As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would normally be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
It is entirely conceivable that the BBB pupil is more intelligent and harder working than the AAA one. In that case it is better for Oxford (dunno what this "Oxbridge" shit is) and by any sane standards more just and more desirable that the BBB pupil gets the place, subject to the very important proviso that the BBB pupil can make up the ground lost by worse schooling, in time to benefit from the Oxford course.
A friend of mine studied some Classics degree at Oxford, maybe the one Boris studied? In any case she was from a state school and found it almost impossible to keep up as most of her peers had studied greek and latin at their private schools, whilst she had not.
She got a 1st anyway.
Early in my physics degree, I discovered that the lecturers assumed everyone knew all about imaginary numbers (not in my A-Level maths course; I did not do further maths). Was a good kick up the backside for me to discover that this wasn't going to be easy and also to learn how to teach myself things rather than rely on being taught everything!
And it's a lot easier to find things out now than it used to be before the internet arrived.
I'm old enough that I had to use actual books (internet/web very definitely existed, but not networked to accommodation in 1st year; was by 4th year)
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
And AAA from Gasworks St Comp is a better predictor of a first class degree in the end than from Eton, I suspect, from observations amongst my friends - all more or less equally bright in their wats but some of the ones from proivate schools had less staying power when the magisterial lash was removed and thet had to self-motivate much more once at Uni. Though all got goods and productive careers in their ways.
I think the point is that from some schools a BBB from Gasworks St Comp is a better indicator than AAA from Eton.
That assumes that knowledge imparted at school is not really important at university.
A mathematics professor of my acquaintance was, several years ago, having to run supplementary basic maths courses for his first years. Since a chunk of the incoming students couldn't differentiate or integrate with any faculty, or ease - for example.
That is an A-level maths quirk: some years back a lot of calculus was stripped out in favour of probability and sets. Social scientists and computer scientists were happy, physical scientists less so.
The GCSE syllabus no longer covers calculus, but it is dealt with in great depth in the basic A Level Maths syllabus, the main omission being the lack of any study of calculus from first principles. The need for additional courses for university freshers is more down to the fact that many chose to study maths at uni after taking only Mathematics at A Level, whereas university courses start from the premise that they have also studied Further Maths at A Level. So students start without any knowledge at all of many topics encountered only at Further Maths, imaginary numbers being but one example, and they need to acquire a rudimentary knowledge of these very quickly in order to progress.
I'm saying it should be vouchers, I have never said crack and prostitutes and I am against any such judgementalism. I believe in libertarianism and free market economics - if you need to give to someone then give to them and let them choose how to spend it.
But yes Morrisons is in a box - the cost to them largely is the box. They're a supermarket they have a ton of food on site. That is the point. They can bulk order and get massive deliveries that go into the shelves or into boxes. That is why supermarkets are such good value. Morrisons may have marginal overheads in packing the box, but they will be tiny compared to others businesses.
A company with overheads is never going to compete with Morrisons.
Wowsers. Lets take this nonsense apart line by line:
1. "The cost to them largely is the box". Laughable. The major cost to all the supermarkets in their online orders is paying someone to pull the stock off the shelves. A generic cardboard carton printed on a vast scale is pennies.
You're talking cross purposes with me. You're talking about someone picking something where they wouldn't otherwise, that is not what I was talking about.
I am talking about if you give someone a voucher to supplement their local shop. IE you give someone a £30 voucher and they turn their £60 shop into a £90 shop.
In that case you've already got someone pulling extra stock off the shelves when they were already doing the regular shop anyway. They're just presenting more at checkout - or if its an online delivery then the picker is picking a bit more (which to be fair may mean they take a bit longer). Either way since a shop was already happening this is just a bit extra added to the shop, not an entirely new order boxed up on its own.
A voucher should reduce the bill not be the entirety of the shop, as people get their regular shopping anyway.
It depends. I don't know the details on this operation but can say from experience that many businesses will be paying their suppliers more wholesale than the supermarkets charge retail. Why? Because the wholesalers who are delivering to them have to cover their costs in doing so. So that £5 of food could cost the business supplying it £6 wholesale rather than £5 retail. Paying someone to go shopping retail can mean the goods are bought cheaper but isn't really worth doing.
Add on all the incidental overheads - for just employing someone you have not just wages, but holiday pay, pensions, National Insurance and more - then other overheads like your Business Rates for the building you're operating from, rent, electricity (not cheap if you have coolers running 24/7) and so on.
Costs can add up quicker than people realise.
All the more reason the only logical thing to do is have parents go direct to the supermarket. They can buy what they need to buy while doing their weekly shop - minimum fuss, minimum overhead.
1. Wholesale gross profit margins are lower than supermarkets due to the lower operating costs 2. A Wholesale pack - 2.5kg of whatever - is almost always cheaper per kilo than the equivalent retail pack. You get a discount for bulk 3. It certainly has been the case that small wholesalers have been dearer than supermarkets and I have given an example of that yesterday. Its very unusual though - we see the opposite in action in the likes of Tesco who now sell cheap bulk packs of Tea or whatever sourced through their Booker operation 4. Overheads for a warehouse are less than overheads for a supermarket.
Maggie HabermanWhite House Correspondent Hi folks, back from a meeting. It’s worth noting that the White House is not preparing a defense for Trump at all. The legislative affairs shop, such as it still is, isn’t involved. Neither is the White House counsel’s office.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would normally be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
It is entirely conceivable that the BBB pupil is more intelligent and harder working than the AAA one. In that case it is better for Oxford (dunno what this "Oxbridge" shit is) and by any sane standards more just and more desirable that the BBB pupil gets the place, subject to the very important proviso that the BBB pupil can make up the ground lost by worse schooling, in time to benefit from the Oxford course.
A friend of mine studied some Classics degree at Oxford, maybe the one Boris studied? In any case she was from a state school and found it almost impossible to keep up as most of her peers had studied greek and latin at their private schools, whilst she had not.
She got a 1st anyway.
In that case, your friend will almost certainly have scored very highly in the Classics Language Aptitude Test (CLAT) when she applied, and thus was admitted on merit, not as a charity case. Oxford has been doing this for years, and it's a much better solution than some crude handicapping system.
On the other hand, it's a great pity if she wasn't able to acquire the languages to a comfortable level, since that's one of the main pleasures and joys of the course.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
And AAA from Gasworks St Comp is a better predictor of a first class degree in the end than from Eton, I suspect, from observations amongst my friends - all more or less equally bright in their wats but some of the ones from proivate schools had less staying power when the magisterial lash was removed and thet had to self-motivate much more once at Uni. Though all got goods and productive careers in their ways.
I think the point is that from some schools a BBB from Gasworks St Comp is a better indicator than AAA from Eton.
That assumes that knowledge imparted at school is not really important at university.
A mathematics professor of my acquaintance was, several years ago, having to run supplementary basic maths courses for his first years. Since a chunk of the incoming students couldn't differentiate or integrate with any faculty, or ease - for example.
That is an A-level maths quirk: some years back a lot of calculus was stripped out in favour of probability and sets. Social scientists and computer scientists were happy, physical scientists less so.
The GCSE syllabus no longer covers calculus, but it is dealt with in great depth in the basic A Level Maths syllabus, the main omission being the lack of any study of calculus from first principles. The need for additional courses for university freshers is more down to the fact that many chose t study maths at uni after taking only Mathematics at A Level, whereas university courses start from the premise that they have also studied Further Maths at A Level. So students start without any knowledge at all of many topics encountered only at Further Maths, imaginary numbers being but one example, and they need to acquire a rudimentary knowledge of these very quickly in order to progress.
Can how you do calculus and not do the foundation / first principles...it makes little sense why you a) need it and b) why it works / what it actually means i.e. slopes of lines, area under line, etc.
Same with imaginary numbers, keystone of some many things especially in physics and engineering m
I said that the idea that this was charged £30 for two weeks was going to be fake news and I said I was prepared to do a charity bet to a food bank or other charity of your choice if I was wrong, if you wanted to take the bet.
I also said that the parcels were poor quality, unacceptable and something should be done about it but we should get to the truth.
Well *drum roll* it turns out I was . . . 100% correct.
The parcel involved was poor and I am glad there's been an apology and they're fixing it for the future - but it was not a £30 parcel. Instead it was a £10.50 one.
Still poor value for £10.50 but poor value for £10.50 and poor value for £30 are an order of magnitude different.
So I don't know if you took up my offer of the bet. If you did, please feel free to donate to a food bank or other charity of your choice. Thank you.
You get a like for continuing to dig your pit down towards Java.
I'm not digging a pit, I was right. 100% unambiguously correct.
The schools were charged £10.50 not £30 which was my contention, that there wasn't a chance on earth that was a £30 box. It was a £10 box (£10.50 technically) not a £30 box.
Last I checked £10 does not equal £30. Nor does £10.50.
Still poor, still needs sorting, I said all that, but the idea it was "what £30 gets you"? Unadulterated bullshit. Of course.
Unless you think the truth does not matter I was correct, wasn't I?
In Derbyshire a £30 box costs £14.40 retail so well under a tenner for Compass at wholesale
Still got to pay £4.7m PA to the CEO somehow I suppose
I'm sorry, but this sort of stuff is utter, vindictive, childish crap. The company makes virtually no money whatsoever from this contract. It's not a large part of its business at all. It's an extremely well-run company - one of the best in the world at what it does - and we need more such companies in the UK and paying UK corporation tax.
I can't comment on the actual food boxes (except that a lot of the pictures were quite obviously nothing to do with any big supplier), but I can make the very obvious point that the cost of sourcing, packing, and delivering food boxes is not just the cost of the raw ingredients. I'd have thought that at the very least £5 per box for putting it together, taking into account dietary requirements per child, and delivering it, would be what you'd expect, maybe quite a bit more depending on the quantities and the location. (That's one reason why vouchers probably make more sense, but that's a different argument).
Look at the Morrison £20 boxes for comparison. They manage to do far more for much less, with better nutrition and variety.
To be honest that is probably sufficient but it still leaves £10 for delivery and some more items.
As for the existing suppliers:
Why are they using mostly overpriced branded stuff? Why are they giving bottled water? Why do they repeatedly get in trouble for poor quality and quantity?
At best they really dont care, so if they dont make any money from it either why dont they leave it to someone else?
Supermarkets are always going to be cheaper and better value for money than any alternative as they have the scale and buying power to dominate. Getting a middle company involved to box it up is never going to be cost efficient.
Which is another reason why vouchers are far superior. If you're going to offer help then let the free market decide, give a voucher they can spend anywhere and let the parents take responsibility for themselves. Free market economics.
Morrisons is a box! All anyone else would need to do is deliver it for under £10. Even Royal Mail could do that.
But yes it goes back to vouchers are best but the Tory party voted against continuing the national voucher scheme because they think it goes on crack and prostitutes.
I'm saying it should be vouchers, I have never said crack and prostitutes and I am against any such judgementalism. I believe in libertarianism and free market economics - if you need to give to someone then give to them and let them choose how to spend it.
But yes Morrisons is in a box - the cost to them largely is the box. They're a supermarket they have a ton of food on site. That is the point. They can bulk order and get massive deliveries that go into the shelves or into boxes. That is why supermarkets are such good value. Morrisons may have marginal overheads in packing the box, but they will be tiny compared to others businesses.
A company with overheads is never going to compete with Morrisons.
That rather points to a company like Morrisons being awarded the contract then doesn't it?
However, in fairness, the Morrisons box would need to be modified - it contains no fresh stuff, such as fruit, cheese, butter, or fresh milk. But it's an ok start.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would normally be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
It is entirely conceivable that the BBB pupil is more intelligent and harder working than the AAA one. In that case it is better for Oxford (dunno what this "Oxbridge" shit is) and by any sane standards more just and more desirable that the BBB pupil gets the place, subject to the very important proviso that the BBB pupil can make up the ground lost by worse schooling, in time to benefit from the Oxford course.
A friend of mine studied some Classics degree at Oxford, maybe the one Boris studied? In any case she was from a state school and found it almost impossible to keep up as most of her peers had studied greek and latin at their private schools, whilst she had not.
She got a 1st anyway.
In that case, your friend will almost certainly have scored very highly in the Classics Language Aptitude Test (CLAT) when she applied, and thus was admitted on merit, not as a charity case. Oxford has been doing this for years, and it's a much better solution than some crude handicapping system.
On the other hand, it's a great pity if she wasn't able to acquire the languages to a comfortable level, since that's one of the main pleasures and joys of the course.
I didn't say she was a "charity case". She is one of the most intelligent people I've ever met. My point was to highlight yet another advantage those who go to private school have and how she had to work much harder to achieve that 1st than they probably did.
I really hope that, for once, Mr Ed's hunch is correct and Trump is not impeached.
The GOP are screwed if Trump is able to stand in 2024. They won't be able to win with him and they won't be able to win without him.
The moment he enters the primaries there will civil war in the GOP. Half the party have seen the light, the other half are doubling down and on their knees quivering in fear at the QAnon types.
The only way I see out of this for the GOP is for Trump to be disbarred from elective office. That way he can't even stand as an independent if he loses the GOP nomination. None of the mini-Trump wannabes would have anything like the same pulling power. I think that is why the saner wing will seriously
(For some reason I was unable to respond directly to Mr Ed. Kept getting a message saying my comment was "1 character too short")
I'm saying it should be vouchers, I have never said crack and prostitutes and I am against any such judgementalism. I believe in libertarianism and free market economics - if you need to give to someone then give to them and let them choose how to spend it.
But yes Morrisons is in a box - the cost to them largely is the box. They're a supermarket they have a ton of food on site. That is the point. They can bulk order and get massive deliveries that go into the shelves or into boxes. That is why supermarkets are such good value. Morrisons may have marginal overheads in packing the box, but they will be tiny compared to others businesses.
A company with overheads is never going to compete with Morrisons.
Wowsers. Lets take this nonsense apart line by line:
1. "The cost to them largely is the box". Laughable. The major cost to all the supermarkets in their online orders is paying someone to pull the stock off the shelves. A generic cardboard carton printed on a vast scale is pennies.
You're talking cross purposes with me. You're talking about someone picking something where they wouldn't otherwise, that is not what I was talking about.
I am talking about if you give someone a voucher to supplement their local shop. IE you give someone a £30 voucher and they turn their £60 shop into a £90 shop.
In that case you've already got someone pulling extra stock off the shelves when they were already doing the regular shop anyway. They're just presenting more at checkout - or if its an online delivery then the picker is picking a bit more (which to be fair may mean they take a bit longer). Either way since a shop was already happening this is just a bit extra added to the shop, not an entirely new order boxed up on its own.
A voucher should reduce the bill not be the entirety of the shop, as people get their regular shopping anyway.
We're comparing the cost of Compass picking a food box vs Morrisons picking a food box. Any "cross purpose" is in your head only like your guesses about the relative P&Ls of these companies
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
And AAA from Gasworks St Comp is a better predictor of a first class degree in the end than from Eton, I suspect, from observations amongst my friends - all more or less equally bright in their wats but some of the ones from proivate schools had less staying power when the magisterial lash was removed and thet had to self-motivate much more once at Uni. Though all got goods and productive careers in their ways.
I think the point is that from some schools a BBB from Gasworks St Comp is a better indicator than AAA from Eton.
That assumes that knowledge imparted at school is not really important at university.
A mathematics professor of my acquaintance was, several years ago, having to run supplementary basic maths courses for his first years. Since a chunk of the incoming students couldn't differentiate or integrate with any faculty, or ease - for example.
That is an A-level maths quirk: some years back a lot of calculus was stripped out in favour of probability and sets. Social scientists and computer scientists were happy, physical scientists less so.
I seem to recollect we did calculus for O level Maths. Maybe I am mis-remembering.
Calculus was reduced, not eliminated.
I always found the best way to learn calculus was in many small steps rather than one big one...
I'm saying it should be vouchers, I have never said crack and prostitutes and I am against any such judgementalism. I believe in libertarianism and free market economics - if you need to give to someone then give to them and let them choose how to spend it.
But yes Morrisons is in a box - the cost to them largely is the box. They're a supermarket they have a ton of food on site. That is the point. They can bulk order and get massive deliveries that go into the shelves or into boxes. That is why supermarkets are such good value. Morrisons may have marginal overheads in packing the box, but they will be tiny compared to others businesses.
A company with overheads is never going to compete with Morrisons.
Wowsers. Lets take this nonsense apart line by line:
1. "The cost to them largely is the box". Laughable. The major cost to all the supermarkets in their online orders is paying someone to pull the stock off the shelves. A generic cardboard carton printed on a vast scale is pennies.
You're talking cross purposes with me. You're talking about someone picking something where they wouldn't otherwise, that is not what I was talking about.
I am talking about if you give someone a voucher to supplement their local shop. IE you give someone a £30 voucher and they turn their £60 shop into a £90 shop.
In that case you've already got someone pulling extra stock off the shelves when they were already doing the regular shop anyway. They're just presenting more at checkout - or if its an online delivery then the picker is picking a bit more (which to be fair may mean they take a bit longer). Either way since a shop was already happening this is just a bit extra added to the shop, not an entirely new order boxed up on its own.
A voucher should reduce the bill not be the entirety of the shop, as people get their regular shopping anyway.
We're comparing the cost of Compass picking a food box vs Morrisons picking a food box. Any "cross purpose" is in your head only like your guesses about the relative P&Ls of these companies
I really hope that, for once, Mr Ed's hunch is correct and Trump is not impeached.
The GOP are screwed if Trump is able to stand in 2024. They won't be able to win with him and they won't be able to win without him.
The moment he enters the primaries there will civil war in the GOP. Half the party have seen the light, the other half are doubling down and on their knees quivering in fear at the QAnon types.
The only way I see out of this for the GOP is for Trump to be disbarred from elective office. That way he can't even stand as an independent if he loses the GOP nomination. None of the mini-Trump wannabes would have anything like the same pulling power. I think that is why the saner wing will seriously
(For some reason I was unable to respond directly to Mr Ed. Kept getting a message saying my comment was "1 character too short")
If Trump can't stand Trump Jr will be trying to.
Pound shop version though, isn't he?
My tame Trump-supporting friend in Florida is hoping for Ivanka, but he may not be thinking just politics.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
And AAA from Gasworks St Comp is a better predictor of a first class degree in the end than from Eton, I suspect, from observations amongst my friends - all more or less equally bright in their wats but some of the ones from proivate schools had less staying power when the magisterial lash was removed and thet had to self-motivate much more once at Uni. Though all got goods and productive careers in their ways.
I think the point is that from some schools a BBB from Gasworks St Comp is a better indicator than AAA from Eton.
That assumes that knowledge imparted at school is not really important at university.
A mathematics professor of my acquaintance was, several years ago, having to run supplementary basic maths courses for his first years. Since a chunk of the incoming students couldn't differentiate or integrate with any faculty, or ease - for example.
That is an A-level maths quirk: some years back a lot of calculus was stripped out in favour of probability and sets. Social scientists and computer scientists were happy, physical scientists less so.
The GCSE syllabus no longer covers calculus, but it is dealt with in great depth in the basic A Level Maths syllabus, the main omission being the lack of any study of calculus from first principles. The need for additional courses for university freshers is more down to the fact that many chose to study maths at uni after taking only Mathematics at A Level, whereas university courses start from the premise that they have also studied Further Maths at A Level. So students start without any knowledge at all of many topics encountered only at Further Maths, imaginary numbers being but one example, and they need to acquire a rudimentary knowledge of these very quickly in order to progress.
I don't believe calculus was ever part of GCSE. I did GCSE (1990, A) and A-Level (1992, maths, and calculus - from first principles - was literally the very first thing we studied in A Level.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would normally be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
Depends.
One of the problems with Uni admissions is that there's a substantial mismatch between the grade offers that many courses advertise upfront and those they end up accepting on clearing. And that includes Russell group, though not the ultracompetitive Oxbridge/medicine courses. It's one of the unfortunate bits of secret code that it's not easy to overcome unless your pupils and their families have the social confidence to believe it.
But the important thing is that universities are independent, have access to the data and in general terms it's up to them who they admit. So if they think there's value in a Foundation Year, who are we to argue?
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
And AAA from Gasworks St Comp is a better predictor of a first class degree in the end than from Eton, I suspect, from observations amongst my friends - all more or less equally bright in their wats but some of the ones from proivate schools had less staying power when the magisterial lash was removed and thet had to self-motivate much more once at Uni. Though all got goods and productive careers in their ways.
I think the point is that from some schools a BBB from Gasworks St Comp is a better indicator than AAA from Eton.
That assumes that knowledge imparted at school is not really important at university.
A mathematics professor of my acquaintance was, several years ago, having to run supplementary basic maths courses for his first years. Since a chunk of the incoming students couldn't differentiate or integrate with any faculty, or ease - for example.
That is an A-level maths quirk: some years back a lot of calculus was stripped out in favour of probability and sets. Social scientists and computer scientists were happy, physical scientists less so.
I seem to recollect we did calculus for O level Maths. Maybe I am mis-remembering.
Calculus was reduced, not eliminated.
I always found the best way to learn calculus was in many small steps rather than one big one...
Maggie HabermanWhite House Correspondent Hi folks, back from a meeting. It’s worth noting that the White House is not preparing a defense for Trump at all. The legislative affairs shop, such as it still is, isn’t involved. Neither is the White House counsel’s office.
NYtimes blog
He has or is going to pardon himself.
Hed have to be vague as no doubt he wont admit to fault, so even if everything in DC is federal related can he cover his arse completely? Assuming self pardon works .
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
And AAA from Gasworks St Comp is a better predictor of a first class degree in the end than from Eton, I suspect, from observations amongst my friends - all more or less equally bright in their wats but some of the ones from proivate schools had less staying power when the magisterial lash was removed and thet had to self-motivate much more once at Uni. Though all got goods and productive careers in their ways.
I think the point is that from some schools a BBB from Gasworks St Comp is a better indicator than AAA from Eton.
That assumes that knowledge imparted at school is not really important at university.
A mathematics professor of my acquaintance was, several years ago, having to run supplementary basic maths courses for his first years. Since a chunk of the incoming students couldn't differentiate or integrate with any faculty, or ease - for example.
That is an A-level maths quirk: some years back a lot of calculus was stripped out in favour of probability and sets. Social scientists and computer scientists were happy, physical scientists less so.
I studied mathematics (eventually to PhD level) because I did well at it in school, and was disconcerted to find that university maths (which was all about theorems and proofs) bore virtually no relationship to school maths (which was all about arithmetic and then formulas). I was in fact initially pretty crap at university maths.
Perhaps schools nowadays do a better job of building a bridge to uni? Anyway, the relevance is that university success is perhaps more dependent on general talent and sheerr bloody-minded persistence than specific school knowledge, and someone from a rough school with BBB is certainly worth a close look.
I don't think so. My son recently completed a maths degree at imperial, and said much the same.
Hope he did more work than I did as a wild & callow youth there in SW7. I was all "South Ken" and very little "Imperial" if you know what I mean.
Well I think I just smashed that litigation exam. Hopefully I'm not just deluded.
Great stuff!
Also, only just saw the good news re: @DavidL 's son. Should be back to normal by Michaelmas, too. Congrats!
Thanks. That gives me an excuse to go back to a link made to the Guardian (I think) where they are improving diversity by accepting some students with BBB grades.
Over 2,200 people applied to do PPE at Oxford this year. Roughly 750 got an interview and of them 254 got places, just over 1/10. Would it really fair if someone loses one of those rare places despite having AAA to improve diversity?
It's quite a difficult question. If you are at a poor school BBB may be an incredible achievement showing genuine talent but people do not get in by accident. They get in by incredibly hard work over an extended period (consistency is important) and a genuine commitment and passion for the subjects. For those in that group to lose out when they otherwise tick the right boxes seems pretty egregious. Tricky.
The nub of this is: you are much more likely to get AAA if you go to a private school. Is that because private school pupils are innately better than state school pupils? I don't think so.
The solution is very difficult but leaving things as they are is not a solution.
I don't disagree. Its not easy. My wife went to a school where she had no Chemistry teacher for 2 of the 3 terms when she was doing her Higher, where, when she and her pal who had gone to night school in despair, they were approached by her maths teacher and told just because she had passed the prelim didn't mean that they would pass the exam, where her modern studies teacher was found using her notes, you get the picture. To get enough qualifications from that to get to University was an astounding achievement.
The fact that that school is no better 40 years on is the real tragedy.
My wife got in with ABC but the C was the highest mark in her entire school because the teacher went AWOL. I went to a grammar school and got AAAAAA but we ended up with the same class of degree (albeit in different subjects).
Is there any general visibility of the spread of outcomes from each school? If you are way above everyone else then that might indicate something. Those "one offs" that got treated really badly by the "algorithm".
I'm sure outcomes in finals will be monitored...
I got ABC in Maths, History, and Physics.
ABD Law, History, Physics. Science is hard, ok!
(That B is bullcrap, itd require a very low score in last exam, but since I got into the best uni that bothered to give me an offer, I let it slide. Still mad though)
Is this a competition? I got AAAB at A-level (1978) in Maths, Physics, Economics and French (the B ). But I was working class so didn't get to Oxbridge like others in my year with AAA.
More than enough to get into the shadow cabinet as chancellor. If you can also sport a regional accent and drop at least three consonants per sentence the sky's the limit
I will just binge watch a few series of Peaky Blinders then - that usually makes my accent "revert".
I said that the idea that this was charged £30 for two weeks was going to be fake news and I said I was prepared to do a charity bet to a food bank or other charity of your choice if I was wrong, if you wanted to take the bet.
I also said that the parcels were poor quality, unacceptable and something should be done about it but we should get to the truth.
Well *drum roll* it turns out I was . . . 100% correct.
The parcel involved was poor and I am glad there's been an apology and they're fixing it for the future - but it was not a £30 parcel. Instead it was a £10.50 one.
Still poor value for £10.50 but poor value for £10.50 and poor value for £30 are an order of magnitude different.
So I don't know if you took up my offer of the bet. If you did, please feel free to donate to a food bank or other charity of your choice. Thank you.
You get a like for continuing to dig your pit down towards Java.
I'm not digging a pit, I was right. 100% unambiguously correct.
The schools were charged £10.50 not £30 which was my contention, that there wasn't a chance on earth that was a £30 box. It was a £10 box (£10.50 technically) not a £30 box.
Last I checked £10 does not equal £30. Nor does £10.50.
Still poor, still needs sorting, I said all that, but the idea it was "what £30 gets you"? Unadulterated bullshit. Of course.
Unless you think the truth does not matter I was correct, wasn't I?
In Derbyshire a £30 box costs £14.40 retail so well under a tenner for Compass at wholesale
Still got to pay £4.7m PA to the CEO somehow I suppose
I'm sorry, but this sort of stuff is utter, vindictive, childish crap. The company makes virtually no money whatsoever from this contract. It's not a large part of its business at all. It's an extremely well-run company - one of the best in the world at what it does - and we need more such companies in the UK and paying UK corporation tax.
I can't comment on the actual food boxes (except that a lot of the pictures were quite obviously nothing to do with any big supplier), but I can make the very obvious point that the cost of sourcing, packing, and delivering food boxes is not just the cost of the raw ingredients. I'd have thought that at the very least £5 per box for putting it together, taking into account dietary requirements per child, and delivering it, would be what you'd expect, maybe quite a bit more depending on the quantities and the location. (That's one reason why vouchers probably make more sense, but that's a different argument).
Look at the Morrison £20 boxes for comparison. They manage to do far more for much less, with better nutrition and variety.
To be honest that is probably sufficient but it still leaves £10 for delivery and some more items.
As for the existing suppliers:
Why are they using mostly overpriced branded stuff? Why are they giving bottled water? Why do they repeatedly get in trouble for poor quality and quantity?
At best they really dont care, so if they dont make any money from it either why dont they leave it to someone else?
Supermarkets are always going to be cheaper and better value for money than any alternative as they have the scale and buying power to dominate. Getting a middle company involved to box it up is never going to be cost efficient.
Which is another reason why vouchers are far superior. If you're going to offer help then let the free market decide, give a voucher they can spend anywhere and let the parents take responsibility for themselves. Free market economics.
Morrisons is a box! All anyone else would need to do is deliver it for under £10. Even Royal Mail could do that.
But yes it goes back to vouchers are best but the Tory party voted against continuing the national voucher scheme because they think it goes on crack and prostitutes.
I'm saying it should be vouchers, I have never said crack and prostitutes and I am against any such judgementalism. I believe in libertarianism and free market economics - if you need to give to someone then give to them and let them choose how to spend it.
But yes Morrisons is in a box - the cost to them largely is the box. They're a supermarket they have a ton of food on site. That is the point. They can bulk order and get massive deliveries that go into the shelves or into boxes. That is why supermarkets are such good value. Morrisons may have marginal overheads in packing the box, but they will be tiny compared to others businesses.
A company with overheads is never going to compete with Morrisons.
That rather points to a company like Morrisons being awarded the contract then doesn't it?
However, in fairness, the Morrisons box would need to be modified - it contains no fresh stuff, such as fruit, cheese, butter, or fresh milk. But it's an ok start.
I'm saying nobody should be awarded the contract.
The parents should get the voucher and let them decide in a free market environment where they want to spend it. If they want to spend it at Morrisons let them. If they want to spend it at ASDA that should be up to them. Ditto Aldi, or Waitrose, or M&S, or anywhere else.
I really hope that, for once, Mr Ed's hunch is correct and Trump is not impeached.
The GOP are screwed if Trump is able to stand in 2024. They won't be able to win with him and they won't be able to win without him.
The moment he enters the primaries there will civil war in the GOP. Half the party have seen the light, the other half are doubling down and on their knees quivering in fear at the QAnon types.
The only way I see out of this for the GOP is for Trump to be disbarred from elective office. That way he can't even stand as an independent if he loses the GOP nomination. None of the mini-Trump wannabes would have anything like the same pulling power. I think that is why the saner wing will seriously
(For some reason I was unable to respond directly to Mr Ed. Kept getting a message saying my comment was "1 character too short")
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would normally be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
It is entirely conceivable that the BBB pupil is more intelligent and harder working than the AAA one. In that case it is better for Oxford (dunno what this "Oxbridge" shit is) and by any sane standards more just and more desirable that the BBB pupil gets the place, subject to the very important proviso that the BBB pupil can make up the ground lost by worse schooling, in time to benefit from the Oxford course.
A friend of mine studied some Classics degree at Oxford, maybe the one Boris studied? In any case she was from a state school and found it almost impossible to keep up as most of her peers had studied greek and latin at their private schools, whilst she had not.
She got a 1st anyway.
Having to work hard to start with is not necessarily a bad thing.
If it all seems too easy you get lazy. Eventually everybody runs into something that needs more effort.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would normally be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
It is entirely conceivable that the BBB pupil is more intelligent and harder working than the AAA one. In that case it is better for Oxford (dunno what this "Oxbridge" shit is) and by any sane standards more just and more desirable that the BBB pupil gets the place, subject to the very important proviso that the BBB pupil can make up the ground lost by worse schooling, in time to benefit from the Oxford course.
One idea would be send a group of high performing students from "inner city comps" to a sixth-form style college for a year or 2 *after* 18. Give them some time and teaching to make lost ground before throwing them in the deep end....
Forcing them into catchup at university doesn't sound like the best way to equalise outcomes.
I'm saying it should be vouchers, I have never said crack and prostitutes and I am against any such judgementalism. I believe in libertarianism and free market economics - if you need to give to someone then give to them and let them choose how to spend it.
But yes Morrisons is in a box - the cost to them largely is the box. They're a supermarket they have a ton of food on site. That is the point. They can bulk order and get massive deliveries that go into the shelves or into boxes. That is why supermarkets are such good value. Morrisons may have marginal overheads in packing the box, but they will be tiny compared to others businesses.
A company with overheads is never going to compete with Morrisons.
Wowsers. Lets take this nonsense apart line by line:
1. "The cost to them largely is the box". Laughable. The major cost to all the supermarkets in their online orders is paying someone to pull the stock off the shelves. A generic cardboard carton printed on a vast scale is pennies.
You're talking cross purposes with me. You're talking about someone picking something where they wouldn't otherwise, that is not what I was talking about.
I am talking about if you give someone a voucher to supplement their local shop. IE you give someone a £30 voucher and they turn their £60 shop into a £90 shop.
In that case you've already got someone pulling extra stock off the shelves when they were already doing the regular shop anyway. They're just presenting more at checkout - or if its an online delivery then the picker is picking a bit more (which to be fair may mean they take a bit longer). Either way since a shop was already happening this is just a bit extra added to the shop, not an entirely new order boxed up on its own.
A voucher should reduce the bill not be the entirety of the shop, as people get their regular shopping anyway.
We're comparing the cost of Compass picking a food box vs Morrisons picking a food box. Any "cross purpose" is in your head only like your guesses about the relative P&Ls of these companies
And even how the businesses work.
And why someone being paid £9 an hour (and they won't even get that) means that £5 gross profit per box for Chartwells means they make a loss because overheads.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would normally be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
It is entirely conceivable that the BBB pupil is more intelligent and harder working than the AAA one. In that case it is better for Oxford (dunno what this "Oxbridge" shit is) and by any sane standards more just and more desirable that the BBB pupil gets the place, subject to the very important proviso that the BBB pupil can make up the ground lost by worse schooling, in time to benefit from the Oxford course.
A friend of mine studied some Classics degree at Oxford, maybe the one Boris studied? In any case she was from a state school and found it almost impossible to keep up as most of her peers had studied greek and latin at their private schools, whilst she had not.
She got a 1st anyway.
In that case, your friend will almost certainly have scored very highly in the Classics Language Aptitude Test (CLAT) when she applied, and thus was admitted on merit, not as a charity case. Oxford has been doing this for years, and it's a much better solution than some crude handicapping system.
On the other hand, it's a great pity if she wasn't able to acquire the languages to a comfortable level, since that's one of the main pleasures and joys of the course.
Are you an Oxford alumnus? If so, it fits my theory that the place ruins people morally and intellectually.
I'm saying it should be vouchers, I have never said crack and prostitutes and I am against any such judgementalism. I believe in libertarianism and free market economics - if you need to give to someone then give to them and let them choose how to spend it.
But yes Morrisons is in a box - the cost to them largely is the box. They're a supermarket they have a ton of food on site. That is the point. They can bulk order and get massive deliveries that go into the shelves or into boxes. That is why supermarkets are such good value. Morrisons may have marginal overheads in packing the box, but they will be tiny compared to others businesses.
A company with overheads is never going to compete with Morrisons.
Wowsers. Lets take this nonsense apart line by line:
1. "The cost to them largely is the box". Laughable. The major cost to all the supermarkets in their online orders is paying someone to pull the stock off the shelves. A generic cardboard carton printed on a vast scale is pennies.
You're talking cross purposes with me. You're talking about someone picking something where they wouldn't otherwise, that is not what I was talking about.
I am talking about if you give someone a voucher to supplement their local shop. IE you give someone a £30 voucher and they turn their £60 shop into a £90 shop.
In that case you've already got someone pulling extra stock off the shelves when they were already doing the regular shop anyway. They're just presenting more at checkout - or if its an online delivery then the picker is picking a bit more (which to be fair may mean they take a bit longer). Either way since a shop was already happening this is just a bit extra added to the shop, not an entirely new order boxed up on its own.
A voucher should reduce the bill not be the entirety of the shop, as people get their regular shopping anyway.
We're comparing the cost of Compass picking a food box vs Morrisons picking a food box. Any "cross purpose" is in your head only like your guesses about the relative P&Ls of these companies
No because we were talking about retail cost of Morrisons food and vouchers for people to spend at Morrisons. If someone gets £30 voucher they can spend on whatever they want at Morrisons that's going to go further than a £30 box bought from someone. Do you disagree?
I'm saying it should be vouchers, I have never said crack and prostitutes and I am against any such judgementalism. I believe in libertarianism and free market economics - if you need to give to someone then give to them and let them choose how to spend it.
But yes Morrisons is in a box - the cost to them largely is the box. They're a supermarket they have a ton of food on site. That is the point. They can bulk order and get massive deliveries that go into the shelves or into boxes. That is why supermarkets are such good value. Morrisons may have marginal overheads in packing the box, but they will be tiny compared to others businesses.
A company with overheads is never going to compete with Morrisons.
Wowsers. Lets take this nonsense apart line by line:
1. "The cost to them largely is the box". Laughable. The major cost to all the supermarkets in their online orders is paying someone to pull the stock off the shelves. A generic cardboard carton printed on a vast scale is pennies.
You're talking cross purposes with me. You're talking about someone picking something where they wouldn't otherwise, that is not what I was talking about.
I am talking about if you give someone a voucher to supplement their local shop. IE you give someone a £30 voucher and they turn their £60 shop into a £90 shop.
In that case you've already got someone pulling extra stock off the shelves when they were already doing the regular shop anyway. They're just presenting more at checkout - or if its an online delivery then the picker is picking a bit more (which to be fair may mean they take a bit longer). Either way since a shop was already happening this is just a bit extra added to the shop, not an entirely new order boxed up on its own.
A voucher should reduce the bill not be the entirety of the shop, as people get their regular shopping anyway.
We're comparing the cost of Compass picking a food box vs Morrisons picking a food box. Any "cross purpose" is in your head only like your guesses about the relative P&Ls of these companies
And even how the businesses work.
And why someone being paid £9 an hour (and they won't even get that) means that £5 gross profit per box for Chartwells means they make a loss because overheads.
I can't help feeling you should be setting up a rival operation, since clearly you could tender at well below the prices of your competitors.
I said that the idea that this was charged £30 for two weeks was going to be fake news and I said I was prepared to do a charity bet to a food bank or other charity of your choice if I was wrong, if you wanted to take the bet.
I also said that the parcels were poor quality, unacceptable and something should be done about it but we should get to the truth.
Well *drum roll* it turns out I was . . . 100% correct.
The parcel involved was poor and I am glad there's been an apology and they're fixing it for the future - but it was not a £30 parcel. Instead it was a £10.50 one.
Still poor value for £10.50 but poor value for £10.50 and poor value for £30 are an order of magnitude different.
So I don't know if you took up my offer of the bet. If you did, please feel free to donate to a food bank or other charity of your choice. Thank you.
You get a like for continuing to dig your pit down towards Java.
I'm not digging a pit, I was right. 100% unambiguously correct.
The schools were charged £10.50 not £30 which was my contention, that there wasn't a chance on earth that was a £30 box. It was a £10 box (£10.50 technically) not a £30 box.
Last I checked £10 does not equal £30. Nor does £10.50.
Still poor, still needs sorting, I said all that, but the idea it was "what £30 gets you"? Unadulterated bullshit. Of course.
Unless you think the truth does not matter I was correct, wasn't I?
In Derbyshire a £30 box costs £14.40 retail so well under a tenner for Compass at wholesale
Still got to pay £4.7m PA to the CEO somehow I suppose
I'm sorry, but this sort of stuff is utter, vindictive, childish crap. The company makes virtually no money whatsoever from this contract. It's not a large part of its business at all. It's an extremely well-run company - one of the best in the world at what it does - and we need more such companies in the UK and paying UK corporation tax.
I can't comment on the actual food boxes (except that a lot of the pictures were quite obviously nothing to do with any big supplier), but I can make the very obvious point that the cost of sourcing, packing, and delivering food boxes is not just the cost of the raw ingredients. I'd have thought that at the very least £5 per box for putting it together, taking into account dietary requirements per child, and delivering it, would be what you'd expect, maybe quite a bit more depending on the quantities and the location. (That's one reason why vouchers probably make more sense, but that's a different argument).
Look at the Morrison £20 boxes for comparison. They manage to do far more for much less, with better nutrition and variety.
To be honest that is probably sufficient but it still leaves £10 for delivery and some more items.
As for the existing suppliers:
Why are they using mostly overpriced branded stuff? Why are they giving bottled water? Why do they repeatedly get in trouble for poor quality and quantity?
At best they really dont care, so if they dont make any money from it either why dont they leave it to someone else?
Supermarkets are always going to be cheaper and better value for money than any alternative as they have the scale and buying power to dominate. Getting a middle company involved to box it up is never going to be cost efficient.
Which is another reason why vouchers are far superior. If you're going to offer help then let the free market decide, give a voucher they can spend anywhere and let the parents take responsibility for themselves. Free market economics.
Morrisons is a box! All anyone else would need to do is deliver it for under £10. Even Royal Mail could do that.
But yes it goes back to vouchers are best but the Tory party voted against continuing the national voucher scheme because they think it goes on crack and prostitutes.
I'm saying it should be vouchers, I have never said crack and prostitutes and I am against any such judgementalism. I believe in libertarianism and free market economics - if you need to give to someone then give to them and let them choose how to spend it.
But yes Morrisons is in a box - the cost to them largely is the box. They're a supermarket they have a ton of food on site. That is the point. They can bulk order and get massive deliveries that go into the shelves or into boxes. That is why supermarkets are such good value. Morrisons may have marginal overheads in packing the box, but they will be tiny compared to others businesses.
A company with overheads is never going to compete with Morrisons.
That rather points to a company like Morrisons being awarded the contract then doesn't it?
However, in fairness, the Morrisons box would need to be modified - it contains no fresh stuff, such as fruit, cheese, butter, or fresh milk. But it's an ok start.
I'm saying nobody should be awarded the contract.
The parents should get the voucher and let them decide in a free market environment where they want to spend it. If they want to spend it at Morrisons let them. If they want to spend it at ASDA that should be up to them. Ditto Aldi, or Waitrose, or M&S, or anywhere else.
That's your opinion - I don't know that I'd agree.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would normally be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
It is entirely conceivable that the BBB pupil is more intelligent and harder working than the AAA one. In that case it is better for Oxford (dunno what this "Oxbridge" shit is) and by any sane standards more just and more desirable that the BBB pupil gets the place, subject to the very important proviso that the BBB pupil can make up the ground lost by worse schooling, in time to benefit from the Oxford course.
One idea would be send a group of high performing students from "inner city comps" to a sixth-form style college for a year or 2 *after* 18. Give them some time and teaching to make lost ground before throwing them in the deep end....
Forcing them into catchup at university doesn't sound like the best way to equalise outcomes.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
And AAA from Gasworks St Comp is a better predictor of a first class degree in the end than from Eton, I suspect, from observations amongst my friends - all more or less equally bright in their wats but some of the ones from proivate schools had less staying power when the magisterial lash was removed and thet had to self-motivate much more once at Uni. Though all got goods and productive careers in their ways.
I think the point is that from some schools a BBB from Gasworks St Comp is a better indicator than AAA from Eton.
That assumes that knowledge imparted at school is not really important at university.
A mathematics professor of my acquaintance was, several years ago, having to run supplementary basic maths courses for his first years. Since a chunk of the incoming students couldn't differentiate or integrate with any faculty, or ease - for example.
That is an A-level maths quirk: some years back a lot of calculus was stripped out in favour of probability and sets. Social scientists and computer scientists were happy, physical scientists less so.
The GCSE syllabus no longer covers calculus, but it is dealt with in great depth in the basic A Level Maths syllabus, the main omission being the lack of any study of calculus from first principles. The need for additional courses for university freshers is more down to the fact that many chose t study maths at uni after taking only Mathematics at A Level, whereas university courses start from the premise that they have also studied Further Maths at A Level. So students start without any knowledge at all of many topics encountered only at Further Maths, imaginary numbers being but one example, and they need to acquire a rudimentary knowledge of these very quickly in order to progress.
Can how you do calculus and not do the foundation / first principles...it makes little sense why you a) need it and b) why it works / what it actually means i.e. slopes of lines, area under line, etc.
Same with imaginary numbers, keystone of some many things especially in physics and engineering m
I am sure we dealt with imaginary numbers for O level. When did that change?
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would normally be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
It is entirely conceivable that the BBB pupil is more intelligent and harder working than the AAA one. In that case it is better for Oxford (dunno what this "Oxbridge" shit is) and by any sane standards more just and more desirable that the BBB pupil gets the place, subject to the very important proviso that the BBB pupil can make up the ground lost by worse schooling, in time to benefit from the Oxford course.
A friend of mine studied some Classics degree at Oxford, maybe the one Boris studied? In any case she was from a state school and found it almost impossible to keep up as most of her peers had studied greek and latin at their private schools, whilst she had not.
She got a 1st anyway.
Early in my physics degree, I discovered that the lecturers assumed everyone knew all about imaginary numbers (not in my A-Level maths course; I did not do further maths). Was a good kick up the backside for me to discover that this wasn't going to be easy and also to learn how to teach myself things rather than rely on being taught everything!
And it's a lot easier to find things out now than it used to be before the internet arrived.
I'm old enough that I had to use actual books (internet/web very definitely existed, but not networked to accommodation in 1st year; was by 4th year)
I am old enough I used a slide rule and log books.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
And AAA from Gasworks St Comp is a better predictor of a first class degree in the end than from Eton, I suspect, from observations amongst my friends - all more or less equally bright in their wats but some of the ones from proivate schools had less staying power when the magisterial lash was removed and thet had to self-motivate much more once at Uni. Though all got goods and productive careers in their ways.
I think the point is that from some schools a BBB from Gasworks St Comp is a better indicator than AAA from Eton.
That assumes that knowledge imparted at school is not really important at university.
A mathematics professor of my acquaintance was, several years ago, having to run supplementary basic maths courses for his first years. Since a chunk of the incoming students couldn't differentiate or integrate with any faculty, or ease - for example.
That is an A-level maths quirk: some years back a lot of calculus was stripped out in favour of probability and sets. Social scientists and computer scientists were happy, physical scientists less so.
The GCSE syllabus no longer covers calculus, but it is dealt with in great depth in the basic A Level Maths syllabus, the main omission being the lack of any study of calculus from first principles. The need for additional courses for university freshers is more down to the fact that many chose to study maths at uni after taking only Mathematics at A Level, whereas university courses start from the premise that they have also studied Further Maths at A Level. So students start without any knowledge at all of many topics encountered only at Further Maths, imaginary numbers being but one example, and they need to acquire a rudimentary knowledge of these very quickly in order to progress.
I don't believe calculus was ever part of GCSE. I did GCSE (1990, A) and A-Level (1992, maths, and calculus - from first principles - was literally the very first thing we studied in A Level.
I definitely studied it before A-level, but i can't remember if it was actually in the exams...but we also spent several weeks learning about gambling and that definitely wasn't on the syballus..no idea how I ended up doing what I used to do.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
Why don't you let the admissions people at Cambridge and Oxford decide whether there is a case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student?
You clearly are too proud and too arrogant to see beyond your own experience as a private school pupil, and lack the empathy to understand the challenges and endeavours others go through.
I bumped into one of the brightest lads in my school year a couple of weeks after we got our GCSE results, he was in a takeaway with his dad. I was going to do A levels and I assumed he would be, being academically excellent - and this at a bog standard comp.
'So what A levels are you doing?' I asked.
He looked at me a bit sheepishly, with his dad looking on, and said 'Oh I'm not going to college, my dad said it's all a load of rubbish, I'm going to work in his garage instead.'
Never seen him since, I often wonder what happened to him.
Nice middle class people, who grow up surrounded by books and Radio 4 and are encouraged to study, by parents who themselves were raised that way, often fail to appreciate that there are millions of kids out there, some of whom are very bright, who grow up with no books, amidst an environment of deep suspicion of education and 'clever' people. I find the lack of empathy from those people from more advantaged backgrounds awful.
When I got to a Russell Group Uni I found that a lot of the nice middle class, usually southern kids, who went to good schools and were pushed academically are gibbering idiots. Not all of them, or even a majority of them, but plenty of them.
I said that the idea that this was charged £30 for two weeks was going to be fake news and I said I was prepared to do a charity bet to a food bank or other charity of your choice if I was wrong, if you wanted to take the bet.
I also said that the parcels were poor quality, unacceptable and something should be done about it but we should get to the truth.
Well *drum roll* it turns out I was . . . 100% correct.
The parcel involved was poor and I am glad there's been an apology and they're fixing it for the future - but it was not a £30 parcel. Instead it was a £10.50 one.
Still poor value for £10.50 but poor value for £10.50 and poor value for £30 are an order of magnitude different.
So I don't know if you took up my offer of the bet. If you did, please feel free to donate to a food bank or other charity of your choice. Thank you.
You get a like for continuing to dig your pit down towards Java.
I'm not digging a pit, I was right. 100% unambiguously correct.
The schools were charged £10.50 not £30 which was my contention, that there wasn't a chance on earth that was a £30 box. It was a £10 box (£10.50 technically) not a £30 box.
Last I checked £10 does not equal £30. Nor does £10.50.
Still poor, still needs sorting, I said all that, but the idea it was "what £30 gets you"? Unadulterated bullshit. Of course.
Unless you think the truth does not matter I was correct, wasn't I?
In Derbyshire a £30 box costs £14.40 retail so well under a tenner for Compass at wholesale
Still got to pay £4.7m PA to the CEO somehow I suppose
I'm sorry, but this sort of stuff is utter, vindictive, childish crap. The company makes virtually no money whatsoever from this contract. It's not a large part of its business at all. It's an extremely well-run company - one of the best in the world at what it does - and we need more such companies in the UK and paying UK corporation tax.
I can't comment on the actual food boxes (except that a lot of the pictures were quite obviously nothing to do with any big supplier), but I can make the very obvious point that the cost of sourcing, packing, and delivering food boxes is not just the cost of the raw ingredients. I'd have thought that at the very least £5 per box for putting it together, taking into account dietary requirements per child, and delivering it, would be what you'd expect, maybe quite a bit more depending on the quantities and the location. (That's one reason why vouchers probably make more sense, but that's a different argument).
Look at the Morrison £20 boxes for comparison. They manage to do far more for much less, with better nutrition and variety.
To be honest that is probably sufficient but it still leaves £10 for delivery and some more items.
As for the existing suppliers:
Why are they using mostly overpriced branded stuff? Why are they giving bottled water? Why do they repeatedly get in trouble for poor quality and quantity?
At best they really dont care, so if they dont make any money from it either why dont they leave it to someone else?
Supermarkets are always going to be cheaper and better value for money than any alternative as they have the scale and buying power to dominate. Getting a middle company involved to box it up is never going to be cost efficient.
Which is another reason why vouchers are far superior. If you're going to offer help then let the free market decide, give a voucher they can spend anywhere and let the parents take responsibility for themselves. Free market economics.
Morrisons is a box! All anyone else would need to do is deliver it for under £10. Even Royal Mail could do that.
But yes it goes back to vouchers are best but the Tory party voted against continuing the national voucher scheme because they think it goes on crack and prostitutes.
I'm saying it should be vouchers, I have never said crack and prostitutes and I am against any such judgementalism. I believe in libertarianism and free market economics - if you need to give to someone then give to them and let them choose how to spend it.
But yes Morrisons is in a box - the cost to them largely is the box. They're a supermarket they have a ton of food on site. That is the point. They can bulk order and get massive deliveries that go into the shelves or into boxes. That is why supermarkets are such good value. Morrisons may have marginal overheads in packing the box, but they will be tiny compared to others businesses.
A company with overheads is never going to compete with Morrisons.
That rather points to a company like Morrisons being awarded the contract then doesn't it?
However, in fairness, the Morrisons box would need to be modified - it contains no fresh stuff, such as fruit, cheese, butter, or fresh milk. But it's an ok start.
I'm saying nobody should be awarded the contract.
The parents should get the voucher and let them decide in a free market environment where they want to spend it. If they want to spend it at Morrisons let them. If they want to spend it at ASDA that should be up to them. Ditto Aldi, or Waitrose, or M&S, or anywhere else.
How difficult would it for you to have dropped the rest of your guff and just say this? Instead of all these hungry child box outrages, just go back to vouchers? There is no need for you to defend Tory donor profiteering when you disagree with the policy to hand them public money.
I'm saying it should be vouchers, I have never said crack and prostitutes and I am against any such judgementalism. I believe in libertarianism and free market economics - if you need to give to someone then give to them and let them choose how to spend it.
But yes Morrisons is in a box - the cost to them largely is the box. They're a supermarket they have a ton of food on site. That is the point. They can bulk order and get massive deliveries that go into the shelves or into boxes. That is why supermarkets are such good value. Morrisons may have marginal overheads in packing the box, but they will be tiny compared to others businesses.
A company with overheads is never going to compete with Morrisons.
Wowsers. Lets take this nonsense apart line by line:
1. "The cost to them largely is the box". Laughable. The major cost to all the supermarkets in their online orders is paying someone to pull the stock off the shelves. A generic cardboard carton printed on a vast scale is pennies.
You're talking cross purposes with me. You're talking about someone picking something where they wouldn't otherwise, that is not what I was talking about.
I am talking about if you give someone a voucher to supplement their local shop. IE you give someone a £30 voucher and they turn their £60 shop into a £90 shop.
In that case you've already got someone pulling extra stock off the shelves when they were already doing the regular shop anyway. They're just presenting more at checkout - or if its an online delivery then the picker is picking a bit more (which to be fair may mean they take a bit longer). Either way since a shop was already happening this is just a bit extra added to the shop, not an entirely new order boxed up on its own.
A voucher should reduce the bill not be the entirety of the shop, as people get their regular shopping anyway.
We're comparing the cost of Compass picking a food box vs Morrisons picking a food box. Any "cross purpose" is in your head only like your guesses about the relative P&Ls of these companies
No because we were talking about retail cost of Morrisons food and vouchers for people to spend at Morrisons. If someone gets £30 voucher they can spend on whatever they want at Morrisons that's going to go further than a £30 box bought from someone. Do you disagree?
I really hope that, for once, Mr Ed's hunch is correct and Trump is not impeached.
The GOP are screwed if Trump is able to stand in 2024. They won't be able to win with him and they won't be able to win without him.
The moment he enters the primaries there will civil war in the GOP. Half the party have seen the light, the other half are doubling down and on their knees quivering in fear at the QAnon types.
The only way I see out of this for the GOP is for Trump to be disbarred from elective office. That way he can't even stand as an independent if he loses the GOP nomination. None of the mini-Trump wannabes would have anything like the same pulling power. I think that is why the saner wing will seriously
(For some reason I was unable to respond directly to Mr Ed. Kept getting a message saying my comment was "1 character too short")
If Trump can't stand Trump Jr will be trying to.
I think even some of the thickest of the Trump core can see that Donald Jnr is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. If the GOP were daft enough to nominate Donald Jnr (and I don't rule it out) the Dems would massacre them
I'm saying it should be vouchers, I have never said crack and prostitutes and I am against any such judgementalism. I believe in libertarianism and free market economics - if you need to give to someone then give to them and let them choose how to spend it.
But yes Morrisons is in a box - the cost to them largely is the box. They're a supermarket they have a ton of food on site. That is the point. They can bulk order and get massive deliveries that go into the shelves or into boxes. That is why supermarkets are such good value. Morrisons may have marginal overheads in packing the box, but they will be tiny compared to others businesses.
A company with overheads is never going to compete with Morrisons.
Wowsers. Lets take this nonsense apart line by line:
1. "The cost to them largely is the box". Laughable. The major cost to all the supermarkets in their online orders is paying someone to pull the stock off the shelves. A generic cardboard carton printed on a vast scale is pennies.
You're talking cross purposes with me. You're talking about someone picking something where they wouldn't otherwise, that is not what I was talking about.
I am talking about if you give someone a voucher to supplement their local shop. IE you give someone a £30 voucher and they turn their £60 shop into a £90 shop.
In that case you've already got someone pulling extra stock off the shelves when they were already doing the regular shop anyway. They're just presenting more at checkout - or if its an online delivery then the picker is picking a bit more (which to be fair may mean they take a bit longer). Either way since a shop was already happening this is just a bit extra added to the shop, not an entirely new order boxed up on its own.
A voucher should reduce the bill not be the entirety of the shop, as people get their regular shopping anyway.
We're comparing the cost of Compass picking a food box vs Morrisons picking a food box. Any "cross purpose" is in your head only like your guesses about the relative P&Ls of these companies
And even how the businesses work.
And why someone being paid £9 an hour (and they won't even get that) means that £5 gross profit per box for Chartwells means they make a loss because overheads.
If someone's not getting minimum wage then that is criminal and they should be reported.
I never said the company makes a loss either. I just said minimum wage doesn't cost £9 once you factor in Employers NI, Pensions, SSP, Statutory Holiday Pay and any other incidentals it costs about 33% more than that.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
And AAA from Gasworks St Comp is a better predictor of a first class degree in the end than from Eton, I suspect, from observations amongst my friends - all more or less equally bright in their wats but some of the ones from proivate schools had less staying power when the magisterial lash was removed and thet had to self-motivate much more once at Uni. Though all got goods and productive careers in their ways.
I think the point is that from some schools a BBB from Gasworks St Comp is a better indicator than AAA from Eton.
That assumes that knowledge imparted at school is not really important at university.
A mathematics professor of my acquaintance was, several years ago, having to run supplementary basic maths courses for his first years. Since a chunk of the incoming students couldn't differentiate or integrate with any faculty, or ease - for example.
That is an A-level maths quirk: some years back a lot of calculus was stripped out in favour of probability and sets. Social scientists and computer scientists were happy, physical scientists less so.
The GCSE syllabus no longer covers calculus, but it is dealt with in great depth in the basic A Level Maths syllabus, the main omission being the lack of any study of calculus from first principles. The need for additional courses for university freshers is more down to the fact that many chose to study maths at uni after taking only Mathematics at A Level, whereas university courses start from the premise that they have also studied Further Maths at A Level. So students start without any knowledge at all of many topics encountered only at Further Maths, imaginary numbers being but one example, and they need to acquire a rudimentary knowledge of these very quickly in order to progress.
Can how you do calculus and not do the foundation / first principles...it makes little sense why you a) need it and b) why it works / what it actually means i.e. slopes of lines, area under line, etc.
Of course they learn those concepts. What I mean is that a student won't actually have been required to derive the proof of why the integral of say 1/x is ln x, just the ability to apply this and other results to solve complex problems in calculus involving exponentials or logs in this case.
The discussion on A-levels reminds me of a famous piece of career advice given by the Duke of Westminster: “If at all possible try to be a direct male-line descendant of a close friend of William the Conqueror”
I suppose that's what you could call Norman Wisdom.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
And AAA from Gasworks St Comp is a better predictor of a first class degree in the end than from Eton, I suspect, from observations amongst my friends - all more or less equally bright in their wats but some of the ones from proivate schools had less staying power when the magisterial lash was removed and thet had to self-motivate much more once at Uni. Though all got goods and productive careers in their ways.
I think the point is that from some schools a BBB from Gasworks St Comp is a better indicator than AAA from Eton.
That assumes that knowledge imparted at school is not really important at university.
A mathematics professor of my acquaintance was, several years ago, having to run supplementary basic maths courses for his first years. Since a chunk of the incoming students couldn't differentiate or integrate with any faculty, or ease - for example.
That is an A-level maths quirk: some years back a lot of calculus was stripped out in favour of probability and sets. Social scientists and computer scientists were happy, physical scientists less so.
The GCSE syllabus no longer covers calculus, but it is dealt with in great depth in the basic A Level Maths syllabus, the main omission being the lack of any study of calculus from first principles. The need for additional courses for university freshers is more down to the fact that many chose to study maths at uni after taking only Mathematics at A Level, whereas university courses start from the premise that they have also studied Further Maths at A Level. So students start without any knowledge at all of many topics encountered only at Further Maths, imaginary numbers being but one example, and they need to acquire a rudimentary knowledge of these very quickly in order to progress.
I don't believe calculus was ever part of GCSE. I did GCSE (1990, A) and A-Level (1992, maths, and calculus - from first principles - was literally the very first thing we studied in A Level.
Back in the mid 50's it was part of the Applied Maths O level course. I didn't do it; very few biologists di.
In other news I have at last got an appointment for my Covid-19 vaccination. Saturday morning. They will ring again in 8 weeks to arrange the second one. I didn't ask which vaccine.
When I look at the calibre of the privately educated, former Oxford students in the House of Commons and, especially, on the government benches, I can't help thinking that maybe such institutions are not as brilliant as we have been led to believe.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would normally be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
It is entirely conceivable that the BBB pupil is more intelligent and harder working than the AAA one. In that case it is better for Oxford (dunno what this "Oxbridge" shit is) and by any sane standards more just and more desirable that the BBB pupil gets the place, subject to the very important proviso that the BBB pupil can make up the ground lost by worse schooling, in time to benefit from the Oxford course.
No it isn't, admissions criteria are admissions criteria.
At most you can do SAT tests alongside as in the US or the Oxbridge admissions tests which are more focused on raw IQ and less easy to prepare for.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
Indeed. 'Grade snob' is also a rather bonkers term - as if high academic attainment were just a bit of inappropriate showing off best avoided in polite company.
No, @HYUFD is genuinely and objectively a grade snob in any case, regardless of today's discussion.
OK, I am a grade snob.
I would prefer to be operated on by a surgeon with A Grades in Science and a first in Medicine than someone who got D Grades at A Level and failed his Medical exams multiple times.
As indeed would anyone sane not obsessed with equality of outcome
I'm saying it should be vouchers, I have never said crack and prostitutes and I am against any such judgementalism. I believe in libertarianism and free market economics - if you need to give to someone then give to them and let them choose how to spend it.
But yes Morrisons is in a box - the cost to them largely is the box. They're a supermarket they have a ton of food on site. That is the point. They can bulk order and get massive deliveries that go into the shelves or into boxes. That is why supermarkets are such good value. Morrisons may have marginal overheads in packing the box, but they will be tiny compared to others businesses.
A company with overheads is never going to compete with Morrisons.
Wowsers. Lets take this nonsense apart line by line:
1. "The cost to them largely is the box". Laughable. The major cost to all the supermarkets in their online orders is paying someone to pull the stock off the shelves. A generic cardboard carton printed on a vast scale is pennies.
You're talking cross purposes with me. You're talking about someone picking something where they wouldn't otherwise, that is not what I was talking about.
I am talking about if you give someone a voucher to supplement their local shop. IE you give someone a £30 voucher and they turn their £60 shop into a £90 shop.
In that case you've already got someone pulling extra stock off the shelves when they were already doing the regular shop anyway. They're just presenting more at checkout - or if its an online delivery then the picker is picking a bit more (which to be fair may mean they take a bit longer). Either way since a shop was already happening this is just a bit extra added to the shop, not an entirely new order boxed up on its own.
A voucher should reduce the bill not be the entirety of the shop, as people get their regular shopping anyway.
We're comparing the cost of Compass picking a food box vs Morrisons picking a food box. Any "cross purpose" is in your head only like your guesses about the relative P&Ls of these companies
And even how the businesses work.
And why someone being paid £9 an hour (and they won't even get that) means that £5 gross profit per box for Chartwells means they make a loss because overheads.
I can't help feeling you should be setting up a rival operation, since clearly you could tender at well below the prices of your competitors.
Happily a lot of people have done just that - its called competition. Don't like Compass or Bidfood or the other big players? Plenty of smaller operators who don't have shareholders to enrich who operate on more realistic margins.
Wholesale is a bloody brilliant industry to work with. Enterprising, innovative, warm.
- gets rid of Trump, - can possibly re-establish control of the party (but not certain); - can recover suburban voters (but not certain - trends have been shifting away from the Republicans)
Reasons why not to back impeachment
- Major risk of civil war in the party - RNC is controlled by Trump supporters and the WSJ poll showed well over half choosing Trump over the GOP if forced to choose; - limited support in the House - max 20 (<10% of base) GOP Congress members to vote for it, McCarthy has said he doesn't want a vote; - Rebellion in the Senate - not only from Hawley, Cruz et al but those who are up for re-election in 2022 who might feel this puts them at risk (e.g. Rubio); - Crucially, puts at risk a 2022 Senate Republican majority - 3 Republican seats (PA, WI, NC) are in very marginal states and incumbents are retiring. It's possible a backlash against the move puts Grassley's seat at risk also. In addition, McConnell probably hopeful he could pick up Arizona, Warlock's seat and possibly Nevada in a backlash year.
Jprobably trust his word on this than the NYT.</p>
On the pro-impeachment side you can add 'he hates the bastard'.
Don't know about Manchin but I believe McConnell has a pretty decent relationship with Biden. I doubt that would affect his calculations though. Foremost in his mind would be what is best for the Republican Party, and if you can tell that better than me (never mind him!) you're a better man than me.
Fwiw, I don't think there are sixteen Republican Senate votes there for a conviction, so the possibility of a 2024 Trump run will remain, but I rather suspect the Orrible Orange Creature is something of a busted flush already and won't be back to frighten the children any more.
Seems like a decent analysis. Cold hard speculation on relative risks of convict vs not convict will sway the senators.
It is worth them remembering he would regard a lack of conviction as endorsement of his actions and that he did nothing wrong. Saying he did bad but not to convict would be a nonsense. Either you're a Trumpster or you ain't.
I think this omits the hit to the GOP's finances of corporate America not being willing to fund those who challenged the validity of the election in Congress, and those who would let them go unchecked. Ultimately, I think McConnell may choose to throw his weight behind impeachment to limit ongoing social censure from big money.
I'm saying it should be vouchers, I have never said crack and prostitutes and I am against any such judgementalism. I believe in libertarianism and free market economics - if you need to give to someone then give to them and let them choose how to spend it.
But yes Morrisons is in a box - the cost to them largely is the box. They're a supermarket they have a ton of food on site. That is the point. They can bulk order and get massive deliveries that go into the shelves or into boxes. That is why supermarkets are such good value. Morrisons may have marginal overheads in packing the box, but they will be tiny compared to others businesses.
A company with overheads is never going to compete with Morrisons.
Wowsers. Lets take this nonsense apart line by line:
1. "The cost to them largely is the box". Laughable. The major cost to all the supermarkets in their online orders is paying someone to pull the stock off the shelves. A generic cardboard carton printed on a vast scale is pennies.
You're talking cross purposes with me. You're talking about someone picking something where they wouldn't otherwise, that is not what I was talking about.
I am talking about if you give someone a voucher to supplement their local shop. IE you give someone a £30 voucher and they turn their £60 shop into a £90 shop.
In that case you've already got someone pulling extra stock off the shelves when they were already doing the regular shop anyway. They're just presenting more at checkout - or if its an online delivery then the picker is picking a bit more (which to be fair may mean they take a bit longer). Either way since a shop was already happening this is just a bit extra added to the shop, not an entirely new order boxed up on its own.
A voucher should reduce the bill not be the entirety of the shop, as people get their regular shopping anyway.
We're comparing the cost of Compass picking a food box vs Morrisons picking a food box. Any "cross purpose" is in your head only like your guesses about the relative P&Ls of these companies
No because we were talking about retail cost of Morrisons food and vouchers for people to spend at Morrisons. If someone gets £30 voucher they can spend on whatever they want at Morrisons that's going to go further than a £30 box bought from someone. Do you disagree?
Do I disagree that we're talking about that? Yes.
Why do you disagree? Because that was the alternative, which I (and others) are advocating. Vouchers as opposed to boxes.
Have you got any explanation yet for hour you intend to accrue for SSP, Holiday Pay, Employers NI and Pensions with a budget of just 28 pence per hour? Or are you just going to gloss over that and stop digging?
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would normally be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
It is entirely conceivable that the BBB pupil is more intelligent and harder working than the AAA one. In that case it is better for Oxford (dunno what this "Oxbridge" shit is) and by any sane standards more just and more desirable that the BBB pupil gets the place, subject to the very important proviso that the BBB pupil can make up the ground lost by worse schooling, in time to benefit from the Oxford course.
No it isn't, admissions criteria are admissions criteria.
At most you can do SAT tests alongside as in the US or the Oxbridge admissions tests which are more focused on raw IQ and less easy to prepare for.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
Indeed. 'Grade snob' is also a rather bonkers term - as if high academic attainment were just a bit of inappropriate showing off best avoided in polite company.
No, @HYUFD is genuinely and objectively a grade snob in any case, regardless of today's discussion.
OK, I am a grade snob.
I would prefer to be operated on by a surgeon with A Grades in Science and a first in Medicine than someone who got D Grades at A Level and failed his Medical exams multiple times.
As indeed would anyone sane not obsessed with equality of outcome
When I look at the calibre of the privately educated, former Oxford students in the House of Commons and, especially, on the government benches, I can't help thinking that maybe such institutions are not as brilliant as we have been led to believe.
I think it is more the smart ones don't go into politics, just the dregs.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
Indeed. 'Grade snob' is also a rather bonkers term - as if high academic attainment were just a bit of inappropriate showing off best avoided in polite company.
No, @HYUFD is genuinely and objectively a grade snob in any case, regardless of today's discussion.
OK, I am a grade snob.
I would prefer to be operated on by a surgeon with A Grades in Science and a first in Medicine than someone who got D Grades at A Level and failed his Medical exams multiple times.
As indeed would anyone sane not obsessed with equality of outcome
Most people wouldn't agree with you there
I would far prefer to be operated on by any surgeon from a decent med school than one from Harvard.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
Indeed. 'Grade snob' is also a rather bonkers term - as if high academic attainment were just a bit of inappropriate showing off best avoided in polite company.
No, @HYUFD is genuinely and objectively a grade snob in any case, regardless of today's discussion.
OK, I am a grade snob.
I would prefer to be operated on by a surgeon with A Grades in Science and a first in Medicine than someone who got D Grades at A Level and failed his Medical exams multiple times.
As indeed would anyone sane not obsessed with equality of outcome
Most people wouldn't agree with you there
I would far prefer to be operated on by any surgeon from a decent med school than one from Harvard.
* Unless my wife told me to go with the one from Harvard.
I think this omits the hit to the GOP's finances of corporate America not being willing to fund those who challenged the validity of the election in Congress, and those who would let them go unchecked. Ultimately, I think McConnell may choose to throw his weight behind impeachment to limit ongoing social censure from big money.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
Indeed. 'Grade snob' is also a rather bonkers term - as if high academic attainment were just a bit of inappropriate showing off best avoided in polite company.
No, @HYUFD is genuinely and objectively a grade snob in any case, regardless of today's discussion.
OK, I am a grade snob.
I would prefer to be operated on by a surgeon with A Grades in Science and a first in Medicine than someone who got D Grades at A Level and failed his Medical exams multiple times.
As indeed would anyone sane not obsessed with equality of outcome
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
Indeed. 'Grade snob' is also a rather bonkers term - as if high academic attainment were just a bit of inappropriate showing off best avoided in polite company.
No, @HYUFD is genuinely and objectively a grade snob in any case, regardless of today's discussion.
OK, I am a grade snob.
I would prefer to be operated on by a surgeon with A Grades in Science and a first in Medicine than someone who got D Grades at A Level and failed his Medical exams multiple times.
As indeed would anyone sane not obsessed with equality of outcome
Your example is stupid. I don't care what A Level grades my surgeon got so long as they passed their medical exams. I wouldn't even care if they failed their medical exams first time of asking as long as they passed subsequently, or what university they went to, so long as they are good at their job.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
Why don't you let the admissions people at Cambridge and Oxford decide whether there is a case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student?
You clearly are too proud and too arrogant to see beyond your own experience as a private school pupil, and lack the empathy to understand the challenges and endeavours others go through.
Just because you go to private school does not mean you are automatically Lord Fauntleroy.
Plenty of private school pupils come from very average families on bursaries and scholarships, plenty of state school pupils go to top performing state schools in expensive and leafy catchment areas and come from wealthy middle class homes
Well I think I just smashed that litigation exam. Hopefully I'm not just deluded.
Great stuff!
Also, only just saw the good news re: @DavidL 's son. Should be back to normal by Michaelmas, too. Congrats!
Thanks. That gives me an excuse to go back to a link made to the Guardian (I think) where they are improving diversity by accepting some students with BBB grades.
Over 2,200 people applied to do PPE at Oxford this year. Roughly 750 got an interview and of them 254 got places, just over 1/10. Would it really fair if someone loses one of those rare places despite having AAA to improve diversity?
It's quite a difficult question. If you are at a poor school BBB may be an incredible achievement showing genuine talent but people do not get in by accident. They get in by incredibly hard work over an extended period (consistency is important) and a genuine commitment and passion for the subjects. For those in that group to lose out when they otherwise tick the right boxes seems pretty egregious. Tricky.
The nub of this is: you are much more likely to get AAA if you go to a private school. Is that because private school pupils are innately better than state school pupils? I don't think so.
The solution is very difficult but leaving things as they are is not a solution.
I don't disagree. Its not easy. My wife went to a school where she had no Chemistry teacher for 2 of the 3 terms when she was doing her Higher, where, when she and her pal who had gone to night school in despair, they were approached by her maths teacher and told just because she had passed the prelim didn't mean that they would pass the exam, where her modern studies teacher was found using her notes, you get the picture. To get enough qualifications from that to get to University was an astounding achievement.
The fact that that school is no better 40 years on is the real tragedy.
My wife got in with ABC but the C was the highest mark in her entire school because the teacher went AWOL. I went to a grammar school and got AAAAAA but we ended up with the same class of degree (albeit in different subjects).
Is there any general visibility of the spread of outcomes from each school? If you are way above everyone else then that might indicate something. Those "one offs" that got treated really badly by the "algorithm".
I'm sure outcomes in finals will be monitored...
Our experience of the Oxford process was enlightening. The colleges seemed to specialise in particular areas of the country and in those areas they had detailed results for each school so that the exceptional stood out. This didn't seem to work quite as well for Scotland but it was clear that they tried hard to put results in some sort of a context.
Happily a lot of people have done just that - its called competition. Don't like Compass or Bidfood or the other big players? Plenty of smaller operators who don't have shareholders to enrich who operate on more realistic margins.
Wholesale is a bloody brilliant industry to work with. Enterprising, innovative, warm.
Yes, exactly. It's a very competitive business, the barriers to entry aren't enormous, and margins are thin.
Which is why I know that the accusations about 'rip-offs' and 'Tory donors' and CEO pay are garbage.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would normally be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
It is entirely conceivable that the BBB pupil is more intelligent and harder working than the AAA one. In that case it is better for Oxford (dunno what this "Oxbridge" shit is) and by any sane standards more just and more desirable that the BBB pupil gets the place, subject to the very important proviso that the BBB pupil can make up the ground lost by worse schooling, in time to benefit from the Oxford course.
One idea would be send a group of high performing students from "inner city comps" to a sixth-form style college for a year or 2 *after* 18. Give them some time and teaching to make lost ground before throwing them in the deep end....
Forcing them into catchup at university doesn't sound like the best way to equalise outcomes.
Isn't that literally what a foundation year is?
The two brightest mates I had at Ox were both state educated. One with me at a grammar (he came top in the year for Law) and another at a Somerset comprehensive.
Oxbridge intake is very small, and access has come on leaps and bounds in recent years. My experience was that there was more of a problem encouraging applications from state schools, than favouring of one school type over another. Frankly, from what I have seen the interviewers are brilliant at sniffing out talent once it is presented to them. Reintroduction of aptitude tests for many subjects has only improved this.
Out of the (say) 65 people I had any form of educational contact with at Ox, there was just one who I didn't think was cutting it.
Is there an entry advantage from private schools? Probably a small one, based on smaller class sizes.
Does it make much difference once there? Not in my experience. (The one I didn't think was cutting it, ex-MPS, got a Desmond).
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
Why don't you let the admissions people at Cambridge and Oxford decide whether there is a case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student?
You clearly are too proud and too arrogant to see beyond your own experience as a private school pupil, and lack the empathy to understand the challenges and endeavours others go through.
Just because you go to private school does not mean you are automatically Lord Fauntleroy.
Plenty of private school pupils come from very average families on bursaries and scholarships, plenty of state school pupils go to top performing state schools in expensive and leafy catchment areas and come from wealthy middle class homes
I'm not sure what that has got to do with anything. I didn't say anything about wealth.
I think this omits the hit to the GOP's finances of corporate America not being willing to fund those who challenged the validity of the election in Congress, and those who would let them go unchecked. Ultimately, I think McConnell may choose to throw his weight behind impeachment to limit ongoing social censure from big money.
Big money to the rescue?
Well, it'd make a change.
Hell, even the Koch brothers admitted it was a mistake.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
Indeed. 'Grade snob' is also a rather bonkers term - as if high academic attainment were just a bit of inappropriate showing off best avoided in polite company.
No, @HYUFD is genuinely and objectively a grade snob in any case, regardless of today's discussion.
OK, I am a grade snob.
I would prefer to be operated on by a surgeon with A Grades in Science and a first in Medicine than someone who got D Grades at A Level and failed his Medical exams multiple times.
As indeed would anyone sane not obsessed with equality of outcome
Your example is stupid. I don't care what A Level grades my surgeon got so long as they passed their medical exams. I wouldn't even care if they failed their medical exams first time of asking as long as they passed subsequently, or what university they went to, so long as they are good at their job.
No, it is entirely relevant.
You said grade snob. That includes medical exams. On your argument a surgeon who failed his medical exams multiple times and scraped through on the final attempt is just as good as a surgeon who passed first time with top marks
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would normally be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
It is entirely conceivable that the BBB pupil is more intelligent and harder working than the AAA one. In that case it is better for Oxford (dunno what this "Oxbridge" shit is) and by any sane standards more just and more desirable that the BBB pupil gets the place, subject to the very important proviso that the BBB pupil can make up the ground lost by worse schooling, in time to benefit from the Oxford course.
A friend of mine studied some Classics degree at Oxford, maybe the one Boris studied? In any case she was from a state school and found it almost impossible to keep up as most of her peers had studied greek and latin at their private schools, whilst she had not.
She got a 1st anyway.
In that case, your friend will almost certainly have scored very highly in the Classics Language Aptitude Test (CLAT) when she applied, and thus was admitted on merit, not as a charity case. Oxford has been doing this for years, and it's a much better solution than some crude handicapping system.
On the other hand, it's a great pity if she wasn't able to acquire the languages to a comfortable level, since that's one of the main pleasures and joys of the course.
I didn't say she was a "charity case". She is one of the most intelligent people I've ever met. My point was to highlight yet another advantage those who go to private school have and how she had to work much harder to achieve that 1st than they probably did.
I'm not disagreeing with you entirely. Getting a First if you read for Course II (where you start the languages from scratch) is less common, and the people who manage it are indeed impressive. On the other hand, the scope of Course II is narrower relative to Course I, concentrating on one language rather than both, and the first year is largely dedicated to intensive catch-up work, so inevitably the average Course II candidate will simply have read and covered less by the end of the degree.
Still, it helps Classics to survive and be enjoyed by more people, so it's not all bad.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
Indeed. 'Grade snob' is also a rather bonkers term - as if high academic attainment were just a bit of inappropriate showing off best avoided in polite company.
No, @HYUFD is genuinely and objectively a grade snob in any case, regardless of today's discussion.
OK, I am a grade snob.
I would prefer to be operated on by a surgeon with A Grades in Science and a first in Medicine than someone who got D Grades at A Level and failed his Medical exams multiple times.
As indeed would anyone sane not obsessed with equality of outcome
I'd want the best surgeon.
Quite. Years down the line into your career how well you did in A levels or even degree won't be the best indicator of quality. Some people might well peak at A Level for a start, and on the job people might prove themselves better than someone who did better than them at University. The analogy having failed medical exams multiple times is not great, since you know the person operating on you will have passed all the necessary qualifications, so that element is fine.
I said that the idea that this was charged £30 for two weeks was going to be fake news and I said I was prepared to do a charity bet to a food bank or other charity of your choice if I was wrong, if you wanted to take the bet.
I also said that the parcels were poor quality, unacceptable and something should be done about it but we should get to the truth.
Well *drum roll* it turns out I was . . . 100% correct.
The parcel involved was poor and I am glad there's been an apology and they're fixing it for the future - but it was not a £30 parcel. Instead it was a £10.50 one.
Still poor value for £10.50 but poor value for £10.50 and poor value for £30 are an order of magnitude different.
So I don't know if you took up my offer of the bet. If you did, please feel free to donate to a food bank or other charity of your choice. Thank you.
You get a like for continuing to dig your pit down towards Java.
I'm not digging a pit, I was right. 100% unambiguously correct.
The schools were charged £10.50 not £30 which was my contention, that there wasn't a chance on earth that was a £30 box. It was a £10 box (£10.50 technically) not a £30 box.
Last I checked £10 does not equal £30. Nor does £10.50.
Still poor, still needs sorting, I said all that, but the idea it was "what £30 gets you"? Unadulterated bullshit. Of course.
Unless you think the truth does not matter I was correct, wasn't I?
In Derbyshire a £30 box costs £14.40 retail so well under a tenner for Compass at wholesale
Still got to pay £4.7m PA to the CEO somehow I suppose
I'm sorry, but this sort of stuff is utter, vindictive, childish crap. The company makes virtually no money whatsoever from this contract. It's not a large part of its business at all. It's an extremely well-run company - one of the best in the world at what it does - and we need more such companies in the UK and paying UK corporation tax.
I can't comment on the actual food boxes (except that a lot of the pictures were quite obviously nothing to do with any big supplier), but I can make the very obvious point that the cost of sourcing, packing, and delivering food boxes is not just the cost of the raw ingredients. I'd have thought that at the very least £5 per box for putting it together, taking into account dietary requirements per child, and delivering it, would be what you'd expect, maybe quite a bit more depending on the quantities and the location. (That's one reason why vouchers probably make more sense, but that's a different argument).
Look at the Morrison £20 boxes for comparison. They manage to do far more for much less, with better nutrition and variety.
To be honest that is probably sufficient but it still leaves £10 for delivery and some more items.
As for the existing suppliers:
Why are they using mostly overpriced branded stuff? Why are they giving bottled water? Why do they repeatedly get in trouble for poor quality and quantity?
At best they really dont care, so if they dont make any money from it either why dont they leave it to someone else?
Supermarkets are always going to be cheaper and better value for money than any alternative as they have the scale and buying power to dominate. Getting a middle company involved to box it up is never going to be cost efficient.
Which is another reason why vouchers are far superior. If you're going to offer help then let the free market decide, give a voucher they can spend anywhere and let the parents take responsibility for themselves. Free market economics.
Morrisons is a box! All anyone else would need to do is deliver it for under £10. Even Royal Mail could do that.
But yes it goes back to vouchers are best but the Tory party voted against continuing the national voucher scheme because they think it goes on crack and prostitutes.
I'm saying it should be vouchers, I have never said crack and prostitutes and I am against any such judgementalism. I believe in libertarianism and free market economics - if you need to give to someone then give to them and let them choose how to spend it.
But yes Morrisons is in a box - the cost to them largely is the box. They're a supermarket they have a ton of food on site. That is the point. They can bulk order and get massive deliveries that go into the shelves or into boxes. That is why supermarkets are such good value. Morrisons may have marginal overheads in packing the box, but they will be tiny compared to others businesses.
A company with overheads is never going to compete with Morrisons.
That rather points to a company like Morrisons being awarded the contract then doesn't it?
However, in fairness, the Morrisons box would need to be modified - it contains no fresh stuff, such as fruit, cheese, butter, or fresh milk. But it's an ok start.
I'm saying nobody should be awarded the contract.
The parents should get the voucher and let them decide in a free market environment where they want to spend it. If they want to spend it at Morrisons let them. If they want to spend it at ASDA that should be up to them. Ditto Aldi, or Waitrose, or M&S, or anywhere else.
How difficult would it for you to have dropped the rest of your guff and just say this? Instead of all these hungry child box outrages, just go back to vouchers? There is no need for you to defend Tory donor profiteering when you disagree with the policy to hand them public money.
Isn't there a danger, identified by some Tory MPs, that if parents are given vouchers they will exchange them for crack?
When I look at the calibre of the privately educated, former Oxford students in the House of Commons and, especially, on the government benches, I can't help thinking that maybe such institutions are not as brilliant as we have been led to believe.
I think it is more the smart ones don't go into politics, just the dregs.
But Johnson was highly rated at Eton and Cameron got a First at Oxford. I don't think it's accurate to refer to them as the dregs. The problem is an excessive sense of entitlement, and it is widespread (but not universal) among this group.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
Why don't you let the admissions people at Cambridge and Oxford decide whether there is a case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student?
You clearly are too proud and too arrogant to see beyond your own experience as a private school pupil, and lack the empathy to understand the challenges and endeavours others go through.
Just because you go to private school does not mean you are automatically Lord Fauntleroy.
Quite right, someone has to be Lord Fauntleroy's fag.
Happily a lot of people have done just that - its called competition. Don't like Compass or Bidfood or the other big players? Plenty of smaller operators who don't have shareholders to enrich who operate on more realistic margins.
Wholesale is a bloody brilliant industry to work with. Enterprising, innovative, warm.
Yes, exactly. It's a very competitive business, the barriers to entry aren't enormous, and margins are thin.
Which is why I know that the accusations about 'rip-offs' and 'Tory donors' and CEO pay are garbage.
Surely the issue is - and it's one Richard you are missing, that Compass is a catering company - it is not a wholesale company and it is therefore trying to do a job which would be better done by someone else who has experience of that area.
Yes I can see why Compass has been tasked with doing it - it's they job to feed school children at Lunchtime but they have then decided to do a job which would have been better offloaded elsewhere.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
Though note the details. ...The university usually requires A*AA at A level to get on degree courses, but a new one-year foundation course has 50 places for students who achieve BBB. If successful on the course, students can then go on to study for degrees. Social mobility campaigners The Sutton Trust welcomed the "innovative steps"....
Seems a very good innovation.
Although I do wonder about rich parents of feckless kids moving house late in A-Levels to get their kids into the nearest failing school for eligibility
Well this is the killer argument always deployed to shoot down my plans to remove the private opt out and at the same time concentrate resource on schools in left behind areas. Even if - the argument goes - I manage to flip the board so all schools are state schools and the best ones are now in Goole, all that will happen is that the affluent denizens of Guildford who used to go private will deviously move up there, and it's back to square one.
When I look at the calibre of the privately educated, former Oxford students in the House of Commons and, especially, on the government benches, I can't help thinking that maybe such institutions are not as brilliant as we have been led to believe.
I think it is more the smart ones don't go into politics, just the dregs.
But Johnson was highly rated at Eton and Cameron got a First at Oxford. I don't think it's accurate to refer to them as the dregs. The problem is an excessive sense of entitlement, and it is widespread (but not universal) among this group.
The dregs are found at the bottom. It's the scum you find floating on the surface.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
Indeed. 'Grade snob' is also a rather bonkers term - as if high academic attainment were just a bit of inappropriate showing off best avoided in polite company.
No, @HYUFD is genuinely and objectively a grade snob in any case, regardless of today's discussion.
OK, I am a grade snob.
I would prefer to be operated on by a surgeon with A Grades in Science and a first in Medicine than someone who got D Grades at A Level and failed his Medical exams multiple times.
As indeed would anyone sane not obsessed with equality of outcome
Your example is stupid. I don't care what A Level grades my surgeon got so long as they passed their medical exams. I wouldn't even care if they failed their medical exams first time of asking as long as they passed subsequently, or what university they went to, so long as they are good at their job.
No, it is entirely relevant.
You said grade snob. That includes medical exams. On your basis a surgeon who failed his medical exams multiple times and scraped through on the final attempt is just as good as a surgeon who passed first time with top marks
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would normally be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
It is entirely conceivable that the BBB pupil is more intelligent and harder working than the AAA one. In that case it is better for Oxford (dunno what this "Oxbridge" shit is) and by any sane standards more just and more desirable that the BBB pupil gets the place, subject to the very important proviso that the BBB pupil can make up the ground lost by worse schooling, in time to benefit from the Oxford course.
A friend of mine studied some Classics degree at Oxford, maybe the one Boris studied? In any case she was from a state school and found it almost impossible to keep up as most of her peers had studied greek and latin at their private schools, whilst she had not.
She got a 1st anyway.
In that case, your friend will almost certainly have scored very highly in the Classics Language Aptitude Test (CLAT) when she applied, and thus was admitted on merit, not as a charity case. Oxford has been doing this for years, and it's a much better solution than some crude handicapping system.
On the other hand, it's a great pity if she wasn't able to acquire the languages to a comfortable level, since that's one of the main pleasures and joys of the course.
"almost impossible to keep up"...."got a 1st".
Shirley something wrong. My guess? She'd be not thrilled at it described as "almost impossible to keep up". Challenging I'm sure but sounds like she is a bright button not phased by such trivia as not knowing the original languages used in the course she was studying.
And one member of the Government has taken a hands-on approach to making sure this happens – deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam was pictured working at the vaccine clinic in Nottingham at the weekend.
My father commented on how busy everywhere was when he went for his jab. Now it might be that maybe ust hasn't been out that much for past year, but i do wonder about how well lockdown is going compared to last March....i think people have become desensitized to reports of 1000+ dying per day.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
And AAA from Gasworks St Comp is a better predictor of a first class degree in the end than from Eton, I suspect, from observations amongst my friends - all more or less equally bright in their wats but some of the ones from proivate schools had less staying power when the magisterial lash was removed and thet had to self-motivate much more once at Uni. Though all got goods and productive careers in their ways.
I think the point is that from some schools a BBB from Gasworks St Comp is a better indicator than AAA from Eton.
That assumes that knowledge imparted at school is not really important at university.
A mathematics professor of my acquaintance was, several years ago, having to run supplementary basic maths courses for his first years. Since a chunk of the incoming students couldn't differentiate or integrate with any faculty, or ease - for example.
That is an A-level maths quirk: some years back a lot of calculus was stripped out in favour of probability and sets. Social scientists and computer scientists were happy, physical scientists less so.
The GCSE syllabus no longer covers calculus, but it is dealt with in great depth in the basic A Level Maths syllabus, the main omission being the lack of any study of calculus from first principles. The need for additional courses for university freshers is more down to the fact that many chose to study maths at uni after taking only Mathematics at A Level, whereas university courses start from the premise that they have also studied Further Maths at A Level. So students start without any knowledge at all of many topics encountered only at Further Maths, imaginary numbers being but one example, and they need to acquire a rudimentary knowledge of these very quickly in order to progress.
I don't believe calculus was ever part of GCSE. I did GCSE (1990, A) and A-Level (1992, maths, and calculus - from first principles - was literally the very first thing we studied in A Level.
It's unlikely that you studied it truly from first principles at school. Because a first-principles exposition needs to begin with a definition of the real numbers. A bit advanced for school, I'd say.
As I once pointed out to the Head of a posh private school in Surrey, 3 AAA's from an inner city Hackney Comp is obviously more valuable than 3 AAA's from her school.
Nothing else needs to be said. What matters to Cambridge is not the qualification on entry but the qualification on exit and the years of learning to achieve that.
Maybe but 3 BBBs from a comprehensive should not be more valuable than 3 AAAs from a private school that is the point.
Of course when we had grammar schools many of the state schools even in Hackney were more than an equal for private schools academically, now with a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy that is rarely the case for comprehensives
Actually 3 Bs from someone who's have to overcome a hell of a lot of difficult circumstances and self-motivate completely because there was no-one there to push them is a hell of a lot more valuable than 3 As from someone in a private school with pushy parents and private tutors.
No it isn't, it is still lower grades no matter personal circumstance.
However as a socialist your solution as usual is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator and penalise the middle classes having already scrapped most grammars which were the best chance to get to Oxbridge the working class ever had
Yes it is, actually. "Socialism" has nothing to do with it. I'm not even a socialist.
We all know you're a grade snob so this is to be expected, but you're wrong.
Besides, I didn't say a BBB was better than an AAA. In fact of course in most cases the AAA will be valuable. However there may be circumstances where the BBB is in fact more valuable.
You are a leftwing Tory hater.
In most cases BBB would be barely enough to scrape into Southampton let alone Oxbridge and it would be ridiculous of Oxbridge to lower its grade total so far to admit more from comprehensives.
There may be a case to favour an AAA comp student over an AAA private school student, there is no case to favour a BBB comp student over an AAA private school student
Indeed. 'Grade snob' is also a rather bonkers term - as if high academic attainment were just a bit of inappropriate showing off best avoided in polite company.
No, @HYUFD is genuinely and objectively a grade snob in any case, regardless of today's discussion.
OK, I am a grade snob.
I would prefer to be operated on by a surgeon with A Grades in Science and a first in Medicine than someone who got D Grades at A Level and failed his Medical exams multiple times.
As indeed would anyone sane not obsessed with equality of outcome
I'd want the best surgeon.
Quite. Years down the line into your career how well you did in A levels or even degree won't be the best indicator of quality. Some people might well peak at A Level for a start, and on the job people might prove themselves better than someone who did better than them at University. The analogy having failed medical exams multiple times is not great, since you know the person operating on you will have passed all the necessary qualifications, so that element is fine.
My experience as an employer is that above a certain threshold, there is very little correlation between exam success and work performance. The skills required to pass exams are often very different to those required to be outstanding in a job.
When I look at the calibre of the privately educated, former Oxford students in the House of Commons and, especially, on the government benches, I can't help thinking that maybe such institutions are not as brilliant as we have been led to believe.
The institution is fine, even if many individuals there aren't always up to scratch.
I mean, on one hand we've got the Jenner institute making a vaccine, and on the other hand, Sunetra Gupta...
Comments
I am talking about if you give someone a voucher to supplement their local shop. IE you give someone a £30 voucher and they turn their £60 shop into a £90 shop.
In that case you've already got someone pulling extra stock off the shelves when they were already doing the regular shop anyway. They're just presenting more at checkout - or if its an online delivery then the picker is picking a bit more (which to be fair may mean they take a bit longer). Either way since a shop was already happening this is just a bit extra added to the shop, not an entirely new order boxed up on its own.
A voucher should reduce the bill not be the entirety of the shop, as people get their regular shopping anyway.
2. A Wholesale pack - 2.5kg of whatever - is almost always cheaper per kilo than the equivalent retail pack. You get a discount for bulk
3. It certainly has been the case that small wholesalers have been dearer than supermarkets and I have given an example of that yesterday. Its very unusual though - we see the opposite in action in the likes of Tesco who now sell cheap bulk packs of Tea or whatever sourced through their Booker operation
4. Overheads for a warehouse are less than overheads for a supermarket.
Stop digging man!
On the other hand, it's a great pity if she wasn't able to acquire the languages to a comfortable level, since that's one of the main pleasures and joys of the course.
Same with imaginary numbers, keystone of some many things especially in physics and engineering m
They are refunding the bookings and paying the hosts themselves.
However, in fairness, the Morrisons box would need to be modified - it contains no fresh stuff, such as fruit, cheese, butter, or fresh milk. But it's an ok start.
My tame Trump-supporting friend in Florida is hoping for Ivanka, but he may not be thinking just politics.
One of the problems with Uni admissions is that there's a substantial mismatch between the grade offers that many courses advertise upfront and those they end up accepting on clearing. And that includes Russell group, though not the ultracompetitive Oxbridge/medicine courses. It's one of the unfortunate bits of secret code that it's not easy to overcome unless your pupils and their families have the social confidence to believe it.
But the important thing is that universities are independent, have access to the data and in general terms it's up to them who they admit. So if they think there's value in a Foundation Year, who are we to argue?
The parents should get the voucher and let them decide in a free market environment where they want to spend it. If they want to spend it at Morrisons let them. If they want to spend it at ASDA that should be up to them. Ditto Aldi, or Waitrose, or M&S, or anywhere else.
If it all seems too easy you get lazy. Eventually everybody runs into something that needs more effort.
I'm sure the Prime Minister would agree.
Forcing them into catchup at university doesn't sound like the best way to equalise outcomes.
https://twitter.com/BestForBritain/status/1349365963301511168
'So what A levels are you doing?' I asked.
He looked at me a bit sheepishly, with his dad looking on, and said 'Oh I'm not going to college, my dad said it's all a load of rubbish, I'm going to work in his garage instead.'
Never seen him since, I often wonder what happened to him.
Nice middle class people, who grow up surrounded by books and Radio 4 and are encouraged to study, by parents who themselves were raised that way, often fail to appreciate that there are millions of kids out there, some of whom are very bright, who grow up with no books, amidst an environment of deep suspicion of education and 'clever' people. I find the lack of empathy from those people from more advantaged backgrounds awful.
When I got to a Russell Group Uni I found that a lot of the nice middle class, usually southern kids, who went to good schools and were pushed academically are gibbering idiots. Not all of them, or even a majority of them, but plenty of them.
2,639,309 up to and including 12 January 2021
I never said the company makes a loss either. I just said minimum wage doesn't cost £9 once you factor in Employers NI, Pensions, SSP, Statutory Holiday Pay and any other incidentals it costs about 33% more than that.
In other news I have at last got an appointment for my Covid-19 vaccination. Saturday morning.
They will ring again in 8 weeks to arrange the second one. I didn't ask which vaccine.
At most you can do SAT tests alongside as in the US or the Oxbridge admissions tests which are more focused on raw IQ and less easy to prepare for.
I would prefer to be operated on by a surgeon with A Grades in Science and a first in Medicine than someone who got D Grades at A Level and failed his Medical exams multiple times.
As indeed would anyone sane not obsessed with equality of outcome
Wholesale is a bloody brilliant industry to work with. Enterprising, innovative, warm.
It is worth them remembering he would regard a lack of conviction as endorsement of his actions and that he did nothing wrong. Saying he did bad but not to convict would be a nonsense. Either you're a Trumpster or you ain't.
I think this omits the hit to the GOP's finances of corporate America not being willing to fund those who challenged the validity of the election in Congress, and those who would let them go unchecked. Ultimately, I think McConnell may choose to throw his weight behind impeachment to limit ongoing social censure from big money.
Have you got any explanation yet for hour you intend to accrue for SSP, Holiday Pay, Employers NI and Pensions with a budget of just 28 pence per hour? Or are you just going to gloss over that and stop digging?
https://twitter.com/NHSNottsCCG/status/1349295842398760961
Helping out with vaccinations in Nottingham.
Well, it'd make a change.
Plenty of private school pupils come from very average families on bursaries and scholarships, plenty of state school pupils go to top performing state schools in expensive and leafy catchment areas and come from wealthy middle class homes
Which is why I know that the accusations about 'rip-offs' and 'Tory donors' and CEO pay are garbage.
Oxbridge intake is very small, and access has come on leaps and bounds in recent years. My experience was that there was more of a problem encouraging applications from state schools, than favouring of one school type over another. Frankly, from what I have seen the interviewers are brilliant at sniffing out talent once it is presented to them. Reintroduction of aptitude tests for many subjects has only improved this.
Out of the (say) 65 people I had any form of educational contact with at Ox, there was just one who I didn't think was cutting it.
Is there an entry advantage from private schools? Probably a small one, based on smaller class sizes.
Does it make much difference once there? Not in my experience. (The one I didn't think was cutting it, ex-MPS, got a Desmond).
https://www.wsj.com/articles/charles-koch-says-his-partisanship-was-a-mistake-11605286893
And
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9135209/American-Express-Dow-halt-donations-lawmakers-opposed-Biden-certification.html
You said grade snob. That includes medical exams. On your argument a surgeon who failed his medical exams multiple times and scraped through on the final attempt is just as good as a surgeon who passed first time with top marks
Still, it helps Classics to survive and be enjoyed by more people, so it's not all bad.
Yes I can see why Compass has been tasked with doing it - it's they job to feed school children at Lunchtime but they have then decided to do a job which would have been better offloaded elsewhere.
It's the scum you find floating on the surface.
Shirley something wrong. My guess? She'd be not thrilled at it described as "almost impossible to keep up". Challenging I'm sure but sounds like she is a bright button not phased by such trivia as not knowing the original languages used in the course she was studying.
And one member of the Government has taken a hands-on approach to making sure this happens – deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam was pictured working at the vaccine clinic in Nottingham at the weekend.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9142597/AstraZeneca-says-deliver-2m-doses-week-imminently.html
(Soz to non-rail crank folks)
--AS
I mean, on one hand we've got the Jenner institute making a vaccine, and on the other hand, Sunetra Gupta...