Everything is fully costed if you beleive there is a magic tax money tree.
It's not even the believability of the figures that I have an issue with.
It took Rayner quite a while to come up with a cost figure, £2.7 billion IIRC, which made me suspect she was looking it up or someone had passed it to her. And she gave no explanation at all of where the money would come from, other than some "it will pay for itself" guff.
Surely it is a basic part of the job of a minister (or their shadow) that they ought to be able to explain how much a policy within their remit will cost, and how it will be paid for?
It's like Abbot and the police numbers; her job, her responsibility, and she could even come up with figures in the ballpark never mind correct.
Perhaps it can come out of the £350 million per week that we will get back from the EU. Such are the figures bandied around...
The Labour party policy platform is in evolution as to direction, not an election manifesto. Not yet anyway.
McDonnell is going to have it all costed up, and will find funding streams. He is not afraid of higher taxes for redistribution, unlike previous folk in the job.
Keeping the Shadow Cabinet on track in terms of promises may be a little trickier.
The big successes at the conference seem to have been Emily Thornberry and Angela Rayner - neither one is on the far-left.
There must be another Angela Rayner in the Labour Party, as you can't possibly mean the person I heard talking on the radio this morning.
She was good on 5live, but I can see not to everyones taste.
The point is on reception at conference. They are the selectorate and she went down well there. Whatever else she is, she is not a posh boy from the establishment, or an Islingtonite hipster!
I rather like her, and she is growing on me. There is a very big difference in being uneducated vs unintelligent. I think she is the former rather than the latter, and she is getting educated all the time. One to watch.
That might be true, but isn't a formal education something of an advantage in a Education Secretary ? Or am I being unduly elitist ?
We don't expect the Defence Secretary to be ex-forces, or the Health Secretary to be a doctor
She was good on 5live, but I can see not to everyones taste.
I thought she was awful. Lots of platitudes, but it took her ages to answer a basic question about the cost of extending child care, and she didn't even try and answer how it would be paid for.
Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm sure it used to be a basic part of the job that a politician could answer the simple questions about their brief at the drop of a hat. In recent months Labour politicians appear to have abandoned that skill.
Nobody from McD's office has told her yet how the child care thing is to be paid for.
To be fair she did repeat "fully costed manifesto" several times.
In any normal job if you were tell your boss it was "fully costed" but couldn't answer how much or where the money was coming from you wouldn't last very long.
Everything is fully costed if you beleive there is a magic tax money tree.
"...no government has to borrow. Quantitative easing proved that. In the UK the government (via the Bank of England) has done £435bn of QE, with the result that the government owns nearly a quarter of its own debt now, effectively cancelling it and all the interest payments due on it in the process. What this means is that another £58bn of QE could be used to cover capital costs of PFI without any difficulty."
The second paragraph of his letter is however, highly optimistic.
She was good on 5live, but I can see not to everyones taste.
I thought she was awful. Lots of platitudes, but it took her ages to answer a basic question about the cost of extending child care, and she didn't even try and answer how it would be paid for.
Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm sure it used to be a basic part of the job that a politician could answer the simple questions about their brief at the drop of a hat. In recent months Labour politicians appear to have abandoned that skill.
Nobody from McD's office has told her yet how the child care thing is to be paid for.
To be fair she did repeat "fully costed manifesto" several times.
In any normal job if you were tell your boss it was "fully costed" but couldn't answer how much or where the money was coming from you wouldn't last very long.
Everything is fully costed if you beleive there is a magic tax money tree.
"...no government has to borrow. Quantitative easing proved that. In the UK the government (via the Bank of England) has done £435bn of QE, with the result that the government owns nearly a quarter of its own debt now, effectively cancelling it and all the interest payments due on it in the process. What this means is that another £58bn of QE could be used to cover capital costs of PFI without any difficulty."
Given the actions of the BoE over the last decade, and in particular the last five years, it is difficult to argue against this.
It's very easy to argue against. QE provided liquidity. Nothing more. What we're talking about is taking assets off 3rd party companies and providing them with a piece of paper which will 'hopefully' be worth real money, effectively nationalisation. With QE that 'paper' never really existed in real form, but with a PFI it would have to.
(I'm reminded of that hospital in Yes Minister that is the recipient of the Florence Nightingale award because it is so well run - despite not having any patients)
Everything is fully costed if you beleive there is a magic tax money tree.
It's not even the believability of the figures that I have an issue with.
It took Rayner quite a while to come up with a cost figure, £2.7 billion IIRC, which made me suspect she was looking it up or someone had passed it to her. And she gave no explanation at all of where the money would come from, other than some "it will pay for itself" guff.
Surely it is a basic part of the job of a minister (or their shadow) that they ought to be able to explain how much a policy within their remit will cost, and how it will be paid for?
It's like Abbot and the police numbers; her job, her responsibility, and she could even come up with figures in the ballpark never mind correct.
Perhaps it can come out of the £350 million per week that we will get back from the EU. Such are the figures bandied around...
The Labour party policy platform is in evolution as to direction, not an election manifesto. Not yet anyway.
McDonnell is going to have it all costed up, and will find funding streams. He is not afraid of higher taxes for redistribution, unlike previous folk in the job.
Keeping the Shadow Cabinet on track in terms of promises may be a little trickier.
The other view is that Shad Cab people like Rayner don't give two hoots about the cost. It is utterly irrelevant to them. These things are going to be done and that's the end of it.
Just catching up on yesterday, did John McDonnell really suggest that he’d be preparing for a run on the pound if Labour got in, or was that a taken-out-of-context reply to a sneaky question from a journalist?
He really said it.
Hopefully OGH is revising his view that Brexit, rather than the revolutionary Bolsheviks on the Labour side of the House, represents the biggest risk to the wealth and security of the UK.
There is no dichotomous relationship between the two. Brexit legitimised post-reality politics and JC took advantage of the new mood.
Corbyn won the 2016 local elections before Brexit but lost the 2017 local and general elections after Brexit
F1: heavy rain showers currently forecast for both qualifying (which starts at 5pm local time) and race (3pm local time). UK times are 10am and 8am respectively.
Tempted to spray some tiny stakes (not even £1) on several drivers to 'win' FP1 each way. If it's wet enough, credible one or more could come off and the odds on Hulkenberg and below would be sufficiently long for a single each way win to make the set green.
Ones I'm looking at are (Ladbrokes, incidentally), Hulkenberg 101, Massa 201, Sainz 251, Palmer 501, Gasly 501, Stroll 751, Ericsson/Wehrlein 2001 (each).
Entirely contingent on weather, but I'm thinking back to FP3 in Italy. Hmm. Although now I think of that, the fact the weather forecast is wet pretty much all weekend may encourage more teams to go out. Against that, they have a limited number of wet weather tyres and won't want to waste any. Hmm. The agony of choice.
Everything is fully costed if you beleive there is a magic tax money tree.
It's not even the believability of the figures that I have an issue with.
It took Rayner quite a while to come up with a cost figure, £2.7 billion IIRC, which made me suspect she was looking it up or someone had passed it to her. And she gave no explanation at all of where the money would come from, other than some "it will pay for itself" guff.
Surely it is a basic part of the job of a minister (or their shadow) that they ought to be able to explain how much a policy within their remit will cost, and how it will be paid for?
It's like Abbot and the police numbers; her job, her responsibility, and she could even come up with figures in the ballpark never mind correct.
Perhaps it can come out of the £350 million per week that we will get back from the EU. Such are the figures bandied around...
The Labour party policy platform is in evolution as to direction, not an election manifesto. Not yet anyway.
McDonnell is going to have it all costed up, and will find funding streams. He is not afraid of higher taxes for redistribution, unlike previous folk in the job.
Keeping the Shadow Cabinet on track in terms of promises may be a little trickier.
Oh yes, I'm sure this programme will be costed. I'd expect people like me to be bearing the brunt of it.
Everything is fully costed if you beleive there is a magic tax money tree.
It's not even the believability of the figures that I have an issue with.
It took Rayner quite a while to come up with a cost figure, £2.7 billion IIRC, which made me suspect she was looking it up or someone had passed it to her. And she gave no explanation at all of where the money would come from, other than some "it will pay for itself" guff.
Surely it is a basic part of the job of a minister (or their shadow) that they ought to be able to explain how much a policy within their remit will cost, and how it will be paid for?
It's like Abbot and the police numbers; her job, her responsibility, and she could even come up with figures in the ballpark never mind correct.
Perhaps it can come out of the £350 million per week that we will get back from the EU. Such are the figures bandied around...
The Labour party policy platform is in evolution as to direction, not an election manifesto. Not yet anyway.
McDonnell is going to have it all costed up, and will find funding streams. He is not afraid of higher taxes for redistribution, unlike previous folk in the job.
Keeping the Shadow Cabinet on track in terms of promises may be a little trickier.
I am looking forward to you explaining how a National Care Service can be set up with just 3 billion pounds of money.
(I'm reminded of that hospital in Yes Minister that is the recipient of the Florence Nightingale award because it is so well run - despite not having any patients)
That's why it is so well run.
Indeed! (I was going to mention the Solihull Project, too, but...)
I oppose Grammars as they are a damaging and stupid waste of taxpayers money. As a taxpayer and voters they are my business. I don't oppose Public Schools because what folk spend their own money on is their business unless it fails Mill's ' Harm Test '. In addition as a left liberal public schools for UK citizens are a mild sort of double taxation. Folk that buy places at them pay extra into the overall education budget while reducing pressure on the state education budget.
Well there's something in that. They should have the their sham charitable status removed though.
The biggest issue is that they perpetuate privilege down through the generations. Aligned to that they mean that we don't necessarily have the brightest and the best in the most influential jobs (just the most expensively educated and best connected)
Rubbish, that charitable status provides bursaries to many who would otherwise be unable to afford the fees
Uhuh? So... allow private schools to maintain chairtable status to reduce their taxes so that they can subsidise a few middle class parents whose elbows are pointy enough to get a reduced fee... or make them pay taxes like any other business, taxes that can help educate the 8m or so children of our country?
Actually many of the bursaries now given out by private schools are to working class parents with bright children
Perhaps it can come out of the £350 million per week that we will get back from the EU. Such are the figures bandied around...
Rayner couldn't even manage that. As I said it's not about believability. A shadow minister ought to be able to answer basic questions about their remit, even if the figures they give in answer are suspect.
She was good on 5live, but I can see not to everyones taste.
I thought she was awful. Lots of platitudes, but it took her ages to answer a basic question about the cost of extending child care, and she didn't even try and answer how it would be paid for.
Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm sure it used to be a basic part of the job that a politician could answer the simple questions about their brief at the drop of a hat. In recent months Labour politicians appear to have abandoned that skill.
Nobody from McD's office has told her yet how the child care thing is to be paid for.
To be fair she did repeat "fully costed manifesto" several times.
In any normal job if you were tell your boss it was "fully costed" but couldn't answer how much or where the money was coming from you wouldn't last very long.
Everything is fully costed if you beleive there is a magic tax money tree.
"...no government has to borrow. Quantitative easing proved that. In the UK the government (via the Bank of England) has done £435bn of QE, with the result that the government owns nearly a quarter of its own debt now, effectively cancelling it and all the interest payments due on it in the process. What this means is that another £58bn of QE could be used to cover capital costs of PFI without any difficulty."
Given the actions of the BoE over the last decade, and in particular the last five years, it is difficult to argue against this.
QE was suppose to be an emergency fix. Relying on it to provide a constant supply of money to the Chancellor for sweeties is a disaster waiting to happen.
We should be unwinding QE now, not ramping it up.
No one has any idea what will happen when the big unwind occurs.
I oppose Grammars as they are a damaging and stupid waste of taxpayers money. As a taxpayer and voters they are my business. I don't oppose Public Schools because what folk spend their own money on is their business unless it fails Mill's ' Harm Test '. In addition as a left liberal public schools for UK citizens are a mild sort of double taxation. Folk that buy places at them pay extra into the overall education budget while reducing pressure on the state education budget.
Well there's something in that. They should have the their sham charitable status removed though.
The biggest issue is that they perpetuate privilege down through the generations. Aligned to that they mean that we don't necessarily have the brightest and the best in the most influential jobs (just the most expensively educated and best connected)
Rubbish, that charitable status provides bursaries to many who would otherwise be unable to afford the fees
Uhuh? So... allow private schools to maintain chairtable status to reduce their taxes so that they can subsidise a few middle class parents whose elbows are pointy enough to get a reduced fee... or make them pay taxes like any other business, taxes that can help educate the 8m or so children of our country?
I think this is not correct. Scholarships to private schools are usually means-tested.
Where you are correct is to point out that there are very few of these scholarships.
I think it is reasonable to expect all the tax saved by private schools to go into means-tested scholarships.
She was good on 5live, but I can see not to everyones taste.
I thought she was awful. Lots of platitudes, but it took her ages to answer a basic question about the cost of extending child care, and she didn't even try and answer how it would be paid for.
Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm sure it used to be a basic part of the job that a politician could answer the simple questions about their brief at the drop of a hat. In recent months Labour politicians appear to have abandoned that skill.
Nobody from McD's office has told her yet how the child care thing is to be paid for.
To be fair she did repeat "fully costed manifesto" several times.
In any normal job if you were tell your boss it was "fully costed" but couldn't answer how much or where the money was coming from you wouldn't last very long.
Everything is fully costed if you beleive there is a magic tax money tree.
"...no government has to borrow. Quantitative easing proved that. In the UK the government (via the Bank of England) has done £435bn of QE, with the result that the government owns nearly a quarter of its own debt now, effectively cancelling it and all the interest payments due on it in the process. What this means is that another £58bn of QE could be used to cover capital costs of PFI without any difficulty."
Given the actions of the BoE over the last decade, and in particular the last five years, it is difficult to argue against this.
QE was suppose to be an emergency fix. Relying on it to provide a constant supply of money to the Chancellor for sweeties is a disaster waiting to happen.
We should be unwinding QE now, not ramping it up.
No one has any idea what will happen when the big unwind occurs.
Put it this way. QE was Balance Sheet accounting. This is talking P+L accounting.
On the day of the Great Leader's most wonderful speech, his next selfless gift to a grateful proletariat, I do not think I have ever felt further from the Labour party. Watching creeps like Len McCluskey and Ken Loach waving away serous accusations of institutional anti-Semitism, dismissing them as attacks on Jeremy, has sickened me to the pit of my stomach. What I still don't see, though, is where the next Corbynite leader is coming from. The big successes at the conference seem to have been Emily Thornberry and Angela Rayner - neither one is on the far-left.
One is however somebody who still claims, in defiance of a Ministry of Defence statement to the contrary, that she was a Colonel in the British Army, and the other in my experience is preternaturally stupid.
If they're the best Labour can offer...
PS I think you owe an apology to creeps for comparing them to McCluskey and Loach.
Having done a bit of googling, I think the Thornberry claims are a bit embarrassing but not that serious,it is rooted in being a lawyer at a military tribunal and claiming some honorary rank in consequence.
Keir Starmer or Thornberry would be fine as leader. Both are accomplished professionals.
A lot of the new generation of Corbynite MP's come across as not very bright. Far from the best the nation can offer.
Owen Jones and Paul Mason would make good Corbynite MP's, in my opinion. It is interesting that they prefer to stay outside of Parliament.
My wife was told when Frimley Park Hospital became a part military hospital that she was an honary Major, when she asked why she was told it made it clear to the military staff where she was in the pecking order.
Was that when they closed down Aldershot Mil in the mid ‘90s?
Yes, any civvies working for or alongside the military get an honorary ‘rank’, because rank means a lot to the military and it’s important they know how to treat each other accordingly. I guess your wife was a consultant or a senior manager, so they gave her a senior manager’s rank to make the point that she was to be treated as a ‘Brass Hat’.
Yes mid 90's she was a staff pharmacist at the time
Apologies for being off topic - and apologies if some think I am making points that I am not entitled to make. I am the quintessential lurker. I have followed this site for well over a decade - indeed Mark Senior's death struck a huge chord with me, given that he seemed to have been here as long as I have, and it was lovely fan site. I rather agree with him about GO's political prowess, but post after post after post on the point, on the uselessness of the current PM, is tedious. It is also pretty stupid for a site based on betting and the identification of value to be dominated by individuals who seem obsessed by partisan one-upmanship... Anyhow, I said that this was off-topic and I apologise again for that. It was just the observation of somebody who has been reading this site for many years but has seen it decline rapidly - not in the quality of headers but in the tedium of the comments - in the last year or so. I quite expect to receive the advice that I can collect my refund on the way out... PS I particularly enjoyed the discussion the other day about an AC/DC powered kettle to address the problems of the US domestic voltage supply. If these discussions continue then, despite my moans above, I will keep returning to this unique site!
You are spot on.
As another long term lurker, I made an account just to agree with this. The combination of lots of interesting posters being banned and Brexit name calling is in serious danger of ruining the site. So many people now just paste links to very tired talking points without any discussion of betting implications. It is making this place just like the rest of the internet.
I oppose Grammars as they are a damaging and stupid waste of taxpayers money. As a taxpayer and voters they are my business. I don't oppose Public Schools because what folk spend their own money on is their business unless it fails Mill's ' Harm Test '. In addition as a left liberal public schools for UK citizens are a mild sort of double taxation. Folk that buy places at them pay extra into the overall education budget while reducing pressure on the state education budget.
Well there's something in that. They should have the their sham charitable status removed though.
The biggest issue is that they perpetuate privilege down through the generations. Aligned to that they mean that we don't necessarily have the brightest and the best in the most influential jobs (just the most expensively educated and best connected)
Rubbish, that charitable status provides bursaries to many who would otherwise be unable to afford the fees
Uhuh? So... allow private schools to maintain chairtable status to reduce their taxes so that they can subsidise a few middle class parents whose elbows are pointy enough to get a reduced fee... or make them pay taxes like any other business, taxes that can help educate the 8m or so children of our country?
That's not the case at my old school, one of the Woodard foundation schools. They use funds from hull-payers to subsidise children from the local area, and it led to a fairly eclectic mix of children. No pointy elbows involved.
When I was there, the headmaster even had a scheme to take in children who had been excluded from other local state schools. In some cases it worked, and the children excelled. In others... not.
Rumour that the non-fee payers were used as a food source during the expedition to Inaccessible Island are believed to be wrong.
I am sure there are good examples - and tbh I think removing private schools' charitable status is alongside foxhunting in relative priority for the country at the moment (albeit it's probably less of a vote-loser for Labour than proposing a foxhunting repeal was for the Tories.)
I oppose Grammars as they are a damaging and stupid waste of taxpayers money. As a taxpayer and voters they are my business. I don't oppose Public Schools because what folk spend their own money on is their business unless it fails Mill's ' Harm Test '. In addition as a left liberal public schools for UK citizens are a mild sort of double taxation. Folk that buy places at them pay extra into the overall education budget while reducing pressure on the state education budget.
Well there's something in that. They should have the their sham charitable status removed though.
The biggest issue is that they perpetuate privilege down through the generations. Aligned to that they mean that we don't necessarily have the brightest and the best in the most influential jobs (just the most expensively educated and best connected)
Rubbish, that charitable status provides bursaries to many who would otherwise be unable to afford the fees
Uhuh? So... allow private schools to maintain chairtable status to reduce their taxes so that they can subsidise a few middle class parents whose elbows are pointy enough to get a reduced fee... or make them pay taxes like any other business, taxes that can help educate the 8m or so children of our country?
That's not the case at my old school, one of the Woodard foundation schools. They use funds from hull-payers to subsidise children from the local area, and it led to a fairly eclectic mix of children. No pointy elbows involved.
When I was there, the headmaster even had a scheme to take in children who had been excluded from other local state schools. In some cases it worked, and the children excelled. In others... not.
Rumour that the non-fee payers were used as a food source during the expedition to Inaccessible Island are believed to be wrong.
I am sure there are good examples - and tbh I think removing private schools' charitable status is alongside foxhunting in relative priority for the country at the moment (albeit it's probably less of a vote-loser for Labour than proposing a foxhunting repeal was for the Tories.)
With a bit of clever timing, Shami and Diane will have their kids out of private school in time to avoid this, and in time to take advantage of free University tuition !
On the day of the Great Leader's most wonderful speech, his next selfless gift to a grateful proletariat, I do not think I have ever felt further from the Labour party. Watching creeps like Len McCluskey and Ken Loach waving away serous accusations of institutional anti-Semitism, dismissing them as attacks on Jeremy, has sickened me to the pit of my stomach. What I still don't see, though, is where the next Corbynite leader is coming from. The big successes at the conference seem to have been Emily Thornberry and Angela Rayner - neither one is on the far-left.
One is however somebody who still claims, in defiance of a Ministry of Defence statement to the contrary, that she was a Colonel in the British Army, and the other in my experience is preternaturally stupid.
If they're the best Labour can offer...
PS I think you owe an apology to creeps for comparing them to McCluskey and Loach.
Having done a bit of googling, I think the Thornberry claims are a bit embarrassing but not that serious,it is rooted in being a lawyer at a military tribunal and claiming some honorary rank in consequence.
Keir Starmer or Thornberry would be fine as leader. Both are accomplished professionals.
A lot of the new generation of Corbynite MP's come across as not very bright. Far from the best the nation can offer.
Owen Jones and Paul Mason would make good Corbynite MP's, in my opinion. It is interesting that they prefer to stay outside of Parliament.
My wife was told when Frimley Park Hospital became a part military hospital that she was an honary Major, when she asked why she was told it made it clear to the military staff where she was in the pecking order.
Was that when they closed down Aldershot Mil in the mid ‘90s?
Yes, any civvies working for or alongside the military get an honorary ‘rank’, because rank means a lot to the military and it’s important they know how to treat each other accordingly. I guess your wife was a consultant or a senior manager, so they gave her a senior manager’s rank to make the point that she was to be treated as a ‘Brass Hat’.
Yes mid 90's she was a staff pharmacist at the time
Ah, a pharmacist, someone who knows how to get the heroin and amphetamines! No wonder the mil got told to treat her with appropriate respect.
Just catching up on yesterday, did John McDonnell really suggest that he’d be preparing for a run on the pound if Labour got in, or was that a taken-out-of-context reply to a sneaky question from a journalist?
He really said it.
Hopefully OGH is revising his view that Brexit, rather than the revolutionary Bolsheviks on the Labour side of the House, represents the biggest risk to the wealth and security of the UK.
There is no dichotomous relationship between the two. Brexit legitimised post-reality politics and JC took advantage of the new mood.
Corbyn won the 2016 local elections before Brexit but lost the 2017 local and general elections after Brexit
The 2016 local election campaign was right in the middle of the Brexit campaign, when loads of right wingers were in a sulk with Dave.
She was good on 5live, but I can see not to everyones taste.
I thought she was awful. Lots of platitudes, but it took her ages to answer a basic question about the cost of extending child care, and she didn't even try and answer how it would be paid for.
Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm sure it used to be a basic part of the job that a politician could answer the simple questions about their brief at the drop of a hat. In recent months Labour politicians appear to have abandoned that skill.
Nobody from McD's office has told her yet how the child care thing is to be paid for.
To be fair she did repeat "fully costed manifesto" several times.
In any normal job if you were tell your boss it was "fully costed" but couldn't answer how much or where the money was coming from you wouldn't last very long.
Everything is fully costed if you beleive there is a magic tax money tree.
"...no government has to borrow. Quantitative easing proved that. In the UK the government (via the Bank of England) has done £435bn of QE, with the result that the government owns nearly a quarter of its own debt now, effectively cancelling it and all the interest payments due on it in the process. What this means is that another £58bn of QE could be used to cover capital costs of PFI without any difficulty."
Given the actions of the BoE over the last decade, and in particular the last five years, it is difficult to argue against this.
It's very easy to argue against. QE provided liquidity. Nothing more. What we're talking about is taking assets off 3rd party companies and providing them with a piece of paper which will 'hopefully' be worth real money, effectively nationalisation. With QE that 'paper' never really existed in real form, but with a PFI it would have to.
The problem is that while that may all be true, that's very difficult to explain to the public.
I oppose Grammars as they are a damaging and stupid waste of taxpayers money. As a taxpayer and voters they are my business. I don't oppose Public Schools because what folk spend their own money on is their business unless it fails Mill's ' Harm Test '. In addition as a left liberal public schools for UK citizens are a mild sort of double taxation. Folk that buy places at them pay extra into the overall education budget while reducing pressure on the state education budget.
Well there's something in that. They should have the their sham charitable status removed though.
The biggest issue is that they perpetuate privilege down through the generations. Aligned to that they mean that we don't necessarily have the brightest and the best in the most influential jobs (just the most expensively educated and best connected)
Rubbish, that charitable status provides bursaries to many who would otherwise be unable to afford the fees
Uhuh? So... allow private schools to maintain chairtable status to reduce their taxes so that they can subsidise a few middle class parents whose elbows are pointy enough to get a reduced fee... or make them pay taxes like any other business, taxes that can help educate the 8m or so children of our country?
That's not the case at my old school, one of the Woodard foundation schools. They use funds from hull-payers to subsidise children from the local area, and it led to a fairly eclectic mix of children. No pointy elbows involved.
When I was there, the headmaster even had a scheme to take in children who had been excluded from other local state schools. In some cases it worked, and the children excelled. In others... not.
Rumour that the non-fee payers were used as a food source during the expedition to Inaccessible Island are believed to be wrong.
I am sure there are good examples - and tbh I think removing private schools' charitable status is alongside foxhunting in relative priority for the country at the moment (albeit it's probably less of a vote-loser for Labour than proposing a foxhunting repeal was for the Tories.)
Removing bursaries for low income pupils just another example of Labour class warfare which would just make private schools even more bastions of the rich
She was good on 5live, but I can see not to everyones taste.
I thought she was awful. Lots of platitudes, but it took her ages to answer a basic question about the cost of extending child care, and she didn't even try and answer how it would be paid for.
Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm sure it used to be a basic part of the job that a politician could answer the simple questions about their brief at the drop of a hat. In recent months Labour politicians appear to have abandoned that skill.
Nobody from McD's office has told her yet how the child care thing is to be paid for.
To be fair she did repeat "fully costed manifesto" several times.
In any normal job if you were tell your boss it was "fully costed" but couldn't answer how much or where the money was coming from you wouldn't last very long.
Everything is fully costed if you beleive there is a magic tax money tree.
"...no government has to borrow. Quantitative easing proved that. In the UK the government (via the Bank of England) has done £435bn of QE, with the result that the government owns nearly a quarter of its own debt now, effectively cancelling it and all the interest payments due on it in the process. What this means is that another £58bn of QE could be used to cover capital costs of PFI without any difficulty."
Given the actions of the BoE over the last decade, and in particular the last five years, it is difficult to argue against this.
It's very easy to argue against. QE provided liquidity. Nothing more. What we're talking about is taking assets off 3rd party companies and providing them with a piece of paper which will 'hopefully' be worth real money, effectively nationalisation. With QE that 'paper' never really existed in real form, but with a PFI it would have to.
The problem is that while that may all be true, that's very difficult to explain to the public.
There is no magic money tree. Thats simple enough,.
Just catching up on yesterday, did John McDonnell really suggest that he’d be preparing for a run on the pound if Labour got in, or was that a taken-out-of-context reply to a sneaky question from a journalist?
He really said it.
Hopefully OGH is revising his view that Brexit, rather than the revolutionary Bolsheviks on the Labour side of the House, represents the biggest risk to the wealth and security of the UK.
There is no dichotomous relationship between the two. Brexit legitimised post-reality politics and JC took advantage of the new mood.
Corbyn won the 2016 local elections before Brexit but lost the 2017 local and general elections after Brexit
The 2016 local election campaign was right in the middle of the Brexit campaign, when loads of right wingers were in a sulk with Dave.
Yes and post Brexit most switched from UKIP to the Tories.
I see Mason has been mouthing off about banning Uber and AirBnB. Now Corbyn is flag flying a robot tax and of course getting rid of all nuclear weapons. It is back to the 70s, not just politically, but technologically.
At this rate, North Korea is going to be more developed than the UK under Chairman Corbyn.
On the day of the Great Leader's most wonderful speech, his next selfless gift to a grateful proletariat, I do not think I have ever felt further from the Labour party. Watching creeps like Len McCluskey and Ken Loach waving away serous accusations of institutional anti-Semitism, dismissing them as attacks on Jeremy, has sickened me to the pit of my stomach. What I still don't see, though, is where the next Corbynite leader is coming from. The big successes at the conference seem to have been Emily Thornberry and Angela Rayner - neither one is on the far-left.
One is however somebody who still claims, in defiance of a Ministry of Defence statement to the contrary, that she was a Colonel in the British Army, and the other in my experience is preternaturally stupid.
If they're the best Labour can offer...
PS I think you owe an apology to creeps for comparing them to McCluskey and Loach.
Having done a bit of googling, I think the Thornberry claims are a bit embarrassing but not that serious,it is rooted in being a lawyer at a military tribunal and claiming some honorary rank in consequence.
Keir Starmer or Thornberry would be fine as leader. Both are accomplished professionals.
A lot of the new generation of Corbynite MP's come across as not very bright. Far from the best the nation can offer.
Owen Jones and Paul Mason would make good Corbynite MP's, in my opinion. It is interesting that they prefer to stay outside of Parliament.
My wife was told when Frimley Park Hospital became a part military hospital that she was an honary Major, when she asked why she was told it made it clear to the military staff where she was in the pecking order.
When my Dad was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Hampshire he was made a full colonel. He was also a veteran of the Honourable Artillery and had reached the dizzy heights of Lance-Bombardier.
At formal dinners he still sat with the NCOs...albeit in his colonel's uniform and sword...
Just catching up on yesterday, did John McDonnell really suggest that he’d be preparing for a run on the pound if Labour got in, or was that a taken-out-of-context reply to a sneaky question from a journalist?
He really said it.
Hopefully OGH is revising his view that Brexit, rather than the revolutionary Bolsheviks on the Labour side of the House, represents the biggest risk to the wealth and security of the UK.
No, because Brexit will be blamed for providing the opportunity.
OGH was a cheerleader for the tripling of student tuition fees.
His reasoning was that young people don't vote but university workers do and they would vote LibDem in gratitude for the extra funding.
An interesting line of thought but one which turned out to be totally wrong and directly led to the rise of Corbyn.
OGH was right that University workers should have been grateful for the extra funding. If you look at number of entry-level Lectureships in the UK Universities, that has increased markedly since the introduction of tuition fees.
In politics, you always hear more from the losers than the winners of any change.
The winners are not grateful, but the losers never forgive you.
(There is a lesson down the road for Jeremy here, as abolishing tuition fees will also produce losers. In fact, at the level of funding currently suggested by Labour, it will lead to substantial job losses in the Universities).
Yes to the last point. It really hasn't dawn on Corbyn's legion of academic friends and cultists that the universities would be fighting for every last penny of funding against other priorities from the Government such as NHS, social care etc etc.
They will lose out in that race. Big time.
The boom days are drawing to a close in HE if they elect Jezza.
Most university workers are far left. They'll find someone other than their hero to blame, if they run out of money.
Just catching up on yesterday, did John McDonnell really suggest that he’d be preparing for a run on the pound if Labour got in, or was that a taken-out-of-context reply to a sneaky question from a journalist?
He really said it.
Hopefully OGH is revising his view that Brexit, rather than the revolutionary Bolsheviks on the Labour side of the House, represents the biggest risk to the wealth and security of the UK.
No, because Brexit will be blamed for providing the opportunity.
OGH was a cheerleader for the tripling of student tuition fees.
His reasoning was that young people don't vote but university workers do and they would vote LibDem in gratitude for the extra funding.
An interesting line of thought but one which turned out to be totally wrong and directly led to the rise of Corbyn.
OGH was right that University workers should have been grateful for the extra funding. If you look at number of entry-level Lectureships in the UK Universities, that has increased markedly since the introduction of tuition fees.
In politics, you always hear more from the losers than the winners of any change.
The winners are not grateful, but the losers never forgive you.
(There is a lesson down the road for Jeremy here, as abolishing tuition fees will also produce losers. In fact, at the level of funding currently suggested by Labour, it will lead to substantial job losses in the Universities).
Yes to the last point. It really hasn't dawn on Corbyn's legion of academic friends and cultists that the universities would be fighting for every last penny of funding against other priorities from the Government such as NHS, social care etc etc.
They will lose out in that race. Big time.
The boom days are drawing to a close in HE if they elect Jezza.
Most university workers are far left. They'll find someone other than their hero to blame, if they run out of money.
It will be the result of the evils of the market and capitalist society....
What I would say is that it is unfair to label all university workers as far left. In my personal experience most in STEM subjects are much more pro-business, soft lefties. It is the social sciences that the hard left Marxist nutters are much more frequently found.
Apologies for being off topic - and apologies if some think I am making points that I am not entitled to make. I am the quintessential lurker. I have followed this site for well over a decade - indeed Mark Senior's death struck a huge chord with me, given that he seemed to have been here as long as I have, and it was lovely fan site. I rather agree with him about GO's political prowess, but post after post after post on the point, on the uselessness of the current PM, is tedious. It is also pretty stupid for a site based on betting and the identification of value to be dominated by individuals who seem obsessed by partisan one-upmanship... Anyhow, I said that this was off-topic and I apologise again for that. It was just the observation of somebody who has been reading this site for many years but has seen it decline rapidly - not in the quality of headers but in the tedium of the comments - in the last year or so. I quite expect to receive the advice that I can collect my refund on the way out... PS I particularly enjoyed the discussion the other day about an AC/DC powered kettle to address the problems of the US domestic voltage supply. If these discussions continue then, despite my moans above, I will keep returning to this unique site!
You are spot on.
As another long term lurker, I made an account just to agree with this. The combination of lots of interesting posters being banned and Brexit name calling is in serious danger of ruining the site. So many people now just paste links to very tired talking points without any discussion of betting implications. It is making this place just like the rest of the internet.
@Eliott and @ JosephG... Welcome onboard as posters.
The name calling is tedious, I agree (and I have been guilty at times - mea culpa).
The way to keep the site interesting is to keep posting interesting comments (as you have) - so do please continue posting. The quality is only as good as the sum of the posts!
Just catching up on yesterday, did John McDonnell really suggest that he’d be preparing for a run on the pound if Labour got in, or was that a taken-out-of-context reply to a sneaky question from a journalist?
He really said it.
Hopefully OGH is revising his view that Brexit, rather than the revolutionary Bolsheviks on the Labour side of the House, represents the biggest risk to the wealth and security of the UK.
No, because Brexit will be blamed for providing the opportunity.
OGH was a cheerleader for the tripling of student tuition fees.
His reasoning was that young people don't vote but university workers do and they would vote LibDem in gratitude for the extra funding.
An interesting line of thought but one which turned out to be totally wrong and directly led to the rise of Corbyn.
OGH was right that University workers should have been grateful for the extra funding. If you look at number of entry-level Lectureships in the UK Universities, that has increased markedly since the introduction of tuition fees.
In politics, you always hear more from the losers than the winners of any change.
The winners are not grateful, but the losers never forgive you.
(There is a lesson down the road for Jeremy here, as abolishing tuition fees will also produce losers. In fact, at the level of funding currently suggested by Labour, it will lead to substantial job losses in the Universities).
Yes to the last point. It really hasn't dawn on Corbyn's legion of academic friends and cultists that the universities would be fighting for every last penny of funding against other priorities from the Government such as NHS, social care etc etc.
They will lose out in that race. Big time.
The boom days are drawing to a close in HE if they elect Jezza.
Most university workers are far left. They'll find someone other than their hero to blame, if they run out of money.
I don't think they are far left.
They believe University education should be free, & they believe that their salaries & working conditions should be competitive with their counterparts in the private US Universities. like Yale and Princeton.
Jeremy's changes will give them some of what they want !
All these tedious, tawdry and dull *facts* about QE. Just put " We printed £350m pw for the Banks. Lets fund our NHS instead." On the side of a bus and chill out.
She was good on 5live, but I can see not to everyones taste.
I thought she was awful. Lots of platitudes, but it took her ages to answer a basic question about the cost of extending child care, and she didn't even try and answer how it would be paid for.
Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm sure it used to be a basic part of the job that a politician could answer the simple questions about their brief at the drop of a hat. In recent months Labour politicians appear to have abandoned that skill.
Nobody from McD's office has told her yet how the child care thing is to be paid for.
To be fair she did repeat "fully costed manifesto" several times.
In any normal job if you were tell your boss it was "fully costed" but couldn't answer how much or where the money was coming from you wouldn't last very long.
Everything is fully costed if you beleive there is a magic tax money tree.
"...no government has to borrow. Quantitative easing proved that. In the UK the government (via the Bank of England) has done £435bn of QE, with the result that the government owns nearly a quarter of its own debt now, effectively cancelling it and all the interest payments due on it in the process. What this means is that another £58bn of QE could be used to cover capital costs of PFI without any difficulty."
Given the actions of the BoE over the last decade, and in particular the last five years, it is difficult to argue against this.
It's very easy to argue against. QE provided liquidity. Nothing more. What we're talking about is taking assets off 3rd party companies and providing them with a piece of paper which will 'hopefully' be worth real money, effectively nationalisation. With QE that 'paper' never really existed in real form, but with a PFI it would have to.
The problem is that while that may all be true, that's very difficult to explain to the public.
There is no magic money tree. .
Unless you are the DUP. In which case, how much would you like?
Just catching up on yesterday, did John McDonnell really suggest that he’d be preparing for a run on the pound if Labour got in, or was that a taken-out-of-context reply to a sneaky question from a journalist?
He really said it.
Hopefully OGH is revising his view that Brexit, rather than the revolutionary Bolsheviks on the Labour side of the House, represents the biggest risk to the wealth and security of the UK.
There is no dichotomous relationship between the two. Brexit legitimised post-reality politics and JC took advantage of the new mood.
Corbyn won the 2016 local elections before Brexit but lost the 2017 local and general elections after Brexit
The 2016 local election campaign was right in the middle of the Brexit campaign, when loads of right wingers were in a sulk with Dave.
They also happened after another failed Osborne Budget.
I oppose Grammars as they are a damaging and stupid waste of taxpayers money. As a taxpayer and voters they are my business. I don't oppose Public Schools because what folk spend their own money on is their business unless it fails Mill's ' Harm Test '. In addition as a left liberal public schools for UK citizens are a mild sort of double taxation. Folk that buy places at them pay extra into the overall education budget while reducing pressure on the state education budget.
Well there's something in that. They should have the their sham charitable status removed though.
The biggest issue is that they perpetuate privilege down through the generations. Aligned to that they mean that we don't necessarily have the brightest and the best in the most influential jobs (just the most expensively educated and best connected)
Rubbish, that charitable status provides bursaries to many who would otherwise be unable to afford the fees
Uhuh? So... allow private schools to maintain chairtable status to reduce their taxes so that they can subsidise a few middle class parents whose elbows are pointy enough to get a reduced fee... or make them pay taxes like any other business, taxes that can help educate the 8m or so children of our country?
I think this is not correct. Scholarships to private schools are usually means-tested.
Where you are correct is to point out that there are very few of these scholarships.
I think it is reasonable to expect all the tax saved by private schools to go into means-tested scholarships.
Quite a common scam by private schools is to admit bright kids on bursaries, who then inflate the results. This means that the rich dumb kids parents get hoodwinked into thinking they are getting an academic step up, but actually no better off than free education on the state.
A second scam to keep the results up is to force out rather than help out borderline kids. Private schools can be ruthless in these manipulations.
Mr. Urquhart, indeed. If Corbyn wins, the UK will cease to be a nuclear-armed power, whilst North Korea will become one. And that's without the other, and numerous, alarming prospects if the wretched fool gets into power.
Just catching up on yesterday, did John McDonnell really suggest that he’d be preparing for a run on the pound if Labour got in, or was that a taken-out-of-context reply to a sneaky question from a journalist?
He really said it.
Hopefully OGH is revising his view that Brexit, rather than the revolutionary Bolsheviks on the Labour side of the House, represents the biggest risk to the wealth and security of the UK.
They are broadly equal and mutually supporting risks.
Mr. Urquhart, indeed. If Corbyn wins, the UK will cease to be a nuclear-armed power, whilst North Korea will become one. And that's without the other, and numerous, alarming prospects if the wretched fool gets into power.
I am seriously worried the more we hear from team twat. Their ideas are just absolutely bonkers.
In recent history, I was generally pretty relaxed about if Tory, Labour or Lib Dems got into powers. Of course I had preferences, but none were proposing totally and utterly f##king bonkers break the system stuff, more tinkering and tweaking with at worst silly flawed ideas that would have added unnecessary burdens without really solving problems i.e. Miliband flawed agenda which was based upon a debunked book regarding inequality.
I oppose Grammars as they are a damaging and stupid waste of taxpayers money. As a taxpayer and voters they are my business. I don't oppose Public Schools because what folk spend their own money on is their business unless it fails Mill's ' Harm Test '. In addition as a left liberal public schools for UK citizens are a mild sort of double taxation. Folk that buy places at them pay extra into the overall education budget while reducing pressure on the state education budget.
Well there's something in that. They should have the their sham charitable status removed though.
The biggest issue is that they perpetuate privilege down through the generations. Aligned to that they mean that we don't necessarily have the brightest and the best in the most influential jobs (just the most expensively educated and best connected)
Rubbish, that charitable status provides bursaries to many who would otherwise be unable to afford the fees
Uhuh? So... allow private schools to maintain chairtable status to reduce their taxes so that they can subsidise a few middle class parents whose elbows are pointy enough to get a reduced fee... or make them pay taxes like any other business, taxes that can help educate the 8m or so children of our country?
I think this is not correct. Scholarships to private schools are usually means-tested.
Where you are correct is to point out that there are very few of these scholarships.
I think it is reasonable to expect all the tax saved by private schools to go into means-tested scholarships.
Quite a common scam by private schools is to admit bright kids on bursaries, who then inflate the results. This means that the rich dumb kids parents get hoodwinked into thinking they are getting an academic step up, but actually no better off than free education on the state.
A second scam to keep the results up is to force out rather than help out borderline kids. Private schools can be ruthless in these manipulations.
I agree they do these things. It is called wealth redistribution.
The rich & the dumb are paying for the bright & the poor. My complaint is that they are not doing enough of it.
(The second point is more serious -- I do know of kids thrown out of independent schools after one year in sixth form as they are going to spoil the A level results That is pretty brutal, and of course very detrimental to the child).
Just catching up on yesterday, did John McDonnell really suggest that he’d be preparing for a run on the pound if Labour got in, or was that a taken-out-of-context reply to a sneaky question from a journalist?
He really said it.
Hopefully OGH is revising his view that Brexit, rather than the revolutionary Bolsheviks on the Labour side of the House, represents the biggest risk to the wealth and security of the UK.
No, because Brexit will be blamed for providing the opportunity.
OGH was a cheerleader for the tripling of student tuition fees.
His reasoning was that young people don't vote but university workers do and they would vote LibDem in gratitude for the extra funding.
An interesting line of thought but one which turned out to be totally wrong and directly led to the rise of Corbyn.
OGH was right that University workers should have been grateful for the extra funding. If you look at number of entry-level Lectureships in the UK Universities, that has increased markedly since the introduction of tuition fees.
In politics, you always hear more from the losers than the winners of any change.
The winners are not grateful, but the losers never forgive you.
(There is a lesson down the road for Jeremy here, as abolishing tuition fees will also produce losers. In fact, at the level of funding currently suggested by Labour, it will lead to substantial job losses in the Universities).
Yes to the last point. It really hasn't dawn on Corbyn's legion of academic friends and cultists that the universities would be fighting for every last penny of funding against other priorities from the Government such as NHS, social care etc etc.
They will lose out in that race. Big time.
The boom days are drawing to a close in HE if they elect Jezza.
Most university workers are far left. They'll find someone other than their hero to blame, if they run out of money.
It will be the result of the evils of the market and capitalist society....
What I would say is that it is unfair to label all university workers as far left. In my personal experience most in STEM subjects are much more pro-business, soft lefties. It is the social sciences that the hard left Marxist nutters are much more frequently found.
On the day of the Great Leader's most wonderful speech, his next selfless gift to a grateful proletariat, I do not think I have ever felt further from the Labour party. Watching creeps like Len McCluskey and Ken Loach waving away serous accusations of institutional anti-Semitism, dismissing them as attacks on Jeremy, has sickened me to the pit of my stomach. What I still don't see, though, is where the next Corbynite leader is coming from. The big successes at the conference seem to have been Emily Thornberry and Angela Rayner - neither one is on the far-left.
One is however somebody who still claims, in defiance of a Ministry of Defence statement to the contrary, that she was a Colonel in the British Army, and the other in my experience is preternaturally stupid.
If they're the best Labour can offer...
PS I think you owe an apology to creeps for comparing them to McCluskey and Loach.
Having done a bit of googling, I think the Thornberry claims are a bit embarrassing but not that serious,it is rooted in being a lawyer at a military tribunal and claiming some honorary rank in consequence.
Keir Starmer or Thornberry would be fine as leader. Both are accomplished professionals.
A lot of the new generation of Corbynite MP's come across as not very bright. Far from the best the nation can offer.
Owen Jones and Paul Mason would make good Corbynite MP's, in my opinion. It is interesting that they prefer to stay outside of Parliament.
My wife was told when Frimley Park Hospital became a part military hospital that she was an honary Major, when she asked why she was told it made it clear to the military staff where she was in the pecking order.
Was that when they closed down Aldershot Mil in the mid ‘90s?
Yes, any civvies working for or alongside the military get an honorary ‘rank’, because rank means a lot to the military and it’s important they know how to treat each other accordingly. I guess your wife was a consultant or a senior manager, so they gave her a senior manager’s rank to make the point that she was to be treated as a ‘Brass Hat’.
Yes mid 90's she was a staff pharmacist at the time
Ah, a pharmacist, someone who knows how to get the heroin and amphetamines! No wonder the mil got told to treat her with appropriate respect.
The military have to approach rank definition in relation to the market outside so a doctor straight out of uni in made a captain and some examples in nursing are equaly strange. I cant remember what a "matron" became but I think it was Lt Colonel
On the day of the Great Leader's most wonderful speech, his next selfless gift to a grateful proletariat, I do not think I have ever felt further from the Labour party. Watching creeps like Len McCluskey and Ken Loach waving away serous accusations of institutional anti-Semitism, dismissing them as attacks on Jeremy, has sickened me to the pit of my stomach. What I still don't see, though, is where the next Corbynite leader is coming from. The big successes at the conference seem to have been Emily Thornberry and Angela Rayner - neither one is on the far-left.
One is however somebody who still claims, in defiance of a Ministry of Defence statement to the contrary, that she was a Colonel in the British Army, and the other in my experience is preternaturally stupid.
If they're the best Labour can offer...
PS I think you owe an apology to creeps for comparing them to McCluskey and Loach.
Having done a bit of googling, I think the Thornberry claims are a bit embarrassing but not that serious,it is rooted in being a lawyer at a military tribunal and claiming some honorary rank in consequence.
Keir Starmer or Thornberry would be fine as leader. Both are accomplished professionals.
A lot of the new generation of Corbynite MP's come across as not very bright. Far from the best the nation can offer.
Owen Jones and Paul Mason would make good Corbynite MP's, in my opinion. It is interesting that they prefer to stay outside of Parliament.
My wife was told when Frimley Park Hospital became a part military hospital that she was an honary Major, when she asked why she was told it made it clear to the military staff where she was in the pecking order.
When my Dad was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Hampshire he was made a full colonel. He was also a veteran of the Honourable Artillery and had reached the dizzy heights of Lance-Bombardier.
At formal dinners he still sat with the NCOs...albeit in his colonel's uniform and sword...
Doesn't the HAC have the best qualified and best healed other ranks in the entire TA?
I oppose Grammars as they are a damaging and stupid waste of taxpayers money. As a taxpayer and voters they are my business. I don't oppose Public Schools because what folk spend their own money on is their business unless it fails Mill's ' Harm Test '. In addition as a left liberal public schools for UK citizens are a mild sort of double taxation. Folk that buy places at them pay extra into the overall education budget while reducing pressure on the state education budget.
Well there's something in that. They should have the their sham charitable status removed though.
The biggest issue is that they perpetuate privilege down through the generations. Aligned to that they mean that we don't necessarily have the brightest and the best in the most influential jobs (just the most expensively educated and best connected)
Rubbish, that charitable status provides bursaries to many who would otherwise be unable to afford the fees
Uhuh? So... allow private schools to maintain chairtable status to reduce their taxes so that they can subsidise a few middle class parents whose elbows are pointy enough to get a reduced fee... or make them pay taxes like any other business, taxes that can help educate the 8m or so children of our country?
I'm not sure that the massive tax savings that Private Schools make add up to a tin of beans.
They pay staff, who pay Income Tax, NI and the schools pay employers NI. They charge / pay VAT as do normal business.
They may get some capital allowances and reductions in corporation tax. Capital gains tax no idea??
In order to save corporation tax you need to make a profit. How much profit is the average Public School making? I would guess enough to keep reserves at sufficient for one terms funding. Diddlysquat is my guess.
They take kids out of the local schools, which is a far greater saving to the system than any taxation lost by charitable status, most offer some facilities and services to the local community, a few are rich, and these usually offer scholarships.
I understand the indignation at the ability of rich parents to buy a head start for their kids, but there is no way that public schools are a net drain on resources when the balance between 'lost tax through charitable status' is set against 'LEA savings through fewer numbers in the schools system'
Just catching up on yesterday, did John McDonnell really suggest that he’d be preparing for a run on the pound if Labour got in, or was that a taken-out-of-context reply to a sneaky question from a journalist?
He really said it.
Hopefully OGH is revising his view that Brexit, rather than the revolutionary Bolsheviks on the Labour side of the House, represents the biggest risk to the wealth and security of the UK.
No, because Brexit will be blamed for providing the opportunity.
OGH was a cheerleader for the tripling of student tuition fees.
His reasoning was that young people don't vote but university workers do and they would vote LibDem in gratitude for the extra funding.
An interesting line of thought but one which turned out to be totally wrong and directly led to the rise of Corbyn.
OGH was right that University workers should have been grateful for the extra funding. If you look at number of entry-level Lectureships in the UK Universities, that has increased markedly since the introduction of tuition fees.
In politics, you always hear more from the losers than the winners of any change.
The winners are not grateful, but the losers never forgive you.
(There is a lesson down the road for Jeremy here, as abolishing tuition fees will also produce losers. In fact, at the level of funding currently suggested by Labour, it will lead to substantial job losses in the Universities).
Yes to the last point. It really hasn't dawn on Corbyn's legion of academic friends and cultists that the universities would be fighting for every last penny of funding against other priorities from the Government such as NHS, social care etc etc.
They will lose out in that race. Big time.
The boom days are drawing to a close in HE if they elect Jezza.
Most university workers are far left. They'll find someone other than their hero to blame, if they run out of money.
I don't think they are far left.
They believe University education should be free, & they believe that their salaries & working conditions should be competitive with their counterparts in the private US Universities. like Yale and Princeton.
Jeremy's changes will give them some of what they want !
The first bit, yes. But I don't know many people on the academic side of HE who think that about salaries and working conditions.
I oppose Grammars as they are a damaging and stupid waste of taxpayers money. As a taxpayer and voters they are my business. I don't oppose Public Schools because what folk spend their own money on is their business unless it fails Mill's ' Harm Test '. In addition as a left liberal public schools for UK citizens are a mild sort of double taxation. Folk that buy places at them pay extra into the overall education budget while reducing pressure on the state education budget.
Well there's something in that. They should have the their sham charitable status removed though.
The biggest issue is that they perpetuate privilege down through the generations. Aligned to that they mean that we don't necessarily have the brightest and the best in the most influential jobs (just the most expensively educated and best connected)
Rubbish, that charitable status provides bursaries to many who would otherwise be unable to afford the fees
Uhuh? So... allow private schools to maintain chairtable status to reduce their taxes so that they can subsidise a few middle class parents whose elbows are pointy enough to get a reduced fee... or make them pay taxes like any other business, taxes that can help educate the 8m or so children of our country?
I think this is not correct. Scholarships to private schools are usually means-tested.
Where you are correct is to point out that there are very few of these scholarships.
I think it is reasonable to expect all the tax saved by private schools to go into means-tested scholarships.
Quite a common scam by private schools is to admit bright kids on bursaries, who then inflate the results. This means that the rich dumb kids parents get hoodwinked into thinking they are getting an academic step up, but actually no better off than free education on the state.
A second scam to keep the results up is to force out rather than help out borderline kids. Private schools can be ruthless in these manipulations.
Unfortunately it is a habit now more commonly seen in state schools with somebody the 'batter's academies having been caught doing this recently
I oppose Grammars as they are a damaging and stupid waste of taxpayers money. As a taxpayer and voters they are my business. I don't oppose Public Schools because what folk spend their own money on is their business unless it fails Mill's ' Harm Test '. In addition as a left liberal public schools for UK citizens are a mild sort of double taxation. Folk that buy places at them pay extra into the overall education budget while reducing pressure on the state education budget.
Well there's something in that. They should have the their sham charitable status removed though.
The biggest issue is that they perpetuate privilege down through the generations. Aligned to that they mean that we don't necessarily have the brightest and the best in the most influential jobs (just the most expensively educated and best connected)
Rubbish, that charitable status provides bursaries to many who would otherwise be unable to afford the fees
Uhuh? So... allow private schools to maintain chairtable status to reduce their taxes so that they can subsidise a few middle class parents whose elbows are pointy enough to get a reduced fee... or make them pay taxes like any other business, taxes that can help educate the 8m or so children of our country?
I think this is not correct. Scholarships to private schools are usually means-tested.
Where you are correct is to point out that there are very few of these scholarships.
I think it is reasonable to expect all the tax saved by private schools to go into means-tested scholarships.
Quite a common scam by private schools is to admit bright kids on bursaries, who then inflate the results. This means that the rich dumb kids parents get hoodwinked into thinking they are getting an academic step up, but actually no better off than free education on the state.
A second scam to keep the results up is to force out rather than help out borderline kids. Private schools can be ruthless in these manipulations.
So, in your first paragraph, they are desperately inveigling "dumb kids" into the school, but in your second they are ruthlessly expelling them again? Seems a bit circular.
No mainstream private school has enough bursaries to "inflate the results", and all of them are selective about entrance whether by rich kids or anyone else.
I oppose Grammars as they are a damaging and stupid waste of taxpayers money. As a taxpayer and voters they are my business. I don't oppose Public Schools because what folk spend their own money on is their business unless it fails Mill's ' Harm Test '. In addition as a left liberal public schools for UK citizens are a mild sort of double taxation. Folk that buy places at them pay extra into the overall education budget while reducing pressure on the state education budget.
Well there's something in that. They should have the their sham charitable status removed though.
The biggest issue is that they perpetuate privilege down through the generations. Aligned to that they mean that we don't necessarily have the brightest and the best in the most influential jobs (just the most expensively educated and best connected)
Rubbish, that charitable status provides bursaries to many who would otherwise be unable to afford the fees
Uhuh? So... allow private schools to maintain chairtable status to reduce their taxes so that they can subsidise a few middle class parents whose elbows are pointy enough to get a reduced fee... or make them pay taxes like any other business, taxes that can help educate the 8m or so children of our country?
I'm not sure that the massive tax savings that Private Schools make add up to a tin of beans.
They pay staff, who pay Income Tax, NI and the schools pay employers NI. They charge / pay VAT as do normal business.
They may get some capital allowances and reductions in corporation tax. Capital gains tax no idea??
In order to save corporation tax you need to make a profit. How much profit is the average Public School making? I would guess enough to keep reserves at sufficient for one terms funding. Diddlysquat is my guess.
They take kids out of the local schools, which is a far greater saving to the system than any taxation lost by charitable status, most offer some facilities and services to the local community, a few are rich, and these usually offer scholarships.
I understand the indignation at the ability of rich parents to buy a head start for their kids, but there is no way that public schools are a net drain on resources when the balance between 'lost tax through charitable status' is set against 'LEA savings through fewer numbers in the schools system'
They are not run for profit, and they couldn't be charities if they were.
Mr. Urquhart, indeed. If Corbyn wins, the UK will cease to be a nuclear-armed power, whilst North Korea will become one. And that's without the other, and numerous, alarming prospects if the wretched fool gets into power.
I am seriously worried the more we hear from team twat. Their ideas are just absolutely bonkers.
In recent history, I was generally pretty relaxed about if Tory, Labour or Lib Dems got into powers. Of course I had preferences, but none were proposing totally and utterly f##king bonkers break the system stuff, more tinkering and tweaking with at worst silly flawed ideas that would have added unnecessary burdens without really solving problems i.e. Miliband flawed agenda which was based upon a debunked book regarding inequality.
Isn't the whole point of Corbynism that it is not tinkering and tweaking with the system?
That's his USP.
As I think Nick P put it - this is a reboot of the system. A roll of the dice.
There seems little doubt that something radical needs to be done on housing and inequality. If not then social pressures may become uncontainable.
My concerns are that:
a) I am not convinced that McD and comrades believe ultimately in parliamentary democracy and that they circumvent this if needs be.
b) the whole air of cult around Corbyn is dangerous.
c) the public need to be fully aware what they might be voting for and the Tories are not up to doing this job because they are so locked up with Brexit.
The first bit, yes. But I don't know many people on the academic side of HE who think that about salaries and working conditions.
Really ?
I mean, you don't know any academics in London who are puzzled that they can't live in Kensington or Bloomsbury near Imperial or UCL, but instead they are commuting from rented accommodation in South Croydon or Peckham.
Mr. Urquhart, indeed. If Corbyn wins, the UK will cease to be a nuclear-armed power, whilst North Korea will become one. And that's without the other, and numerous, alarming prospects if the wretched fool gets into power.
I am seriously worried the more we hear from team twat. Their ideas are just absolutely bonkers.
In recent history, I was generally pretty relaxed about if Tory, Labour or Lib Dems got into powers. Of course I had preferences, but none were proposing totally and utterly f##king bonkers break the system stuff, more tinkering and tweaking with at worst silly flawed ideas that would have added unnecessary burdens without really solving problems i.e. Miliband flawed agenda which was based upon a debunked book regarding inequality.
Isn't the whole point of Corbynism that it is not tinkering and tweaking with the system?
That's his USP.
As I think Nick P put it - this is a reboot of the system. A roll of the dice.
There seems little doubt that something radical needs to be done on housing and inequality. If not then social pressures may become uncontainable.
My concerns are that:
a) I am not convinced that McD and comrades believe ultimately in parliamentary democracy and that they circumvent this if needs be.
b) the whole air of cult around Corbyn is dangerous.
c) the public need to be fully aware what they might be voting for and the Tories are not up to doing this job because they are so locked up with Brexit.
I am totally aware of this...that is why I said last night, it is baby out with the bath water.
I watched an interesting interview with Jordan Peterson the other day in which he talked about this issue across the West.
Everything is fully costed if you beleive there is a magic tax money tree.
It's not even the believability of the figures that I have an issue with.
It took Rayner quite a while to come up with a cost figure, £2.7 billion IIRC, which made me suspect she was looking it up or someone had passed it to her. And she gave no explanation at all of where the money would come from, other than some "it will pay for itself" guff.
Surely it is a basic part of the job of a minister (or their shadow) that they ought to be able to explain how much a policy within their remit will cost, and how it will be paid for?
It's like Abbot and the police numbers; her job, her responsibility, and she could even come up with figures in the ballpark never mind correct.
Perhaps it can come out of the £350 million per week that we will get back from the EU. Such are the figures bandied around...
The Labour party policy platform is in evolution as to direction, not an election manifesto. Not yet anyway.
McDonnell is going to have it all costed up, and will find funding streams. He is not afraid of higher taxes for redistribution, unlike previous folk in the job.
Keeping the Shadow Cabinet on track in terms of promises may be a little trickier.
Oh yes, I'm sure this programme will be costed. I'd expect people like me to be bearing the brunt of it.
We've just bought a 4-bed detached house. We've only achieved that by renting out my previous 2-bed semi-detached house, but we're looking to sell it in the next 2 years before the new tax rules take full effect, and whilst we can still recoup some of the extra duty.
My wife and I own two new cars together, both on PCP contracts. We both work 50+ hours a week, and commute to London every day from the home counties; my wife as a solicitor, myself as a programme manager. Our combined (gross) salaries push us into six figures, and we are planning to start a family.
As far as Corbyn is concerned, we are extremely wealthy. We will be a target. In reality, I earn under £80k, my wife is under £50k, and save hardly anything each month. We are very heavily leveraged, have no investments outside pensions, and we work for all our money as salaried earners.
For the purposes of our financial planning (stress-testing) for a Corbyn administration I am assuming our council tax will triple, our income tax will go up by 5p in the pound, fuel tax will have 10p more on it, and house prices will fall by a third.
My plan is to sell the rental home, end the car PCPs, and try and create a cash buffer of several tens of thousands of pounds to ride out a 5-year Corbyn term. I might send up to half of it overseas to trusted relatives too.
Well there's something in that. They should have the their sham charitable status removed though.
The biggest issue is that they perpetuate privilege down through the generations. Aligned to that they mean that we don't necessarily have the brightest and the best in the most influential jobs (just the most expensively educated and best connected)
Rubbish, that charitable status provides bursaries to many who would otherwise be unable to afford the fees
Uhuh? So... allow private schools to maintain chairtable status to reduce their taxes so that they can subsidise a few middle class parents whose elbows are pointy enough to get a reduced fee... or make them pay taxes like any other business, taxes that can help educate the 8m or so children of our country?
I'm not sure that the massive tax savings that Private Schools make add up to a tin of beans.
They pay staff, who pay Income Tax, NI and the schools pay employers NI. They charge / pay VAT as do normal business.
They may get some capital allowances and reductions in corporation tax. Capital gains tax no idea??
In order to save corporation tax you need to make a profit. How much profit is the average Public School making? I would guess enough to keep reserves at sufficient for one terms funding. Diddlysquat is my guess.
They take kids out of the local schools, which is a far greater saving to the system than any taxation lost by charitable status, most offer some facilities and services to the local community, a few are rich, and these usually offer scholarships.
I understand the indignation at the ability of rich parents to buy a head start for their kids, but there is no way that public schools are a net drain on resources when the balance between 'lost tax through charitable status' is set against 'LEA savings through fewer numbers in the schools system'
They are not run for profit, and they couldn't be charities if they were.
And if they stop being Charities, they’ll put the fees up, concentrate more on overseas students, eliminate public access to facilities and scholarships for bright local kids etc. There’s no public good in any of that happening, the objections to private/public schools are ideological rather than financial or charitable.
So Corbyn Labour is 8 points behind what it was in 2012 when Miliband had a 12 point lead, and 7 points behind Kinnock in 1986 when he had an 11 point lead. Dont cook your rabbit before you catch it.
Comments
The Labour party policy platform is in evolution as to direction, not an election manifesto. Not yet anyway.
McDonnell is going to have it all costed up, and will find funding streams. He is not afraid of higher taxes for redistribution, unlike previous folk in the job.
Keeping the Shadow Cabinet on track in terms of promises may be a little trickier.
Tempted to spray some tiny stakes (not even £1) on several drivers to 'win' FP1 each way. If it's wet enough, credible one or more could come off and the odds on Hulkenberg and below would be sufficiently long for a single each way win to make the set green.
Ones I'm looking at are (Ladbrokes, incidentally), Hulkenberg 101, Massa 201, Sainz 251, Palmer 501, Gasly 501, Stroll 751, Ericsson/Wehrlein 2001 (each).
Entirely contingent on weather, but I'm thinking back to FP3 in Italy. Hmm. Although now I think of that, the fact the weather forecast is wet pretty much all weekend may encourage more teams to go out. Against that, they have a limited number of wet weather tyres and won't want to waste any. Hmm. The agony of choice.
I remember the furore when a WBA player refused a poppy on his shirt. It is a similar dynamic as flag idolatry in the USA.
The loony left is indeed loony.
We should be unwinding QE now, not ramping it up.
No one has any idea what will happen when the big unwind occurs.
Where you are correct is to point out that there are very few of these scholarships.
I think it is reasonable to expect all the tax saved by private schools to go into means-tested scholarships.
They are NOT the same.
Did I mention VAT on school fees... ?
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/04/vat-fees-greedy-private-schools-coming/
At this rate, North Korea is going to be more developed than the UK under Chairman Corbyn.
At formal dinners he still sat with the NCOs...albeit in his colonel's uniform and sword...
What I would say is that it is unfair to label all university workers as far left. In my personal experience most in STEM subjects are much more pro-business, soft lefties. It is the social sciences that the hard left Marxist nutters are much more frequently found.
The name calling is tedious, I agree (and I have been guilty at times - mea culpa).
The way to keep the site interesting is to keep posting interesting comments (as you have) - so do please continue posting. The quality is only as good as the sum of the posts!
They believe University education should be free, & they believe that their salaries & working conditions should be competitive with their counterparts in the private US Universities. like Yale and Princeton.
Jeremy's changes will give them some of what they want !
A second scam to keep the results up is to force out rather than help out borderline kids. Private schools can be ruthless in these manipulations.
Mr. Urquhart, indeed. If Corbyn wins, the UK will cease to be a nuclear-armed power, whilst North Korea will become one. And that's without the other, and numerous, alarming prospects if the wretched fool gets into power.
In recent history, I was generally pretty relaxed about if Tory, Labour or Lib Dems got into powers. Of course I had preferences, but none were proposing totally and utterly f##king bonkers break the system stuff, more tinkering and tweaking with at worst silly flawed ideas that would have added unnecessary burdens without really solving problems i.e. Miliband flawed agenda which was based upon a debunked book regarding inequality.
The rich & the dumb are paying for the bright & the poor. My complaint is that they are not doing enough of it.
(The second point is more serious -- I do know of kids thrown out of independent schools after one year in sixth form as they are going to spoil the A level results That is pretty brutal, and of course very detrimental to the child).
They pay staff, who pay Income Tax, NI and the schools pay employers NI. They charge / pay VAT as do normal business.
They may get some capital allowances and reductions in corporation tax. Capital gains tax no idea??
In order to save corporation tax you need to make a profit. How much profit is the average Public School making? I would guess enough to keep reserves at sufficient for one terms funding. Diddlysquat is my guess.
They take kids out of the local schools, which is a far greater saving to the system than any taxation lost by charitable status, most offer some facilities and services to the local community, a few are rich, and these usually offer scholarships.
I understand the indignation at the ability of rich parents to buy a head start for their kids, but there is no way that public schools are a net drain on resources when the balance between 'lost tax through charitable status' is set against 'LEA savings through fewer numbers in the schools system'
No mainstream private school has enough bursaries to "inflate the results", and all of them are selective about entrance whether by rich kids or anyone else.
That's his USP.
As I think Nick P put it - this is a reboot of the system. A roll of the dice.
There seems little doubt that something radical needs to be done on housing and inequality. If not then social pressures may become uncontainable.
My concerns are that:
a) I am not convinced that McD and comrades believe ultimately in parliamentary democracy and that they circumvent this if needs be.
b) the whole air of cult around Corbyn is dangerous.
c) the public need to be fully aware what they might be voting for and the Tories are not up to doing this job because they are so locked up with Brexit.
I mean, you don't know any academics in London who are puzzled that they can't live in Kensington or Bloomsbury near Imperial or UCL, but instead they are commuting from rented accommodation in South Croydon or Peckham.
I watched an interesting interview with Jordan Peterson the other day in which he talked about this issue across the West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7gKGq_MYpU
My wife and I own two new cars together, both on PCP contracts. We both work 50+ hours a week, and commute to London every day from the home counties; my wife as a solicitor, myself as a programme manager. Our combined (gross) salaries push us into six figures, and we are planning to start a family.
As far as Corbyn is concerned, we are extremely wealthy. We will be a target. In reality, I earn under £80k, my wife is under £50k, and save hardly anything each month. We are very heavily leveraged, have no investments outside pensions, and we work for all our money as salaried earners.
For the purposes of our financial planning (stress-testing) for a Corbyn administration I am assuming our council tax will triple, our income tax will go up by 5p in the pound, fuel tax will have 10p more on it, and house prices will fall by a third.
My plan is to sell the rental home, end the car PCPs, and try and create a cash buffer of several tens of thousands of pounds to ride out a 5-year Corbyn term. I might send up to half of it overseas to trusted relatives too.
NEW THREAD
There’s no public good in any of that happening, the objections to private/public schools are ideological rather than financial or charitable.
It does rather help feed the DM predjudices.