''Streamed or setted? I was streamed in year 7 whereby we went round the school as a class based on general ability. But from year 8 to 11 we were setted so that you could be top set for one subject and set 2/3 for another.''
We had a 'grammar stream', and setting within that.
I'd be fascinated to see what my year 10/11 setting was like. I suspect there probably were two distinct streams.
I think the main argument against grammar schools is that they deplete the comprehensives of their best and brightest role models, thus lowering the chances that pupils at these schools achieve their potential.
There is also the argument that, aside from the coaching arguments, selection by a single test at a certain age is rather arbitrary given the different speeds of development of different children. It's generally a one-way process, with little chance for late developers to enter a grammar school or for those who end up struggling at a grammar school to leave.
Is there any evidence that pupils in those areas that retained grammar schools achieve better grades, on average, than those in areas that didn't, allowing for demographic factors? It'd also be interesting to know how many went on to get degrees, given that university students from comprehensive schools tend to do better then those from grammar schools with the same A levels.
I can understand why people might argue that the division between grammar schools and secondary moderns is counter-productive, but I struggle to understand the amount of angst that their existence generates; far more angst than the existence of private schools.
Perhaps people consider that depriving comprehensives of their brightest pupils is more damaging than depriving them of their richest pupils.
Do you have the same problem with streaming? ie depriving the "lower" classes of their brightest pupils is damaging. Yet streaming is widespread.
And what about the brightest pupils, why should they be pulled down? Shouldn't it be their human right to go to the best schooling they can?
I have no problem at all with streaming. The difference is that pupils then have a continuing incentive and opportunity to do better throughout their school life. A decent comprehensive should both stretch the brightest in the top stream and help those in the bottom streams to improve.
If you banned every other school (private, academy, free) and only had BS Comprehensives, you would be in with a shout.
It's not a policy I would agree with, nor would it be politically acceptable, but it would force wealthier, brighter parents to start using their pointy elbows for the common good.
They'd use their pointy elbows to get the hell out of areas with lots of poor pupils (as a very left-wing couple I know did, in the full wonderful hypocrisy of the left).
I don't have strong ideas about it one way or another but the Palace of Westminster was new and shiny once, although I appreciate borrowing from the gothic vernacular. So was the Florence Baptistry.
Why shouldn't we have a brand new, cutting-edge design for our houses of Parliament which shows off all the beauty, innovation and aspiration of the UK moving confidently into the future?
Apart, of course, from us being beholden to a supranational body that forbids us from exercising our sovereignty by bulldozing it, as @Ishmael_X noted earlier.
Because the UK isn't moving confidently into the future (and before you start, it wasn't doing so before the referendum either), and so called 'cutting edge' design offers little in the way of beauty, innovation or aspiration.
The Victorians (and the Georgians in a different way) knew who they were and what they believed, and had a strong code of ethics - a rulebook from the past. That's why their buildings are still revered today when today's stumpy toys will be demolished and forgotten in decades hence.
I don't disagree, and the whole gherkin, walkie-talkie, etc we shall have to wait to see their longevity. But at the same time surely there is room for something essentially modern British isn't there? Of course there is also the whole one man's brutal is another's...
Using your logic we'd bulldoze every thatched cottage in the land and replace them with cutting edge new builds to cut our carbon emissions.
Um no. The vast majority of people are very happily living in their thatched cottages and wouldn't want to bulldoze them.
But I think it reasonable to have a national debate about whether we refit an ageing public building built in a previous era, or commission something new and modern.
Those thatched cottages might well become structurally unsound at some point, as the HoC has it seems, and at that point you have a decision to make. Do a Quinlan Terry, and rebuild a faux-17th century cottage, or do something contemporary, which doesn't have to mean a glass geodesic dome.
I don't have strong ideas about it one way or another but the Palace of Westminster was new and shiny once, although I appreciate borrowing from the gothic vernacular. So was the Florence Baptistry.
Why shouldn't we have a brand new, cutting-edge design for our houses of Parliament which shows off all the beauty, innovation and aspiration of the UK moving confidently into the future?
Apart, of course, from us being beholden to a supranational body that forbids us from exercising our sovereignty by bulldozing it, as @Ishmael_X noted earlier.
Because the UK isn't moving confidently into the future (and before you start, it wasn't doing so before the referendum either), and so called 'cutting edge' design offers little in the way of beauty, innovation or aspiration.
The Victorians (and the Georgians in a different way) knew who they were and what they believed, and had a strong code of ethics - a rulebook from the past. That's why their buildings are still revered today when today's stumpy toys will be demolished and forgotten in decades hence.
I don't disagree, and the whole gherkin, walkie-talkie, etc we shall have to wait to see their longevity. But at the same time surely there is room for something essentially modern British isn't there? Of course there is also the whole one man's brutal is another's...
I don't subscribe to that. I find very few admirers of Brutalist architecture actually live in, or overlooking the structures they so revere. Because they're simply objectively butt-arse ugly. By contrast, Victorian warehouses, 18th century stables etc. are in high demand as residences despite being purely functional buildings.
Tory Charles Walker has been railing against the boundary changes this morning. If he's going public now, sounds like it will be hard to buy him off or to go for an abstention. It looks like every non-Tory party will unite against them - especially if the idea that the NI changes will favour Sinn Fein, not helpful for securing any NI votes.
Assuming a couple of by-election defeats before 2018, the Tories must be fearing complete defeat on them surely?
Edit: Philip Davies being awkward as well I've read today
If you banned every other school (private, academy, free) and only had BS Comprehensives, you would be in with a shout.
It's not a policy I would agree with, nor would it be politically acceptable, but it would force wealthier, brighter parents to start using their pointy elbows for the common good.
They'd use their pointy elbows to get the hell out of areas with lots of poor pupils (as a very left-wing couple I know did, in the full wonderful hypocrisy of the left).
Ah yes I knew there would be a huge flaw in my plan. But presumably not everyone could do that, and if the state controlled the schools, then they might end up on a big yellow bus travelling back to the school in the area they left..?
Keith Vaz, the charity worker and the mystery of their trips to India
Keith Vaz travelled to Goa in India with the Romanian charity worker and parliamentary aide alleged to have paid two male prostitutes on the Labour MP’s behalf.
I don't have strong ideas about it one way or another but the Palace of Westminster was new and shiny once, although I appreciate borrowing from the gothic vernacular. So was the Florence Baptistry.
Why shouldn't we have a brand new, cutting-edge design for our houses of Parliament which shows off all the beauty, innovation and aspiration of the UK moving confidently into the future?
Apart, of course, from us being beholden to a supranational body that forbids us from exercising our sovereignty by bulldozing it, as @Ishmael_X noted earlier.
Because the UK isn't moving confidently into the future (and before you start, it wasn't doing so before the referendum either), and so called 'cutting edge' design offers little in the way of beauty, innovation or aspiration.
The Victorians (and the Georgians in a different way) knew who they were and what they believed, and had a strong code of ethics - a rulebook from the past. That's why their buildings are still revered today when today's stumpy toys will be demolished and forgotten in decades hence.
I don't disagree, and the whole gherkin, walkie-talkie, etc we shall have to wait to see their longevity. But at the same time surely there is room for something essentially modern British isn't there? Of course there is also the whole one man's brutal is another's...
Using your logic we'd bulldoze every thatched cottage in the land and replace them with cutting edge new builds to cut our carbon emissions.
Um no. The vast majority of people are very happily living in their thatched cottages and wouldn't want to bulldoze them.
But I think it reasonable to have a national debate about whether we refit an ageing public building built in a previous era, or commission something new and modern.
Those thatched cottages might well become structurally unsound at some point, as the HoC has it seems, and at that point you have a decision to make. Do a Quinlan Terry, and rebuild a faux-17th century cottage, or do something contemporary, which doesn't have to mean a glass geodesic dome.
Presuming there is not and will never be a plan to demolish the Palace of Westminster - rather one to turn it into some sort of visitor attraction, I don't see that there's much of a saving to be made. It will still need repair.
I went to a grammar school. I am not in favour of a national system of grammar schools, although what we have at the moment and even what is proposed is well short of that. My view is that (unlike streaming within schools) the existence of a top tier reduced motivations to target funding, and most importantly attention, on the rest. Once Britain derived its professions, its politicians, and its journalists from a single part of its education system, standards were allowed to slip for the rest (the grand ecoles are the same). I would personally not risk that happening again.
New architecture is routinely disliked and middle-aged architecture is routinely thought dowdy. The Victorian Society was founded to save then-despised architecture:
There is no automatic merit in the ancient and no automatic disgrace in the recent. No doubt in decades to come my dislike of post-modern architecture will seem Philistine.
I don't have strong ideas about it one way or another but the Palace of Westminster was new and shiny once, although I appreciate borrowing from the gothic vernacular. So was the Florence Baptistry.
Why shouldn't we have a brand new, cutting-edge design for our houses of Parliament which shows off all the beauty, innovation and aspiration of the UK moving confidently into the future?
Apart, of course, from us being beholden to a supranational body that forbids us from exercising our sovereignty by bulldozing it, as @Ishmael_X noted earlier.
Because the UK isn't moving confidently into the future (and before you start, it wasn't doing so before the referendum either), and so called 'cutting edge' design offers little in the way of beauty, innovation or aspiration.
The Victorians (and the Georgians in a different way) knew who they were and what they believed, and had a strong code of ethics - a rulebook from the past. That's why their buildings are still revered today when today's stumpy toys will be demolished and forgotten in decades hence.
I don't disagree, and the whole gherkin, walkie-talkie, etc we shall have to wait to see their longevity. But at the same time surely there is room for something essentially modern British isn't there? Of course there is also the whole one man's brutal is another's...
I don't subscribe to that. I find very few admirers of Brutalist architecture actually live in, or overlooking the structures they so revere. Because they're simply objectively butt-arse ugly. By contrast, Victorian warehouses, 18th century stables etc. are in high demand as residences despite being purely functional buildings.
But as has been mentioned "brutalist" might be at one end of the spectrum. I happen to think the Gherkin is extremely elegant (and the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong as a further example).
And as you are aware, of course, you cheeky monkey you, there is no such thing as objectively butt-arse ugly.
I don't have strong ideas about it one way or another but the Palace of Westminster was new and shiny once, although I appreciate borrowing from the gothic vernacular. So was the Florence Baptistry.
Why shouldn't we have a brand new, cutting-edge design for our houses of Parliament which shows off all the beauty, innovation and aspiration of the UK moving confidently into the future?
Apart, of course, from us being beholden to a supranational body that forbids us from exercising our sovereignty by bulldozing it, as @Ishmael_X noted earlier.
Because the UK isn't moving confidently into the future (and before you start, it wasn't doing so before the referendum either), and so called 'cutting edge' design offers little in the way of beauty, innovation or aspiration.
The Victorians (and the Georgians in a different way) knew who they were and what they believed, and had a strong code of ethics - a rulebook from the past. That's why their buildings are still revered today when today's stumpy toys will be demolished and forgotten in decades hence.
I don't disagree, and the whole gherkin, walkie-talkie, etc we shall have to wait to see their longevity. But at the same time surely there is room for something essentially modern British isn't there? Of course there is also the whole one man's brutal is another's...
Using your logic we'd bulldoze every thatched cottage in the land and replace them with cutting edge new builds to cut our carbon emissions.
Um no. The vast majority of people are very happily living in their thatched cottages and wouldn't want to bulldoze them.
But I think it reasonable to have a national debate about whether we refit an ageing public building built in a previous era, or commission something new and modern.
Those thatched cottages might well become structurally unsound at some point, as the HoC has it seems, and at that point you have a decision to make. Do a Quinlan Terry, and rebuild a faux-17th century cottage, or do something contemporary, which doesn't have to mean a glass geodesic dome.
Presuming there is not and will never be a plan to demolish the Palace of Westminster - rather one to turn it into some sort of visitor attraction, I don't see that there's much of a saving to be made. It will still need repair.
Yes that's true. Patched up, roof mended, it will be fine.
If you banned every other school (private, academy, free) and only had BS Comprehensives, you would be in with a shout.
It's not a policy I would agree with, nor would it be politically acceptable, but it would force wealthier, brighter parents to start using their pointy elbows for the common good.
They'd use their pointy elbows to get the hell out of areas with lots of poor pupils (as a very left-wing couple I know did, in the full wonderful hypocrisy of the left).
And this is how the Left ends up pursuing itself down a command and control social engineering cul-de-sac.
You could stop people moving house, regulate house prices, enforce busing, class mixing, and prevent parents from imposing their values on their kids. But that would create even greater problems - and lowering of education standards, typical of the Soviet era - whilst those close to those who made the rules would find ways to corrupt them.
New architecture is routinely disliked and middle-aged architecture is routinely thought dowdy. The Victorian Society was founded to save then-despised architecture:
There is no automatic merit in the ancient and no automatic disgrace in the recent. No doubt in decades to come my dislike of post-modern architecture will seem Philistine.
I don't there will ever be an era when the Walkie-talkie is considered anything other than awful.
I don't have strong ideas about it one way or another but the Palace of Westminster was new and shiny once, although I appreciate borrowing from the gothic vernacular. So was the Florence Baptistry.
Why shouldn't we have a brand new, cutting-edge design for our houses of Parliament which shows off all the beauty, innovation and aspiration of the UK moving confidently into the future?
Apart, of course, from us being beholden to a supranational body that forbids us from exercising our sovereignty by bulldozing it, as @Ishmael_X noted earlier.
Because the UK isn't moving confidently into the future (and before you start, it wasn't doing so before the referendum either), and so called 'cutting edge' design offers little in the way of beauty, innovation or aspiration.
The Victorians (and the Georgians in a different way) knew who they were and what they believed, and had a strong code of ethics - a rulebook from the past. That's why their buildings are still revered today when today's stumpy toys will be demolished and forgotten in decades hence.
I don't disagree, and the whole gherkin, walkie-talkie, etc we shall have to wait to see their longevity. But at the same time surely there is room for something essentially modern British isn't there? Of course there is also the whole one man's brutal is another's...
Using your logic we'd bulldoze every thatched cottage in the land and replace them with cutting edge new builds to cut our carbon emissions.
Um no. The vast majority of people are very happily living in their thatched cottages and wouldn't want to bulldoze them.
But I think it reasonable to have a national debate about whether we refit an ageing public building built in a previous era, or commission something new and modern.
Those thatched cottages might well become structurally unsound at some point, as the HoC has it seems, and at that point you have a decision to make. Do a Quinlan Terry, and rebuild a faux-17th century cottage, or do something contemporary, which doesn't have to mean a glass geodesic dome.
Yes, let's demolish them all.
A pointless historical irrelevance that's holding us back.
If you banned every other school (private, academy, free) and only had BS Comprehensives, you would be in with a shout.
It's not a policy I would agree with, nor would it be politically acceptable, but it would force wealthier, brighter parents to start using their pointy elbows for the common good.
They'd use their pointy elbows to get the hell out of areas with lots of poor pupils (as a very left-wing couple I know did, in the full wonderful hypocrisy of the left).
And this is how the Left ends up pursuing itself down a command and control social engineering cul-de-sac.
You could stop people moving house, regulate house prices, enforce busing, class mixing, and prevent parents from imposing their values on their kids. But that would create even greater problems - and lowering of education standards, typical of the Soviet era - whilst those close to those who made the rules would find ways to corrupt them.
And I doubt even Comrade Topping would like that.
Tooting Primary School is a free school, I'll have you know.
Precisely. Is food production not an issue of national security?
Or even energy production and distribution, water supply and sewage disposal, national transport. There are lots of areas where perhaps the market is not the right solution and the people of the UK are getting screwed and the profits made are going out of the country.
Hmm, that's a bit of populist nonsense, Mr Llama. Quite apart from anything else, a number of UK companies are rather good at those areas, which is why they are successful abroad, bringing profits into this country.
If they are so damn good why aren't they running the infrastructure in this country? Who owns the power companies, the water companies?
Take Thames Water: that is to invest in a massive new sewer. Who is paying for that? Not, it would seem, the shareholders seeking to make a return. No, it would seem that the shareholders are guaranteed their dividends whilst the customers (as if they had a choice) are going to have their bills increased.
I see the liberal left are up in arms today about the possibility of a few extra Grammar schools - the faux outrage is much akin to that relating to foxhunting - although ironically it is the small number of existing Grammars that are the red meat for 'disgusted of Finsbury park'. for the record my last 17 years of teaching was at a Kent Grammar which has a very socially mixed intake from both the local town and parts of south London easily accessible. The selection tests are not perfect but are actually difficult to coach effectively for unless the IQ is pretty high anyway. We took the few that relatively few ever got a place that was not merited judged by subsequent performance. The success of any kind of school owes much to the skill of the staff and the leadership at the top - my own school was actually under-subscribed and in danger of closure prior to the appointment of the head who was in post when I joined - that all changed within 3/4 years and 3 consecutive OFSTED's rated it as outstandingly successful - and of course, massively over-subscribed.
I think the main argument against grammar schools is that they deplete the comprehensives of their best and brightest role models, thus lowering the chances that pupils at these schools achieve their potential.
There is also the argument that, aside from the coaching arguments, selection by a single test at a certain age is rather arbitrary given the different speeds of development of different children. It's generally a one-way process, with little chance for late developers to enter a grammar school or for those who end up struggling at a grammar school to leave.
Is there any evidence that pupils in those areas that retained grammar schools achieve better grades, on average, than those in areas that didn't, allowing for demographic factors? It'd also be interesting to know how many went on to get degrees, given that university students from comprehensive schools tend to do better then those from grammar schools with the same A levels.
I can understand why people might argue that the division between grammar schools and secondary moderns is counter-productive, but I struggle to understand the amount of angst that their existence generates; far more angst than the existence of private schools.
Quite. While at my school the children of the local Labour MP both took the test and attended the school. There is huge hypocrisy on the left about this as so many other issues.
New architecture is routinely disliked and middle-aged architecture is routinely thought dowdy. The Victorian Society was founded to save then-despised architecture:
There is no automatic merit in the ancient and no automatic disgrace in the recent. No doubt in decades to come my dislike of post-modern architecture will seem Philistine.
The Park Hill flats in Sheffield are grade II listed. Not my cup of tea, but someone might like it at some point...
I don't have strong ideas about it one way or another but the Palace of Westminster was new a
Apart, of course, from us being beholden to a supranational body that forbids us from exercising our sovereignty by bulldozing it, as @Ishmael_X noted earlier.
Because the UK isn't moving confidently into the future (and before you start, it wasn't doing so before the referendum either), and so called 'cutting edge' design offers little in the way of beauty, innovation or aspiration.
The Victorians (and the Georgians in a different way) knew who they were and what they believed, and had a strong code of ethics - a rulebook from the past. That's why their buildings are still revered today when today's stumpy toys will be demolished and forgotten in decades hence.
I don't disagree, and the whole gherkin, walkie-talkie, etc we shall have to wait to see their longevity. But at the same time surely there is room for something essentially modern British isn't there? Of course there is also the whole one man's brutal is another's...
Using your logic we'd bulldoze every thatched cottage in the land and replace them with cutting edge new builds to cut our carbon emissions.
Um no. The vast majority of people are very happily living in their thatched cottages and wouldn't want to bulldoze them.
But I think it reasonable to have a national debate about whether we refit an ageing public building built in a previous era, or commission something new and modern.
Those thatched cottages might well become structurally unsound at some point, as the HoC has it seems, and at that point you have a decision to make. Do a Quinlan Terry, and rebuild a faux-17th century cottage, or do something contemporary, which doesn't have to mean a glass geodesic dome.
Yes, let's demolish them all.
A pointless historical irrelevance that's holding us back.
We have thankfully not reached the era when they all need demolishing. But we will one day (you and I will have departed PB forever).
But I still don't get the anti-modernity you hold as though it was a self-evident truth.
If anything is self-evident, perhaps even to small children, it is that people historically have hated anything new and sought solace in the old and familiar, only for subsequent generations to accept what had been new as the comforting old and familiar.
I wouldn't have thought that this was a particularly contentious point.
Tory Charles Walker has been railing against the boundary changes this morning. If he's going public now, sounds like it will be hard to buy him off or to go for an abstention. It looks like every non-Tory party will unite against them - especially if the idea that the NI changes will favour Sinn Fein, not helpful for securing any NI votes.
Assuming a couple of by-election defeats before 2018, the Tories must be fearing complete defeat on them surely?
Edit: Philip Davies being awkward as well I've read today
''It seems that the argument against them is that rich children cram for them if they are in (socio-economically) mixed areas and hence the disparity of outcomes. It was then suggested to put them into poor areas but apparently that phenomenon persists.''
No its the stigma of being chucked into a second rate school at eleven.
Streamed comprehensives are a much better idea. You learn with people who are as capable as you, but you get to mix with children of all talents and backgrounds. And everybody wears the same uniform.
Its way better.
Unfortunately, you need such schools to be enormous -2000+ at least in order to provide a full range of 16+ opportunities and big comprehensives have not been successful historically.
If you banned every other school (private, academy, free) and only had BS Comprehensives, you would be in with a shout.
It's not a policy I would agree with, nor would it be politically acceptable, but it would force wealthier, brighter parents to start using their pointy elbows for the common good.
They'd use their pointy elbows to get the hell out of areas with lots of poor pupils (as a very left-wing couple I know did, in the full wonderful hypocrisy of the left).
And this is how the Left ends up pursuing itself down a command and control social engineering cul-de-sac.
You could stop people moving house, regulate house prices, enforce busing, class mixing, and prevent parents from imposing their values on their kids. But that would create even greater problems - and lowering of education standards, typical of the Soviet era - whilst those close to those who made the rules would find ways to corrupt them.
And I doubt even Comrade Topping would like that.
Good schools will always attract rich parents who care about their children's education, raising nearby house prices. Such schools are then likely to improve further, given the support their kids are likely to get as well as the ease of attracting good teachers. It's a classic positive feedback loop. The only real way to counter this natural tendency is by investing heavily in the failing schools in terms of facilities and quality teaching staff.
Tory Charles Walker has been railing against the boundary changes this morning. If he's going public now, sounds like it will be hard to buy him off or to go for an abstention. It looks like every non-Tory party will unite against them - especially if the idea that the NI changes will favour Sinn Fein, not helpful for securing any NI votes.
Assuming a couple of by-election defeats before 2018, the Tories must be fearing complete defeat on them surely?
Edit: Philip Davies being awkward as well I've read today
The Tory whips should be on this right away, it's the biggest vote we know about coming in the remainder of the Parliament. I suspect that a lot of behind the scenes work on identifying retirees and those who could be kicked to the red benches, combined with a vote-against-and-get-deselected three line whip on the vote will be enough to see it pass.
A bill to enforce the EC recommendations without Parliament the,selves having a say is as long overdue as the boundary changes themselves.
I don't have strong ideas about it one way or another but the Palace of Westminster was new a
Apart, of course, from us being beholden to a supranational body that forbids us from exercising our sovereignty by bulldozing it, as @Ishmael_X noted earlier.
Because the UK isn't moving confidently into the future (and before you start, it wasn't doing so before the referendum either), and so called 'cutting edge' design offers little in the way of beauty, innovation or aspiration.
The Victorians (and the Georgians in a different way) knew who they were and what they believed, and had a strong code of ethics - a rulebook from the past. That's why their buildings are still revered today when today's stumpy toys will be demolished and forgotten in decades hence.
I don't disagree, and the whole gherkin, walkie-talkie, etc we shall have to wait to see their longevity. But at the same time surely there is room for something essentially modern British isn't there? Of course there is also the whole one man's brutal is another's...
Using your logic we'd bulldoze every thatched cottage in the land and replace them with cutting edge new builds to cut our carbon emissions.
Um no. The vast majority of people are very happily living in their thatched cottages and wouldn't want to bulldoze them.
But I think it reasonable to have a national debate about whether we refit an ageing public building built in a previous era, or commission something new and modern.
Those thatched cottages might well become structurally unsound at some point, as the HoC has it seems, and at that point you have a decision to make. Do a Quinlan Terry, and rebuild a faux-17th century cottage, or do something contemporary, which doesn't have to mean a glass geodesic dome.
Yes, let's demolish them all.
A pointless historical irrelevance that's holding us back.
We have thankfully not reached the era when they all need demolishing. But we will one day (you and I will have departed PB forever).
But I still don't get the anti-modernity you hold as though it was a self-evident truth.
If anything is self-evident, perhaps even to small children, it is that people historically have hated anything new and sought solace in the old and familiar, only for subsequent generations to accept what had been new as the comforting old and familiar.
I wouldn't have thought that this was a particularly contentious point.
A desire to preserve what is left of our heritage does not imply one holds a hatred of modernity.
Says everything that's disastrous with this policy. Give it 3 months before it's reversed
Why? Grammar schools shouldn't be bogged down with a bunch of rich thickos who have had their parents game their entry.
Because of the devastating impact on the vast majority of children. There's a clue in the meaning of the word 'comprehensive'. If this goes through they will become Secondary Moderns, in reality if not in name.
thatched cottages might well become structurally unsound at some point, as the HoC has it seems...
The Palace of Westminster is NOT structurally unsound. The issue is that the internals are a over century old and it needs a complete refit w.r.t. plumbing, heating, electricity, IT cabling, etc. That entails removing every floorboard, every panel, drilling through foundations, etc, etc, A monster job - but one that should see it good for several centuries to come.
There is precisely zero chance that we'll knock it down and recreate a slice of Milton Keynes on the site - it must surely be the most listed building in the UK. So, as someone pointed out upthread, this work will need to be done anyway.
You could, of course move Parliament to another site anyway and turn the Palace into something else. Not quite sure what the point would be though.
I don't have strong ideas about it one way or another but the Palace of Westminster was new and shiny once, although I appreciate borrowing from the gothic vernacular. So was the Florence Baptistry.
Why shouldn't we have a brand new, cutting-edge design for our houses of Parliament which shows off all the beauty, innovation and aspiration of the UK moving confidently into the future?
Apart, of course, from us being beholden to a supranational body that forbids us from exercising our sovereignty by bulldozing it, as @Ishmael_X noted earlier.
Because the UK isn't moving confidently into the future (and before you start, it wasn't doing so before the referendum either), and so called 'cutting edge' design offers little in the way of beauty, innovation or aspiration.
The Victorians (and the Georgians in a different way) knew who they were and what they believed, and had a strong code of ethics - a rulebook from the past. That's why their buildings are still revered today when today's stumpy toys will be demolished and forgotten in decades hence.
I don't disagree, and the whole gherkin, walkie-talkie, etc we shall have to wait to see their longevity. But at the same time surely there is room for something essentially modern British isn't there? Of course there is also the whole one man's brutal is another's...
I don't subscribe to that. I find very few admirers of Brutalist architecture actually live in, or overlooking the structures they so revere. Because they're simply objectively butt-arse ugly. By contrast, Victorian warehouses, 18th century stables etc. are in high demand as residences despite being purely functional buildings.
But as has been mentioned "brutalist" might be at one end of the spectrum. I happen to think the Gherkin is extremely elegant (and the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong as a further example).
And as you are aware, of course, you cheeky monkey you, there is no such thing as objectively butt-arse ugly.
What about it? It's hideous. Because it was never built to bring joy or beauty to anyone, or to be somewhere one would be proud to live, or to complement its surroundings. And it was built cheaply, of ugly materials.
I don't really mind some of the current London skyscraper crop - they don't inspire me but they are what they are.
But parliament being rebuilt as a 'reflection of modern Britain' should surely fill anyone with abject horror.
I don't have strong ideas about it one way or another but the Palace of Westminster was new a
Apart, of course, from us being beholden to a supranational body that forbids us from exercising our sovereignty by bulldozing it, as @Ishmael_X noted earlier.
Because the UK isn't moving confidently into the future (and before you start, it wasn't doing so before the referendum either), and so called 'cutting edge' design offers little in the way of beauty, innovation or aspiration.
The Victorians (and the Georgians in a different way) knew who they were and what they believed, and had a strong code of ethics - a rulebook from the past. That's why their buildings are still revered today when today's stumpy toys will be demolished and forgotten in decades hence.
I don't disagreenother's...
Using your logic we'd bulldoze every thatched cottage in the land and replace them with cutting edge new builds to cut our carbon emissions.
Um no. The vast mdoesn't have to mean a glass geodesic dome.
Yes, let's demolish them all.
A pointless historical irrelevance that's holding us back.
We have thankfully not reached the era when they all need demolishing. But we will one day (you and I will have departed PB forever).
But I still don't get the anti-modernity you hold as though it was a self-evident truth.
If anything is self-evident, perhaps even to small children, it is that people historically have hated anything new and sought solace in the old and familiar, only for subsequent generations to accept what had been new as the comforting old and familiar.
I wouldn't have thought that this was a particularly contentious point.
A desire to preserve what is left of our heritage does not imply one holds a hatred of modernity.
On that I agree, as does UNESCO, which has over-ridden our sovereign right to bulldoze the Houses of Parliament.
I think keep the Palace of Westminster as a testament to a golden age of British History (like Jane Austen's house), and then relocate something glass, and eco-friendly, and carbon neutral to Sunderland for Parliament to sit.
If you banned every other school (private, academy, free) and only had BS Comprehensives, you would be in with a shout.
It's not a policy I would agree with, nor would it be politically acceptable, but it would force wealthier, brighter parents to start using their pointy elbows for the common good.
They'd use their pointy elbows to get the hell out of areas with lots of poor pupils (as a very left-wing couple I know did, in the full wonderful hypocrisy of the left).
And this is how the Left ends up pursuing itself down a command and control social engineering cul-de-sac.
You could stop people moving house, regulate house prices, enforce busing, class mixing, and prevent parents from imposing their values on their kids. But that would create even greater problems - and lowering of education standards, typical of the Soviet era - whilst those close to those who made the rules would find ways to corrupt them.
And I doubt even Comrade Topping would like that.
Good schools will always attract rich parents who care about their children's education, raising nearby house prices. Such schools are then likely to improve further, given the support their kids are likely to get as well as the ease of attracting good teachers. It's a classic positive feedback loop. The only real way to counter this natural tendency is by investing heavily in the failing schools in terms of facilities and quality teaching staff.
Do poor people not care about their children's education then?
This is such offensive bollocks. Not having a dig at you, but this argument in general.
What we're really saying is that middle-class parents are more articulate and influential. That implies they participate much more in the governance and fundraising activity of and for the school and can get teachers to listen to them because they share their education level and social background, and may mix with them socially too.
Snobbery is as much of a problem as anything. If poor parents don't know how to engage with raising the quality of the school we shouldn't assume they don't give a shit about their kids we should assume they don't know how and ensure they are listened to and respected.
If you banned every other school (private, academy, free) and only had BS Comprehensives, you would be in with a shout.
It's not a policy I would agree with, nor would it be politically acceptable, but it would force wealthier, brighter parents to start using their pointy elbows for the common good.
They'd use their pointy elbows to get the hell out of areas with lots of poor pupils (as a very left-wing couple I know did, in the full wonderful hypocrisy of the left).
And this is how the Left ends up pursuing itself down a command and control social engineering cul-de-sac.
You could stop people moving house, regulate house prices, enforce busing, class mixing, and prevent parents from imposing their values on their kids. But that would create even greater problems - and lowering of education standards, typical of the Soviet era - whilst those close to those who made the rules would find ways to corrupt them.
And I doubt even Comrade Topping would like that.
Good schools will always attract rich parents who care about their children's education, raising nearby house prices. Such schools are then likely to improve further, given the support their kids are likely to get as well as the ease of attracting good teachers. It's a classic positive feedback loop. The only real way to counter this natural tendency is by investing heavily in the failing schools in terms of facilities and quality teaching staff.
Do poor people not care about their children's education then?
This is such offensive bollocks. Not having a dig at you, but this argument in general.
What we're really saying is that middle-class parents are more articulate and influential. That implies they participate much more in the governance and fundraising activity of and for the school and can get teachers to listen to them because they share their education level and social background, and may mix with them socially too.
Snobbery is as much of a problem as anything. If poor parents don't know how to engage with raising the quality of the school we shouldn't assume they don't give a shit about their kids we should assume they don't know how and ensure they are listened to and respected.
Perhaps you didn't notice the lack of a comma between "rich parents" and "who care"?
Edit: OK, I could have been clearer, but I certainly wasn't meaning to imply that only rich parents care about their kids' eduction. I just meant that only those who are rich AND care about their kids' education would move into an expensive house near a good school.
I don't have strong ideas about it one way or another but the Palace of Westminster was new a
Apart, of course, from us being beholden to a supranational body that forbids us from exercising our sovereignty by bulldozing it, as @Ishmael_X noted earlier.
Because the UK isn't moving confidently into the future (and before you start, it wasn't doing so before the referendum either), and so called 'cutting edge' design offers little in the way of beauty, innovation or aspiration.
The Victorians (and the Georgians in a different way) knew who they were and what they believed, and had a strong code of ethics - a rulebook from the past. That's why their buildings are still revered today when today's stumpy toys will be demolished and forgotten in decades hence.
I don't disagreenother's...
Using your logic we'd bulldoze every thatched cottage in the land and replace them with cutting edge new builds to cut our carbon emissions.
Um no. The vast mdoesn't have to mean a glass geodesic dome.
Yes, let's demolish them all.
A pointless historical irrelevance that's holding us back.
We have thankfully not reached the era when they all need demolishing. But we will one day (you and I will have departed PB forever).
But I still don't get the anti-modernity you hold as though it was a self-evident truth.
If anything is self-evident, perhaps even to small children, it is that people historically have hated anything new and sought solace in the old and familiar, only for subsequent generations to accept what had been new as the comforting old and familiar.
I wouldn't have thought that this was a particularly contentious point.
A desire to preserve what is left of our heritage does not imply one holds a hatred of modernity.
On that I agree, as does UNESCO, which has over-ridden our sovereign right to bulldoze the Houses of Parliament.
I think keep the Palace of Westminster as a testament to a golden age of British History (like Jane Austen's house), and then relocate something glass, and eco-friendly, and carbon neutral to Sunderland for Parliament to sit.
I love the way you keep returning to UNESCO as if you keep thinking you're making a clever point on Brexit.
I think you are just as interested in having a dig at those who disagree with you for your own entertainment as you are on engaging in substantive discussion of the issues.
I don't have strong ideas about it one way or another but the Palace of Westminster was new a
Apart, of course, from us being beholden to a supranational body that forbids us from exercising our sovereignty by bulldozing it, as @Ishmael_X noted earlier.
Because the UK isn't moving confidently into the future (and before you start, it wasn't doing so before the referendum either), and so called 'cutting edge' design offers little in the way of beauty, innovation or aspiration.
The Victorians (and the Georgians in a different way) knew who they were and what they believed, and had a strong code of ethics - a rulebook from the past. That's why their buildings are still revered today when today's stumpy toys will be demolished and forgotten in decades hence.
I don't disagreenother's...
Using your logic we'd bulldoze every thatched cottage in the land and replace them with cutting edge new builds to cut our carbon emissions.
Um no. The vast mdoesn't have to mean a glass geodesic dome.
Yes, let's demolish them all.
A pointless historical irrelevance that's holding us back.
We have thankfully not reached the era when they all need demolishing. But we will one day (you and I will have departed PB forever).
But I still don't get the anti-modernity you hold as though it was a self-evident truth.
If anything is self-evident, perhaps even to small children, it is that people historically have hated anything new and sought solace in the old and familiar, only for subsequent generations to accept what had been new as the comforting old and familiar.
I wouldn't have thought that this was a particularly contentious point.
A desire to preserve what is left of our heritage does not imply one holds a hatred of modernity.
On that I agree, as does UNESCO, which has over-ridden our sovereign right to bulldoze the Houses of Parliament.
I think keep the Palace of Westminster as a testament to a golden age of British History (like Jane Austen's house), and then relocate something glass, and eco-friendly, and carbon neutral to Sunderland for Parliament to sit.
UNESCO holds no particular power over the UK - check Liverpool developments in the pipeline for details.
If you banned every other school (private, academy, free) and only had BS Comprehensives, you would be in with a shout.
It's not a policy I would agree with, nor would it be politically acceptable, but it would force wealthier, brighter parents to start using their pointy elbows for the common good.
They'd use their pointy elbows to get the hell out of areas with lots of poor pupils (as a very left-wing couple I know did, in the full wonderful hypocrisy of the left).
And this is how the Left ends up pursuing itself down a command and control social engineering cul-de-sac.
You could stop people moving house, regulate house prices, enforce busing, class mixing, and prevent parents from imposing their values on their kids. But that would create even greater problems - and lowering of education standards, typical of the Soviet era - whilst those close to those who made the rules would find ways to corrupt them.
And I doubt even Comrade Topping would like that.
Good schools will always attract rich parents who care about their children's education, raising nearby house prices. Such schools are then likely to improve further, given the support their kids are likely to get as well as the ease of attracting good teachers. It's a classic positive feedback loop. The only real way to counter this natural tendency is by investing heavily in the failing schools in terms of facilities and quality teaching staff.
Do poor people not care about their children's education then?
This is such offensive bollocks. Not having a dig at you, but this argument in general.
What we're really saying is that middle-class parents are more articulate and influential. That implies they participate much more in the governance and fundraising activity of and for the school and can get teachers to listen to them because they share their education level and social background, and may mix with them socially too.
Snobbery is as much of a problem as anything. If poor parents don't know how to engage with raising the quality of the school we shouldn't assume they don't give a shit about their kids we should assume they don't know how and ensure they are listened to and respected.
Perhaps you didn't notice the lack of a comma between "rich parents" and "who care"?
If they are so damn good why aren't they running the infrastructure in this country? Who owns the power companies, the water companies?
Take Thames Water: that is to invest in a massive new sewer. Who is paying for that? Not, it would seem, the shareholders seeking to make a return. No, it would seem that the shareholders are guaranteed their dividends whilst the customers (as if they had a choice) are going to have their bills increased.
Boy, you are a bit of an unreconstructed 1970s lefty, Mr Llama!
Companies like National Grid and SSE are running much of the infrastructure in this country (as well as in the US and elsewhere). And, being an open, trading country, "open for business", we of course welcome foreign firms to bid for infrastructure business here, or to take over UK companies just as UK companies take over foreign ones. Quite right too: competition drives up standards and lowers costs.
The mega-sewer is being financed by investors in Thames Water and in particular in its bonds, and by banks lending it money. They are taking risk, they of course need some return. Would you prefer it if the whole upfront £4.2bn cost went straight on to consumers' bills as it was incurred?
I have no problem at all with streaming. The difference is that pupils then have a continuing incentive and opportunity to do better throughout their school life. A decent comprehensive should both stretch the brightest in the top stream and help those in the bottom streams to improve.
The OECD PISA programme isn't just there to measure which countries do best at maths and literacy, but to encourage best practice in education systems. Finland does well in the tests while Poland has improved and Sweden has fallen back in recent years. These results can't be explained by the culture and economics of the countries concerned, but are due mainly or entirely to the different national education policies and how they are implemented.
PISA identifies these characteristics in successful education systems:
1. Standardised schools. 2. High levels of autonomy given to headteachers. 3. Highly professional and well paid teachers who are educators first and subject specialists second.
There's something for both right and left in that list. It's all about accountability. Standardised schools that do well or don't do well are exposed and can't either use social reasons as an excuse or rely on selection to coast. Headteachers can't hide behind bureaucracies if their school is not doing so well. Teachers know what they need to do. It's better to have fewer well paid teachers as class sizes don't make any difference to eductional outcomes.
I see the liberal left are up in arms today about the possibility of a few extra Grammar schools - the faux outrage is much akin to that relating to foxhunting - although ironically it is the small number of existing Grammars that are the red meat for 'disgusted of Finsbury park'. for the record my last 17 years of teaching was at a Kent Grammar which has a very socially mixed intake from both the local town and parts of south London easily accessible. The selection tests are not perfect but are actually difficult to coach effectively for unless the IQ is pretty high anyway. We took the few that relatively few ever got a place that was not merited judged by subsequent performance. The success of any kind of school owes much to the skill of the staff and the leadership at the top - my own school was actually under-subscribed and in danger of closure prior to the appointment of the head who was in post when I joined - that all changed within 3/4 years and 3 consecutive OFSTED's rated it as outstandingly successful - and of course, massively over-subscribed.
I think the main argument against grammar schools is that they deplete the comprehensives of their best and brightest role models, thus lowering the chances that pupils at these schools achieve their potential.
There is also the argument that, aside from the coaching arguments, selection by a single test at a certain age is rather arbitrary given the different speeds of development of different children. It's generally a one-way process, with little chance for late developers to enter a grammar school or for those who end up struggling at a grammar school to leave.
Is there any evidence that pupils in those areas that retained grammar schools achieve better grades, on average, than those in areas that didn't, allowing for demographic factors? It'd also be interesting to know how many went on to get degrees, given that university students from comprehensive schools tend to do better then those from grammar schools with the same A levels.
When grammars were the norm, there used to be a rule – at least in some areas – which mandated that the intake from the 11+ would be approximately 50/50 boys and girls (assuming the grammar school in question was co-ed).
In practice, this meant that boys required lower marks than girls to pass the 11+, simply because girls develop quicker academically and boys don't catch up until much later in adolescence. The system was probably wise as far as it goes – an even gender balance in schools/places of study and work is generally a good thing – but I wonder whether such 'positive discrimination' towards male pupils would be allowed to ride today?
Luckily at my primary, throughout Junior level (7 years to 11 years) we had regular "Interval tests" (ie. end of each term), weekly spelling and mental arithmetic tests, and in the run-up to 11-plus, practice verbal/non-verbal reasoning papers. Eight of us in our class went on to Grammar School, inc. yous truly
I don't have strong ideas about it one way or another but the Palace of Westminster was new a
Apart, of course, from us being beholden to a supranational body that forbids us from exercising our sovereignty by bulldozing it, as @Ishmael_X noted earlier.
Because the UK isn't moving confidently into the future (and before you start, it wasn't doing so before the referendum either), and so called 'cutting edge' design offers little in the way of beauty, innovation or aspiration.
The Victorians (and the Georgians in a different way) knew who they were and what they believed, and had a strong code of ethics - a rulebook from the past. That's why their buildings are still revered today when today's stumpy toys will be demolished and forgotten in decades hence.
I don't disagreenother's...
Using your logic we'd bulldoze every thatched cottage in the land and replace them with cutting edge new builds to cut our carbon emissions.
Um no. The vast mdoesn't have to mean a glass geodesic dome.
Yes, let's demolish them all.
A pointless historical irrelevance that's holding us back.
We have thankfully not reached the era when they all need demolishing. But we will one day (you and I will have departed PB forever).
But I still don't get the anti-modernity you hold as though it was a self-evident truth.
If anything is self-evident, perhaps even to small children, it is that people historically have hated anything new and sought solace in the old and familiar, only for subsequent generations to accept what had been new as the comforting old and familiar.
I wouldn't have thought that this was a particularly contentious point.
A desire to preserve what is left of our heritage does not imply one holds a hatred of modernity.
On that I agree, as does UNESCO, which has over-ridden our sovereign right to bulldoze the Houses of Parliament.
I think keep the Palace of Westminster as a testament to a golden age of British History (like Jane Austen's house), and then relocate something glass, and eco-friendly, and carbon neutral to Sunderland for Parliament to sit.
Actually it my doesn't hold that power, we are free to bulldoze any UNESCO site we please. Only Heritage has the power to stop alteration or destruction of buildings and that is a UK organisation.
If there's one sure way of knowing if a policy is bad, is if the pushy middle classes support said policy.
Ergo grammar schools are bad, Mrs May, follow the Gove approach, make schools better for everyone in the state system, not just a select few, follow the Thatcher approach and don't open any more grammar schools.
I don't have strong ideas about it one way or another but the Palace of Westminster was new a
Apart, of course, from us being beholden to a supranational body that forbids us from exercising our sovereignty by bulldozing it, as @Ishmael_X noted earlier.
Because the UK isn't moving confidently into the future (and before you start, it wasn't doing so before the referendum either), and so called 'cutting edge' design offers little in the way of beauty, innovation or aspiration.
The Victorians (and the Georgians in a different way) knew who they were and what they believed, and had a strong code of ethics - a rulebook from the past. That's why their buildings are still revered today when today's stumpy toys will be demolished and forgotten in decades hence.
I don't disagreenother's...
Using your logic we'd bulldoze every thatched cottage in the land and replace them with cutting edge new builds to cut our carbon emissions.
Um no. The vast mdoesn't have to mean a glass geodesic dome.
Yes, let's demolish them all.
A pointless historical irrelevance that's holding us back.
We have thankfully not reached the era when they all need demolishing. But we will one day (you and I will have departed PB forever).
But I still don't get the anti-modernity you hold as though it was a self-evident truth.
If anything is self-evident, perhaps even to small children, it is that people historically have hated anything new and sought solace in the old and familiar, only for subsequent generations to accept what had been new as the comforting old and familiar.
I wouldn't have thought that this was a particularly contentious point.
A desire to preserve what is left of our heritage does not imply one holds a hatred of modernity.
On that I agree, as does UNESCO, which has over-ridden our sovereign right to bulldoze the Houses of Parliament.
I think keep the Palace of Westminster as a testament to a golden age of British History (like Jane Austen's house), and then relocate something glass, and eco-friendly, and carbon neutral to Sunderland for Parliament to sit.
UNESCO holds no particular power over the UK - check Liverpool developments in the pipeline for details.
If there's one sure way of knowing if a policy is bad, is if the pushy middle classes support said policy.
Ergo grammar schools are bad, Mrs May, follow the Gove approach, make schools better for everyone in the state system, not just a select few, follow the Thatcher approach and don't open any more grammar schools.
Australia's historical relationship with the UK is now one of "yesteryear," the country's trade minister told the European Parliament today, as he stressed that doing a free trade deal with the EU was now a greater priority for Australia than doing one with post-Brexit UK.
Some good news for the UK tech sector, Micro Focus is expanding and purchasing HP's enterprise division. Not sure where that leaves HP in the future, consumer products is a low margin game that can turn at any time.
So we sold Autonomy when it was growing fast and a world leade
Yes; a world leader in aggressive accounting policies.
Local champion, maybe; the US leads the way in this with Enron, I think.
"By the summer of 2014, its founders had raised over $400 million from investors, valuing the company at $9 billion.[5][6]
In October 2015, controversy surrounding the company's blood testing process arose after a report in The Wall Street Journal raised concerns about the accuracy of its Edison device. An independent U.S. government review by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported inaccurate testing results and multiple deficiencies in sample handling during a recent inspection.
In June 1, 2016, Forbes revised its estimate of the company's net worth to $800 million.[7][8]
On grammar schools the choice seems to be 'let some fly but thereby reduce chances for the remainder' vs 'hold some back such that others might do better'. It is reduced to an individual good vs collective good argument. Personally I'm not comfortable deliberately holding some back for a 'greater good'. Is that not a bit Stalinist control freaky?
Australia's historical relationship with the UK is now one of "yesteryear," the country's trade minister told the European Parliament today, as he stressed that doing a free trade deal with the EU was now a greater priority for Australia than doing one with post-Brexit UK.
Australia's historical relationship with the UK is now one of "yesteryear," the country's trade minister told the European Parliament today, as he stressed that doing a free trade deal with the EU was now a greater priority for Australia than doing one with post-Brexit UK.
thatched cottages might well become structurally unsound at some point, as the HoC has it seems...
The Palace of Westminster is NOT structurally unsound. The issue is that the internals are a over century old and it needs a complete refit w.r.t. plumbing, heating, electricity, IT cabling, etc. That entails removing every floorboard, every panel, drilling through foundations, etc, etc, A monster job - but one that should see it good for several centuries to come.
There is precisely zero chance that we'll knock it down and recreate a slice of Milton Keynes on the site - it must surely be the most listed building in the UK. So, as someone pointed out upthread, this work will need to be done anyway.
You could, of course move Parliament to another site anyway and turn the Palace into something else. Not quite sure what the point would be though.
AIUI, whilst it is not falling down, there are structural issues, particularly water ingress and the poor condition of the exterior stonework. But yes, it seems the majority of the work in terms of cost will be internal.
Oh, and don't forget Westminster Hall. Anyone who thinks that spectacular gem should be demolished should get a first class ticket to Raqqa.
Has anyone ever been inside Westminster Hall and not had their breath taken away?
Australia's historical relationship with the UK is now one of "yesteryear," the country's trade minister told the European Parliament today, as he stressed that doing a free trade deal with the EU was now a greater priority for Australia than doing one with post-Brexit UK.
Australia's historical relationship with the UK is now one of "yesteryear," the country's trade minister told the European Parliament today, as he stressed that doing a free trade deal with the EU was now a greater priority for Australia than doing one with post-Brexit UK.
Seems to contrast with the warmth of the greeting Mrs May got from Mr Turnbull, the Australian PM, who ousted his former leader and then won a GE (though only just). Indeed, Malcolm Turnbull seemed at times to be the only G20 leader pleased to be in the company of Theresa May.
We can't have a Government where the Minister in charge of Trade is at odds with the Prime Minister..
Australia's historical relationship with the UK is now one of "yesteryear," the country's trade minister told the European Parliament today, as he stressed that doing a free trade deal with the EU was now a greater priority for Australia than doing one with post-Brexit UK.
What he is actually saying is that negotiations with the EU will happen earlier than negotiations with the UK, because under EU rules the latter cannot start until Brexit is complete - not that they are less important.
And anyway one would expect a certain amount of chippiness from a country which came 10th in the Olympics medals table.
On grammar schools the choice seems to be 'let some fly but thereby reduce chances for the remainder' vs 'hold some back such that others might do better'. It is reduced to an individual good vs collective good argument. Personally I'm not comfortable deliberately holding some back for a 'greater good'. Is that not a bit Stalinist control freaky?
Australia's historical relationship with the UK is now one of "yesteryear," the country's trade minister told the European Parliament today, as he stressed that doing a free trade deal with the EU was now a greater priority for Australia than doing one with post-Brexit UK.
I don't have strong ideas about it one way or another but the Palace of Westminster was new a
Apart, of course, from us being beholden to a supranational body that forbids us from exercising our sovereignty by bulldozing it, as @Ishmael_X noted earlier.
Because the UK isn't moving confidently into the future (and before you start, it wasn't doing so before the referendum either), and so called 'cutting edge' design offers little in the way of beauty, innovation or aspiration.
The Victorians (and the Georgians in a different way) knew who they were and what they believed, and had a strong code of ethics - a rulebook from the past. That's why their buildings are still revered today when today's stumpy toys will be demolished and forgotten in decades hence.
I don't disagreenother's...
Using your logic we'd bulldoze every thatched cottage in the land and replace them with cutting edge new builds to cut our carbon emissions.
Um no. The vast mdoesn't have to mean a glass geodesic dome.
Yes, let's demolish them all.
A pointless historical irrelevance that's holding us back.
We have thankfully not reached the era when they all need demolishing. But we will one day (you and I will have departed PB forever).
But I still don't get the anti-modernity you hold as though it was a self-evident truth.
If anything is self-evident, perhaps even to small children, it is that people historically have hated anything new and sought solace in the old and familiar, only for subsequent generations to accept what had been new as the comforting old and familiar.
I wouldn't have thought that this was a particularly contentious point.
A desire to preserve what is left of our heritage does not imply one holds a hatred of modernity.
On that I agree, as does UNESCO, which has over-ridden our sovereign right to bulldoze the Houses of Parliament.
I think keep the Palace of Westminster as a testament to a golden age of British History (like Jane Austen's house), and then relocate something glass, and eco-friendly, and carbon neutral to Sunderland for Parliament to sit.
Actually it my doesn't hold that power, we are free to bulldoze any UNESCO site we please. Only Heritage has the power to stop alteration or destruction of buildings and that is a UK organisation.
If there's one sure way of knowing if a policy is bad, is if the pushy middle classes support said policy.
Ergo grammar schools are bad, Mrs May, follow the Gove approach, make schools better for everyone in the state system, not just a select few, follow the Thatcher approach and don't open any more grammar schools.
Actually, Thatcher would support parental choice.
So new grammar schools should be allowed to open if demand for them is there (not obstructed by the State) but the State should not take a view on what type of school is better, just as Gove did not with his free school policy.
If there's one sure way of knowing if a policy is bad, is if the pushy middle classes support said policy.
Ergo grammar schools are bad, Mrs May, follow the Gove approach, make schools better for everyone in the state system, not just a select few, follow the Thatcher approach and don't open any more grammar schools.
Abolish public schools instead!
#GrammarSchoolLivesMatter
Just sell the damn things to foreign buyers. Why not, we sell everything else.
I don't have strong ideas about it one way or another but the Palace of Westminster was new a
Apart, of course, from us being beholden to a supranational body that forbids us from exercising our sovereignty by bulldozing it, as @Ishmael_X noted earlier.
Because
- a rulebook from the past. That's why their buildings are still revered today when today's stumpy toys will be demolished and forgotten in decades hence.
I don't disagreenother's...
Using your logic we'd bulldoze every thatched cottage in the land and replace them with cutting edge new builds to cut our carbon emissions.
Um no. The vast mdoesn't have to mean a glass geodesic dome.
Yes, let's demolish them all.
A pointless historical irrelevance that's holding us back.
We have thankfully not reached the era when they all need demolishing. But we will one day (you and I will have departed PB forever).
But I still don't get the anti-modernity you hold as though it was a self-evident truth.
If anything is self-evident, perhaps even to small children, it is that people historically have hated anything new and sought solace in the old and familiar, only for subsequent generations to accept what had been new as the comforting old and familiar.
I wouldn't have thought that this was a particularly contentious point.
A desire to preserve what is left of our heritage does not imply one holds a hatred of modernity.
I think keep the Palace of Westminster as a testament to a golden age of British History (like Jane Austen's house), and then relocate something glass, and eco-friendly, and carbon neutral to Sunderland for Parliament to sit.
I love the way you keep returning to UNESCO as if you keep thinking you're making a clever point on Brexit.
I think you are just as interested in having a dig at those who disagree with you for your own entertainment as you are on engaging in substantive discussion of the issues.
So I will leave our discussion here.
So I shall leave our discussion here.
*flounce*
Get over yourself it's an Internet chat room.
I meant everything of substance on modernity. Apart from the Sunderland bit (should be Hull). And I am right, not that it is a particularly contentious point I would have thought.
And I have been put in my place re UNESCO following some nimble googling from Max.
The Victorians (and the Georgians in a different way) knew who they were and what they believed, and had a strong code of ethics - a rulebook from the past. That's why their buildings are still revered today when today's stumpy toys will be demolished and forgotten in decades hence.
Obvious survivorship bias alert.
We've knocked down the crappy Victorian and Georgian buildings and left only the best ones standing.
Am convinced at this stage that May is likely to compromise on EU market access to bring in immigration controls. Whatever deal she ends up doing could give some preferential access to EU citizens, but the idea of anything approximating to the free movement of people between the UK and EU surviving this process is a non-starter.
Restoring the grammar schools is a policy lifted straight from Ukip: I believe that this suggests that May wants to attempt a Unite the Right strategy, and that will only work with a properly-enforced border, and substantial and demonstrable reductions in net immigration rates. This is also why she hasn't used her elevation to the leadership as an opportunity to dump the notorious immigration target, which was made up on the hoof by Cameron and not by her. If she doesn't bring it all the way down below 100,000 then a substantial reduction at least must be demonstrated.
Backsliding towards a soft Brexit will pump rocket fuel into Ukip and/or whatever new populist movement Farage may be incubating, and likely alienate more than enough Tory MPs to wipe out her majority and make the party ungovernable. Everybody remembers what happened to John Major. I stand to be corrected, but I don't think that Theresa May is daft enough to allow herself to be bogged down in the same quagmire.
All of this means that, unless Brexit is so badly mismanaged that it somehow turns into a total catastrophe, or some dreadful accident befalls May, I can see her running as the incumbent in 2020 and significantly increasing the Tories' vote share. There is no effective opposition outside of Scotland, and little prospect of one appearing any time soon.
Comments
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3779567/Anti-terror-police-smash-ISIS-plot-attack-British-soil.html
But I think it reasonable to have a national debate about whether we refit an ageing public building built in a previous era, or commission something new and modern.
Those thatched cottages might well become structurally unsound at some point, as the HoC has it seems, and at that point you have a decision to make. Do a Quinlan Terry, and rebuild a faux-17th century cottage, or do something contemporary, which doesn't have to mean a glass geodesic dome.
Tory Charles Walker has been railing against the boundary changes this morning. If he's going public now, sounds like it will be hard to buy him off or to go for an abstention. It looks like every non-Tory party will unite against them - especially if the idea that the NI changes will favour Sinn Fein, not helpful for securing any NI votes.
Assuming a couple of by-election defeats before 2018, the Tories must be fearing complete defeat on them surely?
Edit: Philip Davies being awkward as well I've read today
Keith Vaz travelled to Goa in India with the Romanian charity worker and parliamentary aide alleged to have paid two male prostitutes on the Labour MP’s behalf.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/07/keith-vaz-the-charity-worker-and-the-mystery-of-their-trips-to-i/
Remember when Keith went missing? Staines kept dropping hints.
http://www.victoriansociety.org.uk/about/history-of-the-victorian-society/
There is no automatic merit in the ancient and no automatic disgrace in the recent. No doubt in decades to come my dislike of post-modern architecture will seem Philistine.
But as has been mentioned "brutalist" might be at one end of the spectrum. I happen to think the Gherkin is extremely elegant (and the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong as a further example).
And as you are aware, of course, you cheeky monkey you, there is no such thing as objectively butt-arse ugly.
Shouldn't we be thinking more boldly?
You could stop people moving house, regulate house prices, enforce busing, class mixing, and prevent parents from imposing their values on their kids. But that would create even greater problems - and lowering of education standards, typical of the Soviet era - whilst those close to those who made the rules would find ways to corrupt them.
And I doubt even Comrade Topping would like that.
A pointless historical irrelevance that's holding us back.
Take Thames Water: that is to invest in a massive new sewer. Who is paying for that? Not, it would seem, the shareholders seeking to make a return. No, it would seem that the shareholders are guaranteed their dividends whilst the customers (as if they had a choice) are going to have their bills increased.
But I still don't get the anti-modernity you hold as though it was a self-evident truth.
If anything is self-evident, perhaps even to small children, it is that people historically have hated anything new and sought solace in the old and familiar, only for subsequent generations to accept what had been new as the comforting old and familiar.
I wouldn't have thought that this was a particularly contentious point.
A bill to enforce the EC recommendations without Parliament the,selves having a say is as long overdue as the boundary changes themselves.
The Palace of Westminster is NOT structurally unsound. The issue is that the internals are a over century old and it needs a complete refit w.r.t. plumbing, heating, electricity, IT cabling, etc. That entails removing every floorboard, every panel, drilling through foundations, etc, etc, A monster job - but one that should see it good for several centuries to come.
There is precisely zero chance that we'll knock it down and recreate a slice of Milton Keynes on the site - it must surely be the most listed building in the UK. So, as someone pointed out upthread, this work will need to be done anyway.
You could, of course move Parliament to another site anyway and turn the Palace into something else. Not quite sure what the point would be though.
I don't really mind some of the current London skyscraper crop - they don't inspire me but they are what they are.
But parliament being rebuilt as a 'reflection of modern Britain' should surely fill anyone with abject horror.
I think keep the Palace of Westminster as a testament to a golden age of British History (like Jane Austen's house), and then relocate something glass, and eco-friendly, and carbon neutral to Sunderland for Parliament to sit.
This is such offensive bollocks. Not having a dig at you, but this argument in general.
What we're really saying is that middle-class parents are more articulate and influential. That implies they participate much more in the governance and fundraising activity of and for the school and can get teachers to listen to them because they share their education level and social background, and may mix with them socially too.
Snobbery is as much of a problem as anything. If poor parents don't know how to engage with raising the quality of the school we shouldn't assume they don't give a shit about their kids we should assume they don't know how and ensure they are listened to and respected.
Edit: OK, I could have been clearer, but I certainly wasn't meaning to imply that only rich parents care about their kids' eduction. I just meant that only those who are rich AND care about their kids' education would move into an expensive house near a good school.
I think you are just as interested in having a dig at those who disagree with you for your own entertainment as you are on engaging in substantive discussion of the issues.
So I will leave our discussion here.
Companies like National Grid and SSE are running much of the infrastructure in this country (as well as in the US and elsewhere). And, being an open, trading country, "open for business", we of course welcome foreign firms to bid for infrastructure business here, or to take over UK companies just as UK companies take over foreign ones. Quite right too: competition drives up standards and lowers costs.
The mega-sewer is being financed by investors in Thames Water and in particular in its bonds, and by banks lending it money. They are taking risk, they of course need some return. Would you prefer it if the whole upfront £4.2bn cost went straight on to consumers' bills as it was incurred?
PISA identifies these characteristics in successful education systems:
1. Standardised schools.
2. High levels of autonomy given to headteachers.
3. Highly professional and well paid teachers who are educators first and subject specialists second.
There's something for both right and left in that list. It's all about accountability. Standardised schools that do well or don't do well are exposed and can't either use social reasons as an excuse or rely on selection to coast. Headteachers can't hide behind bureaucracies if their school is not doing so well. Teachers know what they need to do. It's better to have fewer well paid teachers as class sizes don't make any difference to eductional outcomes.
In practice, this meant that boys required lower marks than girls to pass the 11+, simply because girls develop quicker academically and boys don't catch up until much later in adolescence. The system was probably wise as far as it goes – an even gender balance in schools/places of study and work is generally a good thing – but I wonder whether such 'positive discrimination' towards male pupils would be allowed to ride today?
If there's one sure way of knowing if a policy is bad, is if the pushy middle classes support said policy.
Ergo grammar schools are bad, Mrs May, follow the Gove approach, make schools better for everyone in the state system, not just a select few, follow the Thatcher approach and don't open any more grammar schools.
#GrammarSchoolLivesMatter
Australia's historical relationship with the UK is now one of "yesteryear," the country's trade minister told the European Parliament today, as he stressed that doing a free trade deal with the EU was now a greater priority for Australia than doing one with post-Brexit UK.
http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2016/09/08/australian-trade-minister-says-special-relationship-with-uk
REMAIN 48%
Except the trade deal with the EU will take forever. And then stop.
Whereas the one with the UK can work.
Oh, and don't forget Westminster Hall. Anyone who thinks that spectacular gem should be demolished should get a first class ticket to Raqqa.
Has anyone ever been inside Westminster Hall and not had their breath taken away?
We can't have a Government where the Minister in charge of Trade is at odds with the Prime Minister..
Oh wait...
And anyway one would expect a certain amount of chippiness from a country which came 10th in the Olympics medals table.
NEW THREAD
I have a hunch that our Australian friends will find it quicker to deal with the UK, rather than the rump EU.
So new grammar schools should be allowed to open if demand for them is there (not obstructed by the State) but the State should not take a view on what type of school is better, just as Gove did not with his free school policy.
*flounce*
Get over yourself it's an Internet chat room.
I meant everything of substance on modernity. Apart from the Sunderland bit (should be Hull). And I am right, not that it is a particularly contentious point I would have thought.
And I have been put in my place re UNESCO following some nimble googling from Max.
So chillax.
We've knocked down the crappy Victorian and Georgian buildings and left only the best ones standing.
Restoring the grammar schools is a policy lifted straight from Ukip: I believe that this suggests that May wants to attempt a Unite the Right strategy, and that will only work with a properly-enforced border, and substantial and demonstrable reductions in net immigration rates. This is also why she hasn't used her elevation to the leadership as an opportunity to dump the notorious immigration target, which was made up on the hoof by Cameron and not by her. If she doesn't bring it all the way down below 100,000 then a substantial reduction at least must be demonstrated.
Backsliding towards a soft Brexit will pump rocket fuel into Ukip and/or whatever new populist movement Farage may be incubating, and likely alienate more than enough Tory MPs to wipe out her majority and make the party ungovernable. Everybody remembers what happened to John Major. I stand to be corrected, but I don't think that Theresa May is daft enough to allow herself to be bogged down in the same quagmire.
All of this means that, unless Brexit is so badly mismanaged that it somehow turns into a total catastrophe, or some dreadful accident befalls May, I can see her running as the incumbent in 2020 and significantly increasing the Tories' vote share. There is no effective opposition outside of Scotland, and little prospect of one appearing any time soon.