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Light the beacons of Gondor, Gavin Williamson may have just come up with a competent and popular pol
Light the beacons of Gondor, Gavin Williamson may have just come up with a competent and popular policy – politicalbetting.com
A majority of almost all age groups support banning pupils from looking at or using their phones during the school day, with the exception of those aged 18-24 who are against it https://t.co/zDGBDCZihk pic.twitter.com/3m3m8UZxjV
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And I am unanimous on that.
A man that can't count to 2
This being the UK, the Ground Level is Floor Zero.
Anyway, it wasn't there.
And while I'd make the Conservatives 60-65% likely to win (i.e. outright majority) the next election it is far from certain.
For all the focus on Labour, the reality is that it is the government's record that will be on trial. Sensible oppositions "never interrupt their opponents when they're making a mistake".
The hardest thing for the government to navigate in the next three years is going to be housing. If they get it right, lots of new people will be property owners and will have positive equity in their homes.
If they get it wrong, then either house prices are materially lower (and lots of previously Conservative voters are angry) or the age of first home purchase continues to rise, resulting in ever more disenfranchised voters.
Right now, we care about Covid and Brexit (where, after a rocky start, the government has done a good, perhaps excellent, job). But that will be old news in three years time.
Sounds like yet another solution for a problem which doesn't exist.
Now I have a suspicion we will be spending the holiday week Tiptoeing through the Tulips with TSE.
Has TSE been wild swimming at Slippery Stones? Or semi-tame at Hathersage?
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day*. Surely Williamson is allowed to be right once or twice in his whole career without it affecting his intrinsic, incompetent, nature.
But yes, a policy I also approve of.
*Edit - a proper clock of course not this new fangled digital nonsense
#DismantlingWhiteness"
https://twitter.com/search?q=#DismantlingWhiteness
"Al Barrett Blue heart
@hodgehillvicar
One more time for those who might have missed it: #DismantlingWhiteness has nothing to do with hating white people (or white people hating ourselves). And everything to do with dismantling harmful ways of being in & seeing the world that centre some and marginalise others."
Sounds sensible. Common sense intit?
Most schools have done away with lockers which means there is no where to store phones and most parents insist their kids are able to carry phones too and from school for safety reasons. The upshot is that most schools have no alternative but to allow phones in classrooms although many do stop them being used.
I suppose we could make sure all school classrooms are refitted as Faraday cages.
Edit. Although of course a very good idea if it can be done.
Surprised it wasn’t already policy.
The problem educationally is that mobiles are part of the future workplace as much as leisure. We use mobile tech for all kinds of things and will do which relate to work.
So somehow schools should find ways of accommodating them.
Not that education will bother Williamson so much as votes, and this one may be a winner.
I had not seen this new policy.
Seems a bit 'look squirrel' to me.
The Tories have captured the elderly vote by protecting their income, delivering them Brexit, and inflating their assets.
There have never been more old people; *and* they are more likely to vote. You can’t win England without them. The blue wall is even more, proportionally, full of old people than the South East.
That policies (like Brexit) designed for elderly, no-longer-productive voters will end up bankrupting the country and immiserating the young is of course infuriating - but electoral success is impossible without a willingness to feather-bed this selfish generation.
It is somewhat akin to banning the biro and insisting everyone use a chalk and slate.
Will sixth formers each have access to a laptop to do research in their frees? Or a bulging library overflowing with all the relevant texts?
Or is this about signalling virtue to the aged?
Onwards to the past!
There seems to an idea that it is not possible to learn certain skills without a mobile phone, which is laughable.
On the other hand, lots of them are grandparents who wil lbe worried about their grandchildren's security.
Let the Left die. They seem determined to hurl themselves off an ideological cliff, I fail to see why we should prevent this
If they are primarily an object of distraction and pissing about, then where is the push to forbid them in the workplace?
Far better to leave issues like mobile phones to the schools, I would have thought.
Williamson finds it very easy to decree what must happen - out-of-touch Tories are very much like that - but the problem comes over enforcement. Is he planning to go round all the classrooms in person? Or perhaps he will feel the need to form a squadron of stormtroopers?
This is what Johnson, Williamson, Gove and Cummings have brought the country to.
And again, the idea that mobiles are an indispensable tool for educative purposes is ludicrous.
119,306 / 32,693,527
2nd dose:
485,421 / 9,416,968
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations
"17 April
Data for Wales no longer reported on Saturdays
As of the week commencing 12 April 2021, Public Health Wales have moved to a six day reporting period for COVID-19 surveillance. This means that there will be no reporting of the daily figures for Wales on Saturdays, and UK numbers have therefore only been updated with data from England, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
Additional details
Data for Wales reported on Sundays will be for the 24 hour period up to 9am on Friday, and data reported on Mondays will be for a 48 hour period up to 9am on Sunday. It is likely that the figures reported on Mondays will be around double the usual 24 hours figure."
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/whats-new#data_for_wales_no_longer_reported_on_saturdays
Namely, that it is headteachers who are best placed to manage their schools in the way they think best. So it is up to them to decide whether the presence of mobile phones is an asset or a hindrance to learning.
Detention for Gavin: write out 50 times: let headteachers decide.
I expect that some of the morbid geriatrics and childless incels who constitute a large proportion of the PB commentariat will not understand. Parents will
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-44553705
Who is another lazy, ignorant, stupid fool.
I think there are two schools of thought on this:
1) Schools that spend their money on buldings/teachers and demand children bring their own devices in for internet work as a result;
2) Schools that spend money on tech and therefore forbid children to use their mobiles during the day.
If they are willing to fund laptops/tablets for all children - and that is what this policy requires in today’s world - this policy is a good policy.
If it isn’t, the only reason it isn’t the stupidest policy ever is because masks in classrooms are a much stupider idea.
Or it is not a problem.
Or it is a problem and the schools themselves have no solution.
What is Williamson actually proposing? Apart from a soundbite and a cheap headline.
He would be a worthy sucessor to the useless Johnson.
https://www.libbylondon.com/pages/amanda-spielman
Bizarre. How standards have dropped.
Edit: Buried in the BBC article @ydoethur linked to
"95% of schools already restrict the use of phones in some way."
A healthy life for a child is running around with your mates and a dog, learning to interact with life the universe and everything, in a flesh and blood way. An unhealthy life is that introvert, autistic stare downwards at a screen, being shamed on Instagram
At one point the on-trend lifestyle for young people was going to work in a factory for 12-15 hours a day, in clogs. That doesn't mean it was good, nor was it "the future"
I agree that this should be down to local education authorities, and/or individual schools.
I agree that kids need to learn computing skills and that every child should have a tablet.
But I don’t think mobiles are anything but a distraction to pupils. This is good politics.
The startling thing is this has come from Gavin Williamson, which is also TSE's point. He has hitherto been politically clueless
Keep something completely away from kids until they are 18 (or can get away with pretending to be 18) then let them rip?
Teach them from a young age how it can be used and managed as part of daily life together with understanding the downsides?
One of their schools provided a customised Chromebook which is locked down quite sensibly. And provides a very detailed report of what they have used it for during the school day. The daughter in question 'hates it" and finds it "stupid" - but it seems to be able to do all the actual work stuff.
Frank Spencer had a Southern accent, NOT a Northern One!
I know that NIMBYism gets a lot of bad press. But in somewhere like Stockton-on-Tees I totally understand it. Endless new housing developments have been done across the borough for years. And yet the government says not enough are going up, so developers have won every appeal and keep building in places that understandably locals are hacked off about.
How the Tories gain electoral credit for concreting over England I don't know.
from cases
from hospital admissions
Is it drivenn by a relaively small amount of cases?
Williamson worth a bet at 200/1 imo. His naked ambition virtually guarantees a run.
Remember - the blame is always with Other People. He isn't coming after your kid's phone because they are well-behaved. He's going after the poor kids who can only afford a phone by selling drugs or stealing it.
If you want to be seriously unpopular, tell my next door neighbours (I live literally on the boundary of South Staffs and Cannock Chase) that Williamson is a twat.
If you want to live under police protection, say the same thing in Brewood or Codsall.
They love him. And it can’t all be propaganda. It must be due at least partly to his personal charm.
He might therefore have a realistic chance of making the final two in a Tory leadership contest.
If he isn’t sacked for being totally useless first.
Or the wrong sort?
Or in the wrong places?
I don’t get the point of your post...?
So you don't think people need somewhere to live?
Should people live in tents instead?
Or should we deport people so we have fewer households?
A laptop that is "stupid" and "useless" because it doesn't allow them to play games on it during school hours, but they can do all their school work on..... to me, that is a massively positive review.
Stupid woke terminology like this really doesn't help anyone. Not tolerating racism is something that virtually everyone can unite around; "dismantling whiteness" sounds like a demented attack on the large majority of the population and simply gets people's backs up.
It's the inevitable next thing. Much as the end of chalk boards was in schools...
Also its worth noting that the share of BTL ownership in the country peaked a few years ago and is not going up anymore, so presumably the vast majority of developments are primarily not going to BTL investors.
That is the key question.
Personally, I think there is a good case for the government providing every child over the age of nine with a laptop like the one your children have for free. All textbooks available online. All resources from teachers. And they then use it to become not only tech savvy but to do their work on. Including exams. Set work via GoogleClassroom. Or Teams. Or Showbie. And take it in and Mark it the same way.
But I doubt if the government will provide the money for it.
In which case Williamson’s policy is BS.
In 2017, our analysis of the BES data suggests that turnout among over 55s was 83.35%, compared to 58.15% of those under 55. Likewise, turnout was 84.34% vs. 63.06% for over and under 65s respectively. Combining these BES estimates of turnout with LFS estimates of nationality and ONS population estimates, we arrive at the following figures: the over 55s constituted 48.35% of the voting public in 2017, and the over 65s, 30.27%. If we assume that both turnout and the proportion of those disenfranchised due to their nationality remain constant, over 55s will constitute over half of the voting public by 2020 as a result of projected demographic change.
https://blogs.bath.ac.uk/iprblog/2019/05/21/the-rise-of-the-grey-vote/
Allowing for turnout, pensioners are about a third of the electorate and the over 55s an entire half, and the proportions get greater with every passing year. We are a gerontocracy, and will be for some decades to come.
Are there really people clamouring to buy these homes? That desperately want a large mortgage on a small house on estates that quickly descend into sink status thanks to every other house having a rotating cast of impossible to police BTL tenants?
The solution is planning. Build houses that people need. Which is precisely what the NPPF overrules in favour of the developers.
I know police refused to turn out for a pupil smashing up a science lab and punching a member of staff.
In the mid-1980s the average (mean) household size was 2.6. It is now between 2.3 and 2.4.
The extra requirement (ignoring population growth) of that single change is 2.5 million extra houses.