyone goes private then you'll have the same overutilisation problem causing short examination times and long waits.
Private GPs only 'work' at the moments as there are the public GPs taking the strain.
... AND THATS WHY ANTIBIOTICS ARE FAILING.
Er... No antibiotics are failing due to inappropriate prescription for viral infections which they are useless for and people who dont finish the course breeding resistant bugs. Not to mention cattle being constantly pumped with them so they can stay disease free in factory barns.
I was under the impression that routine antibiotic use in farming was a thing of the past?
Generation safe space are going to get a shock in two days according to headteachers. Finally it seems like the government are making exams tougher again. The Labour years of falling standards and lower difficulty were a joke.
But but but the poor little darling . They all had a meltdown this summer because they were asked one hardy wardy question.
There speak people with, I assume, no actual experience of what students going through A-levels have been going through.
My youngest is waiting for his A-level results. He has been working very hard for the last two years, especially so since Xmas and got good results in his mocks with one subject needing extra work, which he has put in. He has scarcely seen daylight. I cannot fault him for effort and really hope that it will prove successful.
Nonetheless he is apprehensive: worried that he did not do enough, worried about the .
An excellent piece. Thank you.
I'm not Ydoethur, but I am a teacher: indeed my form group from last year were Y13 (upper sixth in old money). Most have been working very hard and the skills and understanding I have seen from th best exceed anything I demonstrated when I was at school. People my generation tend to talk about grade inflation, but the flip side of that are eye-wateringly high offers in many cases and the fear that one mistake on a paper or by an exam board could cost them their place.
Its not "talk" about grade inflation, there are academic studies that show it is case.
Also there is a crucial difference with todays exam grades than "back in the day". The exams today are marked to reflect achievement level, a one point they were graded to indicate basically what percentile in the country you were for a particular year group.
The modern system is in theory better if you want to be able to say Johnny is "this" capable in Maths, but has led to fiddling by exam boards and government to make grades inflate. In the old system, grade offers were basically saying we need you to be in the top 5% of x,y and z of this years cohort.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
We don’t need to rejoin; we just need May to announce that after mature consideration Leaving is actually too difficult, and she won’t be writing the Article 50 letter until after the election, then all parties to campaign on a remain platform.
UKIP majority, Alistair will be happy.
@Alistair will probably be, as the SNP will win Indy ref 2 very easily under those circumstances (Perhaps even declare UDI).
I think he's got a decent amount on fairly long odds for UKIP most seats!
Just 7 quid odd (10 Euros I suppose), all that Paddy Power would let me have.
The kids experience today is not really anything new. I did 6 A-Levels back in the day and worked my nuts off. I did the same for a range of undergraduate and postgrad qualifications too. I now regular work 70+ hrs a week. Thats life, if you want to succeed, especially in the globalised world with live in.
I have direct experience for a number of years at several of the countries best unis having to teach undergrads. There is a real problem with the lack of knowledge many are starting their course with, or rather should I say understanding.
I have said on here over the course of a number of years, the kids are definitely better motivated than a generation before, but a lot of knowledge is surface. The government / exam boards say they study x or y and can tick it off the list, but when I have pushed them they have learned one "fact" about it, rather than really understood the fundamentals.
The first question I always used to get was "what's on the exam". Good to see people are motivated, but it isn't motivated to learn, experience, understand and enjoy the subject matter, it is motivated to know what it is they have to do to pass the exam.
And that is the trouble with seeing education as nothing more than passing exams. The scope for originality, for thinking around a subject, for making interesting connections, for looking at issues with a different perspective, for thinking for yourself, for exploring a subject is limited. It is not education. Nonetheless it is not the students' fault. Perhaps employers might learn to look at students for what they are and what they might be rather than not bother to look past the exam results.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
We don’t need to rejoin; we just need May to announce that after mature consideration Leaving is actually too difficult, and she won’t be writing the Article 50 letter until after the election, then all parties to campaign on a remain platform.
UKIP majority, Alistair will be happy.
I just backed most seats!
Looking at 2015, once UKIP get to over turning everything short of 15,000 vote leads they are at 240 ish seats and largest party. If they get everthing sub 20,000 then they are around 410 seats.
I have £7 at 500/1 UKIP most seats. Just in case Brexit is delayed/abandoned/watered down and the voters react at the next GE. Placed in mid May 2015
Yes, someone mentioned it on here and it looked like a good idea at the time. Looks an even better idea now.
The big disconnect between "Your MP" and "MPs generally" is interesting.
Your MP is a person (who half the respondents will have voted for) whereas MPs generally are a bunch of useless crooks.
There’s a similar situation with regard to GP services.
I think we are probably on the verge of a big switch to private GP services. A few years back I had terrible sinusitis. Suffered for a couple of days but managed to get GP appointment.
New doc at GP said it wasnt bad enough to give antibiotics and that I should just steam it.
Went from there to London to work. Pain got worse. Not fancying being laid up for the bank holiday I phoned a private GP service near Bank. Appointment 40 mins later. Thorough unrushed examination by nurse who diagnosed acute sinusitis. Prescribed antibiotics which they promptly supplied. £70. Plus that included the prescription so £61 really when you take off NHS prescription charge.
They also offered an annual season ticket for about £200.
So much better than NHS and pretty reasonable cost.
If everyone goes private then you'll have the same overutilisation problem causing short examination times and long waits.
Private GPs only 'work' at the moments as there are the public GPs taking the strain.
If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full. The numbers were never really designed to work (for the vast majority at least) on anything like this. We have to bear in mind how utterly unprecedented this is. Not since the start of the BoE in1694 have interest rates been this low (I think 2% was the previous min before this cycle) and gilts yields have records going back to 1703 with nothing this low.
It's the old story of "you owe the bank manager £1000, you've got a problem, owe him a £1million and he's got a problem". Right now the system is owed hundreds of billions on the present calculation methods. And there may lie some salvation if Govt is brave enough. They could perfectly reasonably legislate to make "CPI" default "inflation" rather than "RPI" that many schemes are stuck with purely through the chance of whether lawyers years ago long before CPI was even created worded the scheme rules as "inflation rate" or actually used the phrase "RPI". They could sanctify retrospectively matching of pension ages of schemes to the new State pension ages (Why not? It was retrospective legislation when they raised my age from 65 to 67). They could force schemes to hold more in shares thereby raising scheme yields and freeing trustees from the fear of not being "in bonds". They could issue a gilt for x% (3%?) only for DB pension schemes (maybe to a limited value - first £100M per scheme?). They could untangle the reckless caution of "covenant" banding (weak/moderate/positive etc ) which though designed to force/encourage more investment in schemes by weaker companies, can actually set off a viscous circle, of weakening the company unnecessarily. I suspect if schemes were measured on the "pure maths" "best estimate" basis 75% of the pensions "crisis" would vanish with the wave of a regulatory pen. But schemes are not allowed to do that. Add in the extra burdens of PPF levies, and the extra actuarial, and accounting stuff that's been added on over the years and of course Brown's brainwave of taking £5 billion a year ( at 1997 prices -19 years and counting now) and this is a great example of the power of Govt to really make a difficult situation far worse.
The system is wrecked, it's affecting normal M+A activity, it's affecting investment, it's even reducing corporation tax take by £billions.The Govt, I hope to God, is working on something to unjam some of this through legislation.
One further thought, if I read anything else from "BoE" sources about how low rates and gilt yields are not that bad for schemes because asset prices are inflated to "counterbalance" I have a one word technical reply: Horseshit.
Having looked at it, it is hard to imagine railways could have survived at all. A classic accountant's mentality that assumed passengers went from station to station.
The Waverley route was a loss, but the worst was and remains the Great Central. If we still had that, we wouldn't be arguing over HS2 now. And if it hadn't been sold off for building we could just put it back.
I actually disagree about the Great Central. You'r right about it north of Aylesbury where it was it's own route, but south of there until near Marylebone it shared existing tracks, which are still in use and busy today. It would have done very little to ease congestion into London, as that part of the route's still open.
The real tragedy for me was the closure of my beloved Matlock to Derby line, which AIUI was not in the initial Beeching report. It was closed because the LNWR contingent of BR did not want two alternative routes to Manchester and campaigned for it to be closed instead of the Hope Valley. The Peak Line was used as a diversion during WCML electrification, and then unceremoniously closed.
A typical example of BR's shrinking mindset.
Ironically HS2 will run from london to the southern end of the GC extension at Quainton north of Aylesbury then along the GC tracbed to Brackley before turning off towards Birmingham, ie it will complete the GC route to London - or would have done if it hadn't closed!
True, there has been relatively little growth in the physical network. But it has been growing, unlike in BR times when it was constantly shrinking.
...
I only travelled on BR in the last decade of its existence, but I have little doubt that the current railway is much better for passenger comfort and convenience. As an example: Pacer trains are widely derided, but when they were introduced in the 1980s they were seen as being better than the first-generation DMUs they replaced.
(*) When the adjacent Broad Street station was sadly closed.
First paragraph is not quite fair JJ. Cannock was reconnected to the national network under BR, when the Chase line was promoted from freight only status. It wasn't common, but it happened.
Entirely agree with your second paragraph. BR's record in the provinces was absolutely dismal, especially in terms of punctuality, comfort and service. Things have improved enormously since privatisation. And it's not just where there is no alternative. The Cambrian lines are much more heavily used despite their remoteness and low speeds. In the 1980s you had a one car train every two hours from Mac along the lines. Now they are two car trains every hour, and they are well used.
Oh, indeed it happened. Willington station in South Derbyshire also reopened in late BR times, albeit that was on a passenger line. There was also an abortive first attempt at reopening the station at Corby in 1987, although BR closed it a few years later. It has since reopened again, and passenger numbers have doubled.
In fact, Corby's two reopenings are an indication of privatisation's success. BR could not make the station work. The private companies have.
But think of all the lines we lost, both passenger and freight.
Think of the lucky escape we had when the Settle and Carlisle was saved. The Woodhead line was not so lucky.
The Serpell report is also well worth studying. Imagine if that had gone through!
Having looked at it, it is hard to imagine railways could have survived at all. A classic accountant's mentality that assumed passengers went from station to station.
The Waverley route was a loss, but the worst was and remains the Great Central. If we still had that, we wouldn't be arguing over HS2 now. And if it hadn't been sold off for building we could just put it back.
Interesting comment in the Wikipedia entry that passenger numbers were picking up throughout the 80’s to a peak in 1988. Was that the influence of the petrol/diesel price increases at that time?
It's incredibly dishonest how the Government deems RPI an appropriate inflation statistic for money it takes in (student loans, train fares) but not for money it pays out (e.g. pensions and benefits) where generally lower CPI is used.
Germany believes that Turkey is funding and aiding Islamist terrorists according to leaked classified intelligence reports. Erdogan a key ally of Islamists across the Middle East.
The kids experience today is not really anything new. I did 6 A-Levels back in the day and worked my nuts off. I did the same for a range of undergraduate and postgrad qualifications too. I now regular work 70+ hrs a week. Thats life, if you want to succeed, especially in the globalised world with live in.
I have direct experience for a number of years at several of the countries best unis having to teach undergrads. There is a real problem with the lack of knowledge many are starting their course with, or rather should I say understanding.
I have said on here over the course of a number of years, the kids are definitely better motivated than a generation before, but a lot of knowledge is surface. The government / exam boards say they study x or y and can tick it off the list, but when I have pushed them they have learned one "fact" about it, rather than really understood the fundamentals.
The first question I always used to get was "what's on the exam". Good to see people are motivated, but it isn't motivated to learn, experience, understand and enjoy the subject matter, it is motivated to know what it is they have to do to pass the exam.
And that is the trouble with seeing education as nothing more than passing exams. The scope for originality, for thinking around a subject, for making interesting connections, for looking at issues with a different perspective, for thinking for yourself, for exploring a subject is limited. It is not education. Nonetheless it is not the students' fault. Perhaps employers might learn to look at students for what they are and what they might be rather than not bother to look past the exam results.
Won't disagree with that. You see it in the structure of the exams in science, which reinforces the teaching and studying to learn to "turn the handle" for each mini problem, rather than seeing a bigger picture.
Its a vicious cycle for schools and students.
One thing I would say on the Grammar school debate that was had last week, I believe that is one thing where Grammar schools seem to do really well, offering opportunities outside of straight academic achievement. I don't think it is any coincidence that so many good sports people and people in the arts come from private and grammar school backgrounds.
It is something that the US KIPPs program is also very big on. You go to one of their schools, you have to do more than just study, you have to be involved in after school clubs and societies. So getting kids from the ghetto into sports, arts, music etc.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
We don’t need to rejoin; we just need May to announce that after mature consideration Leaving is actually too difficult, and she won’t be writing the Article 50 letter until after the election, then all parties to campaign on a remain platform.
UKIP majority, Alistair will be happy.
@Alistair will probably be, as the SNP will win Indy ref 2 very easily under those circumstances (Perhaps even declare UDI).
I think he's got a decent amount on fairly long odds for UKIP most seats!
Just 7 quid odd (10 Euros I suppose), all that Paddy Power would let me have.
Doubtless why Betfair is only offering 38, lower odds than for the Libs
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
I had a debate yonks ago with @Neil that all state backed pension schemes should be changed to DC. He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
I'm really struggling to work out what circumstances need to occur before rates start rising....
Bank of England forced to raise them by increasing inflation/fall in pound?
IMHO they wont raise them until their hand is forced by such events.
The 0.25 cut after the pound fell looks crazy to me, epecially given todays RPI.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
I had a debate yonks ago with @Neil that all state backed pension schemes should be changed to DC. He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
I had a debate yonks ago with @Neil that all state backed pension schemes should be changed to DC. He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
I'm a Remainer, and I'd never back rejoining. Rejoining means, inter alia, no rebate, membership of Schengen, and joining the Euro.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
We don’t need to rejoin; we just need May to announce that after mature consideration Leaving is actually too difficult, and she won’t be writing the Article 50 letter until after the election, then all parties to campaign on a remain platform.
She'd be defenestrated by her MPs within 24 hours.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
I had a debate yonks ago with @Neil that all state backed pension schemes should be changed to DC. He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
I had a debate yonks ago with @Neil that all state backed pension schemes should be changed to DC. He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only thing that matters is a correctly defined metric of the sum of present value of both present and future liabilities (And assets).
With DC these simply must be in balance (Unless fraud is occuring). With DB you are always shooting for a 'corridor'...
If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full. The numbers were never really designed to work (for the vast majority at least) on anything like this. We have to bear in mind how utterly unprecedented this is. Not since the start of the BoE in1694 have interest rates been this low (I think 2% was the previous min before this cycle) and gilts yields have records going back to 1703 with nothing this low.
It's the old story of "you owe the bank manager £1000, you've got a problem, owe him a £1million and he's got a problem". Right now the system is owed hundreds of billions on the present calculation methods. And there may lie some salvation if Govt is brave enough. They could perfectly reasonably legislate to make "CPI" default "inflation" rather than "RPI" that many schemes are stuck with purely through the chance of whether lawyers years ago long before CPI was even created worded the scheme rules as "inflation rate" or actually used the phrase "RPI". They could sanctify retrospectively matching of pension ages of schemes to the new State pension ages (Why not? It was retrospective legislation when they raised my age from 65 to 67). They could force schemes to hold more in shares thereby raising scheme yields and freeing trustees from the fear of not being "in bonds". They could issue a gilt for x% (3%?) only for DB pension schemes (maybe to a limited value - first £100M per scheme?). They could untangle the reckless caution of "covenant" banding (weak/moderate/positive etc ) which though designed to force/encourage more investment in schemes by weaker companies, can actually set off a viscous circle, of weakening the company unnecessarily. I suspect if schemes were measured on the "pure maths" "best estimate" basis 75% of the pensions "crisis" would vanish with the wave of a regulatory pen. But schemes are not allowed to do that. Add in the extra burdens of PPF levies, and the extra actuarial, and accounting stuff that's been added on over the years and of course Brown's brainwave of taking £5 billion a year ( at 1997 prices -19 years and counting now) and this is a great example of the power of Govt to really make a difficult situation far worse.
The system is wrecked, it's affecting normal M+A activity, it's affecting investment, it's even reducing corporation tax take by £billions.The Govt, I hope to God, is working on something to unjam some of this through legislation.
One further thought, if I read anything else from "BoE" sources about how low rates and gilt yields are not that bad for schemes because asset prices are inflated to "counterbalance" I have a one word technical reply: Horseshit.
My DB scheme changed from RPI to CPI some years ago (despite privatisation legislation stopping cetrain things from being changed)
It's incredibly dishonest how the Government deems RPI an appropriate inflation statistic for money it takes in (student loans, train fares) but not for money it pays out (e.g. pensions and benefits) where generally lower CPI is used.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
I'm really struggling to work out what circumstances need to occur before rates start rising....
Yes. What circumstances ARE needed for rates to rise ?
Real inflation.
Well surely it's coming, the factory gate prices are up fairly sharply, as soon as that feeds through inflation will start to rise.
Let me be more specific. The British government and the Bank of England will accept currency created inflation because it cushions many of the other problems in the UK economy - in particular our current account deficit and the need to import capital. We are all, in effect, taking a small pay cut as the cost of goods is rising, but our incomes are not.
Interest rates will rise if - and when - this leads to wages increasing faster than the underlying improvement in the economy. When, in other words, we start to hit capacity buffers.
This could happen, for example, if we see a substantial shrinkage of the workforce caused by immigrants returning home. That could cause wage pressures, which would lead in turn to increased prices, which would lead to further wage pressures.
Ah, slack. It's too unquantifiable a measure for me. It has also been clear that there wasn't very much slack from 2014-2016 and interest rates didn't go up. It looks like an error from the Bank not to have raised rates to around 2% in that time.
Surely a defined contribution scheme is 'affordable' by definition. You put in as much as it says. You might not get much out, depending on the state of the markets and quality of investment choices. But DC is always 'affordable'.
The DB problem goes to the heart of politicians and central bankers debasing the very basis of a free market economy - that investors get a return. We've had ZIRP for ages, apparently in order to protect the real economy. But this has screwed saving and investment returns. Maybe we should get back to having a bit of inflation, a bit of real interest able to be earned and a bit of a wash out of the insolvent. We're still deep in pretendy land. Borrowing forever and ZIRPing to stave off bankruptcy today is not a good way to run a sweet shop.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
I had a debate yonks ago with @Neil that all state backed pension schemes should be changed to DC. He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
I had a debate yonks ago with @Neil that all state backed pension schemes should be changed to DC. He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
Yes I think so too. Individual social security accounts have to be the future. They can be drawn either in times of unemployment or at retirement. You can choose to let the government invest it for you, have a fund manage it foe a fee or do it yourself. I guess the workplace pension is supposed to be the solution, but its not massive.
Comments
Some subsidy money would have been saved but there'd have then been a heavy call on the public purse for a mass roadbuilding programme to relieve congested roads, many more bus routes, investment and public spending to stimulate the economies of isolated communities and a host of social challenges in linking together those a long way from the remaining network.
We will never ever give up Sterling.
Generally, that means making things administratively simple and convenient, and central planning according to internal and political priorities, and not rocking the boat by innovating too much, including provoking the unions, so as to preserve jobs for the long-term and a nice final salary pension.
In short: anything for an easy life.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/15/nine-refugees-accused-of-austria-gang-rape-stoking-election-fear/
I already pay far too much for my daily commute from Dore to Manchester.
This needs a serious look at -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37081542
There's little doubt that it was precisely this that led Cameron to covet (and take delight in) his intervention in the EU referendum debate, thinking this would be a slam dunk for Remain. Or, as another Remain poster put it, hit Leave in the solar plexus.
But in reality, it had no effect and may have even worked to Leave's advantage given how aloof and condescending he came across (incidentally, a snippet of precisely what his problem in the US is)
So, a warning: these ratings are of interest but they are not necessarily politically decisive.
As an aside, have you seen that the Swiss police have said "the suspect, who also set himself on fire was a Swiss national who was not of immigrant origin and did not have a criminal record." Which suggests the Twitter image doing the rounds may be false.
Perhaps we should all calm down. Every day in Europe there will be a knife attack of some kind. Heck, there are probably a dozen non-terrorist knife attacks.
You don't get it because you seem incapable of comprehending that most people have a different opinion to your own.
I honestly can't recall the next day when he did, but crystal clear on the evening before.
My youngest is waiting for his A-level results. He has been working very hard for the last two years, especially so since Xmas and got good results in his mocks with one subject needing extra work, which he has put in. He has scarcely seen daylight. I cannot fault him for effort and really hope that it will prove successful.
Nonetheless he is apprehensive: worried that he did not do enough, worried about the complicated marking scheme (how AS and A-level scores combine to make the overall result is still a mystery to me), worried about errors in the marking (one of his remarks in GCSEs led to him jumping a grade), worried about retakes given that a new curriculum starts this autumn and worried that one day will make or break his life (an absurd view but understandable given how everyone goes on about this). He has good offers from good universities. I hope that he will be successful. But if not we and he will cope and life will go on.
What he and other students don't need is sneering from those who don't know what it's like and think that the more idiotic examples of students sometimes seen in newspapers are representative of all students.
Education is about more than passing exams. In my professional life I have met plenty of people very good at passing exams who do not have an ounce of common sense or much of a moral conscience either. Education is about instilling knowledge and skills. Yes. But it's also about instilling the means to learn for the rest of your life, a love of learning, intellectual curiosity, indeed, curiosity in general and a desire to experience life and the wisdom of ages past in all their variety. It's not about training monkeys. We do our children no favours by turning education into such a narrow and dispiriting experience that they get turned off this wider view of education (and I may be the only one who thinks about education like this. So be it.)
Incidentally, all three of my children have had to put up with endless changes in the curriculum and the rules around marking and exams in the last few years. All three of them do not have a good word to say for Mr Gove. Good intentions are not enough.
I am sure @Ydoethur of this parish will give the teachers' view, if he is around.
Mr. 1000, possibly, or he could just be a second generation. That's the problem the media are creating for themselves by, seemingly, taking a deliberate approach of not reporting or under-reporting/downplaying terrorism.
All with a mass DB scheme are surely in for a long term mullering. Is there a list anywhere ?
What would you rather they say? "a 29 year old man of Muslim origin is helping police with their enquiries?"
The Spectator had an interesting piece yesterday about how the elites are conspiring to thwart Brexit;
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/betraying-brexit-revolt-elites-people/
At the moment I'm taking Theresa May's word for it when she says Brexit is going to happen. We'll see what September brings when I'm hoping the government will have gotten their act together and we'll have a mapped out way forward.
Either give full details or none, but a misleading approach (only to later, in the London case at least, acknowledge it may well have been terrorism) only undermines faith in the authorities.
x 1,000.
Interest rates will rise if - and when - this leads to wages increasing faster than the underlying improvement in the economy. When, in other words, we start to hit capacity buffers.
This could happen, for example, if we see a substantial shrinkage of the workforce caused by immigrants returning home. That could cause wage pressures, which would lead in turn to increased prices, which would lead to further wage pressures.
But I think the issue of his refusal to be tested for extraterrestrial DNA will loom large over the remainder of the campaign.
As for healthcare, the uninsured rate is down by a third. Insurance premium rates are a function of the absurd US healthcare system.
Even if we were forced to commit to joining the Euro we could always adopt Sweden's trick of making sure we are never eligible to join.
The kids experience today is not really anything new. I did 6 A-Levels back in the day and worked my nuts off. I did the same for a range of undergraduate and postgrad qualifications too. I now regular work 70+ hrs a week. Thats life, if you want to succeed, especially in the globalised world with live in.
I have direct experience for a number of years at several of the countries best unis having to teach undergrads. There is a real problem with the lack of knowledge many are starting their course with, or rather should I say understanding.
I have said on here over the course of a number of years, the kids are definitely better motivated than a generation before, but a lot of knowledge is surface. The government / exam boards say they study x or y and can tick it off the list, but when I have pushed them they have learned one "fact" about it, rather than really understood the fundamentals.
The first question I always used to get was "what's on the exam". Good to see people are motivated, but it isn't motivated to learn, experience, understand and enjoy the subject matter, it is motivated to know what it is they have to do to pass the exam.
I have a granddaughter and a (prospective) granddaughter-in-law who are both A level teachers and they are fed up to the back teeth with curriculum changes.
Mistakes will always happen, though we must do what we can to minimise them. Deliberately not reporting terrorism or down-playing it is a choice, and one that will only erode trust in the media, police and politicians.
Just on education: just about all my secondary education was during Blair's time. We had Key Skills (there were three, maths, English and IT, basically). They were worthless at the time and nobody ever mentions them now, but were meant to be a sort of additional qualification.
Not sure if this is still the case, but the Maths A-level involved six modules, but it could be any mishmash of Decision (apparently very easy but I never did it), Statistics (reasonably easy, and you got the formulae in exams), Mechanics (trickier, very similar to Physics but I didn't do that) and Pure (hardest, for me anyway).
My A-level was 1 part Statistics, 2 parts Mechanics and 3 parts Pure [I think, Pure/Mechanics might be the other way around]. I got a D. If it had been mostly Decision/Statistics, I would've likely gotten a B. A bit more Stats, I would've got a C. That approach makes the grade effectively meaningless.
As an aside, whilst I'm rambling, my second and third, of six, Religious Studies exams were rampantly mismarked (DE, a resit got BC). This happened for the last two, but resitting would've been rather difficult as I'd left school, obviously, by then.
All the classical history I've learnt since has been completely off my own bat, an interest developed by chance and utterly unrelated to the education system.
Looking at 2015, once UKIP get to over turning everything short of 15,000 vote leads they are at 240 ish seats and largest party. If they get everthing sub 20,000 then they are around 410 seats.
I didn't think those existed.
Lol even my maths lecturer was making a point about how the right shouldn't complain about eastern European migrants.
But support for the EU has risen in Denmark since June. It strengthens the EU's hand; i.e., just what the UK didn't need after it made the first mistake and held a referendum. It now needs the compromise of all compromises and I can't see an easy way around this.
This is set to consume disastrous amounts of political capital, yet May needs to get on & tackle other serious economic problems; e.g., huge current account deficit, disastrously low investment and R&D, clapped-out industries and a currency which most of my life has been a one-way bet (down, down over the decades).
Incidentally, Denmark opted out of the arrest warrant and related legal moves. Why didn't we? We also place special importance on individual freedom.
I don't work as an academic at the moment.
Most have been working very hard and the skills and understanding I have seen from th best exceed anything I demonstrated when I was at school. People my generation tend to talk about grade inflation, but the flip side of that are eye-wateringly high offers in many cases and the fear that one mistake on a paper or by an exam board could cost them their place.
Actually gun violence in the USA is massively down:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve-had-a-massive-decline-in-gun-violence-in-the-united-states-heres-why/
But...the murder rates are hugely uneven between and within different communities in the USA:
http://joeforamerica.com/2016/07/dont-gun-problem-black-problem/
I think Obama's failure is to do anything much for the lives of black people in the USA.
EDIT This is rather fun http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2978/can-liquor-be-used-as-an-emergency-antiseptic
Also there is a crucial difference with todays exam grades than "back in the day". The exams today are marked to reflect achievement level, a one point they were graded to indicate basically what percentile in the country you were for a particular year group.
The modern system is in theory better if you want to be able to say Johnny is "this" capable in Maths, but has led to fiddling by exam boards and government to make grades inflate. In the old system, grade offers were basically saying we need you to be in the top 5% of x,y and z of this years cohort.
About right!
If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full. The numbers were never really designed to work (for the vast majority at least) on anything like this. We have to bear in mind how utterly unprecedented this is. Not since the start of the BoE in1694 have interest rates been this low (I think 2% was the previous min before this cycle) and gilts yields have records going back to 1703 with nothing this low.
It's the old story of "you owe the bank manager £1000, you've got a problem, owe him a £1million and he's got a problem". Right now the system is owed hundreds of billions on the present calculation methods. And there may lie some salvation if Govt is brave enough. They could perfectly reasonably legislate to make "CPI" default "inflation" rather than "RPI" that many schemes are stuck with purely through the chance of whether lawyers years ago long before CPI was even created worded the scheme rules as "inflation rate" or actually used the phrase "RPI". They could sanctify retrospectively matching of pension ages of schemes to the new State pension ages (Why not? It was retrospective legislation when they raised my age from 65 to 67). They could force schemes to hold more in shares thereby raising scheme yields and freeing trustees from the fear of not being "in bonds". They could issue a gilt for x% (3%?) only for DB pension schemes (maybe to a limited value - first £100M per scheme?).
They could untangle the reckless caution of "covenant" banding (weak/moderate/positive etc ) which though designed to force/encourage more investment in schemes by weaker companies, can actually set off a viscous circle, of weakening the company unnecessarily. I suspect if schemes were measured on the "pure maths" "best estimate" basis 75% of the pensions "crisis" would vanish with the wave of a regulatory pen. But schemes are not allowed to do that. Add in the extra burdens of PPF levies, and the extra actuarial, and accounting stuff that's been added on over the years and of course Brown's brainwave of taking £5 billion a year ( at 1997 prices -19 years and counting now) and this is a great example of the power of Govt to really make a difficult situation far worse.
The system is wrecked, it's affecting normal M+A activity, it's affecting investment, it's even reducing corporation tax take by £billions.The Govt, I hope to God, is working on something to unjam some of this through legislation.
One further thought, if I read anything else from "BoE" sources about how low rates and gilt yields are not that bad for schemes because asset prices are inflated to "counterbalance" I have a one word technical reply: Horseshit.
Germany believes that Turkey is funding and aiding Islamist terrorists according to leaked classified intelligence reports. Erdogan a key ally of Islamists across the Middle East.
Its a vicious cycle for schools and students.
One thing I would say on the Grammar school debate that was had last week, I believe that is one thing where Grammar schools seem to do really well, offering opportunities outside of straight academic achievement. I don't think it is any coincidence that so many good sports people and people in the arts come from private and grammar school backgrounds.
It is something that the US KIPPs program is also very big on. You go to one of their schools, you have to do more than just study, you have to be involved in after school clubs and societies. So getting kids from the ghetto into sports, arts, music etc.
IMHO they wont raise them until their hand is forced by such events.
The 0.25 cut after the pound fell looks crazy to me, epecially given todays RPI.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
With DC these simply must be in balance (Unless fraud is occuring). With DB you are always shooting for a 'corridor'...
The DB problem goes to the heart of politicians and central bankers debasing the very basis of a free market economy - that investors get a return. We've had ZIRP for ages, apparently in order to protect the real economy. But this has screwed saving and investment returns. Maybe we should get back to having a bit of inflation, a bit of real interest able to be earned and a bit of a wash out of the insolvent. We're still deep in pretendy land. Borrowing forever and ZIRPing to stave off bankruptcy today is not a good way to run a sweet shop.