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  • novanova Posts: 692
    edited August 2020

    Omnium said:

    https://medium.com/@pauladrianrichards/labour-is-at-war-and-starmer-will-decide-who-wins-19821d6c89d8

    Very good.

    The country is watching and Starmer has an absolute open goal to make Labour electable again and show the public it has really changed. Expelling Corbyn and others would frankly be the best thing to do, if indeed they are implicated by the EHRC.

    Expelling Corbyn would be damn stupid. It's not Corbyn or even the Corbynites who are the problem. It's the Scouse SWP tankies Neil Kinnock threw out who were readmitted by Ed Miliband.
    Corbyn is 100% the problem. A political mantra that is based on 19th century ideas isn't going to work.

    Blair's New Labour is the only future Labour have. Not because of him or anyone else, but simply that they can't bang on with the ideas of well over a hundred years ago. They weren't good ideas then, and they're rubbish now.

    Starmer has, I think, worked this out. He's trying to stop Labour being crap, and is biding his time with regards to positive moves.
    Being Tory Lite is no longer a vote winner, ask the LDs

    The reason Corbyn got 41% of the GB vote in 2017 was the radical agenda

    SKS is a Tory Lite Remoaner in the eyes of many former Labour voters IMO
    Corbyn got 41% of the vote because Labour were still seen as the Remain option, the Lib Dems were still suffering from the coalition, because May was an awful campaigner, and the Tories were so confident of winning that they came up with a ridiculously unpopular manifesto.

    Keir Starmer has already made a good impression with the public - but it's going to take time to turn around the perception of Labour. He can still be radical (and I think he may well be), but needs to make Corbyn just a memory.

    The article suggests Miliband was ahead in the polls by now, but was still well behind in the best PM stakes, and remained so pretty much througout https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2015/04/23/best-pm-cameron-lead-14

    Starmer has already caught Boris, but (apart from Covid making it a tricky balancing act to challenge the govt) it's going to take some kind of normality with Covid (or a shocking second wave), and the end of Corbyn before the Labour party stands a real chance of any significant poll leads.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,222
    A good article on the arguments around masks.

    Incompetence and Errors in Reasoning Around Face Covering
    https://medium.com/incerto/the-masks-masquerade-7de897b517b7
    SIX ERRORS: 1) missing the compounding effects of masks, 2) missing the nonlinearity of the probability of infection to viral exposures, 3) missing absence of evidence (of benefits of mask wearing) for evidence of absence (of benefits of mask wearing), 4) missing the point that people do not need governments to produce facial covering: they can make their own, 5) missing the compounding effects of statistical signals, 6) ignoring the Non-Aggression Principle by pseudolibertarians...

    I also liked this observation....
    “I truly believe that the pseudolibertarians are sociopaths and misanthropes looking for a political party that they think fits their misanthropy.”
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,213
    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Foxy said:

    Ed M became the leader too early.

    If he'd become the leader now he'd likely have done better.

    He didn't "become" leader, he actively went up against his own brother, when he could have waited.

    Spare me any violins.
    I don't think primogeniture an appropriate reason to chose a party leader, or indeed anything else. Speaking as a second child!
    You were second.

    Suck it up, loser.
    I’m surprised that @ydoethur doesnt post about the inherent unfairness of primogeniture more. It can have a material impact on an individual’s opportunities and range of potential outcomes
    Ridiculous to award prizes to those who come first. Whatever next?
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Nigelb said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Foxy said:

    Ed M became the leader too early.

    If he'd become the leader now he'd likely have done better.

    He didn't "become" leader, he actively went up against his own brother, when he could have waited.

    Spare me any violins.
    I don't think primogeniture an appropriate reason to chose a party leader, or indeed anything else. Speaking as a second child!
    You were second.

    Suck it up, loser.
    I’m surprised that @ydoethur doesnt post about the inherent unfairness of primogeniture more. It can have a material impact on an individual’s opportunities and range of potential outcomes
    Nothing to declare? In any case, the real unfairness is height. Tall people are overrepresented in political and commercial leadership roles, as well as consuming more than their fair share of Earth's precious natural resources.
    Sure - I’ve had a successful and well paid career. My expected lifetime earnings are the square root of my older brother’s inheritance.
    I think that's one of the big differences between the middle class and the upper class/aristocracy. If your family was more middle class you'd get ~half :p
    If the upper class had ever cared about fairness, they wouldn’t be the upper class.
    The “upper class” are collectivists.

    They think of the good of the family as a whole, not the individual. They are fully aware that any influence they have comes from control of the core asset - whether that’s land or money or, in our case, trusted relationships over multiple generations.

    You cannot dilute control of the core asset without diluting the power and influence. So my brother controls it. But I know if I was ever in a position where I needed financial assistance I could look to him for support.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,775

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    https://medium.com/@pauladrianrichards/labour-is-at-war-and-starmer-will-decide-who-wins-19821d6c89d8

    Very good.

    The country is watching and Starmer has an absolute open goal to make Labour electable again and show the public it has really changed. Expelling Corbyn and others would frankly be the best thing to do, if indeed they are implicated by the EHRC.

    Expelling Corbyn would be damn stupid. It's not Corbyn or even the Corbynites who are the problem. It's the Scouse SWP tankies Neil Kinnock threw out who were readmitted by Ed Miliband.
    Corbyn is 100% the problem. A political mantra that is based on 19th century ideas isn't going to work.

    Blair's New Labour is the only future Labour have. Not because of him or anyone else, but simply that they can't bang on with the ideas of well over a hundred years ago. They weren't good ideas then, and they're rubbish now.

    Starmer has, I think, worked this out. He's trying to stop Labour being crap, and is biding his time with regards to positive moves.
    Labour's immediate problem is that Boris shot so many of their foxes, when he won in 2019 on Labour's 2017 platform. Boris won by being a better Corbyn, not by being a better Cameron or May.
    He was perhaps a better EdM. Boris is not and I don't imagine can be anything like Corbyn.
    Write down all the things you do not like about Corbyn, and then see how easy it is to apply the same criticisms of Boris.
    I can't afford such paper-extravagance.

    I see where you're going though in you believe that Corbyn said roughly what he'd do in government. So he'd be Tory-light. I do not to believe that.

  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421
    rcs1000 said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Foxy said:

    Ed M became the leader too early.

    If he'd become the leader now he'd likely have done better.

    He didn't "become" leader, he actively went up against his own brother, when he could have waited.

    Spare me any violins.
    I don't think primogeniture an appropriate reason to chose a party leader, or indeed anything else. Speaking as a second child!
    You were second.

    Suck it up, loser.
    I’m surprised that @ydoethur doesnt post about the inherent unfairness of primogeniture more. It can have a material impact on an individual’s opportunities and range of potential outcomes
    Ridiculous to award prizes to those who come first. Whatever next?
    It’s ironic actually, because when I’m teaching history I do inveigh against primogeniture.

    ‘What was Henry VI’s/Nicholas II’s qualification? He emerged from the right vagina in the right order.

    What else? Ummm - nothing really. He sucked.’
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,036
    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Rexel56 said:

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    The first major test of Labour as an opposition seems likely to hit on Thursday.

    A train wreck complete with a jumbo crash is incoming. It was foreseeable and happened because the government are completely useless, and overlooked obviously preferable alternatives.

    If Kate Green can get a handle on that...

    The injustice on Thursday will be on an individual level, overall the marks will be the same as previous years, despite missing a term of work. It all depends on how well teachers have predicted and ranked their candidates.

    Going with the teachers predictions may have inflated grades, but also would have filled the Universities for the autumn, helping their finances as well as minimising NEETS. Not a perfect solution but a pragmatic one.

    Of course, if Gove and Cummings hadn't abolished AS levels, and modular exams a few years back, there would have been a much more solid and objective base for A level results...
    The Universities will fill their places, from the top down... Oxbridge already saying they will lower entry requirements, dressed up as helping pupils from poorer areas... it’ll be the ex-polys and HE colleges without research that will really struggle... of course, a student from England doesn’t pay what a student from China would have done...

    Sixth forms will use teacher grades when deciding entries, suspect Colleges will too...

    The big losers will be the Tabatha and the Tarquins who were expecting a full set of nines or A*s, their parents having spent £££££££ school and/or tuition fees... denied by the wicked algorithm, Daddy and the School Headmaster have already instructed lawyers according to the Times this morning...
    But that’s the point. If small cohorts are exempted from the algorithm, private schools will get what they predicted.

    It’s bright children in weaker state schools who will be punished by this system. Like, for example, the children of voters in the so called Red Wall.
    I doubt that many private schools have cohorts of less than 5. Many will be in the 5-15 bucket and most in the 15+ bucket
    Five per subject, Charles. Not five in total.
    I was at a well known and well funded private school. Albeit one with 260 in a year.

    My smallest class size was 8 (theology). Politics was 12 and history 16.

    How many private schools really have A level cohorts of less than 5 for an individual subject? I doubt many - the economics just don’t stack up - and in any event it will be a very small number of pupils.

    From recollection our smallest subjects were Japanese (2), Russian (3) and Mandarin (4). In each case we teamed up with the local girls’ school which lifted Russian and Mandarin to the 5-15 bucket
    We had 3 in my A-level physics cohort. The secret to small A-level groups is to go to a school that is so shite barely anyone stays past 16.

    Maths and Chemistry were also in single figures.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Rexel56 said:

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    The first major test of Labour as an opposition seems likely to hit on Thursday.

    A train wreck complete with a jumbo crash is incoming. It was foreseeable and happened because the government are completely useless, and overlooked obviously preferable alternatives.

    If Kate Green can get a handle on that...

    The injustice on Thursday will be on an individual level, overall the marks will be the same as previous years, despite missing a term of work. It all depends on how well teachers have predicted and ranked their candidates.

    Going with the teachers predictions may have inflated grades, but also would have filled the Universities for the autumn, helping their finances as well as minimising NEETS. Not a perfect solution but a pragmatic one.

    Of course, if Gove and Cummings hadn't abolished AS levels, and modular exams a few years back, there would have been a much more solid and objective base for A level results...
    The Universities will fill their places, from the top down... Oxbridge already saying they will lower entry requirements, dressed up as helping pupils from poorer areas... it’ll be the ex-polys and HE colleges without research that will really struggle... of course, a student from England doesn’t pay what a student from China would have done...

    Sixth forms will use teacher grades when deciding entries, suspect Colleges will too...

    The big losers will be the Tabatha and the Tarquins who were expecting a full set of nines or A*s, their parents having spent £££££££ school and/or tuition fees... denied by the wicked algorithm, Daddy and the School Headmaster have already instructed lawyers according to the Times this morning...
    But that’s the point. If small cohorts are exempted from the algorithm, private schools will get what they predicted.

    It’s bright children in weaker state schools who will be punished by this system. Like, for example, the children of voters in the so called Red Wall.
    I doubt that many private schools have cohorts of less than 5. Many will be in the 5-15 bucket and most in the 15+ bucket
    Five per subject, Charles. Not five in total.
    I was at a well known and well funded private school. Albeit one with 260 in a year.

    My smallest class size was 8 (theology). Politics was 12 and history 16.

    How many private schools really have A level cohorts of less than 5 for an individual subject? I doubt many - the economics just don’t stack up - and in any event it will be a very small number of pupils.

    From recollection our smallest subjects were Japanese (2), Russian (3) and Mandarin (4). In each case we teamed up with the local girls’ school which lifted Russian and Mandarin to the 5-15 bucket
    We had 3 in my A-level physics cohort. The secret to small A-level groups is to go to a school that is so shite barely anyone stays past 16.

    Maths and Chemistry were also in single figures.
    I suppose that might be the other way of looking at it. The very weakest state schools might have small classes too. But I imagine (although it’s some years since I was in a school in inner-city Bristol where this applied) that below a certain level state schools are now reluctant to run classes due to pressure on the timetable.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,213

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Foxy said:

    Ed M became the leader too early.

    If he'd become the leader now he'd likely have done better.

    He didn't "become" leader, he actively went up against his own brother, when he could have waited.

    Spare me any violins.
    I don't think primogeniture an appropriate reason to chose a party leader, or indeed anything else. Speaking as a second child!
    You were second.

    Suck it up, loser.
    I’m surprised that @ydoethur doesnt post about the inherent unfairness of primogeniture more. It can have a material impact on an individual’s opportunities and range of potential outcomes
    Nothing to declare? In any case, the real unfairness is height. Tall people are overrepresented in political and commercial leadership roles, as well as consuming more than their fair share of Earth's precious natural resources.
    Will no one ever address the most pernicious (and forgotten) prejudice: alphabetical discrimination.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,213
    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Rexel56 said:

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    The first major test of Labour as an opposition seems likely to hit on Thursday.

    A train wreck complete with a jumbo crash is incoming. It was foreseeable and happened because the government are completely useless, and overlooked obviously preferable alternatives.

    If Kate Green can get a handle on that...

    The injustice on Thursday will be on an individual level, overall the marks will be the same as previous years, despite missing a term of work. It all depends on how well teachers have predicted and ranked their candidates.

    Going with the teachers predictions may have inflated grades, but also would have filled the Universities for the autumn, helping their finances as well as minimising NEETS. Not a perfect solution but a pragmatic one.

    Of course, if Gove and Cummings hadn't abolished AS levels, and modular exams a few years back, there would have been a much more solid and objective base for A level results...
    The Universities will fill their places, from the top down... Oxbridge already saying they will lower entry requirements, dressed up as helping pupils from poorer areas... it’ll be the ex-polys and HE colleges without research that will really struggle... of course, a student from England doesn’t pay what a student from China would have done...

    Sixth forms will use teacher grades when deciding entries, suspect Colleges will too...

    The big losers will be the Tabatha and the Tarquins who were expecting a full set of nines or A*s, their parents having spent £££££££ school and/or tuition fees... denied by the wicked algorithm, Daddy and the School Headmaster have already instructed lawyers according to the Times this morning...
    But that’s the point. If small cohorts are exempted from the algorithm, private schools will get what they predicted.

    It’s bright children in weaker state schools who will be punished by this system. Like, for example, the children of voters in the so called Red Wall.
    I doubt that many private schools have cohorts of less than 5. Many will be in the 5-15 bucket and most in the 15+ bucket
    Five per subject, Charles. Not five in total.
    I was at a well known and well funded private school. Albeit one with 260 in a year.

    My smallest class size was 8 (theology). Politics was 12 and history 16.

    How many private schools really have A level cohorts of less than 5 for an individual subject? I doubt many - the economics just don’t stack up - and in any event it will be a very small number of pupils.

    From recollection our smallest subjects were Japanese (2), Russian (3) and Mandarin (4). In each case we teamed up with the local girls’ school which lifted Russian and Mandarin to the 5-15 bucket
    I was at a small state school, and in my history A Level there were four of us, three of us got As, and two got into Oxbridge. (That was, I admit, pretty uncommon for the school.)
  • nova said:

    Omnium said:

    https://medium.com/@pauladrianrichards/labour-is-at-war-and-starmer-will-decide-who-wins-19821d6c89d8

    Very good.

    The country is watching and Starmer has an absolute open goal to make Labour electable again and show the public it has really changed. Expelling Corbyn and others would frankly be the best thing to do, if indeed they are implicated by the EHRC.

    Expelling Corbyn would be damn stupid. It's not Corbyn or even the Corbynites who are the problem. It's the Scouse SWP tankies Neil Kinnock threw out who were readmitted by Ed Miliband.
    Corbyn is 100% the problem. A political mantra that is based on 19th century ideas isn't going to work.

    Blair's New Labour is the only future Labour have. Not because of him or anyone else, but simply that they can't bang on with the ideas of well over a hundred years ago. They weren't good ideas then, and they're rubbish now.

    Starmer has, I think, worked this out. He's trying to stop Labour being crap, and is biding his time with regards to positive moves.
    Being Tory Lite is no longer a vote winner, ask the LDs

    The reason Corbyn got 41% of the GB vote in 2017 was the radical agenda

    SKS is a Tory Lite Remoaner in the eyes of many former Labour voters IMO
    Corbyn got 41% of the vote because Labour were still seen as the Remain option, the Lib Dems were still suffering from the coalition, because May was an awful campaigner, and the Tories were so confident of winning that they came up with a ridiculously unpopular manifesto.

    Keir Starmer has already made a good impression with the public - but it's going to take time to turn around the perception of Labour. He can still be radical (and I think he may well be), but needs to make Corbyn just a memory.

    The article suggests Miliband was ahead in the polls by now, but was still well behind in the best PM stakes, and remained so pretty much througout https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2015/04/23/best-pm-cameron-lead-14

    Starmer has already caught Boris, but (apart from Covid making it a tricky balancing act to challenge the govt) it's going to take some kind of normality with Covid (or a shocking second wave), and the end of Corbyn before the Labour party stands a real chance of any significant poll leads.
    Is it not reasonable to say that the polls for the entire 2010-2015 period were wrong?
  • Starmer is seen as starkly different from Corbyn by the majority of voters and the public. When asked how similar Jeremy Corbyn is to Keir Starmer, 61% of the public say the leaders are different, with 46% saying the pair are very different. Only 8% of the public think the two are similar to some degree – with Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill the only previous party leaders seen as less comparable than Keir Starmer and Corbyn.

    https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/07/13/keir-starmer-jeremy-corbyn-compare-labour-leaders

    This will be important in the months to come
  • LadyGLadyG Posts: 2,221

    justin124 said:

    A good article as always, though I believe David understates the extent to which the Covid crisis continues to override everything else. At this time the electorate is not likely to be receptive to other messages - other than when serious mistakes have clearly been made. Starmer has put the Government on the defensive in relation to Care Homes and brought about U-Turns on policies such as entry of Care Workers into UK. The polls mean little at this stage and many are like to respond to surveys as if being asked 'How did you vote at the last GE?'. I recall too that in the Parliament elected in June 1987 the Tories remained ahead until Spring 1989.

    The collapse of Johnson's approval and best PM ratings are vindication enough for Stamer's strategy. The PM is now a discredited figure.
    Utter nonsense
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,176

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Rexel56 said:

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    The first major test of Labour as an opposition seems likely to hit on Thursday.

    A train wreck complete with a jumbo crash is incoming. It was foreseeable and happened because the government are completely useless, and overlooked obviously preferable alternatives.

    If Kate Green can get a handle on that...

    The injustice on Thursday will be on an individual level, overall the marks will be the same as previous years, despite missing a term of work. It all depends on how well teachers have predicted and ranked their candidates.

    Going with the teachers predictions may have inflated grades, but also would have filled the Universities for the autumn, helping their finances as well as minimising NEETS. Not a perfect solution but a pragmatic one.

    Of course, if Gove and Cummings hadn't abolished AS levels, and modular exams a few years back, there would have been a much more solid and objective base for A level results...
    The Universities will fill their places, from the top down... Oxbridge already saying they will lower entry requirements, dressed up as helping pupils from poorer areas... it’ll be the ex-polys and HE colleges without research that will really struggle... of course, a student from England doesn’t pay what a student from China would have done...

    Sixth forms will use teacher grades when deciding entries, suspect Colleges will too...

    The big losers will be the Tabatha and the Tarquins who were expecting a full set of nines or A*s, their parents having spent £££££££ school and/or tuition fees... denied by the wicked algorithm, Daddy and the School Headmaster have already instructed lawyers according to the Times this morning...
    But that’s the point. If small cohorts are exempted from the algorithm, private schools will get what they predicted.

    It’s bright children in weaker state schools who will be punished by this system. Like, for example, the children of voters in the so called Red Wall.
    I doubt that many private schools have cohorts of less than 5. Many will be in the 5-15 bucket and most in the 15+ bucket
    Five per subject, Charles. Not five in total.
    I was at a well known and well funded private school. Albeit one with 260 in a year.

    My smallest class size was 8 (theology). Politics was 12 and history 16.

    How many private schools really have A level cohorts of less than 5 for an individual subject? I doubt many - the economics just don’t stack up - and in any event it will be a very small number of pupils.

    From recollection our smallest subjects were Japanese (2), Russian (3) and Mandarin (4). In each case we teamed up with the local girls’ school which lifted Russian and Mandarin to the 5-15 bucket
    We had 3 in my A-level physics cohort. The secret to small A-level groups is to go to a school that is so shite barely anyone stays past 16.

    Maths and Chemistry were also in single figures.
    Sadly I didn't have the chance to go to a school where you weren't sent on your way at 16 come what may. That said, I was very fortunate to be able to go to a fantastic sixth form college.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,036
    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Rexel56 said:

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    The first major test of Labour as an opposition seems likely to hit on Thursday.

    A train wreck complete with a jumbo crash is incoming. It was foreseeable and happened because the government are completely useless, and overlooked obviously preferable alternatives.

    If Kate Green can get a handle on that...

    The injustice on Thursday will be on an individual level, overall the marks will be the same as previous years, despite missing a term of work. It all depends on how well teachers have predicted and ranked their candidates.

    Going with the teachers predictions may have inflated grades, but also would have filled the Universities for the autumn, helping their finances as well as minimising NEETS. Not a perfect solution but a pragmatic one.

    Of course, if Gove and Cummings hadn't abolished AS levels, and modular exams a few years back, there would have been a much more solid and objective base for A level results...
    The Universities will fill their places, from the top down... Oxbridge already saying they will lower entry requirements, dressed up as helping pupils from poorer areas... it’ll be the ex-polys and HE colleges without research that will really struggle... of course, a student from England doesn’t pay what a student from China would have done...

    Sixth forms will use teacher grades when deciding entries, suspect Colleges will too...

    The big losers will be the Tabatha and the Tarquins who were expecting a full set of nines or A*s, their parents having spent £££££££ school and/or tuition fees... denied by the wicked algorithm, Daddy and the School Headmaster have already instructed lawyers according to the Times this morning...
    But that’s the point. If small cohorts are exempted from the algorithm, private schools will get what they predicted.

    It’s bright children in weaker state schools who will be punished by this system. Like, for example, the children of voters in the so called Red Wall.
    I doubt that many private schools have cohorts of less than 5. Many will be in the 5-15 bucket and most in the 15+ bucket
    Five per subject, Charles. Not five in total.
    I was at a well known and well funded private school. Albeit one with 260 in a year.

    My smallest class size was 8 (theology). Politics was 12 and history 16.

    How many private schools really have A level cohorts of less than 5 for an individual subject? I doubt many - the economics just don’t stack up - and in any event it will be a very small number of pupils.

    From recollection our smallest subjects were Japanese (2), Russian (3) and Mandarin (4). In each case we teamed up with the local girls’ school which lifted Russian and Mandarin to the 5-15 bucket
    We had 3 in my A-level physics cohort. The secret to small A-level groups is to go to a school that is so shite barely anyone stays past 16.

    Maths and Chemistry were also in single figures.
    I suppose that might be the other way of looking at it. The very weakest state schools might have small classes too. But I imagine (although it’s some years since I was in a school in inner-city Bristol where this applied) that below a certain level state schools are now reluctant to run classes due to pressure on the timetable.
    I should qualify my comment about our school. We had some excellent teachers. It was the pubils that were shite.
  • justin124justin124 Posts: 11,527
    nova said:

    Omnium said:

    https://medium.com/@pauladrianrichards/labour-is-at-war-and-starmer-will-decide-who-wins-19821d6c89d8

    Very good.

    The country is watching and Starmer has an absolute open goal to make Labour electable again and show the public it has really changed. Expelling Corbyn and others would frankly be the best thing to do, if indeed they are implicated by the EHRC.

    Expelling Corbyn would be damn stupid. It's not Corbyn or even the Corbynites who are the problem. It's the Scouse SWP tankies Neil Kinnock threw out who were readmitted by Ed Miliband.
    Corbyn is 100% the problem. A political mantra that is based on 19th century ideas isn't going to work.

    Blair's New Labour is the only future Labour have. Not because of him or anyone else, but simply that they can't bang on with the ideas of well over a hundred years ago. They weren't good ideas then, and they're rubbish now.

    Starmer has, I think, worked this out. He's trying to stop Labour being crap, and is biding his time with regards to positive moves.
    Being Tory Lite is no longer a vote winner, ask the LDs

    The reason Corbyn got 41% of the GB vote in 2017 was the radical agenda

    SKS is a Tory Lite Remoaner in the eyes of many former Labour voters IMO
    Corbyn got 41% of the vote because Labour were still seen as the Remain option, the Lib Dems were still suffering from the coalition, because May was an awful campaigner, and the Tories were so confident of winning that they came up with a ridiculously unpopular manifesto.

    Keir Starmer has already made a good impression with the public - but it's going to take time to turn around the perception of Labour. He can still be radical (and I think he may well be), but needs to make Corbyn just a memory.

    The article suggests Miliband was ahead in the polls by now, but was still well behind in the best PM stakes, and remained so pretty much througout https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2015/04/23/best-pm-cameron-lead-14

    Starmer has already caught Boris, but (apart from Covid making it a tricky balancing act to challenge the govt) it's going to take some kind of normality with Covid (or a shocking second wave), and the end of Corbyn before the Labour party stands a real chance of any significant poll leads.
    Milliband benefitted post-2010 from effectively being gifted a big chunk of the LibDem vote from 2010 as a result of Clegg agreeing to enter the Tory -led Coalition. Starmer took over at a time of stratospheric Tory poll leads but just four months later sees his party within sight of the Tories. The reality of a severe recession is likely to produce clear Labour leads.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421
    edited August 2020

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Rexel56 said:

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    The first major test of Labour as an opposition seems likely to hit on Thursday.

    A train wreck complete with a jumbo crash is incoming. It was foreseeable and happened because the government are completely useless, and overlooked obviously preferable alternatives.

    If Kate Green can get a handle on that...

    The injustice on Thursday will be on an individual level, overall the marks will be the same as previous years, despite missing a term of work. It all depends on how well teachers have predicted and ranked their candidates.

    Going with the teachers predictions may have inflated grades, but also would have filled the Universities for the autumn, helping their finances as well as minimising NEETS. Not a perfect solution but a pragmatic one.

    Of course, if Gove and Cummings hadn't abolished AS levels, and modular exams a few years back, there would have been a much more solid and objective base for A level results...
    The Universities will fill their places, from the top down... Oxbridge already saying they will lower entry requirements, dressed up as helping pupils from poorer areas... it’ll be the ex-polys and HE colleges without research that will really struggle... of course, a student from England doesn’t pay what a student from China would have done...

    Sixth forms will use teacher grades when deciding entries, suspect Colleges will too...

    The big losers will be the Tabatha and the Tarquins who were expecting a full set of nines or A*s, their parents having spent £££££££ school and/or tuition fees... denied by the wicked algorithm, Daddy and the School Headmaster have already instructed lawyers according to the Times this morning...
    But that’s the point. If small cohorts are exempted from the algorithm, private schools will get what they predicted.

    It’s bright children in weaker state schools who will be punished by this system. Like, for example, the children of voters in the so called Red Wall.
    I doubt that many private schools have cohorts of less than 5. Many will be in the 5-15 bucket and most in the 15+ bucket
    Five per subject, Charles. Not five in total.
    I was at a well known and well funded private school. Albeit one with 260 in a year.

    My smallest class size was 8 (theology). Politics was 12 and history 16.

    How many private schools really have A level cohorts of less than 5 for an individual subject? I doubt many - the economics just don’t stack up - and in any event it will be a very small number of pupils.

    From recollection our smallest subjects were Japanese (2), Russian (3) and Mandarin (4). In each case we teamed up with the local girls’ school which lifted Russian and Mandarin to the 5-15 bucket
    We had 3 in my A-level physics cohort. The secret to small A-level groups is to go to a school that is so shite barely anyone stays past 16.

    Maths and Chemistry were also in single figures.
    I suppose that might be the other way of looking at it. The very weakest state schools might have small classes too. But I imagine (although it’s some years since I was in a school in inner-city Bristol where this applied) that below a certain level state schools are now reluctant to run classes due to pressure on the timetable.
    I should qualify my comment about our school. We had some excellent teachers. It was the pubils that were shite.
    Schools would be amazing places to work if it weren’t for all those fecking children spoiling everything.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,405
    rcs1000 said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Rexel56 said:

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    The first major test of Labour as an opposition seems likely to hit on Thursday.

    A train wreck complete with a jumbo crash is incoming. It was foreseeable and happened because the government are completely useless, and overlooked obviously preferable alternatives.

    If Kate Green can get a handle on that...

    The injustice on Thursday will be on an individual level, overall the marks will be the same as previous years, despite missing a term of work. It all depends on how well teachers have predicted and ranked their candidates.

    Going with the teachers predictions may have inflated grades, but also would have filled the Universities for the autumn, helping their finances as well as minimising NEETS. Not a perfect solution but a pragmatic one.

    Of course, if Gove and Cummings hadn't abolished AS levels, and modular exams a few years back, there would have been a much more solid and objective base for A level results...
    The Universities will fill their places, from the top down... Oxbridge already saying they will lower entry requirements, dressed up as helping pupils from poorer areas... it’ll be the ex-polys and HE colleges without research that will really struggle... of course, a student from England doesn’t pay what a student from China would have done...

    Sixth forms will use teacher grades when deciding entries, suspect Colleges will too...

    The big losers will be the Tabatha and the Tarquins who were expecting a full set of nines or A*s, their parents having spent £££££££ school and/or tuition fees... denied by the wicked algorithm, Daddy and the School Headmaster have already instructed lawyers according to the Times this morning...
    But that’s the point. If small cohorts are exempted from the algorithm, private schools will get what they predicted.

    It’s bright children in weaker state schools who will be punished by this system. Like, for example, the children of voters in the so called Red Wall.
    I doubt that many private schools have cohorts of less than 5. Many will be in the 5-15 bucket and most in the 15+ bucket
    Five per subject, Charles. Not five in total.
    I was at a well known and well funded private school. Albeit one with 260 in a year.

    My smallest class size was 8 (theology). Politics was 12 and history 16.

    How many private schools really have A level cohorts of less than 5 for an individual subject? I doubt many - the economics just don’t stack up - and in any event it will be a very small number of pupils.

    From recollection our smallest subjects were Japanese (2), Russian (3) and Mandarin (4). In each case we teamed up with the local girls’ school which lifted Russian and Mandarin to the 5-15 bucket
    I was at a small state school, and in my history A Level there were four of us, three of us got As, and two got into Oxbridge. (That was, I admit, pretty uncommon for the school.)
    Eek twin b's a level music course had a class of 1. We are expecting an A on Thursday as she's off to a Conservatoire to study film score composition
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421
    eek said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Rexel56 said:

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    The first major test of Labour as an opposition seems likely to hit on Thursday.

    A train wreck complete with a jumbo crash is incoming. It was foreseeable and happened because the government are completely useless, and overlooked obviously preferable alternatives.

    If Kate Green can get a handle on that...

    The injustice on Thursday will be on an individual level, overall the marks will be the same as previous years, despite missing a term of work. It all depends on how well teachers have predicted and ranked their candidates.

    Going with the teachers predictions may have inflated grades, but also would have filled the Universities for the autumn, helping their finances as well as minimising NEETS. Not a perfect solution but a pragmatic one.

    Of course, if Gove and Cummings hadn't abolished AS levels, and modular exams a few years back, there would have been a much more solid and objective base for A level results...
    The Universities will fill their places, from the top down... Oxbridge already saying they will lower entry requirements, dressed up as helping pupils from poorer areas... it’ll be the ex-polys and HE colleges without research that will really struggle... of course, a student from England doesn’t pay what a student from China would have done...

    Sixth forms will use teacher grades when deciding entries, suspect Colleges will too...

    The big losers will be the Tabatha and the Tarquins who were expecting a full set of nines or A*s, their parents having spent £££££££ school and/or tuition fees... denied by the wicked algorithm, Daddy and the School Headmaster have already instructed lawyers according to the Times this morning...
    But that’s the point. If small cohorts are exempted from the algorithm, private schools will get what they predicted.

    It’s bright children in weaker state schools who will be punished by this system. Like, for example, the children of voters in the so called Red Wall.
    I doubt that many private schools have cohorts of less than 5. Many will be in the 5-15 bucket and most in the 15+ bucket
    Five per subject, Charles. Not five in total.
    I was at a well known and well funded private school. Albeit one with 260 in a year.

    My smallest class size was 8 (theology). Politics was 12 and history 16.

    How many private schools really have A level cohorts of less than 5 for an individual subject? I doubt many - the economics just don’t stack up - and in any event it will be a very small number of pupils.

    From recollection our smallest subjects were Japanese (2), Russian (3) and Mandarin (4). In each case we teamed up with the local girls’ school which lifted Russian and Mandarin to the 5-15 bucket
    I was at a small state school, and in my history A Level there were four of us, three of us got As, and two got into Oxbridge. (That was, I admit, pretty uncommon for the school.)
    Eek twin b's a level music course had a class of 1. We are expecting an A on Thursday as she's off to a Conservatoire to study film score composition
    Good luck to her. Hopefully the small class(!) means she won’t be affected by this shambles.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,213
    Charles said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Foxy said:

    Ed M became the leader too early.

    If he'd become the leader now he'd likely have done better.

    He didn't "become" leader, he actively went up against his own brother, when he could have waited.

    Spare me any violins.
    I don't think primogeniture an appropriate reason to chose a party leader, or indeed anything else. Speaking as a second child!
    You were second.

    Suck it up, loser.
    I’m surprised that @ydoethur doesnt post about the inherent unfairness of primogeniture more. It can have a material impact on an individual’s opportunities and range of potential outcomes
    Nothing to declare? In any case, the real unfairness is height. Tall people are overrepresented in political and commercial leadership roles, as well as consuming more than their fair share of Earth's precious natural resources.
    Sure - I’ve had a successful and well paid career. My expected lifetime earnings are the square root of my older brother’s inheritance.
    I think that's one of the big differences between the middle class and the upper class/aristocracy. If your family was more middle class you'd get ~half :p
    If the upper class had ever cared about fairness, they wouldn’t be the upper class.
    The “upper class” are collectivists.

    They think of the good of the family as a whole, not the individual. They are fully aware that any influence they have comes from control of the core asset - whether that’s land or money or, in our case, trusted relationships over multiple generations.

    You cannot dilute control of the core asset without diluting the power and influence. So my brother controls it. But I know if I was ever in a position where I needed financial assistance I could look to him for support.
    So long as betting markets like Biden's VP exist, you won't need to ask for support.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    edited August 2020
    rcs1000 said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Foxy said:

    Ed M became the leader too early.

    If he'd become the leader now he'd likely have done better.

    He didn't "become" leader, he actively went up against his own brother, when he could have waited.

    Spare me any violins.
    I don't think primogeniture an appropriate reason to chose a party leader, or indeed anything else. Speaking as a second child!
    You were second.

    Suck it up, loser.
    I’m surprised that @ydoethur doesnt post about the inherent unfairness of primogeniture more. It can have a material impact on an individual’s opportunities and range of potential outcomes
    Nothing to declare? In any case, the real unfairness is height. Tall people are overrepresented in political and commercial leadership roles, as well as consuming more than their fair share of Earth's precious natural resources.
    Will no one ever address the most pernicious (and forgotten) prejudice: alphabetical discrimination.
    It’s shocking how they determine who is lead-left 🙄
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,240
    edited August 2020
    LadyG said:

    justin124 said:

    A good article as always, though I believe David understates the extent to which the Covid crisis continues to override everything else. At this time the electorate is not likely to be receptive to other messages - other than when serious mistakes have clearly been made. Starmer has put the Government on the defensive in relation to Care Homes and brought about U-Turns on policies such as entry of Care Workers into UK. The polls mean little at this stage and many are like to respond to surveys as if being asked 'How did you vote at the last GE?'. I recall too that in the Parliament elected in June 1987 the Tories remained ahead until Spring 1989.

    The collapse of Johnson's approval and best PM ratings are vindication enough for Stamer's strategy. The PM is now a discredited figure.
    Utter nonsense
    True. Johnson was discredited well before then, and continues to discredit himself on a regular basis.

    His genius insight has been to realise how little that matters, at least in the short term.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    rcs1000 said:

    Charles said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Foxy said:

    Ed M became the leader too early.

    If he'd become the leader now he'd likely have done better.

    He didn't "become" leader, he actively went up against his own brother, when he could have waited.

    Spare me any violins.
    I don't think primogeniture an appropriate reason to chose a party leader, or indeed anything else. Speaking as a second child!
    You were second.

    Suck it up, loser.
    I’m surprised that @ydoethur doesnt post about the inherent unfairness of primogeniture more. It can have a material impact on an individual’s opportunities and range of potential outcomes
    Nothing to declare? In any case, the real unfairness is height. Tall people are overrepresented in political and commercial leadership roles, as well as consuming more than their fair share of Earth's precious natural resources.
    Sure - I’ve had a successful and well paid career. My expected lifetime earnings are the square root of my older brother’s inheritance.
    I think that's one of the big differences between the middle class and the upper class/aristocracy. If your family was more middle class you'd get ~half :p
    If the upper class had ever cared about fairness, they wouldn’t be the upper class.
    The “upper class” are collectivists.

    They think of the good of the family as a whole, not the individual. They are fully aware that any influence they have comes from control of the core asset - whether that’s land or money or, in our case, trusted relationships over multiple generations.

    You cannot dilute control of the core asset without diluting the power and influence. So my brother controls it. But I know if I was ever in a position where I needed financial assistance I could look to him for support.
    So long as betting markets like Biden's VP exist, you won't need to ask for support.
    The market isn’t deep or liquid enough for me
  • justin124 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    https://medium.com/@pauladrianrichards/labour-is-at-war-and-starmer-will-decide-who-wins-19821d6c89d8

    Very good.

    The country is watching and Starmer has an absolute open goal to make Labour electable again and show the public it has really changed. Expelling Corbyn and others would frankly be the best thing to do, if indeed they are implicated by the EHRC.

    Expelling Corbyn would be damn stupid. It's not Corbyn or even the Corbynites who are the problem. It's the Scouse SWP tankies Neil Kinnock threw out who were readmitted by Ed Miliband.
    Corbyn is 100% the problem. A political mantra that is based on 19th century ideas isn't going to work.

    Blair's New Labour is the only future Labour have. Not because of him or anyone else, but simply that they can't bang on with the ideas of well over a hundred years ago. They weren't good ideas then, and they're rubbish now.

    Starmer has, I think, worked this out. He's trying to stop Labour being crap, and is biding his time with regards to positive moves.
    Labour's immediate problem is that Boris shot so many of their foxes, when he won in 2019 on Labour's 2017 platform. Boris won by being a better Corbyn, not by being a better Cameron or May.
    He was perhaps a better EdM. Boris is not and I don't imagine can be anything like Corbyn.
    Write down all the things you do not like about Corbyn, and then see how easy it is to apply the same criticisms of Boris.
    Just read your comment from yesterday re- experience of the cane as a result of the cricket ball incident. Rather amusing! Corporal punishment remained lawful in state schools until Autumn 1987 - in private schools it was permitted until Autumn 1999.
    That was another irony. It was Mrs Thatcher who'd done all the things the Tory backwoodsmen used to complain about in education: closed grammars; ended corporal punishment; abolished O-levels.
  • I'll believe it when I see it, re recession damaging the Government polling.

    I do think it's far more likely Labour gets stuck around 40% and the Tories fall, than Labour exceed 43% of the vote
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,164

    LadyG said:

    justin124 said:

    A good article as always, though I believe David understates the extent to which the Covid crisis continues to override everything else. At this time the electorate is not likely to be receptive to other messages - other than when serious mistakes have clearly been made. Starmer has put the Government on the defensive in relation to Care Homes and brought about U-Turns on policies such as entry of Care Workers into UK. The polls mean little at this stage and many are like to respond to surveys as if being asked 'How did you vote at the last GE?'. I recall too that in the Parliament elected in June 1987 the Tories remained ahead until Spring 1989.

    The collapse of Johnson's approval and best PM ratings are vindication enough for Stamer's strategy. The PM is now a discredited figure.
    Utter nonsense
    True. Johnson was discredited well before then, and continues to discredit himself on a regular basis.

    His genius insight has been to realise how little that matters, at least in the short term.
    Two mayoral terms and now PM is not short-term.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,164
    Where do these people get the idea that pictures of European leaders 'mocking' British politicians is a vote winner? The level of sheer political ineptitude is staggering yet 4 years after the Brexit vote and they still can't help themselves.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421
    Such epic multi-tasking shows he is the right person to be PM.

    (In case anyone was in doubt, please imagine I said that in a Voice that dripped with sarcasm.)

    Good night.
  • The Corbyn legacy is clear. Between 2015 and 2019 the Tory vote increased by almost 3m on top of the votes they already had to secure a majority. That a significant number of these additional voters used to be solid Labour voters is even funnier.

    Of course the cult insist that Tory lite policies like three time election winner Tony Blair had will never win elections. Which clearly is why Corbyn won a majority of 704 last year

    As for the stab in the back by traitorous Labour staffers, said traitors gained 30 seats and the true believers lost 60 seats. Perhaps Corbynite staff were just utterly shit at their jobs?
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 36,002
    edited August 2020
    felix said:

    Where do these people get the idea that pictures of European leaders 'mocking' British politicians is a vote winner?

    Where do you get the idea they are trying to win votes?

    What votes?

    There is no election or referendum on the horizon.

    Mocking politicians is a time honoured tradition.

    Mocking Brexiteers for the consequences of Brexit is a civic duty.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,468
    I thought we had already agreed a new deal with France on border arrangements?
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,205
    Muscles Johnson 💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪
  • Pulpstar said:

    Muscles Johnson 💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪
    After discussing the joys of going to the gym with Dishy Rishi I'd rather see shots of him working out *swoon*
  • justin124 said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Rexel56 said:

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    The first major test of Labour as an opposition seems likely to hit on Thursday.

    A train wreck complete with a jumbo crash is incoming. It was foreseeable and happened because the government are completely useless, and overlooked obviously preferable alternatives.

    If Kate Green can get a handle on that...

    The injustice on Thursday will be on an individual level, overall the marks will be the same as previous years, despite missing a term of work. It all depends on how well teachers have predicted and ranked their candidates.

    Going with the teachers predictions may have inflated grades, but also would have filled the Universities for the autumn, helping their finances as well as minimising NEETS. Not a perfect solution but a pragmatic one.

    Of course, if Gove and Cummings hadn't abolished AS levels, and modular exams a few years back, there would have been a much more solid and objective base for A level results...
    The Universities will fill their places, from the top down... Oxbridge already saying they will lower entry requirements, dressed up as helping pupils from poorer areas... it’ll be the ex-polys and HE colleges without research that will really struggle... of course, a student from England doesn’t pay what a student from China would have done...

    Sixth forms will use teacher grades when deciding entries, suspect Colleges will too...

    The big losers will be the Tabatha and the Tarquins who were expecting a full set of nines or A*s, their parents having spent £££££££ school and/or tuition fees... denied by the wicked algorithm, Daddy and the School Headmaster have already instructed lawyers according to the Times this morning...
    But that’s the point. If small cohorts are exempted from the algorithm, private schools will get what they predicted.

    It’s bright children in weaker state schools who will be punished by this system. Like, for example, the children of voters in the so called Red Wall.
    I doubt that many private schools have cohorts of less than 5. Many will be in the 5-15 bucket and most in the 15+ bucket
    Five per subject, Charles. Not five in total.
    I was at a well known and well funded private school. Albeit one with 260 in a year.

    My smallest class size was 8 (theology). Politics was 12 and history 16.

    How many private schools really have A level cohorts of less than 5 for an individual subject? I doubt many - the economics just don’t stack up - and in any event it will be a very small number of pupils.

    From recollection our smallest subjects were Japanese (2), Russian (3) and Mandarin (4). In each case we teamed up with the local girls’ school which lifted Russian and Mandarin to the 5-15 bucket
    In my Boys' Grammar School at the beginning of the 1970s some A Level classes were very small. French had 9 pupils - German 3 - Music 2.
    From memory I think we have two classes below 5, though it might be three.
  • Scott_xP said:
    Playing politics with peoples lives is beyond contempt
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,468
    All my A-Level classes were 20+ students minimum.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,138

    justin124 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    https://medium.com/@pauladrianrichards/labour-is-at-war-and-starmer-will-decide-who-wins-19821d6c89d8

    Very good.

    The country is watching and Starmer has an absolute open goal to make Labour electable again and show the public it has really changed. Expelling Corbyn and others would frankly be the best thing to do, if indeed they are implicated by the EHRC.

    Expelling Corbyn would be damn stupid. It's not Corbyn or even the Corbynites who are the problem. It's the Scouse SWP tankies Neil Kinnock threw out who were readmitted by Ed Miliband.
    Corbyn is 100% the problem. A political mantra that is based on 19th century ideas isn't going to work.

    Blair's New Labour is the only future Labour have. Not because of him or anyone else, but simply that they can't bang on with the ideas of well over a hundred years ago. They weren't good ideas then, and they're rubbish now.

    Starmer has, I think, worked this out. He's trying to stop Labour being crap, and is biding his time with regards to positive moves.
    Labour's immediate problem is that Boris shot so many of their foxes, when he won in 2019 on Labour's 2017 platform. Boris won by being a better Corbyn, not by being a better Cameron or May.
    He was perhaps a better EdM. Boris is not and I don't imagine can be anything like Corbyn.
    Write down all the things you do not like about Corbyn, and then see how easy it is to apply the same criticisms of Boris.
    Just read your comment from yesterday re- experience of the cane as a result of the cricket ball incident. Rather amusing! Corporal punishment remained lawful in state schools until Autumn 1987 - in private schools it was permitted until Autumn 1999.
    That was another irony. It was Mrs Thatcher who'd done all the things the Tory backwoodsmen used to complain about in education: closed grammars; ended corporal punishment; abolished O-levels.
    It was actually Tony Crosland and Shirley Williams who pushed for closing most of the grammars and ending corporal punishment. When Thatcher became PM secondary education was already mainly comprehensive but by 1997 there were more pupils in grammars than there were in 1979
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,766
    Alistair said:
    This aint gonna end well, as Steve Bannon long predicted.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,367
    felix said:

    Where do these people get the idea that pictures of European leaders 'mocking' British politicians is a vote winner? The level of sheer political ineptitude is staggering yet 4 years after the Brexit vote and they still can't help themselves.
    They are talking to themselves. So shouting louder is the obvious way to go...
  • Scott_xP said:

    felix said:

    Where do these people get the idea that pictures of European leaders 'mocking' British politicians is a vote winner?

    Where do you get the idea they are trying to win votes?

    What votes?

    There is no election or referendum on the horizon.

    Mocking politicians is a time honoured tradition.

    Mocking Brexiteers for the consequences of Brexit is a civic duty.
    Playing politics with people's lives is not
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,468
    It is, but if the alleged behaviour of the Chief Whip is true, it paints him in a pretty damn incompetent light.
  • The Chief Whip ain't coming out of this affair well at all
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,138

    The Corbyn legacy is clear. Between 2015 and 2019 the Tory vote increased by almost 3m on top of the votes they already had to secure a majority. That a significant number of these additional voters used to be solid Labour voters is even funnier.

    Of course the cult insist that Tory lite policies like three time election winner Tony Blair had will never win elections. Which clearly is why Corbyn won a majority of 704 last year

    As for the stab in the back by traitorous Labour staffers, said traitors gained 30 seats and the true believers lost 60 seats. Perhaps Corbynite staff were just utterly shit at their jobs?

    To be fair to Corbyn even in 2019 he got more votes than Ed Miliband and Brown but the Tories also got more votes than Cameron did to keep him out of No 10
  • Charles said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    The first major test of Labour as an opposition seems likely to hit on Thursday.

    A train wreck complete with a jumbo crash is incoming. It was foreseeable and happened because the government are completely useless, and overlooked obviously preferable alternatives.

    If Kate Green can get a handle on that...

    What happens Thursday?
    A-level grades come out.

    Having said they will use teacher grades, OFQUAL have now admitted they are judging by past school performance, as the SQA did.

    But it's even better than that, because they don't have as good a data set. All the exams are too new. So according to leaks from yesterday, what is going to happen is:

    1) School cohorts of below five - teacher assessment alone

    2) Cohorts of five to fifteen - mix of teacher assessment and this discredited algorithm

    3) Cohorts of 15+ - algorithm alone.

    Which means the following:

    1) 40% of grades are not going to match teacher predictions. That's far higher than the 10% gap that was leaked earlier.

    2) State schools - with large cohorts - get decided by computer modelling based on at most four comparable sets of data (more usually two or three). Private schools will get based on teacher assessment. Guess which one is going to get clobbered for downgrading? Hint - not the private schools.

    3) Appeals were previously not allowed. Now they are being allowed. They will only be allowed via schools. However, that may change again.

    4) Expect to see this challenged through the courts

    5) Expect the exam system in October to implode

    6) Expect Dominic Cummings and Michael Gove to be blamed, as they were responsible for setting up both the new exams and the current iteration of OFQUAL and the exam boards.

    7) Expect utter chaos as the government tries to blame teachers for providing evidence they decided to ignore.

    8) Expect actual student riots and the unions to ballot their members over strike action.

    And all this could have been avoided if that brain dead moron we call our PM had thought to ask schools to send in samples of work they had graded at A, B, C, D etc for each subject so some standardisation could have been done on that basis.

    This is going to be bad. You thought the SQA was a shambles? This is worse.

    Oh - and GCSEs are going to be worse.

    More here:

    https://www.tes.com/news/GCSE-results-2020-teacher-grades-ignored

    TSE pointed this story out. But the implications are absolutely dire. You could easily see every exam board, OFQUAL and the DfE consumed by this.
    You'd better hope that English teachers haven't exposed themselves as cheats and liars by vastly over predicting grades as their Scottish counterparts did.
    Our local education expert opines that teachers are cheats and liars, you could not make it up. Good old another richardhead
    Perhaps you could compare the grades Scottish teachers predicted with what had been achieved in previous years ?

    And if you'd thought instead of switching automatically into abuse you would see I have backed the action of the Scottish government in lowering those predicted grades.
    Well I don't support them , why ask teachers to do it and then make them out to be cheats and liars by making up another system to trash the teachers opinions.
    I would be less than happy if I was a teacher for sure and you calling Scottish teachers liars and cheats deserves abuse that I would get banned for.
    Nation 5
    2016-2019 average 78.6%
    2020 actual after lowering 81.1%
    2020 teacher predicted 88.6%

    Higher
    2016-2019 average 76.5%
    2020 actual after lowering 78.9%
    2020 teacher predicted 88.8%

    Advanced Higher
    2016-2019 average 80.4%
    2020 actual after lowering 84.9%
    2020 teacher predicted 92.8%

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53636296

    Its the Scottish government who has done a better job than the teachers.
    You can’t conclude more than teachers are over optimistic based on that data set. It may be that they overestimate performance by 10pp+ each year
    Indeed.

    Which is why I've also said that it such over predicting is usual then it is itself worthy of investigation.

    Given that many teachers will predict accurately and others will under-predict in order to prompt their pupils to study harder if there is a regular over-prediction of grades then it would suggest a massive over prediction by a minority of teachers.
  • Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Rexel56 said:

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    The first major test of Labour as an opposition seems likely to hit on Thursday.

    A train wreck complete with a jumbo crash is incoming. It was foreseeable and happened because the government are completely useless, and overlooked obviously preferable alternatives.

    If Kate Green can get a handle on that...

    The injustice on Thursday will be on an individual level, overall the marks will be the same as previous years, despite missing a term of work. It all depends on how well teachers have predicted and ranked their candidates.

    Going with the teachers predictions may have inflated grades, but also would have filled the Universities for the autumn, helping their finances as well as minimising NEETS. Not a perfect solution but a pragmatic one.

    Of course, if Gove and Cummings hadn't abolished AS levels, and modular exams a few years back, there would have been a much more solid and objective base for A level results...
    The Universities will fill their places, from the top down... Oxbridge already saying they will lower entry requirements, dressed up as helping pupils from poorer areas... it’ll be the ex-polys and HE colleges without research that will really struggle... of course, a student from England doesn’t pay what a student from China would have done...

    Sixth forms will use teacher grades when deciding entries, suspect Colleges will too...

    The big losers will be the Tabatha and the Tarquins who were expecting a full set of nines or A*s, their parents having spent £££££££ school and/or tuition fees... denied by the wicked algorithm, Daddy and the School Headmaster have already instructed lawyers according to the Times this morning...
    But that’s the point. If small cohorts are exempted from the algorithm, private schools will get what they predicted.

    It’s bright children in weaker state schools who will be punished by this system. Like, for example, the children of voters in the so called Red Wall.
    I doubt that many private schools have cohorts of less than 5. Many will be in the 5-15 bucket and most in the 15+ bucket
    Five per subject, Charles. Not five in total.
    I was at a well known and well funded private school. Albeit one with 260 in a year.

    My smallest class size was 8 (theology). Politics was 12 and history 16.

    How many private schools really have A level cohorts of less than 5 for an individual subject? I doubt many - the economics just don’t stack up - and in any event it will be a very small number of pupils.

    From recollection our smallest subjects were Japanese (2), Russian (3) and Mandarin (4). In each case we teamed up with the local girls’ school which lifted Russian and Mandarin to the 5-15 bucket
    We had 3 in my A-level physics cohort. The secret to small A-level groups is to go to a school that is so shite barely anyone stays past 16.

    Maths and Chemistry were also in single figures.
    We get maths into three figures some years.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,620
    edited August 2020
    Would he prefer Putin ?

    To be honest I would be cautious about an overweight late fifties bloke who had recently had medical problems going all 'action man' too quickly.
  • It is, but if the alleged behaviour of the Chief Whip is true, it paints him in a pretty damn incompetent light.
    If is the word here and as it is subject to a criminal investigation I do not think it is wise to play politics in this case
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,766
    "The continuing disproportionate focus on coronavirus has created a persistent atmosphere of exaggerated fear."

    "Meanwhile, the institutional obsession with Covid is all-consuming. Its authoritarianism extends into every aspect of life."

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8605931/DAME-HELENA-MORRISSEY-poor-wholl-suffer-dont-return-office.html
  • The Chief Whip ain't coming out of this affair well at all

    Do you have any factual evidence
  • felix said:

    Where do these people get the idea that pictures of European leaders 'mocking' British politicians is a vote winner? The level of sheer political ineptitude is staggering yet 4 years after the Brexit vote and they still can't help themselves.
    OK.

    The thing is, the current UK government has been very clear that it wants to put all the previous arrangements with the EU on the bonfire, with a fairly minimal arrangement in their place. It wants independent control. It held all the cards, yada yada.

    It has been pretty rude to some European leaders; Johnson likened Macron to a Nazi guard, which is really offensive if you think about it. Now it turns out the government needs their help after all.

    If mockery isn't appropriate, what is?
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Scott_xP said:
    Yes? And?

    This isn’t some killer riposte to what Priti Patel said.
  • HYUFD said:

    justin124 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    https://medium.com/@pauladrianrichards/labour-is-at-war-and-starmer-will-decide-who-wins-19821d6c89d8

    Very good.

    The country is watching and Starmer has an absolute open goal to make Labour electable again and show the public it has really changed. Expelling Corbyn and others would frankly be the best thing to do, if indeed they are implicated by the EHRC.

    Expelling Corbyn would be damn stupid. It's not Corbyn or even the Corbynites who are the problem. It's the Scouse SWP tankies Neil Kinnock threw out who were readmitted by Ed Miliband.
    Corbyn is 100% the problem. A political mantra that is based on 19th century ideas isn't going to work.

    Blair's New Labour is the only future Labour have. Not because of him or anyone else, but simply that they can't bang on with the ideas of well over a hundred years ago. They weren't good ideas then, and they're rubbish now.

    Starmer has, I think, worked this out. He's trying to stop Labour being crap, and is biding his time with regards to positive moves.
    Labour's immediate problem is that Boris shot so many of their foxes, when he won in 2019 on Labour's 2017 platform. Boris won by being a better Corbyn, not by being a better Cameron or May.
    He was perhaps a better EdM. Boris is not and I don't imagine can be anything like Corbyn.
    Write down all the things you do not like about Corbyn, and then see how easy it is to apply the same criticisms of Boris.
    Just read your comment from yesterday re- experience of the cane as a result of the cricket ball incident. Rather amusing! Corporal punishment remained lawful in state schools until Autumn 1987 - in private schools it was permitted until Autumn 1999.
    That was another irony. It was Mrs Thatcher who'd done all the things the Tory backwoodsmen used to complain about in education: closed grammars; ended corporal punishment; abolished O-levels.
    It was actually Tony Crosland and Shirley Williams who pushed for closing most of the grammars and ending corporal punishment. When Thatcher became PM secondary education was already mainly comprehensive but by 1997 there were more pupils in grammars than there were in 1979
    Mrs T as Ed Sec under Heath closed most of the grammars. As Prime Minister, her government abolished O-levels by combining them with CSEs to form GCSEs. Her government ended corporal punishment after a European Court ruling.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Scott_xP said:
    Do you still believe that she is just “responding to requests for comment”?

    Or is she seeking revenge via media?
  • HYUFD said:

    The Corbyn legacy is clear. Between 2015 and 2019 the Tory vote increased by almost 3m on top of the votes they already had to secure a majority. That a significant number of these additional voters used to be solid Labour voters is even funnier.

    Of course the cult insist that Tory lite policies like three time election winner Tony Blair had will never win elections. Which clearly is why Corbyn won a majority of 704 last year

    As for the stab in the back by traitorous Labour staffers, said traitors gained 30 seats and the true believers lost 60 seats. Perhaps Corbynite staff were just utterly shit at their jobs?

    To be fair to Corbyn even in 2019 he got more votes than Ed Miliband and Brown but the Tories also got more votes than Cameron did to keep him out of No 10
    In any election at any level its not just about how many votes I get, its about how many votes the other guy gets. Winning an extra slug of votes is fine, but if the other fella who was already in the lead adds more than I did...

    Its just adding. Something Jezbollah acolytes seem incapable of managing
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,468

    It is, but if the alleged behaviour of the Chief Whip is true, it paints him in a pretty damn incompetent light.
    If is the word here and as it is subject to a criminal investigation I do not think it is wise to play politics in this case
    Who’s playing politics? This is not a Labour vs Tory debate. This is a simple discussion over whether promising to get back to someone about a sexual assault allegation, and then not, is incompetent or totally fine.

    It would be incompetence if it was a Labour figure, and it would be incompetence if it was a non-political figure.

    Of course Conservative “fans” will defend the alleged behaviour, simply because the man happens to be a part of the HMG.
  • So a helping of humble pie to go with the pineapple pizza for PB's Jos Buttler fan club ?

    :wink:
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,468
    Charles said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Do you still believe that she is just “responding to requests for comment”?

    Or is she seeking revenge via media?
    Do you think it’s okay to promise to get back to a sexual assault complainant, and then not doing so?

    Really?
  • felix said:

    Where do these people get the idea that pictures of European leaders 'mocking' British politicians is a vote winner? The level of sheer political ineptitude is staggering yet 4 years after the Brexit vote and they still can't help themselves.
    OK.

    The thing is, the current UK government has been very clear that it wants to put all the previous arrangements with the EU on the bonfire, with a fairly minimal arrangement in their place. It wants independent control. It held all the cards, yada yada.

    It has been pretty rude to some European leaders; Johnson likened Macron to a Nazi guard, which is really offensive if you think about it. Now it turns out the government needs their help after all.

    If mockery isn't appropriate, what is?
    People putting their lives at risk needs joint action and this should be beyond cheap politics
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    justin124 said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Rexel56 said:

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    The first major test of Labour as an opposition seems likely to hit on Thursday.

    A train wreck complete with a jumbo crash is incoming. It was foreseeable and happened because the government are completely useless, and overlooked obviously preferable alternatives.

    If Kate Green can get a handle on that...

    The injustice on Thursday will be on an individual level, overall the marks will be the same as previous years, despite missing a term of work. It all depends on how well teachers have predicted and ranked their candidates.

    Going with the teachers predictions may have inflated grades, but also would have filled the Universities for the autumn, helping their finances as well as minimising NEETS. Not a perfect solution but a pragmatic one.

    Of course, if Gove and Cummings hadn't abolished AS levels, and modular exams a few years back, there would have been a much more solid and objective base for A level results...
    The Universities will fill their places, from the top down... Oxbridge already saying they will lower entry requirements, dressed up as helping pupils from poorer areas... it’ll be the ex-polys and HE colleges without research that will really struggle... of course, a student from England doesn’t pay what a student from China would have done...

    Sixth forms will use teacher grades when deciding entries, suspect Colleges will too...

    The big losers will be the Tabatha and the Tarquins who were expecting a full set of nines or A*s, their parents having spent £££££££ school and/or tuition fees... denied by the wicked algorithm, Daddy and the School Headmaster have already instructed lawyers according to the Times this morning...
    But that’s the point. If small cohorts are exempted from the algorithm, private schools will get what they predicted.

    It’s bright children in weaker state schools who will be punished by this system. Like, for example, the children of voters in the so called Red Wall.
    I doubt that many private schools have cohorts of less than 5. Many will be in the 5-15 bucket and most in the 15+ bucket
    Five per subject, Charles. Not five in total.
    I was at a well known and well funded private school. Albeit one with 260 in a year.

    My smallest class size was 8 (theology). Politics was 12 and history 16.

    How many private schools really have A level cohorts of less than 5 for an individual subject? I doubt many - the economics just don’t stack up - and in any event it will be a very small number of pupils.

    From recollection our smallest subjects were Japanese (2), Russian (3) and Mandarin (4). In each case we teamed up with the local girls’ school which lifted Russian and Mandarin to the 5-15 bucket
    In my Boys' Grammar School at the beginning of the 1970s some A Level classes were very small. French had 9 pupils - German 3 - Music 2.
    From memory I think we have two classes below 5, though it might be three.
    It’s been clear from all the posts on here that largest class sizes are in top flight public schools... what conclusions to draw from that 😉
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,468

    The Chief Whip ain't coming out of this affair well at all

    Do you have any factual evidence
    The Sunday Times seems to think they have evidence.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,367
    NHS England Cases - scaled to 100K popluation -

    image
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,367
    HMS England cases - absolute -

    image
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,367
    NHS England Cases -

    image
    image
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 36,002

    People putting their lives at risk needs joint action and this should be beyond cheap politics

    Cheap politics is what endangered the joint action.

    Those who did it should be reminded of that fact.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,367
    PHE Death-by-lawyer numbers

    image
  • It is, but if the alleged behaviour of the Chief Whip is true, it paints him in a pretty damn incompetent light.
    If is the word here and as it is subject to a criminal investigation I do not think it is wise to play politics in this case
    Who’s playing politics? This is not a Labour vs Tory debate. This is a simple discussion over whether promising to get back to someone about a sexual assault allegation, and then not, is incompetent or totally fine.

    It would be incompetence if it was a Labour figure, and it would be incompetence if it was a non-political figure.

    Of course Conservative “fans” will defend the alleged behaviour, simply because the man happens to be a part of the HMG.
    I defend nobody but it is important the law takes it's course and once the police have made a decision other issues will follow. And I would say the same if it was a labour politician
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,468

    It is, but if the alleged behaviour of the Chief Whip is true, it paints him in a pretty damn incompetent light.
    If is the word here and as it is subject to a criminal investigation I do not think it is wise to play politics in this case
    Who’s playing politics? This is not a Labour vs Tory debate. This is a simple discussion over whether promising to get back to someone about a sexual assault allegation, and then not, is incompetent or totally fine.

    It would be incompetence if it was a Labour figure, and it would be incompetence if it was a non-political figure.

    Of course Conservative “fans” will defend the alleged behaviour, simply because the man happens to be a part of the HMG.
    I defend nobody but it is important the law takes it's course and once the police have made a decision other issues will follow. And I would say the same if it was a labour politician
    You’re misunderstanding. Whether or not the rape allegation is true is neither here nor there. It makes no difference to whether promising to get back to a sexual assault complainant, and then “forgetting to” is fine or not.

    It obviously isn’t fine. He should either have not promised anything, or got back to her telling her to go through X channel.
  • humbuggerhumbugger Posts: 377

    The Chief Whip ain't coming out of this affair well at all

    Do you have any factual evidence
    The Sunday Times seems to think they have evidence.
    As I recall the Sunday Times seemed to think it had evidence of the Hitler Diaries.
  • Charles said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Do you still believe that she is just “responding to requests for comment”?

    Or is she seeking revenge via media?
    Do you think it’s okay to promise to get back to a sexual assault complainant, and then not doing so?

    Really?
    Do you have factual evidence on what actually happened or newspaper reports

    I do believe there are concerns here and I am not commenting further

    I await the police decision
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,766

    HMS England cases - absolute -

    image

    I'm curious, where do these figures come from?
  • Scott_xP said:

    People putting their lives at risk needs joint action and this should be beyond cheap politics

    Cheap politics is what endangered the joint action.

    Those who did it should be reminded of that fact.
    Utter nonsense
  • From my recent experience its noticeable that:

    (1) The people in pubs and restaurants on Thur-Sun are, on average, significantly more overweight than those on Mon-Wed ie the Rishi's dinners crowd.

    (2) The average weight of people exercising is significantly lower than it was in the spring.

    The conclusion I would draw is that some people are taking their general health seriously (though still attracted to subsidised meals out) and others aren't.

    It would be interesting to know how what proportion of people decided to take health issues more seriously this year and what proportion of them are/will maintain doing so.
  • Charles said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    The first major test of Labour as an opposition seems likely to hit on Thursday.

    A train wreck complete with a jumbo crash is incoming. It was foreseeable and happened because the government are completely useless, and overlooked obviously preferable alternatives.

    If Kate Green can get a handle on that...

    What happens Thursday?
    A-level grades come out.

    Having said they will use teacher grades, OFQUAL have now admitted they are judging by past school performance, as the SQA did.

    But it's even better than that, because they don't have as good a data set. All the exams are too new. So according to leaks from yesterday, what is going to happen is:

    1) School cohorts of below five - teacher assessment alone

    2) Cohorts of five to fifteen - mix of teacher assessment and this discredited algorithm

    3) Cohorts of 15+ - algorithm alone.

    Which means the following:

    1) 40% of grades are not going to match teacher predictions. That's far higher than the 10% gap that was leaked earlier.

    2) State schools - with large cohorts - get decided by computer modelling based on at most four comparable sets of data (more usually two or three). Private schools will get based on teacher assessment. Guess which one is going to get clobbered for downgrading? Hint - not the private schools.

    3) Appeals were previously not allowed. Now they are being allowed. They will only be allowed via schools. However, that may change again.

    4) Expect to see this challenged through the courts

    5) Expect the exam system in October to implode

    6) Expect Dominic Cummings and Michael Gove to be blamed, as they were responsible for setting up both the new exams and the current iteration of OFQUAL and the exam boards.

    7) Expect utter chaos as the government tries to blame teachers for providing evidence they decided to ignore.

    8) Expect actual student riots and the unions to ballot their members over strike action.

    And all this could have been avoided if that brain dead moron we call our PM had thought to ask schools to send in samples of work they had graded at A, B, C, D etc for each subject so some standardisation could have been done on that basis.

    This is going to be bad. You thought the SQA was a shambles? This is worse.

    Oh - and GCSEs are going to be worse.

    More here:

    https://www.tes.com/news/GCSE-results-2020-teacher-grades-ignored

    TSE pointed this story out. But the implications are absolutely dire. You could easily see every exam board, OFQUAL and the DfE consumed by this.
    You'd better hope that English teachers haven't exposed themselves as cheats and liars by vastly over predicting grades as their Scottish counterparts did.
    Our local education expert opines that teachers are cheats and liars, you could not make it up. Good old another richardhead
    Perhaps you could compare the grades Scottish teachers predicted with what had been achieved in previous years ?

    And if you'd thought instead of switching automatically into abuse you would see I have backed the action of the Scottish government in lowering those predicted grades.
    Well I don't support them , why ask teachers to do it and then make them out to be cheats and liars by making up another system to trash the teachers opinions.
    I would be less than happy if I was a teacher for sure and you calling Scottish teachers liars and cheats deserves abuse that I would get banned for.
    Nation 5
    2016-2019 average 78.6%
    2020 actual after lowering 81.1%
    2020 teacher predicted 88.6%

    Higher
    2016-2019 average 76.5%
    2020 actual after lowering 78.9%
    2020 teacher predicted 88.8%

    Advanced Higher
    2016-2019 average 80.4%
    2020 actual after lowering 84.9%
    2020 teacher predicted 92.8%

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53636296

    Its the Scottish government who has done a better job than the teachers.
    You can’t conclude more than teachers are over optimistic based on that data set. It may be that they overestimate performance by 10pp+ each year
    Indeed.

    Which is why I've also said that it such over predicting is usual then it is itself worthy of investigation.

    Given that many teachers will predict accurately and others will under-predict in order to prompt their pupils to study harder if there is a regular over-prediction of grades then it would suggest a massive over prediction by a minority of teachers.
    Which predictions? I have to produce three sets in a normal year:
    Target grades: these are an indication to the student of the level they should be working towards and are “aspirational”. A student who gets their target grade has done well.
    UCAS predictions: normally the benefit of the doubt is given here. Over-predicting does the students no favours, but sometimes it is difficult for them to accept that.
    Predictions after mocks: these have to be carefully weighted as if they are too high students may feel they are already home and not bother working any more, while if they are too low they can demoralise students into giving up. Making it clear that the prediction is dependent on the usual level of progress is one of the skills of teaching exam groups.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,468

    Charles said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Do you still believe that she is just “responding to requests for comment”?

    Or is she seeking revenge via media?
    Do you think it’s okay to promise to get back to a sexual assault complainant, and then not doing so?

    Really?
    Do you have factual evidence on what actually happened or newspaper reports

    I do believe there are concerns here and I am not commenting further

    I await the police decision
    Whether or not the rape or sexual assault happened is not what we’re discussing here. We’re discussing the alleged actions of the Chief Whip when informed of the allegation. That is not subject to any police investigation.
  • humbuggerhumbugger Posts: 377
    Charles said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Yes? And?

    This isn’t some killer riposte to what Priti Patel said.
    How delightfully quaint to think that France adheres to everything enshrined in EU rules.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,367

    HMS England cases - absolute -

    image

    I'm curious, where do these figures come from?
    https://c19downloads.azureedge.net/downloads/csv/coronavirus-cases_latest.csv

    It's supposed to be replaced with the new API, fairly soon.
  • Charles said:

    justin124 said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Rexel56 said:

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    The first major test of Labour as an opposition seems likely to hit on Thursday.

    A train wreck complete with a jumbo crash is incoming. It was foreseeable and happened because the government are completely useless, and overlooked obviously preferable alternatives.

    If Kate Green can get a handle on that...

    The injustice on Thursday will be on an individual level, overall the marks will be the same as previous years, despite missing a term of work. It all depends on how well teachers have predicted and ranked their candidates.

    Going with the teachers predictions may have inflated grades, but also would have filled the Universities for the autumn, helping their finances as well as minimising NEETS. Not a perfect solution but a pragmatic one.

    Of course, if Gove and Cummings hadn't abolished AS levels, and modular exams a few years back, there would have been a much more solid and objective base for A level results...
    The Universities will fill their places, from the top down... Oxbridge already saying they will lower entry requirements, dressed up as helping pupils from poorer areas... it’ll be the ex-polys and HE colleges without research that will really struggle... of course, a student from England doesn’t pay what a student from China would have done...

    Sixth forms will use teacher grades when deciding entries, suspect Colleges will too...

    The big losers will be the Tabatha and the Tarquins who were expecting a full set of nines or A*s, their parents having spent £££££££ school and/or tuition fees... denied by the wicked algorithm, Daddy and the School Headmaster have already instructed lawyers according to the Times this morning...
    But that’s the point. If small cohorts are exempted from the algorithm, private schools will get what they predicted.

    It’s bright children in weaker state schools who will be punished by this system. Like, for example, the children of voters in the so called Red Wall.
    I doubt that many private schools have cohorts of less than 5. Many will be in the 5-15 bucket and most in the 15+ bucket
    Five per subject, Charles. Not five in total.
    I was at a well known and well funded private school. Albeit one with 260 in a year.

    My smallest class size was 8 (theology). Politics was 12 and history 16.

    How many private schools really have A level cohorts of less than 5 for an individual subject? I doubt many - the economics just don’t stack up - and in any event it will be a very small number of pupils.

    From recollection our smallest subjects were Japanese (2), Russian (3) and Mandarin (4). In each case we teamed up with the local girls’ school which lifted Russian and Mandarin to the 5-15 bucket
    In my Boys' Grammar School at the beginning of the 1970s some A Level classes were very small. French had 9 pupils - German 3 - Music 2.
    From memory I think we have two classes below 5, though it might be three.
    It’s been clear from all the posts on here that largest class sizes are in top flight public schools... what conclusions to draw from that 😉
    According to this here old copy of the Independent Schools Yearbook, Eton has 16 classics teachers. Sixteen!
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 36,002

    Utter nonsense

    That's why I didn't vote for it...
  • HMS England cases - absolute -

    image

    I'm curious, where do these figures come from?
    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/cases?areaType=ltla&areaName=Nottingham
  • eekeek Posts: 28,405
    Charles said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Do you still believe that she is just “responding to requests for comment”?

    Or is she seeking revenge via media?
    If you are promised a response in a week and you don't get one in after chasing up 3 months later I can see why you may head elsewhere
  • brokenwheelbrokenwheel Posts: 3,352

    It is, but if the alleged behaviour of the Chief Whip is true, it paints him in a pretty damn incompetent light.
    If is the word here and as it is subject to a criminal investigation I do not think it is wise to play politics in this case
    Who’s playing politics? This is not a Labour vs Tory debate. This is a simple discussion over whether promising to get back to someone about a sexual assault allegation, and then not, is incompetent or totally fine.

    It would be incompetence if it was a Labour figure, and it would be incompetence if it was a non-political figure.

    Of course Conservative “fans” will defend the alleged behaviour, simply because the man happens to be a part of the HMG.
    I defend nobody but it is important the law takes it's course and once the police have made a decision other issues will follow. And I would say the same if it was a labour politician
    You’re misunderstanding. Whether or not the rape allegation is true is neither here nor there. It makes no difference to whether promising to get back to a sexual assault complainant, and then “forgetting to” is fine or not.

    It obviously isn’t fine. He should either have not promised anything, or got back to her telling her to go through X channel.
    I haven't been paying much attention to this but IIRC didn't the Chief Whip initially say the allegations brought to him were about bullying, not the sexual assualt allegation?
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,482
    Scott_xP said:
    I can't really respect a speaker of English as a second language who uses the American spellings. It's like me learning French and using some sort Senegalese dialect. It's a sort of absurd affectation.
  • Charles said:

    justin124 said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    Rexel56 said:

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    The first major test of Labour as an opposition seems likely to hit on Thursday.

    A train wreck complete with a jumbo crash is incoming. It was foreseeable and happened because the government are completely useless, and overlooked obviously preferable alternatives.

    If Kate Green can get a handle on that...

    The injustice on Thursday will be on an individual level, overall the marks will be the same as previous years, despite missing a term of work. It all depends on how well teachers have predicted and ranked their candidates.

    Going with the teachers predictions may have inflated grades, but also would have filled the Universities for the autumn, helping their finances as well as minimising NEETS. Not a perfect solution but a pragmatic one.

    Of course, if Gove and Cummings hadn't abolished AS levels, and modular exams a few years back, there would have been a much more solid and objective base for A level results...
    The Universities will fill their places, from the top down... Oxbridge already saying they will lower entry requirements, dressed up as helping pupils from poorer areas... it’ll be the ex-polys and HE colleges without research that will really struggle... of course, a student from England doesn’t pay what a student from China would have done...

    Sixth forms will use teacher grades when deciding entries, suspect Colleges will too...

    The big losers will be the Tabatha and the Tarquins who were expecting a full set of nines or A*s, their parents having spent £££££££ school and/or tuition fees... denied by the wicked algorithm, Daddy and the School Headmaster have already instructed lawyers according to the Times this morning...
    But that’s the point. If small cohorts are exempted from the algorithm, private schools will get what they predicted.

    It’s bright children in weaker state schools who will be punished by this system. Like, for example, the children of voters in the so called Red Wall.
    I doubt that many private schools have cohorts of less than 5. Many will be in the 5-15 bucket and most in the 15+ bucket
    Five per subject, Charles. Not five in total.
    I was at a well known and well funded private school. Albeit one with 260 in a year.

    My smallest class size was 8 (theology). Politics was 12 and history 16.

    How many private schools really have A level cohorts of less than 5 for an individual subject? I doubt many - the economics just don’t stack up - and in any event it will be a very small number of pupils.

    From recollection our smallest subjects were Japanese (2), Russian (3) and Mandarin (4). In each case we teamed up with the local girls’ school which lifted Russian and Mandarin to the 5-15 bucket
    In my Boys' Grammar School at the beginning of the 1970s some A Level classes were very small. French had 9 pupils - German 3 - Music 2.
    From memory I think we have two classes below 5, though it might be three.
    It’s been clear from all the posts on here that largest class sizes are in top flight public schools... what conclusions to draw from that 😉
    Our largest A-level classes are over 20 in several subjects. The small classes are very much special cases.
  • Charles said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Do you still believe that she is just “responding to requests for comment”?

    Or is she seeking revenge via media?
    Do you think it’s okay to promise to get back to a sexual assault complainant, and then not doing so?

    Really?
    Do you have factual evidence on what actually happened or newspaper reports

    I do believe there are concerns here and I am not commenting further

    I await the police decision
    Whether or not the rape or sexual assault happened is not what we’re discussing here. We’re discussing the alleged actions of the Chief Whip when informed of the allegation. That is not subject to any police investigation.
    Again I am not commenting on a newspaper story and a sequence of events that have led to a serious allegation

    Maybe I am just very cautious but that is my view and it is not political.

    I would say the same if a labour politician was in a similar position
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,468

    It is, but if the alleged behaviour of the Chief Whip is true, it paints him in a pretty damn incompetent light.
    If is the word here and as it is subject to a criminal investigation I do not think it is wise to play politics in this case
    Who’s playing politics? This is not a Labour vs Tory debate. This is a simple discussion over whether promising to get back to someone about a sexual assault allegation, and then not, is incompetent or totally fine.

    It would be incompetence if it was a Labour figure, and it would be incompetence if it was a non-political figure.

    Of course Conservative “fans” will defend the alleged behaviour, simply because the man happens to be a part of the HMG.
    I defend nobody but it is important the law takes it's course and once the police have made a decision other issues will follow. And I would say the same if it was a labour politician
    You’re misunderstanding. Whether or not the rape allegation is true is neither here nor there. It makes no difference to whether promising to get back to a sexual assault complainant, and then “forgetting to” is fine or not.

    It obviously isn’t fine. He should either have not promised anything, or got back to her telling her to go through X channel.
    I haven't been paying much attention to this but IIRC didn't the Chief Whip initially say the allegations brought to him were about bullying, not the sexual assualt allegation?
    I don’t know. To be honest though It’s still pretty incompetent to promise to get back to somebody over workplace bullying, and then not.
  • Charles said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    The first major test of Labour as an opposition seems likely to hit on Thursday.

    A train wreck complete with a jumbo crash is incoming. It was foreseeable and happened because the government are completely useless, and overlooked obviously preferable alternatives.

    If Kate Green can get a handle on that...

    What happens Thursday?
    A-level grades come out.

    Having said they will use teacher grades, OFQUAL have now admitted they are judging by past school performance, as the SQA did.

    But it's even better than that, because they don't have as good a data set. All the exams are too new. So according to leaks from yesterday, what is going to happen is:

    1) School cohorts of below five - teacher assessment alone

    2) Cohorts of five to fifteen - mix of teacher assessment and this discredited algorithm

    3) Cohorts of 15+ - algorithm alone.

    Which means the following:

    1) 40% of grades are not going to match teacher predictions. That's far higher than the 10% gap that was leaked earlier.

    2) State schools - with large cohorts - get decided by computer modelling based on at most four comparable sets of data (more usually two or three). Private schools will get based on teacher assessment. Guess which one is going to get clobbered for downgrading? Hint - not the private schools.

    3) Appeals were previously not allowed. Now they are being allowed. They will only be allowed via schools. However, that may change again.

    4) Expect to see this challenged through the courts

    5) Expect the exam system in October to implode

    6) Expect Dominic Cummings and Michael Gove to be blamed, as they were responsible for setting up both the new exams and the current iteration of OFQUAL and the exam boards.

    7) Expect utter chaos as the government tries to blame teachers for providing evidence they decided to ignore.

    8) Expect actual student riots and the unions to ballot their members over strike action.

    And all this could have been avoided if that brain dead moron we call our PM had thought to ask schools to send in samples of work they had graded at A, B, C, D etc for each subject so some standardisation could have been done on that basis.

    This is going to be bad. You thought the SQA was a shambles? This is worse.

    Oh - and GCSEs are going to be worse.

    More here:

    https://www.tes.com/news/GCSE-results-2020-teacher-grades-ignored

    TSE pointed this story out. But the implications are absolutely dire. You could easily see every exam board, OFQUAL and the DfE consumed by this.
    You'd better hope that English teachers haven't exposed themselves as cheats and liars by vastly over predicting grades as their Scottish counterparts did.
    Our local education expert opines that teachers are cheats and liars, you could not make it up. Good old another richardhead
    Perhaps you could compare the grades Scottish teachers predicted with what had been achieved in previous years ?

    And if you'd thought instead of switching automatically into abuse you would see I have backed the action of the Scottish government in lowering those predicted grades.
    Well I don't support them , why ask teachers to do it and then make them out to be cheats and liars by making up another system to trash the teachers opinions.
    I would be less than happy if I was a teacher for sure and you calling Scottish teachers liars and cheats deserves abuse that I would get banned for.
    Nation 5
    2016-2019 average 78.6%
    2020 actual after lowering 81.1%
    2020 teacher predicted 88.6%

    Higher
    2016-2019 average 76.5%
    2020 actual after lowering 78.9%
    2020 teacher predicted 88.8%

    Advanced Higher
    2016-2019 average 80.4%
    2020 actual after lowering 84.9%
    2020 teacher predicted 92.8%

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53636296

    Its the Scottish government who has done a better job than the teachers.
    You can’t conclude more than teachers are over optimistic based on that data set. It may be that they overestimate performance by 10pp+ each year
    Indeed.

    Which is why I've also said that it such over predicting is usual then it is itself worthy of investigation.

    Given that many teachers will predict accurately and others will under-predict in order to prompt their pupils to study harder if there is a regular over-prediction of grades then it would suggest a massive over prediction by a minority of teachers.
    Which predictions? I have to produce three sets in a normal year:
    Target grades: these are an indication to the student of the level they should be working towards and are “aspirational”. A student who gets their target grade has done well.
    UCAS predictions: normally the benefit of the doubt is given here. Over-predicting does the students no favours, but sometimes it is difficult for them to accept that.
    Predictions after mocks: these have to be carefully weighted as if they are too high students may feel they are already home and not bother working any more, while if they are too low they can demoralise students into giving up. Making it clear that the prediction is dependent on the usual level of progress is one of the skills of teaching exam groups.
    The ones which will likely see the wailing when some are downgraded.
  • Charles said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Do you still believe that she is just “responding to requests for comment”?

    Or is she seeking revenge via media?
    Do you think it’s okay to promise to get back to a sexual assault complainant, and then not doing so?

    Really?
    Do you have factual evidence on what actually happened or newspaper reports

    I do believe there are concerns here and I am not commenting further

    I await the police decision
    Whether or not the rape or sexual assault happened is not what we’re discussing here. We’re discussing the alleged actions of the Chief Whip when informed of the allegation. That is not subject to any police investigation.
    Anyone presented with claims such as this should tell them to go to the police.
This discussion has been closed.