I see that Mark Carney is using the Y2K strategy regarding the BoE's pre Brexit doom mongering: "But if it hadn't been for all of our hard work, all of that crap would have happened"
A very good summary. Carney is in the Project Fear phase 2 programme.
Following news that all nine "Black Lives Matter" morons who shut down City Airport yesterday are actually white, police have released this picture of the group's ringleader.
I was busy at work so couldn't get involved with the discussion this afternoon. I saw Robert's comment that we need to focus on raising standards below the 25 percentile and I'm sure he's right from a hard nosed business perspective. The question is, to what extent do we need to care about who gets to do the really good jobs in this country?
I had an excellent education and had fantastic teachers. What I didn't get, however, was guidance between the ages of 14 and 16 as to what I should be looking to do at A-Level and then degree level. My school wasn't worried about the bright kids as they'd take of themselves. Well that's okay for some, especially those with highly qualified parents. It wasn't for me and I just wish someone had put me in the right direction at 14/15.
Don't get me wrong, I have a decent job and perhaps grammar schools aren't the answer. But it is not a nice feeling knowing that those who have had better guidance as kids (whether though private education or through professionally qualified parents) have an advantage over you at work.
So she wants to end "selection by house price", make it harder to coach pupils for the test and admit more on free school meals.
Is she trying to make the policy less attractive to Tory voting parents?
Indeed is she some sort of inverse Jezza doing her best to annoy her core vote?
I was dead set against new Grammar schools. I'm now slightly intrigued. If she can pull it off it might be a very useful measure.
I don't see why Tories should be annoyed. Even if you don't credit them with any interest in the poor & needy, it's potentially a way of reducing welfare dependency.
So she wants to end "selection by house price", make it harder to coach pupils for the test and admit more on free school meals.
Is she trying to make the policy less attractive to Tory voting parents?
Indeed is she some sort of inverse Jezza doing her best to annoy her core vote?
No - she's marching onto the centre ground of politics with a whole lot more to come. The time may well come that some on labour's side may see their only future is to be part of the May lead social revolution that is coming to this fantastic new Independent UK
Is the plus number the lead or the change? V confusing if it is the lead.
You could get an explosive situation where Hilary wins a near landslide in the popular vote by piling up votes in safe states but trump just sneaks the marginal states and wins the presidency.
I was busy at work so couldn't get involved with the discussion this afternoon. I saw Robert's comment that we need to focus on raising standards below the 25 percentile and I'm sure he's right from a hard nosed business perspective. The question is, to what extent do we need to care about who gets to do the really good jobs in this country?
I had an excellent education and had fantastic teachers. What I didn't get, however, was guidance between the ages of 14 and 16 as to what I should be looking to do at A-Level and then degree level. My school wasn't worried about the bright kids as they'd take of themselves. Well that's okay for some, especially those with highly qualified parents. It wasn't for me and I just wish someone had put me in the right direction at 14/15.
Don't get me wrong, I have a decent job and perhaps grammar schools aren't the answer. But it is not a nice feeling knowing that those who have had better guidance as kids (whether though private education or through professionally qualified parents) have an advantage over you at work.
I feel similarly to you. I would have loved to have gotten a more advanced education with more choice, and ultimately I was told "as long as you do a degree it'll be all right". There needs to be much more opportunity to get to know what jobs are like at an earlier age.
New Jersey and Mississippi apparently both in play ?!
Election night threatens to be VERY interesting !
I don't believe they are, because no other poll has ever shown it.
Rhode Island on the other hand, it's the second after the Washington Post one a few days ago.
It has the same number of Electoral Votes as N.H. and it's much smaller in size geographically, even Trump with his non-existent ground forces could swamp it.
If Rhode Island looks increasingly close while N.H. is immovable, it could be an ideal replacement for N.H. in new england.
RI is my wife's home state. It has been deep, deep blue for decades. Whilst it hasn't done so well economically in the last few years, I really can't see it going to Trump. True, the state does have a history of voting for charismatic Republican mavericks every once in a while, such as "Buddy Cianci", twice mayor of Providence, both of which terms were terminated by felony convictions. But was Cianci was a local, and locals get away with a lot in Rhode Island.
Two thousand turned up to see Jezza speak today in my neck of the woods, I mean it didn't look like that number from the video they have up (and some of my mates posted on facebook) but...yeah. Awesome. Great. Uplifting. Nah. It's political onanism is what it is, a group of like minded people in a field, videoing each other and then posting it online for other people to like who already had the same likes and preferences. It's like furry porn.
Where was this?
Forest Fields in sunny Nottingham. I must have passed it on my way home on the tram.
"London is generally a safe place to travel, however precautions are needed when entering areas mainly populated by Indians, Pakistanis and black people. We advise tourists not to go out alone at night, and females always to be accompanied by another person when travelling."
I always felt that street mugging/robbery being predominantly the preserve of youths from one particular ethnic group when I lived in South London was highly corrosive towards racial harmony and itself incited hatred more effectively than anything the then NF/BNP did.
Few black politicians have been brave enough to admit there is a problem which has since morphed into full blown gang culture with guns rather than knives - Trevor Philips is I think one of the few to speak out.
Following news that all nine "Black Lives Matter" morons who shut down City Airport yesterday are actually white, police have released this picture of the group's ringleader.
Even Sasha Baron Cohen at his sharpest couldn't have come with the sketch of 9 white guys protesting Climate Change is Racist.
Two thousand turned up to see Jezza speak today in my neck of the woods, I mean it didn't look like that number from the video they have up (and some of my mates posted on facebook) but...yeah. Awesome. Great. Uplifting. Nah. It's political onanism is what it is, a group of like minded people in a field, videoing each other and then posting it online for other people to like who already had the same likes and preferences. It's like furry porn.
Where was this?
Forest Fields in sunny Nottingham. I must have passed it on my way home on the tram.
Following news that all nine "Black Lives Matter" morons who shut down City Airport yesterday are actually white, police have released this picture of the group's ringleader.
Even Sasha Baron Cohen at his sharpest couldn't have come with the sketch of 9 white guys protesting Climate Change is Racist.
I was busy at work so couldn't get involved with the discussion this afternoon. I saw Robert's comment that we need to focus on raising standards below the 25 percentile and I'm sure he's right from a hard nosed business perspective. The question is, to what extent do we need to care about who gets to do the really good jobs in this country?
I had an excellent education and had fantastic teachers. What I didn't get, however, was guidance between the ages of 14 and 16 as to what I should be looking to do at A-Level and then degree level. My school wasn't worried about the bright kids as they'd take of themselves. Well that's okay for some, especially those with highly qualified parents. It wasn't for me and I just wish someone had put me in the right direction at 14/15.
Don't get me wrong, I have a decent job and perhaps grammar schools aren't the answer. But it is not a nice feeling knowing that those who have had better guidance as kids (whether though private education or through professionally qualified parents) have an advantage over you at work.
Wouldn't argue with that Mr 86. The career guidance at my school was a joke and my father who had worked in a factory since the war didn't really have much experience to help me either. So it was uni (huzzah, first in the family) and then the army (OK, every boy in the family had done that back well into the 19th century).
Looking back knowing what I know now there were lots of other things I could have done that I just didn't consider because I didn't know about them. I did maths because I was good at maths, but not good enough to become a professional mathematician as it turned out. I did soldiering because that is what the family did.
However, I ain't complaining. I have done OK, in fact in terms of that council estate in Wandsworth were I was born I have come a very long way, further I think than my parents would have hoped for.
So yes let's try and get more information about the world of work to teenagers, and let us have delivered by people who know what they are talking about. However, worrying about the top 10 or 20% should not, in my view, be the priority in education reform for HMG.
Is the plus number the lead or the change? V confusing if it is the lead.
You could get an explosive situation where Hilary wins a near landslide in the popular vote by piling up votes in safe states but trump just sneaks the marginal states and wins the presidency.
In theory Clinton's lead (2.8%) is the number of extra voters she'll get in California.
So she wants to end "selection by house price", make it harder to coach pupils for the test and admit more on free school meals.
Is she trying to make the policy less attractive to Tory voting parents?
Indeed is she some sort of inverse Jezza doing her best to annoy her core vote?
I was dead set against new Grammar schools. I'm now slightly intrigued. If she can pull it off it might be a very useful measure.
I don't see why Tories should be annoyed. Even if you don't credit them with any interest in the poor & needy, it's potentially a way of reducing welfare dependency.
It's a very Nick Timothy idea.
It's simple really. Parents whose expensive investment in a house in the right catchment area, who cannot afford private primary schooling but can afford a bit of tuition will be the losers. As will those parents who want little Johnnie to mix with nice middle class folk.
I can forsee it not going down well with the 75% who fail the selection, many of them core Tory voters.
Obama seems intent on making it as hard as possible for Clinton to win. Trump will have an absolute field day with this.
I think the plan is to goad Trump into pushing too far. It's certainly a provocative move at this point.
Trump's people are going to be going over his judgements with a fine tooth comb at the moment and finding any part of any judgement where he has supported or even praised Islamic law. If he has Trump will force the issue and win a lot of support.
Hasn't he been in private practice his whole life, specialising in insurance fraud? So, I doubt there's anything in there that's likely to be problematic - except that he might have defended a few big insurers along the way.
I see two of our most respected correspondents have this afternoon touted Dan Jarvis as a Labour leader in the early twenties, and one that would be successful in reviving his party's fortunes. What I don't understand is why they should think that. To be sure he seems a nice chap, understands leadership and has a very good back-story, but what are his politics? Where is the evidence for political acumen, the ability to formulate and deliver policies that non-labour people find attractive. I think he gave a speech a couple of months back that was reported in the papers but other than that he has been invisible.
He reminds me of Rory Stewart another new politician with a good back-story and on whom such high hopes were once pinned. Stewart seems to have sunk without trace too.
A good story to tell about your past and a eing a blank sheet of paper on which everyone can project their own wishes is not sufficient.
I'd go further. This obsession with back stories is positively harmful. It is another example of the nonsense that is identity politics. A person's background is a part of what they are but by no means the major part. What is of much more importance is what they believe, what they say and what they do. And that will be influenced by many things.
Having a particular background does not mean that you are automatically good at empathizing with or understanding or communicating with others of a similar background. Authenticity, a refusal to patronize people, really listening to them, huge dollops of emotional intelligence, curiosity and imagination are more important.
We need to see people for what they are and for what they can be. We need to see past the outside cover. We need to stop making assumptions based on superficial characteristics and really look at people. If we don't, we risk missing good people and we are simply making lazy assumptions just as our forefathers did, even if the targets and assumptions are different.
Spot on as ever, Mrs Free.
I remember in 1997 Archie Norman being heavily tipped to be the Tory Leader who would lead them back to government. Got a frontbench job, bombed and left Parliament after only two terms.
So she wants to end "selection by house price", make it harder to coach pupils for the test and admit more on free school meals.
Is she trying to make the policy less attractive to Tory voting parents?
Indeed is she some sort of inverse Jezza doing her best to annoy her core vote?
No - she's marching onto the centre ground of politics with a whole lot more to come. The time may well come that some on labour's side may see their only future is to be part of the May lead social revolution that is coming to this fantastic new Independent UK
I have to say, Big G, that having just watched some videos of May sent to me on Twitter, I am beginning to think she might well be serious and sincere in what she says. If that turns out to be the case and she is half way competent then she might well turn out to be a great PM. I might even vote Conservative again.
Tutoring was virtually unheard of when I attended grammar school in the early 80s, but times have changed since then. My son started at the same school last year and, although, I didn't hire an external tutor for him, I did spend a lot of time working through practise papers with him myself. He was rather the exception; almost all of his classmates had substantial paid tuition before taking the 11-plus.
Almost everyone who gets into Henrietta Barnett (hopefully including my daughter) is (a) from a private prep school, and (b) coached.
Tutoring was virtually unheard of when I attended grammar school in the early 80s, but times have changed since then. My son started at the same school last year and, although, I didn't hire an external tutor for him, I did spend a lot of time working through practise papers with him myself. He was rather the exception; almost all of his classmates had substantial tuition before taking the 11-plus.
Time to fix the exams so they are unable to be gamed.
Is that possible?
I mean, I know that SATs are supposed to measure aptitude (as with IQ tests), but there is ample evidence that practice and training has a dramatic effect on results. And, do you really want children to spend 18 months drilling on fairly standardised tests of mental agility?
Comments
I had an excellent education and had fantastic teachers. What I didn't get, however, was guidance between the ages of 14 and 16 as to what I should be looking to do at A-Level and then degree level. My school wasn't worried about the bright kids as they'd take of themselves. Well that's okay for some, especially those with highly qualified parents. It wasn't for me and I just wish someone had put me in the right direction at 14/15.
Don't get me wrong, I have a decent job and perhaps grammar schools aren't the answer. But it is not a nice feeling knowing that those who have had better guidance as kids (whether though private education or through professionally qualified parents) have an advantage over you at work.
So she wants to end "selection by house price", make it harder to coach pupils for the test and admit more on free school meals.
Is she trying to make the policy less attractive to Tory voting parents?
Indeed is she some sort of inverse Jezza doing her best to annoy her core vote?
I don't see why Tories should be annoyed. Even if you don't credit them with any interest in the poor & needy, it's potentially a way of reducing welfare dependency.
It's a very Nick Timothy idea.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/06/the-great-boundary-reform-might-kill-off-the-labour-party/
Few black politicians have been brave enough to admit there is a problem which has since morphed into full blown gang culture with guns rather than knives - Trevor Philips is I think one of the few to speak out.
Looking back knowing what I know now there were lots of other things I could have done that I just didn't consider because I didn't know about them. I did maths because I was good at maths, but not good enough to become a professional mathematician as it turned out. I did soldiering because that is what the family did.
However, I ain't complaining. I have done OK, in fact in terms of that council estate in Wandsworth were I was born I have come a very long way, further I think than my parents would have hoped for.
So yes let's try and get more information about the world of work to teenagers, and let us have delivered by people who know what they are talking about. However, worrying about the top 10 or 20% should not, in my view, be the priority in education reform for HMG.
I can forsee it not going down well with the 75% who fail the selection, many of them core Tory voters.
NEW THREAD
I mean, I know that SATs are supposed to measure aptitude (as with IQ tests), but there is ample evidence that practice and training has a dramatic effect on results. And, do you really want children to spend 18 months drilling on fairly standardised tests of mental agility?