It's so nostalgic to see this throw-back to the work-to-rule attitude of the 1960s. Now disappeared everywhere, except in the one sector of state-employed teachers.
Could it be that there may be a reason why teachers (who legally have holidays dictated to them and cannot go on holiday in term time) dislike the idea that you are suggesting they lose some of their holidays for no extra money just for a good Daily Mail headline.
It's almost like their holiday conditions reflect an earlier era.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
My nephew hasn't been given a vast amount and his parents haven't really made a vast amount of effort to get him to do what he has been given either. GCSE year, too.
Bog standard comprehensive.
I'm sure he's very good at video games.
Not all teachers have been making every effort. I expect we don't have a typical sample here.
Or alternatively, he has been given plenty and neglected to tell his parents.
I’ve had a few interesting phone calls with parents along those lines.
‘They’ve done all your work. Why are you complaining?’
‘Because I’ve sent them three lessons worth of work and they’ve done one question in one.’
‘They told me they’ve done it all and you’re lying.’
‘Then I am afraid they are mistaken. Could you ask the, to check these out?’
Ha! I can't say whether you are definitely right or not (I don't think so, although I haven't spoken to him directly for a while) but if you are right then that's definitely an argument for having him in school. You might of course also find that the parents knew but couldn't be bothered with the effort of getting their child to do it...
The real shame here is that it is children like him without academic or particularly ambitious parents who will do worst out of this and it will only make the current inequalities worse.
I understand the need for lesson preparation if you are teaching a specific curriculum, but just having children in school learning would seem to be an improvement on the current situation.
Perhaps it would have been better to move the Easter "holiday" and take 4 weeks off from online learning during lockdown instead of keeping the holidays as they are. The problem is that the government probably still aren't sure exactly when the virus will allow schools to open.
The whole system should have been rethought. Last June.
But that requires somebody with a brain, and there aren’t any in the DfE so it didn’t happen.
Incidentally @Philip_Thompson in the majority of counties Easter holidays start on April 1st, although I know Lancashire is an exception and breakup is a week earlier. So it’s four weeks not three if schools go back on the 8th.
I have to go and do some work. See you later.
By that time I may even have got an answer to my question.
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
Hardly surprising if they haven't been immunised.
Yes. I had some sympathy with Keir's teacher vaccination scheme for that reason.
Actually I have been vaccinated: if schools are back on the 8th of March then I will be in, baring a letter from the DHSC telling me not to.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
And my experience is plenty have not.
Why are you moving from anecdotal evidence of poor practice in some schools to saying we should be threatening and bullying teachers as a whole?
I'm not saying we should be threatening or bullying teachers at all. I don't understand the minutiae of the contracts and the DfE edicts or restrictions. What I am saying is that if there arises an opportunity to provide more schooling to children who have woefully missed out on plenty of it, that opportunity should not be blocked by the teachers or their unions.
And I am telling you that precisely because you don’t understand the issues involved, you are completely wrong and the unions are right, which you proposed to remedy by getting parliament to change the law to break all teachers’ contracts.
And I note you still haven’t answered my question.
Ah thank you for that. So in a nutshell, what are the issues preventing increased/make up school time for you and your pupils?
In a nutshell, I am contracted for 195 days, which include such hours during those days as may reasonably be necessary to carry out my job, at such place as my employer may direct. This does not therefore include the provision for overtime rates or home working.
So to change that requires a contractual change. And given that nobody trusts the government, on account of the fact that they are liars, bullies, thieves and idiots, and everyone is exhausted trying to keep up with the work we are still doing, nobody would take it up.
So theoretically if the govt (liars, bullies, thieves, idiots that they are) said: Look soz but you know, global pandemic and all that, we're going to have to ask you to work an extra 20 days and don't worry you can make that up in future year/and here's your overtime rate, I'm sure you will understand.
You would say no.
I’m already down to work on catch up classes, on an agreed overtime rate. So actually I said yes.
But if the government wants to permanently rewrite my contract to get a good headline in the daily mail and show the DfE is still relevant, the answer is no.
And what’s happened in schools is because of their incompetent handling of the pandemic.
And again I come back to what would you do in those circumstances? Bear in mind please, which I think you and Richard do not fully grasp, when schools are in session teachers cannot have any time off. So no holiday of any sort this year for teachers in your proposals. No time to rest, no time to plan, and no time with family.
Would you take it? Fifth time of asking.
"No time to rest, no time to plan, no time with family"?
Get over yourself. You're not being sent to discover the lost city of Atlantis. You have 13 weeks to play with. So an extra 15-20 days (three to four weeks), appropriately compensated, would not seem unreasonable to man the classrooms for some catch-up school time given the exceptional circumstances.
And you know what? If I had entered a vocational job where it was up to me to safeguard and nurture a group within society, then that is exactly what I would be busting a gut to do.
I’m disturbed that Richard Nabavi thinks ‘contracts can be overridden by the government.’ Sure. They could impose new contracts by diktat. And we can then refuse to sign them and you will have no teachers at all. Plus nobody will ever sign a contract with the British government again.
Why are you disturbed? Governments override contracts very frequently, for example on outlawing excessive working hours, nullifying employment contracts which discriminate against women, or changing the basis under which pension funds pay benefits.
In any case, where did I say the contracts should changed 'by diktat'? I was responding to the suggestion that school holidays are an immutable fact which can never be changed, because of the employment contracts. That is wrong, but of course it should be done by consent and with plenty of notice.
But that is not what you were proposing.
And incidentally, governments overriding contracts to increase working hours by 20% strikes me as a bit of a first. That didn’t even happen under DORA.
Overriding contracts (if necessary, which I doubt) so that working hours this year can be increased. As I said, employment contracts are not an obstacle to doing this. I agree that teachers' lack of concern for education might be, if that is a widespread problem.
Teachers are deeply concerned with education, Richard. That’s why we’re teachers. Those who aren’t do not last long. We’re not like the DfE, or Ofsted, who only care for themselves. Your comment is therefore actually outrageous and I’ll give you the opportunity to withdraw it.
Your doubts are wrong. As I outline above.
As for the rest, you are assuming remote learning is no use. Which may be correct. But if so, why are we bothering to do it at all? Why don’t we just take the time off now and then abolish the holidays?
I think you misunderstand DfE and Ofsted
They are classics of the self re-inforcing system. Read only minds sitting in a circle telling each other they are right.
Fortunately there is a fix for read-only minds - see this handy documentary
I’m disturbed that Richard Nabavi thinks ‘contracts can be overridden by the government.’ Sure. They could impose new contracts by diktat. And we can then refuse to sign them and you will have no teachers at all. Plus nobody will ever sign a contract with the British government again.
Why are you disturbed? Governments override contracts very frequently, for example on outlawing excessive working hours, nullifying employment contracts which discriminate against women, or changing the basis under which pension funds pay benefits.
In any case, where did I say the contracts should changed 'by diktat'? I was responding to the suggestion that school holidays are an immutable fact which can never be changed, because of the employment contracts. That is wrong, but of course it should be done by consent and with plenty of notice.
But that is not what you were proposing.
And incidentally, governments overriding contracts to increase working hours by 20% strikes me as a bit of a first. That didn’t even happen under DORA.
Overriding contracts (if necessary, which I doubt) so that working hours this year can be increased. As I said, employment contracts are not an obstacle to doing this. I agree that teachers' lack of concern for education might be, if that is a widespread problem.
Teachers are deeply concerned with education, Richard. That’s why we’re teachers. Those who aren’t do not last long. We’re not like the DfE, or Ofsted, who only care for themselves. Your comment is therefore actually outrageous and I’ll give you the opportunity to withdraw it.
Your doubts are wrong. As I outline above.
As for the rest, you are assuming remote learning is no use. Which may be correct. But if so, why are we bothering to do it at all? Why don’t we just take the time off now and then abolish the holidays?
What you said on the subject was this:
In a nutshell, I am contracted for 195 days, which include such hours during those days as may reasonably be necessary to carry out my job, at such place as my employer may direct. This does not therefore include the provision for overtime rates or home working.
That looks to me like a pretty unambiguous statement. Where's the bit saying 'Of course, I'd be willing to work for a longer period this year, given the crisis'? You also say the contract doesn't allow for overtime. That was exactly my point: the government can change the effect of that with a short bill. That would be a trivial legislative measure compared with everything else that has had to be done, so is irrelevant as an argument.
As for remote learning, I'm sure it is of use, and I'm sure you are very good at it. I'm also sure that it's very difficult for teachers to do. However, I don't think anyone thinks it's a good replacement for proper in-person teaching and the socialising aspects of schools, and this is particularly true for children from less-advantaged backgrounds. Pretty much everyone - expert or not - agrees that this is a major problem, given the length of time that education has been disrupted.
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
Hardly surprising if they haven't been immunised.
Yes. I had some sympathy with Keir's teacher vaccination scheme for that reason.
Actually I have been vaccinated: if schools are back on the 8th of March then I will be in, baring a letter from the DHSC telling me not to.
It's so nostalgic to see this throw-back to the work-to-rule attitude of the 1960s. Now disappeared everywhere, except in the one sector of state-employed teachers.
That's hugely unfair. I went to a state school and my teachers routinely went over and above what they needed to do by their contract. You're unnecessarily denigrating thousands of amazing teachers all over the country because a few union nutjobs mouth off on TV.
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
Hardly surprising if they haven't been immunised.
Yes. I had some sympathy with Keir's teacher vaccination scheme for that reason.
Actually I have been vaccinated: if schools are back on the 8th of March then I will be in, baring a letter from the DHSC telling me not to.
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
It's confusing the right to speak with the right to an audience. Many have got used to having the latter and are not best pleased - are in many cases downright livid - at seeing this privilege eroded.
I must have missed the part of the regulations in which students will be herded into the lecture halls and held there by force. No one will will be compelled to turn up to listen, but no one will have the right to prevent another from exercising their lawful freedom of speech either. That's life in a free society, and by God it's about time action was taken to preserve it.
In a free society people should be able to decide who they invite to speak to them without the authorities intervening to correct what are deemed bad choices. This is how I look at it.
And what about the freedom of those who might wish to listen, but will never get the chance because a small set of activists have taken upon themselves the sole authority to decide who is allowed to address them at all? It's called a university: the clue is in the name. Your method would lead - entirely unintentionally I'm sure - to the creation of a narrow seminary where only one set of ideas was ever heard spoken.
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
Hardly surprising if they haven't been immunised.
Yes. I had some sympathy with Keir's teacher vaccination scheme for that reason.
Actually I have been vaccinated: if schools are back on the 8th of March then I will be in, baring a letter from the DHSC telling me not to.
It's so nostalgic to see this throw-back to the work-to-rule attitude of the 1960s. Now disappeared everywhere, except in the one sector of state-employed teachers.
That's hugely unfair. I went to a state school and my teachers routinely went over and above what they needed to do by their contract. You're unnecessarily denigrating thousands of amazing teachers all over the country because a few union nutjobs mouth off on TV.
For example our physics teacher went on maternity leave but she was without a doubt the best science teacher in the school. In the run up to our exams she came back during her maternity leave to teach the physics class some of the stuff that we were struggling with under the substitutes. She literally had no obligation to come back and help us during her maternity leave but she still did it, absolutely amazing and I have no doubt her help in that crucial period helped all of us achieve top grades.
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
Hardly surprising if they haven't been immunised.
Yes. I had some sympathy with Keir's teacher vaccination scheme for that reason.
Actually I have been vaccinated: if schools are back on the 8th of March then I will be in, baring a letter from the DHSC telling me not to.
I’m disturbed that Richard Nabavi thinks ‘contracts can be overridden by the government.’ Sure. They could impose new contracts by diktat. And we can then refuse to sign them and you will have no teachers at all. Plus nobody will ever sign a contract with the British government again.
Why are you disturbed? Governments override contracts very frequently, for example on outlawing excessive working hours, nullifying employment contracts which discriminate against women, or changing the basis under which pension funds pay benefits.
In any case, where did I say the contracts should changed 'by diktat'? I was responding to the suggestion that school holidays are an immutable fact which can never be changed, because of the employment contracts. That is wrong, but of course it should be done by consent and with plenty of notice.
But that is not what you were proposing.
And incidentally, governments overriding contracts to increase working hours by 20% strikes me as a bit of a first. That didn’t even happen under DORA.
Overriding contracts (if necessary, which I doubt) so that working hours this year can be increased. As I said, employment contracts are not an obstacle to doing this. I agree that teachers' lack of concern for education might be, if that is a widespread problem.
Teachers are deeply concerned with education, Richard. That’s why we’re teachers. Those who aren’t do not last long. We’re not like the DfE, or Ofsted, who only care for themselves. Your comment is therefore actually outrageous and I’ll give you the opportunity to withdraw it.
Your doubts are wrong. As I outline above.
As for the rest, you are assuming remote learning is no use. Which may be correct. But if so, why are we bothering to do it at all? Why don’t we just take the time off now and then abolish the holidays?
What you said on the subject was this:
In a nutshell, I am contracted for 195 days, which include such hours during those days as may reasonably be necessary to carry out my job, at such place as my employer may direct. This does not therefore include the provision for overtime rates or home working.
That looks to me like a pretty unambiguous statement. Where's the bit saying 'Of course, I'd be willing to work for a longer period this year, given the crisis'? You also say the contract doesn't allow for overtime. That was exactly my point: the government can change the effect of that with a short bill. That would be a trivial legislative measure compared with everything else that has had to be done, so is irrelevant as an argument.
As for remote learning, I'm sure it is of use, and I'm sure you are very good at it. I'm also sure that it's very difficult for teachers to do. However, I don't think anyone thinks it's a good replacement for proper in-person teaching and the socialising aspects of schools, and this is particularly true for children from less-advantaged backgrounds. Pretty much everyone - expert or not - agrees that this is a major problem, given the length of time that education has been disrupted.
There is a big difference between asking for (paid) volunteers to run two or three weeks worth of catch up in the summer for those pupils particularly badly hit by the lockdown, something I fully expect to happen in many schools, and forcing teachers into school during what may be their only chance for a holiday this year. Again, I don't think some people realise that teachers have no choice at all in when we can go on holiday.
It's so nostalgic to see this throw-back to the work-to-rule attitude of the 1960s. Now disappeared everywhere, except in the one sector of state-employed teachers.
That's hugely unfair. I went to a state school and my teachers routinely went over and above what they needed to do by their contract. You're unnecessarily denigrating thousands of amazing teachers all over the country because a few union nutjobs mouth off on TV.
For example our physics teacher went on maternity leave but she was without a doubt the best science teacher in the school. In the run up to our exams she came back during her maternity leave to teach the physics class some of the stuff that we were struggling with under the substitutes. She literally had no obligation to come back and help us during her maternity leave but she still did it, absolutely amazing and I have no doubt her help in that crucial period helped all of us achieve top grades.
Lions led by donkeys. With a few donkeys in the rank and file also.
1) Is concern about kids' education during the pandemic for some Tories merely the conduit to a bout of that popular passtime on the right of teacher bashing?
2) And is that same concern being actively simulated by some Covid Denialists in order to handwring in agonized fashion about the costs of Lockdown?
3) And the really burning question. Why ask things you know the answer to?
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
Hardly surprising if they haven't been immunised.
Yes. I had some sympathy with Keir's teacher vaccination scheme for that reason.
Actually I have been vaccinated: if schools are back on the 8th of March then I will be in, baring a letter from the DHSC telling me not to.
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
Hardly surprising if they haven't been immunised.
Yes. I had some sympathy with Keir's teacher vaccination scheme for that reason.
Actually I have been vaccinated: if schools are back on the 8th of March then I will be in, baring a letter from the DHSC telling me not to.
1) Is concern about kids' education during the pandemic for some Tories merely the conduit to a bout of that popular passtime on the right of teacher bashing?
2) And is that same concern being actively simulated by some Covid Denialists in order to handwring in agonized fashion about the costs of Lockdown?
3) And the really burning question. Why ask things you know the answer to?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9264933/Next-phase-UKs-Covid-vaccine-roll-focus-ethnicity-NOT-occupation.html Explicit prioritisation by ethnicity would be completely scandalous for the sub 50 rollout. I think the best option would just be a bookable slot self service on the basis of simplicity and maximal throughput. The second best option would be either to continue down the age groups (40 - 50 etc) or key workers. Key/essential workers would likely capture slightly more non white people than the general population anyway. There's a big issue with low minority takeup but prioritising explicitly might well make a whole bunch of white people think what's the point. The reverse would also be unthinkable.
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
My sister-in-law is a teacher. She's been working incredibly hard during lockdown, split between teaching the children still physically in school, and those at home.
I don't see any sense in which schools have been "closed". If anything teachers have been run ragged running two types of school in parallel.
If schools had actually been closed, and teachers not working, then it would make sense to cancel the summer holiday and run schools straight through. Maybe that's what should have been done.
But if I was a teacher, and the government asked me to give up my paid time off, then I'd be glad of a Union to stand up for me.
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
It's confusing the right to speak with the right to an audience. Many have got used to having the latter and are not best pleased - are in many cases downright livid - at seeing this privilege eroded.
I must have missed the part of the regulations in which students will be herded into the lecture halls and held there by force. No one will will be compelled to turn up to listen, but no one will have the right to prevent another from exercising their lawful freedom of speech either. That's life in a free society, and by God it's about time action was taken to preserve it.
In a free society people should be able to decide who they invite to speak to them without the authorities intervening to correct what are deemed bad choices. This is how I look at it.
Back when I helped run a student union, we would get no-platforming requests. Essentially they went thus
- Society X would invite person Y to speak at their society - Group Z would demand that person y should not be allowed on University grounds because their presence would upset them. - Group Z would not be invited to to society X
The most recent version of this is group Z declaring they feel unsafe at the presence of Y...
I used to point out the story of a gentlemen whose ideas were so incendiary that every speak he made in half of his country resulted in violence. He killed multiple people in brawls at his speeches. He even write a pamphlet on knife fighting...
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
Hardly surprising if they haven't been immunised.
Yes. I had some sympathy with Keir's teacher vaccination scheme for that reason.
Actually I have been vaccinated: if schools are back on the 8th of March then I will be in, baring a letter from the DHSC telling me not to.
By taking it out of the envelope?
Apologies, but I'm not sure what your point is?
"Baring"
Opps. That was meant to be barring.
Could have been 'bearing' too, in context.
"Barring" means if I get a letter from the DHSC telling me not to then I won't (couldn't: the school's insurance wouldn't cover me), while bearing would mean I'd take the letter with me. Baring, which I wrote, means what you said: taking it out of the envelope.
I know I'm a Physics teacher, not an English teacher, but I think that is right...
1) Is concern about kids' education during the pandemic for some Tories merely the conduit to a bout of that popular passtime on the right of teacher bashing?
2) And is that same concern being actively simulated by some Covid Denialists in order to handwring in agonized fashion about the costs of Lockdown?
3) And the really burning question. Why ask things you know the answer to?
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
Hardly surprising if they haven't been immunised.
Yes. I had some sympathy with Keir's teacher vaccination scheme for that reason.
Actually I have been vaccinated: if schools are back on the 8th of March then I will be in, baring a letter from the DHSC telling me not to.
By taking it out of the envelope?
Apologies, but I'm not sure what your point is?
"Baring"
Opps. That was meant to be barring.
Could have been 'bearing' too, in context.
"Barring" means if I get a letter from the DHSC telling me not to then I won't (couldn't: the school's insurance wouldn't cover me), while bearing would mean I'd take the letter with me. Baring, which I wrote, means what you said: taking it out of the envelope.
I know I'm a Physics teacher, not an English teacher, but I think that is right...
Yup. My apologies for nit-picking. I just can't help it.
On topic, a good article Philip though I disagree with the premise and all of the later posts from others about the EU falling apart. I find that to be a very unlikely scenario, even with all of the internal contradictions there is just to much political capital invested by Paris, Berlin and other capital cities across Europe in the concept of the EU. There's just no way the politicians will allow it to fail and they'll use all of the undemocratic means available to keep it going. France votes down the constitution? No worries, we'll just rebrand it as something else and not allow a vote. Britain votes to leave? No worries let's just pretend that they haven't actually left and ignore any successes they have outside of the EU structures.
There's simply no appetite for admitting that the whole political establishment of Europe has been making such poor decisions for so many years.
What's going to happen without the UK is that you'll get France pushing its own foreign policy agenda without any other major foreign policy power to provide a counterweight and Germany will pursue it's mercantilist trade and economic policies without abandon and the EU will turn into a completely parochial organisation selling itself out to the worst regimes for an extra 0.1% worth of GDP because nothing other than more GDP matters to Germany.
If anything the idea of having no internal competitors for foreign and economic policy within the EU will massively appeal to Paris and Berlin. They both get what they want out of the EU, France projects its power and Germany gets to remake the EU in its image and continues to hollow out Southern Europe with no dissent. For that reason the amount of political capital invested to keep the bandwagon going will continue to rise and it will result in the EU as an organisation limping on from crisis to crisis with no real reform and no real democratic legitimacy.
Buried within this analysis is clear example of what Britain has “lost”.
It can no longer influence Europe-wide* foreign policy, and has surrendered that position uncontested to France.
As you say, Germany will be happy with this arrangement is long as countries are forced to buy German defence equipment every so often.
*As opposed to EU, as I believe EU foreign policy to be largely fictional.
As you point out there's nothing of value lost there and if anything it's leading to a diminished EU with their dodgy China deals and sucking off Putin in Moscow.
Our interests are better served with unilateral action or joining up with the US, Canada and Australia.
Not having the UK makes the EU much less relevant to the rest of the world, for me that's actually a big victory. No longer lending them our diplomatic weight is a definite brexit upside that I was looking forwards to.
I am not saying there is nothing of value to be lost there.
Far from it.
In our very own neighbourhood we face an ongoing Russian threat, as well as ongoing issues related to state insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa.
We also aspire (or should) to promote liberal democracy and the freest trade, especially in Europe which remains 50%+ of our trade and will likely remain close to that level for a generation yet.
It is very much in our interests to promote and influence our view on these matters in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and the Med.
It is also useful to have an voice with the pivotal European powers, France and Germany.
We have torn that all up, and our voice is now much diminished.
We are also less interesting to other powers because we can no longer even pretend to influence the rest of Europe.
PS Political and defence partnerships with other Anglo nations were never actually prevented by EU membership. See, for example, the Five Powers Agreement.
I think giving the EU enough rope is something I can live with and something that a lot of leave voters predicted would happen without our influence inside the EU.
Outside of the EU we're already making huge strides in our own policy and we're focusing eastwards, it's already changing how nations are seeing us and how they want to partner with us. Japan, Canada and Australia have all separately asked us to join the CPTPP, Japan has invited us to join military exercises in the Pacific reviving a century old alliance and the US is making noises about the UK joining he quad to make it a pent and also eyeing up the CPTPP.
Our global influence was never enhanced by being in the EU, it was diminished. The EU saw its influence enhanced by having us in it and now you can see without us their desperation to do grubby deals with China and Russia has already lost them a lot of friends and it's driving the Biden administration towards Brexit Britain with open arms.
These are unwelcome truths for you, I realise that. The EU without the UK is going to have a different outlook and the UK out of the EU will capitalise on that. The process has already started and it will continue to see us diverge from the EU in our foreign policy terms and over time in terms of trade, that 45% export value that the EU currently has will fall as the nation starts facing eastwards. The UK-EU relationship will continue to go down in value for both sides and we will have a simple trading relationship with the EU. As it should always have been.
None of this really stacks up.
How is greater defence activity in Asia going to help us? Of course we are welcomed, we have materiel to spare. It will cost us, though. For what?
Over 50% of our trade is with the EU and/or EFTA nations.
Defence policy should be based on our own national interests which follow our geography and trade realities.
We’ve said goodbye to the ability to influence our own neighbourhood!
The EU-China deals shows starkly that we are now out of that conversation.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps.
The problem you're having is that you think today's situation will last forever and that 45% of our exports will always go to the EU. That's not going to be the case and as that number goes down to reflect something more like global GDP proportions the value of the relationship goes down for both sides. Especially for the UK. I'm not sure why you're bundling EU and EFTA nations together either, we have separate trade deals with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland that aren't dependent on the EU trade deal.
The next decade is going to be hugely interesting, especially as the US starts to marshall its allies against China and the EU needs to decide whether having slaves make Siemens dishwashers is more important to them than an alliance with the US, UK and the rest of the democratic alliance.
I'm glad that we're unequivocally on the side of democracy. I guess part of why the EU finds it difficult to criticise undemocratic nations is because the commission is inherently undemocratic.
The problem you have is that you think 50+ (I use that figure as it is *European* trade) will evaporate overnight.
Trading with our neighbours will remain preeminent I’ll wager until I am past retirement (I am early 40s).
That the EU at large is “anti democratic” is utter nonsense; it is a collection of 27 democracies some of which put our own democratic arrangements to shame.
It always amuses me when people from the UK say that the EU is "undemocratic".
We in the UK have the iniquities of FPTP, the House of Lords that still has hereditary peers ffs, hundreds of quangos, numerous laws made by statutory instrument without legislature scrutiny and a head of state (God bless her) who is from a Germanic aristocratic family and there as a result of an indirect hereditary line to those that believed in the divine right of Kings. Add to that a local government system that is a mess and an asymmetric system of devolution that allows Scottish MPs to vote on matters that pertain to England where English MPs are not allowed an equivalent entitlement and a ridiculous system of city "mayors" that has had no uniform rollout across the country. I am sure there are many more examples.
In summary we are in no position of authority to lecture anyone in Europe about democracy.
Amen to that.
Max is guilty of arrant HYUFDism. He repeats the same tropes about how un-democratic and awful the EU or Germany or France are, over and over.
It’s reflexive Europhobia basically. He is high on his own supply.
There is no black and white. We are not perfect; neither is the EU. We can, and should, both do better.
Nobody has really answered my point about what our key interests are in Asia Pacific that we must pay for with treasure and blood, apart from “our mates are there”.
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
Hardly surprising if they haven't been immunised.
Yes. I had some sympathy with Keir's teacher vaccination scheme for that reason.
Actually I have been vaccinated: if schools are back on the 8th of March then I will be in, baring a letter from the DHSC telling me not to.
By taking it out of the envelope?
Apologies, but I'm not sure what your point is?
"Baring"
Opps. That was meant to be barring.
Could have been 'bearing' too, in context.
"Barring" means if I get a letter from the DHSC telling me not to then I won't (couldn't: the school's insurance wouldn't cover me), while bearing would mean I'd take the letter with me. Baring, which I wrote, means what you said: taking it out of the envelope.
I know I'm a Physics teacher, not an English teacher, but I think that is right...
Yup. My apologies for nit-picking. I just can't help it.
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
If your experience is being presented with the curriculum and being told to get on with it then I can understand your frustration. My experience is one where I have been live teaching to my normal timetable, trying to find resources that will work online to replace my usual experiments and demonstrations. I do know that different schools and teachers have had very different approaches, and that some have been more diligent than others.
I, thankfully I think, have had no experience of it!
But my understanding is that plenty in the state sector have been told just that.
My experience is with my nieces and nephew, at private schools (Benenden and Eton) and they, as you might expect, didn't miss a beat in their education.
My nephew hasn't been given a vast amount and his parents haven't really made a vast amount of effort to get him to do what he has been given either. GCSE year, too.
Bog standard comprehensive.
I'm sure he's very good at video games.
Not all teachers have been making every effort. I expect we don't have a typical sample here.
Or alternatively, he has been given plenty and neglected to tell his parents.
I’ve had a few interesting phone calls with parents along those lines.
‘They’ve done all your work. Why are you complaining?’
‘Because I’ve sent them three lessons worth of work and they’ve done one question in one.’
‘They told me they’ve done it all and you’re lying.’
‘Then I am afraid they are mistaken. Could you ask the, to check these out?’
Isn't that all part of the problem. That wouldn't happen in school because the teachers and the receivers of the work would be the same person.
True. But we are not in school, so this is the best we can do.
Getting those who have not engaged with remote learning in to school for a catch-up week or three in the summer might be a good solution, particularly if they know in advance that is what will happen, but only for the non-exam years I think.
There is the catch that, unless a school is very well run, the Venn diagram of "need to come to catch-up" and "will come to catch-up" doesn't have much of an overlap.
There's another group of people we need to think about here, namely the pupils. The reason we have 6 weeks then some sort of holiday is that, if they've been working properly, they are knackered by then. It's why the autumn term (which tends to be 8 weeks then 7 weeks) is so miserable- everyone is running on fumes by the end.
And that is in normal times. My two have had full timetables of online lessons from their state schools this term. And they are even more drained than usual. They want to go back, I want them to go back, their teachers want them back... Once it's securely safe. But terms are the length they are for a goodish reason. Though I would look into keeping Y11 and Y13 in until July this year.
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
It's confusing the right to speak with the right to an audience. Many have got used to having the latter and are not best pleased - are in many cases downright livid - at seeing this privilege eroded.
I must have missed the part of the regulations in which students will be herded into the lecture halls and held there by force. No one will will be compelled to turn up to listen, but no one will have the right to prevent another from exercising their lawful freedom of speech either. That's life in a free society, and by God it's about time action was taken to preserve it.
In a free society people should be able to decide who they invite to speak to them without the authorities intervening to correct what are deemed bad choices. This is how I look at it.
And what about the freedom of those who might wish to listen, but will never get the chance because a small set of activists have taken upon themselves the sole authority to decide who is allowed to address them at all? It's called a university: the clue is in the name. Your method would lead - entirely unintentionally I'm sure - to the creation of a narrow seminary where only one set of ideas was ever heard spoken.
There's nothing stopping students getting involved to change what they dislike about the current set-up or creating new platforms reflecting what they wish to hear and see and discuss outside of whatever their course of study is. To me most of this "must protect free speech at uni!" has the air of a solution looking for a problem.
On topic, a good article Philip though I disagree with the premise and all of the later posts from others about the EU falling apart. I find that to be a very unlikely scenario, even with all of the internal contradictions there is just to much political capital invested by Paris, Berlin and other capital cities across Europe in the concept of the EU. There's just no way the politicians will allow it to fail and they'll use all of the undemocratic means available to keep it going. France votes down the constitution? No worries, we'll just rebrand it as something else and not allow a vote. Britain votes to leave? No worries let's just pretend that they haven't actually left and ignore any successes they have outside of the EU structures.
There's simply no appetite for admitting that the whole political establishment of Europe has been making such poor decisions for so many years.
What's going to happen without the UK is that you'll get France pushing its own foreign policy agenda without any other major foreign policy power to provide a counterweight and Germany will pursue it's mercantilist trade and economic policies without abandon and the EU will turn into a completely parochial organisation selling itself out to the worst regimes for an extra 0.1% worth of GDP because nothing other than more GDP matters to Germany.
If anything the idea of having no internal competitors for foreign and economic policy within the EU will massively appeal to Paris and Berlin. They both get what they want out of the EU, France projects its power and Germany gets to remake the EU in its image and continues to hollow out Southern Europe with no dissent. For that reason the amount of political capital invested to keep the bandwagon going will continue to rise and it will result in the EU as an organisation limping on from crisis to crisis with no real reform and no real democratic legitimacy.
Buried within this analysis is clear example of what Britain has “lost”.
It can no longer influence Europe-wide* foreign policy, and has surrendered that position uncontested to France.
As you say, Germany will be happy with this arrangement is long as countries are forced to buy German defence equipment every so often.
*As opposed to EU, as I believe EU foreign policy to be largely fictional.
As you point out there's nothing of value lost there and if anything it's leading to a diminished EU with their dodgy China deals and sucking off Putin in Moscow.
Our interests are better served with unilateral action or joining up with the US, Canada and Australia.
Not having the UK makes the EU much less relevant to the rest of the world, for me that's actually a big victory. No longer lending them our diplomatic weight is a definite brexit upside that I was looking forwards to.
I am not saying there is nothing of value to be lost there.
Far from it.
In our very own neighbourhood we face an ongoing Russian threat, as well as ongoing issues related to state insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa.
We also aspire (or should) to promote liberal democracy and the freest trade, especially in Europe which remains 50%+ of our trade and will likely remain close to that level for a generation yet.
It is very much in our interests to promote and influence our view on these matters in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and the Med.
It is also useful to have an voice with the pivotal European powers, France and Germany.
We have torn that all up, and our voice is now much diminished.
We are also less interesting to other powers because we can no longer even pretend to influence the rest of Europe.
PS Political and defence partnerships with other Anglo nations were never actually prevented by EU membership. See, for example, the Five Powers Agreement.
I think giving the EU enough rope is something I can live with and something that a lot of leave voters predicted would happen without our influence inside the EU.
Outside of the EU we're already making huge strides in our own policy and we're focusing eastwards, it's already changing how nations are seeing us and how they want to partner with us. Japan, Canada and Australia have all separately asked us to join the CPTPP, Japan has invited us to join military exercises in the Pacific reviving a century old alliance and the US is making noises about the UK joining he quad to make it a pent and also eyeing up the CPTPP.
Our global influence was never enhanced by being in the EU, it was diminished. The EU saw its influence enhanced by having us in it and now you can see without us their desperation to do grubby deals with China and Russia has already lost them a lot of friends and it's driving the Biden administration towards Brexit Britain with open arms.
These are unwelcome truths for you, I realise that. The EU without the UK is going to have a different outlook and the UK out of the EU will capitalise on that. The process has already started and it will continue to see us diverge from the EU in our foreign policy terms and over time in terms of trade, that 45% export value that the EU currently has will fall as the nation starts facing eastwards. The UK-EU relationship will continue to go down in value for both sides and we will have a simple trading relationship with the EU. As it should always have been.
None of this really stacks up.
How is greater defence activity in Asia going to help us? Of course we are welcomed, we have materiel to spare. It will cost us, though. For what?
Over 50% of our trade is with the EU and/or EFTA nations.
Defence policy should be based on our own national interests which follow our geography and trade realities.
We’ve said goodbye to the ability to influence our own neighbourhood!
The EU-China deals shows starkly that we are now out of that conversation.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps.
The problem you're having is that you think today's situation will last forever and that 45% of our exports will always go to the EU. That's not going to be the case and as that number goes down to reflect something more like global GDP proportions the value of the relationship goes down for both sides. Especially for the UK. I'm not sure why you're bundling EU and EFTA nations together either, we have separate trade deals with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland that aren't dependent on the EU trade deal.
The next decade is going to be hugely interesting, especially as the US starts to marshall its allies against China and the EU needs to decide whether having slaves make Siemens dishwashers is more important to them than an alliance with the US, UK and the rest of the democratic alliance.
I'm glad that we're unequivocally on the side of democracy. I guess part of why the EU finds it difficult to criticise undemocratic nations is because the commission is inherently undemocratic.
The problem you have is that you think 50+ (I use that figure as it is *European* trade) will evaporate overnight.
Trading with our neighbours will remain preeminent I’ll wager until I am past retirement (I am early 40s).
That the EU at large is “anti democratic” is utter nonsense; it is a collection of 27 democracies some of which put our own democratic arrangements to shame.
It always amuses me when people from the UK say that the EU is "undemocratic".
We in the UK have the iniquities of FPTP, the House of Lords that still has hereditary peers ffs, hundreds of quangos, numerous laws made by statutory instrument without legislature scrutiny and a head of state (God bless her) who is from a Germanic aristocratic family and there as a result of an indirect hereditary line to those that believed in the divine right of Kings. Add to that a local government system that is a mess and an asymmetric system of devolution that allows Scottish MPs to vote on matters that pertain to England where English MPs are not allowed an equivalent entitlement and a ridiculous system of city "mayors" that has had no uniform rollout across the country. I am sure there are many more examples.
In summary we are in no position of authority to lecture anyone in Europe about democracy.
Amen to that.
Max is guilty of arrant HYUFDism. He repeats the same tropes about how un-democratic and awful the EU or Germany or France are, over and over.
It’s reflexive Europhobia basically. He is high on his own supply.
There is no black and white. We are not perfect; neither is the EU. We can, and should, both do better.
Nobody has really answered my point about what our key interests are in Asia Pacific that we must pay for with treasure and blood, apart from “our mates are there”.
I did answer it. "Our enemies are there."
Where do you think our modern threats are based - solely western Europe or Asia Pacific too?
For the mental health and development of the children I think it's a great idea for them to be going back personally.
Keeping them confined at home for four months, with the long summer holiday still to come, isn't healthy and it's not good for their development.
If it's safe for children to go back they should.
What I find incomprehensible about this whole debate is that everyone, including the government, acts as though the dates of school holidays are set by some rigid law of physics and cannot possibly be changed even when we've had many months of school closures. There's no need for an Easter break longer than Good Friday and Easter Monday, if we've only just reopened schools, and no universal law of nature which dictates that the summer holiday can't be short this year.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps. ....
Hmm, bit of a reinterpretation of history there. I seem to recall that one of the promised benefits of Brexit was precisely that we were supposedly going to be able to do our own deal with the slave-labour providers:
Smaller countries, like Iceland and Switzerland, which are outside the EU and don’t have to deal with all of its bureaucratic problems, have been able to strike free trade agreements with China. If we Vote Leave and take back control, we will gain the power to strike our own trade deals, creating new business opportunities and creating more jobs. (from the Vote Leave website).
That was before they attacked Hong Kong and the Uighurs.
Does that change nothing in your eyes?
Yes, it does to an extent. However, that doesn't alter the point that Leave advocates were dead keen to do deals with China, just as the EU has been, and well after the period where it became obvious that China was becoming more authoritarian and more contemptuous of human rights. After all, the Uighur scandal has been going on since 2014, and became increasingly nasty from 2017. Equally, the Hong Kong repression started a while back.
It is true that the UK (and the US) have been a bit quicker than the EU to recognise the new reality, for which they deserve some credit. But we're still doing plenty of business with China, and accepting investment from Chinese companies which are ultimately controlled by the state. The EU shouldn't have done its deal with China - and indeed, the deal might not be ratified by the European parliament - but I don't think their position is really all that different from the rest of the Western world.
It’s been poorly understood in the West for too long that it’s deeply engaged (and losing) what is effectively world war 3 against Chinese Communism. TSE’s hero George was as bad as anyone, his prostrating in front of the Chinese reds making the country a laughing stock in the areas of Asia that are suspicious of Chinese communism.
It’s a war being fought to ensure technological, economic, cultural and military dominance for Chinese communism and is seen by the chief designers very squarely along lines not just of political ideology but importantly of racial superiority.
The chief weapons utilised so far have been trade, monopolisation of key natural resources and propaganda, with outsized public investment and r&d funded by printed money, and the gradual but definite erosion of private enterprise to national interest based central planning. We’re now starting to see the re-drawing of “contested” areas of the map as well.
Throw in the racial/religious based-subjugation of a group into slave camps, a nationalist leader who has swatted aside all political opposition, the now total control of both internal and external movement and a tighter control of information than ever before. And the parallels with the 1930s become eerie.
It’s a relief that the penny seems to have dropped in policy circles in the Anglo-sphere. It is a disappointment but no great surprise than continental Europe has still not seen sense.
I have been a “Sino-phobe” since the early 2000s when I first noticed articles in the NZ press by “China watchers” claiming that perhaps parliamentary democracy was outmoded.
There is no obvious way to avoid the “Thucydidian Trap”, and it is not primarily the UK’s fight, but one one thing we should do is jealously guard our democratic freedoms.
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
Hardly surprising if they haven't been immunised.
Yes. I had some sympathy with Keir's teacher vaccination scheme for that reason.
Actually I have been vaccinated: if schools are back on the 8th of March then I will be in, baring a letter from the DHSC telling me not to.
By taking it out of the envelope?
Apologies, but I'm not sure what your point is?
"Baring"
Opps. That was meant to be barring.
Could have been 'bearing' too, in context.
"Barring" means if I get a letter from the DHSC telling me not to then I won't (couldn't: the school's insurance wouldn't cover me), while bearing would mean I'd take the letter with me. Baring, which I wrote, means what you said: taking it out of the envelope.
I know I'm a Physics teacher, not an English teacher, but I think that is right...
Yup. My apologies for nit-picking. I just can't help it.
Have you thought about going into teaching?
There are still vacancies for nit-pickers? You surprise me.....
One gets the impression on here they might be somewhat oversubscribed. 😉
Has this been posted? If you use the same polling methodology, 'No' has retaken the lead from 'Yes' in indyref polling in Feb.
Weighting has been changed to take into account self-reported likelihood of voting. Which essentially means enthusiasm counts for more. Like for like, No has taken the lead.
Interesting. I think that it is very close at the moment and all to play for. My guess is that there might be a majority for Indyref2 but not for Yes.
I have thought that for a long time
I think the logic is,
“We are Scotland, *we* should decide if and when we vote” - hence support for a poll or the right to have a poll is higher than actual support for independence.
Absolutely correct that the two are different. That was the case in polling a year or two back, and I suspect in general.
There's however a complication when the pollster specifies a timing - but that is obvious anyway: still, it's worth bearing in mind that someone who wants it now could be a Unionist making a calculation like Wendy Alexander did - and other permutations are available.
Indeed. Shortly after the SNP wolves pull down Nicola seems quite a sensible time to me.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps. ....
Hmm, bit of a reinterpretation of history there. I seem to recall that one of the promised benefits of Brexit was precisely that we were supposedly going to be able to do our own deal with the slave-labour providers:
Smaller countries, like Iceland and Switzerland, which are outside the EU and don’t have to deal with all of its bureaucratic problems, have been able to strike free trade agreements with China. If we Vote Leave and take back control, we will gain the power to strike our own trade deals, creating new business opportunities and creating more jobs. (from the Vote Leave website).
That was before they attacked Hong Kong and the Uighurs.
Does that change nothing in your eyes?
Yes, it does to an extent. However, that doesn't alter the point that Leave advocates were dead keen to do deals with China, just as the EU has been, and well after the period where it became obvious that China was becoming more authoritarian and more contemptuous of human rights. After all, the Uighur scandal has been going on since 2014, and became increasingly nasty from 2017. Equally, the Hong Kong repression started a while back.
It is true that the UK (and the US) have been a bit quicker than the EU to recognise the new reality, for which they deserve some credit. But we're still doing plenty of business with China, and accepting investment from Chinese companies which are ultimately controlled by the state. The EU shouldn't have done its deal with China - and indeed, the deal might not be ratified by the European parliament - but I don't think their position is really all that different from the rest of the Western world.
It’s been poorly understood in the West for too long that it’s deeply engaged (and losing) what is effectively world war 3 against Chinese Communism. TSE’s hero George was as bad as anyone, his prostrating in front of the Chinese reds making the country a laughing stock in the areas of Asia that are suspicious of Chinese communism.
It’s a war being fought to ensure technological, economic, cultural and military dominance for Chinese communism and is seen by the chief designers very squarely along lines not just of political ideology but importantly of racial superiority.
The chief weapons utilised so far have been trade, monopolisation of key natural resources and propaganda, with outsized public investment and r&d funded by printed money, and the gradual but definite erosion of private enterprise to national interest based central planning. We’re now starting to see the re-drawing of “contested” areas of the map as well.
Throw in the racial/religious based-subjugation of a group into slave camps, a nationalist leader who has swatted aside all political opposition, the now total control of both internal and external movement and a tighter control of information than ever before. And the parallels with the 1930s become eerie.
It’s a relief that the penny seems to have dropped in policy circles in the Anglo-sphere. It is a disappointment but no great surprise than continental Europe has still not seen sense.
I have been a “Sino-phobe” since the early 2000s when I first noticed articles in the NZ press by “China watchers” claiming that perhaps parliamentary democracy was outmoded.
There is no obvious way to avoid the “Thucydidian Trap”, and it is not primarily the UK’s fight, but one one thing we should do is jealously guard our democratic freedoms.
Protecting western* democracy and defending our allies against those who would turn against them absolutely is the UK's fight and has been for decades.
* Including western democracies and allies physically located in the far east.
Region of Residence 1st dose 2nd dose Cumulative Total Doses to Date Total 219,760 1,854 221,614 East Of England 21,755 349 22,104 London 29,442 216 29,658 Midlands 47,932 143 48,075 North East And Yorkshire 28,409 483 28,892 North West 26,709 156 26,865 South East 39,206 252 39,458 South West 25,061 253 25,314
For the afternoon Mon-Wed Vaccine Number panic, please form an orderly queue. Tea and biscuits will be served.
There's no need for panic, but that suggests the UK total will be well down on Tuesday last week.
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
Hardly surprising if they haven't been immunised.
Yes. I had some sympathy with Keir's teacher vaccination scheme for that reason.
Actually I have been vaccinated: if schools are back on the 8th of March then I will be in, baring a letter from the DHSC telling me not to.
By taking it out of the envelope?
Apologies, but I'm not sure what your point is?
"Baring"
Opps. That was meant to be barring.
Could have been 'bearing' too, in context.
"Barring" means if I get a letter from the DHSC telling me not to then I won't (couldn't: the school's insurance wouldn't cover me), while bearing would mean I'd take the letter with me. Baring, which I wrote, means what you said: taking it out of the envelope.
I know I'm a Physics teacher, not an English teacher, but I think that is right...
Yup. My apologies for nit-picking. I just can't help it.
Have you thought about going into teaching?
I'm retired after 40 years of (university) teaching, so you rumbled me.
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
It's confusing the right to speak with the right to an audience. Many have got used to having the latter and are not best pleased - are in many cases downright livid - at seeing this privilege eroded.
I must have missed the part of the regulations in which students will be herded into the lecture halls and held there by force. No one will will be compelled to turn up to listen, but no one will have the right to prevent another from exercising their lawful freedom of speech either. That's life in a free society, and by God it's about time action was taken to preserve it.
In a free society people should be able to decide who they invite to speak to them without the authorities intervening to correct what are deemed bad choices. This is how I look at it.
And what about the freedom of those who might wish to listen, but will never get the chance because a small set of activists have taken upon themselves the sole authority to decide who is allowed to address them at all? It's called a university: the clue is in the name. Your method would lead - entirely unintentionally I'm sure - to the creation of a narrow seminary where only one set of ideas was ever heard spoken.
There's nothing stopping students getting involved to change what they dislike about the current set-up or creating new platforms reflecting what they wish to hear and see and discuss outside of whatever their course of study is. To me most of this "must protect free speech at uni!" has the air of a solution looking for a problem.
Anyone who wants to hear the thoughts of (say) Jordan B. Peterson can easily do so with a couple of clicks on the internet.
Hardly anyone does, in the same way that hardly any uni students go and see him in person.
This is a bit more bureaucracy because the government wants to fight a culture war.
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
It's confusing the right to speak with the right to an audience. Many have got used to having the latter and are not best pleased - are in many cases downright livid - at seeing this privilege eroded.
I must have missed the part of the regulations in which students will be herded into the lecture halls and held there by force. No one will will be compelled to turn up to listen, but no one will have the right to prevent another from exercising their lawful freedom of speech either. That's life in a free society, and by God it's about time action was taken to preserve it.
In a free society people should be able to decide who they invite to speak to them without the authorities intervening to correct what are deemed bad choices. This is how I look at it.
And what about the freedom of those who might wish to listen, but will never get the chance because a small set of activists have taken upon themselves the sole authority to decide who is allowed to address them at all? It's called a university: the clue is in the name. Your method would lead - entirely unintentionally I'm sure - to the creation of a narrow seminary where only one set of ideas was ever heard spoken.
There's nothing stopping students getting involved to change what they dislike about the current set-up or creating new platforms reflecting what they wish to hear and see and discuss outside of whatever their course of study is. To me most of this "must protect free speech at uni!" has the air of a solution looking for a problem.
Anyone who wants to hear the thoughts of (say) Jordan B. Peterson can easily do so with a couple of clicks on the internet.
Hardly anyone does, in the same way that hardly any uni students go and see him in person.
This is a bit more bureaucracy because the government wants to fight a culture war.
If nobody wants to hear him then what's the harm in letting him speak to an empty lecture hall?
University is the place for views to be debated, even or especially repugnant ones. Nothing should be off limits at a university.
If letting him speak is no big deal then why would there be a culture war? Let him speak, there's no issue, nothing to fight over.
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
Hardly surprising if they haven't been immunised.
Yes. I had some sympathy with Keir's teacher vaccination scheme for that reason.
Actually I have been vaccinated: if schools are back on the 8th of March then I will be in, baring a letter from the DHSC telling me not to.
By taking it out of the envelope?
Apologies, but I'm not sure what your point is?
"Baring"
Opps. That was meant to be barring.
Could have been 'bearing' too, in context.
"Barring" means if I get a letter from the DHSC telling me not to then I won't (couldn't: the school's insurance wouldn't cover me), while bearing would mean I'd take the letter with me. Baring, which I wrote, means what you said: taking it out of the envelope.
I know I'm a Physics teacher, not an English teacher, but I think that is right...
Yup. My apologies for nit-picking. I just can't help it.
Have you thought about going into teaching?
There are still vacancies for nit-pickers? You surprise me.....
One gets the impression on here they might be somewhat oversubscribed. 😉
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
Hardly surprising if they haven't been immunised.
Yes. I had some sympathy with Keir's teacher vaccination scheme for that reason.
Actually I have been vaccinated: if schools are back on the 8th of March then I will be in, baring a letter from the DHSC telling me not to.
By taking it out of the envelope?
Apologies, but I'm not sure what your point is?
"Baring"
Opps. That was meant to be barring.
Could have been 'bearing' too, in context.
"Barring" means if I get a letter from the DHSC telling me not to then I won't (couldn't: the school's insurance wouldn't cover me), while bearing would mean I'd take the letter with me. Baring, which I wrote, means what you said: taking it out of the envelope.
I know I'm a Physics teacher, not an English teacher, but I think that is right...
Yup. My apologies for nit-picking. I just can't help it.
Have you thought about going into teaching?
There are still vacancies for nit-pickers? You surprise me.....
One gets the impression on here they might be somewhat oversubscribed. 😉
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps. ....
Hmm, bit of a reinterpretation of history there. I seem to recall that one of the promised benefits of Brexit was precisely that we were supposedly going to be able to do our own deal with the slave-labour providers:
Smaller countries, like Iceland and Switzerland, which are outside the EU and don’t have to deal with all of its bureaucratic problems, have been able to strike free trade agreements with China. If we Vote Leave and take back control, we will gain the power to strike our own trade deals, creating new business opportunities and creating more jobs. (from the Vote Leave website).
That was before they attacked Hong Kong and the Uighurs.
Does that change nothing in your eyes?
Yes, it does to an extent. However, that doesn't alter the point that Leave advocates were dead keen to do deals with China, just as the EU has been, and well after the period where it became obvious that China was becoming more authoritarian and more contemptuous of human rights. After all, the Uighur scandal has been going on since 2014, and became increasingly nasty from 2017. Equally, the Hong Kong repression started a while back.
It is true that the UK (and the US) have been a bit quicker than the EU to recognise the new reality, for which they deserve some credit. But we're still doing plenty of business with China, and accepting investment from Chinese companies which are ultimately controlled by the state. The EU shouldn't have done its deal with China - and indeed, the deal might not be ratified by the European parliament - but I don't think their position is really all that different from the rest of the Western world.
It’s been poorly understood in the West for too long that it’s deeply engaged (and losing) what is effectively world war 3 against Chinese Communism. TSE’s hero George was as bad as anyone, his prostrating in front of the Chinese reds making the country a laughing stock in the areas of Asia that are suspicious of Chinese communism.
It’s a war being fought to ensure technological, economic, cultural and military dominance for Chinese communism and is seen by the chief designers very squarely along lines not just of political ideology but importantly of racial superiority.
The chief weapons utilised so far have been trade, monopolisation of key natural resources and propaganda, with outsized public investment and r&d funded by printed money, and the gradual but definite erosion of private enterprise to national interest based central planning. We’re now starting to see the re-drawing of “contested” areas of the map as well.
Throw in the racial/religious based-subjugation of a group into slave camps, a nationalist leader who has swatted aside all political opposition, the now total control of both internal and external movement and a tighter control of information than ever before. And the parallels with the 1930s become eerie.
It’s a relief that the penny seems to have dropped in policy circles in the Anglo-sphere. It is a disappointment but no great surprise than continental Europe has still not seen sense.
I have been a “Sino-phobe” since the early 2000s when I first noticed articles in the NZ press by “China watchers” claiming that perhaps parliamentary democracy was outmoded.
There is no obvious way to avoid the “Thucydidian Trap”, and it is not primarily the UK’s fight, but one one thing we should do is jealously guard our democratic freedoms.
Protecting western* democracy and defending our allies against those who would turn against them absolutely is the UK's fight and has been for decades.
* Including western democracies and allies physically located in the far east.
Whether America’s recent pivot in its behaviour to China was at Trump’s initiation or his Rep. advisors, I do not know. It will be unfortunate indeed if people’s reflexive anti Trumpism undoes the progress in positioning on his watch.
On topic, a good article Philip though I disagree with the premise and all of the later posts from others about the EU falling apart. I find that to be a very unlikely scenario, even with all of the internal contradictions there is just to much political capital invested by Paris, Berlin and other capital cities across Europe in the concept of the EU. There's just no way the politicians will allow it to fail and they'll use all of the undemocratic means available to keep it going. France votes down the constitution? No worries, we'll just rebrand it as something else and not allow a vote. Britain votes to leave? No worries let's just pretend that they haven't actually left and ignore any successes they have outside of the EU structures.
There's simply no appetite for admitting that the whole political establishment of Europe has been making such poor decisions for so many years.
What's going to happen without the UK is that you'll get France pushing its own foreign policy agenda without any other major foreign policy power to provide a counterweight and Germany will pursue it's mercantilist trade and economic policies without abandon and the EU will turn into a completely parochial organisation selling itself out to the worst regimes for an extra 0.1% worth of GDP because nothing other than more GDP matters to Germany.
If anything the idea of having no internal competitors for foreign and economic policy within the EU will massively appeal to Paris and Berlin. They both get what they want out of the EU, France projects its power and Germany gets to remake the EU in its image and continues to hollow out Southern Europe with no dissent. For that reason the amount of political capital invested to keep the bandwagon going will continue to rise and it will result in the EU as an organisation limping on from crisis to crisis with no real reform and no real democratic legitimacy.
Buried within this analysis is clear example of what Britain has “lost”.
It can no longer influence Europe-wide* foreign policy, and has surrendered that position uncontested to France.
As you say, Germany will be happy with this arrangement is long as countries are forced to buy German defence equipment every so often.
*As opposed to EU, as I believe EU foreign policy to be largely fictional.
As you point out there's nothing of value lost there and if anything it's leading to a diminished EU with their dodgy China deals and sucking off Putin in Moscow.
Our interests are better served with unilateral action or joining up with the US, Canada and Australia.
Not having the UK makes the EU much less relevant to the rest of the world, for me that's actually a big victory. No longer lending them our diplomatic weight is a definite brexit upside that I was looking forwards to.
I am not saying there is nothing of value to be lost there.
Far from it.
In our very own neighbourhood we face an ongoing Russian threat, as well as ongoing issues related to state insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa.
We also aspire (or should) to promote liberal democracy and the freest trade, especially in Europe which remains 50%+ of our trade and will likely remain close to that level for a generation yet.
It is very much in our interests to promote and influence our view on these matters in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and the Med.
It is also useful to have an voice with the pivotal European powers, France and Germany.
We have torn that all up, and our voice is now much diminished.
We are also less interesting to other powers because we can no longer even pretend to influence the rest of Europe.
PS Political and defence partnerships with other Anglo nations were never actually prevented by EU membership. See, for example, the Five Powers Agreement.
I think giving the EU enough rope is something I can live with and something that a lot of leave voters predicted would happen without our influence inside the EU.
Outside of the EU we're already making huge strides in our own policy and we're focusing eastwards, it's already changing how nations are seeing us and how they want to partner with us. Japan, Canada and Australia have all separately asked us to join the CPTPP, Japan has invited us to join military exercises in the Pacific reviving a century old alliance and the US is making noises about the UK joining he quad to make it a pent and also eyeing up the CPTPP.
Our global influence was never enhanced by being in the EU, it was diminished. The EU saw its influence enhanced by having us in it and now you can see without us their desperation to do grubby deals with China and Russia has already lost them a lot of friends and it's driving the Biden administration towards Brexit Britain with open arms.
These are unwelcome truths for you, I realise that. The EU without the UK is going to have a different outlook and the UK out of the EU will capitalise on that. The process has already started and it will continue to see us diverge from the EU in our foreign policy terms and over time in terms of trade, that 45% export value that the EU currently has will fall as the nation starts facing eastwards. The UK-EU relationship will continue to go down in value for both sides and we will have a simple trading relationship with the EU. As it should always have been.
None of this really stacks up.
How is greater defence activity in Asia going to help us? Of course we are welcomed, we have materiel to spare. It will cost us, though. For what?
Over 50% of our trade is with the EU and/or EFTA nations.
Defence policy should be based on our own national interests which follow our geography and trade realities.
We’ve said goodbye to the ability to influence our own neighbourhood!
The EU-China deals shows starkly that we are now out of that conversation.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps.
The problem you're having is that you think today's situation will last forever and that 45% of our exports will always go to the EU. That's not going to be the case and as that number goes down to reflect something more like global GDP proportions the value of the relationship goes down for both sides. Especially for the UK. I'm not sure why you're bundling EU and EFTA nations together either, we have separate trade deals with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland that aren't dependent on the EU trade deal.
The next decade is going to be hugely interesting, especially as the US starts to marshall its allies against China and the EU needs to decide whether having slaves make Siemens dishwashers is more important to them than an alliance with the US, UK and the rest of the democratic alliance.
I'm glad that we're unequivocally on the side of democracy. I guess part of why the EU finds it difficult to criticise undemocratic nations is because the commission is inherently undemocratic.
The problem you have is that you think 50+ (I use that figure as it is *European* trade) will evaporate overnight.
Trading with our neighbours will remain preeminent I’ll wager until I am past retirement (I am early 40s).
That the EU at large is “anti democratic” is utter nonsense; it is a collection of 27 democracies some of which put our own democratic arrangements to shame.
It always amuses me when people from the UK say that the EU is "undemocratic".
We in the UK have the iniquities of FPTP, the House of Lords that still has hereditary peers ffs, hundreds of quangos, numerous laws made by statutory instrument without legislature scrutiny and a head of state (God bless her) who is from a Germanic aristocratic family and there as a result of an indirect hereditary line to those that believed in the divine right of Kings. Add to that a local government system that is a mess and an asymmetric system of devolution that allows Scottish MPs to vote on matters that pertain to England where English MPs are not allowed an equivalent entitlement and a ridiculous system of city "mayors" that has had no uniform rollout across the country. I am sure there are many more examples.
In summary we are in no position of authority to lecture anyone in Europe about democracy.
Amen to that.
Max is guilty of arrant HYUFDism. He repeats the same tropes about how un-democratic and awful the EU or Germany or France are, over and over.
It’s reflexive Europhobia basically. He is high on his own supply.
There is no black and white. We are not perfect; neither is the EU. We can, and should, both do better.
Nobody has really answered my point about what our key interests are in Asia Pacific that we must pay for with treasure and blood, apart from “our mates are there”.
I did answer it. "Our enemies are there."
Where do you think our modern threats are based - solely western Europe or Asia Pacific too?
The democratic, rule-of-law, countries of the world - whether Japan, Australia, South Korea, Norway, Germany, the US or the UK - share common interests.
Yes, they will quarrel from time-to-time. Yes, you will have leaders who behave poorly, whether Trump or UvdL or whoever.
But unless "The West" is able to hang together, they will hang apart, picked off by the divide and conquer tactics of China, Russia and others.
Trump demonstrated this: he correctly adjudged that China needed to be confronted. But he didn't realise that even the US wasn't big enough to achieve its goals*. We need to remember that.
* Of course, it didn't help that Trump was utterly obsessed by bilateral trade balances.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps. ....
Hmm, bit of a reinterpretation of history there. I seem to recall that one of the promised benefits of Brexit was precisely that we were supposedly going to be able to do our own deal with the slave-labour providers:
Smaller countries, like Iceland and Switzerland, which are outside the EU and don’t have to deal with all of its bureaucratic problems, have been able to strike free trade agreements with China. If we Vote Leave and take back control, we will gain the power to strike our own trade deals, creating new business opportunities and creating more jobs. (from the Vote Leave website).
That was before they attacked Hong Kong and the Uighurs.
Does that change nothing in your eyes?
Yes, it does to an extent. However, that doesn't alter the point that Leave advocates were dead keen to do deals with China, just as the EU has been, and well after the period where it became obvious that China was becoming more authoritarian and more contemptuous of human rights. After all, the Uighur scandal has been going on since 2014, and became increasingly nasty from 2017. Equally, the Hong Kong repression started a while back.
It is true that the UK (and the US) have been a bit quicker than the EU to recognise the new reality, for which they deserve some credit. But we're still doing plenty of business with China, and accepting investment from Chinese companies which are ultimately controlled by the state. The EU shouldn't have done its deal with China - and indeed, the deal might not be ratified by the European parliament - but I don't think their position is really all that different from the rest of the Western world.
It’s been poorly understood in the West for too long that it’s deeply engaged (and losing) what is effectively world war 3 against Chinese Communism. TSE’s hero George was as bad as anyone, his prostrating in front of the Chinese reds making the country a laughing stock in the areas of Asia that are suspicious of Chinese communism.
It’s a war being fought to ensure technological, economic, cultural and military dominance for Chinese communism and is seen by the chief designers very squarely along lines not just of political ideology but importantly of racial superiority.
The chief weapons utilised so far have been trade, monopolisation of key natural resources and propaganda, with outsized public investment and r&d funded by printed money, and the gradual but definite erosion of private enterprise to national interest based central planning. We’re now starting to see the re-drawing of “contested” areas of the map as well.
Throw in the racial/religious based-subjugation of a group into slave camps, a nationalist leader who has swatted aside all political opposition, the now total control of both internal and external movement and a tighter control of information than ever before. And the parallels with the 1930s become eerie.
It’s a relief that the penny seems to have dropped in policy circles in the Anglo-sphere. It is a disappointment but no great surprise than continental Europe has still not seen sense.
I have been a “Sino-phobe” since the early 2000s when I first noticed articles in the NZ press by “China watchers” claiming that perhaps parliamentary democracy was outmoded.
There is no obvious way to avoid the “Thucydidian Trap”, and it is not primarily the UK’s fight, but one one thing we should do is jealously guard our democratic freedoms.
Protecting western* democracy and defending our allies against those who would turn against them absolutely is the UK's fight and has been for decades.
* Including western democracies and allies physically located in the far east.
Whether America’s recent pivot in its behaviour to China was at Trump’s initiation or his Rep. advisors, I do not know. It will be unfortunate indeed if people’s reflexive anti Trumpism undoes the progress in positioning on his watch.
Especially since the repositioning began under Obama rather than Trump - TPP was in part a deliberate attempt to curtail Chinese influence and build America's influence in the Asia Pacific region. Trump's first day abdication from that project put America's influence back and hopefully Biden undoes that damage by taking America back into the grouping though it will be a challenge for him to do so now.
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
It's confusing the right to speak with the right to an audience. Many have got used to having the latter and are not best pleased - are in many cases downright livid - at seeing this privilege eroded.
I must have missed the part of the regulations in which students will be herded into the lecture halls and held there by force. No one will will be compelled to turn up to listen, but no one will have the right to prevent another from exercising their lawful freedom of speech either. That's life in a free society, and by God it's about time action was taken to preserve it.
In a free society people should be able to decide who they invite to speak to them without the authorities intervening to correct what are deemed bad choices. This is how I look at it.
And what about the freedom of those who might wish to listen, but will never get the chance because a small set of activists have taken upon themselves the sole authority to decide who is allowed to address them at all? It's called a university: the clue is in the name. Your method would lead - entirely unintentionally I'm sure - to the creation of a narrow seminary where only one set of ideas was ever heard spoken.
There's nothing stopping students getting involved to change what they dislike about the current set-up or creating new platforms reflecting what they wish to hear and see and discuss outside of whatever their course of study is. To me most of this "must protect free speech at uni!" has the air of a solution looking for a problem.
Anyone who wants to hear the thoughts of (say) Jordan B. Peterson can easily do so with a couple of clicks on the internet.
Hardly anyone does, in the same way that hardly any uni students go and see him in person.
This is a bit more bureaucracy because the government wants to fight a culture war.
Yes, I'm queasily aware that the more this sort of story features in general discourse the better it is for this manifestation of the Conservative Party.
It surprises me a little that our tiny sample of teachers isn't itching to get back in to the classroom. I'd say a two week 'catch up', to assess students' levels, get some basic information in, would be invaluable - no homework/marking, just classroom learning and teaching.
Hardly surprising if they haven't been immunised.
Yes. I had some sympathy with Keir's teacher vaccination scheme for that reason.
Actually I have been vaccinated: if schools are back on the 8th of March then I will be in, baring a letter from the DHSC telling me not to.
By taking it out of the envelope?
Apologies, but I'm not sure what your point is?
"Baring"
Opps. That was meant to be barring.
Could have been 'bearing' too, in context.
"Barring" means if I get a letter from the DHSC telling me not to then I won't (couldn't: the school's insurance wouldn't cover me), while bearing would mean I'd take the letter with me. Baring, which I wrote, means what you said: taking it out of the envelope.
I know I'm a Physics teacher, not an English teacher, but I think that is right...
Yup. My apologies for nit-picking. I just can't help it.
Have you thought about going into teaching?
I'm retired after 40 years of (university) teaching, so you rumbled me.
That reminds me of a story about my great-grandmother. She was in hospital, aged 96 and not fully there anymore, but she amused the nurses no end when she complemented the consultant who had just examined her by telling him he could make a good doctor if he applied...
On topic, a good article Philip though I disagree with the premise and all of the later posts from others about the EU falling apart. I find that to be a very unlikely scenario, even with all of the internal contradictions there is just to much political capital invested by Paris, Berlin and other capital cities across Europe in the concept of the EU. There's just no way the politicians will allow it to fail and they'll use all of the undemocratic means available to keep it going. France votes down the constitution? No worries, we'll just rebrand it as something else and not allow a vote. Britain votes to leave? No worries let's just pretend that they haven't actually left and ignore any successes they have outside of the EU structures.
There's simply no appetite for admitting that the whole political establishment of Europe has been making such poor decisions for so many years.
What's going to happen without the UK is that you'll get France pushing its own foreign policy agenda without any other major foreign policy power to provide a counterweight and Germany will pursue it's mercantilist trade and economic policies without abandon and the EU will turn into a completely parochial organisation selling itself out to the worst regimes for an extra 0.1% worth of GDP because nothing other than more GDP matters to Germany.
If anything the idea of having no internal competitors for foreign and economic policy within the EU will massively appeal to Paris and Berlin. They both get what they want out of the EU, France projects its power and Germany gets to remake the EU in its image and continues to hollow out Southern Europe with no dissent. For that reason the amount of political capital invested to keep the bandwagon going will continue to rise and it will result in the EU as an organisation limping on from crisis to crisis with no real reform and no real democratic legitimacy.
Buried within this analysis is clear example of what Britain has “lost”.
It can no longer influence Europe-wide* foreign policy, and has surrendered that position uncontested to France.
As you say, Germany will be happy with this arrangement is long as countries are forced to buy German defence equipment every so often.
*As opposed to EU, as I believe EU foreign policy to be largely fictional.
As you point out there's nothing of value lost there and if anything it's leading to a diminished EU with their dodgy China deals and sucking off Putin in Moscow.
Our interests are better served with unilateral action or joining up with the US, Canada and Australia.
Not having the UK makes the EU much less relevant to the rest of the world, for me that's actually a big victory. No longer lending them our diplomatic weight is a definite brexit upside that I was looking forwards to.
I am not saying there is nothing of value to be lost there.
Far from it.
In our very own neighbourhood we face an ongoing Russian threat, as well as ongoing issues related to state insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa.
We also aspire (or should) to promote liberal democracy and the freest trade, especially in Europe which remains 50%+ of our trade and will likely remain close to that level for a generation yet.
It is very much in our interests to promote and influence our view on these matters in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and the Med.
It is also useful to have an voice with the pivotal European powers, France and Germany.
We have torn that all up, and our voice is now much diminished.
We are also less interesting to other powers because we can no longer even pretend to influence the rest of Europe.
PS Political and defence partnerships with other Anglo nations were never actually prevented by EU membership. See, for example, the Five Powers Agreement.
I think giving the EU enough rope is something I can live with and something that a lot of leave voters predicted would happen without our influence inside the EU.
Outside of the EU we're already making huge strides in our own policy and we're focusing eastwards, it's already changing how nations are seeing us and how they want to partner with us. Japan, Canada and Australia have all separately asked us to join the CPTPP, Japan has invited us to join military exercises in the Pacific reviving a century old alliance and the US is making noises about the UK joining he quad to make it a pent and also eyeing up the CPTPP.
Our global influence was never enhanced by being in the EU, it was diminished. The EU saw its influence enhanced by having us in it and now you can see without us their desperation to do grubby deals with China and Russia has already lost them a lot of friends and it's driving the Biden administration towards Brexit Britain with open arms.
These are unwelcome truths for you, I realise that. The EU without the UK is going to have a different outlook and the UK out of the EU will capitalise on that. The process has already started and it will continue to see us diverge from the EU in our foreign policy terms and over time in terms of trade, that 45% export value that the EU currently has will fall as the nation starts facing eastwards. The UK-EU relationship will continue to go down in value for both sides and we will have a simple trading relationship with the EU. As it should always have been.
None of this really stacks up.
How is greater defence activity in Asia going to help us? Of course we are welcomed, we have materiel to spare. It will cost us, though. For what?
Over 50% of our trade is with the EU and/or EFTA nations.
Defence policy should be based on our own national interests which follow our geography and trade realities.
We’ve said goodbye to the ability to influence our own neighbourhood!
The EU-China deals shows starkly that we are now out of that conversation.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps.
The problem you're having is that you think today's situation will last forever and that 45% of our exports will always go to the EU. That's not going to be the case and as that number goes down to reflect something more like global GDP proportions the value of the relationship goes down for both sides. Especially for the UK. I'm not sure why you're bundling EU and EFTA nations together either, we have separate trade deals with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland that aren't dependent on the EU trade deal.
The next decade is going to be hugely interesting, especially as the US starts to marshall its allies against China and the EU needs to decide whether having slaves make Siemens dishwashers is more important to them than an alliance with the US, UK and the rest of the democratic alliance.
I'm glad that we're unequivocally on the side of democracy. I guess part of why the EU finds it difficult to criticise undemocratic nations is because the commission is inherently undemocratic.
The problem you have is that you think 50+ (I use that figure as it is *European* trade) will evaporate overnight.
Trading with our neighbours will remain preeminent I’ll wager until I am past retirement (I am early 40s).
That the EU at large is “anti democratic” is utter nonsense; it is a collection of 27 democracies some of which put our own democratic arrangements to shame.
It always amuses me when people from the UK say that the EU is "undemocratic".
We in the UK have the iniquities of FPTP, the House of Lords that still has hereditary peers ffs, hundreds of quangos, numerous laws made by statutory instrument without legislature scrutiny and a head of state (God bless her) who is from a Germanic aristocratic family and there as a result of an indirect hereditary line to those that believed in the divine right of Kings. Add to that a local government system that is a mess and an asymmetric system of devolution that allows Scottish MPs to vote on matters that pertain to England where English MPs are not allowed an equivalent entitlement and a ridiculous system of city "mayors" that has had no uniform rollout across the country. I am sure there are many more examples.
In summary we are in no position of authority to lecture anyone in Europe about democracy.
Amen to that.
Max is guilty of arrant HYUFDism. He repeats the same tropes about how un-democratic and awful the EU or Germany or France are, over and over.
It’s reflexive Europhobia basically. He is high on his own supply.
There is no black and white. We are not perfect; neither is the EU. We can, and should, both do better.
Nobody has really answered my point about what our key interests are in Asia Pacific that we must pay for with treasure and blood, apart from “our mates are there”.
I did answer it. "Our enemies are there."
Where do you think our modern threats are based - solely western Europe or Asia Pacific too?
The democratic, rule-of-law, countries of the world - whether Japan, Australia, South Korea, Norway, Germany, the US or the UK - share common interests.
Yes, they will quarrel from time-to-time. Yes, you will have leaders who behave poorly, whether Trump or UvdL or whoever.
But unless "The West" is able to hang together, they will hang apart, picked off by the divide and conquer tactics of China, Russia and others.
Trump demonstrated this: he correctly adjudged that China needed to be confronted. But he didn't realise that even the US wasn't big enough to achieve its goals*. We need to remember that.
* Of course, it didn't help that Trump was utterly obsessed by bilateral trade balances.
Unfortunately Europe seems to want to hang apart, whether its because they're still smarting from Brexit, greedy about getting 0.1% of GDP potentially from Nord Stream 2, or just don't grasp the gravity of the situation.
The UK is right to be working with its partners around the world. It is petty, smallminded and ignorant of @Gardenwalker to think that we can just turn a blind eye to Asia and only deal with our tiny portion of the planet.
Region of Residence 1st dose 2nd dose Cumulative Total Doses to Date Total 219,760 1,854 221,614 East Of England 21,755 349 22,104 London 29,442 216 29,658 Midlands 47,932 143 48,075 North East And Yorkshire 28,409 483 28,892 North West 26,709 156 26,865 South East 39,206 252 39,458 South West 25,061 253 25,314
For the afternoon Mon-Wed Vaccine Number panic, please form an orderly queue. Tea and biscuits will be served.
There's no need for panic, but that suggests the UK total will be well down on Tuesday last week.
The government messaging has been very smart. They were maybe a day early in delivering on the 15m, but had forewarned it might be tight. Spot on. They know there is a likely reduction in supplies over the next 2-3 weeks - and that means we can't forge ahead. Yet. But once the vast numbers of deliveries get made, the infrastructure is there and can scale up. I hope that by weeks 3-4 of March, we will be breaking record after record on the way to a million a day.
April has complications around Easter, but we should be going, er, gang-busters by then.
On topic, a good article Philip though I disagree with the premise and all of the later posts from others about the EU falling apart. I find that to be a very unlikely scenario, even with all of the internal contradictions there is just to much political capital invested by Paris, Berlin and other capital cities across Europe in the concept of the EU. There's just no way the politicians will allow it to fail and they'll use all of the undemocratic means available to keep it going. France votes down the constitution? No worries, we'll just rebrand it as something else and not allow a vote. Britain votes to leave? No worries let's just pretend that they haven't actually left and ignore any successes they have outside of the EU structures.
There's simply no appetite for admitting that the whole political establishment of Europe has been making such poor decisions for so many years.
What's going to happen without the UK is that you'll get France pushing its own foreign policy agenda without any other major foreign policy power to provide a counterweight and Germany will pursue it's mercantilist trade and economic policies without abandon and the EU will turn into a completely parochial organisation selling itself out to the worst regimes for an extra 0.1% worth of GDP because nothing other than more GDP matters to Germany.
If anything the idea of having no internal competitors for foreign and economic policy within the EU will massively appeal to Paris and Berlin. They both get what they want out of the EU, France projects its power and Germany gets to remake the EU in its image and continues to hollow out Southern Europe with no dissent. For that reason the amount of political capital invested to keep the bandwagon going will continue to rise and it will result in the EU as an organisation limping on from crisis to crisis with no real reform and no real democratic legitimacy.
Buried within this analysis is clear example of what Britain has “lost”.
It can no longer influence Europe-wide* foreign policy, and has surrendered that position uncontested to France.
As you say, Germany will be happy with this arrangement is long as countries are forced to buy German defence equipment every so often.
*As opposed to EU, as I believe EU foreign policy to be largely fictional.
As you point out there's nothing of value lost there and if anything it's leading to a diminished EU with their dodgy China deals and sucking off Putin in Moscow.
Our interests are better served with unilateral action or joining up with the US, Canada and Australia.
Not having the UK makes the EU much less relevant to the rest of the world, for me that's actually a big victory. No longer lending them our diplomatic weight is a definite brexit upside that I was looking forwards to.
I am not saying there is nothing of value to be lost there.
Far from it.
In our very own neighbourhood we face an ongoing Russian threat, as well as ongoing issues related to state insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa.
We also aspire (or should) to promote liberal democracy and the freest trade, especially in Europe which remains 50%+ of our trade and will likely remain close to that level for a generation yet.
It is very much in our interests to promote and influence our view on these matters in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and the Med.
It is also useful to have an voice with the pivotal European powers, France and Germany.
We have torn that all up, and our voice is now much diminished.
We are also less interesting to other powers because we can no longer even pretend to influence the rest of Europe.
PS Political and defence partnerships with other Anglo nations were never actually prevented by EU membership. See, for example, the Five Powers Agreement.
I think giving the EU enough rope is something I can live with and something that a lot of leave voters predicted would happen without our influence inside the EU.
Outside of the EU we're already making huge strides in our own policy and we're focusing eastwards, it's already changing how nations are seeing us and how they want to partner with us. Japan, Canada and Australia have all separately asked us to join the CPTPP, Japan has invited us to join military exercises in the Pacific reviving a century old alliance and the US is making noises about the UK joining he quad to make it a pent and also eyeing up the CPTPP.
Our global influence was never enhanced by being in the EU, it was diminished. The EU saw its influence enhanced by having us in it and now you can see without us their desperation to do grubby deals with China and Russia has already lost them a lot of friends and it's driving the Biden administration towards Brexit Britain with open arms.
These are unwelcome truths for you, I realise that. The EU without the UK is going to have a different outlook and the UK out of the EU will capitalise on that. The process has already started and it will continue to see us diverge from the EU in our foreign policy terms and over time in terms of trade, that 45% export value that the EU currently has will fall as the nation starts facing eastwards. The UK-EU relationship will continue to go down in value for both sides and we will have a simple trading relationship with the EU. As it should always have been.
None of this really stacks up.
How is greater defence activity in Asia going to help us? Of course we are welcomed, we have materiel to spare. It will cost us, though. For what?
Over 50% of our trade is with the EU and/or EFTA nations.
Defence policy should be based on our own national interests which follow our geography and trade realities.
We’ve said goodbye to the ability to influence our own neighbourhood!
The EU-China deals shows starkly that we are now out of that conversation.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps.
The problem you're having is that you think today's situation will last forever and that 45% of our exports will always go to the EU. That's not going to be the case and as that number goes down to reflect something more like global GDP proportions the value of the relationship goes down for both sides. Especially for the UK. I'm not sure why you're bundling EU and EFTA nations together either, we have separate trade deals with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland that aren't dependent on the EU trade deal.
The next decade is going to be hugely interesting, especially as the US starts to marshall its allies against China and the EU needs to decide whether having slaves make Siemens dishwashers is more important to them than an alliance with the US, UK and the rest of the democratic alliance.
I'm glad that we're unequivocally on the side of democracy. I guess part of why the EU finds it difficult to criticise undemocratic nations is because the commission is inherently undemocratic.
The problem you have is that you think 50+ (I use that figure as it is *European* trade) will evaporate overnight.
Trading with our neighbours will remain preeminent I’ll wager until I am past retirement (I am early 40s).
That the EU at large is “anti democratic” is utter nonsense; it is a collection of 27 democracies some of which put our own democratic arrangements to shame.
It always amuses me when people from the UK say that the EU is "undemocratic".
We in the UK have the iniquities of FPTP, the House of Lords that still has hereditary peers ffs, hundreds of quangos, numerous laws made by statutory instrument without legislature scrutiny and a head of state (God bless her) who is from a Germanic aristocratic family and there as a result of an indirect hereditary line to those that believed in the divine right of Kings. Add to that a local government system that is a mess and an asymmetric system of devolution that allows Scottish MPs to vote on matters that pertain to England where English MPs are not allowed an equivalent entitlement and a ridiculous system of city "mayors" that has had no uniform rollout across the country. I am sure there are many more examples.
In summary we are in no position of authority to lecture anyone in Europe about democracy.
Amen to that.
Max is guilty of arrant HYUFDism. He repeats the same tropes about how un-democratic and awful the EU or Germany or France are, over and over.
It’s reflexive Europhobia basically. He is high on his own supply.
There is no black and white. We are not perfect; neither is the EU. We can, and should, both do better.
Nobody has really answered my point about what our key interests are in Asia Pacific that we must pay for with treasure and blood, apart from “our mates are there”.
I did answer it. "Our enemies are there."
Where do you think our modern threats are based - solely western Europe or Asia Pacific too?
The most important *interest* we have is in the security and stability of our own neighbourhood.
Most of our trade is with neighbouring European countries. Our food and energy security also depend on stable trading flows in this domain, and to a lesser extent the North Atlantic.
As the pre-eminent, or joint pre-eminent, military power in Europe, it therefore stands to reason that we would wish first to protect our home neighbourhood, including defence of the GIUK gap.
Our threats, in order:
1. Russia is the revanchist power on our doorstep with an interest in destabilising stability in Europe. There is plenty of form, including the Salisbury Poisoning Case.
2. Scottish independence represents a security threat in that a rump U.K. would surrender automatic legal authority and some operational ability over large stretches of the North Sea. Although Scotland would likely be a longer term partner within the Western Alliance, all experience tells us that any separation will be acrimonious, unpredictable, and very likely detrimental to rump U.K. security.
3. Destabilisation in the Middle East and North Africa can, as we’ve seen, can lead both to large scale refugee flows as well as increase in terrorist activity. It’s in our interests to support measures to keep the region stable and to help police the Med.
China I think follows these three. Primarily for us it about defending ourselves against Chinese ideological narratives, as well as inappropriate industry takeovers and theft of IP.
Militarily, China is not a threat to us, although of course it is to key allies.
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
It's confusing the right to speak with the right to an audience. Many have got used to having the latter and are not best pleased - are in many cases downright livid - at seeing this privilege eroded.
I must have missed the part of the regulations in which students will be herded into the lecture halls and held there by force. No one will will be compelled to turn up to listen, but no one will have the right to prevent another from exercising their lawful freedom of speech either. That's life in a free society, and by God it's about time action was taken to preserve it.
In a free society people should be able to decide who they invite to speak to them without the authorities intervening to correct what are deemed bad choices. This is how I look at it.
And what about the freedom of those who might wish to listen, but will never get the chance because a small set of activists have taken upon themselves the sole authority to decide who is allowed to address them at all? It's called a university: the clue is in the name. Your method would lead - entirely unintentionally I'm sure - to the creation of a narrow seminary where only one set of ideas was ever heard spoken.
There's nothing stopping students getting involved to change what they dislike about the current set-up or creating new platforms reflecting what they wish to hear and see and discuss outside of whatever their course of study is. To me most of this "must protect free speech at uni!" has the air of a solution looking for a problem.
So there's never any need for government intervention to protect the rights and freedoms of minorities or to ensure a level playing field, but instead they should leave individuals to fend for themselves as best they can? You'd better not try airing these kinds of bow-tie reactionary views at a university, or you'll get yourself no-platformed for sure...
Your typical teacher lost any goodwill they were willing to give this Government at least a year ago (and often circa 2014 when Gove screwed up exams).
Well, yes, but it's a bizarre idea that this would be a favour to the government. I might be naive, but I always thought the idea of education was that it was for the benefit of the children.
Working for 2 weeks when there should be a break doesn't make any sense. Children are taught in 6-8 week blocks followed by a 1-2 week gap for a reason.
You can't suddenly change it (well you could but ideally we should have done this in January and tried to shrink Easter to a week by extending this half term then. You cannot do this at zero notice no matter how much you may suddenly think it's a great idea.
Indeed. You assemble kids, put a teacher in front of them and bingo. Education happens. It doesn't. It takes a lot of planning, logistics and preparation. Good job the Minister is laser focussed on what is best for children and not off wasting everyone's time trying to kick off a culture war.
So will those parents who have home schooled their children tell us whether nothing happened when they were presented with the curriculum and told to get on with it? Or did they manage?
You write as though teaching algebra is a black art.
After being furloughed last year and being made redundant before lockdown 2 I have been responsible for education in our house while my wife has continued her job. In lockdown 1 the provision was almost nothing for my 6yo and some work for my 11yo. In lockdown 2 and 3 work has been provided by school. For my eldest the main problem is ensuring he spends enough time doing the work and not rushing do he can go online with his friends which we would normally limit, but less so as he can't see his friends. He has a couple of 15 minute group sessions with his teacher and there are lots of videos to go along side his work.
The main problem is the year 2. On one hand the work set is far too easy in the main. If he sat down and concentrated for 30 - 60 mins he would be completed. Unfortunately this can take hours and hours and without a classroom, a teachers authority, and peer pressure he has little by way of motivation. In effect I end up standing over his shoulder whilst he does the work. I can see this would be impossible for working parents.
The other issue is keeping the children relatively out of the way and quiet. My wife has frequent calls and zoom meetings and so I will be trying to do the above whilst keeping the noise down which can be difficult if the youngest (frequently) or eldest (infrequently) is having a meltdown. I live in a large house and the kids are able to have desks in their rooms and the fibre broadband is reasonably good to the whole house. So we have been able to cope but I imagine for a lot of the population it is very difficult to get everything done.
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
It's confusing the right to speak with the right to an audience. Many have got used to having the latter and are not best pleased - are in many cases downright livid - at seeing this privilege eroded.
I must have missed the part of the regulations in which students will be herded into the lecture halls and held there by force. No one will will be compelled to turn up to listen, but no one will have the right to prevent another from exercising their lawful freedom of speech either. That's life in a free society, and by God it's about time action was taken to preserve it.
In a free society people should be able to decide who they invite to speak to them without the authorities intervening to correct what are deemed bad choices. This is how I look at it.
And what about the freedom of those who might wish to listen, but will never get the chance because a small set of activists have taken upon themselves the sole authority to decide who is allowed to address them at all? It's called a university: the clue is in the name. Your method would lead - entirely unintentionally I'm sure - to the creation of a narrow seminary where only one set of ideas was ever heard spoken.
There's nothing stopping students getting involved to change what they dislike about the current set-up or creating new platforms reflecting what they wish to hear and see and discuss outside of whatever their course of study is. To me most of this "must protect free speech at uni!" has the air of a solution looking for a problem.
Anyone who wants to hear the thoughts of (say) Jordan B. Peterson can easily do so with a couple of clicks on the internet.
Hardly anyone does, in the same way that hardly any uni students go and see him in person.
This is a bit more bureaucracy because the government wants to fight a culture war.
If nobody wants to hear him then what's the harm in letting him speak to an empty lecture hall?
University is the place for views to be debated, even or especially repugnant ones. Nothing should be off limits at a university.
If letting him speak is no big deal then why would there be a culture war? Let him speak, there's no issue, nothing to fight over.
On topic, a good article Philip though I disagree with the premise and all of the later posts from others about the EU falling apart. I find that to be a very unlikely scenario, even with all of the internal contradictions there is just to much political capital invested by Paris, Berlin and other capital cities across Europe in the concept of the EU. There's just no way the politicians will allow it to fail and they'll use all of the undemocratic means available to keep it going. France votes down the constitution? No worries, we'll just rebrand it as something else and not allow a vote. Britain votes to leave? No worries let's just pretend that they haven't actually left and ignore any successes they have outside of the EU structures.
There's simply no appetite for admitting that the whole political establishment of Europe has been making such poor decisions for so many years.
What's going to happen without the UK is that you'll get France pushing its own foreign policy agenda without any other major foreign policy power to provide a counterweight and Germany will pursue it's mercantilist trade and economic policies without abandon and the EU will turn into a completely parochial organisation selling itself out to the worst regimes for an extra 0.1% worth of GDP because nothing other than more GDP matters to Germany.
If anything the idea of having no internal competitors for foreign and economic policy within the EU will massively appeal to Paris and Berlin. They both get what they want out of the EU, France projects its power and Germany gets to remake the EU in its image and continues to hollow out Southern Europe with no dissent. For that reason the amount of political capital invested to keep the bandwagon going will continue to rise and it will result in the EU as an organisation limping on from crisis to crisis with no real reform and no real democratic legitimacy.
Buried within this analysis is clear example of what Britain has “lost”.
It can no longer influence Europe-wide* foreign policy, and has surrendered that position uncontested to France.
As you say, Germany will be happy with this arrangement is long as countries are forced to buy German defence equipment every so often.
*As opposed to EU, as I believe EU foreign policy to be largely fictional.
As you point out there's nothing of value lost there and if anything it's leading to a diminished EU with their dodgy China deals and sucking off Putin in Moscow.
Our interests are better served with unilateral action or joining up with the US, Canada and Australia.
Not having the UK makes the EU much less relevant to the rest of the world, for me that's actually a big victory. No longer lending them our diplomatic weight is a definite brexit upside that I was looking forwards to.
I am not saying there is nothing of value to be lost there.
Far from it.
In our very own neighbourhood we face an ongoing Russian threat, as well as ongoing issues related to state insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa.
We also aspire (or should) to promote liberal democracy and the freest trade, especially in Europe which remains 50%+ of our trade and will likely remain close to that level for a generation yet.
It is very much in our interests to promote and influence our view on these matters in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and the Med.
It is also useful to have an voice with the pivotal European powers, France and Germany.
We have torn that all up, and our voice is now much diminished.
We are also less interesting to other powers because we can no longer even pretend to influence the rest of Europe.
PS Political and defence partnerships with other Anglo nations were never actually prevented by EU membership. See, for example, the Five Powers Agreement.
I think giving the EU enough rope is something I can live with and something that a lot of leave voters predicted would happen without our influence inside the EU.
Outside of the EU we're already making huge strides in our own policy and we're focusing eastwards, it's already changing how nations are seeing us and how they want to partner with us. Japan, Canada and Australia have all separately asked us to join the CPTPP, Japan has invited us to join military exercises in the Pacific reviving a century old alliance and the US is making noises about the UK joining he quad to make it a pent and also eyeing up the CPTPP.
Our global influence was never enhanced by being in the EU, it was diminished. The EU saw its influence enhanced by having us in it and now you can see without us their desperation to do grubby deals with China and Russia has already lost them a lot of friends and it's driving the Biden administration towards Brexit Britain with open arms.
These are unwelcome truths for you, I realise that. The EU without the UK is going to have a different outlook and the UK out of the EU will capitalise on that. The process has already started and it will continue to see us diverge from the EU in our foreign policy terms and over time in terms of trade, that 45% export value that the EU currently has will fall as the nation starts facing eastwards. The UK-EU relationship will continue to go down in value for both sides and we will have a simple trading relationship with the EU. As it should always have been.
None of this really stacks up.
How is greater defence activity in Asia going to help us? Of course we are welcomed, we have materiel to spare. It will cost us, though. For what?
Over 50% of our trade is with the EU and/or EFTA nations.
Defence policy should be based on our own national interests which follow our geography and trade realities.
We’ve said goodbye to the ability to influence our own neighbourhood!
The EU-China deals shows starkly that we are now out of that conversation.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps.
The problem you're having is that you think today's situation will last forever and that 45% of our exports will always go to the EU. That's not going to be the case and as that number goes down to reflect something more like global GDP proportions the value of the relationship goes down for both sides. Especially for the UK. I'm not sure why you're bundling EU and EFTA nations together either, we have separate trade deals with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland that aren't dependent on the EU trade deal.
The next decade is going to be hugely interesting, especially as the US starts to marshall its allies against China and the EU needs to decide whether having slaves make Siemens dishwashers is more important to them than an alliance with the US, UK and the rest of the democratic alliance.
I'm glad that we're unequivocally on the side of democracy. I guess part of why the EU finds it difficult to criticise undemocratic nations is because the commission is inherently undemocratic.
The problem you have is that you think 50+ (I use that figure as it is *European* trade) will evaporate overnight.
Trading with our neighbours will remain preeminent I’ll wager until I am past retirement (I am early 40s).
That the EU at large is “anti democratic” is utter nonsense; it is a collection of 27 democracies some of which put our own democratic arrangements to shame.
It always amuses me when people from the UK say that the EU is "undemocratic".
We in the UK have the iniquities of FPTP, the House of Lords that still has hereditary peers ffs, hundreds of quangos, numerous laws made by statutory instrument without legislature scrutiny and a head of state (God bless her) who is from a Germanic aristocratic family and there as a result of an indirect hereditary line to those that believed in the divine right of Kings. Add to that a local government system that is a mess and an asymmetric system of devolution that allows Scottish MPs to vote on matters that pertain to England where English MPs are not allowed an equivalent entitlement and a ridiculous system of city "mayors" that has had no uniform rollout across the country. I am sure there are many more examples.
In summary we are in no position of authority to lecture anyone in Europe about democracy.
Amen to that.
Max is guilty of arrant HYUFDism. He repeats the same tropes about how un-democratic and awful the EU or Germany or France are, over and over.
It’s reflexive Europhobia basically. He is high on his own supply.
There is no black and white. We are not perfect; neither is the EU. We can, and should, both do better.
Nobody has really answered my point about what our key interests are in Asia Pacific that we must pay for with treasure and blood, apart from “our mates are there”.
I did answer it. "Our enemies are there."
Where do you think our modern threats are based - solely western Europe or Asia Pacific too?
The democratic, rule-of-law, countries of the world - whether Japan, Australia, South Korea, Norway, Germany, the US or the UK - share common interests.
Yes, they will quarrel from time-to-time. Yes, you will have leaders who behave poorly, whether Trump or UvdL or whoever.
But unless "The West" is able to hang together, they will hang apart, picked off by the divide and conquer tactics of China, Russia and others.
Trump demonstrated this: he correctly adjudged that China needed to be confronted. But he didn't realise that even the US wasn't big enough to achieve its goals*. We need to remember that.
* Of course, it didn't help that Trump was utterly obsessed by bilateral trade balances.
Also worth pointing out that the US did a trade deal last year with China, just like the EU, which Biden won't repudiate. That the US got a bit more out of its deal than the EU doesn't really change the moral case.
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
It's confusing the right to speak with the right to an audience. Many have got used to having the latter and are not best pleased - are in many cases downright livid - at seeing this privilege eroded.
I must have missed the part of the regulations in which students will be herded into the lecture halls and held there by force. No one will will be compelled to turn up to listen, but no one will have the right to prevent another from exercising their lawful freedom of speech either. That's life in a free society, and by God it's about time action was taken to preserve it.
In a free society people should be able to decide who they invite to speak to them without the authorities intervening to correct what are deemed bad choices. This is how I look at it.
And what about the freedom of those who might wish to listen, but will never get the chance because a small set of activists have taken upon themselves the sole authority to decide who is allowed to address them at all? It's called a university: the clue is in the name. Your method would lead - entirely unintentionally I'm sure - to the creation of a narrow seminary where only one set of ideas was ever heard spoken.
There's nothing stopping students getting involved to change what they dislike about the current set-up or creating new platforms reflecting what they wish to hear and see and discuss outside of whatever their course of study is. To me most of this "must protect free speech at uni!" has the air of a solution looking for a problem.
Anyone who wants to hear the thoughts of (say) Jordan B. Peterson can easily do so with a couple of clicks on the internet.
Hardly anyone does, in the same way that hardly any uni students go and see him in person.
This is a bit more bureaucracy because the government wants to fight a culture war.
If nobody wants to hear him then what's the harm in letting him speak to an empty lecture hall?
University is the place for views to be debated, even or especially repugnant ones. Nothing should be off limits at a university.
If letting him speak is no big deal then why would there be a culture war? Let him speak, there's no issue, nothing to fight over.
Because there *is* a culture war.
It seems the accusations about a "culture war" always come from those who want only their PoV of culture to be applied. Like anyone who disagrees should just shut up and go away.
I've got a novel idea: if there's disagreements about culture then how about we debate those openly and freely? Perhaps at universities which are meant to be bastions of free thought.
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
So, Universities are banned from teaching certain things but have to allow free speech.
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
So, Universities are banned from teaching certain things but have to allow free speech.
On topic, a good article Philip though I disagree with the premise and all of the later posts from others about the EU falling apart. I find that to be a very unlikely scenario, even with all of the internal contradictions there is just to much political capital invested by Paris, Berlin and other capital cities across Europe in the concept of the EU. There's just no way the politicians will allow it to fail and they'll use all of the undemocratic means available to keep it going. France votes down the constitution? No worries, we'll just rebrand it as something else and not allow a vote. Britain votes to leave? No worries let's just pretend that they haven't actually left and ignore any successes they have outside of the EU structures.
There's simply no appetite for admitting that the whole political establishment of Europe has been making such poor decisions for so many years.
What's going to happen without the UK is that you'll get France pushing its own foreign policy agenda without any other major foreign policy power to provide a counterweight and Germany will pursue it's mercantilist trade and economic policies without abandon and the EU will turn into a completely parochial organisation selling itself out to the worst regimes for an extra 0.1% worth of GDP because nothing other than more GDP matters to Germany.
If anything the idea of having no internal competitors for foreign and economic policy within the EU will massively appeal to Paris and Berlin. They both get what they want out of the EU, France projects its power and Germany gets to remake the EU in its image and continues to hollow out Southern Europe with no dissent. For that reason the amount of political capital invested to keep the bandwagon going will continue to rise and it will result in the EU as an organisation limping on from crisis to crisis with no real reform and no real democratic legitimacy.
Buried within this analysis is clear example of what Britain has “lost”.
It can no longer influence Europe-wide* foreign policy, and has surrendered that position uncontested to France.
As you say, Germany will be happy with this arrangement is long as countries are forced to buy German defence equipment every so often.
*As opposed to EU, as I believe EU foreign policy to be largely fictional.
As you point out there's nothing of value lost there and if anything it's leading to a diminished EU with their dodgy China deals and sucking off Putin in Moscow.
Our interests are better served with unilateral action or joining up with the US, Canada and Australia.
Not having the UK makes the EU much less relevant to the rest of the world, for me that's actually a big victory. No longer lending them our diplomatic weight is a definite brexit upside that I was looking forwards to.
I am not saying there is nothing of value to be lost there.
Far from it.
In our very own neighbourhood we face an ongoing Russian threat, as well as ongoing issues related to state insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa.
We also aspire (or should) to promote liberal democracy and the freest trade, especially in Europe which remains 50%+ of our trade and will likely remain close to that level for a generation yet.
It is very much in our interests to promote and influence our view on these matters in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and the Med.
It is also useful to have an voice with the pivotal European powers, France and Germany.
We have torn that all up, and our voice is now much diminished.
We are also less interesting to other powers because we can no longer even pretend to influence the rest of Europe.
PS Political and defence partnerships with other Anglo nations were never actually prevented by EU membership. See, for example, the Five Powers Agreement.
I think giving the EU enough rope is something I can live with and something that a lot of leave voters predicted would happen without our influence inside the EU.
Outside of the EU we're already making huge strides in our own policy and we're focusing eastwards, it's already changing how nations are seeing us and how they want to partner with us. Japan, Canada and Australia have all separately asked us to join the CPTPP, Japan has invited us to join military exercises in the Pacific reviving a century old alliance and the US is making noises about the UK joining he quad to make it a pent and also eyeing up the CPTPP.
Our global influence was never enhanced by being in the EU, it was diminished. The EU saw its influence enhanced by having us in it and now you can see without us their desperation to do grubby deals with China and Russia has already lost them a lot of friends and it's driving the Biden administration towards Brexit Britain with open arms.
These are unwelcome truths for you, I realise that. The EU without the UK is going to have a different outlook and the UK out of the EU will capitalise on that. The process has already started and it will continue to see us diverge from the EU in our foreign policy terms and over time in terms of trade, that 45% export value that the EU currently has will fall as the nation starts facing eastwards. The UK-EU relationship will continue to go down in value for both sides and we will have a simple trading relationship with the EU. As it should always have been.
None of this really stacks up.
How is greater defence activity in Asia going to help us? Of course we are welcomed, we have materiel to spare. It will cost us, though. For what?
Over 50% of our trade is with the EU and/or EFTA nations.
Defence policy should be based on our own national interests which follow our geography and trade realities.
We’ve said goodbye to the ability to influence our own neighbourhood!
The EU-China deals shows starkly that we are now out of that conversation.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps.
The problem you're having is that you think today's situation will last forever and that 45% of our exports will always go to the EU. That's not going to be the case and as that number goes down to reflect something more like global GDP proportions the value of the relationship goes down for both sides. Especially for the UK. I'm not sure why you're bundling EU and EFTA nations together either, we have separate trade deals with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland that aren't dependent on the EU trade deal.
The next decade is going to be hugely interesting, especially as the US starts to marshall its allies against China and the EU needs to decide whether having slaves make Siemens dishwashers is more important to them than an alliance with the US, UK and the rest of the democratic alliance.
I'm glad that we're unequivocally on the side of democracy. I guess part of why the EU finds it difficult to criticise undemocratic nations is because the commission is inherently undemocratic.
The problem you have is that you think 50+ (I use that figure as it is *European* trade) will evaporate overnight.
Trading with our neighbours will remain preeminent I’ll wager until I am past retirement (I am early 40s).
That the EU at large is “anti democratic” is utter nonsense; it is a collection of 27 democracies some of which put our own democratic arrangements to shame.
It always amuses me when people from the UK say that the EU is "undemocratic".
We in the UK have the iniquities of FPTP, the House of Lords that still has hereditary peers ffs, hundreds of quangos, numerous laws made by statutory instrument without legislature scrutiny and a head of state (God bless her) who is from a Germanic aristocratic family and there as a result of an indirect hereditary line to those that believed in the divine right of Kings. Add to that a local government system that is a mess and an asymmetric system of devolution that allows Scottish MPs to vote on matters that pertain to England where English MPs are not allowed an equivalent entitlement and a ridiculous system of city "mayors" that has had no uniform rollout across the country. I am sure there are many more examples.
In summary we are in no position of authority to lecture anyone in Europe about democracy.
Amen to that.
Max is guilty of arrant HYUFDism. He repeats the same tropes about how un-democratic and awful the EU or Germany or France are, over and over.
It’s reflexive Europhobia basically. He is high on his own supply.
There is no black and white. We are not perfect; neither is the EU. We can, and should, both do better.
Nobody has really answered my point about what our key interests are in Asia Pacific that we must pay for with treasure and blood, apart from “our mates are there”.
I did answer it. "Our enemies are there."
Where do you think our modern threats are based - solely western Europe or Asia Pacific too?
The democratic, rule-of-law, countries of the world - whether Japan, Australia, South Korea, Norway, Germany, the US or the UK - share common interests.
Yes, they will quarrel from time-to-time. Yes, you will have leaders who behave poorly, whether Trump or UvdL or whoever.
But unless "The West" is able to hang together, they will hang apart, picked off by the divide and conquer tactics of China, Russia and others.
Trump demonstrated this: he correctly adjudged that China needed to be confronted. But he didn't realise that even the US wasn't big enough to achieve its goals*. We need to remember that.
* Of course, it didn't help that Trump was utterly obsessed by bilateral trade balances.
Also worth pointing out that the US did a trade deal last year with China, just like the EU, which Biden won't repudiate. That the US got a bit more out of its deal than the EU doesn't really change the moral case.
So according to Max and PT we should now repudiate the US.
Maybe we should actually partner with China. That will show ‘em who’s boss!
On topic, a good article Philip though I disagree with the premise and all of the later posts from others about the EU falling apart. I find that to be a very unlikely scenario, even with all of the internal contradictions there is just to much political capital invested by Paris, Berlin and other capital cities across Europe in the concept of the EU. There's just no way the politicians will allow it to fail and they'll use all of the undemocratic means available to keep it going. France votes down the constitution? No worries, we'll just rebrand it as something else and not allow a vote. Britain votes to leave? No worries let's just pretend that they haven't actually left and ignore any successes they have outside of the EU structures.
There's simply no appetite for admitting that the whole political establishment of Europe has been making such poor decisions for so many years.
What's going to happen without the UK is that you'll get France pushing its own foreign policy agenda without any other major foreign policy power to provide a counterweight and Germany will pursue it's mercantilist trade and economic policies without abandon and the EU will turn into a completely parochial organisation selling itself out to the worst regimes for an extra 0.1% worth of GDP because nothing other than more GDP matters to Germany.
If anything the idea of having no internal competitors for foreign and economic policy within the EU will massively appeal to Paris and Berlin. They both get what they want out of the EU, France projects its power and Germany gets to remake the EU in its image and continues to hollow out Southern Europe with no dissent. For that reason the amount of political capital invested to keep the bandwagon going will continue to rise and it will result in the EU as an organisation limping on from crisis to crisis with no real reform and no real democratic legitimacy.
Buried within this analysis is clear example of what Britain has “lost”.
It can no longer influence Europe-wide* foreign policy, and has surrendered that position uncontested to France.
As you say, Germany will be happy with this arrangement is long as countries are forced to buy German defence equipment every so often.
*As opposed to EU, as I believe EU foreign policy to be largely fictional.
As you point out there's nothing of value lost there and if anything it's leading to a diminished EU with their dodgy China deals and sucking off Putin in Moscow.
Our interests are better served with unilateral action or joining up with the US, Canada and Australia.
Not having the UK makes the EU much less relevant to the rest of the world, for me that's actually a big victory. No longer lending them our diplomatic weight is a definite brexit upside that I was looking forwards to.
I am not saying there is nothing of value to be lost there.
Far from it.
In our very own neighbourhood we face an ongoing Russian threat, as well as ongoing issues related to state insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa.
We also aspire (or should) to promote liberal democracy and the freest trade, especially in Europe which remains 50%+ of our trade and will likely remain close to that level for a generation yet.
It is very much in our interests to promote and influence our view on these matters in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and the Med.
It is also useful to have an voice with the pivotal European powers, France and Germany.
We have torn that all up, and our voice is now much diminished.
We are also less interesting to other powers because we can no longer even pretend to influence the rest of Europe.
PS Political and defence partnerships with other Anglo nations were never actually prevented by EU membership. See, for example, the Five Powers Agreement.
I think giving the EU enough rope is something I can live with and something that a lot of leave voters predicted would happen without our influence inside the EU.
Outside of the EU we're already making huge strides in our own policy and we're focusing eastwards, it's already changing how nations are seeing us and how they want to partner with us. Japan, Canada and Australia have all separately asked us to join the CPTPP, Japan has invited us to join military exercises in the Pacific reviving a century old alliance and the US is making noises about the UK joining he quad to make it a pent and also eyeing up the CPTPP.
Our global influence was never enhanced by being in the EU, it was diminished. The EU saw its influence enhanced by having us in it and now you can see without us their desperation to do grubby deals with China and Russia has already lost them a lot of friends and it's driving the Biden administration towards Brexit Britain with open arms.
These are unwelcome truths for you, I realise that. The EU without the UK is going to have a different outlook and the UK out of the EU will capitalise on that. The process has already started and it will continue to see us diverge from the EU in our foreign policy terms and over time in terms of trade, that 45% export value that the EU currently has will fall as the nation starts facing eastwards. The UK-EU relationship will continue to go down in value for both sides and we will have a simple trading relationship with the EU. As it should always have been.
None of this really stacks up.
How is greater defence activity in Asia going to help us? Of course we are welcomed, we have materiel to spare. It will cost us, though. For what?
Over 50% of our trade is with the EU and/or EFTA nations.
Defence policy should be based on our own national interests which follow our geography and trade realities.
We’ve said goodbye to the ability to influence our own neighbourhood!
The EU-China deals shows starkly that we are now out of that conversation.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps.
The problem you're having is that you think today's situation will last forever and that 45% of our exports will always go to the EU. That's not going to be the case and as that number goes down to reflect something more like global GDP proportions the value of the relationship goes down for both sides. Especially for the UK. I'm not sure why you're bundling EU and EFTA nations together either, we have separate trade deals with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland that aren't dependent on the EU trade deal.
The next decade is going to be hugely interesting, especially as the US starts to marshall its allies against China and the EU needs to decide whether having slaves make Siemens dishwashers is more important to them than an alliance with the US, UK and the rest of the democratic alliance.
I'm glad that we're unequivocally on the side of democracy. I guess part of why the EU finds it difficult to criticise undemocratic nations is because the commission is inherently undemocratic.
The problem you have is that you think 50+ (I use that figure as it is *European* trade) will evaporate overnight.
Trading with our neighbours will remain preeminent I’ll wager until I am past retirement (I am early 40s).
That the EU at large is “anti democratic” is utter nonsense; it is a collection of 27 democracies some of which put our own democratic arrangements to shame.
It always amuses me when people from the UK say that the EU is "undemocratic".
We in the UK have the iniquities of FPTP, the House of Lords that still has hereditary peers ffs, hundreds of quangos, numerous laws made by statutory instrument without legislature scrutiny and a head of state (God bless her) who is from a Germanic aristocratic family and there as a result of an indirect hereditary line to those that believed in the divine right of Kings. Add to that a local government system that is a mess and an asymmetric system of devolution that allows Scottish MPs to vote on matters that pertain to England where English MPs are not allowed an equivalent entitlement and a ridiculous system of city "mayors" that has had no uniform rollout across the country. I am sure there are many more examples.
In summary we are in no position of authority to lecture anyone in Europe about democracy.
Amen to that.
Max is guilty of arrant HYUFDism. He repeats the same tropes about how un-democratic and awful the EU or Germany or France are, over and over.
It’s reflexive Europhobia basically. He is high on his own supply.
There is no black and white. We are not perfect; neither is the EU. We can, and should, both do better.
Nobody has really answered my point about what our key interests are in Asia Pacific that we must pay for with treasure and blood, apart from “our mates are there”.
I did answer it. "Our enemies are there."
Where do you think our modern threats are based - solely western Europe or Asia Pacific too?
The most important *interest* we have is in the security and stability of our own neighbourhood.
Most of our trade is with neighbouring European countries. Our food and energy security also depend on stable trading flows in this domain, and to a lesser extent the North Atlantic.
As the pre-eminent, or joint pre-eminent, military power in Europe, it therefore stands to reason that we would wish first to protect our home neighbourhood, including defence of the GIUK gap.
Our threats, in order:
1. Russia is the revanchist power on our doorstep with an interest in destabilising stability in Europe. There is plenty of form, including the Salisbury Poisoning Case.
2. Scottish independence represents a security threat in that a rump U.K. would surrender automatic legal authority and some operational ability over large stretches of the North Sea. Although Scotland would likely be a longer term partner within the Western Alliance, all experience tells us that any separation will be acrimonious, unpredictable, and very likely detrimental to rump U.K. security.
3. Destabilisation in the Middle East and North Africa can, as we’ve seen, can lead both to large scale refugee flows as well as increase in terrorist activity. It’s in our interests to support measures to keep the region stable and to help police the Med.
China I think follows these three. Primarily for us it about defending ourselves against Chinese ideological narratives, as well as inappropriate industry takeovers and theft of IP.
Militarily, China is not a threat to us, although of course it is to key allies.
"Our neighbourhood" is not Europe.
"Our neighbourhood" is the entire planet.
Do you really believe that what happens in Asia, what happens in say Wuhan for example, could never affect us?
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
So, Universities are banned from teaching certain things but have to allow free speech.
How does that work?
Er, where exactly does it say that they're banned from teaching anything? What they're not allowed to do is to suppress the free speech of others.
On topic, a good article Philip though I disagree with the premise and all of the later posts from others about the EU falling apart. I find that to be a very unlikely scenario, even with all of the internal contradictions there is just to much political capital invested by Paris, Berlin and other capital cities across Europe in the concept of the EU. There's just no way the politicians will allow it to fail and they'll use all of the undemocratic means available to keep it going. France votes down the constitution? No worries, we'll just rebrand it as something else and not allow a vote. Britain votes to leave? No worries let's just pretend that they haven't actually left and ignore any successes they have outside of the EU structures.
There's simply no appetite for admitting that the whole political establishment of Europe has been making such poor decisions for so many years.
What's going to happen without the UK is that you'll get France pushing its own foreign policy agenda without any other major foreign policy power to provide a counterweight and Germany will pursue it's mercantilist trade and economic policies without abandon and the EU will turn into a completely parochial organisation selling itself out to the worst regimes for an extra 0.1% worth of GDP because nothing other than more GDP matters to Germany.
If anything the idea of having no internal competitors for foreign and economic policy within the EU will massively appeal to Paris and Berlin. They both get what they want out of the EU, France projects its power and Germany gets to remake the EU in its image and continues to hollow out Southern Europe with no dissent. For that reason the amount of political capital invested to keep the bandwagon going will continue to rise and it will result in the EU as an organisation limping on from crisis to crisis with no real reform and no real democratic legitimacy.
Buried within this analysis is clear example of what Britain has “lost”.
It can no longer influence Europe-wide* foreign policy, and has surrendered that position uncontested to France.
As you say, Germany will be happy with this arrangement is long as countries are forced to buy German defence equipment every so often.
*As opposed to EU, as I believe EU foreign policy to be largely fictional.
As you point out there's nothing of value lost there and if anything it's leading to a diminished EU with their dodgy China deals and sucking off Putin in Moscow.
Our interests are better served with unilateral action or joining up with the US, Canada and Australia.
Not having the UK makes the EU much less relevant to the rest of the world, for me that's actually a big victory. No longer lending them our diplomatic weight is a definite brexit upside that I was looking forwards to.
I am not saying there is nothing of value to be lost there.
Far from it.
In our very own neighbourhood we face an ongoing Russian threat, as well as ongoing issues related to state insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa.
We also aspire (or should) to promote liberal democracy and the freest trade, especially in Europe which remains 50%+ of our trade and will likely remain close to that level for a generation yet.
It is very much in our interests to promote and influence our view on these matters in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and the Med.
It is also useful to have an voice with the pivotal European powers, France and Germany.
We have torn that all up, and our voice is now much diminished.
We are also less interesting to other powers because we can no longer even pretend to influence the rest of Europe.
PS Political and defence partnerships with other Anglo nations were never actually prevented by EU membership. See, for example, the Five Powers Agreement.
I think giving the EU enough rope is something I can live with and something that a lot of leave voters predicted would happen without our influence inside the EU.
Outside of the EU we're already making huge strides in our own policy and we're focusing eastwards, it's already changing how nations are seeing us and how they want to partner with us. Japan, Canada and Australia have all separately asked us to join the CPTPP, Japan has invited us to join military exercises in the Pacific reviving a century old alliance and the US is making noises about the UK joining he quad to make it a pent and also eyeing up the CPTPP.
Our global influence was never enhanced by being in the EU, it was diminished. The EU saw its influence enhanced by having us in it and now you can see without us their desperation to do grubby deals with China and Russia has already lost them a lot of friends and it's driving the Biden administration towards Brexit Britain with open arms.
These are unwelcome truths for you, I realise that. The EU without the UK is going to have a different outlook and the UK out of the EU will capitalise on that. The process has already started and it will continue to see us diverge from the EU in our foreign policy terms and over time in terms of trade, that 45% export value that the EU currently has will fall as the nation starts facing eastwards. The UK-EU relationship will continue to go down in value for both sides and we will have a simple trading relationship with the EU. As it should always have been.
None of this really stacks up.
How is greater defence activity in Asia going to help us? Of course we are welcomed, we have materiel to spare. It will cost us, though. For what?
Over 50% of our trade is with the EU and/or EFTA nations.
Defence policy should be based on our own national interests which follow our geography and trade realities.
We’ve said goodbye to the ability to influence our own neighbourhood!
The EU-China deals shows starkly that we are now out of that conversation.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps.
The problem you're having is that you think today's situation will last forever and that 45% of our exports will always go to the EU. That's not going to be the case and as that number goes down to reflect something more like global GDP proportions the value of the relationship goes down for both sides. Especially for the UK. I'm not sure why you're bundling EU and EFTA nations together either, we have separate trade deals with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland that aren't dependent on the EU trade deal.
The next decade is going to be hugely interesting, especially as the US starts to marshall its allies against China and the EU needs to decide whether having slaves make Siemens dishwashers is more important to them than an alliance with the US, UK and the rest of the democratic alliance.
I'm glad that we're unequivocally on the side of democracy. I guess part of why the EU finds it difficult to criticise undemocratic nations is because the commission is inherently undemocratic.
The problem you have is that you think 50+ (I use that figure as it is *European* trade) will evaporate overnight.
Trading with our neighbours will remain preeminent I’ll wager until I am past retirement (I am early 40s).
That the EU at large is “anti democratic” is utter nonsense; it is a collection of 27 democracies some of which put our own democratic arrangements to shame.
It always amuses me when people from the UK say that the EU is "undemocratic".
We in the UK have the iniquities of FPTP, the House of Lords that still has hereditary peers ffs, hundreds of quangos, numerous laws made by statutory instrument without legislature scrutiny and a head of state (God bless her) who is from a Germanic aristocratic family and there as a result of an indirect hereditary line to those that believed in the divine right of Kings. Add to that a local government system that is a mess and an asymmetric system of devolution that allows Scottish MPs to vote on matters that pertain to England where English MPs are not allowed an equivalent entitlement and a ridiculous system of city "mayors" that has had no uniform rollout across the country. I am sure there are many more examples.
In summary we are in no position of authority to lecture anyone in Europe about democracy.
Amen to that.
Max is guilty of arrant HYUFDism. He repeats the same tropes about how un-democratic and awful the EU or Germany or France are, over and over.
It’s reflexive Europhobia basically. He is high on his own supply.
There is no black and white. We are not perfect; neither is the EU. We can, and should, both do better.
Nobody has really answered my point about what our key interests are in Asia Pacific that we must pay for with treasure and blood, apart from “our mates are there”.
I did answer it. "Our enemies are there."
Where do you think our modern threats are based - solely western Europe or Asia Pacific too?
The democratic, rule-of-law, countries of the world - whether Japan, Australia, South Korea, Norway, Germany, the US or the UK - share common interests.
Yes, they will quarrel from time-to-time. Yes, you will have leaders who behave poorly, whether Trump or UvdL or whoever.
But unless "The West" is able to hang together, they will hang apart, picked off by the divide and conquer tactics of China, Russia and others.
Trump demonstrated this: he correctly adjudged that China needed to be confronted. But he didn't realise that even the US wasn't big enough to achieve its goals*. We need to remember that.
* Of course, it didn't help that Trump was utterly obsessed by bilateral trade balances.
Unfortunately Europe seems to want to hang apart, whether its because they're still smarting from Brexit, greedy about getting 0.1% of GDP potentially from Nord Stream 2, or just don't grasp the gravity of the situation.
The UK is right to be working with its partners around the world. It is petty, smallminded and ignorant of @Gardenwalker to think that we can just turn a blind eye to Asia and only deal with our tiny portion of the planet.
Your obsession with anything negative about the EU really is pathetic. You are soooo desperate to justify the stupidity of Brexit, you think the way to do that is to keep pointing out the EU's weaknesses. Yes they have weaknesses and so does every other organisation or government. They are probably not "smarting about Brexit". They are most likely laughing about it, particularly the clownish leader with the bulging tight white shirt and the silly hair and the idiosyncratic syntax that was able to persuade people like you to buy it. Most likely though is that unlike you, they don't care. Most of them have real jobs and need to move on!
There's some on the right who have a weird obsession with who speaks at Student Unions. They are just as bad as those who get involved with the NUS in the first place.
The rest of us normal people just get on with our lives.
On topic, a good article Philip though I disagree with the premise and all of the later posts from others about the EU falling apart. I find that to be a very unlikely scenario, even with all of the internal contradictions there is just to much political capital invested by Paris, Berlin and other capital cities across Europe in the concept of the EU. There's just no way the politicians will allow it to fail and they'll use all of the undemocratic means available to keep it going. France votes down the constitution? No worries, we'll just rebrand it as something else and not allow a vote. Britain votes to leave? No worries let's just pretend that they haven't actually left and ignore any successes they have outside of the EU structures.
There's simply no appetite for admitting that the whole political establishment of Europe has been making such poor decisions for so many years.
What's going to happen without the UK is that you'll get France pushing its own foreign policy agenda without any other major foreign policy power to provide a counterweight and Germany will pursue it's mercantilist trade and economic policies without abandon and the EU will turn into a completely parochial organisation selling itself out to the worst regimes for an extra 0.1% worth of GDP because nothing other than more GDP matters to Germany.
If anything the idea of having no internal competitors for foreign and economic policy within the EU will massively appeal to Paris and Berlin. They both get what they want out of the EU, France projects its power and Germany gets to remake the EU in its image and continues to hollow out Southern Europe with no dissent. For that reason the amount of political capital invested to keep the bandwagon going will continue to rise and it will result in the EU as an organisation limping on from crisis to crisis with no real reform and no real democratic legitimacy.
Buried within this analysis is clear example of what Britain has “lost”.
It can no longer influence Europe-wide* foreign policy, and has surrendered that position uncontested to France.
As you say, Germany will be happy with this arrangement is long as countries are forced to buy German defence equipment every so often.
*As opposed to EU, as I believe EU foreign policy to be largely fictional.
As you point out there's nothing of value lost there and if anything it's leading to a diminished EU with their dodgy China deals and sucking off Putin in Moscow.
Our interests are better served with unilateral action or joining up with the US, Canada and Australia.
Not having the UK makes the EU much less relevant to the rest of the world, for me that's actually a big victory. No longer lending them our diplomatic weight is a definite brexit upside that I was looking forwards to.
I am not saying there is nothing of value to be lost there.
Far from it.
In our very own neighbourhood we face an ongoing Russian threat, as well as ongoing issues related to state insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa.
We also aspire (or should) to promote liberal democracy and the freest trade, especially in Europe which remains 50%+ of our trade and will likely remain close to that level for a generation yet.
It is very much in our interests to promote and influence our view on these matters in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and the Med.
It is also useful to have an voice with the pivotal European powers, France and Germany.
We have torn that all up, and our voice is now much diminished.
We are also less interesting to other powers because we can no longer even pretend to influence the rest of Europe.
PS Political and defence partnerships with other Anglo nations were never actually prevented by EU membership. See, for example, the Five Powers Agreement.
I think giving the EU enough rope is something I can live with and something that a lot of leave voters predicted would happen without our influence inside the EU.
Outside of the EU we're already making huge strides in our own policy and we're focusing eastwards, it's already changing how nations are seeing us and how they want to partner with us. Japan, Canada and Australia have all separately asked us to join the CPTPP, Japan has invited us to join military exercises in the Pacific reviving a century old alliance and the US is making noises about the UK joining he quad to make it a pent and also eyeing up the CPTPP.
Our global influence was never enhanced by being in the EU, it was diminished. The EU saw its influence enhanced by having us in it and now you can see without us their desperation to do grubby deals with China and Russia has already lost them a lot of friends and it's driving the Biden administration towards Brexit Britain with open arms.
These are unwelcome truths for you, I realise that. The EU without the UK is going to have a different outlook and the UK out of the EU will capitalise on that. The process has already started and it will continue to see us diverge from the EU in our foreign policy terms and over time in terms of trade, that 45% export value that the EU currently has will fall as the nation starts facing eastwards. The UK-EU relationship will continue to go down in value for both sides and we will have a simple trading relationship with the EU. As it should always have been.
None of this really stacks up.
How is greater defence activity in Asia going to help us? Of course we are welcomed, we have materiel to spare. It will cost us, though. For what?
Over 50% of our trade is with the EU and/or EFTA nations.
Defence policy should be based on our own national interests which follow our geography and trade realities.
We’ve said goodbye to the ability to influence our own neighbourhood!
The EU-China deals shows starkly that we are now out of that conversation.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps.
The problem you're having is that you think today's situation will last forever and that 45% of our exports will always go to the EU. That's not going to be the case and as that number goes down to reflect something more like global GDP proportions the value of the relationship goes down for both sides. Especially for the UK. I'm not sure why you're bundling EU and EFTA nations together either, we have separate trade deals with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland that aren't dependent on the EU trade deal.
The next decade is going to be hugely interesting, especially as the US starts to marshall its allies against China and the EU needs to decide whether having slaves make Siemens dishwashers is more important to them than an alliance with the US, UK and the rest of the democratic alliance.
I'm glad that we're unequivocally on the side of democracy. I guess part of why the EU finds it difficult to criticise undemocratic nations is because the commission is inherently undemocratic.
The problem you have is that you think 50+ (I use that figure as it is *European* trade) will evaporate overnight.
Trading with our neighbours will remain preeminent I’ll wager until I am past retirement (I am early 40s).
That the EU at large is “anti democratic” is utter nonsense; it is a collection of 27 democracies some of which put our own democratic arrangements to shame.
It always amuses me when people from the UK say that the EU is "undemocratic".
We in the UK have the iniquities of FPTP, the House of Lords that still has hereditary peers ffs, hundreds of quangos, numerous laws made by statutory instrument without legislature scrutiny and a head of state (God bless her) who is from a Germanic aristocratic family and there as a result of an indirect hereditary line to those that believed in the divine right of Kings. Add to that a local government system that is a mess and an asymmetric system of devolution that allows Scottish MPs to vote on matters that pertain to England where English MPs are not allowed an equivalent entitlement and a ridiculous system of city "mayors" that has had no uniform rollout across the country. I am sure there are many more examples.
In summary we are in no position of authority to lecture anyone in Europe about democracy.
Amen to that.
Max is guilty of arrant HYUFDism. He repeats the same tropes about how un-democratic and awful the EU or Germany or France are, over and over.
It’s reflexive Europhobia basically. He is high on his own supply.
There is no black and white. We are not perfect; neither is the EU. We can, and should, both do better.
Nobody has really answered my point about what our key interests are in Asia Pacific that we must pay for with treasure and blood, apart from “our mates are there”.
I did answer it. "Our enemies are there."
Where do you think our modern threats are based - solely western Europe or Asia Pacific too?
The democratic, rule-of-law, countries of the world - whether Japan, Australia, South Korea, Norway, Germany, the US or the UK - share common interests.
Yes, they will quarrel from time-to-time. Yes, you will have leaders who behave poorly, whether Trump or UvdL or whoever.
But unless "The West" is able to hang together, they will hang apart, picked off by the divide and conquer tactics of China, Russia and others.
Trump demonstrated this: he correctly adjudged that China needed to be confronted. But he didn't realise that even the US wasn't big enough to achieve its goals*. We need to remember that.
* Of course, it didn't help that Trump was utterly obsessed by bilateral trade balances.
Unfortunately Europe seems to want to hang apart, whether its because they're still smarting from Brexit, greedy about getting 0.1% of GDP potentially from Nord Stream 2, or just don't grasp the gravity of the situation.
The UK is right to be working with its partners around the world. It is petty, smallminded and ignorant of @Gardenwalker to think that we can just turn a blind eye to Asia and only deal with our tiny portion of the planet.
Who is saying turn a blind eye to Asia? Not me.
I’m simply pointing out that saying “our mates are there” or even “our enemies are there” is the sort of geopolitics I’d expect from my son.
Who is 18 months old.
Except, at least he’d do some crayon scribbles to accompany.
Boris' approval rating was in the 40s in yesterday's YouGov - the first time since August, and the same (41%) as it was in the first poll after he won the 2019 GE. Coincidentally the NS is exactly the same as well (-11%).
So after the Brexit shambles and the pandemic chaos, he is as popular as when he won his majority. Pretty surprising I'd say
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
So, Universities are banned from teaching certain things but have to allow free speech.
How does that work?
Er, where exactly does it say that they're banned from teaching anything? What they're not allowed to do is to suppress the free speech of others.
Imagine thinking that who speaks at a student union is a "big deal"...
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
So, Universities are banned from teaching certain things but have to allow free speech.
How does that work?
Er, where exactly does it say that they're banned from teaching anything? What they're not allowed to do is to suppress the free speech of others.
I'm fairly sure that any Chemistry department teaching the phlogiston theory as fact is not going to get a good rating from the university equivalent of OFSTEAD.
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
So, Universities are banned from teaching certain things but have to allow free speech.
How does that work?
I suspect there is a lot of conflation of universities with student groups going on around this issue.
Also, one could bankrupt a uni or its student union by demanding to give speeches on how wonderful slavery was and then suing them when they tell one where to put one's laser pointer. Or if they give one a slot and nobody turns up - perhaps not even (deliberately) the lecturer - the poor Uni or union has to cover the costs. How does that work, too?
On topic, a good article Philip though I disagree with the premise and all of the later posts from others about the EU falling apart. I find that to be a very unlikely scenario, even with all of the internal contradictions there is just to much political capital invested by Paris, Berlin and other capital cities across Europe in the concept of the EU. There's just no way the politicians will allow it to fail and they'll use all of the undemocratic means available to keep it going. France votes down the constitution? No worries, we'll just rebrand it as something else and not allow a vote. Britain votes to leave? No worries let's just pretend that they haven't actually left and ignore any successes they have outside of the EU structures.
There's simply no appetite for admitting that the whole political establishment of Europe has been making such poor decisions for so many years.
What's going to happen without the UK is that you'll get France pushing its own foreign policy agenda without any other major foreign policy power to provide a counterweight and Germany will pursue it's mercantilist trade and economic policies without abandon and the EU will turn into a completely parochial organisation selling itself out to the worst regimes for an extra 0.1% worth of GDP because nothing other than more GDP matters to Germany.
If anything the idea of having no internal competitors for foreign and economic policy within the EU will massively appeal to Paris and Berlin. They both get what they want out of the EU, France projects its power and Germany gets to remake the EU in its image and continues to hollow out Southern Europe with no dissent. For that reason the amount of political capital invested to keep the bandwagon going will continue to rise and it will result in the EU as an organisation limping on from crisis to crisis with no real reform and no real democratic legitimacy.
Buried within this analysis is clear example of what Britain has “lost”.
It can no longer influence Europe-wide* foreign policy, and has surrendered that position uncontested to France.
As you say, Germany will be happy with this arrangement is long as countries are forced to buy German defence equipment every so often.
*As opposed to EU, as I believe EU foreign policy to be largely fictional.
As you point out there's nothing of value lost there and if anything it's leading to a diminished EU with their dodgy China deals and sucking off Putin in Moscow.
Our interests are better served with unilateral action or joining up with the US, Canada and Australia.
Not having the UK makes the EU much less relevant to the rest of the world, for me that's actually a big victory. No longer lending them our diplomatic weight is a definite brexit upside that I was looking forwards to.
I am not saying there is nothing of value to be lost there.
Far from it.
In our very own neighbourhood we face an ongoing Russian threat, as well as ongoing issues related to state insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa.
We also aspire (or should) to promote liberal democracy and the freest trade, especially in Europe which remains 50%+ of our trade and will likely remain close to that level for a generation yet.
It is very much in our interests to promote and influence our view on these matters in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and the Med.
It is also useful to have an voice with the pivotal European powers, France and Germany.
We have torn that all up, and our voice is now much diminished.
We are also less interesting to other powers because we can no longer even pretend to influence the rest of Europe.
PS Political and defence partnerships with other Anglo nations were never actually prevented by EU membership. See, for example, the Five Powers Agreement.
I think giving the EU enough rope is something I can live with and something that a lot of leave voters predicted would happen without our influence inside the EU.
Outside of the EU we're already making huge strides in our own policy and we're focusing eastwards, it's already changing how nations are seeing us and how they want to partner with us. Japan, Canada and Australia have all separately asked us to join the CPTPP, Japan has invited us to join military exercises in the Pacific reviving a century old alliance and the US is making noises about the UK joining he quad to make it a pent and also eyeing up the CPTPP.
Our global influence was never enhanced by being in the EU, it was diminished. The EU saw its influence enhanced by having us in it and now you can see without us their desperation to do grubby deals with China and Russia has already lost them a lot of friends and it's driving the Biden administration towards Brexit Britain with open arms.
These are unwelcome truths for you, I realise that. The EU without the UK is going to have a different outlook and the UK out of the EU will capitalise on that. The process has already started and it will continue to see us diverge from the EU in our foreign policy terms and over time in terms of trade, that 45% export value that the EU currently has will fall as the nation starts facing eastwards. The UK-EU relationship will continue to go down in value for both sides and we will have a simple trading relationship with the EU. As it should always have been.
None of this really stacks up.
How is greater defence activity in Asia going to help us? Of course we are welcomed, we have materiel to spare. It will cost us, though. For what?
Over 50% of our trade is with the EU and/or EFTA nations.
Defence policy should be based on our own national interests which follow our geography and trade realities.
We’ve said goodbye to the ability to influence our own neighbourhood!
The EU-China deals shows starkly that we are now out of that conversation.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps.
The problem you're having is that you think today's situation will last forever and that 45% of our exports will always go to the EU. That's not going to be the case and as that number goes down to reflect something more like global GDP proportions the value of the relationship goes down for both sides. Especially for the UK. I'm not sure why you're bundling EU and EFTA nations together either, we have separate trade deals with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland that aren't dependent on the EU trade deal.
The next decade is going to be hugely interesting, especially as the US starts to marshall its allies against China and the EU needs to decide whether having slaves make Siemens dishwashers is more important to them than an alliance with the US, UK and the rest of the democratic alliance.
I'm glad that we're unequivocally on the side of democracy. I guess part of why the EU finds it difficult to criticise undemocratic nations is because the commission is inherently undemocratic.
The problem you have is that you think 50+ (I use that figure as it is *European* trade) will evaporate overnight.
Trading with our neighbours will remain preeminent I’ll wager until I am past retirement (I am early 40s).
That the EU at large is “anti democratic” is utter nonsense; it is a collection of 27 democracies some of which put our own democratic arrangements to shame.
It always amuses me when people from the UK say that the EU is "undemocratic".
We in the UK have the iniquities of FPTP, the House of Lords that still has hereditary peers ffs, hundreds of quangos, numerous laws made by statutory instrument without legislature scrutiny and a head of state (God bless her) who is from a Germanic aristocratic family and there as a result of an indirect hereditary line to those that believed in the divine right of Kings. Add to that a local government system that is a mess and an asymmetric system of devolution that allows Scottish MPs to vote on matters that pertain to England where English MPs are not allowed an equivalent entitlement and a ridiculous system of city "mayors" that has had no uniform rollout across the country. I am sure there are many more examples.
In summary we are in no position of authority to lecture anyone in Europe about democracy.
Amen to that.
Max is guilty of arrant HYUFDism. He repeats the same tropes about how un-democratic and awful the EU or Germany or France are, over and over.
It’s reflexive Europhobia basically. He is high on his own supply.
There is no black and white. We are not perfect; neither is the EU. We can, and should, both do better.
Nobody has really answered my point about what our key interests are in Asia Pacific that we must pay for with treasure and blood, apart from “our mates are there”.
I did answer it. "Our enemies are there."
Where do you think our modern threats are based - solely western Europe or Asia Pacific too?
The democratic, rule-of-law, countries of the world - whether Japan, Australia, South Korea, Norway, Germany, the US or the UK - share common interests.
Yes, they will quarrel from time-to-time. Yes, you will have leaders who behave poorly, whether Trump or UvdL or whoever.
But unless "The West" is able to hang together, they will hang apart, picked off by the divide and conquer tactics of China, Russia and others.
Trump demonstrated this: he correctly adjudged that China needed to be confronted. But he didn't realise that even the US wasn't big enough to achieve its goals*. We need to remember that.
* Of course, it didn't help that Trump was utterly obsessed by bilateral trade balances.
Unfortunately Europe seems to want to hang apart, whether its because they're still smarting from Brexit, greedy about getting 0.1% of GDP potentially from Nord Stream 2, or just don't grasp the gravity of the situation.
The UK is right to be working with its partners around the world. It is petty, smallminded and ignorant of @Gardenwalker to think that we can just turn a blind eye to Asia and only deal with our tiny portion of the planet.
Who is saying turn a blind eye to Asia? Not me.
I’m simply pointing out that saying “our mates are there” or even “our enemies are there” is the sort of geopolitics I’d expect from my son.
Who is 18 months old.
Except, at least he’d do some crayon scribbles to accompany.
You have a bright son then, maybe you should listen to him more. You should be proud of him.
The world is interconnected, it would be absolutely absurd and foolish to be obsessed over our own fraction of the planet when any part of the planet can be reached from any other part of it in a matter of hours - or seconds for telecommunications.
There's some on the right who have a weird obsession with who speaks at Student Unions. They are just as bad as those who get involved with the NUS in the first place.
The rest of us normal people just get on with our lives.
Those wishing to protect freedom of speech are not morally equivalent to those seeking to suppress it. This isn't the place for a 'good people on both sides' Donaldism.
On topic, a good article Philip though I disagree with the premise and all of the later posts from others about the EU falling apart. I find that to be a very unlikely scenario, even with all of the internal contradictions there is just to much political capital invested by Paris, Berlin and other capital cities across Europe in the concept of the EU. There's just no way the politicians will allow it to fail and they'll use all of the undemocratic means available to keep it going. France votes down the constitution? No worries, we'll just rebrand it as something else and not allow a vote. Britain votes to leave? No worries let's just pretend that they haven't actually left and ignore any successes they have outside of the EU structures.
There's simply no appetite for admitting that the whole political establishment of Europe has been making such poor decisions for so many years.
What's going to happen without the UK is that you'll get France pushing its own foreign policy agenda without any other major foreign policy power to provide a counterweight and Germany will pursue it's mercantilist trade and economic policies without abandon and the EU will turn into a completely parochial organisation selling itself out to the worst regimes for an extra 0.1% worth of GDP because nothing other than more GDP matters to Germany.
If anything the idea of having no internal competitors for foreign and economic policy within the EU will massively appeal to Paris and Berlin. They both get what they want out of the EU, France projects its power and Germany gets to remake the EU in its image and continues to hollow out Southern Europe with no dissent. For that reason the amount of political capital invested to keep the bandwagon going will continue to rise and it will result in the EU as an organisation limping on from crisis to crisis with no real reform and no real democratic legitimacy.
Buried within this analysis is clear example of what Britain has “lost”.
It can no longer influence Europe-wide* foreign policy, and has surrendered that position uncontested to France.
As you say, Germany will be happy with this arrangement is long as countries are forced to buy German defence equipment every so often.
*As opposed to EU, as I believe EU foreign policy to be largely fictional.
As you point out there's nothing of value lost there and if anything it's leading to a diminished EU with their dodgy China deals and sucking off Putin in Moscow.
Our interests are better served with unilateral action or joining up with the US, Canada and Australia.
Not having the UK makes the EU much less relevant to the rest of the world, for me that's actually a big victory. No longer lending them our diplomatic weight is a definite brexit upside that I was looking forwards to.
I am not saying there is nothing of value to be lost there.
Far from it.
In our very own neighbourhood we face an ongoing Russian threat, as well as ongoing issues related to state insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa.
We also aspire (or should) to promote liberal democracy and the freest trade, especially in Europe which remains 50%+ of our trade and will likely remain close to that level for a generation yet.
It is very much in our interests to promote and influence our view on these matters in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and the Med.
It is also useful to have an voice with the pivotal European powers, France and Germany.
We have torn that all up, and our voice is now much diminished.
We are also less interesting to other powers because we can no longer even pretend to influence the rest of Europe.
PS Political and defence partnerships with other Anglo nations were never actually prevented by EU membership. See, for example, the Five Powers Agreement.
I think giving the EU enough rope is something I can live with and something that a lot of leave voters predicted would happen without our influence inside the EU.
Outside of the EU we're already making huge strides in our own policy and we're focusing eastwards, it's already changing how nations are seeing us and how they want to partner with us. Japan, Canada and Australia have all separately asked us to join the CPTPP, Japan has invited us to join military exercises in the Pacific reviving a century old alliance and the US is making noises about the UK joining he quad to make it a pent and also eyeing up the CPTPP.
Our global influence was never enhanced by being in the EU, it was diminished. The EU saw its influence enhanced by having us in it and now you can see without us their desperation to do grubby deals with China and Russia has already lost them a lot of friends and it's driving the Biden administration towards Brexit Britain with open arms.
These are unwelcome truths for you, I realise that. The EU without the UK is going to have a different outlook and the UK out of the EU will capitalise on that. The process has already started and it will continue to see us diverge from the EU in our foreign policy terms and over time in terms of trade, that 45% export value that the EU currently has will fall as the nation starts facing eastwards. The UK-EU relationship will continue to go down in value for both sides and we will have a simple trading relationship with the EU. As it should always have been.
None of this really stacks up.
How is greater defence activity in Asia going to help us? Of course we are welcomed, we have materiel to spare. It will cost us, though. For what?
Over 50% of our trade is with the EU and/or EFTA nations.
Defence policy should be based on our own national interests which follow our geography and trade realities.
We’ve said goodbye to the ability to influence our own neighbourhood!
The EU-China deals shows starkly that we are now out of that conversation.
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps.
The problem you're having is that you think today's situation will last forever and that 45% of our exports will always go to the EU. That's not going to be the case and as that number goes down to reflect something more like global GDP proportions the value of the relationship goes down for both sides. Especially for the UK. I'm not sure why you're bundling EU and EFTA nations together either, we have separate trade deals with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland that aren't dependent on the EU trade deal.
The next decade is going to be hugely interesting, especially as the US starts to marshall its allies against China and the EU needs to decide whether having slaves make Siemens dishwashers is more important to them than an alliance with the US, UK and the rest of the democratic alliance.
I'm glad that we're unequivocally on the side of democracy. I guess part of why the EU finds it difficult to criticise undemocratic nations is because the commission is inherently undemocratic.
The problem you have is that you think 50+ (I use that figure as it is *European* trade) will evaporate overnight.
Trading with our neighbours will remain preeminent I’ll wager until I am past retirement (I am early 40s).
That the EU at large is “anti democratic” is utter nonsense; it is a collection of 27 democracies some of which put our own democratic arrangements to shame.
It always amuses me when people from the UK say that the EU is "undemocratic".
We in the UK have the iniquities of FPTP, the House of Lords that still has hereditary peers ffs, hundreds of quangos, numerous laws made by statutory instrument without legislature scrutiny and a head of state (God bless her) who is from a Germanic aristocratic family and there as a result of an indirect hereditary line to those that believed in the divine right of Kings. Add to that a local government system that is a mess and an asymmetric system of devolution that allows Scottish MPs to vote on matters that pertain to England where English MPs are not allowed an equivalent entitlement and a ridiculous system of city "mayors" that has had no uniform rollout across the country. I am sure there are many more examples.
In summary we are in no position of authority to lecture anyone in Europe about democracy.
Amen to that.
Max is guilty of arrant HYUFDism. He repeats the same tropes about how un-democratic and awful the EU or Germany or France are, over and over.
It’s reflexive Europhobia basically. He is high on his own supply.
There is no black and white. We are not perfect; neither is the EU. We can, and should, both do better.
Nobody has really answered my point about what our key interests are in Asia Pacific that we must pay for with treasure and blood, apart from “our mates are there”.
I did answer it. "Our enemies are there."
Where do you think our modern threats are based - solely western Europe or Asia Pacific too?
The most important *interest* we have is in the security and stability of our own neighbourhood.
Most of our trade is with neighbouring European countries. Our food and energy security also depend on stable trading flows in this domain, and to a lesser extent the North Atlantic.
As the pre-eminent, or joint pre-eminent, military power in Europe, it therefore stands to reason that we would wish first to protect our home neighbourhood, including defence of the GIUK gap.
Our threats, in order:
1. Russia is the revanchist power on our doorstep with an interest in destabilising stability in Europe. There is plenty of form, including the Salisbury Poisoning Case.
2. Scottish independence represents a security threat in that a rump U.K. would surrender automatic legal authority and some operational ability over large stretches of the North Sea. Although Scotland would likely be a longer term partner within the Western Alliance, all experience tells us that any separation will be acrimonious, unpredictable, and very likely detrimental to rump U.K. security.
3. Destabilisation in the Middle East and North Africa can, as we’ve seen, can lead both to large scale refugee flows as well as increase in terrorist activity. It’s in our interests to support measures to keep the region stable and to help police the Med.
China I think follows these three. Primarily for us it about defending ourselves against Chinese ideological narratives, as well as inappropriate industry takeovers and theft of IP.
Militarily, China is not a threat to us, although of course it is to key allies.
"Our neighbourhood" is not Europe.
"Our neighbourhood" is the entire planet.
Do you really believe that what happens in Asia, what happens in say Wuhan for example, could never affect us?
Your first two sentences should be preserved as possibly the bat-shittest ever seen on PB.
There's some on the right who have a weird obsession with who speaks at Student Unions. They are just as bad as those who get involved with the NUS in the first place.
The rest of us normal people just get on with our lives.
Those wishing to ensure freedom of speech are not morally equivalent to those seeking to suppress it. This isn't the place for a 'good people on both sides' Donaldism.
"Ensure freedom of speech" just listen to yourself.
You're conflating "student politics" with real life.
Pro-tip: student politics is not real life. It is meaningless.
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
So, Universities are banned from teaching certain things but have to allow free speech.
How does that work?
Er, where exactly does it say that they're banned from teaching anything? What they're not allowed to do is to suppress the free speech of others.
I'm fairly sure that any Chemistry department teaching the phlogiston theory as fact is not going to get a good rating from the university equivalent of OFSTEAD.
But if a guest speaker wanted to advocate for a modern theory of theirs that incorporated the phlogiston theory, challenging existing knowledge, then they should be banned from doing so?
Boris' approval rating was in the 40s in yesterday's YouGov - the first time since August, and the same (41%) as it was in the first poll after he won the 2019 GE. Coincidentally the NS is exactly the same as well (-11%).
So after the Brexit shambles and the pandemic chaos, he is as popular as when he won his majority. Pretty surprising I'd say
Not really. Almost every other world leader is similar. Given that, the only surprise would be if he wasn't.
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
So, Universities are banned from teaching certain things but have to allow free speech.
How does that work?
Er, where exactly does it say that they're banned from teaching anything? What they're not allowed to do is to suppress the free speech of others.
I'm fairly sure that any Chemistry department teaching the phlogiston theory as fact is not going to get a good rating from the university equivalent of OFSTEAD.
But if a guest speaker wanted to advocate for a modern theory of theirs that incorporated the phlogiston theory, challenging existing knowledge, then they should be banned from doing so?
No. I was trying to give an example of something that universities are (or should be) banned from teaching, not something that some random speaker should be prevented from saying. Of course the Q&A from any science students would be entertaining...
There's some on the right who have a weird obsession with who speaks at Student Unions. They are just as bad as those who get involved with the NUS in the first place.
The rest of us normal people just get on with our lives.
Those wishing to ensure freedom of speech are not morally equivalent to those seeking to suppress it. This isn't the place for a 'good people on both sides' Donaldism.
"Ensure freedom of speech" just listen to yourself.
You're conflating "student politics" with real life.
Pro-tip: student politics is not real life. It is meaningless.
Student politicians tend to grow up. Two of the three men updating the nation on coronavirus yesterday were former Presidents of the Oxford Union (not the same thing as OUSU, the students' union, but plenty of figures enter public life from there too).
There's some on the right who have a weird obsession with who speaks at Student Unions. They are just as bad as those who get involved with the NUS in the first place.
The rest of us normal people just get on with our lives.
Those wishing to ensure freedom of speech are not morally equivalent to those seeking to suppress it. This isn't the place for a 'good people on both sides' Donaldism.
"Ensure freedom of speech" just listen to yourself.
You're conflating "student politics" with real life.
Pro-tip: student politics is not real life. It is meaningless.
Student politicians tend to grow up. Two of the three men updating the nation on coronavirus yesterday were former Presidents of the Oxford Union (not the same thing as OUSU, the students' union, but plenty of figures enter public life from there too).
Exactly. This is about petty student squabbles at the Oxford Union and that's it. It isn't real life.
There's some on the right who have a weird obsession with who speaks at Student Unions. They are just as bad as those who get involved with the NUS in the first place.
The rest of us normal people just get on with our lives.
Those wishing to ensure freedom of speech are not morally equivalent to those seeking to suppress it. This isn't the place for a 'good people on both sides' Donaldism.
"Ensure freedom of speech" just listen to yourself.
You're conflating "student politics" with real life.
Pro-tip: student politics is not real life. It is meaningless.
Student politicians tend to grow up. Two of the three men updating the nation on coronavirus yesterday were former Presidents of the Oxford Union (not the same thing as OUSU, the students' union, but plenty of figures enter public life from there too).
Perhaps we need a student politics that *does* reflect real life slightly?
How many of our peculiar MPs picked up their strange politics in SUs?
There's some on the right who have a weird obsession with who speaks at Student Unions. They are just as bad as those who get involved with the NUS in the first place.
The rest of us normal people just get on with our lives.
In my day I only attended one union debate (as did just about everyone else) which was in support of the IRA and we all turned up to tell them no.
Manchester's Union (like most) was very left wing. In my first year (although at Manchester) I lived in a hall above the UMIST union. The UMIST Union's constitution barred them from being involved in political activity. That nearly changed when they hired out a room for an event being hosted by Patricia Hewitt (not UMIST Union event). The National Front turned up and destroyed the place. And when I say destroyed I really mean destroyed. It was rumoured the police were to afraid to turn up until it was over. It was horrible. They came close to ditching their non political stance.
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
It's confusing the right to speak with the right to an audience. Many have got used to having the latter and are not best pleased - are in many cases downright livid - at seeing this privilege eroded.
I must have missed the part of the regulations in which students will be herded into the lecture halls and held there by force. No one will will be compelled to turn up to listen, but no one will have the right to prevent another from exercising their lawful freedom of speech either. That's life in a free society, and by God it's about time action was taken to preserve it.
In a free society people should be able to decide who they invite to speak to them without the authorities intervening to correct what are deemed bad choices. This is how I look at it.
And what about the freedom of those who might wish to listen, but will never get the chance because a small set of activists have taken upon themselves the sole authority to decide who is allowed to address them at all? It's called a university: the clue is in the name. Your method would lead - entirely unintentionally I'm sure - to the creation of a narrow seminary where only one set of ideas was ever heard spoken.
There's nothing stopping students getting involved to change what they dislike about the current set-up or creating new platforms reflecting what they wish to hear and see and discuss outside of whatever their course of study is. To me most of this "must protect free speech at uni!" has the air of a solution looking for a problem.
So there's never any need for government intervention to protect the rights and freedoms of minorities or to ensure a level playing field, but instead they should leave individuals to fend for themselves as best they can? You'd better not try airing these kinds of bow-tie reactionary views at a university, or you'll get yourself no-platformed for sure...
There is sometimes such a need but I can't see a minority being discriminated against here. Speakers are not being systematically excluded based on the protected characteristics of identity. They are being chosen for the content and style of what they have to say. If bad choices are made - e.g. Tobes and Tice were up on their hinds the other week at Cambridge - that's hardly the end of the world.
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
So, Universities are banned from teaching certain things but have to allow free speech.
How does that work?
Er, where exactly does it say that they're banned from teaching anything? What they're not allowed to do is to suppress the free speech of others.
I'm fairly sure that any Chemistry department teaching the phlogiston theory as fact is not going to get a good rating from the university equivalent of OFSTEAD.
Yep. Do Physics departments still bang on about dark matter? Used to drive my mate up the wall (Prof Phys/Chem)
The EU-China deal shows what the EU is all about. I wish both parties good luck and hope that EU politicians can live with their marginal gains being made on the back of slave labour camps. ....
Hmm, bit of a reinterpretation of history there. I seem to recall that one of the promised benefits of Brexit was precisely that we were supposedly going to be able to do our own deal with the slave-labour providers:
Smaller countries, like Iceland and Switzerland, which are outside the EU and don’t have to deal with all of its bureaucratic problems, have been able to strike free trade agreements with China. If we Vote Leave and take back control, we will gain the power to strike our own trade deals, creating new business opportunities and creating more jobs. (from the Vote Leave website).
That was before they attacked Hong Kong and the Uighurs.
Does that change nothing in your eyes?
Yes, it does to an extent. However, that doesn't alter the point that Leave advocates were dead keen to do deals with China, just as the EU has been, and well after the period where it became obvious that China was becoming more authoritarian and more contemptuous of human rights. After all, the Uighur scandal has been going on since 2014, and became increasingly nasty from 2017. Equally, the Hong Kong repression started a while back.
It is true that the UK (and the US) have been a bit quicker than the EU to recognise the new reality, for which they deserve some credit. But we're still doing plenty of business with China, and accepting investment from Chinese companies which are ultimately controlled by the state. The EU shouldn't have done its deal with China - and indeed, the deal might not be ratified by the European parliament - but I don't think their position is really all that different from the rest of the Western world.
It’s been poorly understood in the West for too long that it’s deeply engaged (and losing) what is effectively world war 3 against Chinese Communism. TSE’s hero George was as bad as anyone, his prostrating in front of the Chinese reds making the country a laughing stock in the areas of Asia that are suspicious of Chinese communism.
It’s a war being fought to ensure technological, economic, cultural and military dominance for Chinese communism and is seen by the chief designers very squarely along lines not just of political ideology but importantly of racial superiority.
The chief weapons utilised so far have been trade, monopolisation of key natural resources and propaganda, with outsized public investment and r&d funded by printed money, and the gradual but definite erosion of private enterprise to national interest based central planning. We’re now starting to see the re-drawing of “contested” areas of the map as well.
Throw in the racial/religious based-subjugation of a group into slave camps, a nationalist leader who has swatted aside all political opposition, the now total control of both internal and external movement and a tighter control of information than ever before. And the parallels with the 1930s become eerie.
It’s a relief that the penny seems to have dropped in policy circles in the Anglo-sphere. It is a disappointment but no great surprise than continental Europe has still not seen sense.
I have been a “Sino-phobe” since the early 2000s when I first noticed articles in the NZ press by “China watchers” claiming that perhaps parliamentary democracy was outmoded.
There is no obvious way to avoid the “Thucydidian Trap”, and it is not primarily the UK’s fight, but one one thing we should do is jealously guard our democratic freedoms.
Protecting western* democracy and defending our allies against those who would turn against them absolutely is the UK's fight and has been for decades.
* Including western democracies and allies physically located in the far east.
On the contrary, these are excellent first steps in dispelling the chilling effect of wokeism in our institutions. The preservation of liberty is what a Conservative government was born to do.
Under the plans, universities would be legally required to actively promote free speech and the OfS would have the power to impose fines on institutions if they breach this condition.
This would also extend to student unions, which would have to ensure that lawful free speech is secured for members and visiting speakers.
Individuals would be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered loss from a breach of the free speech duties - like being expelled, dismissed or demoted - under a new legal measure.
So, Universities are banned from teaching certain things but have to allow free speech.
How does that work?
Er, where exactly does it say that they're banned from teaching anything? What they're not allowed to do is to suppress the free speech of others.
I'm fairly sure that any Chemistry department teaching the phlogiston theory as fact is not going to get a good rating from the university equivalent of OFSTEAD.
Yep. Do Physics departments still bang on about dark matter? Used to drive my mate up the wall (Prof Phys/Chem)
That's not fair - there was way more evidence for phlogiston than Dark Matter.
Comments
https://twitter.com/susie_dent/status/1361670181362298882
Could it be that there may be a reason why teachers (who legally have holidays dictated to them and cannot go on holiday in term time) dislike the idea that you are suggesting they lose some of their holidays for no extra money just for a good Daily Mail headline.
It's almost like their holiday conditions reflect an earlier era.
But that requires somebody with a brain, and there aren’t any in the DfE so it didn’t happen.
Incidentally @Philip_Thompson in the majority of counties Easter holidays start on April 1st, although I know Lancashire is an exception and breakup is a week earlier. So it’s four weeks not three if schools go back on the 8th.
I have to go and do some work. See you later.
By that time I may even have got an answer to my question.
Get over yourself. You're not being sent to discover the lost city of Atlantis. You have 13 weeks to play with. So an extra 15-20 days (three to four weeks), appropriately compensated, would not seem unreasonable to man the classrooms for some catch-up school time given the exceptional circumstances.
And you know what? If I had entered a vocational job where it was up to me to safeguard and nurture a group within society, then that is exactly what I would be busting a gut to do.
So there's your answer.
They are classics of the self re-inforcing system. Read only minds sitting in a circle telling each other they are right.
Fortunately there is a fix for read-only minds - see this handy documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t_wrtyxFp8
In a nutshell, I am contracted for 195 days, which include such hours during those days as may reasonably be necessary to carry out my job, at such place as my employer may direct. This does not therefore include the provision for overtime rates or home working.
That looks to me like a pretty unambiguous statement. Where's the bit saying 'Of course, I'd be willing to work for a longer period this year, given the crisis'? You also say the contract doesn't allow for overtime. That was exactly my point: the government can change the effect of that with a short bill. That would be a trivial legislative measure compared with everything else that has had to be done, so is irrelevant as an argument.
As for remote learning, I'm sure it is of use, and I'm sure you are very good at it. I'm also sure that it's very difficult for teachers to do. However, I don't think anyone thinks it's a good replacement for proper in-person teaching and the socialising aspects of schools, and this is particularly true for children from less-advantaged backgrounds. Pretty much everyone - expert or not - agrees that this is a major problem, given the length of time that education has been disrupted.
2) And is that same concern being actively simulated by some Covid Denialists in order to handwring in agonized fashion about the costs of Lockdown?
3) And the really burning question. Why ask things you know the answer to?
Explicit prioritisation by ethnicity would be completely scandalous for the sub 50 rollout. I think the best option would just be a bookable slot self service on the basis of simplicity and maximal throughput.
The second best option would be either to continue down the age groups (40 - 50 etc) or key workers. Key/essential workers would likely capture slightly more non white people than the general population anyway.
There's a big issue with low minority takeup but prioritising explicitly might well make a whole bunch of white people think what's the point. The reverse would also be unthinkable.
Hopefully the piece is a nonsense.
I don't see any sense in which schools have been "closed". If anything teachers have been run ragged running two types of school in parallel.
If schools had actually been closed, and teachers not working, then it would make sense to cancel the summer holiday and run schools straight through. Maybe that's what should have been done.
But if I was a teacher, and the government asked me to give up my paid time off, then I'd be glad of a Union to stand up for me.
- Society X would invite person Y to speak at their society
- Group Z would demand that person y should not be allowed on University grounds because their presence would upset them.
- Group Z would not be invited to to society X
The most recent version of this is group Z declaring they feel unsafe at the presence of Y...
I used to point out the story of a gentlemen whose ideas were so incendiary that every speak he made in half of his country resulted in violence. He killed multiple people in brawls at his speeches. He even write a pamphlet on knife fighting...
I know I'm a Physics teacher, not an English teacher, but I think that is right...
Max is guilty of arrant HYUFDism.
He repeats the same tropes about how un-democratic and awful the EU or Germany or France are, over and over.
It’s reflexive Europhobia basically.
He is high on his own supply.
There is no black and white.
We are not perfect; neither is the EU. We can, and should, both do better.
Nobody has really answered my point about what our key interests are in Asia Pacific that we must pay for with treasure and blood, apart from “our mates are there”.
There's another group of people we need to think about here, namely the pupils. The reason we have 6 weeks then some sort of holiday is that, if they've been working properly, they are knackered by then. It's why the autumn term (which tends to be 8 weeks then 7 weeks) is so miserable- everyone is running on fumes by the end.
And that is in normal times. My two have had full timetables of online lessons from their state schools this term. And they are even more drained than usual. They want to go back, I want them to go back, their teachers want them back... Once it's securely safe. But terms are the length they are for a goodish reason. Though I would look into keeping Y11 and Y13 in until July this year.
Where do you think our modern threats are based - solely western Europe or Asia Pacific too?
The comparison doesn't work at all.
There is no obvious way to avoid the “Thucydidian Trap”, and it is not primarily the UK’s fight, but one one thing we should do is jealously guard our democratic freedoms.
One gets the impression on here they might be somewhat oversubscribed. 😉
* Including western democracies and allies physically located in the far east.
Hardly anyone does, in the same way that hardly any uni students go and see him in person.
This is a bit more bureaucracy because the government wants to fight a culture war.
University is the place for views to be debated, even or especially repugnant ones. Nothing should be off limits at a university.
If letting him speak is no big deal then why would there be a culture war? Let him speak, there's no issue, nothing to fight over.
(gets coat)
Yes, they will quarrel from time-to-time. Yes, you will have leaders who behave poorly, whether Trump or UvdL or whoever.
But unless "The West" is able to hang together, they will hang apart, picked off by the divide and conquer tactics of China, Russia and others.
Trump demonstrated this: he correctly adjudged that China needed to be confronted. But he didn't realise that even the US wasn't big enough to achieve its goals*. We need to remember that.
* Of course, it didn't help that Trump was utterly obsessed by bilateral trade balances.
His example makes most of our conservatives look like either closet socialists and careerist opportunists.
The UK is right to be working with its partners around the world. It is petty, smallminded and ignorant of @Gardenwalker to think that we can just turn a blind eye to Asia and only deal with our tiny portion of the planet.
April has complications around Easter, but we should be going, er, gang-busters by then.
Who yer gonna call? Gang-busters!
Most of our trade is with neighbouring European countries. Our food and energy security also depend on stable trading flows in this domain, and to a lesser extent the North Atlantic.
As the pre-eminent, or joint pre-eminent, military power in Europe, it therefore stands to reason that we would wish first to protect our home neighbourhood, including defence of the GIUK gap.
Our threats, in order:
1. Russia is the revanchist power on our doorstep with an interest in destabilising stability in Europe. There is plenty of form, including the Salisbury Poisoning Case.
2. Scottish independence represents a security threat in that a rump U.K. would surrender automatic legal authority and some operational ability over large stretches of the North Sea. Although Scotland would likely be a longer term partner within the Western Alliance, all experience tells us that any separation will be acrimonious, unpredictable, and very likely detrimental to rump U.K. security.
3. Destabilisation in the Middle East and North Africa can, as we’ve seen, can lead both to large scale refugee flows as well as increase in terrorist activity. It’s in our interests to support measures to keep the region stable and to help police the Med.
China I think follows these three.
Primarily for us it about defending ourselves against Chinese ideological narratives, as well as inappropriate industry takeovers and theft of IP.
Militarily, China is not a threat to us, although of course it is to key allies.
The main problem is the year 2. On one hand the work set is far too easy in the main. If he sat down and concentrated for 30 - 60 mins he would be completed. Unfortunately this can take hours and hours and without a classroom, a teachers authority, and peer pressure he has little by way of motivation. In effect I end up standing over his shoulder whilst he does the work. I can see this would be impossible for working parents.
The other issue is keeping the children relatively out of the way and quiet. My wife has frequent calls and zoom meetings and so I will be trying to do the above whilst keeping the noise down which can be difficult if the youngest (frequently) or eldest (infrequently) is having a meltdown. I live in a large house and the kids are able to have desks in their rooms and the fibre broadband is reasonably good to the whole house. So we have been able to cope but I imagine for a lot of the population it is very difficult to get everything done.
I've got a novel idea: if there's disagreements about culture then how about we debate those openly and freely? Perhaps at universities which are meant to be bastions of free thought.
How does that work?
Maybe we should actually partner with China. That will show ‘em who’s boss!
"Our neighbourhood" is the entire planet.
Do you really believe that what happens in Asia, what happens in say Wuhan for example, could never affect us?
The rest of us normal people just get on with our lives.
Not me.
I’m simply pointing out that saying “our mates are there” or even “our enemies are there” is the sort of geopolitics I’d expect from my son.
Who is 18 months old.
Except, at least he’d do some crayon scribbles to accompany.
Boris' approval rating was in the 40s in yesterday's YouGov - the first time since August, and the same (41%) as it was in the first poll after he won the 2019 GE. Coincidentally the NS is exactly the same as well (-11%).
So after the Brexit shambles and the pandemic chaos, he is as popular as when he won his majority. Pretty surprising I'd say
Also, one could bankrupt a uni or its student union by demanding to give speeches on how wonderful slavery was and then suing them when they tell one where to put one's laser pointer. Or if they give one a slot and nobody turns up - perhaps not even (deliberately) the lecturer - the poor Uni or union has to cover the costs. How does that work, too?
Nobody cares.
The world is interconnected, it would be absolutely absurd and foolish to be obsessed over our own fraction of the planet when any part of the planet can be reached from any other part of it in a matter of hours - or seconds for telecommunications.
You're conflating "student politics" with real life.
Pro-tip: student politics is not real life. It is meaningless.
Given that, the only surprise would be if he wasn't.
How many of our peculiar MPs picked up their strange politics in SUs?
Manchester's Union (like most) was very left wing. In my first year (although at Manchester) I lived in a hall above the UMIST union. The UMIST Union's constitution barred them from being involved in political activity. That nearly changed when they hired out a room for an event being hosted by Patricia Hewitt (not UMIST Union event). The National Front turned up and destroyed the place. And when I say destroyed I really mean destroyed. It was rumoured the police were to afraid to turn up until it was over. It was horrible. They came close to ditching their non political stance.