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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Reminder – Next Dirty Dicks do, Next Wednesday Nov 20th 6.3
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Reminder – Next Dirty Dicks do, Next Wednesday Nov 20th 6.30 pm
The next PB gathering will be at the Dirty Dicks pub just across the road from Liverpool Street Station in London from 1830 on Wednesday November 20th. These have become very much a tradition and a good time is generally had by all.
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You should know by now that PB Tories arent picky about where our free drinks come from. Though I bet that JohnO and Richard Nabavi will have exhausted the tab by the time I get there.
It was 15-3, I think, when I posted that. (Slight delay as I'm only occasionally checking the text updates on the BBC).
Aww, tim! I'm hurt. But it's important that people are reminded of your poor betting record to put your analysis of any given political situation into proper context.
The middle class is not the most helpful concept any more, since most people now belong to it. In today's grammar school counties, the top of the middle class does better, while everyone below that does worse ((c) Chris Cook). Poor kids do worse because they tend to fall behind before the eleven plus. This means grammar schools aren't very good for social mobility. But the upper-middle classes who get an opportunity to compete against the very rich will see them as REALLY good for social mobility. I think it's a good example of NIMBY behaviour: a small group who oppose a change that would help everyone else a little, but who themselves have so much to lose.
One thing I did try here once was to examine the reasons why voters keep voting for polite upper-middle class politicians in practice, even though they praise George Galloway/Nigel Farage more. Capture isn't the only necessary explanation. People may want a big cohort of reliable politicians to whom they don't much mind delegating the overwhelming power of the state (red buttons and all that), but also a small cadre of dramatic but essentially amateur scourges to warn the professional majority away from becoming completely disconnected. In an age when professional and managerial politics dominates class politics, we shouldn't expect voters to insist on working-class MPs any more than they insist on working-class accountants or solicitors (not that the modern working-class is very big or homogenous, anyway). When there isn't a strong, united class interest to defend, there's no need to have a politican bound by identity to that interest.
"BBC Sport's chief F1 writer Andrew Benson in Austin:
"Things in Formula 1 you couldn't make up, chapter 327. It was discovered on Friday that Mexican flags being sold on McLaren merchandising stands here for fans who wanted to support Sergio Perez had the image of a cannabis plant on them - the result of someone from what McLaren describe as 'a third company sub-contractor of an agent' the team use searching on the internet for a picture of a Mexican flag to use as the basis for the design and choosing one with the plant on it, thinking it was the genuine one.
"McLaren, who had no input into the situation, have put out a statement of apology and removed the flags. An interesting aside is that the agency is owned by Prodrive, the motorsport company owned by former F1 team boss and current Aston Martin chairman David Richards.""
Hope everyone has a good time though. I am giving serious thought to the Yorkshire proposal.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24970403
"Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has reacted defiantly to the UK's call for an inquiry into alleged human rights abuses, saying "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones"
Pro-government commentators have pointed to alleged abuses under British colonial rule to suggest Britain has no moral right to criticise Sri Lanka"
Mr Rajapaksa made an oblique reference to Bloody Sunday, when 13 civilians were shot dead in Northern Ireland by the British army in 1972"
Disgusting comments. Cameron should stand up and say it like it is.
Anschluss with Bournemouth has been postponed to next year.
Please ignore the following:
Is somebody you toast toast?
http://enormo-haddock.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/america-pre-qualifying.html
Bottas and the Saubers might be interesting in qualifying.
I also want Tonga to beat France. No bets on that, it'd just be amusing.
1. I grant you that the upper middle class gains the most from grammar schools and will tend to pre-dominate within them such schools do provide an opportunity for a minority of very able or motivated lower middle class/working class education to benefit from a selective education, an opportunity they simply would not have without Grammar schools.
2. It is undoubtedly the case that the existence of grammar schools means that the majority of children suffer to a degree from the absence of the abler/more motivated children who have gone to grammar schools. However the fact is that without the existence of the grammar schools there is no ladder for anyone outside the elite to climb up to the elite (whether from the upper middle class or lower social groups).
Therefore the choice is this:
a) Have state funded selective education which creates a ladder for the middle class and below into the elites. That ladder will be dominated by those in the upper end of the middle class but there will still be at least the possibility of those further down to rise up the greasy pole; or
b) retain the comprehensive system, in which case the mass of children will benefit to a small degree from being educated alongside those better motivated and abler than themselves. In this system there will is the opportunity for social mobility within the mass of the population but there will be an opaque (rather than glass because it is very obvious) ceiling between them and the elites, who will be privately educated.
I agree with more or less everything you say in your second paragraph.
He must be REALLY REALLY important - the PM I'm talking about
?rmany, Sweden do not have this. Are they less successful over the last 50 years ? I will happily take what they have achieved.
Fitalass, with whom I agree very little, wrote a very good post on this topic which I totally agreed with.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24972028
Said to be in serious pain!