A friend of mine has reacted to the stamp duty news
'Fuck fuck fuck fuck'. He completed within the lockdown period as he was only moving a street away so could do it without outside help. He's in Leicester too.
Somewhat off topic we received the detail of my son's school's plans for August today. It's going to be different but the amount of work that they have put in is really quite remarkable.
They have analysed how to use every part of the school estate. Bad news is that the 6th year common room is now a class as is the library, the dinner hall and any other nook and cranny.
Kids are not going to be allowed to leave the school for lunch. They must bring a packed lunch and will eat in 2 shifts at their desks, clearing up between shifts.
Where necessary classes will be split over 2 or more classrooms with kids attending by zoom and the teacher going between them. Those that choose not to come in will have to have their cameras on and be seen to be in a work environment dressed appropriately (no logging in from bed).
Kids are going to have blocks of the entire morning or afternoon for each subject reducing the amount of movement around the school.
With this and other steps the whole school will be back in (unless they choose to learn remotely) from the start of term. A lot of the fripperies, such as enrichment periods (where my daughter learned to cook) are gone but the curriculum will be delivered. Much though I admire the thought and effort put into this I can't help wondering if the EIS will allow the Scottish government to do anything remotely similar in the state schools.
That's an excellent summary of the differences between private and state schools, in their attitudes towards dealing with the current situation.
They've breached their 'regular' ICU capacity and are now into what they term phase 2 capacity where they open up extra space and give current staff extra shifts to work. At current trends they will move onto "Phase 3" capacity in about 12 days.
They are hazy at how long they can operate at Phase 3 for but it is a temporary level.
It seems to me that most PMs/Presidents age quickly in office, and Obama was a good example of that. Even Theresa May in her short time as PM aged noticeably. PM Johnson has too but in 12 months he's not only been PM but also had a child and Covid-19, so it is understandable.
She has a gravitas problem reminiscent of Estelle Morris.
I sort of see it, but also worry that, when I think of "gravitas" the honest truth is I rarely think female and regional (or indeed non-white, young etc).
So I am at least open to the possibility that when I think "they lack gravitas" I MIGHT actually be saying more about myself than about the person in question.
Wonder if we'll get the more difficult stuff too like the German Green New Deal?
German health system would be useful, if the UK didn't treat their own as if it were a religion.
Yes we'll have that too. But they spend more remember.
Indeed they do, although the numbers are dependent on many other factors. Tax breaks at 40% for private insurance in the UK would have the same effect on spending, that would be a good starting point.
An insurance model would be fine - so long as the state pays if you can't afford it. I'm far more sanguine about private healthcare than I am about private schools.
Private schools also offer scholarships and bursaries
Small fraction of the intake. The business model is premium product to affluent customers who can afford the price.
Granddaughter three has a 'scholarship' at such a school; amounts to 10% I think of a years fees. Drama and singing IIRC. Got an excellent singing voice at 14.
Keep her away from Simon Cowell whatever else happens.
Somewhat off topic we received the detail of my son's school's plans for August today. It's going to be different but the amount of work that they have put in is really quite remarkable.
They have analysed how to use every part of the school estate. Bad news is that the 6th year common room is now a class as is the library, the dinner hall and any other nook and cranny.
Kids are not going to be allowed to leave the school for lunch. They must bring a packed lunch and will eat in 2 shifts at their desks, clearing up between shifts.
Where necessary classes will be split over 2 or more classrooms with kids attending by zoom and the teacher going between them. Those that choose not to come in will have to have their cameras on and be seen to be in a work environment dressed appropriately (no logging in from bed).
Kids are going to have blocks of the entire morning or afternoon for each subject reducing the amount of movement around the school.
With this and other steps the whole school will be back in (unless they choose to learn remotely) from the start of term. A lot of the fripperies, such as enrichment periods (where my daughter learned to cook) are gone but the curriculum will be delivered. Much though I admire the thought and effort put into this I can't help wondering if the EIS will allow the Scottish government to do anything remotely similar in the state schools.
That's an excellent summary of the differences between private and state schools, in their attitudes towards dealing with the current situation.
More an excellent summary of one private school.
True, but it shows what can be done if the management of the school are so minded.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
The latter sounds eminently tolerable.
I wonder if you're reading "rich Remainers" as "rich Unionists"? I read it as rich Remain in the EUers. The SNP get a lot of votes from that group, and always have (back when they only picked up a handful of MPs, they actually tended to be somewhat better off areas).
She has a gravitas problem reminiscent of Estelle Morris.
I sort of see it, but also worry that, when I think of "gravitas" the honest truth is I rarely think female and regional (or indeed non-white, young etc).
So I am at least open to the possibility that when I think "they lack gravitas" I MIGHT actually be saying more about myself than about the person in question.
Hmm...I may not have let on but I am not the greatest fan of Nicola Sturgeon or her policies. But I wouldn't say she lacks gravitas. Dodd does.
Dodds performance very poor, and Sunak has demolished it in response.
Labour has a better leader than Corbyn now but a worse Shadow Chancellor than McDonnell (even though personally as a Tory I would prefer Dodds)
McDonnell, the best Chancellor we nearly but never had?
Certainly a case can be made.
That has to go on a list.
- Go for it.
As to THE list. Now 8 fold. Will soon need a new sheet of paper at this rate.
What's the list?
Philip's absurdities. But I don't bandy it about. I'm not like that.
You have one or two of your own on wokeism. I don't hold it against you though. I put it down to your age.
Is there a need to be so condescending?
I find it exceptionally rude when people on forums go on about the age of people, in some pathetic attempt to invalidate their opinions because they might be younger.
Age <> intelligence. Look at Trump.
It's banter. Kinabalu understands that. It also enabled me to put up Obama's comments on wokeism. https://youtu.be/qaHLd8de6nM?t=2
Yes that was OK from Barack "about my age" Obama.
As for me and "Woke" - I am of course fighting to reclaim the word from the alt right deplorables.
Would it be easier for an opposition to cross examine Rishi Sunak from the right than from the left?
A right leaning opposition could stand up and say Sunak is consigning our grandchildren to a future of destitution deprivation and penury. What selfishness, what self obsession, what rank recklessnes!
It could tear into him for super wasteful spending on pet socialist projects blah blah blah.
All labour can say is good on yah, son
The Lib Dems could do that, I suppose.
I don;'t think anybody WILL do it, to be honest, but I just wondered if it would be easier to.
Nah, it'd be a bit of a doomed attempt.
We're having a global natural disaster. We can't ignore it, and the necessary actions to minimise its impact have had huge repercussions. Not taking these sorts of steps would be incredibly short-sighted and self-destructive - we'd incur worse and longer-running economic harm, as well as the human cost in the short term.
It's not business as usual, and anyone who tries to suggest a more business-as-usual answer will be rightly accused of not realising the impact, or of being economically blind.
It seems to me that most PMs/Presidents age quickly in office, and Obama was a good example of that. Even Theresa May in her short time as PM aged noticeably. PM Johnson has too but in 12 months he's not only been PM but also had a child and Covid-19, so it is understandable.
Tony Blair was the same. In recent times chillax Cameron seems to have escaped most lightly.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
It's no longer called Stamp Duty in Scotland. When Swinney introduced LBTT with higher rates than rUK for higher valued properties but zero % to a higher threshold, there was much gnashing of teeth and predictions of SNP honeymoons coming to a crashing halt.
Somewhat off topic we received the detail of my son's school's plans for August today. It's going to be different but the amount of work that they have put in is really quite remarkable.
They have analysed how to use every part of the school estate. Bad news is that the 6th year common room is now a class as is the library, the dinner hall and any other nook and cranny.
Kids are not going to be allowed to leave the school for lunch. They must bring a packed lunch and will eat in 2 shifts at their desks, clearing up between shifts.
Where necessary classes will be split over 2 or more classrooms with kids attending by zoom and the teacher going between them. Those that choose not to come in will have to have their cameras on and be seen to be in a work environment dressed appropriately (no logging in from bed).
Kids are going to have blocks of the entire morning or afternoon for each subject reducing the amount of movement around the school.
With this and other steps the whole school will be back in (unless they choose to learn remotely) from the start of term. A lot of the fripperies, such as enrichment periods (where my daughter learned to cook) are gone but the curriculum will be delivered. Much though I admire the thought and effort put into this I can't help wondering if the EIS will allow the Scottish government to do anything remotely similar in the state schools.
That's an excellent summary of the differences between private and state schools, in their attitudes towards dealing with the current situation.
I wonder whether state schools have equivalent amounts of spare space or financial resources. (This is rhetorical, of course they don't). Fwiw my kids' state schools are doing everything they can. The kids will all be back in September, but the reality is that there will be basically no effort at social distancing as it's impossible. So if schools act as breeding grounds for Covid then it is certainly coming back then.
In 2 days it is going to be unsafe and illegal for me to enter a shop without one. Not now of course but in 2 days. And people keep trying to say that the Scottish government is handling this well?
On the plus side since our barbers are all still shut there is plenty of hair to pull.
Somewhat off topic we received the detail of my son's school's plans for August today. It's going to be different but the amount of work that they have put in is really quite remarkable.
They have analysed how to use every part of the school estate. Bad news is that the 6th year common room is now a class as is the library, the dinner hall and any other nook and cranny.
Kids are not going to be allowed to leave the school for lunch. They must bring a packed lunch and will eat in 2 shifts at their desks, clearing up between shifts.
Where necessary classes will be split over 2 or more classrooms with kids attending by zoom and the teacher going between them. Those that choose not to come in will have to have their cameras on and be seen to be in a work environment dressed appropriately (no logging in from bed).
Kids are going to have blocks of the entire morning or afternoon for each subject reducing the amount of movement around the school.
With this and other steps the whole school will be back in (unless they choose to learn remotely) from the start of term. A lot of the fripperies, such as enrichment periods (where my daughter learned to cook) are gone but the curriculum will be delivered. Much though I admire the thought and effort put into this I can't help wondering if the EIS will allow the Scottish government to do anything remotely similar in the state schools.
That's an excellent summary of the differences between private and state schools, in their attitudes towards dealing with the current situation.
More an excellent summary of one private school.
Three: my children`s private schools have arranged things equally impressively.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
The latter sounds eminently tolerable.
Not for her - they previously voted No, and she needs them to be turncoats! Poor Nicola.
Am I right in thinking that in the past you've described yourself as a former Yes supporter and SNP voter? That's quite a wee 'journey' you've been on.
Dodds performance very poor, and Sunak has demolished it in response.
Labour has a better leader than Corbyn now but a worse Shadow Chancellor than McDonnell (even though personally as a Tory I would prefer Dodds)
McDonnell, the best Chancellor we nearly but never had?
Certainly a case can be made.
That has to go on a list.
- Go for it.
As to THE list. Now 8 fold. Will soon need a new sheet of paper at this rate.
From memory only 2 of the 8 were things I've actually said rather than you misrepresenting me.
No. They are all 100% pukka except - arguably - that you said Boris Johnson was "very muscly". That does have a slight element of exaggeration. The exact words were that he was "17 and a half stone but it's mainly muscle".
I absolutely never said "mainly muscle" that is a categorical lie you are saying.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
It's no longer called Stamp Duty in Scotland. When Swinney introduced LBTT with higher rates than rUK for higher valued properties but zero % to a higher threshold, there was much gnashing of teeth and predictions of SNP honeymoons coming to a crashing halt.
We all know how that turned out.
Yes, with a reduction in tax revenue. But who cares, a political point was made, eh?
Wonder if we'll get the more difficult stuff too like the German Green New Deal?
German health system would be useful, if the UK didn't treat their own as if it were a religion.
Yes we'll have that too. But they spend more remember.
Indeed they do, although the numbers are dependent on many other factors. Tax breaks at 40% for private insurance in the UK would have the same effect on spending, that would be a good starting point.
An insurance model would be fine - so long as the state pays if you can't afford it. I'm far more sanguine about private healthcare than I am about private schools.
Private schools also offer scholarships and bursaries
I think the amount they fund is pretty much a billion a year.
I still don't understand people with visceral opposition to independent schools.
'We support high standards, and we're going to do it by destroying the places with the greatest diversity and the highest standards'.
It's about equality of opportunity. If this is truly important to somebody they cannot (without ludicrous contortions of argument) be supportive of private schools.
Why then, not advocate destroying the excessively successful *state* schools. The effect they have on life outcome is just as extreme, in many cases.
The goal is schools of a high and similar standard for everyone with no fees.
So you would need to destroy all non-bog-standard-comprehensives.
Then what do you do about the comprehensives that have private school levels of success? Destroy them as well?
The objective is to "destroy" - as in materially reduce - inequality of opportunity. A drastic reduction in usage of private schools is a necessary but far from sufficient step towards this. Much else is required. The very phrase "bog standard comprehensives" needs to become meaningless. We will simply have schools. Good schools. You're framing things in a slanted defeatist way that presupposes either (i) the objective is to reduce everything to the deeply mediocre or (ii) that the practical effect of reducing inequalities will be to do that.
If you had any experience of comprehensive schools, you would see that the variations are extreme.
Hence catchment areas being a major driver in house prices.
I did go to one. But, yes, a school's results and ambience will always to some extent be impacted by its intake. I'm not arguing for a Brave New World dystopia that eliminates all difference. I'm simply looking to (significantly) reduce the correlation between affluence of parents and material life outcomes.
She has a gravitas problem reminiscent of Estelle Morris.
I sort of see it, but also worry that, when I think of "gravitas" the honest truth is I rarely think female and regional (or indeed non-white, young etc).
So I am at least open to the possibility that when I think "they lack gravitas" I MIGHT actually be saying more about myself than about the person in question.
Hmm...I may not have let on but I am not the greatest fan of Nicola Sturgeon or her policies. But I wouldn't say she lacks gravitas. Dodd does.
Nicola Sturgeon is lent gravitas by her position and performance. When she took over from Salmond, she was very much subject to those sorts of criticism.
I'm also not saying no regional woman can be seen as possessing gravitas. Just that they have to work harder to be seen that way. And that's kind of what prejudice normally is. Relatively few people are explicit or even intentional about it - it's just they end up setting a higher bar.
Take Obama, for example. He is probably the most articulate, very obviously intellectually capable man to be President in recent decades. And I'm afraid he kind of had to be to get the job. Would he have even got close to the Presidency with the intellect and sentence construction of his predecessors (and certainly the incumbent) but with his own skin? No chance, I'd suggest.
She has a gravitas problem reminiscent of Estelle Morris.
I sort of see it, but also worry that, when I think of "gravitas" the honest truth is I rarely think female and regional (or indeed non-white, young etc).
So I am at least open to the possibility that when I think "they lack gravitas" I MIGHT actually be saying more about myself than about the person in question.
Hmm...I may not have let on but I am not the greatest fan of Nicola Sturgeon or her policies. But I wouldn't say she lacks gravitas. Dodd does.
Nicola Sturgeon is lent gravitas by her position and performance. When she took over from Salmond, she was very much subject to those sorts of criticism.
I'm also not saying no regional woman can be seen as possessing gravitas. Just that they have to work harder to be seen that way. And that's kind of what prejudice normally is. Relatively few people are explicit or even intentional about it - it's just they end up setting a higher bar.
Take Obama, for example. He is probably the most articulate, very obviously intellectually capable man to be President in recent decades. And I'm afraid he kind of had to be to get the job. Would he have even got close to the Presidency with the intellect and sentence construction of his predecessors (and certainly the incumbent) but with his own skin? No chance, I'd suggest.
I don't disagree. But as Scar pointed out in the Lion King life is not fair.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
It's no longer called Stamp Duty in Scotland. When Swinney introduced LBTT with higher rates than rUK for higher valued properties but zero % to a higher threshold, there was much gnashing of teeth and predictions of SNP honeymoons coming to a crashing halt.
We all know how that turned out.
Yes, with a reduction in tax revenue. But who cares, a political point was made, eh?
The point was more low income folk and first time buyers paid no tax. If you think that's only low politics, maybe that's why Unionists are so crap at politics.
Wonder if we'll get the more difficult stuff too like the German Green New Deal?
German health system would be useful, if the UK didn't treat their own as if it were a religion.
Yes we'll have that too. But they spend more remember.
Indeed they do, although the numbers are dependent on many other factors. Tax breaks at 40% for private insurance in the UK would have the same effect on spending, that would be a good starting point.
An insurance model would be fine - so long as the state pays if you can't afford it. I'm far more sanguine about private healthcare than I am about private schools.
Private schools also offer scholarships and bursaries
I think the amount they fund is pretty much a billion a year.
I still don't understand people with visceral opposition to independent schools.
'We support high standards, and we're going to do it by destroying the places with the greatest diversity and the highest standards'.
It's about equality of opportunity. If this is truly important to somebody they cannot (without ludicrous contortions of argument) be supportive of private schools.
Why then, not advocate destroying the excessively successful *state* schools. The effect they have on life outcome is just as extreme, in many cases.
The goal is schools of a high and similar standard for everyone with no fees.
So you would need to destroy all non-bog-standard-comprehensives.
Then what do you do about the comprehensives that have private school levels of success? Destroy them as well?
The objective is to "destroy" - as in materially reduce - inequality of opportunity. A drastic reduction in usage of private schools is a necessary but far from sufficient step towards this. Much else is required. The very phrase "bog standard comprehensives" needs to become meaningless. We will simply have schools. Good schools. You're framing things in a slanted defeatist way that presupposes either (i) the objective is to reduce everything to the deeply mediocre or (ii) that the practical effect of reducing inequalities will be to do that.
If you had any experience of comprehensive schools, you would see that the variations are extreme.
Hence catchment areas being a major driver in house prices.
I did go to one. But, yes, a school's results and ambience will always to some extent be impacted by its intake. I'm not arguing for a Brave New World dystopia that eliminates all difference. I'm simply looking to (significantly) reduce the correlation between affluence of parents and quality of schooling.
Large catchment areas and a lottery for state school places would seem to be the obvious place to start then - a real bracing rush of equality for the affluent middle classes. Heady, transformative, and, er, brave...
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
The latter sounds eminently tolerable.
Not for her - they previously voted No, and she needs them to be turncoats! Poor Nicola.
Am I right in thinking that in the past you've described yourself as a former Yes supporter and SNP voter? That's quite a wee 'journey' you've been on.
I'm also a realist. Do you think annoying people you need to vote for you is a good position to be in? You're not a Corbynista.
Wonder if we'll get the more difficult stuff too like the German Green New Deal?
German health system would be useful, if the UK didn't treat their own as if it were a religion.
Yes we'll have that too. But they spend more remember.
Indeed they do, although the numbers are dependent on many other factors. Tax breaks at 40% for private insurance in the UK would have the same effect on spending, that would be a good starting point.
An insurance model would be fine - so long as the state pays if you can't afford it. I'm far more sanguine about private healthcare than I am about private schools.
Private schools also offer scholarships and bursaries
I think the amount they fund is pretty much a billion a year.
I still don't understand people with visceral opposition to independent schools.
'We support high standards, and we're going to do it by destroying the places with the greatest diversity and the highest standards'.
It's about equality of opportunity. If this is truly important to somebody they cannot (without ludicrous contortions of argument) be supportive of private schools.
That's not convincing.
In my experience the State System crushes diversity. I have a child in my own extended family for whom the state was unable to cater, and whom they could not protect from bullying.
And also sometimes equality of opportunity. The parents had to use a specialist independent school in order to get what you call equality of opporunity, involving holiday money spent on education and all the rest.
The implication is you think private schools are better for diversity and equal opportunity. But how can this be when most cannot afford them?
At the moment Sunak is popular for helping businesses with the furlough scheme.
However the test for him will come in December, if Boris ends the transition period and goes to WTO terms and Sunak does not resign he will lose popularity with Remain voters, if however he does resign if no deal is agreed with the EU then he will lose popularity with the Tory membership who will elect the next leader and want a hard Brexit.
His prospects therefore depend on there being a deal with the EU but that also means Boris will probably remain popular enough to stay PM anyway
I wish people would stop pretending WTO is a possibility. It isn't. Bigging it up just plays into Johnson's hands - which is perhaps your motive for doing it?
It allows Johnson to trumpet the inevitable close alignment deal as a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. Also to benefit from relief that something which was never going to happen is not going to happen.
Ah, I see what you are up to.
Interesting that Labour`s monkeying around last year was predicated partly on wanting to avoid WTO which, you say, has never been a possibility.
Yes that's an interesting and accurate comparison. It's all pointless now but my view back then was that the Benn Act, all of that stuff, was bad politics. We - Labour - should have called Johnson's bluff, made him own all the decisions, because he was never doing No Deal.
Current situation re: schools reminds me of those times last year.
Last year Corbyn/McDonnell/Starmer (I suspect Starmer was the brains) had the Conservatives in a head-lock, with the help of the FTPA, only to be released by Swinson`s agreement to hold a GE.
Now we have Starmer doing the same thing again. He has Conservatives in another head-lock - this time over schools. Starmer is ruthless - and I don`t see the Conservative`s escape from this one.
Once again, The tories are in a trap of partly their own devising.
They may get bailed out by the science, one way or the other (which irrespective of the politics, would be a good thing).
It`s not the children that are the issue - it`s the teachers (perhaps, more fairly, the teachers` unions) and the Labour Party.
I hope you are right, but I wonder whether even a vaccine with, say, 70% effectiveness would be sufficient for the unions (and Starmer of course) to say "schools are safe".
A 70% effective vaccine won't see the light of day.
I just plucked 70% out of the air - but I`d be interested to know what you mean, Pulpstar.
I think that what is meant is that a vaccine that only protects 70% of recipients will be classed as a fail and won't be distributed.
It'd be distributed and it would be successful.
It's all down to the numbers.
If R0 is 3 without intervention, and simple interventions could get it down to 2, and heroic interventions down to a bit below 1 (as it is now), then a 70% vaccine would reduce transmission opportunities by 70%.
So R would drop to 0.9 with no interventions, and down to 0.6 with simple interventions. The exponential works for us and the virus dies out. A 70% effective vaccine with no restrictions puts us at about where we are with the restrictions we had a couple of weeks ago.
I'd guess that the threshold for distribution would probably be about 50% effectiveness, as long as there are no safety issues.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
It's no longer called Stamp Duty in Scotland. When Swinney introduced LBTT with higher rates than rUK for higher valued properties but zero % to a higher threshold, there was much gnashing of teeth and predictions of SNP honeymoons coming to a crashing halt.
We all know how that turned out.
Yes, with a reduction in tax revenue. But who cares, a political point was made, eh?
The point was more low income folk and first time buyers payed no tax. If you think that's only low politics, maybe that's why Unionists are so crap at politics.
Thats why they lost the indy ref.... oh wait
Not to worry these once in a generation events are (according to Nats) like buses, miss one and another one or 2 will be along shortly
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
The latter sounds eminently tolerable.
Not for her - they previously voted No, and she needs them to be turncoats! Poor Nicola.
Am I right in thinking that in the past you've described yourself as a former Yes supporter and SNP voter? That's quite a wee 'journey' you've been on.
I'm also a realist. Do you think annoying people you need to vote for you is a good position to be in? You're not a Corbynista.
Your previous observations on how the SNP are doing it all wrong certainly vouchsafe your realism on the subject.
It would be good if SCOTUS were capable of making a 9-0 decision on this rather than the usual 5-4 or 6-3.
If a case comes to the Supreme Court, it's normally because there are good arguments both ways, and hence majority decisions are much more likely. Things that lend themselves to unanimity rarely get to the Supreme Court.
Bear in mind also that the Supreme Court pick their own cases - they aren't typically required to determine something that has been through the state judicial systems. They are "petitioned" (i.e. asked rather than getting 10,000 signatures!) to take cases and take them if they are either substantively important in themselves (e.g. access to Presidential financial records) or resolve important legal controversies.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
It's no longer called Stamp Duty in Scotland. When Swinney introduced LBTT with higher rates than rUK for higher valued properties but zero % to a higher threshold, there was much gnashing of teeth and predictions of SNP honeymoons coming to a crashing halt.
We all know how that turned out.
Yes, with a reduction in tax revenue. But who cares, a political point was made, eh?
The point was more low income folk and first time buyers payed no tax. If you think that's only low politics, maybe that's why Unionists are so crap at politics.
Thats why they lost the indy ref.... oh wait
Not to worry these once in a generation events are (according to Nats) like buses, miss one and another one or 2 will be along shortly
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
It's no longer called Stamp Duty in Scotland. When Swinney introduced LBTT with higher rates than rUK for higher valued properties but zero % to a higher threshold, there was much gnashing of teeth and predictions of SNP honeymoons coming to a crashing halt.
We all know how that turned out.
Yes, with a reduction in tax revenue. But who cares, a political point was made, eh?
The point was more low income folk and first time buyers paid no tax. If you think that's only low politics, maybe that's why Unionists are so crap at politics.
The point of a tax is to raise money, plucking the goose with the least amount of squealing, as Colbert put it. Alternatively, the SNP model is to give freebies to some and tax the better off so severely that they kill the market reducing the tax take. Politics it might be, economics it ain't.
If he didn't read all X pages of plans, that is one thing.
But he seems to say he didn't even know it was going to be covered in cladding when he signed it off!!
Sometimes the choice for witnesses in deciding the best line to take is between
(a) 'I was negligent, careless, incompetent and mistakes were made by a concatenation of circumstances in which lots of others did the same sorts of errors all of which were highly regrettable but cannot be laid at the door of any one of these careless individuals'
and
(b) 'I was competent, knew my stuff, was on top of the brief, and read all the papers while visiting and carefully examining the site and therefore knew perfectly well this block of flats was an unexploded bomb.'
I have a feeling I can work out which line they will be taking between these unpleasant alternatives.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
The latter sounds eminently tolerable.
Not for her - they previously voted No, and she needs them to be turncoats! Poor Nicola.
Am I right in thinking that in the past you've described yourself as a former Yes supporter and SNP voter? That's quite a wee 'journey' you've been on.
I'm also a realist. Do you think annoying people you need to vote for you is a good position to be in? You're not a Corbynista.
Your previous observations on how the SNP are doing it all wrong certainly vouchsafe your realism on the subject.
For the record, I've voted SNP pretty continuously but I think 2019 will be the last time. When Nicola goes it might be that Cherry idiot. I would vote Yes most likely in a legal referendum - which I would expect to lose, but I wouldn't vote in a half-baked referendum that isn't recognised by either Westminster or a decent chunk of the Scottish electorate because of the lack of legitimacy.
I don't see politics as being like football, and I don't like football.
Wonder if we'll get the more difficult stuff too like the German Green New Deal?
German health system would be useful, if the UK didn't treat their own as if it were a religion.
Yes we'll have that too. But they spend more remember.
Indeed they do, although the numbers are dependent on many other factors. Tax breaks at 40% for private insurance in the UK would have the same effect on spending, that would be a good starting point.
An insurance model would be fine - so long as the state pays if you can't afford it. I'm far more sanguine about private healthcare than I am about private schools.
Private schools also offer scholarships and bursaries
I think the amount they fund is pretty much a billion a year.
I still don't understand people with visceral opposition to independent schools.
'We support high standards, and we're going to do it by destroying the places with the greatest diversity and the highest standards'.
It's about equality of opportunity. If this is truly important to somebody they cannot (without ludicrous contortions of argument) be supportive of private schools.
That's not convincing.
In my experience the State System crushes diversity. I have a child in my own extended family for whom the state was unable to cater, and whom they could not protect from bullying.
And also sometimes equality of opportunity. The parents had to use a specialist independent school in order to get what you call equality of opporunity, involving holiday money spent on education and all the rest.
The implication is you think private schools are better for diversity and equal opportunity. But how can this be when most cannot afford them?
Give parents vouchers t cover the cost of education at a state school and then give them choice.
When the State finally admitted the price of "educating" my son it turns out it was possible to send him to a private school which specialised in Aspergers and dyslexia for the same price.
A broken unhappy child is now a thriving young adult because of that choice
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
It's no longer called Stamp Duty in Scotland. When Swinney introduced LBTT with higher rates than rUK for higher valued properties but zero % to a higher threshold, there was much gnashing of teeth and predictions of SNP honeymoons coming to a crashing halt.
We all know how that turned out.
Yes, with a reduction in tax revenue. But who cares, a political point was made, eh?
The point was more low income folk and first time buyers payed no tax. If you think that's only low politics, maybe that's why Unionists are so crap at politics.
Thats why they lost the indy ref.... oh wait
Not to worry these once in a generation events are (according to Nats) like buses, miss one and another one or 2 will be along shortly
What on earth has it got to do with you?
Strange, never stopped you commenting on my posts in the past.
At the moment Sunak is popular for helping businesses with the furlough scheme.
However the test for him will come in December, if Boris ends the transition period and goes to WTO terms and Sunak does not resign he will lose popularity with Remain voters, if however he does resign if no deal is agreed with the EU then he will lose popularity with the Tory membership who will elect the next leader and want a hard Brexit.
His prospects therefore depend on there being a deal with the EU but that also means Boris will probably remain popular enough to stay PM anyway
I wish people would stop pretending WTO is a possibility. It isn't. Bigging it up just plays into Johnson's hands - which is perhaps your motive for doing it?
It allows Johnson to trumpet the inevitable close alignment deal as a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. Also to benefit from relief that something which was never going to happen is not going to happen.
Ah, I see what you are up to.
Interesting that Labour`s monkeying around last year was predicated partly on wanting to avoid WTO which, you say, has never been a possibility.
Yes that's an interesting and accurate comparison. It's all pointless now but my view back then was that the Benn Act, all of that stuff, was bad politics. We - Labour - should have called Johnson's bluff, made him own all the decisions, because he was never doing No Deal.
On that one I agree with you and I said so at the time, the Benn Act was terrible politics. Really played into Boris's hands, Labour were trying to be too clever by half and were completely outfoxed.
What's happened to the "Johnsons" from you? It's been wall-to-wall B word ever since you announced with quite some fanfare that you liked to use both.
Hope you're not trying to be perverse.
I suspect he is trying to rile you.
(Something that I`d never do.)
Hmm. Not sure about either statement. But anyway, there's only one way to rile me with 100% certainty and that is to post a "Trump is such an arse but ..." offering.
She has a gravitas problem reminiscent of Estelle Morris.
I sort of see it, but also worry that, when I think of "gravitas" the honest truth is I rarely think female and regional (or indeed non-white, young etc).
So I am at least open to the possibility that when I think "they lack gravitas" I MIGHT actually be saying more about myself than about the person in question.
Hmm...I may not have let on but I am not the greatest fan of Nicola Sturgeon or her policies. But I wouldn't say she lacks gravitas. Dodd does.
Nicola Sturgeon is lent gravitas by her position and performance. When she took over from Salmond, she was very much subject to those sorts of criticism.
I'm also not saying no regional woman can be seen as possessing gravitas. Just that they have to work harder to be seen that way. And that's kind of what prejudice normally is. Relatively few people are explicit or even intentional about it - it's just they end up setting a higher bar.
Take Obama, for example. He is probably the most articulate, very obviously intellectually capable man to be President in recent decades. And I'm afraid he kind of had to be to get the job. Would he have even got close to the Presidency with the intellect and sentence construction of his predecessors (and certainly the incumbent) but with his own skin? No chance, I'd suggest.
I don't disagree. But as Scar pointed out in the Lion King life is not fair.
True, but my point is simply that you and I can make it more fair by being mindful of the likelihood we'll have implicit prejudices.
At the moment Sunak is popular for helping businesses with the furlough scheme.
However the test for him will come in December, if Boris ends the transition period and goes to WTO terms and Sunak does not resign he will lose popularity with Remain voters, if however he does resign if no deal is agreed with the EU then he will lose popularity with the Tory membership who will elect the next leader and want a hard Brexit.
His prospects therefore depend on there being a deal with the EU but that also means Boris will probably remain popular enough to stay PM anyway
I wish people would stop pretending WTO is a possibility. It isn't. Bigging it up just plays into Johnson's hands - which is perhaps your motive for doing it?
It allows Johnson to trumpet the inevitable close alignment deal as a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. Also to benefit from relief that something which was never going to happen is not going to happen.
Ah, I see what you are up to.
Interesting that Labour`s monkeying around last year was predicated partly on wanting to avoid WTO which, you say, has never been a possibility.
Yes that's an interesting and accurate comparison. It's all pointless now but my view back then was that the Benn Act, all of that stuff, was bad politics. We - Labour - should have called Johnson's bluff, made him own all the decisions, because he was never doing No Deal.
Current situation re: schools reminds me of those times last year.
Last year Corbyn/McDonnell/Starmer (I suspect Starmer was the brains) had the Conservatives in a head-lock, with the help of the FTPA, only to be released by Swinson`s agreement to hold a GE.
Now we have Starmer doing the same thing again. He has Conservatives in another head-lock - this time over schools. Starmer is ruthless - and I don`t see the Conservative`s escape from this one.
Once again, The tories are in a trap of partly their own devising.
I love the idea that the Conservatives were in a head-lock last year, very amusing.
The Tories were always able to call for a General Election and it couldn't ever be realistically opposed. Even if Swinson had continued to refuse the election all Boris ever had to do was to keep tabling his Brexit deal and to keep tabling an election motion. Parliament would have had to vote for one of them eventually, or the anger in the country would have been stoked even further.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
The latter sounds eminently tolerable.
Not for her - they previously voted No, and she needs them to be turncoats! Poor Nicola.
Am I right in thinking that in the past you've described yourself as a former Yes supporter and SNP voter? That's quite a wee 'journey' you've been on.
I'm also a realist. Do you think annoying people you need to vote for you is a good position to be in? You're not a Corbynista.
Your previous observations on how the SNP are doing it all wrong certainly vouchsafe your realism on the subject.
For the record, I've voted SNP pretty continuously but I think 2019 will be the last time. When Nicola goes it might be that Cherry idiot. I would vote Yes most likely in a legal referendum - which I would expect to lose, but I wouldn't vote in a half-baked referendum that isn't recognised by either Westminster or a decent chunk of the Scottish electorate because of the lack of legitimacy.
I don't see politics as being like football, and I don't like football.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
It's no longer called Stamp Duty in Scotland. When Swinney introduced LBTT with higher rates than rUK for higher valued properties but zero % to a higher threshold, there was much gnashing of teeth and predictions of SNP honeymoons coming to a crashing halt.
We all know how that turned out.
Yes, with a reduction in tax revenue. But who cares, a political point was made, eh?
The point was more low income folk and first time buyers paid no tax. If you think that's only low politics, maybe that's why Unionists are so crap at politics.
The point of a tax is to raise money, plucking the goose with the least amount of squealing, as Colbert put it. Alternatively, the SNP model is to give freebies to some and tax the better off so severely that they kill the market reducing the tax take. Politics it might be, economics it ain't.
Pretty ironic on the day a Tory chancellor further turned on the taps to your general approval.
She has a gravitas problem reminiscent of Estelle Morris.
I sort of see it, but also worry that, when I think of "gravitas" the honest truth is I rarely think female and regional (or indeed non-white, young etc).
So I am at least open to the possibility that when I think "they lack gravitas" I MIGHT actually be saying more about myself than about the person in question.
Hmm...I may not have let on but I am not the greatest fan of Nicola Sturgeon or her policies. But I wouldn't say she lacks gravitas. Dodd does.
Nicola Sturgeon is lent gravitas by her position and performance. When she took over from Salmond, she was very much subject to those sorts of criticism.
I'm also not saying no regional woman can be seen as possessing gravitas. Just that they have to work harder to be seen that way. And that's kind of what prejudice normally is. Relatively few people are explicit or even intentional about it - it's just they end up setting a higher bar.
Take Obama, for example. He is probably the most articulate, very obviously intellectually capable man to be President in recent decades. And I'm afraid he kind of had to be to get the job. Would he have even got close to the Presidency with the intellect and sentence construction of his predecessors (and certainly the incumbent) but with his own skin? No chance, I'd suggest.
Gravitas here is (I think) being confused with physical presence, robustness, confidence. Estelle Morris is a good example. Dodds has the same apologetic eye brows, and over all a bit of a nerdy demeanour. As she develops confidence in the role, things will probably improve.
She has a gravitas problem reminiscent of Estelle Morris.
I sort of see it, but also worry that, when I think of "gravitas" the honest truth is I rarely think female and regional (or indeed non-white, young etc).
So I am at least open to the possibility that when I think "they lack gravitas" I MIGHT actually be saying more about myself than about the person in question.
Hmm...I may not have let on but I am not the greatest fan of Nicola Sturgeon or her policies. But I wouldn't say she lacks gravitas. Dodd does.
Nicola Sturgeon is lent gravitas by her position and performance. When she took over from Salmond, she was very much subject to those sorts of criticism.
I'm also not saying no regional woman can be seen as possessing gravitas. Just that they have to work harder to be seen that way. And that's kind of what prejudice normally is. Relatively few people are explicit or even intentional about it - it's just they end up setting a higher bar.
Take Obama, for example. He is probably the most articulate, very obviously intellectually capable man to be President in recent decades. And I'm afraid he kind of had to be to get the job. Would he have even got close to the Presidency with the intellect and sentence construction of his predecessors (and certainly the incumbent) but with his own skin? No chance, I'd suggest.
I don't disagree. But as Scar pointed out in the Lion King life is not fair.
True, but my point is simply that you and I can make it more fair by being mindful of the likelihood we'll have implicit prejudices.
Totally agree. Of course, in my line of work, appearing before Lady Smith or Sheriff Mackie is a very effective cure for any delusions of superiority that I might have been daft enough to have.
Wonder if we'll get the more difficult stuff too like the German Green New Deal?
German health system would be useful, if the UK didn't treat their own as if it were a religion.
Yes we'll have that too. But they spend more remember.
Indeed they do, although the numbers are dependent on many other factors. Tax breaks at 40% for private insurance in the UK would have the same effect on spending, that would be a good starting point.
An insurance model would be fine - so long as the state pays if you can't afford it. I'm far more sanguine about private healthcare than I am about private schools.
Private schools also offer scholarships and bursaries
I think the amount they fund is pretty much a billion a year.
I still don't understand people with visceral opposition to independent schools.
'We support high standards, and we're going to do it by destroying the places with the greatest diversity and the highest standards'.
It's about equality of opportunity. If this is truly important to somebody they cannot (without ludicrous contortions of argument) be supportive of private schools.
Why then, not advocate destroying the excessively successful *state* schools. The effect they have on life outcome is just as extreme, in many cases.
The goal is schools of a high and similar standard for everyone with no fees.
So you would need to destroy all non-bog-standard-comprehensives.
Then what do you do about the comprehensives that have private school levels of success? Destroy them as well?
The objective is to "destroy" - as in materially reduce - inequality of opportunity. A drastic reduction in usage of private schools is a necessary but far from sufficient step towards this. Much else is required. The very phrase "bog standard comprehensives" needs to become meaningless. We will simply have schools. Good schools. You're framing things in a slanted defeatist way that presupposes either (i) the objective is to reduce everything to the deeply mediocre or (ii) that the practical effect of reducing inequalities will be to do that.
If you had any experience of comprehensive schools, you would see that the variations are extreme.
Hence catchment areas being a major driver in house prices.
I did go to one. But, yes, a school's results and ambience will always to some extent be impacted by its intake. I'm not arguing for a Brave New World dystopia that eliminates all difference. I'm simply looking to (significantly) reduce the correlation between affluence of parents and quality of schooling.
Large catchment areas and a lottery for state school places would seem to be the obvious place to start then - a real bracing rush of equality for the affluent middle classes. Heady, transformative, and, er, brave...
Yes. Like it. Schools to be big but flexible. Minimize parental involvement in which school but maximize it in the school.
Wonder if we'll get the more difficult stuff too like the German Green New Deal?
German health system would be useful, if the UK didn't treat their own as if it were a religion.
Yes we'll have that too. But they spend more remember.
Indeed they do, although the numbers are dependent on many other factors. Tax breaks at 40% for private insurance in the UK would have the same effect on spending, that would be a good starting point.
An insurance model would be fine - so long as the state pays if you can't afford it. I'm far more sanguine about private healthcare than I am about private schools.
Private schools also offer scholarships and bursaries
I think the amount they fund is pretty much a billion a year.
I still don't understand people with visceral opposition to independent schools.
'We support high standards, and we're going to do it by destroying the places with the greatest diversity and the highest standards'.
It's about equality of opportunity. If this is truly important to somebody they cannot (without ludicrous contortions of argument) be supportive of private schools.
Why then, not advocate destroying the excessively successful *state* schools. The effect they have on life outcome is just as extreme, in many cases.
The goal is schools of a high and similar standard for everyone with no fees.
So you would need to destroy all non-bog-standard-comprehensives.
Then what do you do about the comprehensives that have private school levels of success? Destroy them as well?
The objective is to "destroy" - as in materially reduce - inequality of opportunity. A drastic reduction in usage of private schools is a necessary but far from sufficient step towards this. Much else is required. The very phrase "bog standard comprehensives" needs to become meaningless. We will simply have schools. Good schools. You're framing things in a slanted defeatist way that presupposes either (i) the objective is to reduce everything to the deeply mediocre or (ii) that the practical effect of reducing inequalities will be to do that.
If you had any experience of comprehensive schools, you would see that the variations are extreme.
Hence catchment areas being a major driver in house prices.
I did go to one. But, yes, a school's results and ambience will always to some extent be impacted by its intake. I'm not arguing for a Brave New World dystopia that eliminates all difference. I'm simply looking to (significantly) reduce the correlation between affluence of parents and quality of schooling.
Large catchment areas and a lottery for state school places would seem to be the obvious place to start then - a real bracing rush of equality for the affluent middle classes. Heady, transformative, and, er, brave...
How large though? How much additional traffic do you want to create? My kids walk to school, which is good for them and the environment. The idea that middle class people move houses for secondary school catchment has some grounding in reality but I think less than some people think. Good schools tend to exist in leafy suburbs with nice Victorian housing more than in the middle of large social housing estates, and it's not rocket science to figure out which area is more likely to have middle class people living in it. It doesn't mean they moved there for the school. In my own area of inner London the state schools are basically all ok, none of them is really outstanding, so I don't think it's a big deal, but it is nice that the kids can walk to school and to their friends' houses and the local parks etc so there would certainly be downsides to shipping them off to schools in other boroughs, especially given already terrible traffic.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
The latter sounds eminently tolerable.
I wonder if you're reading "rich Remainers" as "rich Unionists"? I read it as rich Remain in the EUers. The SNP get a lot of votes from that group, and always have (back when they only picked up a handful of MPs, they actually tended to be somewhat better off areas).
SNP focus groups have revealed that framing the independence question as Leave the UK/Remain in the UK gives a better response (from their perspective) than the original "Do you wish Scotland to be an independent country?". question used in the referendum.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
The latter sounds eminently tolerable.
I wonder if you're reading "rich Remainers" as "rich Unionists"? I read it as rich Remain in the EUers. The SNP get a lot of votes from that group, and always have (back when they only picked up a handful of MPs, they actually tended to be somewhat better off areas).
SNP focus groups have revealed that framing the independence question as Leave the UK/Remain in the UK gives a better response (from their perspective) than the original "Do you wish Scotland to be an independent country?". question used in the referendum.
Interesting when you consider that Leave the EU/Remain in the EU was chosen as it was considered a Yes or No question gave an advantage to the Yes side.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
It's no longer called Stamp Duty in Scotland. When Swinney introduced LBTT with higher rates than rUK for higher valued properties but zero % to a higher threshold, there was much gnashing of teeth and predictions of SNP honeymoons coming to a crashing halt.
We all know how that turned out.
Yes, with a reduction in tax revenue. But who cares, a political point was made, eh?
The point was more low income folk and first time buyers paid no tax. If you think that's only low politics, maybe that's why Unionists are so crap at politics.
The point of a tax is to raise money, plucking the goose with the least amount of squealing, as Colbert put it. Alternatively, the SNP model is to give freebies to some and tax the better off so severely that they kill the market reducing the tax take. Politics it might be, economics it ain't.
Pretty ironic on the day a Tory chancellor further turned on the taps to your general approval.
I think if Scottish schools were still providing an education that response might be marked "could do better".
She has a gravitas problem reminiscent of Estelle Morris.
I sort of see it, but also worry that, when I think of "gravitas" the honest truth is I rarely think female and regional (or indeed non-white, young etc).
So I am at least open to the possibility that when I think "they lack gravitas" I MIGHT actually be saying more about myself than about the person in question.
Hmm...I may not have let on but I am not the greatest fan of Nicola Sturgeon or her policies. But I wouldn't say she lacks gravitas. Dodd does.
Nicola Sturgeon is lent gravitas by her position and performance. When she took over from Salmond, she was very much subject to those sorts of criticism.
I'm also not saying no regional woman can be seen as possessing gravitas. Just that they have to work harder to be seen that way. And that's kind of what prejudice normally is. Relatively few people are explicit or even intentional about it - it's just they end up setting a higher bar.
Take Obama, for example. He is probably the most articulate, very obviously intellectually capable man to be President in recent decades. And I'm afraid he kind of had to be to get the job. Would he have even got close to the Presidency with the intellect and sentence construction of his predecessors (and certainly the incumbent) but with his own skin? No chance, I'd suggest.
Gravitas here is (I think) being confused with physical presence, robustness, confidence. Estelle Morris is a good example. Dodds has the same apologetic eye brows, and over all a bit of a nerdy demeanour. As she develops confidence in the role, things will probably improve.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
The latter sounds eminently tolerable.
I wonder if you're reading "rich Remainers" as "rich Unionists"? I read it as rich Remain in the EUers. The SNP get a lot of votes from that group, and always have (back when they only picked up a handful of MPs, they actually tended to be somewhat better off areas).
SNP focus groups have revealed that framing the independence question as Leave the UK/Remain in the UK gives a better response (from their perspective) than the original "Do you wish Scotland to be an independent country?". question used in the referendum.
Interesting when you consider that Leave the EU/Remain in the EU was chosen as it was considered a Yes or No question gave an advantage to the Yes side.
Have to admit I'm somewhat sceptical. The Scottish independence polling I've seen which uses Leave/Remain as opposed to Yes/No tends to be more favourable for the unionist option.
Wonder if we'll get the more difficult stuff too like the German Green New Deal?
German health system would be useful, if the UK didn't treat their own as if it were a religion.
Yes we'll have that too. But they spend more remember.
Indeed they do, although the numbers are dependent on many other factors. Tax breaks at 40% for private insurance in the UK would have the same effect on spending, that would be a good starting point.
An insurance model would be fine - so long as the state pays if you can't afford it. I'm far more sanguine about private healthcare than I am about private schools.
Private schools also offer scholarships and bursaries
I think the amount they fund is pretty much a billion a year.
I still don't understand people with visceral opposition to independent schools.
'We support high standards, and we're going to do it by destroying the places with the greatest diversity and the highest standards'.
It's about equality of opportunity. If this is truly important to somebody they cannot (without ludicrous contortions of argument) be supportive of private schools.
Why then, not advocate destroying the excessively successful *state* schools. The effect they have on life outcome is just as extreme, in many cases.
The goal is schools of a high and similar standard for everyone with no fees.
So you would need to destroy all non-bog-standard-comprehensives.
Then what do you do about the comprehensives that have private school levels of success? Destroy them as well?
The objective is to "destroy" - as in materially reduce - inequality of opportunity. A drastic reduction in usage of private schools is a necessary but far from sufficient step towards this. Much else is required. The very phrase "bog standard comprehensives" needs to become meaningless. We will simply have schools. Good schools. You're framing things in a slanted defeatist way that presupposes either (i) the objective is to reduce everything to the deeply mediocre or (ii) that the practical effect of reducing inequalities will be to do that.
If you had any experience of comprehensive schools, you would see that the variations are extreme.
Hence catchment areas being a major driver in house prices.
I did go to one. But, yes, a school's results and ambience will always to some extent be impacted by its intake. I'm not arguing for a Brave New World dystopia that eliminates all difference. I'm simply looking to (significantly) reduce the correlation between affluence of parents and quality of schooling.
Large catchment areas and a lottery for state school places would seem to be the obvious place to start then - a real bracing rush of equality for the affluent middle classes. Heady, transformative, and, er, brave...
Yes. Like it. Schools to be big but flexible. Minimize parental involvement in which school but maximize it in the school.
You may join the working party.
I think you're barking up the wrong tree in defining the quality of education by the resources attached. I attended secondary school just as the wonder of 'electronic white boards' was taking over our schools. They added naff all to the quality of our education. They were probably a net loss because they were a distraction. The same is true of most material investment in schools - the expenditure doesn't result in the output of better educated young people. By contrast, African schools with corrugated roofs, mud floors, and a 6 mile walk there and back, are (citation needed) probably imparting the three 'r's better than many of their UK counterparts. The schools in our own recent past certainly were.
Kids need to be well nourished, well disciplined, and well taught. They don't need expensive buildings or tech.
Somewhat off topic we received the detail of my son's school's plans for August today. It's going to be different but the amount of work that they have put in is really quite remarkable.
They have analysed how to use every part of the school estate. Bad news is that the 6th year common room is now a class as is the library, the dinner hall and any other nook and cranny.
Kids are not going to be allowed to leave the school for lunch. They must bring a packed lunch and will eat in 2 shifts at their desks, clearing up between shifts.
Where necessary classes will be split over 2 or more classrooms with kids attending by zoom and the teacher going between them. Those that choose not to come in will have to have their cameras on and be seen to be in a work environment dressed appropriately (no logging in from bed).
Kids are going to have blocks of the entire morning or afternoon for each subject reducing the amount of movement around the school.
With this and other steps the whole school will be back in (unless they choose to learn remotely) from the start of term. A lot of the fripperies, such as enrichment periods (where my daughter learned to cook) are gone but the curriculum will be delivered. Much though I admire the thought and effort put into this I can't help wondering if the EIS will allow the Scottish government to do anything remotely similar in the state schools.
Just walked past a private school near me in north London, at kicking out time. Takes ages 5-13.
The kids, parents and teachers were all mingling as normal: laughing, waving, chattng. There was absolutely zero attempt at social distancing.
The only clue that this was not a normal school day was the one parent wearing a mask. One.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
The latter sounds eminently tolerable.
I wonder if you're reading "rich Remainers" as "rich Unionists"? I read it as rich Remain in the EUers. The SNP get a lot of votes from that group, and always have (back when they only picked up a handful of MPs, they actually tended to be somewhat better off areas).
SNP focus groups have revealed that framing the independence question as Leave the UK/Remain in the UK gives a better response (from their perspective) than the original "Do you wish Scotland to be an independent country?". question used in the referendum.
That is suprising as that is not what the Scotland in Union polling shows.
When they as the question as "Leave/Remain in the UK" then "Leave" gets a significantly lower response rate than "Yes"
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
The latter sounds eminently tolerable.
I wonder if you're reading "rich Remainers" as "rich Unionists"? I read it as rich Remain in the EUers. The SNP get a lot of votes from that group, and always have (back when they only picked up a handful of MPs, they actually tended to be somewhat better off areas).
No I took it as EU Remainers. Probably should not have commented given my lack of knowledge of how Remain/Leave maps to Yes/No in Scotland.
PS - good brace of posts on GRAVITAS. So often does mean a bloke of a certain type who is used to being listened to.
LOL I love it when a journalist gets completely shown up as to not knowing what they're talking about. This is a brilliant thread trying to get the idea of a "sandwich tax" talked about - worth reading through to the end!
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
It's no longer called Stamp Duty in Scotland. When Swinney introduced LBTT with higher rates than rUK for higher valued properties but zero % to a higher threshold, there was much gnashing of teeth and predictions of SNP honeymoons coming to a crashing halt.
We all know how that turned out.
Yes, with a reduction in tax revenue. But who cares, a political point was made, eh?
The point was more low income folk and first time buyers paid no tax. If you think that's only low politics, maybe that's why Unionists are so crap at politics.
The point of a tax is to raise money, plucking the goose with the least amount of squealing, as Colbert put it. Alternatively, the SNP model is to give freebies to some and tax the better off so severely that they kill the market reducing the tax take. Politics it might be, economics it ain't.
Pretty ironic on the day a Tory chancellor further turned on the taps to your general approval.
I think if Scottish schools were still providing an education that response might be marked "could do better".
LOL I love it when a journalist gets completely shown up as to not knowing what they're talking about. This is a brilliant thread trying to get the idea of a "sandwich tax" talked about - worth reading through to the end!
Somewhat off topic we received the detail of my son's school's plans for August today. It's going to be different but the amount of work that they have put in is really quite remarkable.
They have analysed how to use every part of the school estate. Bad news is that the 6th year common room is now a class as is the library, the dinner hall and any other nook and cranny.
Kids are not going to be allowed to leave the school for lunch. They must bring a packed lunch and will eat in 2 shifts at their desks, clearing up between shifts.
Where necessary classes will be split over 2 or more classrooms with kids attending by zoom and the teacher going between them. Those that choose not to come in will have to have their cameras on and be seen to be in a work environment dressed appropriately (no logging in from bed).
Kids are going to have blocks of the entire morning or afternoon for each subject reducing the amount of movement around the school.
With this and other steps the whole school will be back in (unless they choose to learn remotely) from the start of term. A lot of the fripperies, such as enrichment periods (where my daughter learned to cook) are gone but the curriculum will be delivered. Much though I admire the thought and effort put into this I can't help wondering if the EIS will allow the Scottish government to do anything remotely similar in the state schools.
That's an excellent summary of the differences between private and state schools, in their attitudes towards dealing with the current situation.
More an excellent summary of one private school.
Three: my children`s private schools have arranged things equally impressively.
Probably is indicative. Private schools need to keep those fees coming in.
BTW, when I argue against private schools I do not one iota blame people for choosing them. I simply believe we would as a society be better off if such a choice was not made.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
It's no longer called Stamp Duty in Scotland. When Swinney introduced LBTT with higher rates than rUK for higher valued properties but zero % to a higher threshold, there was much gnashing of teeth and predictions of SNP honeymoons coming to a crashing halt.
We all know how that turned out.
Yes, with a reduction in tax revenue. But who cares, a political point was made, eh?
The point was more low income folk and first time buyers paid no tax. If you think that's only low politics, maybe that's why Unionists are so crap at politics.
The point of a tax is to raise money, plucking the goose with the least amount of squealing, as Colbert put it. Alternatively, the SNP model is to give freebies to some and tax the better off so severely that they kill the market reducing the tax take. Politics it might be, economics it ain't.
Pretty ironic on the day a Tory chancellor further turned on the taps to your general approval.
I think if Scottish schools were still providing an education that response might be marked "could do better".
I'm sure as a Unionist your general outlook is 'couldn't do any worse', so I'll take that as a positive.
Taiwan has been doing well in this crisis and I missed this item when it came out more than two months ago. Taiwan's vice president, who is also a leading epidemiologist said: "It’s not necessary to stop all activities. As long as more than 50% of the population reduces 50% of their social contacts then the outbreak can be controlled. They can go to school, to work but must reduce non-essential recreation and social contact." https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/taiwans-vice-president-chen-chien-jen-countrys-fight-covid-19/
If the economists' models are right about interaction between the epidemic and the behavioural response, which they seem to be, then the level of herd immunity may be well below what has been assumed based on epidemiological models with constant parameters. As John Cochrane says in a comment on his blog, "Economists vs. epidemiologists has a long history. Economists point out that disease transmission is not a biological constant, but varies with human behavior. And human behavior varies predictably in response to incentives (and information)."
Wonder if we'll get the more difficult stuff too like the German Green New Deal?
German health system would be useful, if the UK didn't treat their own as if it were a religion.
Yes we'll have that too. But they spend more remember.
Indeed they do, although the numbers are dependent on many other factors. Tax breaks at 40% for private insurance in the UK would have the same effect on spending, that would be a good starting point.
An insurance model would be fine - so long as the state pays if you can't afford it. I'm far more sanguine about private healthcare than I am about private schools.
Private schools also offer scholarships and bursaries
I think the amount they fund is pretty much a billion a year.
I still don't understand people with visceral opposition to independent schools.
'We support high standards, and we're going to do it by destroying the places with the greatest diversity and the highest standards'.
It's about equality of opportunity. If this is truly important to somebody they cannot (without ludicrous contortions of argument) be supportive of private schools.
That's not convincing.
In my experience the State System crushes diversity. I have a child in my own extended family for whom the state was unable to cater, and whom they could not protect from bullying.
And also sometimes equality of opportunity. The parents had to use a specialist independent school in order to get what you call equality of opporunity, involving holiday money spent on education and all the rest.
The implication is you think private schools are better for diversity and equal opportunity. But how can this be when most cannot afford them?
Give parents vouchers t cover the cost of education at a state school and then give them choice.
When the State finally admitted the price of "educating" my son it turns out it was possible to send him to a private school which specialised in Aspergers and dyslexia for the same price.
A broken unhappy child is now a thriving young adult because of that choice
Vouchers for all that you can't top up would be worth looking at.
But I prefer my "everyone goes to their big beautiful local school" vision.
Dodds performance very poor, and Sunak has demolished it in response.
Labour has a better leader than Corbyn now but a worse Shadow Chancellor than McDonnell (even though personally as a Tory I would prefer Dodds)
McDonnell, the best Chancellor we nearly but never had?
Certainly a case can be made.
That has to go on a list.
- Go for it.
As to THE list. Now 8 fold. Will soon need a new sheet of paper at this rate.
From memory only 2 of the 8 were things I've actually said rather than you misrepresenting me.
No. They are all 100% pukka except - arguably - that you said Boris Johnson was "very muscly". That does have a slight element of exaggeration. The exact words were that he was "17 and a half stone but it's mainly muscle".
I absolutely never said "mainly muscle" that is a categorical lie you are saying.
Not a lie. But happy to move on and not mention it again for ages.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
The latter sounds eminently tolerable.
I wonder if you're reading "rich Remainers" as "rich Unionists"? I read it as rich Remain in the EUers. The SNP get a lot of votes from that group, and always have (back when they only picked up a handful of MPs, they actually tended to be somewhat better off areas).
SNP focus groups have revealed that framing the independence question as Leave the UK/Remain in the UK gives a better response (from their perspective) than the original "Do you wish Scotland to be an independent country?". question used in the referendum.
The UK Brexit referendum question was written by the Electoral Commission, as the most impartial way they could find to ask the question. Asking a question to which the answer is Yes/No has been determined by many studies to be slightly biased towards the Yes response. The Scottish referendum question was specified in the Scottish Government legislation, and was basically written by Alex Salmond.
At the moment Sunak is popular for helping businesses with the furlough scheme.
However the test for him will come in December, if Boris ends the transition period and goes to WTO terms and Sunak does not resign he will lose popularity with Remain voters, if however he does resign if no deal is agreed with the EU then he will lose popularity with the Tory membership who will elect the next leader and want a hard Brexit.
His prospects therefore depend on there being a deal with the EU but that also means Boris will probably remain popular enough to stay PM anyway
I wish people would stop pretending WTO is a possibility. It isn't. Bigging it up just plays into Johnson's hands - which is perhaps your motive for doing it?
It allows Johnson to trumpet the inevitable close alignment deal as a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. Also to benefit from relief that something which was never going to happen is not going to happen.
Ah, I see what you are up to.
Interesting that Labour`s monkeying around last year was predicated partly on wanting to avoid WTO which, you say, has never been a possibility.
Yes that's an interesting and accurate comparison. It's all pointless now but my view back then was that the Benn Act, all of that stuff, was bad politics. We - Labour - should have called Johnson's bluff, made him own all the decisions, because he was never doing No Deal.
Current situation re: schools reminds me of those times last year.
Last year Corbyn/McDonnell/Starmer (I suspect Starmer was the brains) had the Conservatives in a head-lock, with the help of the FTPA, only to be released by Swinson`s agreement to hold a GE.
Now we have Starmer doing the same thing again. He has Conservatives in another head-lock - this time over schools. Starmer is ruthless - and I don`t see the Conservative`s escape from this one.
Once again, The tories are in a trap of partly their own devising.
I love the idea that the Conservatives were in a head-lock last year, very amusing.
The Tories were always able to call for a General Election and it couldn't ever be realistically opposed. Even if Swinson had continued to refuse the election all Boris ever had to do was to keep tabling his Brexit deal and to keep tabling an election motion. Parliament would have had to vote for one of them eventually, or the anger in the country would have been stoked even further.
You can't hide from the public forever.
We'd already had one re-election in the 2015 term. Its not hiding from an election when you already held one you didn't need and the original term still has half a year left to run. Could have interesting though - George Osborne vs Andy Burnham in a spring 20 General Election campaign in the middle of a pandemic. Would Osborne hide from the public by postponing the vote because too dangerous to hold?
Wonder if we'll get the more difficult stuff too like the German Green New Deal?
German health system would be useful, if the UK didn't treat their own as if it were a religion.
Yes we'll have that too. But they spend more remember.
Indeed they do, although the numbers are dependent on many other factors. Tax breaks at 40% for private insurance in the UK would have the same effect on spending, that would be a good starting point.
An insurance model would be fine - so long as the state pays if you can't afford it. I'm far more sanguine about private healthcare than I am about private schools.
Private schools also offer scholarships and bursaries
I think the amount they fund is pretty much a billion a year.
I still don't understand people with visceral opposition to independent schools.
'We support high standards, and we're going to do it by destroying the places with the greatest diversity and the highest standards'.
It's about equality of opportunity. If this is truly important to somebody they cannot (without ludicrous contortions of argument) be supportive of private schools.
Why then, not advocate destroying the excessively successful *state* schools. The effect they have on life outcome is just as extreme, in many cases.
The goal is schools of a high and similar standard for everyone with no fees.
So you would need to destroy all non-bog-standard-comprehensives.
Then what do you do about the comprehensives that have private school levels of success? Destroy them as well?
The objective is to "destroy" - as in materially reduce - inequality of opportunity. A drastic reduction in usage of private schools is a necessary but far from sufficient step towards this. Much else is required. The very phrase "bog standard comprehensives" needs to become meaningless. We will simply have schools. Good schools. You're framing things in a slanted defeatist way that presupposes either (i) the objective is to reduce everything to the deeply mediocre or (ii) that the practical effect of reducing inequalities will be to do that.
If you had any experience of comprehensive schools, you would see that the variations are extreme.
Hence catchment areas being a major driver in house prices.
I did go to one. But, yes, a school's results and ambience will always to some extent be impacted by its intake. I'm not arguing for a Brave New World dystopia that eliminates all difference. I'm simply looking to (significantly) reduce the correlation between affluence of parents and quality of schooling.
Large catchment areas and a lottery for state school places would seem to be the obvious place to start then - a real bracing rush of equality for the affluent middle classes. Heady, transformative, and, er, brave...
Yes. Like it. Schools to be big but flexible. Minimize parental involvement in which school but maximize it in the school.
You may join the working party.
I think you're barking up the wrong tree in defining the quality of education by the resources attached. I attended secondary school just as the wonder of 'electronic white boards' was taking over our schools. They added naff all to the quality of our education. They were probably a net loss because they were a distraction. The same is true of most material investment in schools - the expenditure doesn't result in the output of better educated young people. By contrast, African schools with corrugated roofs, mud floors, and a 6 mile walk there and back, are (citation needed) probably imparting the three 'r's better than many of their UK counterparts. The schools in our own recent past certainly were.
Kids need to be well nourished, well disciplined, and well taught. They don't need expensive buildings or tech.
I agree (so there's a need for me to communicate better). I'm not obsessing about buildings and kit. It's mainly about the people - teachers and pupils.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
The latter sounds eminently tolerable.
I wonder if you're reading "rich Remainers" as "rich Unionists"? I read it as rich Remain in the EUers. The SNP get a lot of votes from that group, and always have (back when they only picked up a handful of MPs, they actually tended to be somewhat better off areas).
SNP focus groups have revealed that framing the independence question as Leave the UK/Remain in the UK gives a better response (from their perspective) than the original "Do you wish Scotland to be an independent country?". question used in the referendum.
That is suprising as that is not what the Scotland in Union polling shows.
When they as the question as "Leave/Remain in the UK" then "Leave" gets a significantly lower response rate than "Yes"
Yes, that would surprise me, I'd have thought that Leave was a pretty charged word in Scotland.
Nicola is in trouble with the Stamp Duty isn't she? Broke if she copies it, annoys the rich Remainers if she doesn't.
The latter sounds eminently tolerable.
I wonder if you're reading "rich Remainers" as "rich Unionists"? I read it as rich Remain in the EUers. The SNP get a lot of votes from that group, and always have (back when they only picked up a handful of MPs, they actually tended to be somewhat better off areas).
SNP focus groups have revealed that framing the independence question as Leave the UK/Remain in the UK gives a better response (from their perspective) than the original "Do you wish Scotland to be an independent country?". question used in the referendum.
Interesting. Should have thought it was the other way round.
We've already seen what the 2022 Sindyref question will be - same as the last one. No need to use leave or remain (a negative, should we LEAVE something), it'll be should Scotland be an independent country (a positive).
Wonder if we'll get the more difficult stuff too like the German Green New Deal?
German health system would be useful, if the UK didn't treat their own as if it were a religion.
Yes we'll have that too. But they spend more remember.
Indeed they do, although the numbers are dependent on many other factors. Tax breaks at 40% for private insurance in the UK would have the same effect on spending, that would be a good starting point.
An insurance model would be fine - so long as the state pays if you can't afford it. I'm far more sanguine about private healthcare than I am about private schools.
Private schools also offer scholarships and bursaries
I think the amount they fund is pretty much a billion a year.
I still don't understand people with visceral opposition to independent schools.
'We support high standards, and we're going to do it by destroying the places with the greatest diversity and the highest standards'.
It's about equality of opportunity. If this is truly important to somebody they cannot (without ludicrous contortions of argument) be supportive of private schools.
That's not convincing.
In my experience the State System crushes diversity. I have a child in my own extended family for whom the state was unable to cater, and whom they could not protect from bullying.
And also sometimes equality of opportunity. The parents had to use a specialist independent school in order to get what you call equality of opporunity, involving holiday money spent on education and all the rest.
The implication is you think private schools are better for diversity and equal opportunity. But how can this be when most cannot afford them?
Give parents vouchers t cover the cost of education at a state school and then give them choice.
When the State finally admitted the price of "educating" my son it turns out it was possible to send him to a private school which specialised in Aspergers and dyslexia for the same price.
A broken unhappy child is now a thriving young adult because of that choice
Vouchers for all that you can't top up would be worth looking at.
But I prefer my "everyone goes to their big beautiful local school" vision.
The problem with everyone going to their local school, is that it would lead to selection by house prices, even more so than is the case today. House prices in the 'right' postcode would soar overnight.
Leave aside the other problems, such as the private boarding schools simply relocating abroad, or groups of parents home schooling their kids together.
What's the saving for non Landlords and second home owners? Is it the same?
Looks like it - he hasn't aiui given a holiday on the "special-for-landlords-and-others" surcharge.
and so he shouldn't - mind you personally he shouldn't have given away any of the stamp duty, as I'm at a total loss as to how it helps the economy when banks aren't that willing to issue mortgages...
I'm agreed on that last point.
I think it might cancel out any price falls due to lockdown,
Wonder if we'll get the more difficult stuff too like the German Green New Deal?
German health system would be useful, if the UK didn't treat their own as if it were a religion.
Yes we'll have that too. But they spend more remember.
Indeed they do, although the numbers are dependent on many other factors. Tax breaks at 40% for private insurance in the UK would have the same effect on spending, that would be a good starting point.
An insurance model would be fine - so long as the state pays if you can't afford it. I'm far more sanguine about private healthcare than I am about private schools.
Private schools also offer scholarships and bursaries
I think the amount they fund is pretty much a billion a year.
I still don't understand people with visceral opposition to independent schools.
'We support high standards, and we're going to do it by destroying the places with the greatest diversity and the highest standards'.
It's about equality of opportunity. If this is truly important to somebody they cannot (without ludicrous contortions of argument) be supportive of private schools.
That's not convincing.
In my experience the State System crushes diversity. I have a child in my own extended family for whom the state was unable to cater, and whom they could not protect from bullying.
And also sometimes equality of opportunity. The parents had to use a specialist independent school in order to get what you call equality of opporunity, involving holiday money spent on education and all the rest.
The implication is you think private schools are better for diversity and equal opportunity. But how can this be when most cannot afford them?
Give parents vouchers t cover the cost of education at a state school and then give them choice.
When the State finally admitted the price of "educating" my son it turns out it was possible to send him to a private school which specialised in Aspergers and dyslexia for the same price.
A broken unhappy child is now a thriving young adult because of that choice
Vouchers for all that you can't top up would be worth looking at.
But I prefer my "everyone goes to their big beautiful local school" vision.
The problem with everyone going to their local school, is that it would lead to selection by house prices, even more so than is the case today. House prices in the 'right' postcode would soar overnight.
Leave aside the other problems, such as the private boarding schools simply relocating abroad, or groups of parents home schooling their kids together.
I sense you reach for these "selection by house price" and "flight of the boarders" arguments purely to bat away a concept you dislike. No doubt some of that will occur but my model will almost certainly reduce the link between parental affluence and educational outcomes. Which is the goal. You can't eliminate the link and nor should you want to. That way lies Pol Pot.
Universal mask wearing on public transport, urban streets and shops would be a massive boost psychologically as well as being almost certainly a useful suppressor of infection.
Comments
'Fuck fuck fuck fuck'. He completed within the lockdown period as he was only moving a street away so could do it without outside help. He's in Leicester too.
They are hazy at how long they can operate at Phase 3 for but it is a temporary level.
https://www.tmc.edu/coronavirus-updates/
So I am at least open to the possibility that when I think "they lack gravitas" I MIGHT actually be saying more about myself than about the person in question.
The route to an excellent education should not go via parental bank balance.
As for me and "Woke" - I am of course fighting to reclaim the word from the alt right deplorables.
We're having a global natural disaster. We can't ignore it, and the necessary actions to minimise its impact have had huge repercussions. Not taking these sorts of steps would be incredibly short-sighted and self-destructive - we'd incur worse and longer-running economic harm, as well as the human cost in the short term.
It's not business as usual, and anyone who tries to suggest a more business-as-usual answer will be rightly accused of not realising the impact, or of being economically blind.
We all know how that turned out.
Fwiw my kids' state schools are doing everything they can. The kids will all be back in September, but the reality is that there will be basically no effort at social distancing as it's impossible. So if schools act as breeding grounds for Covid then it is certainly coming back then.
On the plus side since our barbers are all still shut there is plenty of hair to pull.
I'm also not saying no regional woman can be seen as possessing gravitas. Just that they have to work harder to be seen that way. And that's kind of what prejudice normally is. Relatively few people are explicit or even intentional about it - it's just they end up setting a higher bar.
Take Obama, for example. He is probably the most articulate, very obviously intellectually capable man to be President in recent decades. And I'm afraid he kind of had to be to get the job. Would he have even got close to the Presidency with the intellect and sentence construction of his predecessors (and certainly the incumbent) but with his own skin? No chance, I'd suggest.
Summary - number of cases very slowly declining in England overall, and also in London.
London has a lower incidence of cases than England as a whole.
It's all down to the numbers.
If R0 is 3 without intervention, and simple interventions could get it down to 2, and heroic interventions down to a bit below 1 (as it is now), then a 70% vaccine would reduce transmission opportunities by 70%.
So R would drop to 0.9 with no interventions, and down to 0.6 with simple interventions. The exponential works for us and the virus dies out. A 70% effective vaccine with no restrictions puts us at about where we are with the restrictions we had a couple of weeks ago.
I'd guess that the threshold for distribution would probably be about 50% effectiveness, as long as there are no safety issues.
Not to worry these once in a generation events are (according to Nats) like buses, miss one and another one or 2 will be along shortly
Bear in mind also that the Supreme Court pick their own cases - they aren't typically required to determine something that has been through the state judicial systems. They are "petitioned" (i.e. asked rather than getting 10,000 signatures!) to take cases and take them if they are either substantively important in themselves (e.g. access to Presidential financial records) or resolve important legal controversies.
(a) 'I was negligent, careless, incompetent and mistakes were made by a concatenation of circumstances in which lots of others did the same sorts of errors all of which were highly regrettable but cannot be laid at the door of any one of these careless individuals'
and
(b) 'I was competent, knew my stuff, was on top of the brief, and read all the papers while visiting and carefully examining the site and therefore knew perfectly well this block of flats was an unexploded bomb.'
I have a feeling I can work out which line they will be taking between these unpleasant alternatives.
I don't see politics as being like football, and I don't like football.
When the State finally admitted the price of "educating" my son it turns out it was possible to send him to a private school which specialised in Aspergers and dyslexia for the same price.
A broken unhappy child is now a thriving young adult because of that choice
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/07/08/angela-merkel-tells-eu-get-prepared-no-trade-deal-brexit-warning/
The Tories were always able to call for a General Election and it couldn't ever be realistically opposed. Even if Swinson had continued to refuse the election all Boris ever had to do was to keep tabling his Brexit deal and to keep tabling an election motion. Parliament would have had to vote for one of them eventually, or the anger in the country would have been stoked even further.
You can't hide from the public forever.
You may join the working party.
The idea that middle class people move houses for secondary school catchment has some grounding in reality but I think less than some people think. Good schools tend to exist in leafy suburbs with nice Victorian housing more than in the middle of large social housing estates, and it's not rocket science to figure out which area is more likely to have middle class people living in it. It doesn't mean they moved there for the school.
In my own area of inner London the state schools are basically all ok, none of them is really outstanding, so I don't think it's a big deal, but it is nice that the kids can walk to school and to their friends' houses and the local parks etc so there would certainly be downsides to shipping them off to schools in other boroughs, especially given already terrible traffic.
It would explain a lot.
Kids need to be well nourished, well disciplined, and well taught. They don't need expensive buildings or tech.
The kids, parents and teachers were all mingling as normal: laughing, waving, chattng. There was absolutely zero attempt at social distancing.
The only clue that this was not a normal school day was the one parent wearing a mask. One.
When they as the question as "Leave/Remain in the UK" then "Leave" gets a significantly lower response rate than "Yes"
PS - good brace of posts on GRAVITAS. So often does mean a bloke of a certain type who is used to being listened to.
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1280839510838968320
BTW, when I argue against private schools I do not one iota blame people for choosing them. I simply believe we would as a society be better off if such a choice was not made.
"It’s not necessary to stop all activities. As long as more than 50% of the population reduces 50% of their social contacts then the outbreak can be controlled. They can go to school, to work but must reduce non-essential recreation and social contact."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/taiwans-vice-president-chen-chien-jen-countrys-fight-covid-19/
If the economists' models are right about interaction between the epidemic and the behavioural response, which they seem to be, then the level of herd immunity may be well below what has been assumed based on epidemiological models with constant parameters.
As John Cochrane says in a comment on his blog, "Economists vs. epidemiologists has a long history. Economists point out that disease transmission is not a biological constant, but varies with human behavior. And human behavior varies predictably in response to incentives (and information)."
But I prefer my "everyone goes to their big beautiful local school" vision.
Leave aside the other problems, such as the private boarding schools simply relocating abroad, or groups of parents home schooling their kids together.
I think it might cancel out any price falls due to lockdown,