The question is now do we see a long tail of cases or in 2-3 weeks time will covid be down to less tha 10k a day?
Because i presume come September, the rugrats go back to school and it will rise again, then the uni students...
Seems to me pretty likely from the trend that cases (don’t know about hospitalisations/deaths) are about to start rising again. Of course one of the problems with the way deaths and hospitalisations are reported is that these are linked. More Covid cases = more Covid deaths, even if none of the latter are actually linked to Covid (I think the “Covid deaths as per death certificate figure” has actually been running below the headline 28 day figures for a fair while).
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
If we have to have an elite, why not aim for an enormous one?
PS isn't that our HE policy?
What I'm really talking about is reducing the impact of birth circumstances on life prospects. Who your parents are and what their bank balance is will always be influential but let's make it LESS influential. That's the essence of it.
The thing is @kinabalu you tend to bunch private schools together without acknowledging that there is a massive difference between many provincial day schools and, say, Eton. The day schools I am familiar with are closer to state schools than Eton and the like. There is no old boys' network in the schools my children have attended.
While I of course acknowledge that being financial able to send one's offspring to any private school is a sign of inequality and is to some degree unfair, life isn't fair and no amount of engineering will make it so.
What I have observed loud and clear is the advantage that high intelligence brings. If you are lucky enough to have children who are naturally clever then they will thrive in any school, state or private. I see it all the time. Cream comes to the top. Wealth cannot buy intelligence. You talk about reducing "the impact of birth circumstances on life prospects" without recognising the biological advantage conferred by inherited intelligence.
Private schools get your goat, but what gets mine is intelligent children of brilliant parents (many of whom are solicitors, teachers, etc, etc) who don't bother with private schools despite having oodles of cash. Their brilliant children get accepted into the very best state schools (grammar in our neighbouring county) - in fact these children are actively competed for - and inevitably do brilliantly and it hasn't cost those wealthy parents a penny.
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
I can promise you there's also people who can and do afford it who'd be secretly not wholly disgruntled if the option were denied them, and they had to spend the money on horses and yachts instead, dammit.
For sure. It's kind of a tax cut for the rich. In fact that's how I'd sell it in the drawing rooms and boardrooms of England.
They are still not going to send their kids to the average or below average local comp.
They will make sure they live in the most expensive postcodes and thus the locals schools their kids attend will still be those mainly attended by the offspring of the wealthy.
So you would have to ban expensive detached houses too and make everyone live in a 2 bed semi or council flat
That's just the old "if we can't totally deal with an issue let's not deal with it at all" shtick.
It's funny how Jamaican women are dominating the sprints yet they might not get a single man to either the 100 or 200 metre final this olympics. Still absurdly strong at sprinting for a ~ 3 million population nation.
What is amazing is how weak the actual West African countries are at sprinting compared to their disapora.
A contrast to how the East African countries dominate the long distance events.
There is a cruel Darwinian explanation for this
The slaves that survived the Middle Passage - and the brutalities of slavery itself - were thus selected over generations for their fitness, speed, strength. The Africans who remained in Africa did not undergo this savage evolutionary pressure
Another example of white supremacy racism shaping the world we live in?
Eh? I thought it was selection for salt retention leading to high blood pressure today?! Not much sprinting on a slave ship.
In any case the HBP = slave ancestors theory has been frowned on of late:
I think it much more prosaic. West Africans play a lot of football, and are well represented in our Football Leagues, which require a lot of speed and stamina. In the West Indies they do a lot of athletics at school, so are well represented internationally.
It is more nurture than nature as far as I can see.
The slave theory does sound a bit lurid.
You find it lurid because you are hyper-sensitive to anything involving race
It's a perfectly valid hypothesis - it seems highly likely that the intense pressures of slavery would have selected for certain factors over time. Only the toughest would have made it to the New World in the first place. There, only the fittest would have been allowed to breed.
Revolting to us, but that is exactly what happened.
There are similar theories as to why Ashkenazi Jews have such high IQs compared to others (about 15 points higher on average). It was the persecution of the Jews over many centuries that meant only the really clever Jews escaped, also the Jews encouraged scholars and rabbis to have many babies - a kind of soft eugenicism, to preserve the Jewish faith and people
I wonder if there is a misunderstanding?
'Fitness' has a specific meaning in Darwinian terminology: the collective sum total of differential survival and differential reproduction. It certainly does not mean the Olympic/athletic 'fitness' - consider, for instance, the many organisms which save energy and resources and do very well by quite literally being non-athletic.
I know what fitness means in a Darwinian sense. I use it in that sense, you prannock
But fitness in the Darwinian sense will incorporate fitness in the athletic sense
Not necessarily. Having a lot of calorie-consuming muscle mass would probably be a disadvantage when trying to survive starvation.
You don't buy slaves to starve them, duh. You feed them.
Footnote for the Pollyannas who think how wonderful our Brave Boys in the RN were, because the W Africa Squadron: what the RN was up to when Bligh had his unfortunate contretemps was attempting off its own bat to facilitate the plantations by establishing breadfruit in the W Indies to feed the slaves on.
Deaths on the passage across the Atlantic were at incredibly high rates. Seems like they did buy slaves with little care for their survival, or the condition they would be in at the other end of the journey.
This is such nonsense. The slaves were the cargo. If you lost a lot of them, you didn't get much more business
A slaver who could bring almost an entire boat-load, alive, would prosper
Your rather glib calculation ignores the obvious point that overcrowding the ship - as was common practice - led to very high death rates, but a net benefit from the point of view of the slavers. As evidenced by the fact that mortality rates dropped from around 25% to 10% only after British legislation which limited the numbers permitted on a given ship.
It's not glib calculation, it is cold basic logic, the kind these bastard slavers would use
A dead slave is worth nothing. Pack the slaves too tight, they sicken and die. Pack them too loose, you're losing profit. They would try and pack as many in as they could while keeping deaths to "an acceptable minimum"
And they really did not want disease on the boat, as that could kill everyone, including the crew
They didn't care much about the crew, either - whose mortality rates often exceed those of the slaves (and most of whom did not serve voluntarily). And you're supposing a grasp of the germ theory of disease which simply didn't pertain.
It's funny how Jamaican women are dominating the sprints yet they might not get a single man to either the 100 or 200 metre final this olympics. Still absurdly strong at sprinting for a ~ 3 million population nation.
What is amazing is how weak the actual West African countries are at sprinting compared to their disapora.
A contrast to how the East African countries dominate the long distance events.
There is a cruel Darwinian explanation for this
The slaves that survived the Middle Passage - and the brutalities of slavery itself - were thus selected over generations for their fitness, speed, strength. The Africans who remained in Africa did not undergo this savage evolutionary pressure
Another example of white supremacy racism shaping the world we live in?
Eh? I thought it was selection for salt retention leading to high blood pressure today?! Not much sprinting on a slave ship.
In any case the HBP = slave ancestors theory has been frowned on of late:
I think it much more prosaic. West Africans play a lot of football, and are well represented in our Football Leagues, which require a lot of speed and stamina. In the West Indies they do a lot of athletics at school, so are well represented internationally.
It is more nurture than nature as far as I can see.
The slave theory does sound a bit lurid.
You find it lurid because you are hyper-sensitive to anything involving race
It's a perfectly valid hypothesis - it seems highly likely that the intense pressures of slavery would have selected for certain factors over time. Only the toughest would have made it to the New World in the first place. There, only the fittest would have been allowed to breed.
Revolting to us, but that is exactly what happened.
There are similar theories as to why Ashkenazi Jews have such high IQs compared to others (about 15 points higher on average). It was the persecution of the Jews over many centuries that meant only the really clever Jews escaped, also the Jews encouraged scholars and rabbis to have many babies - a kind of soft eugenicism, to preserve the Jewish faith and people
I wonder if there is a misunderstanding?
'Fitness' has a specific meaning in Darwinian terminology: the collective sum total of differential survival and differential reproduction. It certainly does not mean the Olympic/athletic 'fitness' - consider, for instance, the many organisms which save energy and resources and do very well by quite literally being non-athletic.
I know what fitness means in a Darwinian sense. I use it in that sense, you prannock
But fitness in the Darwinian sense will incorporate fitness in the athletic sense
Not necessarily. Having a lot of calorie-consuming muscle mass would probably be a disadvantage when trying to survive starvation.
You don't buy slaves to starve them, duh. You feed them.
Footnote for the Pollyannas who think how wonderful our Brave Boys in the RN were, because the W Africa Squadron: what the RN was up to when Bligh had his unfortunate contretemps was attempting off its own bat to facilitate the plantations by establishing breadfruit in the W Indies to feed the slaves on.
Deaths on the passage across the Atlantic were at incredibly high rates. Seems like they did buy slaves with little care for their survival, or the condition they would be in at the other end of the journey.
This is such nonsense. The slaves were the cargo. If you lost a lot of them, you didn't get much more business
A slaver who could bring almost an entire boat-load, alive, would prosper
The traders were wholesalers not logistic providers. They owned the slaves during the passage.
But basically did the calculation that it was a better return to take more slaves and accept a level of mortality vs reduce capacity fir slaves to take more food etc.
That’s the mindset that led, in extremis, to the Zong.
Only 150k total jabs in todays figures. I really don't understand why we aren't using all the spare capacity to get cracking with booster shots or if kids want it they can.
Some of the oldest, weakest, most vulnerable had their jabs 6 months ago now, why not get them jabbed up again.
I really don't understand why we have watched the vaccinations slow so much and done nothing to use up the capacity that is there. We ought to be supply limited at all times, not letting supplies pile up and having vaccine centres barely ticking over.
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
I can promise you there's also people who can and do afford it who'd be secretly not wholly disgruntled if the option were denied them, and they had to spend the money on horses and yachts instead, dammit.
For sure. It's kind of a tax cut for the rich. In fact that's how I'd sell it in the drawing rooms and boardrooms of England.
They are still not going to send their kids to the average or below average local comp.
They will make sure they live in the most expensive postcodes and thus the locals schools their kids attend will still be those mainly attended by the offspring of the wealthy.
So you would have to ban expensive detached houses too and make everyone live in a 2 bed semi or council flat
That's just the old "if we can't totally deal with an issue let's not deal with it at all" shtick.
No - it's about not letting the state decide everything and accepting that individuals and indeed parents have the right to make choices - and that those choices have consequences which no amount of state engineering can, or should negate.
It's funny how Jamaican women are dominating the sprints yet they might not get a single man to either the 100 or 200 metre final this olympics. Still absurdly strong at sprinting for a ~ 3 million population nation.
What is amazing is how weak the actual West African countries are at sprinting compared to their disapora.
A contrast to how the East African countries dominate the long distance events.
There is a cruel Darwinian explanation for this
The slaves that survived the Middle Passage - and the brutalities of slavery itself - were thus selected over generations for their fitness, speed, strength. The Africans who remained in Africa did not undergo this savage evolutionary pressure
Another example of white supremacy racism shaping the world we live in?
Eh? I thought it was selection for salt retention leading to high blood pressure today?! Not much sprinting on a slave ship.
In any case the HBP = slave ancestors theory has been frowned on of late:
I think it much more prosaic. West Africans play a lot of football, and are well represented in our Football Leagues, which require a lot of speed and stamina. In the West Indies they do a lot of athletics at school, so are well represented internationally.
It is more nurture than nature as far as I can see.
The slave theory does sound a bit lurid.
You find it lurid because you are hyper-sensitive to anything involving race
It's a perfectly valid hypothesis - it seems highly likely that the intense pressures of slavery would have selected for certain factors over time. Only the toughest would have made it to the New World in the first place. There, only the fittest would have been allowed to breed.
Revolting to us, but that is exactly what happened.
There are similar theories as to why Ashkenazi Jews have such high IQs compared to others (about 15 points higher on average). It was the persecution of the Jews over many centuries that meant only the really clever Jews escaped, also the Jews encouraged scholars and rabbis to have many babies - a kind of soft eugenicism, to preserve the Jewish faith and people
I wonder if there is a misunderstanding?
'Fitness' has a specific meaning in Darwinian terminology: the collective sum total of differential survival and differential reproduction. It certainly does not mean the Olympic/athletic 'fitness' - consider, for instance, the many organisms which save energy and resources and do very well by quite literally being non-athletic.
I know what fitness means in a Darwinian sense. I use it in that sense, you prannock
But fitness in the Darwinian sense will incorporate fitness in the athletic sense
Not necessarily. Having a lot of calorie-consuming muscle mass would probably be a disadvantage when trying to survive starvation.
You don't buy slaves to starve them, duh. You feed them.
Footnote for the Pollyannas who think how wonderful our Brave Boys in the RN were, because the W Africa Squadron: what the RN was up to when Bligh had his unfortunate contretemps was attempting off its own bat to facilitate the plantations by establishing breadfruit in the W Indies to feed the slaves on.
Deaths on the passage across the Atlantic were at incredibly high rates. Seems like they did buy slaves with little care for their survival, or the condition they would be in at the other end of the journey.
This is such nonsense. The slaves were the cargo. If you lost a lot of them, you didn't get much more business
A slaver who could bring almost an entire boat-load, alive, would prosper
I'm not particularly a Clarkson fan - but has anyone seen Clarkson's Farm? Took me by surprise - an excellent series, curiously riveting for some reason. Hope there will be a Series Two.
It's funny how Jamaican women are dominating the sprints yet they might not get a single man to either the 100 or 200 metre final this olympics. Still absurdly strong at sprinting for a ~ 3 million population nation.
What is amazing is how weak the actual West African countries are at sprinting compared to their disapora.
A contrast to how the East African countries dominate the long distance events.
There is a cruel Darwinian explanation for this
The slaves that survived the Middle Passage - and the brutalities of slavery itself - were thus selected over generations for their fitness, speed, strength. The Africans who remained in Africa did not undergo this savage evolutionary pressure
Another example of white supremacy racism shaping the world we live in?
Eh? I thought it was selection for salt retention leading to high blood pressure today?! Not much sprinting on a slave ship.
In any case the HBP = slave ancestors theory has been frowned on of late:
I think it much more prosaic. West Africans play a lot of football, and are well represented in our Football Leagues, which require a lot of speed and stamina. In the West Indies they do a lot of athletics at school, so are well represented internationally.
It is more nurture than nature as far as I can see.
The slave theory does sound a bit lurid.
You find it lurid because you are hyper-sensitive to anything involving race
It's a perfectly valid hypothesis - it seems highly likely that the intense pressures of slavery would have selected for certain factors over time. Only the toughest would have made it to the New World in the first place. There, only the fittest would have been allowed to breed.
Revolting to us, but that is exactly what happened.
There are similar theories as to why Ashkenazi Jews have such high IQs compared to others (about 15 points higher on average). It was the persecution of the Jews over many centuries that meant only the really clever Jews escaped, also the Jews encouraged scholars and rabbis to have many babies - a kind of soft eugenicism, to preserve the Jewish faith and people
I wonder if there is a misunderstanding?
'Fitness' has a specific meaning in Darwinian terminology: the collective sum total of differential survival and differential reproduction. It certainly does not mean the Olympic/athletic 'fitness' - consider, for instance, the many organisms which save energy and resources and do very well by quite literally being non-athletic.
I know what fitness means in a Darwinian sense. I use it in that sense, you prannock
But fitness in the Darwinian sense will incorporate fitness in the athletic sense
Not necessarily. Having a lot of calorie-consuming muscle mass would probably be a disadvantage when trying to survive starvation.
You don't buy slaves to starve them, duh. You feed them.
Footnote for the Pollyannas who think how wonderful our Brave Boys in the RN were, because the W Africa Squadron: what the RN was up to when Bligh had his unfortunate contretemps was attempting off its own bat to facilitate the plantations by establishing breadfruit in the W Indies to feed the slaves on.
Deaths on the passage across the Atlantic were at incredibly high rates. Seems like they did buy slaves with little care for their survival, or the condition they would be in at the other end of the journey.
This is such nonsense. The slaves were the cargo. If you lost a lot of them, you didn't get much more business
A slaver who could bring almost an entire boat-load, alive, would prosper
Your rather glib calculation ignores the obvious point that overcrowding the ship - as was common practice - led to very high death rates, but a net benefit from the point of view of the slavers. As evidenced by the fact that mortality rates dropped from around 25% to 10% only after British legislation which limited the numbers permitted on a given ship.
It's not glib calculation, it is cold basic logic, the kind these bastard slavers would use
A dead slave is worth nothing. Pack the slaves too tight, they sicken and die. Pack them too loose, you're losing profit. They would try and pack as many in as they could while keeping deaths to "an acceptable minimum"
And they really did not want disease on the boat, as that could kill everyone, including the crew
The Zong case was particularly nasty, of course: the slavers ran out of supplies and threw some of the slaves overboard to save water for the rest, and to claim on the insurance (which did not normally, however, cover normal disease and death of the slaves AIUI).
Although the reaction to that case does indicate that it was atypical and regarded as horrific (but mainly because the insurance companies didn’t want to pay out on the policy so sued the Captain iirc)
I'm not particularly a Clarkson fan - but has anyone seen Clarkson's Farm? Took me by surprise - an excellent series, curiously riveting for some reason. Hope there will be a Series Two.
Yes, most people on here seem to have and the general opinion is that its great, and yes Season Two being filmed now....
However new Grand Tour episode, utter shit....just take it out the back and put it out its misery.
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
I can promise you there's also people who can and do afford it who'd be secretly not wholly disgruntled if the option were denied them, and they had to spend the money on horses and yachts instead, dammit.
For sure. It's kind of a tax cut for the rich. In fact that's how I'd sell it in the drawing rooms and boardrooms of England.
They are still not going to send their kids to the average or below average local comp.
They will make sure they live in the most expensive postcodes and thus the locals schools their kids attend will still be those mainly attended by the offspring of the wealthy.
So you would have to ban expensive detached houses too and make everyone live in a 2 bed semi or council flat
That's just the old "if we can't totally deal with an issue let's not deal with it at all" shtick.
And your approach is a classic theory of 2nd best failure. Socialist paradise isn't possible, and therefore the actually possible optimum solution probably won't look like getting half way there.
It's funny how Jamaican women are dominating the sprints yet they might not get a single man to either the 100 or 200 metre final this olympics. Still absurdly strong at sprinting for a ~ 3 million population nation.
What is amazing is how weak the actual West African countries are at sprinting compared to their disapora.
A contrast to how the East African countries dominate the long distance events.
There is a cruel Darwinian explanation for this
The slaves that survived the Middle Passage - and the brutalities of slavery itself - were thus selected over generations for their fitness, speed, strength. The Africans who remained in Africa did not undergo this savage evolutionary pressure
Another example of white supremacy racism shaping the world we live in?
Eh? I thought it was selection for salt retention leading to high blood pressure today?! Not much sprinting on a slave ship.
In any case the HBP = slave ancestors theory has been frowned on of late:
I think it much more prosaic. West Africans play a lot of football, and are well represented in our Football Leagues, which require a lot of speed and stamina. In the West Indies they do a lot of athletics at school, so are well represented internationally.
It is more nurture than nature as far as I can see.
The slave theory does sound a bit lurid.
You find it lurid because you are hyper-sensitive to anything involving race
It's a perfectly valid hypothesis - it seems highly likely that the intense pressures of slavery would have selected for certain factors over time. Only the toughest would have made it to the New World in the first place. There, only the fittest would have been allowed to breed.
Revolting to us, but that is exactly what happened.
There are similar theories as to why Ashkenazi Jews have such high IQs compared to others (about 15 points higher on average). It was the persecution of the Jews over many centuries that meant only the really clever Jews escaped, also the Jews encouraged scholars and rabbis to have many babies - a kind of soft eugenicism, to preserve the Jewish faith and people
I wonder if there is a misunderstanding?
'Fitness' has a specific meaning in Darwinian terminology: the collective sum total of differential survival and differential reproduction. It certainly does not mean the Olympic/athletic 'fitness' - consider, for instance, the many organisms which save energy and resources and do very well by quite literally being non-athletic.
I know what fitness means in a Darwinian sense. I use it in that sense, you prannock
But fitness in the Darwinian sense will incorporate fitness in the athletic sense
Not necessarily. Having a lot of calorie-consuming muscle mass would probably be a disadvantage when trying to survive starvation.
You don't buy slaves to starve them, duh. You feed them.
Footnote for the Pollyannas who think how wonderful our Brave Boys in the RN were, because the W Africa Squadron: what the RN was up to when Bligh had his unfortunate contretemps was attempting off its own bat to facilitate the plantations by establishing breadfruit in the W Indies to feed the slaves on.
Deaths on the passage across the Atlantic were at incredibly high rates. Seems like they did buy slaves with little care for their survival, or the condition they would be in at the other end of the journey.
This is such nonsense. The slaves were the cargo. If you lost a lot of them, you didn't get much more business
A slaver who could bring almost an entire boat-load, alive, would prosper
Your rather glib calculation ignores the obvious point that overcrowding the ship - as was common practice - led to very high death rates, but a net benefit from the point of view of the slavers. As evidenced by the fact that mortality rates dropped from around 25% to 10% only after British legislation which limited the numbers permitted on a given ship.
It's not glib calculation, it is cold basic logic, the kind these bastard slavers would use
A dead slave is worth nothing. Pack the slaves too tight, they sicken and die. Pack them too loose, you're losing profit. They would try and pack as many in as they could while keeping deaths to "an acceptable minimum"
And they really did not want disease on the boat, as that could kill everyone, including the crew
They didn't care much about the crew, either - whose mortality rates often exceed those of the slaves (and most of whom did not serve voluntarily). And you're supposing a grasp of the germ theory of disease which simply didn't pertain.
You think people didn't realise infectious diseases are infectious, prior to Pasteur?
It's funny how Jamaican women are dominating the sprints yet they might not get a single man to either the 100 or 200 metre final this olympics. Still absurdly strong at sprinting for a ~ 3 million population nation.
What is amazing is how weak the actual West African countries are at sprinting compared to their disapora.
A contrast to how the East African countries dominate the long distance events.
There is a cruel Darwinian explanation for this
The slaves that survived the Middle Passage - and the brutalities of slavery itself - were thus selected over generations for their fitness, speed, strength. The Africans who remained in Africa did not undergo this savage evolutionary pressure
Another example of white supremacy racism shaping the world we live in?
Eh? I thought it was selection for salt retention leading to high blood pressure today?! Not much sprinting on a slave ship.
In any case the HBP = slave ancestors theory has been frowned on of late:
I think it much more prosaic. West Africans play a lot of football, and are well represented in our Football Leagues, which require a lot of speed and stamina. In the West Indies they do a lot of athletics at school, so are well represented internationally.
It is more nurture than nature as far as I can see.
The slave theory does sound a bit lurid.
You find it lurid because you are hyper-sensitive to anything involving race
It's a perfectly valid hypothesis - it seems highly likely that the intense pressures of slavery would have selected for certain factors over time. Only the toughest would have made it to the New World in the first place. There, only the fittest would have been allowed to breed.
Revolting to us, but that is exactly what happened.
There are similar theories as to why Ashkenazi Jews have such high IQs compared to others (about 15 points higher on average). It was the persecution of the Jews over many centuries that meant only the really clever Jews escaped, also the Jews encouraged scholars and rabbis to have many babies - a kind of soft eugenicism, to preserve the Jewish faith and people
I wonder if there is a misunderstanding?
'Fitness' has a specific meaning in Darwinian terminology: the collective sum total of differential survival and differential reproduction. It certainly does not mean the Olympic/athletic 'fitness' - consider, for instance, the many organisms which save energy and resources and do very well by quite literally being non-athletic.
I know what fitness means in a Darwinian sense. I use it in that sense, you prannock
But fitness in the Darwinian sense will incorporate fitness in the athletic sense
Not necessarily. Having a lot of calorie-consuming muscle mass would probably be a disadvantage when trying to survive starvation.
You don't buy slaves to starve them, duh. You feed them.
Footnote for the Pollyannas who think how wonderful our Brave Boys in the RN were, because the W Africa Squadron: what the RN was up to when Bligh had his unfortunate contretemps was attempting off its own bat to facilitate the plantations by establishing breadfruit in the W Indies to feed the slaves on.
Deaths on the passage across the Atlantic were at incredibly high rates. Seems like they did buy slaves with little care for their survival, or the condition they would be in at the other end of the journey.
This is such nonsense. The slaves were the cargo. If you lost a lot of them, you didn't get much more business
A slaver who could bring almost an entire boat-load, alive, would prosper
Your rather glib calculation ignores the obvious point that overcrowding the ship - as was common practice - led to very high death rates, but a net benefit from the point of view of the slavers. As evidenced by the fact that mortality rates dropped from around 25% to 10% only after British legislation which limited the numbers permitted on a given ship.
It's not glib calculation, it is cold basic logic, the kind these bastard slavers would use
A dead slave is worth nothing. Pack the slaves too tight, they sicken and die. Pack them too loose, you're losing profit. They would try and pack as many in as they could while keeping deaths to "an acceptable minimum"
And they really did not want disease on the boat, as that could kill everyone, including the crew
They didn't care much about the crew, either - whose mortality rates often exceed those of the slaves (and most of whom did not serve voluntarily). And you're supposing a grasp of the germ theory of disease which simply didn't pertain.
You think people didn't realise infectious diseases are infectious, prior to Pasteur?
A lot of them thought it was the environment that did it. Malaria = swamp. Yellow fever was a classic example - keep away from marshy areas after dark and you were mostly OK, was an old RN rule of thumb. Of course that in reality was a difficult combination of environment and germ!
I'm not particularly a Clarkson fan - but has anyone seen Clarkson's Farm? Took me by surprise - an excellent series, curiously riveting for some reason. Hope there will be a Series Two.
Yes, most people on here seem to have and the general opinion is that its great, and yes Season Two being filmed now....
However new Grand Tour episode, utter shit....just take it out the back and put it out its misery.
My children like Grand Tour and the one I half-watched the other day was appallingly sad. Like Last of the Summer Wine but worse.
Not to mention private tutors and the m/c 'Comprehensives'. Also the notion that the 'chumocracy' is exclusive to one political party - the Benn's, Kinnocks, Corbyns, say hello!
Xi Jinping is trying to crack down on private tutoring:
China's $120bn dollar private tutoring industry went into nosedive when he announced tutoring should be non-profits.
Part of the reason is he is trying to go back to "traditional" communism. Partly it's because he is trying to raise the birth-rate and the Chinese are stubbornly sticking to one child, even though they can now have two, because of how expensive it is to educate children.
It's funny how Jamaican women are dominating the sprints yet they might not get a single man to either the 100 or 200 metre final this olympics. Still absurdly strong at sprinting for a ~ 3 million population nation.
What is amazing is how weak the actual West African countries are at sprinting compared to their disapora.
A contrast to how the East African countries dominate the long distance events.
There is a cruel Darwinian explanation for this
The slaves that survived the Middle Passage - and the brutalities of slavery itself - were thus selected over generations for their fitness, speed, strength. The Africans who remained in Africa did not undergo this savage evolutionary pressure
Another example of white supremacy racism shaping the world we live in?
Eh? I thought it was selection for salt retention leading to high blood pressure today?! Not much sprinting on a slave ship.
In any case the HBP = slave ancestors theory has been frowned on of late:
I think it much more prosaic. West Africans play a lot of football, and are well represented in our Football Leagues, which require a lot of speed and stamina. In the West Indies they do a lot of athletics at school, so are well represented internationally.
It is more nurture than nature as far as I can see.
The slave theory does sound a bit lurid.
You find it lurid because you are hyper-sensitive to anything involving race
It's a perfectly valid hypothesis - it seems highly likely that the intense pressures of slavery would have selected for certain factors over time. Only the toughest would have made it to the New World in the first place. There, only the fittest would have been allowed to breed.
Revolting to us, but that is exactly what happened.
There are similar theories as to why Ashkenazi Jews have such high IQs compared to others (about 15 points higher on average). It was the persecution of the Jews over many centuries that meant only the really clever Jews escaped, also the Jews encouraged scholars and rabbis to have many babies - a kind of soft eugenicism, to preserve the Jewish faith and people
I wonder if there is a misunderstanding?
'Fitness' has a specific meaning in Darwinian terminology: the collective sum total of differential survival and differential reproduction. It certainly does not mean the Olympic/athletic 'fitness' - consider, for instance, the many organisms which save energy and resources and do very well by quite literally being non-athletic.
I know what fitness means in a Darwinian sense. I use it in that sense, you prannock
But fitness in the Darwinian sense will incorporate fitness in the athletic sense
Not necessarily. Having a lot of calorie-consuming muscle mass would probably be a disadvantage when trying to survive starvation.
You don't buy slaves to starve them, duh. You feed them.
Footnote for the Pollyannas who think how wonderful our Brave Boys in the RN were, because the W Africa Squadron: what the RN was up to when Bligh had his unfortunate contretemps was attempting off its own bat to facilitate the plantations by establishing breadfruit in the W Indies to feed the slaves on.
Deaths on the passage across the Atlantic were at incredibly high rates. Seems like they did buy slaves with little care for their survival, or the condition they would be in at the other end of the journey.
This is such nonsense. The slaves were the cargo. If you lost a lot of them, you didn't get much more business
A slaver who could bring almost an entire boat-load, alive, would prosper
And yet the estimated death rate was still 15%, despite the obvious financial incentive.
I am not for a moment making light of the Middle Passage. A shameful episode for all humanity. An especially indelible stain on European history
However, as someone else has said, crossing the Atlantic in the 18th and early 19th centuries was dangerous for anyone. It would be interesting to know the death rate for early Irish migrants to America
I know that Cornishmen sailing to Mexico to mine tin in the mid 19th century died in their droves on the boats - of a disease called "the black vomit". Not sure what it was
Slavers didn't care about high death rates, if the supply of slaves was cheap and plentiful.
In Haiti, life expectancy for newly-arrived slaves was about 3 years on average. The slave population was naturally decreasing, but as far as the slavers were concerned, they could be worked till they dropped, because there was an endless supply of fresh slaves, sold cheaply.
It's only if the supply of fresh slaves dries up that slavers have an incentive to treat their slaves more "humanely".
That was one of wilberforces arguments for banning the trade
It's funny how Jamaican women are dominating the sprints yet they might not get a single man to either the 100 or 200 metre final this olympics. Still absurdly strong at sprinting for a ~ 3 million population nation.
What is amazing is how weak the actual West African countries are at sprinting compared to their disapora.
A contrast to how the East African countries dominate the long distance events.
There is a cruel Darwinian explanation for this
The slaves that survived the Middle Passage - and the brutalities of slavery itself - were thus selected over generations for their fitness, speed, strength. The Africans who remained in Africa did not undergo this savage evolutionary pressure
Another example of white supremacy racism shaping the world we live in?
Eh? I thought it was selection for salt retention leading to high blood pressure today?! Not much sprinting on a slave ship.
In any case the HBP = slave ancestors theory has been frowned on of late:
I think it much more prosaic. West Africans play a lot of football, and are well represented in our Football Leagues, which require a lot of speed and stamina. In the West Indies they do a lot of athletics at school, so are well represented internationally.
It is more nurture than nature as far as I can see.
The slave theory does sound a bit lurid.
You find it lurid because you are hyper-sensitive to anything involving race
It's a perfectly valid hypothesis - it seems highly likely that the intense pressures of slavery would have selected for certain factors over time. Only the toughest would have made it to the New World in the first place. There, only the fittest would have been allowed to breed.
Revolting to us, but that is exactly what happened.
There are similar theories as to why Ashkenazi Jews have such high IQs compared to others (about 15 points higher on average). It was the persecution of the Jews over many centuries that meant only the really clever Jews escaped, also the Jews encouraged scholars and rabbis to have many babies - a kind of soft eugenicism, to preserve the Jewish faith and people
I wonder if there is a misunderstanding?
'Fitness' has a specific meaning in Darwinian terminology: the collective sum total of differential survival and differential reproduction. It certainly does not mean the Olympic/athletic 'fitness' - consider, for instance, the many organisms which save energy and resources and do very well by quite literally being non-athletic.
I know what fitness means in a Darwinian sense. I use it in that sense, you prannock
But fitness in the Darwinian sense will incorporate fitness in the athletic sense
Not necessarily. Having a lot of calorie-consuming muscle mass would probably be a disadvantage when trying to survive starvation.
You don't buy slaves to starve them, duh. You feed them.
Footnote for the Pollyannas who think how wonderful our Brave Boys in the RN were, because the W Africa Squadron: what the RN was up to when Bligh had his unfortunate contretemps was attempting off its own bat to facilitate the plantations by establishing breadfruit in the W Indies to feed the slaves on.
Deaths on the passage across the Atlantic were at incredibly high rates. Seems like they did buy slaves with little care for their survival, or the condition they would be in at the other end of the journey.
This is such nonsense. The slaves were the cargo. If you lost a lot of them, you didn't get much more business
A slaver who could bring almost an entire boat-load, alive, would prosper
And yet the estimated death rate was still 15%, despite the obvious financial incentive.
I am not for a moment making light of the Middle Passage. A shameful episode for all humanity. An especially indelible stain on European history
However, as someone else has said, crossing the Atlantic in the 18th and early 19th centuries was dangerous for anyone. It would be interesting to know the death rate for early Irish migrants to America
I know that Cornishmen sailing to Mexico to mine tin in the mid 19th century died in their droves on the boats - of a disease called "the black vomit". Not sure what it was
Slavers didn't care about high death rates, if the supply of slaves was cheap and plentiful.
In Haiti, life expectancy for newly-arrived slaves was about 3 years on average. The slave population was naturally decreasing, but as far as the slavers were concerned, they could be worked till they dropped, because there was an endless supply of fresh slaves, sold cheaply.
It's only if the supply of fresh slaves dries up that slavers have an incentive to treat their slaves more "humanely".
That was one of wilberforces arguments for banning the trade
It's worth noting that even on the best-run slave ships, rape of female slaves by the crew was routine. A pregnant slave, expecting a half-white child, would fetch a higher price at the other end of the voyage.
I'm not particularly a Clarkson fan - but has anyone seen Clarkson's Farm? Took me by surprise - an excellent series, curiously riveting for some reason. Hope there will be a Series Two.
Yes, most people on here seem to have and the general opinion is that its great, and yes Season Two being filmed now....
However new Grand Tour episode, utter shit....just take it out the back and put it out its misery.
My children like Grand Tour and the one I half-watched the other day was appallingly sad. Like Last of the Summer Wine but worse.
It is now everything that Clarkson's Farm isn't. It is 100% staged, from the "witty" banter to the mishaps etc, and now it is just all so tired and predictable, that it is boring.
What is nice about Clarkson's Farm is, yes, we know some of it is a setup, oh look I bought a tractor that is too big for my barn aren't I silly ape, but the supporting "cast" are real people, who worked that land for years, you really couldn't have hand selected better.
Clarkson is much more toned down (I presume much closer to how he really is), while he still got the witty remarks, there is also much more interest in real world issues. And also especially during middle of COVID there is no or limited crew and lots of the tasks being done don't allow for huge stage managed fake disasters e.g. the lambing, the harvesting etc. He isn't going to accidentally crash a Bentley through the lambing barn for the LOLs.
I'm not particularly a Clarkson fan - but has anyone seen Clarkson's Farm? Took me by surprise - an excellent series, curiously riveting for some reason. Hope there will be a Series Two.
It has been renewed. Haven't seen it myself, but a lot of people have praised it include many other non-Clarkson-fans-generally.
'Nicola Sturgeon is taking a bigger risk [than Boris Johnson].'
Prof. Sir John Curtice tells De Piero & Halligan that, by lifting restrictions when schools 'are going back', the First Minister is taking more a gamble than Boris Johnson did when he removed Covid rules in England.
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
I can promise you there's also people who can and do afford it who'd be secretly not wholly disgruntled if the option were denied them, and they had to spend the money on horses and yachts instead, dammit.
For sure. It's kind of a tax cut for the rich. In fact that's how I'd sell it in the drawing rooms and boardrooms of England.
They are still not going to send their kids to the average or below average local comp.
They will make sure they live in the most expensive postcodes and thus the locals schools their kids attend will still be those mainly attended by the offspring of the wealthy.
So you would have to ban expensive detached houses too and make everyone live in a 2 bed semi or council flat
That's just the old "if we can't totally deal with an issue let's not deal with it at all" shtick.
No - it's about not letting the state decide everything and accepting that individuals and indeed parents have the right to make choices - and that those choices have consequences which no amount of state engineering can, or should negate.
The whole rationale of the state is to prevent people's choices from harming other people. Otherwise we wouldn't need it, we could all just do whatever we want. I want the state to do its best to create a level playing field so that (a) everyone gets a fair shot in life and (b) the best people end up in top positions. It should be fairly evident that that's not happening right now, and private schools play a big part in that failure.
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
I can promise you there's also people who can and do afford it who'd be secretly not wholly disgruntled if the option were denied them, and they had to spend the money on horses and yachts instead, dammit.
For sure. It's kind of a tax cut for the rich. In fact that's how I'd sell it in the drawing rooms and boardrooms of England.
They are still not going to send their kids to the average or below average local comp.
They will make sure they live in the most expensive postcodes and thus the locals schools their kids attend will still be those mainly attended by the offspring of the wealthy.
So you would have to ban expensive detached houses too and make everyone live in a 2 bed semi or council flat
That's just the old "if we can't totally deal with an issue let's not deal with it at all" shtick.
No - it's about not letting the state decide everything and accepting that individuals and indeed parents have the right to make choices - and that those choices have consequences which no amount of state engineering can, or should negate.
The whole rationale of the state is to prevent people's choices from harming other people. Otherwise we wouldn't need it, we could all just do whatever we want. I want the state to do its best to create a level playing field so that (a) everyone gets a fair shot in life and (b) the best people end up in top positions. It should be fairly evident that that's not happening right now, and private schools play a big part in that failure.
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
I can promise you there's also people who can and do afford it who'd be secretly not wholly disgruntled if the option were denied them, and they had to spend the money on horses and yachts instead, dammit.
For sure. It's kind of a tax cut for the rich. In fact that's how I'd sell it in the drawing rooms and boardrooms of England.
They are still not going to send their kids to the average or below average local comp.
They will make sure they live in the most expensive postcodes and thus the locals schools their kids attend will still be those mainly attended by the offspring of the wealthy.
So you would have to ban expensive detached houses too and make everyone live in a 2 bed semi or council flat
That's just the old "if we can't totally deal with an issue let's not deal with it at all" shtick.
No - it's about not letting the state decide everything and accepting that individuals and indeed parents have the right to make choices - and that those choices have consequences which no amount of state engineering can, or should negate.
The whole rationale of the state is to prevent people's choices from harming other people. Otherwise we wouldn't need it, we could all just do whatever we want. I want the state to do its best to create a level playing field so that (a) everyone gets a fair shot in life and (b) the best people end up in top positions. It should be fairly evident that that's not happening right now, and private schools play a big part in that failure.
The best instrument we had for getting people from average or below average income backgrounds into top positions was of course the grammar schools.
Labour of course could not have that so abolished most of them, for socialists equality of outcome is more important than equality of opportunity
I'm not particularly a Clarkson fan - but has anyone seen Clarkson's Farm? Took me by surprise - an excellent series, curiously riveting for some reason. Hope there will be a Series Two.
Yes, most people on here seem to have and the general opinion is that its great, and yes Season Two being filmed now....
However new Grand Tour episode, utter shit....just take it out the back and put it out its misery.
My children like Grand Tour and the one I half-watched the other day was appallingly sad. Like Last of the Summer Wine but worse.
It is now everything that Clarkson's Farm isn't. It is 100% staged, from the "witty" banter to the mishaps etc, and now it is just all so tired and predictable, that it is boring.
What is nice about Clarkson's Farm is, yes, we know some of it is a setup, oh look I bought a tractor that is too big for my barn aren't I silly ape, but the supporting "cast" are real people, who worked that land for years, who you really couldn't have hand selected better.
Clarkson is much more toned down (I presume much closer to how he really is), while he still got the witty remarks, there is also much more interest in real world issues. And also especially during middle of COVID there is no or limited crew and lots of the tasks being done don't allow for huge stage managed fake disasters e.g. the lambing, the harvesting etc. He isn't going to accidentally crash a Bentley through the lambing barn for the LOLs.
Presumably the harsh realities of farming life have encouraged him to the deeply considered conclusion that we should ignore those communists at Sage and might as well open up, and if you die of Covid you die.
Not to mention private tutors and the m/c 'Comprehensives'. Also the notion that the 'chumocracy' is exclusive to one political party - the Benn's, Kinnocks, Corbyns, say hello!
Xi Jinping is trying to crack down on private tutoring:
China's $120bn dollar private tutoring industry went into nosedive when he announced tutoring should be non-profits.
Part of the reason is he is trying to go back to "traditional" communism. Partly it's because he is trying to raise the birth-rate and the Chinese are stubbornly sticking to one child, even though they can now have two, because of how expensive it is to educate children.
I think a couple of months ago the abandoned the 2 child policy, cant remember if its now 3 child, or as many as you like. but ether way its not likely to have much impact is only a small proportion have even 2 kids.
'Nicola Sturgeon is taking a bigger risk [than Boris Johnson].'
Prof. Sir John Curtice tells De Piero & Halligan that, by lifting restrictions when schools 'are going back', the First Minister is taking more a gamble than Boris Johnson did when he removed Covid rules in England.
'Nicola Sturgeon is taking a bigger risk [than Boris Johnson].'
Prof. Sir John Curtice tells De Piero & Halligan that, by lifting restrictions when schools 'are going back', the First Minister is taking more a gamble than Boris Johnson did when he removed Covid rules in England.
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
If we have to have an elite, why not aim for an enormous one?
PS isn't that our HE policy?
What I'm really talking about is reducing the impact of birth circumstances on life prospects. Who your parents are and what their bank balance is will always be influential but let's make it LESS influential. That's the essence of it.
The thing is @kinabalu you tend to bunch private schools together without acknowledging that there is a massive difference between many provincial day schools and, say, Eton. The day schools I am familiar with are closer to state schools than Eton and the like. There is no old boys' network in the schools my children have attended.
While I of course acknowledge that being financial able to send one's offspring to any private school is a sign of inequality and is to some degree unfair, life isn't fair and no amount of engineering will make it so.
What I have observed loud and clear is the advantage that high intelligence brings. If you are lucky enough to have children who are naturally clever then they will thrive in any school, state or private. I see it all the time. Cream comes to the top. Wealth cannot buy intelligence. You talk about reducing "the impact of birth circumstances on life prospects" without recognising the biological advantage conferred by inherited intelligence.
Private schools get your goat, but what gets mine is intelligent children of brilliant parents (many of whom are solicitors, teachers, etc, etc) who don't bother with private schools despite having oodles of cash. Their brilliant children get accepted into the very best state schools (grammar in our neighbouring county) - in fact these children are actively competed for - and inevitably do brilliantly and it hasn't cost those wealthy parents a penny.
Indeed, in the 1950s and 1960s before comprehensives, you only sent your kids private if they failed their 11 plus to get into the grammar school. Except for the likes of Eton and Harrow which could still rely on snob value private schools were under real pressure
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
I can promise you there's also people who can and do afford it who'd be secretly not wholly disgruntled if the option were denied them, and they had to spend the money on horses and yachts instead, dammit.
For sure. It's kind of a tax cut for the rich. In fact that's how I'd sell it in the drawing rooms and boardrooms of England.
They are still not going to send their kids to the average or below average local comp.
They will make sure they live in the most expensive postcodes and thus the locals schools their kids attend will still be those mainly attended by the offspring of the wealthy.
So you would have to ban expensive detached houses too and make everyone live in a 2 bed semi or council flat
That's just the old "if we can't totally deal with an issue let's not deal with it at all" shtick.
No - it's about not letting the state decide everything and accepting that individuals and indeed parents have the right to make choices - and that those choices have consequences which no amount of state engineering can, or should negate.
The whole rationale of the state is to prevent people's choices from harming other people. Otherwise we wouldn't need it, we could all just do whatever we want. I want the state to do its best to create a level playing field so that (a) everyone gets a fair shot in life and (b) the best people end up in top positions. It should be fairly evident that that's not happening right now, and private schools play a big part in that failure.
There's no limit to the potential for State interference on those grounds. It's pretty well inevitable that some children will have a better start in life than others. It would take a huge degree of coercion to handicap the children who enjoy better circumstances, and level up the children who start in worse circumstances.
'Nicola Sturgeon is taking a bigger risk [than Boris Johnson].'
Prof. Sir John Curtice tells De Piero & Halligan that, by lifting restrictions when schools 'are going back', the First Minister is taking more a gamble than Boris Johnson did when he removed Covid rules in England.
I'm not particularly a Clarkson fan - but has anyone seen Clarkson's Farm? Took me by surprise - an excellent series, curiously riveting for some reason. Hope there will be a Series Two.
Yes, most people on here seem to have and the general opinion is that its great, and yes Season Two being filmed now....
However new Grand Tour episode, utter shit....just take it out the back and put it out its misery.
My children like Grand Tour and the one I half-watched the other day was appallingly sad. Like Last of the Summer Wine but worse.
It is now everything that Clarkson's Farm isn't. It is 100% staged, from the "witty" banter to the mishaps etc, and now it is just all so tired and predictable, that it is boring.
What is nice about Clarkson's Farm is, yes, we know some of it is a setup, oh look I bought a tractor that is too big for my barn aren't I silly ape, but the supporting "cast" are real people, who worked that land for years, who you really couldn't have hand selected better.
Clarkson is much more toned down (I presume much closer to how he really is), while he still got the witty remarks, there is also much more interest in real world issues. And also especially during middle of COVID there is no or limited crew and lots of the tasks being done don't allow for huge stage managed fake disasters e.g. the lambing, the harvesting etc. He isn't going to accidentally crash a Bentley through the lambing barn for the LOLs.
Presumably the harsh realities of farming life have encouraged him to the deeply considered conclusion that we should ignore those communists at Sage and might as well open up, and if you die of Covid you die.
Its like he has a new show out or something that he is trying to generate publicity for....
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
If we have to have an elite, why not aim for an enormous one?
PS isn't that our HE policy?
What I'm really talking about is reducing the impact of birth circumstances on life prospects. Who your parents are and what their bank balance is will always be influential but let's make it LESS influential. That's the essence of it.
The thing is @kinabalu you tend to bunch private schools together without acknowledging that there is a massive difference between many provincial day schools and, say, Eton. The day schools I am familiar with are closer to state schools than Eton and the like. There is no old boys network in the schools my children have attended.
While I of course acknowledge that being financial able to send one's offspring to any private school is a sign of inequality and is to some degree unfair, life isn't fair and no amount of engineering will make it so.
What I have observed loud and clear is the advantage that high intelligence brings. If you are lucky enough to have children who are naturally clever then they will thrive in any school, state or private. I see it all the time. Cream comes to the top. Wealth cannot buy intelligence. You talk about reducing "the impact of birth circumstances on life prospects" without recognising the biological advantage conferred by inherited intelligence.
Private schools get your goat, but what get's mine is intelligent children of brilliant parents (many of whom are solicitors, teachers, etc, etc) who don't bother with private schools despite having oodles of cash. Their brilliant children get accepted into the very best state schools (grammar in our neighbouring county) and inevitably do brilliantly and it hasn't cost those wealthy parents a penny.
Ah no, I do totally recognize the wide variation. It's just there's a limit to what you can post at any one time and so it ends up rather broad-brush. You're somebody for principles, as I read you, so let me try and put this in a way you'll like (even if you disagree). We have 2 competing aspirations here:
1. A society where who and how rich your parents are is a far less significant factor on your life prospects than it is today.
2. The right of parents to spend their own hard (or not) earned money on giving their kids the best possible start in life.
There's a conflict. Not a total conflict but a substantial one. Anybody who denies this is kidding themselves.
So for me, my politics being quite egalitarian, number (1) trumps number (2). A more equal society is right up towards the top of my value tree. That's not to say that liberty and prosperity etc aren't also important. Course they are. But I'm genuinely on the left, not just pretending to be, and so a more equal society is something I'm going to be prioritizing above other things, from time to time, as here, with this issue.
Other people - eg most on here - disagree. They value (2) above (1). Which is fine. It's a different value judgement. What I have little time for is flat out denial and absurd nitpicking. Denial: Pretending our predilection for private schools does NOT feed inequality. Nitpicking: Making out that if there weren't private schools we'd get the same level of educational inequality via "selection by house price".
And it's my great tragedy that whenever I float this one, denial and nitpicking is pretty much all I get.
Not to mention private tutors and the m/c 'Comprehensives'. Also the notion that the 'chumocracy' is exclusive to one political party - the Benn's, Kinnocks, Corbyns, say hello!
Xi Jinping is trying to crack down on private tutoring:
China's $120bn dollar private tutoring industry went into nosedive when he announced tutoring should be non-profits.
Part of the reason is he is trying to go back to "traditional" communism. Partly it's because he is trying to raise the birth-rate and the Chinese are stubbornly sticking to one child, even though they can now have two, because of how expensive it is to educate children.
I think a couple of months ago the abandoned the 2 child policy, cant remember if its now 3 child, or as many as you like. but ether way its not likely to have much impact is only a small proportion have even 2 kids.
The thing about having a 1 child policy for 30+ years is it becomes socially unacceptable to have more than one child. It'll take decades for the fertility rate to rise in China.
'Nicola Sturgeon is taking a bigger risk [than Boris Johnson].'
Prof. Sir John Curtice tells De Piero & Halligan that, by lifting restrictions when schools 'are going back', the First Minister is taking more a gamble than Boris Johnson did when he removed Covid rules in England.
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
I can promise you there's also people who can and do afford it who'd be secretly not wholly disgruntled if the option were denied them, and they had to spend the money on horses and yachts instead, dammit.
For sure. It's kind of a tax cut for the rich. In fact that's how I'd sell it in the drawing rooms and boardrooms of England.
They are still not going to send their kids to the average or below average local comp.
They will make sure they live in the most expensive postcodes and thus the locals schools their kids attend will still be those mainly attended by the offspring of the wealthy.
So you would have to ban expensive detached houses too and make everyone live in a 2 bed semi or council flat
That's just the old "if we can't totally deal with an issue let's not deal with it at all" shtick.
No - it's about not letting the state decide everything and accepting that individuals and indeed parents have the right to make choices - and that those choices have consequences which no amount of state engineering can, or should negate.
The whole rationale of the state is to prevent people's choices from harming other people. Otherwise we wouldn't need it, we could all just do whatever we want. I want the state to do its best to create a level playing field so that (a) everyone gets a fair shot in life and (b) the best people end up in top positions. It should be fairly evident that that's not happening right now, and private schools play a big part in that failure.
The best instrument we had for getting people from average or below average income backgrounds into top positions was of course the grammar schools.
Labour of course could not have that so abolished most of them, for socialists equality of outcome is more important than equality of opportunity
You keep saying this, despite the evidence that grammar schools get captured by the middle class via tutoring and prep schools. If grammar schools were these incredible engines of social mobility, then Kent (where they still exist) would be a classless society. Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes in Kent will know that the opposite is the case. Personally I am all for equality of opportunity - equality of outcome is impossible in education because some people are just smarter than others. The way to get equality of opportunity is to fund all schools better, rigorously enforce standards, pay teachers better to get good teachers to stay in the profession, and to make sure there are no kids too hungry to learn.
Very similar dynamics in UK. Labour is now caught in a death spiral. Its MPs, activists, members & increasingly urban graduate liberal white voters hold cultural values that are far more radical than most, especially the voters it needs to win back. Massive open goal for Cons."
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
I can promise you there's also people who can and do afford it who'd be secretly not wholly disgruntled if the option were denied them, and they had to spend the money on horses and yachts instead, dammit.
For sure. It's kind of a tax cut for the rich. In fact that's how I'd sell it in the drawing rooms and boardrooms of England.
They are still not going to send their kids to the average or below average local comp.
They will make sure they live in the most expensive postcodes and thus the locals schools their kids attend will still be those mainly attended by the offspring of the wealthy.
So you would have to ban expensive detached houses too and make everyone live in a 2 bed semi or council flat
That's just the old "if we can't totally deal with an issue let's not deal with it at all" shtick.
No - it's about not letting the state decide everything and accepting that individuals and indeed parents have the right to make choices - and that those choices have consequences which no amount of state engineering can, or should negate.
The whole rationale of the state is to prevent people's choices from harming other people. Otherwise we wouldn't need it, we could all just do whatever we want. I want the state to do its best to create a level playing field so that (a) everyone gets a fair shot in life and (b) the best people end up in top positions. It should be fairly evident that that's not happening right now, and private schools play a big part in that failure.
The best instrument we had for getting people from average or below average income backgrounds into top positions was of course the grammar schools.
Labour of course could not have that so abolished most of them, for socialists equality of outcome is more important than equality of opportunity
You keep saying this, despite the evidence that grammar schools get captured by the middle class via tutoring and prep schools. If grammar schools were these incredible engines of social mobility, then Kent (where they still exist) would be a classless society. Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes in Kent will know that the opposite is the case. Personally I am all for equality of opportunity - equality of outcome is impossible in education because some people are just smarter than others. The way to get equality of opportunity is to fund all schools better, rigorously enforce standards, pay teachers better to get good teachers to stay in the profession, and to make sure there are no kids too hungry to learn.
Very similar dynamics in UK. Labour is now caught in a death spiral. Its MPs, activists, members & increasingly urban graduate liberal white voters hold cultural values that are far more radical than most, especially the voters it needs to win back. Massive open goal for Cons."
'Nicola Sturgeon is taking a bigger risk [than Boris Johnson].'
Prof. Sir John Curtice tells De Piero & Halligan that, by lifting restrictions when schools 'are going back', the First Minister is taking more a gamble than Boris Johnson did when he removed Covid rules in England.
1) Cases in Scotland now are much lower than they where when England opened up. 2) There is now an established decline in cases, which there was not in England. 3) fractionally more people have now been jabbed/double Jabbed than when England opened. 4) We now have more evidence not least from England that opening up does not cause cases to spike.
But what about schools reopening, well that's not on the same day, that's a week later, so if there was a risk it would shortly be opening on the same day! Therefor, ether open now, or wait till after schools have restarted, and as the England example has shone so far, reopening is not that big a defiance, then better to do it now.
Very similar dynamics in UK. Labour is now caught in a death spiral. Its MPs, activists, members & increasingly urban graduate liberal white voters hold cultural values that are far more radical than most, especially the voters it needs to win back. Massive open goal for Cons."
Neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 by highly potent, hyperthermostable, and mutation-tolerant nanobodies https://www.embopress.org/doi/abs/10.15252/embj.2021107985 Monoclonal anti-SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobulins represent a treatment option for COVID-19. However, their production in mammalian cells is not scalable to meet the global demand. Single-domain (VHH) antibodies (also called nanobodies) provide an alternative suitable for microbial production. Using alpaca immune libraries against the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein, we isolated 45 infection-blocking VHH antibodies. These include nanobodies that can withstand 95°C. The most effective VHH antibody neutralizes SARS-CoV-2 at 17-50 pM concentration (0.2-0.7 µg per liter), binds the open and closed states of the Spike, and shows a tight RBD interaction in the X-ray and cryo-EM structures. The best VHH trimers neutralize even at 40 ng per liter. We constructed nanobody tandems and identified nanobody monomers that tolerate the K417N/T, E484K, N501Y, and L452R immune-escape mutations found in the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Epsilon, Iota, and Delta/Kappa lineages. We also demonstrate neutralization of the Beta strain at low picomolar VHH concentrations. We further discovered VHH antibodies that enforce native folding of the RBD in the E. coli cytosol, where its folding normally fails. Such 'fold-promoting' nanobodies may allow for simplified production of vaccines and their adaptation to viral escape-mutations
Effective against all the variants in very small quantities; can be produced much more cheaply than conventional antibodies; can be stored at room temperature and above. And useful in vaccine production.
'Nicola Sturgeon is taking a bigger risk [than Boris Johnson].'
Prof. Sir John Curtice tells De Piero & Halligan that, by lifting restrictions when schools 'are going back', the First Minister is taking more a gamble than Boris Johnson did when he removed Covid rules in England.
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
I can promise you there's also people who can and do afford it who'd be secretly not wholly disgruntled if the option were denied them, and they had to spend the money on horses and yachts instead, dammit.
For sure. It's kind of a tax cut for the rich. In fact that's how I'd sell it in the drawing rooms and boardrooms of England.
They are still not going to send their kids to the average or below average local comp.
They will make sure they live in the most expensive postcodes and thus the locals schools their kids attend will still be those mainly attended by the offspring of the wealthy.
So you would have to ban expensive detached houses too and make everyone live in a 2 bed semi or council flat
That's just the old "if we can't totally deal with an issue let's not deal with it at all" shtick.
No - it's about not letting the state decide everything and accepting that individuals and indeed parents have the right to make choices - and that those choices have consequences which no amount of state engineering can, or should negate.
The whole rationale of the state is to prevent people's choices from harming other people. Otherwise we wouldn't need it, we could all just do whatever we want. I want the state to do its best to create a level playing field so that (a) everyone gets a fair shot in life and (b) the best people end up in top positions. It should be fairly evident that that's not happening right now, and private schools play a big part in that failure.
There's no limit to the potential for State interference on those grounds. It's pretty well inevitable that some children will have a better start in life than others. It would take a huge degree of coercion to handicap the children who enjoy better circumstances, and level up the children who start in worse circumstances.
The limit comes where the line is drawn. Like with everything. There's nothing uniquely different here.
Guess who on the declining case and admission numbers a nightclub in Lincoln....
The UK govt once again shows that it strongly believes in reproducibility in science by refusing to act on strong evidence from so many other countries. We must see every mistake reproduced in the UK to be absolutely sure we aren't exceptional. And still not correct these.
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
I can promise you there's also people who can and do afford it who'd be secretly not wholly disgruntled if the option were denied them, and they had to spend the money on horses and yachts instead, dammit.
For sure. It's kind of a tax cut for the rich. In fact that's how I'd sell it in the drawing rooms and boardrooms of England.
They are still not going to send their kids to the average or below average local comp.
They will make sure they live in the most expensive postcodes and thus the locals schools their kids attend will still be those mainly attended by the offspring of the wealthy.
So you would have to ban expensive detached houses too and make everyone live in a 2 bed semi or council flat
That's just the old "if we can't totally deal with an issue let's not deal with it at all" shtick.
And your approach is a classic theory of 2nd best failure. Socialist paradise isn't possible, and therefore the actually possible optimum solution probably won't look like getting half way there.
I'd settle for 25% of the way there. I'm a pragmatist.
The thing about having a 1 child policy for 30+ years is it becomes socially unacceptable to have more than one child. It'll take decades for the fertility rate to rise in China.
Yeah. But China is in a bit of a panic about the birth rate. The real cost of the lockdown last year was not deaths, it was a drop in births.
In 2018 they had 15,230,000 births. In 2019 they had 14,650,000 births. In 2020 this fell to 12,050,000 births. That's a big drop.
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
I can promise you there's also people who can and do afford it who'd be secretly not wholly disgruntled if the option were denied them, and they had to spend the money on horses and yachts instead, dammit.
For sure. It's kind of a tax cut for the rich. In fact that's how I'd sell it in the drawing rooms and boardrooms of England.
They are still not going to send their kids to the average or below average local comp.
They will make sure they live in the most expensive postcodes and thus the locals schools their kids attend will still be those mainly attended by the offspring of the wealthy.
So you would have to ban expensive detached houses too and make everyone live in a 2 bed semi or council flat
That's just the old "if we can't totally deal with an issue let's not deal with it at all" shtick.
No - it's about not letting the state decide everything and accepting that individuals and indeed parents have the right to make choices - and that those choices have consequences which no amount of state engineering can, or should negate.
The whole rationale of the state is to prevent people's choices from harming other people. Otherwise we wouldn't need it, we could all just do whatever we want. I want the state to do its best to create a level playing field so that (a) everyone gets a fair shot in life and (b) the best people end up in top positions. It should be fairly evident that that's not happening right now, and private schools play a big part in that failure.
The best instrument we had for getting people from average or below average income backgrounds into top positions was of course the grammar schools.
Labour of course could not have that so abolished most of them, for socialists equality of outcome is more important than equality of opportunity
You keep saying this, despite the evidence that grammar schools get captured by the middle class via tutoring and prep schools. If grammar schools were these incredible engines of social mobility, then Kent (where they still exist) would be a classless society. Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes in Kent will know that the opposite is the case. Personally I am all for equality of opportunity - equality of outcome is impossible in education because some people are just smarter than others. The way to get equality of opportunity is to fund all schools better, rigorously enforce standards, pay teachers better to get good teachers to stay in the profession, and to make sure there are no kids too hungry to learn.
Private schools are a symptom not a cause. Take them away and parents will find a zillion ways to give their children a "better" start in life - for a start they will have £40k after tax to play with to do so.
So you've got to go back to the root cause and then you are either build a Communist state or become like Finland, which would mean a root and branch transformation of our schooling - and university - system.
Problem is, as the man said, I wouldn't have started from here. Today we have bog standard comprehensives, Eton, Winchester and Oxbridge. All that would need to be reformed to get to "free" education.
I imagine that the extra percentage of GDP to be spent plus the requirement for all teachers to have a masters degree might also cause some problems, politically, as an example.
Hospital admissions down 25% on last week (again), looks like we're topping out at 5% of hospital beds being covid in this wave for England.
Didn't iSage and others predict 100,000 a week by now
Looks like it may be time for some quiet reflection and maybe less media hype of them
And iStarmer.
Clearly Boris is hiding all the Johnson variant cases.
I think that cases may start to increase again by the end of the week - if we look at the latest figures by case date, a couple of days are only about 10% down week on week, and presumably there are still additions to these numbers. This increase would be primarily attributable to the 19/7 reopening. However, we should see some decreases in hospitalisations and deaths coming through, as these still moving off the back of previous decreases.
Whether the case peak gets higher than a couple of weeks ago is yet to be seen.
Drivers of people sharing more air in the coming weeks: - Any derestriction of holidays / flying (which I wouldn't oppose) - Start of the football season and associated pub crowding - Return to school
I'm not sure how close we are to natural peak in those circumstances - we are very roughly around 30% immunity from infection, 55% partial immunity (catching, transmission and severity) from vaccination , and 15% no immunity from what I've seen.
I'd still be on the page of derestricting some things (contact isolation rules with extension of rapid testing) and restricting others (standing capacity / no-crowding at indoor venues, making vaxport available to businesses and advising people should avoid entertainment and leisure venues unless they can fulfil vaxport), but further controls in the winter look likely if August does uptick. The one the government haven't touched and I've championed all along is advanced central mandation and extension of school holiday dates - an extra few days on each half-term and end of term holiday over the winter. Prepare it now.
This could yet have a large role in dabbing the brakes and keeping everything else open until we approach fully open herd immunity. And if we are not as near herd immunity as we think, 12-17 vaccination should be prepared for rapid deployment just in case JCVI reverse their advice.
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
I can promise you there's also people who can and do afford it who'd be secretly not wholly disgruntled if the option were denied them, and they had to spend the money on horses and yachts instead, dammit.
For sure. It's kind of a tax cut for the rich. In fact that's how I'd sell it in the drawing rooms and boardrooms of England.
They are still not going to send their kids to the average or below average local comp.
They will make sure they live in the most expensive postcodes and thus the locals schools their kids attend will still be those mainly attended by the offspring of the wealthy.
So you would have to ban expensive detached houses too and make everyone live in a 2 bed semi or council flat
That's just the old "if we can't totally deal with an issue let's not deal with it at all" shtick.
No - it's about not letting the state decide everything and accepting that individuals and indeed parents have the right to make choices - and that those choices have consequences which no amount of state engineering can, or should negate.
The state deciding everything is most certainly not what I'm proposing. Who your parents are will always be a big factor in how you get on in life. We're just talking about how big a factor it should be, and to what extent government should act to mitigate it and make it less of a factor. It's not a one way ticket to the Gulag.
'Nicola Sturgeon is taking a bigger risk [than Boris Johnson].'
Prof. Sir John Curtice tells De Piero & Halligan that, by lifting restrictions when schools 'are going back', the First Minister is taking more a gamble than Boris Johnson did when he removed Covid rules in England.
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
I can promise you there's also people who can and do afford it who'd be secretly not wholly disgruntled if the option were denied them, and they had to spend the money on horses and yachts instead, dammit.
For sure. It's kind of a tax cut for the rich. In fact that's how I'd sell it in the drawing rooms and boardrooms of England.
They are still not going to send their kids to the average or below average local comp.
They will make sure they live in the most expensive postcodes and thus the locals schools their kids attend will still be those mainly attended by the offspring of the wealthy.
So you would have to ban expensive detached houses too and make everyone live in a 2 bed semi or council flat
That's just the old "if we can't totally deal with an issue let's not deal with it at all" shtick.
No - it's about not letting the state decide everything and accepting that individuals and indeed parents have the right to make choices - and that those choices have consequences which no amount of state engineering can, or should negate.
The whole rationale of the state is to prevent people's choices from harming other people. Otherwise we wouldn't need it, we could all just do whatever we want. I want the state to do its best to create a level playing field so that (a) everyone gets a fair shot in life and (b) the best people end up in top positions. It should be fairly evident that that's not happening right now, and private schools play a big part in that failure.
The best instrument we had for getting people from average or below average income backgrounds into top positions was of course the grammar schools.
Labour of course could not have that so abolished most of them, for socialists equality of outcome is more important than equality of opportunity
You keep saying this, despite the evidence that grammar schools get captured by the middle class via tutoring and prep schools. If grammar schools were these incredible engines of social mobility, then Kent (where they still exist) would be a classless society. Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes in Kent will know that the opposite is the case. Personally I am all for equality of opportunity - equality of outcome is impossible in education because some people are just smarter than others. The way to get equality of opportunity is to fund all schools better, rigorously enforce standards, pay teachers better to get good teachers to stay in the profession, and to make sure there are no kids too hungry to learn.
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
I can promise you there's also people who can and do afford it who'd be secretly not wholly disgruntled if the option were denied them, and they had to spend the money on horses and yachts instead, dammit.
For sure. It's kind of a tax cut for the rich. In fact that's how I'd sell it in the drawing rooms and boardrooms of England.
They are still not going to send their kids to the average or below average local comp.
They will make sure they live in the most expensive postcodes and thus the locals schools their kids attend will still be those mainly attended by the offspring of the wealthy.
So you would have to ban expensive detached houses too and make everyone live in a 2 bed semi or council flat
That's just the old "if we can't totally deal with an issue let's not deal with it at all" shtick.
No - it's about not letting the state decide everything and accepting that individuals and indeed parents have the right to make choices - and that those choices have consequences which no amount of state engineering can, or should negate.
The whole rationale of the state is to prevent people's choices from harming other people. Otherwise we wouldn't need it, we could all just do whatever we want. I want the state to do its best to create a level playing field so that (a) everyone gets a fair shot in life and (b) the best people end up in top positions. It should be fairly evident that that's not happening right now, and private schools play a big part in that failure.
The best instrument we had for getting people from average or below average income backgrounds into top positions was of course the grammar schools.
Labour of course could not have that so abolished most of them, for socialists equality of outcome is more important than equality of opportunity
You keep saying this, despite the evidence that grammar schools get captured by the middle class via tutoring and prep schools. If grammar schools were these incredible engines of social mobility, then Kent (where they still exist) would be a classless society. Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes in Kent will know that the opposite is the case. Personally I am all for equality of opportunity - equality of outcome is impossible in education because some people are just smarter than others. The way to get equality of opportunity is to fund all schools better, rigorously enforce standards, pay teachers better to get good teachers to stay in the profession, and to make sure there are no kids too hungry to learn.
'Nicola Sturgeon is taking a bigger risk [than Boris Johnson].'
Prof. Sir John Curtice tells De Piero & Halligan that, by lifting restrictions when schools 'are going back', the First Minister is taking more a gamble than Boris Johnson did when he removed Covid rules in England.
I feel your pain. I remember the summer of 2005 when Steven Gerrard shirts were being burned outside Anfield and Melwood then he ended up staying.
Are you setting up a PB fantasy league?
Stevie G did as you say, the depressing thing is we all know H won't and then we are in a right pickle.
Re the PB League - do you want me to? I'm rather out of things at the moment - doesn't take a minute to do so if we want to go again.... I've not even looked at fantasy team yet.
'Nicola Sturgeon is taking a bigger risk [than Boris Johnson].'
Prof. Sir John Curtice tells De Piero & Halligan that, by lifting restrictions when schools 'are going back', the First Minister is taking more a gamble than Boris Johnson did when he removed Covid rules in England.
What an extraordinary coincidence that the best person to be on the anti-sleaze watchdog just happened to be an old chum of Johnsons from his Bullingdon Club days.
However, I remember some Corbyn fans on here defending McDonnell employing Corbyn's son in a taxpayer-funded role. By an astonishing coincidence, the son of his best bud was the best candidate for the job.
(Hint, he wasn't.)
If we want to stop people hiring friends, family and chums to roles, especially to taxpayer-funded roles, then it needs to apply equally to all.
I don't think I have ever defended cronyism in the Labour Party either.
The nepotism and Chumocracy does show how illusory "taking back control" was.
Jobs for the sons and daughters of friends is as old as jobs themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's not the best way of hiring someone but sometimes it can work. Rather depends on how how up the chain the job is.
That's the Indy. And there seems to be not a shred of actual evidence of malpractice.
Has anyone provided any evidence that Johnson had a corrupt role in the process, or how the process worked such that Johnson could manipulate it? Or that the member appointed is unfit to be on the Committee or is corrupt?
Or is this just Hoof-in-Mouth Rayner howling at the moon because it is Tuesday and she still does not have anything to say?
"You were in a student club with him 35 years ago" is some way beyond farfetched.
The only possible chink I can see is if the PM is supplied with say 50 names, from which he then gets to choose who he wants, and that would still require a lot more evidence that we have.
It's quite a dangerous argument to make because it shrinks the pool of acceptable candidates - 'No, you went to the same school when you were six!" - and undermines the expectation of personal integrity.
At this level it looks bad, though. However, I agree that we've not seen evidence that, for example, Johnson looked at the shortlist and said 'He's the one. Know him. Good chap' or similar. Nor have we seen any suggestion, AFAIK, that a selection committee produced three names in order of preference, and the Good Chap was third.
I think what we may get here at some time is similar to what happened to selection of Bishops, where the process was that the PM got 2 names and a theoretical convention that they could choose either - which has only been used once in 100-200 appointments.
That has now been replaced with the second name being a "reserve" if eg the first one dies.
Quite concerning, though, is the dire quality of opposition a reliance on painting this stuff in poster paints indicates.
Despite your archaeology you haven’t really found a good reason why Boris should be picking an old school friend to head the Boris-monitoring committee, have you?
I don't need one.
I was pointing out that this particular outrage bus is fuelled by BS and hot air.
Yes. What we need is a tape with Johnson saying, "Ah, Fergie! He was in the old Bullers with me. Sound as a pound. Hired."
Short of that, as Charles would stress, nothing to see and unfair to insinuate.
And the Lord that drew up the shortlist was enabled by David Cameron, who was in the same dissolute dining club.
It's almost like a self replicating oligarchy.
Gets my goat it really does. Private schools have to go. It's the only way imo.
Cutting the head off a hydra, mate. Everywhere has oligarchies, nowhere else has public schools (except in the sense of actually public actual schools). If you strike them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I think that is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Elitism can be reduced but not eradicated. In fact you shouldn't even try to eradicate it. That leads to totalitarianism and - yes - elites. Worse ones. I'm just thinking about what's realistic in England 2021. This could be possible one day. But not this day, I'm fully aware of that. It's electoral poison. People who can't afford this privilege still support it. Until this changes, no chance of reform, I'll be talking to the hand.
I can promise you there's also people who can and do afford it who'd be secretly not wholly disgruntled if the option were denied them, and they had to spend the money on horses and yachts instead, dammit.
For sure. It's kind of a tax cut for the rich. In fact that's how I'd sell it in the drawing rooms and boardrooms of England.
They are still not going to send their kids to the average or below average local comp.
They will make sure they live in the most expensive postcodes and thus the locals schools their kids attend will still be those mainly attended by the offspring of the wealthy.
So you would have to ban expensive detached houses too and make everyone live in a 2 bed semi or council flat
That's just the old "if we can't totally deal with an issue let's not deal with it at all" shtick.
No - it's about not letting the state decide everything and accepting that individuals and indeed parents have the right to make choices - and that those choices have consequences which no amount of state engineering can, or should negate.
The whole rationale of the state is to prevent people's choices from harming other people. Otherwise we wouldn't need it, we could all just do whatever we want. I want the state to do its best to create a level playing field so that (a) everyone gets a fair shot in life and (b) the best people end up in top positions. It should be fairly evident that that's not happening right now, and private schools play a big part in that failure.
The best instrument we had for getting people from average or below average income backgrounds into top positions was of course the grammar schools.
Labour of course could not have that so abolished most of them, for socialists equality of outcome is more important than equality of opportunity
You keep saying this, despite the evidence that grammar schools get captured by the middle class via tutoring and prep schools. If grammar schools were these incredible engines of social mobility, then Kent (where they still exist) would be a classless society. Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes in Kent will know that the opposite is the case. Personally I am all for equality of opportunity - equality of outcome is impossible in education because some people are just smarter than others. The way to get equality of opportunity is to fund all schools better, rigorously enforce standards, pay teachers better to get good teachers to stay in the profession, and to make sure there are no kids too hungry to learn.
Kent's most recent PM, Ted Heath, was the son of a builder and maid, went to grammar school, then Oxford and ended up in No 10
Other than stating the bleeding obvious what is the point being made here?
Selecting at 11 is a good way of messing up a number of children's lives, whereas streaming achieves the end desired without making that drastic decision at such a young age.
Of course Grammar schools will have the best results. You have selected their intake. Doh!
But you have selected them at 11 making life changing decisions at such a young age. Academic ability and practical ability can radically change between 11 and later life as it did for me. Also children can excel in some subjects and be rubbish in others, making across the board selection stupid. And I should know because as I have detailed here before it happened to me and I witnessed it happening to others. It was crap.
Comments
Seems to me pretty likely from the trend that cases (don’t know about hospitalisations/deaths) are about to start rising again. Of course one of the problems with the way deaths and hospitalisations are reported is that these are linked. More Covid cases = more Covid deaths, even if none of the latter are actually linked to Covid (I think the “Covid deaths as per death certificate figure” has actually been running below the headline 28 day figures for a fair while).
While I of course acknowledge that being financial able to send one's offspring to any private school is a sign of inequality and is to some degree unfair, life isn't fair and no amount of engineering will make it so.
What I have observed loud and clear is the advantage that high intelligence brings. If you are lucky enough to have children who are naturally clever then they will thrive in any school, state or private. I see it all the time. Cream comes to the top. Wealth cannot buy intelligence. You talk about reducing "the impact of birth circumstances on life prospects" without recognising the biological advantage conferred by inherited intelligence.
Private schools get your goat, but what gets mine is intelligent children of brilliant parents (many of whom are solicitors, teachers, etc, etc) who don't bother with private schools despite having oodles of cash. Their brilliant children get accepted into the very best state schools (grammar in our neighbouring county) - in fact these children are actively competed for - and inevitably do brilliantly and it hasn't cost those wealthy parents a penny.
And you're supposing a grasp of the germ theory of disease which simply didn't pertain.
But basically did the calculation that it was a better return to take more slaves and accept a level of mortality vs reduce capacity fir slaves to take more food etc.
That’s the mindset that led, in extremis, to the Zong.
Election Maps UK
@ElectionMapsUK
Westminster Voting Intention:
CON: 40% (=)
LAB: 34% (=)
LDM: 10% (=)
GRN: 6% (+2)
SNP: 4% (=)
Via
@SavantaComRes
, 30 Jul - 1 Aug.
Changes w/ 25-25 Jul.
or is he....
I'm not particularly a Clarkson fan - but has anyone seen Clarkson's Farm? Took me by surprise - an excellent series, curiously riveting for some reason. Hope there will be a Series Two.
I would think most people south of the border couldn't care less if you decided to go it alone.
When I say you, obviously not you, but the Scottish people - as you are insulated from the potential downsides over in Sweden.
We know they skew young, but not exclusively.
We know they include pregnant mothers (and presumably pregnant people in general).
What else do we know? Do they object on religious reasons? Concerned vegans?
Are they libertarian Laurence Fox types?
Are they people who struggle with English - are they socially isolated generally? Do they struggle with transport?
However new Grand Tour episode, utter shit....just take it out the back and put it out its misery.
Starmer, at least, is contractually obliged to oppose the government.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57966027
China's $120bn dollar private tutoring industry went into nosedive when he announced tutoring should be non-profits.
Part of the reason is he is trying to go back to "traditional" communism. Partly it's because he is trying to raise the birth-rate and the Chinese are stubbornly sticking to one child, even though they can now have two, because of how expensive it is to educate children.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/olympics/2021/08/03/team-gb-track-cycling-row-denmark-illegal-shin-tape-dane-crashes/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr
What is nice about Clarkson's Farm is, yes, we know some of it is a setup, oh look I bought a tractor that is too big for my barn aren't I silly ape, but the supporting "cast" are real people, who worked that land for years, you really couldn't have hand selected better.
Clarkson is much more toned down (I presume much closer to how he really is), while he still got the witty remarks, there is also much more interest in real world issues. And also especially during middle of COVID there is no or limited crew and lots of the tasks being done don't allow for huge stage managed fake disasters e.g. the lambing, the harvesting etc. He isn't going to accidentally crash a Bentley through the lambing barn for the LOLs.
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/entertainment/clarksons-farm-season-2-release-date/
Prof. Sir John Curtice tells De Piero & Halligan that, by lifting restrictions when schools 'are going back', the First Minister is taking more a gamble than Boris Johnson did when he removed Covid rules in England.
https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1422558556872744961?s=20
I want the state to do its best to create a level playing field so that (a) everyone gets a fair shot in life and (b) the best people end up in top positions. It should be fairly evident that that's not happening right now, and private schools play a big part in that failure.
I want the state to do its best to create a level playing field so that (a) everyone gets a fair shot in life and (b) the best people end up in top positions. It should be fairly evident that that's not happening right now, and private schools play a big part in that failure.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/aug/03/civil-servant-who-lost-mod-files-at-a-bus-stop-was-to-be-uks-ambassador-to-nato
Labour of course could not have that so abolished most of them, for socialists equality of outcome is more important than equality of opportunity
Edit: It's something I'm concerned about, too, but why him? Seems odd.
Are you setting up a PB fantasy league?
England relaxed restrictions as schools broke up.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58077255
1. A society where who and how rich your parents are is a far less significant factor on your life prospects than it is today.
2. The right of parents to spend their own hard (or not) earned money on giving their kids the best possible start in life.
There's a conflict. Not a total conflict but a substantial one. Anybody who denies this is kidding themselves.
So for me, my politics being quite egalitarian, number (1) trumps number (2). A more equal society is right up towards the top of my value tree. That's not to say that liberty and prosperity etc aren't also important. Course they are. But I'm genuinely on the left, not just pretending to be, and so a more equal society is something I'm going to be prioritizing above other things, from time to time, as here, with this issue.
Other people - eg most on here - disagree. They value (2) above (1). Which is fine. It's a different value judgement. What I have little time for is flat out denial and absurd nitpicking. Denial: Pretending our predilection for private schools does NOT feed inequality. Nitpicking: Making out that if there weren't private schools we'd get the same level of educational inequality via "selection by house price".
And it's my great tragedy that whenever I float this one, denial and nitpicking is pretty much all I get.
So that's it for another 3 months.
Bit of a scramble going on.
Personally I am all for equality of opportunity - equality of outcome is impossible in education because some people are just smarter than others. The way to get equality of opportunity is to fund all schools better, rigorously enforce standards, pay teachers better to get good teachers to stay in the profession, and to make sure there are no kids too hungry to learn.
Very similar dynamics in UK. Labour is now caught in a death spiral. Its MPs, activists, members & increasingly urban graduate liberal white voters hold cultural values that are far more radical than most, especially the voters it needs to win back. Massive open goal for Cons."
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1422527524047888389
Just thought I'd share that, I so had to be on my best behaviour today.
https://britannia-study.com.my/state-schools/best-state-secondary-schools-in-the-uk
Grammar schools also make up the vast majority of the state schools in the top 100 schools which get the most pupils into Oxbridge, the feeder for the top jobs and professions
https://www.keystonetutors.com/news/oxbridge-which-schools-get-the-most-offers
Kent's most recent PM, Ted Heath, was the son of a builder and maid, went to grammar school, then Oxford and ended up in No 10
In many ways its a much smaller risk,
1) Cases in Scotland now are much lower than they where when England opened up.
2) There is now an established decline in cases, which there was not in England.
3) fractionally more people have now been jabbed/double Jabbed than when England opened.
4) We now have more evidence not least from England that opening up does not cause cases to spike.
But what about schools reopening, well that's not on the same day, that's a week later, so if there was a risk it would shortly be opening on the same day! Therefor, ether open now, or wait till after schools have restarted, and as the England example has shone so far, reopening is not that big a defiance, then better to do it now.
Neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 by highly potent, hyperthermostable, and mutation-tolerant nanobodies
https://www.embopress.org/doi/abs/10.15252/embj.2021107985
Monoclonal anti-SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobulins represent a treatment option for COVID-19. However, their production in mammalian cells is not scalable to meet the global demand. Single-domain (VHH) antibodies (also called nanobodies) provide an alternative suitable for microbial production. Using alpaca immune libraries against the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein, we isolated 45 infection-blocking VHH antibodies. These include nanobodies that can withstand 95°C. The most effective VHH antibody neutralizes SARS-CoV-2 at 17-50 pM concentration (0.2-0.7 µg per liter), binds the open and closed states of the Spike, and shows a tight RBD interaction in the X-ray and cryo-EM structures. The best VHH trimers neutralize even at 40 ng per liter. We constructed nanobody tandems and identified nanobody monomers that tolerate the K417N/T, E484K, N501Y, and L452R immune-escape mutations found in the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Epsilon, Iota, and Delta/Kappa lineages. We also demonstrate neutralization of the Beta strain at low picomolar VHH concentrations. We further discovered VHH antibodies that enforce native folding of the RBD in the E. coli cytosol, where its folding normally fails. Such 'fold-promoting' nanobodies may allow for simplified production of vaccines and their adaptation to viral escape-mutations
Effective against all the variants in very small quantities; can be produced much more cheaply than conventional antibodies; can be stored at room temperature and above.
And useful in vaccine production.
Didn't have you down as one of the "Nicola can do no wrong" set, but there you go....
The UK govt once again shows that it strongly believes in reproducibility in science by refusing to act on strong evidence from so many other countries. We must see every mistake reproduced in the UK to be absolutely sure we aren't exceptional. And still not correct these.
https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1422574672726695938?s=20
In 2018 they had 15,230,000 births. In 2019 they had 14,650,000 births. In 2020 this fell to 12,050,000 births. That's a big drop.
So you've got to go back to the root cause and then you are either build a Communist state or become like Finland, which would mean a root and branch transformation of our schooling - and university - system.
Problem is, as the man said, I wouldn't have started from here. Today we have bog standard comprehensives, Eton, Winchester and Oxbridge. All that would need to be reformed to get to "free" education.
I imagine that the extra percentage of GDP to be spent plus the requirement for all teachers to have a masters degree might also cause some problems, politically, as an example.
Whether the case peak gets higher than a couple of weeks ago is yet to be seen.
Drivers of people sharing more air in the coming weeks:
- Any derestriction of holidays / flying (which I wouldn't oppose)
- Start of the football season and associated pub crowding
- Return to school
I'm not sure how close we are to natural peak in those circumstances - we are very roughly around 30% immunity from infection, 55% partial immunity (catching, transmission and severity) from vaccination , and 15% no immunity from what I've seen.
I'd still be on the page of derestricting some things (contact isolation rules with extension of rapid testing) and restricting others (standing capacity / no-crowding at indoor venues, making vaxport available to businesses and advising people should avoid entertainment and leisure venues unless they can fulfil vaxport), but further controls in the winter look likely if August does uptick. The one the government haven't touched and I've championed all along is advanced central mandation and extension of school holiday dates - an extra few days on each half-term and end of term holiday over the winter. Prepare it now.
This could yet have a large role in dabbing the brakes and keeping everything else open until we approach fully open herd immunity. And if we are not as near herd immunity as we think, 12-17 vaccination should be prepared for rapid deployment just in case JCVI reverse their advice.
Re the PB League - do you want me to? I'm rather out of things at the moment - doesn't take a minute to do so if we want to go again.... I've not even looked at fantasy team yet.
Selecting at 11 is a good way of messing up a number of children's lives, whereas streaming achieves the end desired without making that drastic decision at such a young age.
Of course Grammar schools will have the best results. You have selected their intake. Doh!
But you have selected them at 11 making life changing decisions at such a young age. Academic ability and practical ability can radically change between 11 and later life as it did for me. Also children can excel in some subjects and be rubbish in others, making across the board selection stupid. And I should know because as I have detailed here before it happened to me and I witnessed it happening to others. It was crap.